Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“In Nottingham, the party opposite blew £38 million on a failed energy company and made 230 of its employees redundant over Skype, before rewarding themselves with a backdated pay rise. Robin Hood Energy, they called it. Well, Robin Hood stole from the rich, but Labour’s Robin Hood just stole from everyone. Up in Durham, the council, at the height of the pandemic, approved a new 3,500 square feet roof terrace on its £50 million county hall. Merton Council reportedly set up a building company with a £2 million investment, only to deliver not a single home. The council leader said it was designed to make money, but he had built in—I kid you not—jumping off points. It turns out that there was no parachute for local residents. Labour Warrington has debts of least £1.6 billion.”
“Gentleman could check in with his own council in Croydon, a council that in its consultation response to the Department on last year’s finance settlement said: “we are disappointed that the ability to increase locally determined Council Tax has been reduced and that” it “can…only be increased by 2%”— directly contradicting the hon. Gentleman. How are these councils actually performing? Croydon is a council that has found itself in £1.5 billion of debt, the only council to go bust in 2020, following the collapse of its housebuilding company, Brick by Brick, which may not have proved to be very good at building, but did prove to be extremely good at owing people a lot of money. The problem is that Labour in local government today is a catalogue of failure, dysfunction and waste.”
“Yes, I am happy to withdraw it, Mr Speaker. I will come on to the remarks of the LGA in a few minutes, if I may, but the hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways: he cannot say that he is unhappy that we have imposed a cap that provides limited flexibility for local councils to decide of their own volition whether to increase council tax or not, and that he wants the cap lifted altogether so councils can increase it without limit, which seems to be the consensus among his own local government leaders. Perhaps the hon.”
“While we have been clear that we have a plan to protect local councils and that we care about local council tax payers, Labour has perfected the art of saying nothing at all. Frankly, council tax payers across the country deserve better than this absurd and hypocritical debate from the Labour party, and they will have the opportunity to say so in May.”
“We take no lectures from the Labour party, which presided over eye-watering increases in council tax throughout its time in office, and whose economic mismanagement in local government has been laid painfully bare for all to see. The reports of those councils—Croydon and Nottingham—spell it out: mismanagement; waste; poor public services; and, yes, higher council taxes. There is a toxic legacy of debt and dysfunction, not just for today but for future generations. And where, frankly, was the shadow Secretary of State? Where was his denunciation of Croydon and Nottingham? He was silent. He was invisible. His famous Twitter account was as uncharacteristically quiet as that of Donald Trump—no leadership when the country needed it. While we have reduced council tax in real terms on our watch, Labour has increased it time and again.”
“This Government are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with local government in its hour of greatest need: with the officers, the teachers, the refuse collectors, the care workers, and the environmental health officers enforcing our regulations. For all that they have done, we salute them and thank them on behalf of our communities and our country. We owe them the stability, certainty and flexibility to plan for a brighter future ahead, and that is exactly what we have done, what we will do and what we will always do for them. Our communities have never needed good council leadership more than they do today. Whether it is in Croydon or in Nottingham, across the country the reputation of too many Labour councils is, frankly, rotten.”
“That is not even to mention £4.6 billion of unring-fenced grant support to councils, £1 billion through the infection control fund, £1 billion through the contain outbreak management grant and £300 million via the test and trace service support grant. I could go on and on: 5 million food boxes delivered; 2 million shielded people protected through councils; and, of course, 33,000 rough sleepers brought in off the streets under the world-class Everyone In programme, and given the chance to rebuild their lives. That is central Government and local government working together through a unique pandemic to support millions of people across the country. Local government has been—and remains—at the forefront of our response to covid-19.”
“Since the start of the pandemic, we have mobilised our welfare system like never before, with generous income support schemes, mortgage holidays, support for renters, a £500 million local authority hardship fund, a £170 million covid winter grant scheme and much-needed help with utilities. To support local economies, we have provided £12 billion in grants to thousands of businesses the length and breadth of the country, and a business rates holiday worth around £10 billion to local retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. We have operated a major reimbursement scheme for lost council income, recovering billions of pounds from car parks, leisure centres, theatres and tourist attractions—money that will go to help councils move forward and recover.”
