Mr Clive Betts
MP for Sheffield South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time.”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that.”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,726 lines we hold for Mr Clive Betts, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 58 of 95.
“Indeed, if I may tease the Minister, the extent to which the Government agree with the Committee’s recommendations is partly because most of the recommendations are not aimed at them, but at local government. That might be a little unkind, because generally we are on the same page. Talking of the LGA and its supportive response to our report, I am pleased to be going to the LGA conference next week, and to the launch of its national procurement strategy, which is an important part of delivering the Committee’s recommendations. I look forward to giving a presentation, and to hearing what the LGA has to say. Local government procurement might not be the most exciting of subjects, but it is an important one, because local authorities spend £45 billion a year, which is not an inconsiderable sum of public money.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, and to introduce the debate on the sixth report of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the 2013-14 Session. The main theme of what I have to say is that there is an awful lot of agreement on local government procurement, which is probably unusual, given some of the subjects that we discuss in debates on communities and local government. Many of our recommendations—a little unusually for our reports—are aimed at local authorities and at the Local Government Association, rather than at central Government. That is consistent with the Committee’s intention to take a localist approach to such matters.”
“My hon. Friend might like to know that the Committee will do an inquiry into the community right to challenge and how it is functioning. That is one of the inquiries we will do in the autumn.”
“Clearly, this is one of the few areas of specific disagreement. We picked up from small businesses that if suddenly they found that they were putting a tender in along with 20 other organisations, 19 of them would be wasting their time. As long as it is a standardised and simple pre-qualification questionnaire to thin out the number that will tender, it could be greatly to the advantage of small businesses in particular and reduce their costs overall.”
“I also thank Colin Cram, our specialist adviser, who was extremely helpful as well.”
“On behalf of the Select Committee, I identified £45 billion in local government procurement. To show that I was paying close attention to what the two Front-Bench spokespeople said, I think my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) put the figure at £50 billion, while the Minister set it at £57 billion. If we had had more speakers, we might have seen an exponential growth in local authority procurement. Clearly, there is a difference in how we evaluate it. We may want to clear that up at some point in future. Finally, I am sure that it is appropriate for me, on behalf of the whole Committee, to thank Sarah Coe, our second Clerk, who was the lead officer in helping us produce this report. We very much appreciated her excellent support, which was instrumental in helping us get to the end result.”
“I will take a couple of minutes to summarise this constructive, well-informed debate, in which agreement has generally been found across the parties and between the Select Committee and both Front Benches. That should be welcomed. I think that we have all ultimately agreed that this is a matter for local councils, and that it is for local government in general, and the Local Government Association in particular, to help councils that are not up to the same level of procurement practice as their counterparts that are delivering a first-class service to learn from that best practice and emulate it. I am sure the Select Committee will want to return to the issue in future to monitor and assess whether the improvements that we think can be made have been made. I have one slight worry about a disagreement that I had not expected.”
“I have referred previously to paragraphs 47 onwards of the national planning policy framework, which mean that sites have to be deliverable and viable to be included in a local plan. Many developers are objecting to brownfield sites being included and want greenfield sites to be substituted instead because of this requirement. As a result of the package to which the Minister has just referred, how many of the sites excluded from local plans by paragraph 47 requirements will now be able to be included by local authorities?”
“I do not know whether the Secretary of State read the comments of Sir Merrick Cockell, the chair of the Local Government Association. Speaking on a cross-party basis, he said that he thought that the benefits or payments to the community promised to areas in which fracking takes place are simply not large enough, considering the enormous amount of revenue to be gained by the companies from fracking activities, in particular given the tax breaks. Will the Government think again about that to ensure that local communities get a lot more benefit from such activities?”
