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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“What happens if one of those councils gets into serious financial difficulties? Would the Government insist on a council having a referendum if it needed to raise council tax by 20% to make ends meet and to deliver its statutory service? Will the public vote for an increase in a referendum if they know that the Government have section 31 powers—civil servants and Ministers revealed them to the Committee—to step in at any point and give councils extra grant to stop them from going bust? Where do we stand when an authority gets into serious difficulty, whether that authority is Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem, rural or urban, a city authority or a district council? What action will the Government take if a council gets into difficulty, which seems to me to be almost inevitable?”
“There has to be a fundamental and radical change. There was a good contribution to the debate from the LGA with the “Rewiring Public Services” document. There was a good contribution from the London Finance Commission. The Communities and Local Government Committee is to conduct an inquiry into local and inter-city financing and how city governance affects other parts of the country. Important elements have been raised for discussion, and I hope we can take that debate forward. In the meantime, what will the Minister do when a local authority gets into real difficulties? The National Audit Office has been highly critical that the Government have not done an impact assessment on the cumulative impact of cuts to local councils. The LGA has said that 56 councils will spend 15% above their income by 2015-16.”
“Adult social care and care for looked-after children ultimately benefit a minority of people, important though those services are, and the rest of the population do not know what they get from local councils because virtually nothing is left. That undermines local democracy, which is very worrying. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) is absolutely right that we have to look towards the longer term. The Government have done some good things, such as abolishing ring-fencing, moving a little on business rates—I would like to see more—and introducing city deals. The most significant thing they have done, however, is to undermine the basis of local government finance in this country to such an extent that a future Government simply will not be able to come back and build on what was there before.”
“We cannot continue on that basis, because it is not sustainable. Cuts that are made one year cannot be simply repeated and enhanced the following year. Every year it becomes more difficult because there is less room for manoeuvre and a lower percentage of discretionary spend that can be cut. That is not a steady state, because more pressure is being put on spending for adult social care all the time. The graph of doom that the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) referred to is already there. As cuts are made in spending availability and extra demands are made on adult social care, the amount left for other local government services is squeezed until it becomes non-existent.”
“Local government services are more important than that, and the extent to which local government services have been singled out for disproportionate cuts is unacceptable. We can argue about which authorities have had the worst deal, and I certainly argue that those with the greatest needs and traditionally the highest level of grants have had the biggest cuts in their grant. That is not questionable—the figures are there to back it up. Local government generally has a good record on efficiency savings. It has coped with the cuts so far quite well, but we have already seen across the country cuts to community services such as libraries and changes to eligibility criteria for adult social care that are affecting communities and individuals in local authorities of all political persuasions.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on securing the debate. Reference has been made to the Local Government Authority’s position. It is a good idea to take notice of those who, day to day, have to deal with the problems we are discussing and make decisions in local government. Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, which has a Conservative majority, has said clearly that the position of local Government finance is not sustainable. I happen to agree with him, and there is cross-party agreement in the LGA. That comes about because, as my hon. Friend has said, local government has been asked to make twice the level of cuts demanded of central Government Departments.”
“11. In a debate on a statutory instrument before Christmas, the Minister indicated that where local authorities needed extra resources to make proper efforts to maximise the number of people on the register, those resources would be available to them. How are they going to go about applying for them—what will the process be?”
“A characteristic of HS2 is that there will be widespread economic benefits to areas such as the city region in Sheffield, with very specific high costs to certain individuals, such as my constituents on Greasbro road, who will lose their homes. Will the Secretary of State look again at whether it is reasonable compensation in these circumstances simply to offer market value plus 10%? Should we not do a little more to help those people who bear the cost for the wider economic benefit of everyone else?”
“Q5. At the end of November, I visited Handsworth Grange community sports college in my constituency. The head, Anne Quaile, told me about the school collecting food to help their needy families over Christmas. Indeed, there will be a food bank on the school site in the new year. What really shocked me was when she told me about a young girl, aged 15, who arrived on a Monday—just before my visit—not having eaten all weekend, because there was no food in the house. How does the Prime Minister expect that young girl to fulfil her educational potential?”
