Hilary Benn
MP for Leeds South · Labour · United Kingdom
“As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Irish Government published on 8 June their legislative outline, entitled “The General Scheme of the Legacy of the Troubles Bill 2026”. That is intended to fulfil the commitment that the Irish Government gave in the joint framework to co-operate to the fullest extent possible with the commission.”
“Northern Ireland is a society, as the hon. Gentleman knows better than most, that has been undergoing profound change since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 28 years ago. As the famous lines go, we have a shared history, but not necessarily a shared memory.”
“The right hon. Gentleman raises a really important point, and I am grateful to him for his question. We all have a responsibility—political leaders have a responsibility to call out what was witnessed for what it is and not mince our words, and as I have already indicated, social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that such m…”
“I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that the common travel area, which is more than a century old, is of great benefit to the citizens of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Many people in Northern Ireland live their lives across that border every single day.”
“I do agree with my hon. Friend. The attack on Mr Ogilvie was truly shocking, and there was no justification whatsoever for the racist thuggery we witnessed on the streets of Belfast in the days following.”
“That was, of course, an awful feature of what we saw. One of the things I learned in my discussions was that those from the far right had taken a list of houses in multiple occupation in Belfast—a list that, in the interests of openness, was properly available on the Belfast city council website; the council has now taken it down—and used…”
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“I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for putting the record straight. Perhaps I should have trusted my initial judgment and not given way to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).”
“That is an extremely good point and it matches what the Government have done in relation to England, which I shall come to in a moment. The Government said that they wanted to prevent homelessness, but what has happened? It has risen every year under this Government and rough-sleeping is up by nearly a third since 2010. House prices, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) mentioned a moment ago, are racing ahead of earnings. They are up 8.4% in the last 12 months according to Nationwide and up 15% in London, and today it takes the average family over 20 years to save a deposit for a house. If we are talking about records, that figure in 1997 was three years, so no wonder the rate of home ownership is falling. Therefore, it is not really working, is it?”
“What is more, the money that is taken from the least well-off goes to areas where in all probability the houses would have been built anyway, so in what sense is the new homes bonus “a powerful incentive for local authorities to deliver housing”? We know the new Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), does not think it is an incentive because he told us so. On 25 November he told the House that “the new homes bonus is not about encouraging people to build homes.” —[ Official Report , 25 November 2013; Vol. 571, c. 11.] That is what he said. If that is the case, what on earth is the new homes bonus for? Perhaps when the Secretary of State responds he could sort out the confusion in his own Department.”
“I come now to the new homes bonus. The National Audit Office said there is little evidence that the bonus has significantly changed local authorities’ behaviour, and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee says there is no credible data available to show whether it is working. Indeed, she has pointed out that the areas that have gained most money tend to be the areas where housing need is lowest and the areas that have lost most money tend to be those where the needs are greatest. That is a familiar story with this Government: whether it is local government funding or the new homes bonus, they like to take from those who are least well-off and give to those who are most well-off.”
“Judging by the record so far, the answer is clearly no, and there is one bit of advice I suggest the Secretary of State takes, which he himself gave: he did at least have the modesty to put out one press release which was headed: “No complacency in the drive to build more homes.” The Secretary of State should listen to the plans and proposals Labour have put forward about what more needs to be done. Let us consider affordable homes. What did the Government do? One of their first acts was to cut the affordable housing budget by 60%. [Interruption.] Indeed, it was the largest cut they made. We have tried to persuade them to use the proceeds of the 4G auction to build affordable homes and to listen to the International Monetary Fund calling for an infrastructure boost by providing more affordable homes. They have not done that.”
“I shall come to Help to Buy in a moment, but, yes, we have consistently said that we welcome measures that help people to buy, but there is a problem about supply and that is what this debate is about: the Government’s failure to ensure that enough homes are being built. The truth is we need to build a lot more homes as a country—roughly double the current rate. The question before the House today is not whether we are now seeing a rise in housing starts from the pitifully low level the Government have bequeathed themselves over the last three years. The question before the House today is: does the country have a plan that will see building on the scale required?”
“My hon. Friend illustrates the problem. As we know, this is money that has been top-sliced from all local authorities and is being redistributed in a way that clearly does not appear to be fair and, judging by the findings of the PAC and the NAO, is not terribly effective.”
“As the hon. Lady may be aware, the Lyons commission established by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is looking at that question. Labour councils are outdoing Conservative authorities in building new council houses because of the reforms to the housing revenue account the last Labour Government put in place.”
