David Simmonds
MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Secretary of State back to the Dispatch Box, and I thank her for early sight of her statement. I am not sure that this was the triumphant return to the subject of devolution that she had in mind, because our councillors and the communities that they represent are looking aghast at yet another shambolic U-turn from this Gover…”
“Given that the Government have been banking on millions of pounds in savings—we have challenged them on those savings repeatedly across the Dispatch Boxes—to mitigate costs, which include the massive rise in national insurance that has driven many councils to the verge of bankruptcy, what assessment have Treasury colleagues made, and what…”
“Given the promises made and that all our political parties have selected candidates who have been campaigning for mayoral elections and new unitary authorities that the Government promised were coming into being, with elections to take place next May, will she give a categorical assurance that those new authorities will be in place, or pr…”
“Can she tell the House from the Dispatch Box why she is not satisfied that it was lawful, and will she place all the non-privileged documentation and correspondence relating to this debacle in the public domain and in the Library?”
“Finally, I appreciate that the Secretary of State has returned to the role after others have been stewarding it, but will she apologise to all those councillors, all those local government officials, all those political candidates and activists and all those businesses who have engaged in good faith with the Government’s process?”
“Planning permissions for new homes, of which there are already around 1.5 million, are one thing, but getting those units built is another. With Savills reporting that two thirds of London boroughs have seen net zero new housing starts under the Mayor of London, what proposals do the Government have to ensure that units with permission ac…”
The complete record
Every one of 600 lines we hold for David Simmonds, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 8 of 12.
“I am grateful to the Minister and the Government for their willingness to embrace the debate about electric vehicle charging, and I know noble Lords have been extremely keen to support the work being done to deliver that net zero agenda. However, so many elements of the Bill incorporate a tendency to centralisation. The lack of community-level accountability and lack of ability for local residents to have their say about what is happening in their area—for example, on assets of community value—remains a fundamental concern. If we want those communities to embrace development and new homes, they need to be able to see the benefits and opportunities that a development will bring to their lives. Another issue covered in the Lords amendments is chalk streams.”
“Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) set out in her intervention, highlighted in Lords amendment 1. Ongoing accountability is crucial. We know there will be trade-offs, whether it is on Heathrow—an issue that affects her constituents and mine—or High Speed 2, which has been very much debated, the delivery of new cross-Thames infrastructure to the east of London, new ports, new airports or new roads. There is a significant parliamentary interest in all those issues, and that process provides an opportunity to explain to the public where those trade-offs sit. On heritage sites and reservoirs, the Lords have done some excellent work.”
“My right hon. Friend tempts me to fast-forward to a point that will arise later on. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer said at the end of her Budget statement last year that she was wiping the slate clean, and from here on in it was on them, she was absolutely right. If we look at the impact that the measures taken have had on the deliverability of housing and infrastructure, and the rising costs of government driven by the colossal borrowing spree that has been embarked upon by this Chancellor, there is no question. A Government who have borrowed £100 billion this financial year alone are not in a position to talk about a businesslike approach to delivering housing and infrastructure. The Opposition share the concern that the hon.”
“That would help to allay concerns and allow time for the local authority to consider in advance the impact of having families with children who need education provision and the impact on the NHS of providing support for people who may have war injuries or have suffered other circumstances that brought them to our shores as asylum seekers, for example. It would also enable representations to be made to the provider if it was clear that a locality was not able to provide the support needed by a household or class of users. Introducing an additional use class would bring about a higher degree of transparency and ensure that many of the genuine community concerns that hon. Members on both sides of the House have outlined could be effectively addressed.”
“It is very clear that there is a degree of community concern, particularly given the backdrop. We have heard the Government say that they are committed to shifting the asylum accommodation estate away from hotels, the use of which has grown very rapidly in the last 12 months, towards other types of accommodation. We have heard a lot about houses in multiple occupation and former military bases being put to use for that purpose. I therefore encourage the Government to consider the Opposition’s proposals for a specific use class for asylum accommodation so that there is an effective public consultation, and so that residents understand the purpose of the HMO change.”