“We have a long-term failure in this country, as politicians, to build the homes that people need. I use those words carefully because it is a failure of the last Government as well as of this Government. It is just that the failure has got worse under this Government, as the number of homes being built has fallen. Historically, compared with the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s the real fall-off has been in the building of homes to rent in the social rented sector.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope that that was not directed personally. I am sure that it was not. I want to concentrate on the supply of housing, or rather the lack of it, the regulation of the private rented sector and the impact of immigration on some of our poorer communities. On housing supply, we ought to be building 250,000 homes a year to keep pace with household formation. We all know from the people who come to our surgeries weekly that we do not have homes that people can afford to buy, and that there are not homes in the social rented sector for which people are eligible—even, as in my constituency, for those who have been on the waiting list for 10 years. Many in the private rented sector are well housed but many others are not and they feel the pressure of rising rents.”
“If we are honest about this in the long term—I say this to both Front-Bench teams—and if we are to build the homes that people need and build more social housing on the scale this country needs, we are going to have to put in more subsidy from the national public purse. That is the reality. We are not going to build the homes we need unless we spend more money on them. That is an uncomfortable fact and we tend not to want to discuss it before the general election, but it is, as I say, the reality of the situation. Whether it be housing associations or local authorities that do the building, they are going to need more assistance to make it work. We need to carry on arguing about that.”
“If we are to see house building rise in future, the private housing developers will play a part, but they are not going to build the quarter of a million homes we need. We are going to have to build more homes to rent. It is disappointing that the Government have not moved at least some way in that direction in the Queen’s Speech—failing, for example, to take the cap off local authority borrowing for house building, which they could have done. They could have provided 60,000 new homes immediately with no cost to central Government funds. They could have taken steps to alter the definition of the grant on housing association books and convert it into a genuine grant from the loan that it currently is. That would have freed up more borrowing for housing associations as well.”
“I entirely take the point that some people object. At a public meeting in my constituency three or four years ago, someone said to me, “We are not going to have homes for those sorts of people, are we?” Frankly, an elected representative has to stand up and face down that sort of prejudice, making it clear that everyone is entitled to a home. Many people who have lived in my constituency all their lives simply cannot afford to buy homes that their parents could have afforded to buy a few years ago. These people are entitled to live in that community; homes should be provided for them. It is unfortunate that one of the biggest cuts in Government funding during this Parliament has been the 60% cut in funds for social housing.”
“People say to me, “Mr Betts, is it fair that I have been waiting 15 years on the housing list, but someone can come to this country and in six months’ time get a house from the council?” Often, that does not happen, but the perception it could happen again builds up resentment. Councils could take action to give more priority to people who have been on the waiting list for a long time, because our communities will think that is fairer. That could be done, and the Government might think about that. Finally—”
“Resources must also go into the schools where kids are coming in who cannot speak English not just at five, but often at seven and eight. Some of them have not been to school at all, and not only their inability to speak English but sometimes their behaviour poses a great challenge to the school. I asked one head, “How many of these kids have you got?” and I was told, “Thirty. But not the same 30 as last month because they move around.” Having newly come to the country, they tend to be mobile; they have no fixed abode, and they may be somewhere else in a month’s time. That is a challenge to schools, to the police and to our housing services. Therefore, if we believe as a country that there is benefit from migration, the communities facing those pressures need extra resources and assistance to cope.”
“I met local doctors in Darnall last week, because people are complaining that they cannot get an appointment to see their GP. The doctors tell me that the numbers of migrants coming into the local community are simply overwhelming them, and the money that comes for having patients arrives a long time after the patients arrive. They want to do thorough health checks on people who come from a background where they are not offered such checks, and that is absolutely right, but they also have people coming to them who do not speak English, so every consultation takes twice as long. People who have lived in that community for years then get upset and angry and irritated. They cannot get to see their GP, or have to wait in a queue while others take twice as long as them with the GP. We have to put resources in to help address that issue.”