“In the June spending round, the Chancellor stated that in future years local government spending would drop not by the 10% to 15% that the Local Government Association said, but by 2.3%. The Prime Minister has repeated that figure. I wrote to him asking how it was calculated, but got a response from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that did not do that. Will the Minister now explain where that 2.3% figure is in the document and how it is calculated? If it is not in here now, will he write to me, placing a copy in the Library, showing how it has been calculated?”
“I have heard what the Minister has said about transparency of contracts, but is he saying that if a local authority goes about formulating a contract in the right way, the public—it is they who are important—could be entitled to as much information about the spending of their money through a contracting process as they would be if the service was delivered by a local authority directly?”
“That has not answered my question—I was not asking what local authorities should do. If a local authority went about this correctly and formulated a contract correctly, could the public have as much information on the spending of their money through a contracting process as they could if the service were delivered directly by the local authority?”
“On a point of clarification, will the guidance apply to subcontractors as well as contractors? In practice, many contracts are effectively delivered by the subcontractors as well as the main contractors.”
“Three years ago, the Select Committee conducted an inquiry into the whole issue of local authority publications, and found absolutely no evidence of any impact on commercial newspapers. Indeed, one of our findings was that many local authority publications were published on the presses of commercial papers, thus providing them with important additional income.”
“My hon. Friend has made an important point because as well as small businesses, local authorities are under real pressure. Can he assure the House that his proposals will not reduce by one penny the money going to local councils?”
“I presume that the Minister is not ruling out business rates not increasing by the retail prices index next year. If so, will he tell the House where the Government might find the money to achieve a lower increase in business rates? Will it come from local councils, the Exchequer or somewhere else?”
“One welcome thing that the Minister mentioned is a review of the appeal system. It is completely unacceptable that it can take up to 18 months or longer for appeals to be held. First, for the businesses themselves, they do not know how they will be placed when they are waiting for their appeal to be determined. Secondly, for the local authorities, an appeal casts doubts over their income stream. One thing the Minister could do before the review is announced and then carried out is to ensure that next year the element of hold-back for local authorities is removed. Ministers could take on board any uncertainties about the valuations and how they will work out through the appeal system, rather than leaving the problem for the local authorities to bear.”
“This is an important debate because business rates are clearly an important cost—and a rising percentage cost—for many businesses, particularly small businesses, in the country. Business rates have gone up faster than turnover during times of economic difficulty. They are important for local councils because they comprise more than 50% of their revenue. If the Minister had until the end of the debate to explain the whole system to us, he would still need more time for the details. There is the retention of rates by local authorities, the provision of resources to the Exchequer which are then redistributed to local authorities, the set aside that the Treasury can keep, and the safety nets and the levies that go on to authorities that are in different positions. It is an incredibly complicated system.”
“If there is a problem, which the Chancellor might recognise tomorrow, why not go that bit further and at least freeze business rates or, even better, take up the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) and cut them? If there is a problem, why not address it properly? If there is not, why go for a 2% increase? The Government have a fundamental question to answer on this issue. The Government must also deal with the disproportionate impact of business rate increases. Firms in different parts of the country are suffering in different ways. In parts of the country where demand has not recovered, where growth has not increased and where there is poverty and deprivation, businesses are suffering more. A revaluation would have addressed precisely that.”
“We need to know the impact of lower business rates not just on councils as a whole but on each individual council in the country— I ask the Minister to put the details in the Library—once the levies and safety nets are taken into account. That must be made explicitly clear for their benefit. Business rates are a real problem for firms up and down the country. The percentage of their turnover paid in business rates has increased, and that is putting real pressure on small businesses in particular. If the Government recognise that, and recognise the need for action, why are they so mealy-mouthed as to say, “No increase in line with RPI—we will simply reduce that increase to 2%”?”
“I will not come to a view about whether its proposals are right, but it is interesting that there is now a call for a wider look at the whole basis of property tax in this country and the extent to which it can be devolved down to local authorities. Were the Chancellor to make any changes tomorrow to business rates for next year—and we hope there will not be a commitment to increase business rates by RPI, as has been the case for the past few years—any reduction must not come at the expense of local councils, which are very hard pressed at this time of austerity and restraint on their spending. Any commitment must be made clear.”