“When I was a councillor, my local authority applied one in very restricted areas where it was seeking to protect the student housing market, rather than using a whole-borough approach, but it is now considering implementing that more widely to address the kinds of concerns that hon. Members have highlighted. The Government have just gained Royal Assent for the Renters’ Rights Act. As they look at leasehold legislation, as well as the devolution Bill, which contains housing elements, and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, about which I think the Commons is due to receive Lords messages next week, I encourage them to look at the opportunity for further amendments to those pieces of legislation that would enable local authorities to more effectively address these concerns through different routes.”
“The Opposition support the Government in bringing forward new provisions to improve the licensing process for HMOs, which several hon. Members on both sides of the House have called for. Historically, we have always sought to make that process as straightforward as possible to swiftly meet rising local demand for housing. However, we recognise that there has been growing pressure, particularly because of the unneighbourly behaviour that we have seen from some landlords, that needs to be swiftly and robustly tackled. We also support a more straightforward implementation of article 4 directions. We recognise that where they have been implemented, their operation was restricted to ensure that the supply of this type of accommodation was not choked off by blanket application.”
“They have provided for temporary workers over the years and are a key plank of our student housing market. They are extremely important, especially for people who may be trying to put their lives back together and make the first step into social housing. Their numbers have grown in a housing market where, although private rented homes have the highest level of occupier satisfaction of any type of housing, there is none the less an acute need to ensure that people are found homes and are off the streets. There is a high degree of commonality and agreement, but I am sure we all recognise that that need will remain a significant challenge in the context of a collapsing housing market, especially here in London where the mayor is on track to deliver less than 4% of the housing target set by the previous Government.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Dowd, and to speak in this debate called by the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm). He gave a clear exposition of the issues facing his constituents, which mirror the experiences of mine. I was out at the weekend talking to people in Lovett Road and Ash Grove in Harefield who told pretty much the same story that hon. Members on both sides of the House have set out. I have huge sympathy for the Minister and the Government because that story encapsulates the housing challenge: everybody is generally in favour of providing more housing, but they are not very keen on this specific form of more housing when it has an impact on their constituency. The Opposition recognise that HMOs have always been a helpful source of additional housing.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley set out the view of the official Opposition during the debate last week, so I will not relitigate that in its entirety, although I am sure he will be keen for me to emphasise the sheer cross-party commitment on assets of community value. We know about the risk to assets that are at the heart of a community, from a village pub or cricket field through to community centres and business premises. We need a means laid out in the law whereby the value they add to the local community can be retained where necessary. That was enshrined in legislation by our party when we were in government, and in general we support the direction of the current Government in taking up those principles. We will listen carefully to the debate.”
“I sympathise with the Minister’s argument, but does she agree that there is a general weakness in the Bill in that the opportunity has not been taken to tidy up the legislation, particularly the role of parish councils and parish meetings in this context? The point has been well made that it is often through those vehicles that we see districts and others going through reorganisation already looking to enshrine the community value of these assets. It is a missed opportunity if we leave it hanging so that the convoluted but robust powers that the Minister outlined, which can take years to put into effect, remain the only available route, when there is an opportunity for an alternative structure to deal with that now.”
“Clearly, where there has been a failing in local audit, it is the specific local authority, or the general group of local authorities, that is the victim; they are the ones who have suffered a demerit or deficit as a consequence. It seems a little illogical that the penalty would be paid to the Secretary of State rather than those who have been directly affected by that failing. It would be helpful if the Minister set out how the Government will ensure that, where those failings have had an impact, and where penalties have been gathered to make some degree of remedy, it is the victims that see the benefit, rather than it essentially sitting in a Government office.”
“I seek an assurance that the Government have given due consideration to what will happen where that qualified individual of an appropriate status belongs to another professional body that sets accounting standards, rather than CIPFA, not least because accounting is often as much an art as a science, and there are differences of opinion as to how different accounting provisions might be made. Secondly, I would be grateful if the Minister can give some clarity to the Committee. Government amendment 237 requires that, when a penalty is imposed, the Local Audit Office must pay the sum of that penalty to the Secretary of State.”