“Local authorities will be very well placed, through the extra powers to enforce better housing conditions and their role in minimum wage enforcement, to bring those two things together and stop these scams, which undermine the working conditions and job opportunities of existing residents and cause a lot of grievance in the local community. We must recognise that this is a problem and tackle it. It is not racism to oppose such things; it is about people saying, “My job is being undercut; my conditions are being undercut; it simply isn’t fair.” My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and I have been to see the Secretary of State to discuss the pressure on local public services that is being generated, and he has promised us another meeting.”
“That gets around the minimum wage legislation because the people do not see the whole of their wages, and they pay inflated rents because of the lack of proper regulation and rent contracts. That scam is going on, and we need to toughen up on regulation and enforcement. I am pleased the Government are looking to introduce greater penalties for failure to pay the minimum wage. We ought to put more resources into that, and look at what local authorities can do to help enforce paying the minimum wage, and at the scams that link working conditions and working arrangements to housing arrangements.”
“If we, as a society, believe that immigration can provide benefits for the whole of our country, the whole of our country has a responsibility to help the individuals and communities on whom the entry of migrants will put particular pressure, for instance in relation to jobs and working conditions. We know what happens in many cases. We believe that about 2,000 Slovak Roma are coming into Sheffield in Fir Vale and Page Hall and in Darwen and Tinsley, which are in my constituency. They are given a package: they are offered a deal whereby when they obtain jobs, which are mostly unskilled and low paid, those who give them the jobs take money from their pay packets and use it to pay the rents for the often grossly overcrowded housing they are given.”
“The Government are right to take a firm view on the incomes that people should have when they sponsor those who wish to come here as dependants, and to say that those who come should be able to speak English. The real problem is caused by economic migrants, particularly those who come from the European Union. If we remain a member of the EU, as I hope we shall, we are likely to have to settle for the free movement of labour, even if we can mitigate the effects of that in the case of new entrant countries. However, people who come from the poorer parts of the EU are likely to enter poorer communities.”
“Let me now say something about the impact of immigration, a subject that arose frequently during the recent elections. By and large, people do not object to immigration. The problem is the Government’s “one size fits all” policy of a 100,000 limit, and the fact that they are shoving every kind of migrant into a single category. People in Sheffield do not object when doctors or computer technicians, of whom we have not enough in this country, come here to do vital jobs. Nor do they object to overseas students, who are clearly bringing real income and benefit to the city. Sheffield university is one of our biggest industries, involving a great many people, and there are also long-term benefits to be gained from allowing overseas students to study in this country.”
“During that time, only one came forward in Page Hall and Fir Vale in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). Some horror stories have emerged from the mandatory licensing scheme. A classic example is the story of a cooker that was not properly wired up, but was connected to ordinary sockets by a wire running right across the kitchen. In other instances, wiring has been left bare and dangerous. The council is now trying to deal with those problems, but the Inland Revenue would surely have a major interest in ensuring that landlords are registered so that it can know who is receiving rent from tenants. This is a complete scandal, and we need to put an end to it.”
“I wish the Government would reconsider their refusal to give local authorities more flexibility in the regulation of standards of private rented accommodation. The present licensing system is cumbersome, and operates only in areas of low demand or where there is antisocial behaviour. I am not entirely sure of the merits of a national registration scheme, but empowering authorities to adopt a mandatory registration scheme would provide the necessary degree of flexibility, and might make it possible to control the worst excesses of the worst landlords who will not join voluntary accreditation schemes. For several weeks, Sheffield city council encouraged landlords who were objecting to a licensing scheme in one area to apply for a voluntary accreditation scheme in the neighbouring area.”
“During the Select Committee’s inquiry, we heard more complaints about them and their activities than about any other issue. The Government have indicated that they want to make the whole process more transparent, so that people know what they will have to pay from day one rather than incurring hidden charges later. We ought to ban double charging: it is wrong that both landlord and tenant can be charged for the same service. Charging tenants has been banned in Scotland, and the Select Committee will be looking into that further. It has been argued that landlords will simply add their charge to the rent, but it might be slightly easier for a tenant to pay a little more rent each month than to find an average of £500 to pay the letting agent up front while at the same time having to find a deposit, which is often very difficult.”
