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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“At that time, we discussed the possible consequences of individual registration not being done properly, and that issue has been part of the general argument ever since. As the introduction of these new measures is now being speeded up, I ask the Minister what will happen if our worst fears are realised and there is a significant fall in the number of people on the register. What will the Government’s answer be at that point? Is there a plan B? Are measures in place to address that eventuality, or will Ministers simply wring their hands and say, “Oh dear, we didn’t really intend that. It shouldn’t have happened, but it has happened and there’s nothing we can do about it”? It is reasonable and right that we raise those concerns at this point and ask Ministers to respond to them.”
“First, let me say that the principle of individual registration is unarguably right; indeed, I have supported it for some time. Excellent work has been done by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in this Parliament, but I have read again the recommendations of 2004-05, when a Joint Committee of the Committees of Constitutional Affairs and the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister looked at this issue. We supported the principle of individual registration, and looked at a number of ways in which that could have been done. However, neither of the main political parties chose to look at a proposal I thought might be appropriate: a common household form that individuals signed, so that people registered individually on a single form.”
“Such damage would not be intended by Ministers but, if it were to occur, it would be very damaging to the whole democratic process in this country.”
“As we saw, turnouts in the recent local elections were not high, but turnouts among postal voters, certainly in my constituency, where there have been no allegations of electoral fraud that I am aware of, were much higher. If we do anything to discourage legitimate postal voting, we will reduce turnout, and it is important that we keep that in mind. I shall conclude now, as I am aware that other hon. Members wish to contribute. I just say to the Minister that the reasoned amendment is just that—it is a reasoned amendment. Many—perhaps all—Labour Members are not against the principle of individual registration; we are merely concerned about an undue rush to implement it, which could damage the number of people registering.”
“Those powers are lacking in this Bill. The commission has asked for them—people from the commission mention them every time we meet—and we ought to examine them. We need less prescription about how this is done; a clear requirement for EROs to maximise registration; a clear requirement for the commission to give guidelines and examples of good practice; and powers for the commission then to intervene if there is a failure in particular areas. I say to the Minister that I have been partly reassured on postal votes. It is very important that people who have long-term postal votes, not for any fraudulent reason, but because they simply need them—perhaps because they are elderly, they are disabled or they work away from home a lot—should not be disadvantaged in any way.”
“We have to examine the powers that the Electoral Commission has and those it is asking for. As a localist, I think we are currently too prescriptive about the means of getting a comprehensive register. I have mentioned that we may not require the annual canvass in future. The Electoral Commission should give electoral registration officers a general requirement to ensure that as high a percentage of people in an area register as possible. The Electoral Commission should give guidelines and examples of good practice as to how that should be achieved. If EROs then do not carry out their functions—if we clearly see that in some areas the process is failing, whereas in others it is succeeding—the Electoral Commission should have powers not merely to monitor and shame those officers who are not performing in their duties, but to intervene.”
“I am certainly prepared to support that Bill. This is not just about jury service; it is also about the fact that the registers are used to draw up boundaries. If some people decide that they want to opt out of registration, they are, in effect, undermining and reducing the level of electoral representation in their area, by making the constituency they live in have a larger number of residents. That is because the boundaries will be made on the basis not of the number of residents, but the number of people registered to vote in areas. Again, it is a matter of civic responsibility that people should be registering. If they take services and benefits from the state, they should give something back in return. The other issue I briefly wish to address is how we go about forming a national regime for improving registration.”
“I apologise for not being here earlier, but I was at a Select Committee meeting. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) apparently raised the point about the time local authorities will have to propose a scheme, consult on it—as the Minister has just described—and then get their providers of services, such as Capita, to design the schemes and implement them. In January, Capita raised concerns about the time constraints that it would face and its real worry that it would have inadequate time to do that. Is the Minister convinced that local authorities will have adequate time and that there will be no problems with the delivery of services to constituents?”
“My right hon. Friend has raised an important point about what the Government may choose to do with the extra money from the business rates that will accrue each year. The suspicion has been expressed that they will use it to ensure that local authorities must fund more and more council tax benefits. That would be a simple way of transferring responsibility for benefits to local authorities.”
“Am I being a little cynical when I say that the Government have devised a scheme that is now so complicated—top-ups, tariffs, set-asides, then revaluations, and on top of that the fact that only 50% of business rates will be returned to local authorities, and a rate support grant element as well—that when they achieve what they are trying to do, the transfer of money from deprived communities to more affluent communities, it will be virtually impossible to explain to anybody what they have done?”
“The Minister says that the system is being reformed because of the complications of the current system. The Secretary of State, in his initial statement to the House, said that the Government’s objective was to create a new and simpler system. Does the Minister think that the Government have achieved that objective?”
