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Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)
The NHS long-term workforce plan sets out a path to double the number of medical school training places, increase GP training by 50% and double the number of adult nursing training places.
Theo Clarke
What steps are the Government taking to increase the recruitment of midwives, given the closure of Stafford County Hospital’s freestanding midwifery birthing unit due to shortages, and how is the Secretary of State going to ensure that all midwives are trained to deal with birth injuries to reduce risk?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I know she has secured a debate in the House this week to further explore these issues. She will be aware that there has been a 13% increase in the number of midwifery programme place starters since two years ago. That is alongside the £165 million added to the maternity budget since 2021 and the key increase in midwifery places in the long-term workforce plan.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
It is obviously welcome to train and recruit as many staff as possible, but part of the problem is actually retaining the staff. We are increasingly seeing among the reasons given for leaving, particularly by nurses, their work-life balance. What is the Secretary of State doing to address that?
Steve Barclay
Just yesterday, I met leaders of the NHS Staff Council, who represent trade unions under Agenda for Change, as part of our ongoing discussions on the agreement we will reach with them, which includes working together on retention and how we address some of the challenges the workforce face.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Ind)
May I congratulate the Secretary of State on being ahead of track to hire 50,000 more nurses this Parliament, as we committed to in the 2019 manifesto? However, can I push him by asking him where he is up to on ensuring that enough staff are trained to do clinical trials, as set out in the excellent O’Shaughnessy review, and can he give us an update of where implementation of that review is up to?
Steve Barclay
I very much welcome my right hon. Friend signalling that we are ahead of the manifesto commitment not just in nurses being recruited, but in key additional roles in primary care, where the target was 26,000 and actually 31,000 have now been recruited. He is right about the importance of clinical research. The O’Shaughnessy review speeds that up and reduces the cost. It better leverages the taxpayer pound in investment from the private sector, and standardises contracts across NHS trusts to bring the time down. We are also looking at innovation in areas such as the NHS app to better empower patients to take part in clinical research trials. That ensures they are at the front of the queue in getting the latest medicine, which is exactly where we want the NHS to be.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State did not mention the increase planned in the number of physician associates. The Norfolk and Waveney integrated care system has posted:
“Got abdominal pain that isn’t going away? A Physician Associate based in your GP practice can help…They are highly skilled at diagnosing conditions”.
After the tragic case of Emily Chesterton, who was misdiagnosed after seeing a physician associate twice at a GP practice and no GP at any point, when will the lesson be learned that the NHS workforce cannot be safely expanded by this route of associates with only two years’ medical training?
Steve Barclay
All clinical roles need to have the right regulation around them, and we need to ensure that patient safety is to the fore. The hon. Lady gives a very good illustration of how the Labour party talks about reform, but not when it comes to the reform of new roles, having new roles in the NHS and having a ladder of opportunity for people to come into the NHS. Physician associates are people with masters’ degrees: these people are highly skilled. Of course, we need to get the regulation right. However, the Labour party talks about reform, but when it comes to standing up to the trade unions, it is not willing to do so, which is why, when there is an innovation such as physician associates, it wants to block it.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Ind)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
Last month, we published a cross-Government five-year suicide prevention strategy. It sets out our pledge to reduce England’s suicide rates within two and a half years, with over 100 measures aimed at saving lives and providing early intervention for those at highest risk of suicide, including new mums and middle-aged men.
Paul Howell
Like many others, I dropped into the campaign event for “One Million Lives”, developed by Jacobs and supported by R;pple, and I was impressed by its efforts to interfere with the online risk of suicide-centric websites. The Minister may be aware that my wife is a long-term volunteer with Darlington and district Samaritans, which has raised with me the “Saving Lives Can’t Wait” campaign. It asks the Government to review local funding for suicide-safer communities, which is due to end. Could I ask the Minister to support the “One Million Lives” campaign, and to push for the renewal of local funding to support suicide-safer communities?
Maria Caulfield
I thank my hon. Friend for his hard work in this area and for his mental health campaigning overall, and also his wife and all who selflessly give their time to volunteer with the invaluable mental health charities. We fully recognise that, and that is why when we launched the suicide prevention strategy we also launched our £10 million suicide prevention grant fund.
On my hon. Friend’s point about wider funding beyond 2024-25, that is subject to a future spending review, but our commitment and record in delivering record investment of £15.9 billion in mental health services just in this financial year, which is 28% more funding than in 2018, should give him confidence that this Conservative Government deliver on mental health services.
Scott Benton
Is the Minister able to provide an update on the suicide prevention grant, and particularly on when the money is expected to reach the successful organisations?
Maria Caulfield
We have had a huge response to the opening of the grant, with over 1,800 applications from voluntary groups and organisations. We are assessing those bids and hope to make an announcement before the end of the year.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
Campaigns such as 3 Dads Walking and Just 3 Mums Walking have worked incredibly hard to raise awareness of suicide prevention. Has the Minister had time to meet with either of those campaigns yet?
Maria Caulfield
I have met with 3 Dads Walking; I have not met the mums group but am very happy to do so. Because of their intervention and campaigning, we were able to successfully put their campaign about improving mental health awareness in the school curriculum into our suicide prevention strategy. It is a cross-Government strategy, and the Department for Education has very much taken their points on board.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Over 1.8 million people languishing on mental health waiting lists, black people five times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, and over 2,000 people with learning disabilities detained in hospital, all while the Government are dragging their feet on mental health and suicide prevention. You will be interested to know, Mr Speaker, that we had cross-party support to tackle these burning injustices through the draft Mental Health Bill, yet since the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill published our report in January we have heard nothing from the Government, so will the Minister today commit to including reform of the Mental Health Act in the King’s Speech?