“There is a growing list of voices expressing concern about the scheme, the latest of which belongs to someone who happens to sit at the Cabinet table with the Secretary of State. I refer, of course, to the Business Secretary. Talking recently about the state of the economy, he said that “we risk it being derailed by a housing bubble…It’s not my job to tell the Bank of England what to do, but I get a sense that the Governor of the Bank does understand this is a serious problem.””
“My right hon. Friend makes an overwhelmingly powerful case. That is the problem with the new homes bonus and that is why we are urging the Government to think again about it. Indeed, when the Chancellor tried to persuade the Treasury Committee that the Government’s actions were going to boost supply, the Treasury Committee said the arguments being made were “unconvincing”. I shall turn now to the Help to Buy scheme. I said in answer to an earlier intervention that we support measures to assist people in realising their dream of home ownership, but if one of the consequences is that house prices move further and further out of people’s reach, there will be a problem. We cannot boost demand for housing, which is what Help to Buy is doing, if we do not also increase the supply.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly fair point. As he knows, the housing market varies enormously between different parts of the country. In the city that he and I have the privilege of representing, the council’s assessment—which is supported by all the parties—is that we will need roughly 70,000 new homes in the next 15 years. That is a question of supply.”
“I have given way a great deal. I want to make some progress, because lots of people want to speak. Let us look at the situation in London. Here, we see new blocks being built and marketed to foreign investors, making it much more difficult for Londoners and others to get a chance to buy those homes. The shadow Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), has said that that is wrong and called for action to require such homes to be marketed to Londoners and others who live in this country first, rather than being sold off-plan to investors abroad.”
“I will give way to him to allow him to answer. I notice that he does not wish to intervene. Perhaps a nod would do. This is the third time I have asked him about foreign buyers in relation to the Help to Buy scheme, and it is the third time he has been unable or unwilling to give me an answer.”
“I want to make some progress. In the capital, about 50,000 homes are now sitting empty. That is why Labour would allow councils to double the council tax on empty properties. We would also deal with the loophole that allows overseas owners to claim that a property is their second home, simply because they have put a table and chair in it. I asked the Secretary of State a specific question last March about whether foreign buyers would be able to benefit from the Help to Buy scheme, and his reply could not have been clearer: “This scheme will not be available for foreign buyers; this is a scheme to help people from this country.” —[ Official Report , 25 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1311.] Will he confirm for the record that EU nationals who have come to the UK will not be eligible for assistance from the Help to Buy scheme?”
“Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) has tried to claim it as a Conservative idea. With such illustrious backing, how could Labour’s proposal be anything other than a very good plan indeed?”
“In the most extreme cases, we will use compulsory purchase powers to take the land off you, with the permission, and sell it to someone else who will build the homes.” I know that Ministers spluttered into their Cornflakes when we announced that policy, and that the Mayor of London described it as a “Mugabe-style” land grab, but I would gently point out that among those who support the idea of charging when permission has been granted but no houses have been built are the International Monetary Fund and someone who goes by the name of Boris Johnson, who, when I last checked, was the Mayor of London. Moreover, the planning Minister once called for a tax on land to “deter speculative land banks”. The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen has also spoken up in favour of the proposal, and the hon.”
“That represents a lot of homes that could be built, yet companies are sitting on the land, with planning permission, waiting for it to increase in value and not building on it. The Office of Fair Trading looked into this matter and found that strategic land banks, including optioned land, were worth 14.3 years, which is about enough land to build 1.4 million homes. That is why we think it perfectly reasonable for communities that have given planning permission to say to those who sought it, “Look, will you please get on and build the homes you said you wanted to build? And if you don’t, then after a time we will start levying a charge. After all, if you had built them, we would now be getting council tax revenue.”
“I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have called on the Bank of England to look into the operation of the Help to Buy scheme now, rather than in a year’s time, precisely so that those points can be taken on board. I want to move on to discuss what else could be done to get the land, the finance and the planning consent required to build more homes. Ministers seem to argue that nothing is really wrong with the way in which the land market is working. I have to say to the Secretary of State that we disagree. The planning Minister, in his latest written answer to me, has said there are more than 523,000 units with planning permission, of which 241,500 have not yet even been started on site.”
“Even when times were good, when mortgage credit was readily available and house prices were booming, the house building industry was unable to build the number of homes required.”
“I am going to make some progress. When Kate Barker carried out her review of the housing market a decade ago she found two factors that we need to consider. First, she said that “limited land supply means the competition tends to be focused on land acquisition rather than on consumers”. Secondly, she found that “many housebuilders ‘trickle out’ houses…to protect themselves against price volatility”. [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members say that that was a decade ago, but it is still going on. Roughly translated, it means that not all house builders have an incentive to build all the homes for which they have planning permission as quickly as possible or as quickly as the nation needs them to. That is a problem, and we have proposed a way of dealing with it.”