“If we try to interfere with the rent at the beginning of a tenancy negotiated between a landlord and tenant, we will damage the ability to attract private investment into better-quality private rented provision, which is something we must not do. If, however, we can find a way of making tenancies naturally and usually longer than the current six months to a year, we should go ahead with it. The proposals from the Opposition Front-Bench team are at least an interesting move in that direction, and I hope the Secretary of State will be prepared at least to consider them. I am sure he would like to see longer tenancies as well. I think we all want to provide greater certainty for families in the private rented sector. We can do more to regulate letting agents.”
“The real problem is the uncertainty over which home people will be living in in six months’ time, which also means uncertainty about which school their children will attend. It means uncertainty about whether they will have to live near their parents or grandparents to provide child care, or about whether to live on a suitable bus route for their job. Those are real problems—uncertainty and the instability it causes to family life. I therefore suggest that any measures to lengthen tenancies and provide more security should be welcomed. I have made it clear on the record—the Select Committee report said it—that I am not in favour of rent control.”
“I very much agree with that. The Select Committee is currently doing an inquiry into the operation of the national planning policy framework. One problem can be seen in paragraph 47 and subsequent paragraphs, whereby the sites for the five-year housing supply in the local plan have to be viable and deliverable. Developers are now claiming that brownfield sites are not viable or deliverable in the current economic circumstances, forcing local authorities to revisit their local plans and include more greenfield sites. We need to look very carefully at that problem. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, to which we must give further consideration. There is nothing wrong with people renting homes in the private rented sector, and many people are happy in the homes they rent.”
“Once such devolution has happened in Scotland and, to a great extent, in Wales, how will we be able to devolve English government in a way that will rejuvenate our local democracy and give our local authorities greater fiscal powers and responsibilities? That is the major question that we need to be thinking about.”
“My final point does not relate to the Queen’s Speech, but it was interesting to hear the Conservatives’ major announcement last week of a commitment to radical fiscal devolution for Scotland. They have gone further than the other two parties in that regard, and I commend them for that. We shall not be doing much about that during this Session, however, and we ought to be thinking ahead to what will happen after the next Queen’s Speech. If Scotland votes to stay in the Union, as I very much hope it will, and if there is then extra devolution to Scotland and Wales, the really big question that we will all have to think about is the English question.”
“That is absolutely right, and one of the positive things going on—it is not all negative by any means—is that the Pakistani Muslim centre had an open day for the Slovak Roma community a month ago in my constituency to which over 300 people came. That was a great event. Also, earlier today I got an e-mail from the Handsworth junior football club, which is going to give a week’s free coaching in August for the deprived community of Darnall, which has people from the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Somali and Slovak Roma communities. It is going to be open house for all to come along for a week’s free coaching. We can do these events on the ground, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and I are very much involved in trying to stimulate such activity.”
“However, when we go on websites like that of Foxtons, we see those fees are in very small print, so, in practice, letting agents are going through the motions when it comes to the ASA ruling, but they are not sticking to the spirit of it. We did not recommend a complete abolition of fees to tenants. What we said was that it has been done in Scotland and that we should review the Scottish experience. The Committee will come back in the autumn and look at the Scottish experience and consider whether banning charges to tenants means higher rents. If so, there is a question as to whether tenants favour paying a bit more in rent rather than having a massive fee up front. The Committee will also look at the fact that the contract is with the landlord, not the tenant. We will take further evidence on those matters in the autumn.”
“The Committee responded that there should be absolute transparency of fees up front when a property is advertised and it must be clear what the totality of charges to tenants will be and there should be no double charging. If there is transparency, it will be harder for a letting agent to charge a tenant and a landlord for the same thing, which happens at present. We want these changes to be put in a mandatory code of practice, but the Government have not agreed to do that. On transparency, all that has happened is the Advertising Standards Authority has given a ruling saying the fees that are compulsory should be shown up front as part of the price quoted.”