Maria Caulfield
I was going to pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her work on mental health campaigning, and she will know we have done a huge amount. The suicide prevention strategy is a cross-Government piece of work, which makes sure suicide is everyone’s business, not just that of health and social care. Whether by supporting families bereaved by suicide or rolling out mental health support schemes in schools, it is this Government who are delivering on mental health services.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
The House of Commons Library says there has been no statistically significant change in the rate of suicides in England since 2015. Suicide remains the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. Why has it taken so long for the Government to bring forward a strategy, and why do they continue to drag their feet over reform to the Mental Health Act? Can the Minister give the House a firm timetable today?
Maria Caulfield
The hon. Lady is not quite right in her statistics. Just before covid we had seen a 20% reduction compared with two decades ago in suicide levels in England. She might be interested to know that in Labour-run Wales suicide rates are higher than in England, and its suicide prevention strategy expired last year. Mental health has been demoted on the shadow Front Bench, too, as we saw from the resignation of the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) when the role of shadow mental health Minister was removed from the Opposition Front Bench.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)
We are determined to address the safety issues caused by RAAC. We are prioritising the seven worst-affected hospitals and have a fund of just under £700 million covering the four-year programme of replacement.
Ian Lavery
Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many of the hospitals where RAAC is an issue also have issues with asbestos being present? What assessment has his Department made of the impact should asbestos spores be released in a RAAC collapse?
Steve Barclay
The hon. Member raises an interesting point about asbestos, because much of the NHS estate dates from a time when asbestos was widely used. Of course, asbestos is considered safe if it is undisturbed. It is a similar issue with RAAC.
On RAAC, we are following the guidance from the Institution of Structural Engineers and monitoring it. The advice is not that all RAAC needs to be replaced; the point is that it needs to be monitored. Where there is deterioration, we have a fund of just under £700 million to tackle that. The asbestos is being monitored, as is the RAAC. We have been monitoring this since 2019 and have a four-year national programme backed up with £700 million to address issues as and when they arise.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
The residents of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke would like me to place their thanks on the record to the Secretary of State for having ensured that the Haywood walk-in centre, which has RAAC present, has just received £26.5 million for a new build out-patient building, which will do a lot to improve the care of residents locally. As spades are already in the ground, will the Secretary of State commit to coming to visit so that we can show off this fantastic progress?
Steve Barclay
It is always a pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. He highlights a good illustration of how the national programme is working, backed with that £700 million of funding. We are closely monitoring the estate and, where RAAC mitigation is required, that work is taking place. He brings a good example of that to the House’s attention.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
Not only are the hospital buildings crumbling after 13 years of neglect, creating huge capacity challenges; it seems that those still standing do not have enough beds. As we heard from The Times this morning, the number of
“hospital beds…has fallen by almost 3,000 since ministers promised 5,000 before winter”.
It feels pretty much like winter to me. Is that just another broken promise?
Steve Barclay
First, we have got more than £1 billion of investment in an additional 5,000 permanent beds going into the NHS estate as part of our urgent and emergency care recovery programme. More widely, the Government are committed to the biggest ever investment in the NHS estate, backed with more than £20 billion—the biggest of any Government. Of course, we will not take lectures from Labour, which bequeathed the NHS the consequence of expensive private finance initiative deals that many trusts are still paying for to this day.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Helen Whately
It is fine; thank you, Mr Speaker.
Since Brexit, we have more than 13,000 more doctors and 48,000 more nurses working in the NHS in England, and 40,000 more full-time equivalent staff in adult social care. Our points-based immigration system means that we can recruit the talent we need from all over the world for our health and social care system, including from the European Union.
Patrick Grady
If everything is as rosy as the Minister says, why did a spokesperson for the Nuffield Trust say last year that
“greater costs, more paperwork and uncertainty over visas because of Brexit have been among the biggest barriers to recruiting and keeping EU and EFTA doctors”?
Cannot she admit that Brexit is exacerbating difficulties with recruiting appropriate staff for the NHS across the whole of the UK? Scotland did not vote for Brexit. Why are we having to pay the price?
Helen Whately
I suggest it is really time that the hon. Gentleman stops blaming Brexit. He should in fact look to his SNP colleagues in Holyrood and ensure that they make Scotland’s NHS a better place to work. If he had listened to my answer, he would have heard me say that since Brexit we have recruited more than 13,000 more doctors to the NHS in England. In fact, we are doing so well that we recently recruited a doctor from the SNP Benches. [Laughter.]
Gavin Newlands
Very droll. I congratulate the Minister on that one.
If not the Nuffield Trust, perhaps BMA Scotland’s Chair Dr Iain Kennedy will be good enough. He recently said that the recruitment and retention of senior medical staff across the NHS in Scotland remains a huge challenge, with the health immigration surcharge cost increases announced by this Government potentially further deterring foreign workers from joining the NHS. Given the recently announced NHS long-term workforce plan, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that Scotland has the immigration we need for future recruitment and retention for our health service?
Helen Whately
We have the health and social care visa, which supports our health and social care services to recruit doctors, nurses and other professionals, as well as social care staff, helping to boost those numbers. The hon. Gentleman referred to the important NHS workforce long-term plan, which will increase the home-grown staff in our health service. That will give us 60,000 more doctors, 170,000 more nurses and 70,000 more allied health professionals in our NHS over the next 15 years.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
It has been reported that the Home Secretary plans to tighten the rules for those arriving on a health and care worker visa, to block most from bringing dependents with them—yet another in a long list of her vendettas against children coming to these isles. What recent assessments has the Secretary of State made of how that will impact international recruitment and capacity in our already struggling health and care services?
Helen Whately
I work closely with colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that the health and care visa achieves the objectives set out. We are seeing real success in social care—the recent Skills for Care workforce report showed that we have 20,000 more care workers in England. We are doing well on recruitment to social care.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)
Provisional NHS data shows that opt-out testing has found around 700 cases of HIV during its first year. In total, it has found more than 2,000 cases of blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis B and C.