“At the most recent meeting of the Liaison Committee, the Prime Minister, in a response to a question that I asked, said that “I can absolutely assure you that on the city deals…we can do those deals with individual cities whether or not they are going to have a mayor.” Yet, in the Yorkshire Evening Post on Saturday, the Minister agreed that there were powers that the Government would be happy to give to an elected mayor, but not to a traditional council. Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister that powers can be devolved to cities irrespective of whether they have an elected mayor or an elected council leader, as long as they have strong governance arrangements?”
“However, during our discussions on this matter, in the debate on the initial draft and in the comments on the Minister’s statement, an awful lot of Members on the Government Benches seemed to be saying, “We want a planning system that stops development in our areas.” I just worry that there might be some conflict—”
“The test of this document is not whether it is better than the first draft but whether it is better than the existing guidance that has been in operation up to now. The test is also whether it delivers better planning for communities and individuals, and for developers as well, because they are important in creating homes and jobs. What test do the Government want to apply to judge the success of the system? Is it a requirement to meet the Housing Minister’s target to build more housing in this country than we were building before the recession? Is it a requirement to ensure that we develop enough renewable energy projects to hit our climate change targets? I assume that those are the Government’s objectives.”
“There are some concerns about how far the issue of brownfield priority was taken, but the test will be in the practical application of the framework. Another welcome measure is the incorporation of offices and other development, as well as retail, into the sequential test to protect district, town and city centres. Those and other changes in the final document are very welcome. I do not have time to go through all the points in the document, as our time is constrained and other Members want to speak, but I shall draw out one or two areas in which things could go wrong, or that are in need of clarification or perhaps further review at some stage. That is not to say that there are not other good things in the document, but I want to draw out the issues that need further testing or scrutiny.”
“I suppose we could look at this in two ways: either the Select Committee’s report was excellent, or the draft document was somewhat flawed. Perhaps it was a bit of both. I do not want to be churlish, however. There have been distinct improvements, which we welcome, particularly in relation to the definition of sustainable development. I also want to thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), for the work that her Committee did, and for ensuring that the presumption in favour of sustainable development was set into the framework of the local plan, because the local plan must be at the heart of any plan-led system.”
“First, I want to note the very unsatisfactory nature of the debate on this important issue. Our debate has taken place in two bits at the end of two days, and the Government’s business managers could have found more time for it over the past few weeks. I know that the Minister was also keen to have the debate. On behalf of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, I would like to express our thanks to the Minister for the process that he went through, for informing the Select Committee at an early stage of his intention to produce a draft national planning policy framework, for inviting the Committee to look at the proposals and for listening carefully to our views and accepting in full or in part 30 of our 35 recommendations.”
“Well, we have seen a lot of letters to newspapers saying, “Please stop all these wind turbines being put up”—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I got an immediate response to that one. How, in the end, does a planning system relate all the individual local decisions and wishes of local communities to the Government’s national targets to deal with climate change and house the people of this country?”
“In the end, I am a committed localist. I believe in consultation and taking account of the wishes of local communities. All localists—not just Ministers—face a challenge: if the sum total of local decisions does not add up to the national requirements on issues such as climate change or the number of homes, what should the Government do about it?”
“For example: “For 12 months from the day of publication, decision-takers may continue to give full weight to relevant policies adopted since 2004 even if there is a limited degree of conflict with this Framework.” What does a “limited degree of conflict” mean? There is an awful lot of room for an awful lot of lawyers to argue about that and make quite a bit of money. In the next paragraph, it states that “after this 12-month period, due weight should be given to relevant policies and existing plans according to their degree of consistency with this framework”. What does “degree of consistency” with the framework mean? Ministers may think they know what it means, but lawyers may have a different view and two lawyers may have two different views, and that can lead to an awful lot of expense, delay and, perhaps, the wrong decisions.”
“There will be misreading of the wording; inspectors will come to decisions on appeal that do not conform with the Minister’s aspirations; judicial reviews will reach different conclusions from those Ministers, local MPs or local councils might want. At some point, the Minister will have to put in place a review system and perhaps bring in some changes, simply to take account in practice of those sorts of issues. This is a technical issue, but it could be crucial to how the system works. In the end, how it works in practice rather than what it says on a piece of paper is what will count. I welcome the idea of having transitional arrangements, and it is good that the Minister agreed them with the Local Government Association. That is very positive. Let us look at some of these transitional arrangements.”