“That takes the total additional funding provided to local authorities to over £12 billion, £2 billion more than the sum the Local Government Association called for at the start of the pandemic—the sum the shadow Secretary of State himself estimated to be the cost to councils of covid at the time. We know today that we have provided £1 billion more than local government has self-reported to my Department as covid-related costs throughout that period—£1 billion more than even councils have told us they have spent and need. Let us be clear that when the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and I promised to support local councils and the communities that rely on them, we meant that promise, and we have delivered on that promise.”
“The shadow Secretary of State has suggested to the House today that this Government have not delivered on our commitment to communities during the pandemic. This past year has seen the largest ever injection of in-year cash to the local government sector. Taken together, we have provided over £36 billion of support to and through local government in response to the pandemic. To put that in context, in 2019-20 the entire council tax take for the whole of England was £31.6 billion—less than we have provided in year to and through local councils this year alone. Local authorities have received £8 billion in direct funding, with a further £3 billion extra already announced for 2021-22, and we forecast adding an additional £1.2 billion to that from schemes to compensate for lost council income from sales, fees and charges.”
“In total, we expect core spending power for English councils to increase from £49 billion this year to £51.2 billion next year, in line with last year’s increases and recognising the resources that councils need to meet extraordinary pressures while maintaining the essential services they provide. The measures I proposed will provide an additional £1 billion of funding for adult and children’s social care. We have also confirmed that we intend to roll forward last year’s £1.4 billion of social care grant and continue the 2020-21 improved better care funding at £2.1 billion. We are considering responses to the settlement consultation and will return to the House to set out the final funding package for local government in the very near future.”
“Across the country, Conservative Mayors, whether Andy Street in the west midlands or Ben Houchen in Teesside, are continuing that tradition: low on taxes; high on leadership and delivery. The provisional local finance settlement, which I announced to the House on 17 December, set out our proposals to increase the core spending power available to councils by 4.5%, a significant and real-terms increase. That comes on top of a 4.5% real-terms increase this year—a settlement the Labour party considered so good that, for the first time in living memory, it did not even oppose it.”
“Across the country, Conservatives charge the lowest taxes. We see this on the ground wherever we look. In the Leader of the Opposition’s constituency, in Labour-run Camden, council tax is three times as high as in neighbouring Conservative-run Westminster. As I am sure the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) can testify, residents in Labour Merton and Lambeth pay almost twice the council tax of residents living just one or two roads away in Wandsworth. The Mayor of London has presided over a rise in council tax every year since he was elected. To put that in perspective, when the Prime Minister was Mayor, he reduced the amount of council tax he charged Londoners by almost 11% during his tenure. In his last year alone, band D households in the 32 London boroughs saw their Greater London Authority council tax charges fall by 6.4%.”
“There are many examples I could cite from Birmingham City Council, but I do not think time allows me to do that. Let us contrast this Government’s approach to protecting the interests of local tax payers with that of Labour. In one year alone, the last Labour Administration oversaw an increase in council tax of a staggering 12.9%. In comparison, as we have said, since 2010 this Government have implemented five years of council tax freezes, under which the great majority of councils did not increase council tax at all. In retail price index terms, council tax is lower than it was in 2010. We have introduced legislation to end crude and universal top-down capping, ensuring significant council tax increases can be implemented only through a referendum, giving local tax payers a right to veto excessive tax increases.”
“The Government’s priority throughout the pandemic has been to protect lives and livelihoods, with substantial support flowing to high street businesses through business grants, the paying of people’s wages and tax deferrals. Just last week, the Chancellor announced an additional £4.6 billion in new lockdown grants to support businesses and protect jobs. I was pleased that on Boxing day we allocated £830 million from our future high streets fund to 72 areas to transform underused town centres into the vibrant places to live, work and visit that we all want to see after the pandemic.”