Peter Gibson
I welcome the Minister’s news on those figures. He will have seen the impact of opt-out testing—detecting more people, treating them earlier and saving the NHS money. However, if we are to meet our 2030 target on no new infections, we cannot delay a further roll-out of opt-out testing. Will he commit the resources needed to expand it in time for World AIDS Day on 1 December?
Neil O’Brien
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all his work on this important issue. We will assess all the evidence and reply before the end of the year. Opt-out testing is not the only thing we are doing to drive down HIV transmission. We have had a 40% rise in the number of people getting pre-exposure prophylaxis, and we have increased the number of people testing, with 20,000 free testing kits handed out this year. We are doing everything we can to meet that visionary goal to stop HIV transmission in this country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answer to the question from the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). It is clear that today, HIV is not the death sentence that it once was, because of the progress of medication and healthcare in prolonging life and improving quality of life. In Northern Ireland we are proactive, as the Minister will know, on PrEP and young people. We are doing progressive things through the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Has the Minister had the opportunity to discuss with the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Health Department how we can work better together? I always say we are better together in every case.
Neil O’Brien
The hon. Gentleman is completely correct. He has been a fantastic champion on this issue. The UK is leading the world on this issue, hitting the UN’s 95-95-95 goals, driving down transmission and reducing stigma. People increasingly realise that as well as suppressing the virus, the treatment makes it impossible to transmit, transforming the lives of people with HIV.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)
We have increased funding for general practice by about a fifth in real terms since 2018. We have increased the workforce by about 30% since 2019 alone, with 2,000 extra doctors and 31,000 extra clinicians going into general practice. With the hard work of GPs, that has enabled about 15% more appointments than before the pandemic. In rural areas we are going further with things such as the targeted in-house recruitment scheme and the elements of the funding formula that favour rural areas.
Greg Smith
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer, but I have repeatedly raised with Ministers the specific case of an innovative model from Long Crendon Parish Council to use land secured through planning gain to replace Long Crendon Surgery, which closed during the pandemic. There is an agreement for Unity Health to provide primary care services there, but no money to physically build. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has advised consistently that the money be sought from the integrated care board, but after prolonged talks it has said that there is no money. Will the Minister look at this innovative model again? It is a great way of building rural GP provision in the future, with a mind to his Department making it happen.
Neil O’Brien
I will absolutely look closely at that specific case. My hon. Friend has put a huge amount of work into Long Crendon. As he knows, we are already changing the national planning policy framework to enable more developer contributions to flow into such innovative projects. We have more GP practices than we did in 2010, but we continue to look at ways to go further.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)
We are making the most significant public health intervention in a generation by creating a smoke-free generation. To put that in context, every five cigarettes a day increases the risk of stroke by 12%. We are also rolling out free blood pressure checks to people over 40 in community pharmacies, which will help to detect much earlier thousands more people living with high blood pressure.
Suzanne Webb
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Many commercial infant and toddler foods are ultra-processed, which sets alarm bells ringing as ultra-processed food is strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases and 40% of 10 to 11-year-olds are obese. I strongly believe that parents are being misled by companies that put health claims on ultra-processed infant food, when in fact the food is anything but healthy—it is high in fat, salt and sugar. What steps are the Government taking to address the disingenuous and grossly misleading marketing and labelling of commercial infant and toddler food and drink?
Steve Barclay
As my hon. Friend knows, there is no agreed definition for ultra-high processed food. As a general principle, I do not think we should be taxing and banning things—smoking is an outlier. We have to empower the patient and recognise the pressures from the cost of living. We are also rolling out anti-obesity drugs to give patients access to the most innovative drugs as part of our wider response to the challenge of obesity.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
What is the Secretary of State’s view of the worrying trend of increased cardiac-related deaths in the UK and around the world since 2021, which correlates closely with the roll-out of the experimental mRNA vaccines?
Steve Barclay
It is always important to follow the science. That is why, at the G20, Health Ministers agreed to look at the various research being done in multiple countries, particularly on long covid but also on the lessons from that period, to ensure that research from that period is shared internationally so we can learn best practice from other countries as well as within the NHS.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
The Government and NHS England are committed to ensuring cancer patients can receive high quality radiotherapy treatment. Between 2016 and 2021, £162 million was invested which enabled the replacement or upgrade of around 100 radiotherapy machines. Responsibility for investment in radiotherapy machines has sat with local systems since April 2022. I look forward to meeting the hon. Gentleman and the all-party group for radiotherapy on this matter soon.
Tim Farron
I am very grateful to the Minister for his reply and in particular for the offer of the meeting coming soon. Radiotherapy UK says that for us to even meet average international standards we must commission 125 additional new linear accelerators. Will he make the commitment to do that and, in doing so, ensure that rural and remote communities do not lose out by placing some of those machines in new satellite centres, such as the Westmorland General Hospital?
Will Quince
The hon. Gentleman is hugely passionate on this subject. As I said, integrated care boards are responsible for meeting the health needs of their individual populations, and that includes capital allocation. The 2021 spending review set aside £12 billion in capital funding, and since 2016 over £160 million has been invested in radiotherapy equipment, but of course I want to see more investment in this important technology and the necessary upgrades across England. I very much look forward to our meeting, where we can discuss that further.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
Following Professor Sir Mike Richards’s review, it is now a national requirement for all paediatric cancer services to be co-located with a children’s intensive care unit. The current principal treatment centre for south London and the south-east does not meet those requirements. NHS England has launched a reconfiguration process to identify a new location, which includes a public consultation. The future centre will achieve world class outcomes for children with cancer. I would be very happy to meet Members whose constituents may be affected to discuss that further.
Stephen Hammond
I am grateful to the Minister for that offer, because that would have been part of my question.
Stephen Hammond
But in true style, Mr Speaker, I was hoping for two bites at the cherry. [Laughter.]