“Without proper co-operation between those authorities and in the absence of the top-down targets from the regional spatial strategies, whose removal I know Government Members welcome, some areas are going to have real problems meeting housing needs in a constructive and co-ordinated way. Ministers and Government Members need to accept that, however much they welcome the changes they have brought in, any change in the planning system will almost certainly lead to uncertainty and cause an initial slowdown in decision making. That is almost inevitable, so we should not be surprised if things do not go smoothly at first. Almost certainly, too, there will be unintended consequences from what they are putting forward.”
“It was an important decision, as I say, to leave the technical guidance in place, and it would be helpful to know more about what is going on with respect to it. Although the Government have not gone quite as far as the Select Committee wanted, I welcome the fact that local authorities will have to come forward yearly to show in their monitoring reports what they are doing about the important duty to co-operate. There will be challenges for authorities that cannot meet their housing need because of land constraints, as they will need neighbouring authorities to take house building on to meet housing needs.”
“I am sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman’s point. He has a long history of arguing for more of the right sort of housing for his community; I would not accuse him of nimbyism at all. There is, however, an issue for the Government to think about. It is helpful that the Minister has kept in place the technical guidance about the assessment of housing need, so that there is a consistency up and down the country. It would also be helpful if he could write to hon. Members, and place his response in the Library, to explain exactly what technical guidance has been left in place to date, what his plans are to review it, in conjunction with various professional bodies and the Local Government Association, and what the time scale for the process will be.”
“It also worries me slightly that people see them as a way of stopping development. Apparently they must be consistent and “conform to the strategic priorities within the Local Plan.” What exactly does that mean? I think that it provides more room for legal argument. In the end, what is important is not what the NPPF actually says, but how that is interpreted and what happens on the ground. At some point the Government will have to explain, in their terms, what a successful planning system will achieve, and how they will monitor it in order to display that success in the future.”
“The Minister has gone some way towards accepting our proposal. We have talked about the “light touch review”. If local plans are to be at the heart of the process, it is ridiculous that we should be dealing with plans many of which are 20 years old. That is not acceptable. We must find a way of bringing those plans up to date more rapidly. I do not know whether the system of local development frameworks, strategies and site allocation plans is too complicated to provide the necessary flexibility, but the Select Committee may wish to return to the issue, and the Government may wish to work along with us in exploring the technical issues further. Everyone is in favour of neighbourhood plans, but I am worried about the resource implications. Such plans will not feature in poorer areas with fewer resources.”
“I stand corrected on that point. The fact that some of the wording is open to interpretation may cause real problems. It may mean that, ultimately, that the wishes of local communities are not adhered to. Most of the complaints made in evidence to the Select Committee about the planning system were not about guidance and policy, but about process relating to individual applications. I do, however, have a lot of sympathy with the Government in regard to the slow pace at which local plans have been put in place. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 resulted from the fact that local authorities were not adopting unitary development plans quickly enough. We now know that local plans are not in place in about half the authorities concerned. How can we change that for the future?”
“The Minister is talking about an improved system. When we add up the sum total of the planning approvals given for housing as part of the planning system that is being created, does he expect that number to be up or down on those given before the new system is put in place?”
“The document that the Government have now produced is clearly an awful lot better than the draft, and the Minister has complimented the Committee on the report that we produced, but in the end the real test is whether the new guidance is better than the old guidance—presumably whether, as a result of the changes, we get more houses built, more green energy projects approved and more development in general. But, if the sum total of all local decisions to which the Minister has referred does not account for the amount of growth that the Government want to see delivered in the economy as a whole, what will be the Government’s answer to that?”
“That was followed by a report in 2005 on empty homes and low-demand pathfinders, when I think that the Committee was called the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee. The Committee has had various titles but a constant theme of deliberations on the problems of low-demand areas and regeneration. As part of the Committee’s evidence sessions in 2002, I remember going to Burnley. Frankly, I was shocked by what I saw. We saw evidence of rows of terraced properties with selective pepper-potting of empty homes—properties becoming empty and no one going back to them as residents. We heard evidence of homes being exchanged in pubs for £2,000. Particularly for hon. Members from the south and other more prosperous areas, the idea of even buying a garden shed for £2,000 is quite ridiculous.”
“I will refer to the Government’s response to our report. Perhaps unlike the recent Government response to our report on the national planning policy framework, the Government were not quite so supportive on this occasion as they were to our comments and recommendations on planning. However, I will obviously focus mainly on our report on regeneration. Some of us—I am looking at you, Sir Alan—have been around this place long enough to remember a time before 2010 and previous Parliaments when the Select Committee, which has gone through various names, was called the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee. It conducted an initial report into empty homes in 2002.”
