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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“He was not always right in damning the regional spatial strategies and blaming them for every evil on the planet, but I think he had a point nevertheless, in that the old regions did not necessarily represent local economies and the way in which areas worked in day-to-day life. The districts of south Yorkshire were in the Yorkshire and Humber region, but the districts in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were in the old East Midlands region, and that often did not work because the two regional development authorities did not always speak to each other. That was a fundamental problem for the Sheffield regional economy, which the last Government recognised when it created the LEPs and allowed them to create themselves across the old regional boundaries to reflect the travel-to-work areas and the local sub-regional city region economies.”
“What happens in Sheffield matters to us, and how people transport themselves from Bolsover to Sheffield matters to us. It is right that we are sitting round the table having discussions and being involved in the decision-making process.” Those were wise words, which have stood the test of time. The coalition Government adopted a similar approach. When they formed the local enterprise partnerships, they recognised that the historical regional boundaries were not always appropriate. I know that the previous Secretary of State had a thing about regions: people almost had to cross themselves, or put money in the Department’s swear box, if they mentioned them.”
“That has been recognised in a number of ways, and I remember when it was first recognised. I went to the first meeting between the leaders of those nine councils, which took place at Meadowhall shopping centre, and which had been called by David Miliband when he was number two in his Department. I am not sure which Department it was, but it was probably the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. I expected a reaction from the districts outside south Yorkshire—I expected them to think that Sheffield Big Brother was going to take them over—but the leader of Bolsover district council said, “Actually, it is quite good that we are involved in this.” He said, “I know that not everyone who lives in Bolsover will have a job in Bolsover, and that many people have to travel to work in Sheffield.”
“They came together to form what is now the Sheffield combined authority. To an extent, the same applies to Leeds, which contains five districts that used to be the West Yorkshire metropolitan county, and which have been working together as a combined authority. There are, however, some differences, which have been recognised at various times by parties on both sides of the House. Sheffield contains not merely the four districts of south Yorkshire, but five other districts which form part of either Derbyshire county or Nottinghamshire county: Derbyshire Dales, Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire, Bolsover and Bassetlaw. They are not part of the old South Yorkshire county, but they are very much part of the local economy of the Sheffield city region—the travel-to-work area.”
“There were 10 districts that formed that old Greater Manchester metropolitan county, so they have always had a sense of being together and working together over a number of years. They are also unitary authorities that all have the ability to make their own decisions about whether they come together, how they do so and what they do to form the combined authority. It is a relatively simple and easy arrangement in constitutional terms. The difficulty for some other areas is that the constitutional arrangements are slightly different. Obviously, I am now going to refer to my own area. Sheffield contains the four districts which used to form the old South Yorkshire metropolitan county, and which have worked together to varying degrees, and with varying degrees of success, since the counties were abolished.”
“I shall speak specifically to Government amendment 27. The proposals for combined authorities are welcome. They are essentially about local authorities coming together where they wish to combine their approach, their workings and their functions to deliver better services and, hopefully, greater economic growth for the residents in their areas. The idea was pioneered in Manchester. The one fundamental difference between Manchester and some of the other areas that we are considering is that Manchester has had a number of authorities that have worked together over a period of time and these happen to be the authorities that were part of the old Greater Manchester metropolitan area.”
“Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy)—and right for developing skills, for economic growth, and for the development of a proper transport strategy for those areas.”
“The districts in North Derbyshire and North Nottinghamshire, or some of them, may well decide to become part of the Sheffield city region—I hope that they will, because I think that it makes economic sense—but it is nevertheless possible that Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire will form another combined authority, an N2D2, and that there will then be a conflict between the two decisions. I understand from the amendment that it will be up to the Secretary of State to decide which combined authority the districts should join, because they cannot join two; the people in those areas cannot have a vote for two elected mayors in different combined authorities. I hope when he decides that he will indicate that his key criterion will be what is right for the local economy—that point was made by the hon.”
“I entirely agree. In the end, of course, a district council as a whole will have to go to an area, but, as the hon. Gentleman says, the focus should be on what works for the economy in terms of job creation, growth and the development of skills, and on ensuring that the necessary transport links exist. I hope that the Minister will clarify one important point. There may ultimately be a decision for the Secretary of State or the Minister to make on these matters.”
“Standing the test of time is about what works economically and what works for growth, because that is the purpose of devolution in the first place.”