“It has to be quick, and it will need more resources being put into it as well. The Minister cannot do this at nil cost. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Hopefully, as my hon. Friend says, it will develop very quickly. In the longer term, we need a complete review of the business rates system. We need to look at the way in which valuations are carried out. The Local Government Association has called for that review, and I thoroughly support it. It should form part of a wider review of local government finance, and the Select Committee, which I chair, will now be carrying out a review of fiscal devolution to cities on the back of the London Finance Commission, which the Mayor of London has commissioned and which Labour and Tory London boroughs and the core cities have supported.”
“If there is a problem and we are to have some change to the business rates next year, let us make it a cut not—”
“Were we to have a revaluation now, I would suggest that we took account of the fact that an increase in empty properties on the high street would likely see the valuation of shops there go down. If the planning system works as the Government intend and we have a town and city centre-first policy, the constraint on future out-of-town developments should put a premium on the existing developments and cause a relative increase in the rateable value of such properties. Postponing the revaluation has had a disadvantage for the high street and an advantage for out-of-town centres, and we should take account of that. There are a lot of issues for the Government to consider. We need a longer term reform of business rates and to go back and consider revaluation, as it was not fair to postpone it.”
“There might be short-term advantages, as it does not cause problems for the Government in explaining to some people why their taxes have gone up, but in the medium and longer term it is always a disaster to put off revaluations, because when they are eventually handled they become even larger, more difficult to deal with and more difficult to explain. That is the simple reality. If we are thinking about the retail sector, we must consider the greater benefits that the postponement of revaluation allows for out-of-town shopping centres. When we consider revaluation and the whole system in future, we must consider the fact that the value of rates for out-of-town shopping centres, compared with those for smaller shops in the high street, is not fair at all.”
“The cost of any revaluation would have been borne not by businesses but by the Treasury, and I suggest that that is why the Government did not go ahead with it in the end. It was another stealth saving by the Chancellor to try to ensure that they did not have to put in the costs of protecting firms from large increases. At the same time, of course, he has caused additional costs for firms that are struggling in the less prosperous parts of the country, which has been the real disadvantage of not going ahead with revaluation. I will also be critical of the previous Labour Government, who did not go ahead with a revaluation of council tax. In the longer term, delaying valuations has had major disbenefits.”
“Absolutely. The economy is not rebalanced and some areas are doing better than others. The areas that are doing less well have businesses that are struggling and that is why revaluation would have been important. The Minister says that a revaluation would somehow affect businesses adversely. No, it would not. A revaluation should be a zero-sum game as far as businesses are concerned. The Minister said that there was no benefit to the Treasury. Every previous revaluation has had dampening put in to protect firms that are likely to see a significant increase in their rates. There has always been a net cost to the Treasury as a result of any revaluation, particularly when there are big changes—as there could well have been if a revaluation had been carried out.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I am sorry that I cannot stay until the end. Anticipating what might come on Thursday, and assuming the Chancellor is minded to go some way towards assisting small businesses by freezing business rate increases next year, does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that the Chancellor makes it transparent that any costs should be borne by the Exchequer, not by local authorities? Given the sleight of hand that she has just described, we want that spelled out in crystal clear terms to assure us that it is being done.”
“My hon. Friend is making a good point about the new homes bonus, which is one of the original and probably largest holdbacks, and she is right to draw attention to the Public Accounts Committee report. As she says, the key is in the title—new homes bonus. It is not a bonus, and the Public Accounts Committee decided that there was no evidence that it had led to the building of any new homes.”
“I now suspend the sitting until 11 o’clock, although if the hon. Member responsible for the next debate and the Minister responding both arrive a little early, I am happy to start the debate a few minutes earlier.”
“I am sure that the Home Secretary will realise that my constituents are concerned not just about benefits. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) has drawn attention to the challenges posed by the large influx of Roma-Slovak migrants into our constituencies. Does she accept that that poses major challenges to community cohesion and puts significant pressures on housing overcrowding and health and school services in our constituencies? Does she agree that the Government need to develop a strategy to work with councils such as Sheffield to meet those challenges to the benefit of all concerned?”