“It is a pleasure to introduce the Select Committee’s report on regeneration. The Committee began the inquiry with a view to considering the Government’s statement on regeneration to enable growth—something that we have commented on in our recommendations. We recognised that, in the current climate, resources were always going to be limited. We therefore considered how the resources that were available could best be spent and, from past experience, what was likely to be most effective. We made inquiries along those lines on our visits to Manchester, Salford and Rochdale, and on my visit Liverpool and Bootle, too. During the inquiry, we had to comment on the Government’s reduction in funding to housing market renewal areas. That reduction has made a considerable impact that came up in our evidence.”
“Someone had to be at the end of the queue; but even if they were, the promise was always that their home would eventually be dealt with. Everyone would have the same treatment as their neighbours. She said that the most demoralising thing she had to do as an elected local representative—someone who had been just a local resident and was elected by her colleagues as chair of the residents’ group and eventually chair of the collection of residents’ groups for the whole housing market renewal area—was to stand up at a meeting and say, “I’m sorry; we made promises in good faith that your home eventually would be subject to this renewal programme, either by demolition or refurbishment, and now the money has stopped.” She said, “I felt responsible for telling my neighbours that what was being promised them was not going to happen.””
“In the vast majority of housing market renewal areas, there was full and proper consultation with local residents about what the future held for them and their properties, how they were moved on and decanted into properties nearby and an attempt to keep communities together. That was the right approach. Of course, some properties were capable of refurbishment—perhaps bigger and more substantial properties with the potential to be family homes when they were done up—but local decisions were the right ones to take. Ros Groves lives in the Anfield area of Liverpool and gave evidence to the Committee. I remember her saying to me that it took a long time for communities to work through the order in which demolition and refurbishment took place.”
“Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) is nodding from across the Chamber. Homes in those areas have been through one process of regeneration in an attempt to keep them going for 30 years. Those 30 years have now come to an end, and there was little point in trying to do them up once again. I went to a home in Bootle—I remember it very well—where the property was right out on to the street. The backyard had two wheelie bins in it. They took up half the space, which illustrates how big the backyard was. I could hear water rushing underneath the property through the cellars and water coming through the roof. It is right that there should be local decisions about the future of those areas.”
“It is no surprise that many of those areas have failed markets with failed demand. Demolition has been the right solution locally, providing that it has been done in conjunction, consultation and agreement with local communities. As part of collecting evidence for the current report that we are debating today, the Committee went to Manchester and Rochdale, and I went to Liverpool and Bootle. We saw streets of old properties that were in the process of being demolished. We talked to residents there, and to residents who had moved into new homes. Overwhelmingly, people said to us that the right decisions had been made. Some of the houses had been subject to housing action areas. I do not know how many people in the Chamber are old enough to remember housing action areas and to have been involved in them. The hon.”
“It is difficult for one Government to commit another, but the reality is that these areas have failed so much and the needs are so great and so long term—a theme that came out very strongly in our evidence—that Governments must be prepared to commit for that period. There were other interesting recommendations in the 2005 report, and the Committee clearly heard conflicting evidence about the benefits of refurbishing homes or demolishing them and the whole issue of heritage. Paragraph 24 stated: “The potential heritage value of the housing and its contribution to regenerating neighbourhoods should be considered an important part of any appraisal but houses should not be preserved for the sake of heritage if there is not the demand for them.” That is a real issue.”
“One of the recommendations of the 2005 report, in paragraph 19, stated: “The Government acknowledges that it will take up to 15 years to tackle failing housing markets or undertake market restructuring and many of the mechanisms such as compulsory purchase orders have a long lead-in time before taking effect.” Setting up the housing market renewal areas and the indication of the need for a long-term programme was absolutely right. One criticism that the Minister has made of the Government at that time, which I accept, is that they should have done then what they did for the new deal community areas and actually made a commitment from the very beginning to 15-year funding.”
“It was simply a matter of complete and utter market failure. There was no question of the private sector coming in with private investment, because the houses were simply regarded as not having any real value. As a result of that experience and the report from the Select Committee, the Government set up the housing market renewal areas—pathfinders—and put in substantial amounts of public money. The Select Committee then published another report in 2005, which is interesting because it considered some of the same themes as the new report.”
“Those properties were changing hands, and landlords who had little interest in their management were buying and letting them, often to people on housing benefit, with little attempt to control antisocial behaviour. Owner-occupiers who had previously spent their money—often their life savings—on their properties abandoned them. They walked out because they could not cope with the area any more. The whole area was therefore in a spiral of decay and decline. Clearly, there was population loss, and there were job losses, too. The relative isolation of some ex-mill towns in those parts of Lancashire was an issue, and one repeated in other parts of northern cities, too. We saw an area that was almost suffering death by a thousand cuts—a decline that was not being managed, because there was no effective public intervention.”