“The process gets repeated to a degree every time people renew their tenancy after six months or 12 months, and that militates against having longer term contracts. Agents see this as an incentive not to let longer term contracts because short-term contracts mean renewals and more fees for them. I have described letting agents as being a bit like football agents as they make their money out of transfers and renewals of contracts. We ought to be extremely wary of that. Shelter said the average size of a fee to a tenant was £355. The Foxtons website gives its fees as £420 to a tenant to create a contract, £96 to renew it and £150 for an inventory check. Such charges are replicated by most letting agents.”
“I want to speak to new clause 22 about letting agents’ charges. When the Communities and Local Government Committee did a report on the private rented sector last year, we had more evidence and more complaints about letting agents’ charges than almost anything else. That was reflected by the OFT, which said that complaints to Consumer Direct about letting agents were almost all about fees and charges. It is not just that there is one fee up front for a tenancy agreement; there are also the charges for inventories and for credit checks, and people enter into a viewing not knowing what the ultimate charge will be. It is a charge they have to find up front as a prospective tenant, at the same time as they are trying to find the deposit, and often these are people on very low incomes.”
“Order. We are constrained for time. We need to get to the end of this debate by 3.30 pm and four Opposition Members want to speak: Paul Murphy, Madeleine Moon, Geraint Davies and Huw Irranca-Davies. The Front-Bench spokesmen need 10 minutes each, so there is 10 minutes for the four of you. That is not very much time, but if you can manage that between you it would help to let everybody in.”
“That is helpful. If that is the general feeling of the Select Committee, I am more than happy to reflect that. If we take another 10 minutes off the other debate, that gives us five minutes for each of the four speakers.”
“I will ask the Chairman of the Select Committee to respond briefly to this debate and then to introduce the second debate, which is on the Work programme in Wales. While that is happening, will hon. Members who want to speak in that debate indicate that to me? It will be helpful in apportioning the time.”
“Order. I will call Nick Smith next, and then Guto Bebb. I will allow them six minutes each to speak, as they did not speak during the previous debate. For the other three speakers, I will cut the time down to four minutes to get the Front-Bench speakers in, although I will have to squeeze them a bit as well, if that is okay.”
“Order. The Front-Bench Members have eight minutes each, leaving a couple of minutes for the Chair of the Select Committee to sum up at the end.”
“We support the Government’s commitment to open-book accounting. Councils should consider placing similar requirements on information provision by contractors as applied to a public body under freedom of information regulations to provide a level playing field. We heard that one of the best means of identifying fraud was whistleblowing. More needs to be done to support whistleblowers and the Government must publicise arrangements for an anonymous reporting channel. The measures set out in our report will help to achieve a vision of better procurement and commissioning from local councils. We hope that the Government, local government sector leaders and individual councils will pay heed to our recommendations.”
“It is therefore alarming that in the worst cases councils not only fail to monitor quality but bear the costs when a contractor fails to deliver its side of the contract. It is vital that councils are equipped to manage complex contracts. Greater voluntary collaborative work between regional procurement bodies can open up access to specialist procurement skills to help to tackle this problem. On fraud, we found little hard evidence of significant fraud, but widespread unease that, as more services are put out to tender, local authorities are at much greater risk. Councils must not “let and forget” contracts, but proactively tackle fraud throughout the lifetime of a contract, not just during the tender phase. Contracts let by public bodies must be transparent and performance against them auditable.”
“Pre-qualification questionnaires should be standardised, so that councils do not require a new form for every contract and potential suppliers do not find themselves having to fill in different forms for every local authority and every public body. There should be standardisation to reduce costs. Councils must include requirements in contracts that contractors stick to timetables for paying their subcontractors right down the supply chain, with spot checks on implementation. It is not acceptable for firms to delay payment, which puts smaller firms, in particular, at risk of cash-flow crises. Outsourcing a contract does not mean outsourcing responsibility for ensuring quality and consistency of service to residents.”