“Again, the Opposition are broadly sympathetic to the Government’s direction of travel, but I will put a couple of questions to the Minister. I previously raised the issue that, in respect of local audit, there are a number of accredited accounting bodies to which professionals may belong. I have not seen a response, but I know that at the time there was some discussion about the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy being the identifying body.”
“Will the Minister set out the role of the section 151 officer in relation to the Local Audit Office? Primary accountability around local government finance is in the council tax fixing process. By law, it has to be balanced in-year. The audit process sits behind that, verifying that the information presented, on which that decision has been lawfully made, is true and accurate. The section 151 officer holds that legal duty in each local authority. Can she set out how the accountability that she has described, which revolves around the role of that individual, will be dealt with by the law, particularly given the role that the Secretary of State is taking on in the appointments process?”
“Many of us will have experience of where a difference of opinion between auditors on the treatment of a transaction can have a significant impact, including by directly impacting the level of council tax that needs to be set. I have not been able to locate a response from the Minister on the different types of accounting. Can she set out how the system will ensure sufficient flexibility to recognise legitimate professional differences between different types of accountants, authorities, businesses and systems? None of them is inherently wrong or incorrect; they just reflect different approaches to managing the finances of that local authority. Flexibility for local decision making should remain at the heart of what is supposed to be a devolution Bill.”
“I will briefly return to the question of accounting standards and how they will operate. As the Minister set out, the aim is to streamline and, broadly, to restore the Audit Commission district auditor-type system we have seen in the past, which itself had a number of issues. Clearly, when local authority councillors make their decision on fixing council tax—when local authority finance officers put that information together—they will always be mindful of the accounting standards that apply. One of the issues is that there are a lot of different ways of approaching that. Some may use cash accounting and some will use accruals; some will use Sage and some will use Oracle. All of those have different characteristics in managing the system, and different auditors may have different views about which they prefer.”
“] I hear murmurs of agreement—but ensuring investment for housing, children’s social care, adult social care, education and local transport depends on us getting this right. Rather than create a system that sets local authorities up to fail, we need to have that debate and put that right straightaway. Taking into account fully the specific, unique legal and financial impositions on local authorities in this audit arrangement is critical, so that decisions can be made locally in good faith and with the relevant level of local democratic accountability.”
“The key challenge is that, unlike any other public body, local authorities are democratically elected. They are subject to an annual process of budget fixing, where they are legally obliged to balance that budget in year. That rule does not apply to any Government Department, or NHS bodies and so on, all of which have a conversation with central Government about how overspends, capital expenditure, borrowing and so on are dealt with, in a completely different way from local authorities. Could the Minister address that, and ensure that the Committee is fully aware of how those provisions will be considered? Local authority finance is not the most exciting subject— [ Interruption.”
“A number of these other local bodies are subject, in the Treasury’s eyes and legally, to different accounting rules. In particular, Government Departments have revenue and capital departmental expenditure limits, and the Treasury is happy to shift money between those annually: capital may be allocated to cover revenue shortfalls and so on. That is something that a local authority cannot do. Will the Minister set out how the appointment process will ensure a high degree of transparency, particularly at the local level, so that people can see the difference between bodies that are subject to the local authority regime of in-year balancing and the other local bodies that are subject to a separate regime, and why the levels of assurance and the nature of decision making may be different?”
“The risk is that, if there appears to be a consistent standard, the judgments produced in respect of authorities that are operating within one legal and financial framework will be very different from those produced in respect of bodies operating within another. Given the Bill’s envisaged reorganisation of local government and the centralisation that the Minister has referred to, we need to retain a level of local clarity about what differences arise as a result of local decision making, so that council tax payers can see them, versus things that result from interactions with central Government via the Secretary of State.”
“I am reassured to a degree by what the Minister says. I was personally involved in the setting up of the PSAA, although I do not have any direct interests in it. The market has clearly moved in that direction. My concern with bringing all these things into a central accountability stream that sits with the Secretary of State is that the legal and financial environments in which these bodies operate are quite different. If an NHS trust or a police organisation has overspent, it can ask the Secretary of State to reallocate capital for building, for example, a new police station to cover the revenue shortfall, but the local authority cannot do that.”