“That is an added complication. At present, three separate police and crime commissioners cover the Sheffield city region: one for south Yorkshire, one for Derbyshire and one for Nottinghamshire. Those issues might be considered at some point way down the line, but the leaders of the Sheffield combined authority have— sensibly, in my view—decided not to incorporate the police and crime commissioners’ powers in their devolution deal, probably because that would lead to exactly the sort of further complications to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. They have confined their deal to economic, transport, skills and growth issues, which are precisely the issues to which the Secretary of State will have to give particular consideration if there is a decision to be made about which combined authority the districts are to go into.”
“It allows devolution to go forward without a veto from the county over the particular issues of economic devolution and transport powers. It makes a lot more sense for the Sheffield city region. It also offers the same opportunities for the same way forward for the West Yorkshire combined authority and probably for the west midlands as well.”
“Absolutely, and therefore I support the principles of the Bill, but having said that, and while agreeing with my hon. Friend, if we can do something to improve the devolution process, which this amendment does, we should be looking to do that as well. I want devolution to happen, but I want it to work. There is a danger in the Sheffield city region proposals that, without those North Derbyshire and North Nottinghamshire districts, and without a true reflection of the whole travel-to-work area, the devolution will not be as economically successful. I accept in the end that it is a matter of consensus, however. This amendment allows those districts to express their own view about where they think their economic future lies without pulling out of the county for all other services.”
“I am trying to work out what the hon. Gentleman is trying to achieve by this amendment. Is he just probing the Government? They have made it clear that devolution deals, as negotiated, will go ahead only with an elected mayor. Is he working on the assumption that if the population turn down an elected mayor in a referendum, the whole devolution deal for that area will fall?”
“If Members look at any of the local government systems in western Europe, they will find that those local authorities have the power not just to spend money that central Governments give them, but much greater power to raise their own revenues. I recognise that the Government have taken an initial step forward with the full localisation of business rates. We shall obviously want to scrutinise the way in which that is done, but I hope that it is merely the first stage of fiscal devolution, as well as the spending devolution with which this Bill is mainly concerned.”
“I am sure that the Secretary of State could not possibly say anything, but he knows exactly what the realities are from his experience of negotiating with his colleagues. Finally, I think that after, say, two years of the workings of what are rightly disparate deals that reflect the particular needs of particular areas—for that is what the construction of these deals is all about—we shall want to examine the overall constitutional position of central and local government. We shall want to think about what the next stage should be, and about whether general principles that we have learnt from the deals need to be applied more widely. I am thinking particularly of fiscal devolution.”
“First, we shall have to discuss the deals that have been agreed, how successful they have been, and what lessons can be learned. Deals in one area can throw up either problems or successes from which other areas will want to learn. We shall need to subject the deals to scrutiny, on the Floor of the House or in the Select Committee, to establish how well they have worked in practice, whether they have achieved the success that we wanted them to achieve, and whether such success can be extended to other areas. Secondly, I think that the House will want to examine the performance of different Departments—and I noted the Secretary of State’s reference to his previous reports on performance. I suspect that there is still more enthusiasm in some parts of the Government than in others for the whole devolution idea.”
“I shall not go into the details of the Sheffield city region again, but I think that the amendment demonstrates Ministers’ understanding of a wider issue. If more growth, better economic performance and new jobs are to result from these deals, the bodies that we are creating must reflect the real economies of their areas rather than having regard to the old administrative boundaries of regions that existed for many years but did not necessarily reflect those local economies. The fact that Ministers were prepared to recognise that, and to help with the construction of bodies that will indeed reflect the economies of their areas, demonstrates a very important principle. I think that, at some point, we shall have to return to the House and discuss what we have achieved with devolution, and I think that we shall have to discuss three issues.”
“Equally, I would like to place on record my thanks to local government leaders, particularly those on the Labour side who control most of the major cities. The reality is, as I am sure Ministers recognise, that while those leaders’ budgets are being cut to shreds by the Government, they are still prepared to sit down and work pragmatically with the very same Ministers to negotiate deals on devolution that will be to the benefit of the communities they represent. That says an awful lot for council leaders, and the way in which they have approached the offer that the Government have made to them. I thank the Secretary of State and Ministers for recognising the concerns that I raised and tabling amendment 27.”