“Some 47% of council spend is currently channelled via small and medium-sized enterprises. There is clearly much good practice, but more could be done, for example by the LGA disseminating best practice and guidance. On reducing costs to businesses, the cost to a business of a typical council procurement exercise can be about £40,000 to £50,000. A Centre for Economics and Business Research report published in July 2013 found that UK procurement processes were the most expensive in the EU and took some 53 days longer than average. Too many councils are applying EU regulations over-zealously. The Government and the LGA should spell out what is a proportionate approach.”
“Securing savings should not come at the expense of delivering wider commissioning objectives, such as supporting local economies. There can be no compulsion to collaborate or to join a centralised procurement body. Councils must retain the flexibility to deliver local priorities, but should consider examples of good practice. On delivering economic, social and environmental objectives, the Committee was clear that councils should exploit fully the potential of their procurement spend to deliver local strategic priorities, including social, economic and environmental objectives, by letting contracts, as appropriate locally, on the basis of best value, not simply lowest price. A case in point is support for small local businesses, which all local authorities are keen to support.”
“On value for money, councils have shown that they can save millions of pounds through joining up with each other and other public sector bodies, directly or via procurement organisations, to buy some goods and services. However, opportunities are not being taken fully and we estimate, conservatively, additional savings of approximately £1.8 billion could be achieved with better collaborative approaches. The LGA should review collaborative approaches and produce best practice guidance. It should continue to focus on supporting councils to collaborate in key spend areas—particularly in IT, energy and construction, where it is relatively easy for collaboration to save money—while recognising the importance of local freedoms and flexibilities.”
“Councils should also ensure that front-line councillors have a clearly defined role in reviewing and scrutinising procurement, including outsourced contracts, and their impact on services for residents. In the end, that is what is important: services for residents. We would like all councils to make an annual statement to their full council meetings to set out their strategy for incorporating economic, social and environmental value in procurement, including employment terms and conditions, impact on local economies and small businesses, and relationships between contractors, customers and the relevant councils. In total, the Committee makes 29 specific recommendations. You will probably be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I do not have time to go into all of them, but I will mention some key recommendations.”
“Councils should look at adopting the toolkit developed by Sheffield city council, and the Cabinet Office should consider how the Government’s Commissioning Academy can help develop the skills of local government officers. The third overarching recommendation is the need for political and officer leadership. Procurement improvement must be spearheaded by council cabinet members and front-line councillors, with the close involvement of senior officers. We commend the LGA for putting procurement at the top table within councils. We can see considerable advantage to councils identifying a lead cabinet member and a senior officer who will take overall responsibility for procurement.”
“A lesson we learned during the Committee’s visit to my city of Sheffield, was that procurement should not be seen as a niche activity, conducted in back offices by a narrow set of specialists, but rather as a vital cross-cutting activity that requires in-depth skills from all staff involved in designing, commissioning and particularly managing services once contracts are let. To achieve that, councils must step up training, and the sector—especially the LGA—needs to ensure that procurement skills are embedded across councils. Investment in procurement skills should be seen as a wise investment now because it saves money in the future.”
“Nevertheless, a step-change is now needed for successes to be replicated across the country, and for detailed support to be provided to tackle all complex aspects of procurement. We therefore conclude that the LGA, with the support of DCLG, should establish a taskforce with representatives of the private and third sectors to develop an action plan for improving council capacity to conduct effective procurement. We recommend that the Cabinet Office dedicate resources to ensure that lessons learned in central Government are translated into effective council action where appropriate, and vice versa. Secondly, procurement excellence needs to be embedded across councils, not seen as the preserve of a handful of specialists.”