In my recent discussions with the management of St George’s Hospital, one concern about the consultation is that the specialist paediatric cancer surgical unit based at St George’s may be lost if the current proposal goes through. That would potentially affect real outcomes for a number of children. Will the Minister have a look at that and explain to me whether he is concerned about the current scoring by the NHS?
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for his supplementary question. While I cannot pre-empt the outcome of the consultation, which closes on 18 December, I can assure him that there will be no sudden changes in the way patients receive their care. Any move will of course be carefully planned with the full involvement of current teams, and clear information will be provided for parents and families. NHS England will help as many experienced staff as possible to move to the future centre, and I can reassure my hon. Friend that that centre will build on all the strengths of the existing service and provide the best quality of care for patients.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
Integrated care systems and the organisations within them are making real progress in understanding the health needs of their populations, setting out their plans, developing the infrastructure needed for collaboration, and bringing health and social care organisations together to serve the needs of their communities.
Justin Madders
NHS Cheshire and Merseyside integrated care board has instructed all NHS providers to make cuts of 5% in their services. Its instruction is not being discussed with members of the public, Members of Parliament or indeed anyone, and it is clear there is no mandate for this action. Given that the Government have made great play of the NHS having more funds than ever before, I am at a loss to understand why the cuts are necessary, so will the Minister intervene to ensure that they do not happen on her watch?
Helen Whately
NHS England determines the funding received by integrated care systems. That follows a formula which takes into account the needs of local populations, demographic deprivation and so on, and ICSs are then able to direct resources as they are best needed across those populations. Part of their value, and part of the intention in setting them up along with the organisations within them, lies in that ability to understand the health needs of local populations and direct resources accordingly.
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
Integrated care systems bring partner organisations together to improve health, tackle inequalities, and enhance value for money. Detailed data such as that produced by NHS Digital is critical to their work, but we learnt this week that A&E waiting times in Wales had been under-reported for the last 10 years. Does the Minister agree that without accurate data, the Labour Government in Cardiff are scuppering the attempts of NHS Wales to deliver better health outcomes throughout Wales?
Helen Whately
My hon. Friend has made a good point about the importance of transparency and accurate data. As she said, just this week we learnt that Labour-run NHS Wales had been under-reporting its A&E waiting times. According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, about 45,000 patients are missing from the data. While we are working hard to improve services in the NHS in England, the Labour-run NHS in Wales is merely fudging the figures.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The whole purpose of integrated care systems is to join up social care and NHS services in a better way. We know, for example, that fracture liaison services keep 100,000 people out of hospital, but only 50% of English NHS trusts have them, and despite the commitment given by the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield—to providing more, nothing has happened, and Lord Evans has walked back from her commitment. I realise that I am pushing at an open door in directing this question to a Minister whose leg is strapped up, but when will the Government finally deliver for the “back better bones” campaign to help older people to survive and thrive?
Helen Whately
As the hon. Member has mentioned, I have a broken ankle, and I am taking my responsibility as Minister with oversight of urgent and emergency care very seriously in making use of several of those services. As for my oversight of integrated care systems, what I am seeing is that they are making a very good job of enabling the integration of services. For instance, we are seeing real success in the growth of virtual wards—or “hospital at home”—which bring together acute and community services to look after people in their homes and help them to be discharged earlier. The NHS has achieved its target of having 10,000 “hospital at home” places ready for this winter.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)
Our primary care recovery plan supports GP practices in addressing the 8 am rush for appointments, cutting bureaucracy for GPs and expanding community pharmacy services. We have recruited over 31,000 additional primary care staff and have over 2,000 more doctors working in general practice, compared with before the pandemic.
Mr Dhesi
People are finding it nigh-on impossible to see their GP when they need to. Labour has pledged to guarantee face-to-face appointments when people want them by training more NHS GPs but, as my constituents point out to me, under the Tories, a two-tier healthcare system is emerging where some are forced to pay to be seen quicker while those that cannot afford it are left behind in agony. Why have the Conservatives broken their promise, made in 2019, to deliver 6,000 more GPs, and when will this GP crisis finally be resolved?
Steve Barclay
There is a two-tier approach within the UK, between what is going on with the NHS in Wales and what is going on in England. We have more appointments, more staff—over 2,000 more doctors and over 31,000 additional roles—and more tech, with £240 million invested in delivering the digital telephony and the online booking system so that we can get patients to the right level of care with an appointment as part of our commitment to 50 million more appointments in primary care.
Rob Butler
In my constituency of Aylesbury we have some absolutely fantastic GPs and some brilliant services being delivered, thanks in part to many of the policies that have been introduced under this Government. I thank my right hon. Friend for continuing with that. However, there are still challenges for constituents to get through to their GP surgery to make an appointment in the first place. He has just mentioned digital telephony. Could he update the House on the progress that is being made on rolling out this technology to health centres to end the incredibly frustrating waits that people have, sometimes being on hold on the phone for hours at a time?
Steve Barclay
Through that £240 million, we have 100% adoption from GP practices that want to take part in receiving those funds and putting digital telephony in place if they have not already done so. This includes call-back, which allows people to know where they are in the queue, and links to online booking, which allows us to maximise the 31,000 additional roles that we have put into primary care so that people can see the specialist that they need. In my hon. Friend’s own integrated care board, appointments for July increased from 768,000 last July to 816,000 this July, so more patients are being seen, more appointments are taking place and more tech investment is going into the practices in his area.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
To listen to the Secretary of State, you would think it was all going so well, so let me give him a reality check. In Tamworth last year, only a third of patients said it was easy to get through to their doctor on the phone, one in three GP appointments were not conducted face to face and fewer than half of patients were offered a choice of appointment. The Government are not listening to the people of Tamworth. Perhaps the Secretary of State would like to explain to the people of Tamworth why, after 13 years of Conservative Government, this is the case, and better still, adopt Labour’s plan to cut red tape, incentivise continuity of care and bring back the family doctor.