“I said on Second Reading that I supported the general principles of the Bill and its underlying intentions—and I still do. I have reservations about the pace and the extent of the change—I would like to go faster and further—and about certain details such as elected mayors and their imposition. I think imposition is the right word, despite Ministers’ denials. Nevertheless, the Bill is important for its symbolism and its direction of travel. On that direction, when I was first elected in 1992 I never thought I would see this happening in this House of Commons. What we have here is a revelation by comparison with where thinking was in those days. I thank the Secretary of State and Ministers for the way in which they have dealt with the debate in Committee and on Report. They have listened to the constructive comments made on both sides.”
“There will be Muslims in this country, particularly young Muslims, who, although they do not support ISIL/Daesh, are concerned about the UK being seen to take military action against other Muslims. Will the Prime Minister address that concern directly, and make it clear that to be anti-ISIL/Daesh is not to be anti-Muslim?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 14 March this year, the Communities and Local Government Committee produced a report on litter and fly-tipping. The convention is that Government Departments will respond to such reports within eight weeks. Sometimes there is a reason for a delay, and obviously the general election intervened, but it is now eight months since the report was produced. Despite repeated requests at ministerial and official level on a regular basis, we are still no nearer to getting a response. That shows disrespect not merely to the Select Committee but to the House as a whole. Will you use your good offices to ensure that the report is responded to in a proper manner?”
“I was only too pleased earlier that, as I was in the Chair, I was not able to join in the competition about who was nearest to retirement age. We will move on to Mr Ian Blackford winding up briefly.”
“The Minister talks about the importance of trans-Pennine links, which currently are pretty awful. David Higgins described the links between Sheffield and Manchester as a matter of national concern. This is an important new clause—there are 12 pages of it, so it must be important. Just how will it help us to co-ordinate the delivery of HS3 with that of HS2—I have not found anyone in Government making that link—and how will it deliver a tunnel under the Pennines to replace the ridiculously slow Snake and Woodhead passes, which at present pass for road links between Sheffield and Manchester?”
“Will the Minister explain again? What role will the body play in looking at a road tunnel under the Pennines? Would it carry out the review of whether one is necessary? Would it commission the work? Or would it simply be advisory? How would it relate to HS2, given that that will need other transport links? What will its role be in that connection?”
“I am still not sure what role an STB will play. Will it be just an advisory body? Will it be just a planning body? Will it just help the Secretary of State to make decisions? How, in particular, will it relate to HS2 and HS3? Will it try to link those two bodies? Will it have any oversight of those developments?”
“There are currently two Bills before the House, and I expect the Minister is considering them both fairly widely. The Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill is about devolution. That is welcome, and we can discuss how devolution should take place. We also have the Housing and Planning Bill, and the Royal Town Planning Institute said that it was astonished at the amount of planning centralisation in that Bill. With starter homes, measures in the Bill are attempting to decide on the nature of section 106 agreements, which are essentially agreements about a particular site between a local authority and a developer. That is a particularly wide issue.”
“I am comfortable and supportive of that idea, but we need a dialogue and debate about two important issues. The first has been raised continually by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who chaired the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament. He was a strong advocate for trying to codify or set in a more formal arrangement the powers of local government and its relationship with the centre. That is important because there is a danger that some powers and aspects of policy will be devolved to local councils, but that other powers—without talking about centralisation or taking anything back to the centre—will be removed from local councils, and more controls introduced in their place.”
“I wish to raise two issues that the Government and the Committee will have to deal with at some point. When I spoke on Second Reading, I indicated that I was generally supportive of the Bill. I have reservations about some aspects and details of it, but the direction of travel is essentially right, as is the idea that devolution will happen and is on the agenda, and there is a good deal of cross-party support for it. That is an important step change from how things were when I first came to the House in 1992, or in many subsequent years. We are seeing progress. Members of the House are standing up and talking positively about devolution, and no one is saying “Local councils can’t do that—they can’t be trusted”, which was very much the attitude a few years ago.”
“Could local government have a right to be allocated a certain percentage of income tax? Those are all ideas. All I am saying to the Government is that once this wave of devolution is going through, with cross-party support and local councils entering into it and putting in bids, can we at least have some indication that they will step back at some point and have a serious look at wider fiscal devolution? Ultimately, simply giving to local councils the power to spend money that has been handed out from the centre is not real devolution at all. It is power to spend the money the Chancellor gives out. What councils need for real devolution is the greater power to raise that money in the first place.”