“What consultation has the Minister undertaken with accounting bodies, such as the Association of Consulting Actuaries, CIPFA and all the others, so that they can ensure that the necessary degree of influence has been exerted to ensure that the training standards and process that will emerge from this will be sufficiently robust?”
“The elected folk may be of the view that it is, but a section 151 officer may say that it does not stack up in financial terms. There needs to be a process for resolving that dispute, and that will revolve around the professional standards that the Minister has just set out. It would be helpful if she could set out what process of assurance there will be following a decision, so that we can all be clear that there is an adequate pipeline of people, as she has described, to undertake those roles, and that we do not suck out all of the expertise of section 151 officers, who are the only people who can undertake them.”
“The section 151 officer is the person in the local authority who has whistleblower protection; they have a legal obligation to ensure that the local authority has the information that it needs when setting its budgets, and that the information is true and correct. However, disputes about the treatment of financial decision making are also common, where a section 151 officer may have a lesser degree of comfort about a risk arising from a decision. We talked earlier about assets of community value, and there are many MPs in this room who will have campaigned for their local authority and undertaken responsibility or an intervention to preserve an asset or local amenity. That leads to a debate about whether that is a good use of taxpayers’ money.”
“Will the Minister briefly set out some examples of things that are being undertaken but she feels are not adding value? We are all sympathetic, but it would be helpful to the Committee’s decision making if we understood what we are going to stop doing as a result of the decision we are being asked to take.”
“It would be helpful if she set out what those things are so that our colleagues in local authorities can understand what will be removed from the requirements upon them and the Committee can understand what risks, if any, that poses to the public.”
“The Minister is perhaps being a little mischievous in responding politically to what was essentially a technical question. We all recognise that there are challenges. Broadly, the audit system suffers not from a lack of regulation but from a lack of capacity. Measures such as Public Sector Audit Appointments were designed to address that, but they have not been sufficient, despite being implemented in consultation with the sector. We therefore agree that an alternative approach is required. The Minister has been clear to the Committee that she feels that many of the requirements imposed by the current system are unnecessary. She has returned a number of times to the point about there being things that do not add value and are onerous.”
“The Minister keeps returning to the point that she feels that there are elements of the system that are onerous and burdens that should be alleviated. It would be helpful if she briefly set out a couple of examples for the Committee so that we can understand what she thinks we should no longer look at so that we and our council taxpayers can at least understand the risk and reward associated with it.”
“The treatment of the dedicated schools grant, which has a huge impact on local authority budgets, is an example of an issue that comes up regularly on the Floor of the House. It is CIPFA’s view that, because it sits within a legal ringfence that has to be balanced each year, it is a budget killer for local authorities. However, ownership of that sits with a different Government Department that takes a different view about how it should be addressed. To me, that is a good example of something that is onerous and requires a lot of work, but in practice, the Government have collectively decided that they are going to deal with it in a different way and effectively ignore the rules that they imposed on local authorities to make it go away.”
“Does the Minister have a good view or a strong reason as to why that element of local expertise should be disregarded, given the extremely significant financial risks associated with the example that she gave the Committee of something that she envisages the Government will stop requiring councils to do?”
“When these amendments talk about local arrangements, I think they are seeking to enable flexibility in a local authority, for example, whose pension fund profile may be slightly different from its neighbours or outwith the norm, because it has a younger or older workforce than is typical, or because it has entered outsourcing arrangements. That flexibility would allow the local authority to have people on its audit committee who have the relevant experience to ensure that the audits and information reflect that, and that the decision making properly reflects those risks and does not unduly impact on council tax payers.”
“Local authorities across the country, which have a legal obligation to make up any such shortfall, were then faced with this question: to what extent will we have to make financial cuts to public services to bridge that gap at short notice so that, if the pension fund is falling short, council tax will bail it out? That is not something about which we could say, “You don’t really need to know about it, and you can safely ignore it.” It is something that, if it goes wrong, could be critical to the finances of that local authority.”