Steve Barclay
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised GPs in Tamworth. The GP lead for the Doctors Association said that his plans for general practice filled them with despair, and his proposal for GP nationalisation was mocked by the Nuffield Trust, one of the respected think-tanks. The reality is that this Government are investing in more tech in primary care, have recruited 31,000 additional roles into primary care and have over 2,000 more doctors working in primary care than before the pandemic. Those are the facts. His plans have been mocked by respected think-tanks because he talks a good game on reform but we know that he will never stand up to the trade unions.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
I am aware of the project to provide a new health centre in Thornbury and, of course, my hon. Friend’s tireless work to champion it. My officials are working closely with colleagues in NHS England and the integrated care board to help progress the scheme. I understand that he met Lord Markham earlier today to discuss imminent funding for the development of the business case, and we will be in touch in the coming days.
Luke Hall
I am grateful to Ministers for taking the time to meet me this morning to discuss the £40 million bid for a new health centre in Thornbury, which is a growing town that desperately needs this new facility. The health centre will provide more GP appointments, more mental health support and, crucially, more out-patient services. Can the Minister update me on the timescales for the announcement on funding for Thornbury health centre so we can get this crucial facility open as quickly as possible?
Will Quince
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case, and I know how passionate and determined he is to deliver the new Thornbury health centre. I can assure him that my officials will continue to work closely with him, with the integrated care board and with the NHS to progress the scheme. We will be in contact in the coming days, following the meeting he had earlier today with Lord Markham.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)
We are making NHS work more attractive to dentists. We have started to reform the contracts and create more UDA bands. We have introduced the minimum UDA value to help sustain practices where values are lower, and we are allowing dentists to deliver 110% of their UDAs. We are also reforming the rules to empower both clinicians and commissioners, for example by enabling therapists to start delivering medicines such as anaesthetics. We are rebasing contract values where they are underperforming, and we are growing the workforce with a record commitment to grow the number of dentists in training by 40%—a commitment never made by the Opposition.
Mark Menzies
UDA rates, the sum paid to NHS dentists for each unit of dental work undertaken, have long been deemed insufficient. Being based on figures from 2005, there are huge differences in rates between practices, with some receiving less than the NHS charges patients for the service. A recent 5% uplift was based on the Government estimate of a 3% rise in costs, a figure that local dentists tell me is more like 10% to 15%, compounding the losses that NHS dentists are already making. What steps is my hon. Friend taking to reform the UDA system and to stop the flow of dentists leaving the NHS?
Neil O’Brien
That is exactly why we have started to reform the UDA system. As well as the introduction of the first ever minimum UDA rate, which will help constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s, we have changed the rules nationally so that commissioners can take UDAs away from dentists who are underperforming and give them to those who want to do more NHS work. As a result, nearly a quarter more NHS dentistry is being done than a year ago.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)
In addition to the steps we are taking to drive up NHS dentistry everywhere, we are going further in the south-west, with NHSE commissioning additional urgent appointments. There are several hundred extra appointments every week.
Chris Loder
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. It is not sustainable for the people of West Dorset who have needed dental care for some time when there is a £400 million national underspend in the dental care budget. The NHS and local dentists tell me that the incompatibility often relates to the national dental care contract, which is up for review. When does the Minister expect a solution to be found to this contract difficulty? Will he meet me and the NHS Dorset ICB to discuss the matter in detail to find a solution?
Neil O’Brien
Absolutely. I am keen to continue the conversation with my hon. Friend. These issues are exactly why, this summer, we legislated to allow rebasing and to end the inflexibility he describes. We are also in the process of ringfencing local dental budgets, because we do not want to see underspends. We want to see that money going to NHS dentistry.
Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
Improving cancer treatment waiting times is a top priority for this Government, and it is a key focus of our elective recovery plan, backed by an additional £8 billion in revenue funding across the spending review period. In August 2023, cancer treatment activity for first treatments stood at 105% of pre-pandemic levels on a per working day basis, and the 62-day backlog has fallen 30% since its peak in the pandemic.
Mrs Hamilton
Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest type of common cancer, killing more than half of those diagnosed in England within three months. I know the pain of losing close friends and family to pancreatic cancer and how important it is that people are diagnosed and treated quickly. Under this Government we have seen NHS waiting lists go up, not down. What is the Minister doing to ensure that people with pancreatic cancer are seen, diagnosed and treated quickly?
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and, of course, I recognise the importance of early diagnosis and treatment. Cancer checks are up by a quarter on pre-pandemic levels, and in August more than 91% of patients started their first cancer treatment within a month of a decision to treat. We have opened 123 additional community diagnostic centres and an additional 94 surgical hubs, but I accept, of course, that there is much more that we need to do.
Jeff Smith
The Minister has again been referring to “pre-pandemic levels”. Ministers have a tendency to blame covid for increased waiting times, including in respect of cancer. I presume they are aware that the number of cancer patients not getting care on time rose in every year since the Conservatives came to power before the pandemic. How can the Government defend that dreadful record?
Will Quince
We are continuing to support NHS England in increasing cancer treatment capacity. As I say, I recognise the importance of early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. NHS England has instructed integrated care boards to increase and prioritise the diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer. As of the middle of this year, we have 93 additional surgical hubs that are currently operational and 123 additional community diagnostic centres, which have delivered more than 5 million additional tests since July 2021, but we know and recognise that we need to do more.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Members will know from my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I am an NHS consultant and a member of the British Medical Association. I congratulate the Minister on the work he is doing to reduce waiting lists, but BMA strikes have led to the loss of more than 1 million appointments, have delayed the reporting of scans, including scans for cancer, and have disrupted people’s chronic long-term condition treatment. What is he doing to ensure that there are no further strikes? What talks is he having on minimum service levels to expand the provision if further strikes do take place?