“That idea lies very much behind the comprehensive package of support that the Chancellor has made available, with £200 billion specifically targeted at supporting small businesses on the high street. It is also why we have brought forward the further top-up grants, worth up to £9,000, to help small businesses through this next—and hopefully final—phase of the pandemic. We will of course continue to review the situation. Such concerns lie at the heart of our plans through the towns fund, the high streets fund and now the future levelling-up fund.”
“I praise my hon. Friend for her hard work to support Oxted high street in Surrey and the work of her local councils. The truth is that the pandemic has not so much changed things but magnified and accelerated enormous market forces that were evident even before the pandemic. There will now be a very significant role for local councils in bringing forward imaginative plans to bring private and public sector investment back to the high streets over the course of the year, and to make good use of the licensing and planning reforms that we have already brought forward and that we will bring forward more of in future. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to hear her plans for Oxted.”
“Friend to look at the planning reforms that we have brought forward, because it is not simply about more public investment; we also want to support entrepreneurs, small businesspeople and small builders through the right to regenerate, the changes to the use-class orders and the new licensing arrangements—such as the ability to have markets, keep marquees outside pubs and have more tables and chairs outdoors—that I would like to be put on a permanent footing so that the al fresco dining we saw in the summer can be replicated this year.”
“As I said, I was delighted to announce over the Christmas period the 72 places that have benefited from the future high streets fund, but I appreciate that hundreds of high streets throughout the country will be thinking about their own futures. We will very shortly bring forward the levelling-up fund, from which all parts of the country, including my hon. Friend’s in Hampshire, will have the opportunity to benefit. I also direct my hon.”
“Those are the ways that we attract private sector investment and enable small builders and entrepreneurs in Croydon, in Newark and in all parts of the country to face the future with confidence.”
“The Chancellor announced earlier in the year an unprecedented business rates holiday, which is benefiting thousands of businesses the length and breadth of the country, and he will be considering what further steps are necessary. I know that he is making a statement later today, and we will bring forward a Budget in March. We all want to support small independent businesses on our high streets, which is precisely why I encourage the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to support the planning reforms that we have already introduced, such as the ability to build upwards, to bring more homes on to the high street and to turn a derelict or empty property in a town centre into something more useful for the future.”
“The Government care deeply about building more homes and delivered more than 243,000 last year, the highest level for more than 30 years. We have gone to great lengths to keep the whole industry open during the pandemic, sustaining hundreds of thousands of people’s jobs and livelihoods, while continuing to stimulate the market through our stamp duty cut. Covid will impact starts significantly, so we are taking steps to sustain activity, including delivering up to 180,000 homes through our £12 billion investment in affordable homes, the biggest investment of its kind for a decade.”
“I do not think any village in this country should be deemed to be set in aspic. Organic growth has happened throughout the generations and can and should happen in the future.”
“Like my right hon. Friend, I want to see more homes of all kinds built in all parts of the country, and I want to deliver as many social and affordable homes as we possibly can. I was delighted that the Chancellor gave us the funding for the £12 billion affordable homes programme, which as I say is the largest for a decade. It has a target to deliver 10% of those homes in rural areas, so it should support his community in Lincolnshire. To answer the broader question, rural areas need to consider how they can bring forward more land in the plan-making process in their neighbourhood plans for homes of all kinds. The current planning system permits local communities to choose the type of homes that they want, so when they allocate sites, they can say that they should be affordable homes, through which they can support the next generation.”
“It may be in areas where there are existing clusters of tall buildings, such as Nine Elms or Canary Wharf, or it might be around transport infrastructure in other parts of the city, but we should be able to protect the character and feel of outer London and those parts of the suburbs that my hon. Friend represents, which deserve that added level of protection.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he has done in this area, along with a number of his colleagues representing London constituencies. I have corresponded with the Mayor of London, directing him that in the forthcoming London plan there now be a tall buildings policy for London, which will ensure that every borough can determine if and where tall buildings should be built. We have no objection to tall buildings. London needs more housing, and that includes good-quality tall buildings, but it is fair for communities to decide where that should be focused.”