“The tax also has not been revalued for 25 years. That is nonsense. The council tax is the one tax over which local government has some degree of control, but it does not control the bands. There must be some flexibility there to recognise the extraordinary difference between amount of tax paid and the value of houses in the top and bottom bands. The difference in the values of the houses is much wider than the amount of council tax paid. Local councils need more flexibility and the ability to control that. As the London Finance Commission said, and the Select Committee agreed, let us also look at stamp duty and other property taxes. Let us consider giving local councils freedom to set business rates. I know that the Government want to bring in some freedoms, but they could go wider.”
“How they do that will be critical, including dealing with the issue of rewarding councils that get more development in their areas and at the same time protecting those areas where development is not as easy to achieve. Achieving some element of redistribution in the mechanism will be key. Nevertheless, the Government have accepted the need for some more fiscal devolution in principle. They now need to consider how it can be right that any increase in the one tax over which local government has total control—the council tax—is restricted by the need for a referendum. No other tax raised by central Government requires a referendum on any increase. I did not agree with the previous Government’s policy on council tax capping—I refused to vote for that on several occasions, as it is a very centralist policy.”
“Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) quoted the report from the Select Committee in the last Parliament, and the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) was a member of the Committee. We produced the report on an all-party basis. We followed the London Finance Commission, which was promoted by the Mayor of London and supported by the London boroughs. By and large, we agreed the report, albeit with some embellishments, with the London Finance Commission, and we had support from the core cities, but it was almost dismissed by the Government as an irrelevancy—something that they did not want to pursue. I am pleased that the Government are looking at the total localisation of business rates.”
“I will try to get back on to the straight and narrow, Mrs Main. My point is that we need a time of reflection, with a discussion between Government, local government and this House about the framework for the constitutional relationships between the centre and local authorities of whatever kind, including combined authorities, so that we can look at the balance of powers and perhaps put down some markers or mechanisms for ensuring that the devolution we all support today is not taken back tomorrow. We need something of that kind. A constitutional convention has been mentioned—the Government may not like those words, but we need some mechanism to enable that to happen. My second point is about fiscal devolution. My hon.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his helpful response. Does he agree that, if the Sheffield city region is to be economically successful, all the districts within it will need to have the right to join the combined authority? Also, if we are to have an elected mayor responsible for transport, should not everyone in that travel-to-work area have the right to participate in the vote for that mayor?”
“The Secretary of State quoted what I said in a debate during the previous Parliament, when I did accept that the Government whom I supported for 13 years did not build enough homes, but if he looked at the remainder of the quotation, he would see that I said that the problem was that the coalition Government built even fewer.”
“Are not the legislative proposals on starter homes worrying for two reasons? Irrespective of the merits or otherwise of the starter homes, the provision will not add a single property to those being built over the course of this Parliament. Every property built as a starter home will replace a home that would have been built under section 106 obligations on an affordable basis. Secondly, this is an incredibly centralising measure under which central Government will dictate the details of planning permissions given on every site for which a local authority receives a planning application.”
“It will be very interesting if Ministers are able to provide the Committee with evidence. The starter home measures also present problems and challenges, because they do not propose the building of a single new home. Every starter home will be built in place of the affordable home that would otherwise be built under the current section 106 arrangements. In the last 10 years, nearly a quarter of a million homes have been built for housing associations as a result of section 106 agreements, but no more will be built during this Parliament. There will be starter homes costing up to £450,000, but a whole range of homes for affordable rents will not now be built.”
“What concerns me is that measures in the Bill will lead to the building of fewer houses at rents that people can afford, and that by the end of the current Parliament in 2020 there will be fewer homes to rent than there were in 2015. Let us consider some of those measures. First, let us consider the right to buy. It is possible that some housing associations, if they chose—and it will be a choice—could replace properties on a like-for-like basis in their localities, although that would depend very much on their circumstances, but no information that I have seen, from Ministers or from anyone else, has persuaded me that local authorities have any chance of replacing the properties that they will have to sell off on a like-for-like basis in their localities. I am sure that the Select Committee will explore that issue further.”