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for her question, which is better directed at the BMA. However, she is right to suggest that we are taking action on minimum service level legislation. We recognise that industrial action means that services are under increased pressure, with appointments and treatments being cancelled because of the strikes. The NHS is taking action, prioritising urgent and cancer care, and will of course continue to do so. It will do its best to maintain appointments and elective procedures, wherever possible, but she is right to say that these strikes and the actions of the BMA are having a devastating impact on patients.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)
My constituent Elaine Lynch was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in September 2021. The drug she needs, Enhertu, is available free on the NHS to treat breast cancer, but not lung cancer, so it is costing my constituent £10,000 a month to get the treatment, without which she will die. The public petition on this matter has received more than 200,000 signatures, so it is very much in the public interest. As the company Daiichi Sankyo does not offer the drug on compassionate grounds, will the Minister meet me to see how we can make this drug available for Elaine as soon as possible, because this is literally a matter of life or death?
Will Quince
I have huge sympathy and empathy with the case that my hon. Friend raises. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is rightly independent, and strict and robust processes are in place on drug repurposing and clinical trials. Nevertheless, I would of course be happy to meet him to see what can be done.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)
First, may I welcome Opposition Front-Bench Members to their new roles, as there have been changes since we last met? Since then, we have launched a new £30 million fund to speed up the adoption of tech across the NHS. Even when local pilots prove their effectiveness, it often takes too long for those innovations to be rolled out nationally. This fund can change that, giving integrated care systems across England the chance to invest in tech that is proven to improve care, for instance in detecting cancer sooner. These investments will be made this financial year, getting patients care faster. We are also making more than 200 more medical school places available for universities from next September, accelerating a commitment that we made in the NHS long-term workforce plan and delivering more doctors to areas that need them most.
This Government are listening to patient voices too, particularly on the importance of biological sex in healthcare. That is why, following a consultation later this year, we will amend the NHS constitution to make sure that we respect the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients. The Prime Minister has also unveiled plans to introduce a new law to prevent children who turn 14 this year from ever legally being sold cigarettes, creating the first smokefree generation. Last week, my Department launched an expedited consultation to crack down on youth vaping.
Aaron Bell
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, particularly what he said about tech. On dental provision, I recently met with Dr Khan of Westbury Park dental practice in my constituency to discuss access to NHS dentistry, which is becoming more difficult for many of my constituents. I welcome the plans we have to increase the number of dentists and I reiterate my support for a dental school at Keele University, but those plans will take time. In the short term, there is a huge backlog of overseas clinicians waiting to take the registration exam so that they can practise here. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to expedite this?
Steve Barclay
He is right that we are taking both long-term and short-term actions. A key part of the long-term workforce plan is to boost the number of dentists being trained. In the more immediate term, earlier this year we made legislative changes that give the General Dental Council the flexibility to improve the way professionals are registered, giving more flexibility in terms of the skills mix and, for example, tripling the number of people sitting part 1 this year, so that more overseas professionals can be recognised and qualified to practise in the UK.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
In Mid Bedfordshire last year, 165 children—[Interruption.] I do not know why Government Members are laughing; perhaps they should listen, as it is not our party that has let down the people of Mid Bedfordshire. Last year, 165 children in Mid Bedfordshire had teeth removed due to tooth decay. Some 800 patients were forced into A&E for the same reason and 100,000 people across the region cannot get access to an NHS dentist. Instead of laughing, the Government might like to adopt Labour’s plan to provide 700,000 extra dentistry appointments every year.
Steve Barclay
Since 2010, we have had 6.5% more dentists, a quarter more appointments and, as we have just touched on, increasing flexibility in regulation and boosting overseas recruitment. It is striking that one area of the country that the shadow Secretary of State does not want to talk about is Wales, which has a record of what a Labour Government will deliver. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition says that he wants Wales to be the “blueprint” for what the NHS would be in England. There, this week, we have seen a fiddling of the figures on health. Even without that fiddling, we know people are twice as likely to be on a waiting list in Wales as in England—
Mr Speaker
Order. One of us has got to sit down and it is not going to be me. I let you have a good crack at the beginning, Secretary of State. Your opening statement took quite a long time, which I do not mind. I do not mind your having a go about Wales, but I am certainly not going to open up a debate between the Government and Opposition Front Benches. Topical questions are for Back Benchers and about short questions with short answers. I want it to be kept that way, so please understand that. There must be too many by-elections, because Members are getting carried away.
Wes Streeting
It is not just Mid Bedfordshire. Across the country, the No.1 reason children aged six to 10 are admitted to hospital is tooth decay. Given that, will the Secretary of State at least adopt the modest measure that Labour has proposed to introduce national supervised tooth brushing for small children—low cost, high impact—to keep their teeth clean and keep children out of hospital?
Steve Barclay
We are reforming the NHS workforce more fundamentally, looking at how we expand the roles that dental hygienists and dental therapists can perform. We are looking at how we can boost training, which is why we have made the commitment for more dentists in the long-term workforce plan, backed by £2.4 billion. How does that help? It increases the number of dentists being trained and we have a quarter more activity compared with last year.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
My right hon. Friend has long championed this cause. I hope it is good news that I am able to confirm that enabling works have recently been approved for the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust hospital transformation programme and are expected to commence this financial year. I can also confirm that funding has been provided for the development of the full business case and is expected to be submitted in the coming months.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
New research by UNICEF UK has made clear how badly the cost of living crisis has hit the mental health of families with young children. Rising prices and services gutted by austerity have left 60% of parents feeling overwhelmed, anxious, unsupported and lonely all or most of the time. What representations has the Secretary of State made to his Cabinet colleagues ahead of the upcoming autumn statement to support families and to improve health outcomes?
Steve Barclay
That shows just how divorced the SNP line of questioning is from the reality of funding. The funding for mental health is £2.3 billion more this year than it was four years ago. We are funding 160 mental health crisis cafés and we have a programme of mental health support teams being rolled out in our schools, all of which is subject to Barnett consequentials on which the Scottish Government receive money. This Government are committed to investing in mental health. That is what we are doing. The question for the Scottish Government is why they are not getting the same results that we are.