“We will keep on investing in homes through the affordable homes programme and more investment in brownfield land, and we will keep on bringing forward ambitious planning reforms to free up the planning system, to support small builders and entrepreneurs and to create and sustain jobs for the brickies, the plumbers and the self-employed people the length and breadth of the country who need a Conservative Government to be on their side. I would respectfully ask the hon. Lady to back us. She and her colleagues have voted against every single one of those measures since the pandemic. People across this country need those measures to get this country building and support jobs.”
“Let us remember that the last Labour Government left house building in this country at its lowest ever level in peacetime—the lowest since the 1920s. The statistics that we published at the end of last year show that this Government are building more homes than any Government has built for almost 40 years, and were it not for covid, we would have built more homes than any Government since that in which Harold Macmillan was Housing Secretary many years ago. We will keep on building more homes.”
“Contributions from housing developers see around £7 billion a year invested back into communities, building more homes and vital infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, and helping to deliver more than 30,000 affordable homes last year. But, as my hon. Friend has raised with me a number of times, the system is still too long-winded and complex. To fix that, we will introduce a flat rate, non-negotiable single infrastructure levy. As set out in the “Planning for the future” White Paper, that will accelerate house building, aim to raise more revenue than under the current process and deliver at least as many on-site affordable homes. We will publish more details on this soon.”
“The current system is not successful. It leads to long-winded wrangling. It places the cards in the hands of big developers, rather than local councils, communities and, in particular, small developers, who find it too costly and complex to navigate. The new infrastructure levy will be simpler and more certain and, as my hon. Friend says, it will do two important things. First, it will raise a larger amount of money, capturing more of the uplift in land values, so that more money can be put at the disposal of local communities. Secondly, it will give greater freedom to local councils to decide how they choose to spend that, so that development can benefit communities in flexible ways.”
“While we look to the future with optimism as our vaccine programme continues to make progress, we know that covid-19 has meant an unprecedented challenge for towns and high streets. That is why, last month, I announced a new urban centre recovery taskforce, bringing together local leaders and industry experts to help our cities and towns to adapt and take advantage of the new opportunities that may follow. This builds on our wider planning reforms, giving shop owners the flexibility to change the use of their property and to rebuild vacant properties as homes. All this comes on top of our £3.6 billion towns fund, the £4 billion levelling-up fund and the new brownfield funding, all of which will ensure that towns have the investment they need to prosper.”
“We will be publishing very soon the prospectus on the levelling-up fund, and that will give an opportunity for all parts of the country to benefit from this additional funding, including the community that my hon. Friend represents in Stoke-on-Trent. We also, as a result of his assiduous lobbying, have brought forward further funding for the remediation of brownfield land. Stoke-on-Trent has an excellent track record of developing new homes, but it does face significant challenges with the cost of remediation and the viability of those homes, so I hope Stoke-on-Trent will benefit from that funding as well.”
“I am very pleased to hear that Aylesbury has made such progress with its regeneration plans, which will complement Buckinghamshire’s ambitious garden town project—to which we have already allocated over £172 million—to unlock 10,000 homes. My hon. Friend is right to say that this year a priority post covid for every single council in the country, including his own, must be how they can help their town centre to thrive, not just today but well into the future. That will include ambitious plans to turn underutilised retail into work spaces and homes, and trying to attract private sector investment by making full use of the planning reforms that we have brought forward, with a more flexible, more certain and more responsive system to make regeneration a reality.”
“We have provided over £230 million of support to other coastal towns in England through the coastal communities fund, and coastal communities will be very much in our thoughts in the £4 billion levelling-up fund and also as part of the UK shared prosperity fund, both of which we will be publishing prospectuses for very soon.”