“I am sure the Minister will agree that one of the important principles for achieving sustainable development is the brownfield first policy contained in the core planning policies and principles of the NPPF. I think the Minister is also aware that developers are using paragraph 47 of the NPPF to claim that brownfield sites are not deliverable because they are not viable, which is causing authorities to look at more and more greenfield sites for their five-year housing supply. Does the Minister agree that that effectively undermines the brownfield first policy in the NPPF? What is he going to do about it?”
“I am very supportive of the comments the hon. Gentleman has just made. Perhaps it would help other Members to know that that was not the only option that was looked at. Other options for increasing the number of schoolchildren coming here were considered. The only alternative available was putting a facility in No. 1 Parliament street. Anyone who considered that realised that fewer schoolchildren would be able to get through the facility and that it would simply transfer the congestion from Portcullis House and make it even worse at No. 1 Parliament street, so there is no real alternative to the proposal before us.”
“I understand the concerns about spending money on the education centre—I think everyone agrees that in principle it is the right thing to do—and I do not think we should delay that expenditure if it means schoolchildren losing out on the opportunity to come here. After all, if we delay the expenditure for five years, some of those children will have ceased to be schoolchildren. It is right and proper, if we have a bit of extra money to spend, that we spend it on opening up access to schoolchildren. With that included, I hope we pass today’s motion. I, certainly, am happy to support it.”
“I hope those take place and that they can find a way forward that provides Members with a good service and staff with working and family-life arrangements they feel comfortable with. The Metropolitan police contract is up for renewal in a year’s time, so we need to consider this further. Finally, on the education centre, it is right that in reducing our expenditure, we have not done anything that affects Members’ ability to do their job, but neither should we take any actions that affect the ability of members of the public—our constituents—to visit this place and to see what goes on here and how Members do their work. It is particularly important that we do not impact on the opportunity of young people and schoolchildren to visit this place.”
“That, too, is the right thing for a good employer to do, and it is right that this House of Parliament has done so. Problems remain with the Metropolitan police contract. Over the years, there have been difficulties, and there remains quite a bit of staff unrest, including over changes in shift patterns. We have discussed that. In the end, it is a matter for the Metropolitan police, but if it affects the morale of staff in this place, particularly those with security responsibilities, it is of concern. I think that the new Chief Superintendent, Sandra Looby, whom I have spoken to about this, is up for having further discussions with trade union representatives.”
“On the opportunity for staff to engage with management and improve the delivery of services, I think it was the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) who tabled an amendment to the motion last year to give staff and management in the House the opportunity to bring about improvements before we moved to market testing. It is to the credit of both management and staff that their efforts to achieve savings and improve service delivery has meant that market testing has not been necessary because of the success of in-House improvements. The fact that the opportunity was given and taken ought to be on the record. The Chair of the Finance and Services Committee referred to the discussions and decisions on the living wage and avoiding the worst forms of zero-hours contracts.”
“Despite the reductions, we have tried to treat our staff properly. They do an excellent job for us throughout the House. We should remember that and I think we have tried to reflect that. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) drew attention to the dispute over staff increments, which is to be regretted. I hope we will continue to engage in dialogue to resolve the issue before it goes to court. We have to remember that even the best employers occasionally have a disagreement with their employees. Both sides have genuinely tried to resolve the matter, but have not come up with an agreed solution. The disagreement should not go to court through a lack of effort in trying to find a solution. I hope both sides redouble their efforts to find a solution to what is clearly a difficult matter.”
“It is important that we are having this debate today, the second such debate, so that matters are available for all Members to discuss, and, if necessary, vote on. It is also important that we have an annual budget, that we take decisions collectively across the piece on financial matters, and that, with the changes to Standing Orders, individual items with financial repercussions are not decided outside the framework of an annual budget. All financial matters must be taken within that framework. It is not too revolutionary to think of having an annual debate in this Chamber on the budget: any self-respecting council will have being doing just that for years. The fact that Parliament has only just got around to it shows we do not always move as quickly as local government. Nevertheless, we have got there in the end.”
“We have made the work of discussing, deliberating and making decisions on our finances more transparent. As a member of the Finance and Services Committee in previous Parliaments, I was often unsure what we had debated and what decisions we had reached. If we had reached a decision, I was often unsure what then happened to it. I was confused on that, and I think that if I had asked most MPs about how decisions on financial arrangements for this place were made, they would not have had a clue. In this Parliament, we have clarified the relationship between the Finance and Services Committee and the House of Commons Commission. We make recommendations to the Commission and it is clear what the Commission does with them. That is a helpful first step.”