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)
We have already brought in restrictions on the places that unhealthy food can be sold to stop pester power. That is on top of other measures that we are taking on obesity such as the sugar tax, calorie labelling, the extra money for school sport, and the extra facilities for young people. It is a serious issue and one on which we are taking urgent action.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
I was going to ask a question about the shocking statistic of 85,000 people on the waiting list at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, but so poor was the Secretary of State’s response to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) about the dental desert that I will tell him a quick story. Ukrainian refugees who come to my constituency are travelling back to war-torn Ukraine to have their teeth seen to because there is a better dental service there than in Norfolk and Norwich. What does he have to say to that?
Steve Barclay
As I have said, we have 6.5% more dentists now than when we came to power. There is also a quarter more dental activity this year compared with last year. I understand why the hon. Gentleman does not want to talk about the investment that we are making on the elective programme in Norfolk, because it includes funding for two new hospitals in Norfolk through our new hospitals programme and significant funding into diagnostic capacity, with a number of diagnostic centres being opened in Norfolk, which he does not want to mention.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
Will Quince
We will always work with my hon. Friend and the trust on capital improvements where needed, but I am pleased to note that the trust has been allocated significant investment from national programmes in recent years, which my hon. Friend fought hard for, including £32.2 million from our community diagnostic centres programme, which will provide vital testing to local residents close to home, and £3 million from our A&E upgrade programme. We will of course continue to work closely with colleagues in the NHS and the local trust to continue delivering for the people of Stockton.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Ten years on from the Francis report, the National Guardian’s Office—for freedom to speak up—reports that last year there were 937 cases where whistleblowers were not listened to and experienced detriment. If we add that to 170,000 complaints, with 30,000 reaching the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, we can see that the complaints system across the NHS is defensive and dangerous. Will the Secretary of State review the NHS complaints system, and embed a listening and learning culture and early intervention?
Steve Barclay
I discussed this with Henrietta Hughes, the patient safety champion, just yesterday as part of the sprint that we have commissioned in the Department in response to Martha’s rule. We are doing considerable work with NHSE colleagues on how we better respond to the concerns of patients, whether it is through the work on Martha’s rule or the complaints process, and a significant amount of work is ongoing as part of that.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Steve Barclay
Yes I will. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the way he has championed this issue. I have visited the hospital; I have seen it for myself. As he will be aware, the full business case was received by the Department this morning. While the cost has increased, it is still within the wider funding envelope for the scheme on that site and I will do everything I can to expedite the process as he asks.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
In recent months, there was a concerted campaign from the public to prevent the closure of Park View Medical Centre in Liverpool, which was subsequently closed by the Merseyside and Cheshire integrated care board. Not long after the conclusion of the campaign, during which members of the public were turning up to board meetings, the ICB announced that 50% of its meetings would now be held exclusively in private. I for one do not believe that that is a coincidence. What would the Secretary of State’s advice be to Merseyside and Cheshire ICB on transparency and accountability, and is it not time we looked at strengthening the guidance?
Steve Barclay
The hon. Lady raises an important point. I was not aware of that decision by the local ICB. As a principle, I think we can agree across the House that greater transparency on such meetings is important, so I will follow up on that. The Government are making significant investment into Merseyside; both Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital have been rebuilt at significant cost as part of this Government’s commitment to investing in the NHS estate in that area.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
Steve Barclay
I am happy to join my hon. Friend; indeed, I am sure the whole House is happy to pay tribute to the exemplary public service Mr Warrender has provided, both in the Royal Navy and with the ambulance trust, and to wish him a very happy retirement.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
Immunocompromised patients are facing their fourth winter without adequate protection from covid, despite a new study showing that they now comprise approximately 25% of all covid hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths. In the last few days, some hospitals have been giving guidance to their staff that they should not even test for covid unless they are working on specific wards. After three and a half years, what are the Government going to do to put an end to this appalling situation, where some of the most clinically vulnerable patients are scared of accessing the healthcare they need for fear it could literally be a death sentence?
Steve Barclay
During the pandemic, as the hon. Lady knows, the Government prioritised the clinically extremely vulnerable and significant investment went in there. We follow the guidance from the UK Health Security Agency about the right level of infection control. More widely, we need to look at what medicine is effective. If it relates to immunosuppressants, there was a big debate in summer 2022 about that issue and we keep the science under active review.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Neil O’Brien
My hon. Friend is right. The amount of NHS dentistry being delivered in his ICB has gone up in the last year, but we want to go further. The NHS has recently commissioned additional children’s orthodontic capacity within his ICB, but through the actions we are going to take, we will go further.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Having 100% fracture liaison services coverage in England would prevent an estimated 74,000 fractures, including 31,000 hip fractures, over five years. Will the Minister finally commit to 100% FLS coverage across England?
Steve Barclay
In the interests of brevity, I will actively look at that issue and write to the hon. Lady about it.
Core School Budget Allocations
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the 2023-2024 core school budget allocations.
The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)
As the Government confirmed in a written ministerial statement yesterday, the Department for Education has corrected an error in the notional allocations of the schools national funding formula for 2024-2025. Those allocations were originally published and notified to the House on 17 July 2023. However, the Department has subsequently uncovered an error made by officials during the initial calculations of the national funding formula. Specifically, there was an error processing forecast pupil numbers, which meant that the overall cost of the core schools budget for 2024-25 would be 0.62% greater than allocated. The Department therefore issued new national funding formula allocations on 6 October to rectify that error as quickly as possible.