“I am sympathetic to the issue behind these amendments, although I am not convinced that this is the mechanism to address it. I will briefly explain why, and where this sits in the context of the previous debate. The Minister gave the example of the pensions audit as something that we could alleviate, but my personal experience would suggest that is a very poor example, and amendments 18 and 17 connect to it. If we think back to the last big financial crash when the last Labour Government were in office, the local government pension scheme, which is currently overfunded, saw a huge fall in the value of its assets to the extent that it was then 30% underfunded.”
“I have a brief question for the Minister. One challenge is that most local authorities will have an arrangement, although it is not always called the audit committee; sometimes it is the finance scrutiny committee or the overview committee—there are lots of different arrangements. Could the Minister set out briefly what specific requirements, if any, she intends to impose on local authorities about who can be a member of an audit committee and what its composition is? Will it sit within the overall political balance structure that exists in all local authorities? I ask that just so that we understand where it will fit within the new arrangements.”
“When we hear that North Yorkshire spends £51 million over a couple of years taking kids to school, that sounds like an extraordinarily high level of expenditure, but it is driven entirely by local circumstances; it is not the result of inefficiency or negligence on the part of decision makers. The point is well made that we have to have that really clear grasp in decision making that comes from people understanding and knowing their local place.”
“Some have everything dealt with by a single, financially focused scrutiny and overview committee, while others do it as part of a wider context or in the context of individual service areas. So there are different approaches, and it is important that that local discretion continues to exist. I am not convinced that it is necessary to have further legislation, but it is right that we bring the matter to public attention. One weakness of the Westminster-focused Public Accounts Committee is that it does not always grasp local nuance. Home-to-school transport in rural Lincolnshire or North Yorkshire is a completely different challenge from that in Greater London, where all local authorities are, effectively, levied so that public transport in the capital is free for children going to school. Such things are difficult to capture.”
“The only element where I have any disagreement with the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole is over whether the legislation needs to be implemented for local public accounts committees to happen. There have been a number of measures in this regard, and I think of the Localism Act 2011, where there was a great deal of debate about the role of the local armchair auditor and the requirement for local authorities to publish all expenditure over £500—itemised—so that people can see what is being spent day to day, as a means of bringing about transparency. In this debate about audit committees, we have already covered the fact that there are different local arrangements.”
“Sometimes there are risks that sit beneath what will be classified as smaller authorities, especially given our earlier debate about how reorganisation is seeing asset transfers between districts and parish and town councils as a result of the need to manage opportunities and challenges. Could the Minister therefore set out who will be accountable? Will Ministers sign this off? What is the role of the delegated legislation Committee in making these decisions? What will be the role of the Local Audit Office in deciding how risks are managed? We need to be confident that what may appear to be a low-risk environment does not produce a very nasty surprise.”
“Broadly, the Opposition agree with the Government’s direction of travel, and this seems a logical thing to do. This kind of update is periodically required. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could set out, for the benefit of transparency in Committee, what the assurance process will be around risk. To reflect on where things have gone wrong, West Somerset district council—then the smallest local authority in England—was essentially not financially viable, but it was also the planning authority for the Hinkley Point nuclear power station, so it was absolutely critical that it could do its job for the needs of national infrastructure. Its budget was essentially broken by the loss of a business rates appeal in respect of Hinkley Point, which cost its £6.5 million out of its already very small budget.”
“Will she set out the Government’s thinking about how those risks will be managed? In particular, how will the legal requirement to set an in-year balanced budget be met, and how does imposing a requirement for an additional and separate opinion, with a separate timetable, represent a reduction of the burden on the local authority?”
“The assumptions made about the pension fund are critical to the setting of the council tax, which is a statutory process. This is not the only set of relevant accounts that must meet that same test. Local authorities have limited but varying degrees of control over the parking revenue account, housing revenue account and dedicated schools grant, but all are ringfenced for specific purposes and all can create significant financial liabilities that fall on the council tax payer in the event that something emerges within them that had not previously been considered. Although I understand that the Minister thinks that separating out the requirement makes life easier for some parts of the Government, it can none the less create significant issues in the council tax fixing process.”