“I accept that there are pockets—indeed, substantial areas—of deprivation, particularly in parts of London, but in towns and cities in the south as well. That is not something that we want to obscure. I was making the generalisation that house prices are generally more expensive in the south, where we would probably not find houses changing hands for £2,000 in the pub. However, the point about life expectancy is well made. Indeed, I think that at some point the Committee will consider the whole issue of public health and the new health and wellbeing boards in councils. I think that one of their priorities will be to address that issue.”
“For example, the house that I described in Bootle was built straight on to the road, with no back yard and little prospect of being made into a substantial family home. A number of properties in Skinnerthorpe road in the ward that I used to represent in Sheffield, which is now part of the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), are tiny little homes that are damp and inadequate and were subject to demolition, but the larger homes on the road next door, which could be refurbished as family homes, were refurbished properly as part of an ongoing programme, generally with community support.”
“I agree. Whether it is demolition or refurbishment, there is not one right answer. The right answer arises in the context of a local community making decisions. The worst thing that can happen is leaving the areas to decay, because housing pressures, which are not being responded to there, spill over into greenfield sites, although we would rather have houses either demolished and rebuilt or refurbished on existing brownfield sites. In the end, the criteria are simple. Communities considered whether the areas had a future, whether there was demand for the properties and community support for refurbishment or demolition, whether houses had already been refurbished once, 30 years ago and whether they were adequate.”
“In the 2005 report, when we had a Government of a different persuasion, the Committee was critical of the Government allowing the pathfinders to go their own way, but not of drawing together themes and trying to enable them to learn lessons from one another. Our criticisms reflect those of a previous report on a previous Government. We do not ever seem to have had an overall, clear national framework.”
“I shall make some points about that in a minute. The hon. Gentleman anticipates what I am going to say and makes a valid, correct point. Our fundamental criticism of the Government—it will be interesting to hear what the Minister says—is that we did not believe that they had a strategy for dealing with the issue. We did not believe that there was such a strategy in the Government’s report on regeneration. We even contrasted that report with the approach to regeneration in Scotland, where the Government seemed to have an overall view of what should happen. It is not just a party political point. I am sure that the Minister will be relieved about that.”
“I will explain what I think it is about. The hon. Gentleman anticipates me. I do not know whether it is helpful to give a simple definition of regeneration to cover all possible examples, but it should reflect some elements of regeneration schemes. The hon. Gentleman’s first point is right. There was a lot of mixing up of regeneration and growth. For example, High Speed 2 and Crossrail were mentioned in the Government’s regeneration paper as examples of funding to help regeneration. It is a fairly big stretch of anyone’s imagination to link HS2 and Crossrail to the potential for regeneration schemes. That is a little step too far. I am happy to support those schemes and believe they will help economic growth nationally, but I am not sure whether they really relate to particular regeneration.”
“I am all in favour of HS2, which will be good for growth in northern cities, such as Sheffield. I am a strong supporter of that and have been for a long time. When considering specific areas—coming back to the point made by the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris)—regeneration is a response to market failure, as we saw in Burnley, where houses were sold for next to nothing. To take the point made by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), there is a wider issue of failure of environment, dereliction, failure of skills and lack of employment opportunities.”
“If we are going to tackle the difficult, fundamental problems that we see in some of the worst areas, there probably has to be some concentration of whatever public money can be found—recognising the issue of the public finances—in those particular areas. I have made the comment already, but the previous Government’s failing was not in making the money available, but in not committing it for a long enough period to see the schemes through to a successful conclusion.”
“As witnesses said to the inquiry, no regeneration is happening in Britain at present, because it has virtually come to a standstill. There is a bit of the tail-off of housing market renewal in respect of schemes that are being wound down, but that is all. There is a need, potentially, for the private sector to invest with some gap funding, which, again, may be available through the European Regional Development Fund, which I will mention in a second. Regeneration and market failure is not just about bricks and mortar; it is about the environment, as well as various facilities, skills and jobs.”
“Regeneration is defined widely. Different areas will have different needs and a different response will be required. I agree with the Minister that that is why, in the end, a localist approach to what works in an area is important. With regard to my comments about Crossrail and HS2, which are massive, major projects involving billions of pounds of expenditure, if a tiny bit of that affects one area, then good, but it is a little bit difficult to recognise such projects as regeneration funding as a whole. In Burnley, Liverpool and Rochdale, we saw market failure and nothing will happen without some public funding. That was the message that came over to us. If the public money is not there, the private money will not be there either. The two need to go hand in hand.”