“I was very pleased to announce last month that Kirkham will benefit from our future high streets fund, receiving over £6 million, which will go a long way to support its ambitious plans. Not only that, but my hon. Friend’s constituents will no doubt benefit, in part at least, from the £39.5 million that we have awarded to nearby Blackpool, which will help to revitalise the town and fund several projects, including modernising the illuminations, so that they can be brighter than ever later this year. He is right that as a seaside town St Anne’s faces some very significant challenges, which he and I have spoken about in the past.”
“Last week, I announced the next phase of our strategy, which has been widely praised as one of the most successful of its kind in the world, and which has already committed over £700 million in the past year to supporting rough sleepers and the homeless. The Prime Minister and I have been clear that central to this Government’s mission is the Conservative party’s promise of home ownership, helping more people to achieve the dream of owning their own home. Our landmark leasehold reforms are the next step in that great tradition. We are putting an end to practices that for far too long have soured the dream of home ownership for millions, and preparing the way for a better system altogether with the active promotion of commonhold.”
“Over Christmas the Government announced the 72 recipients of our £830 million future high streets fund competition, enabling the delivery by councils of ambitious plans for regeneration. Councils are once again critical to the covid-19 pandemic, and our focus in the coming weeks will be on ensuring that they play a full and supportive role in the vaccination programme, especially ensuring that the hardest to reach in each of their communities are protected and vaccinated. The work that communities have done in protecting some of the most vulnerable in society—rough sleepers—has truly been first-class.”
“My right hon. Friend raises an important point. Local councils have done a fantastic job, but they have limited capacity and in many cases they are close to the limit of that capacity. We are very aware of that. I am urging my colleagues in Cabinet and across Government to prioritise carefully their asks of local government, to ensure that the schemes they bring forward are as simple as possible to reduce the burden on local councils. My long-standing view is that we should be providing funding in almost every case to local councils on an unring-fenced basis. That is certainly the way we have proceeded in general throughout the pandemic. We have provided £54 million of unring-fenced funding to her local council on top of, as she said, a whole range of schemes to support local businesses and the care sector.”
“I cannot comment on an individual application, other than to say that a decision not to call in an application is not a decision on the merits of a particular case. It is a decision on whether it meets the bar to bring in a case and have it heard on a national scale, or whether, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, it is better left to local democratically elected councillors, in this case in Cumbria. It is those councillors who will now make the decision. The national planning policy framework presents a balanced judgment that they will have to make, balancing our national presumption against new coal with any particular benefits that a project might bring to that community in terms of jobs, skills and economic benefit. That is a decision that in this case will be made by the democratically elected members on Cumbria County Council.”
“The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. We said at the spending review that we are bringing forward not just the UK shared prosperity fund but £220 million of additional funding on top of that to support local communities in all parts of the country, including Scotland. We will shortly be publishing the prospectus. I hope he will now take this occasion to welcome the fact that not only will Scottish residents and businesses receive as much funding as they would have received had we stayed in the European Union, but £220 million more than that. We are more than meeting our commitment to his electors in Scotland.”
“The hon. Gentleman needs to do his sums again, if he is fully abreast of what is happening. The EU structural funds will continue for the coming year at the level they would have been at had we remained a member. The Chancellor has chosen, in addition to that funding, to add £220 million more. The hon. Gentleman does not know the proportion of that going to Scotland, because we will publish that in the prospectus. The figure he quotes is the one set by the European Union, so his objection is to the way in which the European Union chooses to divide up its structural funds to support local communities, not to the way that this Government can. Fortunately, as a result of leaving the European Union we can make our own decisions in the weeks and months ahead.”
“My hon. Friend has already secured, as he says, the town deal for Ashfield, and the good news over the Christmas period is that it will also benefit from the high streets fund. We have been supporting Eastwood under this Government. The redevelopment of Mushroom Farm has received £160,000 for new commercial space for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs in his constituency, but I would be very happy to meet him and see what more we might be able to do, so that all the investment that we have brought to Ashfield is also spread to Eastwood.”