“Nowadays, the figure is only one third, and when we talk to small and medium-sized builders about the problems they face, they mention two things: the difficulty of getting access to land and the difficulty in obtaining finance. Something needs to be done about both.”
“As the hon. Gentleman is well aware, there was a very difficult period— [ Interruption. ] No, there was a collapse in the global economy. It is no good the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen shaking his head. The problems that we experienced in the United Kingdom were caused in particular by problems in the housing market in the United States of America. That is why we should be concerned by the threat of a housing bubble returning to the United Kingdom. One of the answers must be to get more people building houses. [ Interruption. ] I am glad to see the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen nodding in agreement. Forty or 50 years ago, two thirds of the houses in this country were built by small and medium-sized builders. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Gentleman can carry on nodding; that is fine. I am grateful for his support.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point about the nature of the land market, why reform is required and why that is one thing we have asked Sir Michael Lyons to look at in his work. The next problem the Government should start looking at is the difficulty faced by local authorities in places such as Stevenage, Oxford, Luton and York, which want to see houses built to meet demand but do not have the land and neighbouring authorities are not co-operating and making that happen. Ministers recognise that there is a problem, because that is why they put the duty to co-operate in the national planning policy framework.”
“Excuse me. It also does not square with the figures that I have looked at on the proposals for development to the north of Stevenage, which have been consistently blocked. The truth is that a duty to co-operate is not a duty to help each other out or to reach agreement. So in those circumstances, what is a council supposed to do? That shows why the right to grow would provide a means of overcoming this problem by requiring neighbouring local authorities to work together to ensure that the houses that need to be built are built. It is not a top-down—”
“However, rents are rising twice as fast as wages, house prices are moving out of reach of families, and 5 million people are in the queue for social housing. This country needs something different, and I urge the House to vote for this motion.”
“I do not know whether the Secretary of State in the end believed all his press releases and announcements, I do not know whether he thought that blaming councils would be enough and I do not know whether he was taken in by what I have to describe as the bombast of this Government’s first Housing Minister, who boasted consistently of the Government’s record. The problem is that the Secretary of State’s record speaks all too clearly for itself. Therefore, the country needs a new plan. The public need it because they are the ones paying the price for failure. Homes give us security and a sense of community: they are where we build and raise families; they are places for children to do their homework; and they are good for our health.”
“On that I am with the planning Minister, because I believe that neighbourhood planning is the way forward. For too long, we have had a system in which nobody has really taken responsibility for building new homes. Thame in south Oxfordshire provides a good example of the new community plan. If communities feel that the new houses that they give consent to will solve the housing problem in their own neighbourhood, they will be much more likely to give agreement. That is why we need plots for self-build and local allocation policies for social housing, and why we need to give local people first call on having the chance to buy new developments in their area. That will give communities confidence that the homes will meet their need. The progress so far has not been considerable, but the task is.”
“Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have two other points to make, one of which is about new towns and garden cities. The Government used to be very keen on those at one point, but they seem to have become less enthusiastic. I hope that the Secretary of State will say something about that when he responds, because it is hard to see how we will make progress without those things . We have to incentivise local authorities to come forward, which is why the Lyons commission is going to look at how we can help new towns and garden cities to be established and why a Labour Treasury would use guarantees—the Government are currently using guarantees for Help to Buy—for “help to build” for these new towns. Finally, we need communities to take responsibility for building new homes.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on the provisional local government finance settlement.”
“Does he not realise that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people have already been denied social care due to cuts in council funding, while the Government have wasted money on their expensive and failed reorganisation of the NHS? Is it not the case that even more people will lose out because of what has been announced today? Another week, another Minister in denial—when will the Government realise that the future set out today means that more and more councils in the years ahead will simply not be able to maintain the services on which so many people rely?”
“As the Audit Commission recently reported: “Councils serving the most deprived areas have seen the largest reductions in funding relative to spending.” Tough times do indeed require tough decisions, but this Government, as they have shown time and again, from the bedroom tax to the top rate of tax and local government funding, take most from those who have least. That is unfair and unjust. Despite Government talk of a freeze, many councils, including Tory authority after Tory authority, will increase the council tax next year, including for residents who work but are on the lowest incomes and will lose council tax benefit. Why is the Minister top-slicing money from council funding that is based on need, and putting it into the so-called “new homes bonus” in areas where new homes would have been built anyway?”