“A number of factors have been borne in mind in making those reductions and it is important to put them on the record. As has been said, the reductions have been made in a way that has not affected the ability of MPs to do their job and hold the Executive to account. That is a fundamental principle that, by and large, we have achieved. As the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, I have not noticed any impact on the Committee’s ability to do its work properly in holding Ministers from that Department to account. Nevertheless, I welcome the commitment from the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee to review Select Committee resources. That is a helpful move in the right direction to deal with any problems that might have arisen and been identified.”
“I support the comments made by the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso). I congratulate him on the excellent way in which he has chaired the Committee in the past year. He has taken us forward on a number of difficult and contentious issues with a general degree of consensus, and it is important that we have agreement across the House on these matters. It is important that we have sought to reduce expenditure by 17% during this Parliament. It would have been inconceivable to our constituents if, while they faced cuts in their public services, we in this House had been immune to reductions and carried on regardless. It was important to take that initial step.”
“Last November, I asked the Secretary of State whether one of the intentions behind the electrification of the midland main line was to speed up journey times, in which case the line would need the new inter-city express trains and not the transfer of old rolling stock from the east coast line, which would be slower and would increase journey times. The Secretary of State could not answer me then. Can he tell me now whether the electrified midland main line will get the new rolling stock needed to speed up journey times, which is what we both want to see?”
“I agree with the comments made by the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). Following an article I wrote for the Yorkshire Post , I have received dozens of complaints about Yorkshire bank from small businesses, particularly about being locked into tailored business loans with very high interest rates and very high redemption clauses and payments to get out of them. Will the Minister look at involving the Financial Conduct Authority to see if there could be an investigation into what has been going on?”
“I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware of the tram-train pilot scheme which will begin in Sheffield in 2015, and which may lead to an excellent opportunity for trams to use under-utilised heavy rail track to connect wider city regions through high-speed rail stations. Will my hon. Friend encourage the Government to carry out a review? Indeed, the Select Committee itself might wish to look into the matter.”
“I reassure the hon. Gentleman that, in parts of the north such as Sheffield, the consensus has never broken. We have always been firmly in favour in principle. The city’s MPs, the city council—unanimously —and the chamber of commerce, and the local enterprise partnership support high-speed rail as a matter of principle.”
“My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the problem of delay. Certainly in Sheffield, we are particularly concerned about the delay between completing phases 1 and 2. Now that the welcome appointment of Sir David Higgins has been announced, should not one of his jobs be to consider how we can build the second phase more quickly? Perhaps we could start building in the north as we start building in the south.”
“I welcome the Minister to his new responsibility. Last week the Communities and Local Government Committee had the Department’s permanent secretary and officials before us. We asked about the impact of the Help to Buy scheme on new house building. They said that the equity share element would add a maximum of 5,000 new homes a year, but they could not give us any assessment at all of the impact of the mortgage guarantee element. Is that because the Government, like everybody else, now believe that the scheme will have a minimal impact on house building but a significant impact on house prices?”
“By then, the 16% discretionary funding that remains after statutory services, contractual commitments and debt repayments have been taken into account will have gone. There will be nothing left. It is not about which libraries will be closed, because no libraries will remain open. That is a serious situation in Sheffield, which is mirrored in other parts of the country. It is not about one authority somehow failing, it is a potential failure of local government as a whole, not through its own fault but simply because it will not have the necessary resources from central Government and will not be able to raise the money itself. It is a serious situation.”
“Any change made in such contracts has a financial penalty attached to it. There is also the new private finance initiative scheme in Sheffield. It is absolutely great—the roads in Sheffield are being repaired, and we are delighted with what is being done. I congratulate the Government on supporting the scheme, which the previous Government drew up, and the council on implementing it. However, that PFI commitment is for the next 25 years and cannot be changed. There are also repayments on borrowing for schools and so on, which cannot be ducked out of. Such contractual commitments and debt repayments make up 46% of the budget, so that leaves 16%. I have given the figures for the further reductions that are in the pipeline through to 2018-19.”