“The Government ought to consider allowing local authorities to keep fines that are levied on landlords, so as to help pay the cost of prosecuting those landlords who behave badly and bring the whole sector into disrepute. I hope that the Government will consider placing in the Bill a measure to ensure five-yearly checks on electrical safety in homes. The Government could achieve that very easily and it would help greatly. On affordable housing, my great worry about the Bill is that if we are to achieve the 200,000 homes a year that the Government aspire to building—or the 250,000-plus homes that we really need—it can be done only through a serious long-term plan to build social housing for rent in this country. There has been a long-term decline in house building because that whole sector has diminished.”
“I shall begin with the aspects of the Bill with which I agree. There are some measures on the private rented sector that I can support, not least because the proposals on fixed penalty notices are an easier way to deal with landlords who are misbehaving in certain circumstances, and the rent repayment orders were recommendations of the Select Committee, as set out in its report during the last Parliament. I am sorry that the Government have not gone further in dealing with the continuing problem of the very short tenures that most people in the private rented sector have or with the problem of the lack of resources of local authorities.”
“Those two points alone show how out of touch the Government are, and how irrelevant these measures are to the real problems that face most people in this country.”
“The Royal Town Planning Institute has said that “the increase in the powers of Whitehall through these measures is extraordinary.” Control of total rents, control of the rents paid by so-called high-income families, and controls forcing local authorities to sell off properties will mean that the housing revenue account—a stand-alone account that was introduced by the Secretary of State when he was a junior Minister a few years ago—is now very firmly in the Chancellor’s pocket. Let me make two final points. Can anyone seriously believe that homes costing £450,000 are affordable, or that the income of a family in which two members are working hard and earning the living wage can be described as high, as it is in the Bill?”
“The other day, in the Chamber, I congratulated the Secretary of State on his decentralisation proposals, but another key problem with the Bill is that it is very centralist. The starter homes programme involves micromanaged section 106 agreements. Local authorities currently do a deal on each individual site, but decisions on what homes should be built on each site will now be imposed from the centre. Moreover, planning permissions for building on brownfield sites will be given automatically, and local authorities will not have the right to negotiate infrastructure deals as part of those permissions. In the case of major infrastructure projects, it will be possible for housing to be approved with no local consent whatsoever.”
“David Orr, who gave evidence to the Select Committee the other day, said that he believed that more homes would be built as a result of the right-to-buy proposals, but also said that the federation did not support the proposals to force a sell-off of council homes to pay for them. He made that very clear. The federation also came out very strongly against the changes in rent levels which the Chancellor introduced in his Budget, and which will cause significant reductions in the number of homes that can be built by both local authorities and housing associations. As a result of these measures, Sheffield county council will lose £27 million of revenue from its housing account and South Yorkshire housing association will lose £7 million over the current Parliament.”
“You will be pleased to learn, Mr Speaker, that I shall not begin by referring to Sheffield Wednesday’s impressive victory over Arsenal the other night. [Laughter.] What I will do is refer to Sir David Higgins’s report, in which he describes transport links between Sheffield and Manchester as a matter of national concern, and as probably the worst links between any two major cities in Europe. Will the Secretary of State seriously consider two proposals? The first is that HS3 should link not merely Manchester and Leeds but Manchester and Sheffield, and the second is that serious consideration should be given to the building of a road tunnel under the Pennines. That is the only serious way in which to link Sheffield and Manchester without damaging the national park.”
“When the Localism Act was passed, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—in a previous guise—produced an annual report on how each Department was doing in regard to devolution. Unfortunately, that practice was stopped, but the right hon. Gentleman came to the Select Committee and argued strongly that it should be continued. Does the Minister think his boss has changed his mind?”
“The Minister has just said that the Sheffield deal could be put at risk, but at this stage it is not a done deal—it is a proposal. If Sheffield were to say, “We actually rather like the proposal, but without the mayor,” what would be wrong with that, as the Bill stands?”
“The Minister is making the case that a mayor is required in order to have strong enough leadership and get things through, but in the proposed Sheffield deal only the transport functions go to the mayor—all the economic functions go to the combined authority. Is he therefore saying that there is not going to be strong leadership on these economic functions, because a mayor is not in charge of them?”
“Will the Minister also listen to the problem in the districts in north Nottinghamshire and north Derbyshire? They are part of the Sheffield city region for economic purposes under the proposed deal but not for transport purposes, because in order to come under the mayor’s jurisdiction they need the permission of the county. Equally, the districts have to give their permission to join a county combined authority. This is a really complicated situation that needs resolution with Government help.”