“Given the scale of the cuts affecting local authorities, the Minister really should have made an oral statement today instead of having to be dragged to the House. Will he explain why the further cut of, supposedly, 10% in real terms—announced by the Chancellor in the spending round for 2015-16—is actually a 15% real cut to the settlement funding assessment? Why are the most disadvantaged communities once again the hardest hit? Will he confirm that by 2017 the city of Liverpool, the most deprived local authority in the country, will have lost 62% of the Government grant it was receiving in 2010? How on earth can he justify that?”
“Censors the world over might think that is a jolly good clause, but the House was unconvinced.”
“They could not be bothered to write a letter to a single authority, but they could be bothered to draft a shoddy clause that will give the Secretary of State the right to control every single local council publication, every website, leaflet and bit of content—the lot. The Secretary of State, if he takes offence, will be able to tell councils, “You’re not allowed to refer to the bedroom tax as the bedroom tax. You have to call it something else.” If he feels like it, he will be able to stop councils commenting on spending cuts and the way they affect the local authority area. He could stop them commenting on airports, HS2 or NHS changes. He can even tell local parish councils that they cannot produce 12 double-sided A4 sheets a year. He will be able to do anything he wants.”
“I have not read quite so many local authority publications since Second Reading, but I have still found no figures on tractor production, which I continue to be disappointed about. Basically, no evidence has been advanced on local authority publications. It is no good the Minister in the other place saying, “I could give you the names of 12 authorities, but I don’t think that would be helpful.” We have heard the Minister give one example, that of “East End Life”. The really damning revelation is that for all the complaints, concerns and denunciations of breaches of the code, he tries to suggest that what the Bill offers is true localism, and in three years the Government have not even contacted a single local authority, which is astounding.”
“Friend the Member for Corby, both in Committee and earlier today, is clause 39, which deals with the code of practice for local authority publicity. I was interested to hear that the Liberal Democrats apparently could not bring themselves to vote for it in Committee, because they were absent when it was discussed. I do not blame them, because they are right to be embarrassed by what is a most illiberal piece of legislation. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) described that provision as a sledgehammer. If I may coin a new phrase, I think that it is a sledgehammer of a blunderbuss, and it has been constructed on the back of a lot of ministerial complaining about Pravda -like publications.”
“Our argument is that when the Whitehall and the local pound are brought together to provide services at a local level, there will continue to be different audit arrangements. I say to the Minister, and I hope he will reflect on it even when the Bill has become an Act, that that does not make sense. An audit, especially when the Bill gives us a chance to set it on a new footing, must take account of the changing way in which public money is spent, particularly as community budgets develop. It does not make sense if there is a community budget for different bodies, with the NAO trying to chase the Whitehall pound down the road and the local authority auditor looking at the local pound. One clause that was dissected and then comprehensively savaged by my hon.”
“We will hold him to what he said about ensuring that the public has exactly the same right as it currently has using the Freedom of Information Act to get access to information that auditors and private companies have about contracts that they are undertaking on behalf of local authorities. I am very sorry that the Government have not made provision for auditing that will be fit for purpose for the years ahead. The Minister did not do justice to the argument that we advanced. We did not suggest that the Bill prevents local authorities from working together with each other or with central Government—for example, through the troubled families initiative. That is not our argument.”
“That is particularly surprising, given that Ministers often lecture local government about the need to make changes. On access to information, the amendments that we argued for were all about the public’s right to know. As we are aware, the Audit Commission is covered by the Freedom of Information Act; private auditors in general are not. As councils change the way in which they work, it is very important that the public have the right to understand what is happening and have access to information. Listening to the Minister this afternoon, the more he protested that our amendment was not necessary, the more puzzled I became. Then there was a moment of what I hope was conversion. I am delighted by what he had to say when pressed by my hon. Friends.”
“What is striking about the Bill, however, is that the quality of some of the content we have debated at length has not benefited from the length of time it has taken the Government to bring it forward, in part because of the complexity of what has been removed and therefore the need to construct arrangements to replace it. I acknowledge that the Government moved on the issue of joint procurement, and I am grateful to the Minister for listening to the arguments made by local government and by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby, but I am genuinely sorry that the Minister either has not wanted to get the arguments that we made or has not properly understood the consequences of the Bill failing to anticipate the new world in which local authorities have to work.”
“I join the Minister in expressing thanks to all Members who served on the Bill Committee, all those who gave evidence to the ad hoc Joint Committee, and my colleagues the noble Lords McKenzie and Beecham for the work they did in scrutinising the Bill in another place. As we know, this is a Bill that arises from a very early decision that the Secretary of State took, which was to abolish the Audit Commission. When we heard from him on Second Reading, he was convinced that it was the right thing to do. We all recognise that the commission is going, but only time will tell whether it was right for the Secretary of State not to take the advice of the noble Lord Heseltine, who originally introduced the Audit Commission because he thought it was wrong for local government to appoint the people who audit it.”