“In many ways, the clause reinforces the concerns that I set out earlier. The Minister said that this was an area where no value was being added and that it was the Government’s intention to reduce expectations. In fact, the clause increases expectations: it requires the publication of a separate opinion on the pension fund’s accounts. As I set out earlier, the concern we all recognise is that, where there is a shortfall, the local authority is required to make up that shortfall and, where there is potentially a surplus, it may choose to reduce the pension contributions that it makes on a regular basis, as is already the case. We have seen examples across the private sector in the past when that has been significant in both negative and sometimes positive ways.”
“I invite the Minister to reflect that she may have inadvertently misled the Committee. Each local authority has a statutory duty in respect of its own pension fund. There are some pooling arrangements and common standards, but if a local authority in one place has chosen to invest in something that has gone down, it will have a shortfall that will not be replicated in the neighbouring authority that has invested in something else. It is not the case that there is one single scheme. Each of the individual schemes will have an impact on the local authority that employs those members; they are not part of some amorphous national scheme.”
“Our concern is that we risk creating a number of complex structures for rental agreements that in practice have the same consequence, but without the benefit of upward-only rent reviews, which is that landlords’ certainty about their position in turn encourages investment in our high streets, the availability of the units we want to see, and those units not being turned into residences or repurposed for things other than business. The loss of upward-only rent reviews as part of the toolkit of available options undermines the confidence to invest in our high streets, and in turn undermines the objective, which we all share, of ensuring that they remain vibrant and successful. That is the purpose of the amendments, which I am sure we will come on to in due course.”
“We have some concerns, which are reflected in the amendments I have tabled. As we just heard, countries approach this issue in different ways. Broadly speaking, it sounds like one of the reasons why Ireland did not see an impact on the market was that what was implemented was the end of upward-only rent reviews almost in name only; there were still many other mechanisms that achieved the same outcome, even if that specific one ceased to exist.”
“I want to make the same point again, but I will not go back and repeat it. We remain very concerned about the loss of freedom of contract that this represents. Clearly, this is consistent with the Government’s direction of travel. The Minister refers to protecting businesses, some businesses will benefit from this and others will lose out, including property investors who are critical to the success of our high streets and commercial sectors. They are facing rapidly rising business rates and increases in national insurance, all of which are hammering our commercial sector and resulting in a very large number of job losses. We see this as part of that picture. We encourage the Minister to think again, reflect and perhaps change direction on this matter.”
“It would be helpful if the Minister could provide a clear assurance that the existing provisions that guarantee an additional separate grant to fund elections to take place will continue to apply, as has been established practice for a long time. Will the Minister also tell us—or at least give us a steer—whether the Government intend to introduce further legislation to defer elections again, so they will not take place as scheduled next May in councils that are set to be abolished, or do the Government have a different intention? That may well affect how we vote on these new clauses; we oppose the deferral, delay or cancellation of elections, but we need to know the Government’s intentions so that we understand what we are voting for or against.”
“That is what the laws that we have passed actually do, so as far as the law stands, all the councils set to be abolished are due to have elections on their current footprint next year unless the Government return with further legislation to cancel elections under different provisions or to defer them again. The risk highlighted by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole remains a live one. Multiple Ministers and two different Secretaries of State have assured us at the Dispatch Box that there will be elections, but without giving any specific commitments. In many places, in the normal cycle of events, there will be district elections. If the new mayoral authorities come into being, there may be mayoral elections. If there are not, under the current legislation, those existing counties will go to the polls next year.”
“Although they do not employ many people, so they were not as hit by the national insurance rise as the big local authorities that do social care, the town and parish councils that support those neighbourhood plans—and the district councils that support such work in the local areas—have been particularly hit by the loss of funding. Ensuring that funding is there to deliver the vision that we set out when we were in government for neighbourhood planning is really important. New clause 5 is about the ability to deliver local elections. The Government are in a bit of a mess on this issue: the messaging on devolution is that there is no point in having elections to councils that are about to be abolished, which I think we would all agree with, but the legislation simply defers the elections for one year.”