“We have been very clear that the further work that we are doing now, building on the hugely successful Everyone In scheme, will be available to all individuals. Councils need to apply the law and that means making an individual assessment, but the unique circumstances of winter and the pandemic will mean that councils will use that to support more people off the streets and, importantly, to view this as a moment not just to support them now, but to get them GP-registered so that, in due course, they can be vaccinated, so we lead the world in supporting this vulnerable group and ensuring that they are fully vaccinated.”
“I do remember that visit to Dinnington when my hon. Friend was a candidate, and I was delighted that he was later elected. He has assiduously made the point that we need to think about smaller towns and larger villages in the preparation of our plans, whether that is the levelling-up fund or the UK shared prosperity fund. I appreciate that in places such as south Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, there are small communities, perhaps ex-steel and ex-coalfield communities, where the need is great and where we need to ensure that investment arrives. That will very much be in our minds as we prepare the prospectus for the levelling-up fund.”
“My hon. Friend is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful Members of the House on this subject, which he and I have discussed many times. Fewer than one in five children from a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller background meets the expected standard for English and maths at GCSE. I am firmly committed to delivering a cross-Government strategy to improve life chances in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and, as my hon. Friend says, to encourage greater integration, particularly in education. In the depths of the pandemic, my Department has invested £400,000 in education and training programmes for GRT children, so that they can receive extra tuition and catch up on lost learning.”
“The hon. Lady misrepresents even what the Public Accounts Committee had to say about the towns fund; I urge her to re-read what it said and not to be so liberal with her language. I can assure her that the high streets fund used a 100% competitive process, and Ministers had no say in choosing the places selected. If fault lies anywhere, I am afraid it lies with the hon. Lady’s local council, because despite our giving it hundreds of thousands of pounds to produce plans, and despite the no doubt great need in the community, it failed to put forward proposals that met the Treasury’s basic benefit-cost ratio value-for-money standard. That is a great pity. The people of her local community have missed out, but if the blame lies anywhere, it lies with her local council.”
“Building on last year’s settlement, which exceptionally received cross-party support, it puts councils, which were at the forefront of our response to the pandemic, at the forefront of our recovery, and I commend this statement to the House.”
“When there is a clearer path ahead, we will work with the sector and Members across the House to seek a new consensus for broader reforms to local government, including the fair funding review and the business rates reset, and we will ensure that councils are set on a long-term trajectory of sustainable growth and fair resources. This will, I hope, be viewed as a significant settlement that paves the way for a bright future for our local communities as they seek to bounce back from an exceptionally difficult year. The settlement will deliver £2.2 billion of extra funding, a 4.5% cash and real terms increase in core spending power, and it will further fund councils to ensure that they steer the course of the remaining months of the covid-19 pandemic with certainty and confidence.”
“To that end, my Department is publishing today its response to Sir Tony Redmond’s excellent review of the effectiveness of external audit and transparency. We will provide councils with an additional £15 million next year to implement Sir Tony’s recommendations. We are preserving the ability of local authorities to invest in programmes to power growth by lowering Public Works Loan Board interest rates, but we must also protect taxpayers from unwise risky investments of the kind we have seen, sadly, in some councils in recent years. Those practices must now end.”
“That will fund once-in-a-generation changes to local communities and deliver the highest sustained levels of public sector net investment since the 1970s, including the biggest hospital building programme in living memory, and £2.2 billion investment in our schools funding programme to rebuild 500 schools over the next decade. In addition, local councils will benefit from £1.7 billion for local roads maintenance and upgrades to tackle potholes, which will improve local connectivity and deliver better roads for our communities. I want local government to emerge stronger, more sustainable and better able to meet the needs of those it serves. That means greater openness and accountability, and in a minority of cases it means better financial management and regard for taxpayers’ money.”