“The Bill certainly has generated a great deal of debate—more, I suspect, than either the Minister or others who thought it was just about audit might have anticipated. That is in no small measure, as the Minister has just acknowledged, due to the skill and forensic arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), who did sterling work in Committee, as he has done today, ably assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and also my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), from whom we heard today.”
“In this day and age, with the very big changes in technology that enable every citizen to become a reporter, all of us in this House, whichever side we sit on, want more people to take an interest in what our local authorities are doing, by going to meetings and reporting them to spread the news and make sure that more people can see what is going on. We will not oppose the Bill given that provision has to be made for a replacement for the Audit Commission, which is on its way out, but in some respects it is a lost opportunity. For all the words that the Secretary of State, in particular, is fond of saying about localism, once again this Bill proves that the longer he is in office the more he cannot resist using legislation to tell local councils what to do.”
“If the Government go back on a done deal, which is what has happened in this case, they undermine confidence in the city deal process, undermine the certainty on which financial planning has to be based, and undermine the confidence of those who will negotiate with them in future, who will ask themselves, “Hey, look what happened to the Leeds city region—how do we know they aren’t going to change the rules for us after we’ve signed our names in ink on a piece of paper?” It needs to be sorted out. As the Minister knows, we support the other changes that were made in this House on parish polls and councils allowing recording and videoing of council and committee meetings.”
“The Minister knows very well how important the transport infrastructure fund is to the Leeds city region deal; indeed, it is the main thing that the city region got out of city deals, which, as he knows, I support. The letter is signed not only by the chair of the combined city region which is to become an authority—the leader of Leeds city council—but by the chair of the local LEP. They are not persuaded by the Minister’s arguments, because they say: “As it stands, the Local Audit and Accountability Bill makes the Fund impossible to deliver.” I listened carefully to what the Minister said, and I do not know whether there is a chink of light there, but he has a responsibility to sort this out. Apart from doing justice to the Leeds city region, there is another argument for why the Minister has a responsibility to deal with this.”
“Knowing how long it takes to decide on these things in government, I think that it is inconceivable that Ministers were not privately discussing changing the rules at the very moment when they were discussing the Leeds city region deal. If that is the case—I will give way to the Minister on this point—why did he not tell the people they were negotiating with? He does not want to intervene, so for the third time we have had no answer to the question, and some people will draw the conclusion that they do not want to answer it. The Minister will have seen the letter mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby that the Leeds city region sent to the Deputy Prime Minister on 6 December asking the Government to solve the problem they created by changing the rules after the agreement was signed.”
“On referendums and levying bodies, I must say that I was unconvinced by the Minister’s arguments in relation to the Leeds city region deal, described by his ministerial colleagues as a watershed moment, which was signed before the new policy was announced. The Minister has still not answered the question I asked the Secretary of State on Second Reading, and which was asked again today by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby, so I will put it slightly differently. The city deal was signed towards the end of the year and the announcement of the new policy on referendums and levying bodies was announced at the beginning of the new year.”
“Absolutely, but the problem with the clause is that they cannot publish any more than that. If they want to bring out a special edition on their Christmas celebrations, for example, having had their 12, that would not be allowed, because the Secretary of State is taking the power to prevent that. The clause states that the Secretary of State can exercise all those powers regardless of whether he thinks that the local authority is complying with the code of conduct, which is extraordinary. I read with great care the arguments that the Minister tried to advance in Committee, but I am afraid that I found none that justified that. The truth is that Ministers ought to be really careful with the great big blue pencil they are about to get hold of.”
“Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made this point—as a lesson to the leaders in other conflicts in the world today, because, like Nelson Mandela, they face two simple choices. The easy path is to remain a victim. The more courageous path is to say to those they lead and to the world, “This is what we must now do in the interests of peace.” Nelson Mandela once said: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.” May he be granted in death the peace for which he campaigned so hard in life.”
“Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was absolutely right to make the point about the power of politics to utterly transform our world and people’s lives. Out of all the words that have been used to describe Nelson Mandela two stand out for me: magnanimity and reconciliation. After those long years of imprisonment, he showed magnanimity at the very moment when he had forced the apartheid regime to grant him his freedom by refusing to yield, and he preached reconciliation. Why? It was because he knew it was the only way he could achieve his vision of a non-racist and democratic South Africa—it was his leadership that made that possible. I simply say that one of the best ways in which we can honour Mandela’s memory is to let his example stand—the right hon.”