The permanent secretary has apologised for the error in writing to both the Chair of the Education Committee and the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has instructed the permanent secretary to conduct a formal review of the quality assurance process surrounding the calculation and quality assurance of the NFF, with external and independent scrutiny. Peter Wyman CBE, the chair of the Institute of Charted Accountants in England and Wales, will lead the review. Improvements have already been identified to ensure that similar mistakes are not made.
I would like to reassure the House that the error does not affect the overall level of school funding, which remains at £59.6 billion for 2024-25. The Government continue to deliver, in full, the core schools budget, which includes funding for mainstream schools and for high needs. As I said, it will remain at £59.6 billion in 2024-25—its highest ever level in real terms and, of course, in cash terms. That is a percentage increase of 3.2% compared with the current year of 2023-24. Through the schools national funding formula, average funding is £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil in 2024-25, up from £5,200 and £6,720 respectively in 2023-24.
Schools have not yet received their 2024-25 funding, so the correction of this error does not mean adjusting any funding that schools have already received. Likewise, the error will not impact on the publication of a dedicated schools grant in December, or on when schools will receive their final allocations for 2024-25. The 2024-25 high needs national funding formula allocations, which fund provisions for children with complex special educational needs and disabilities, are also unaffected by the error, as are other funding streams outside the NFF, including the teachers’ pay additional grant announced in the summer.
I also clarify that the recalculation of the NFF for 2024-25 does not affect the affordability of the 2023 teachers’ pay award. There has been no change to the funding that was promised as part of the pay settlement in July and which the unions agreed meant that the pay award is properly funded. The Government recognise that the correction of the NFF error will be difficult for local authorities and frustrating for some school leaders, which is why the Department has rectified the error as quickly as possible.
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister has taken three, nearly four, minutes. I hope that he is coming to the end of his remarks.
Bridget Phillipson
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Since the House returned from the summer recess, Ministers have been forced to come here twice, first to explain how this Government left school buildings in such a parlous state that many are now at risk of collapse, and now to explain that the Conservatives are taking £370 million out of schools’ budget allocations for next year. It is shambolic, it is chaotic, and our children deserve a lot better. I am glad that Ministers have listened to Labour’s call for an independent investigation, but what is the timeline for this review? How will the review be reported to the House, and how will Members have a chance to scrutinise its findings?
We need to know much more, too. We need to know why, when the mistake was first identified in September, it was not until after the Conservative party conference in October that headteachers were finally notified. What support will schools now receive to ensure that children’s education does not suffer as a result of Conservative incompetence? Rather than blaming officials, will the Secretary of State—wherever she is today—finally take some responsibility?
We all know that mistakes happen, but this is not a one-off; this is part of a much bigger pattern of Conservative mismanagement right across the Department and right across Government for 13 long years, and it is our children who are paying the price. It is Conservative mismanagement that brought us the RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—crisis in our schools, that kept children at home as Ministers failed to resolve industrial action for months on end, and that is now seeing record numbers of teachers leaving the profession, attainment gaps widening and standards falling. It will fall to the next Labour Government to reset the relationship between Government, families and schools, to show once again that it is Labour that is the party of high and rising standards in our schools.
Nick Gibb
The hon. Lady refers to RAAC. We took the only decision that any responsible Government would take when the evidence changed on RAAC in school buildings that surveyors had previously assessed as not in a critical condition and we discovered it was not safe for pupils to stay in those schools. There are 174 schools so far confirmed with RAAC, which we have published details of, and we are taking urgent action to make sure that no child or member of staff in our school buildings will be at risk from this reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—which, by the way, has been around through successive Administrations, both Labour and Conservative, since the 1950s and 1960s.
The hon. Lady refers to £370 million being taken out of the school budget. No money has been taken out of the school budget. It is £59.6 billion next year, and it will remain at £59.6 billion. What would be irresponsible would be to increase funding for schools by 0.62% solely as a result of an error by officials. That is not how Government spending systems work. It has to go through the proper value for money procedures, and that is how we always conduct our allocation of taxpayers’ money.
The hon. Lady talks about standards in schools. We are rising in the international tables. We are fourth in the world for the reading ability of nine-year-olds, according to the recent progress in international reading literacy study, or PIRLS, of pupils of that age. We are rising in TIMSS, the trends in mathematics and science study, and we are rising in PISA, the programme for international student assessment. That is in direct contrast with what happened under the last Labour Government, when we were falling in those PISA tables.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am grateful for the apology and the letter that the Select Committee received on this issue, which we have published today. Clearly, it is deeply unfortunate that this error took place. It is a result of a complex and very difficult to understand funding system that provides schools with a lack of transparency as to how their funding works in the long run.
We were elected on a manifesto to deliver a fair national funding formula. There were plans in place to legislate for the direct funding of schools. While I welcome my right hon. Friend’s confirmation that this does not in any way affect the high needs block or take money out of the overall school budget, can he update the House on plans to deliver that direct funding formula, which, along with multi-year funding settlements, the Select Committee and the sector have been calling for over many years?
Nick Gibb
Yes, it is unfortunate, for which officials and Ministers have apologised. It is frustrating, particularly for local authorities that have to conduct their calculations—it was an error based on the coding of the pupil numbers.
My hon. Friend mentioned moving to the direct funding formula. That is the intention of the Government, and the latest edition of the national funding formula and high needs technical briefing does say that we want ultimately to get to direct funding. Many local authorities are moving their local funding formula ever closer to the approach taken in the national funding formula.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I saw a tweet to the Minister earlier this morning saying that one man’s error is another man’s total cock-up—I do not know whether that is technical language, Mr Speaker. The fact of the matter is that he is the longest-serving Minister in any Department in any Government for many years, and on his watch we have seen the demoralisation of the education sector in our country, with good people leaving. It is the Gibb factor. Why does he not resign and talk to people?
Nick Gibb
If I may say so, Mr Speaker, that was an extraordinary outburst. Today, we have the highest number of teachers in the profession—some 468,000—which is, by the way, 27,000 more than when we came to office in 2010. In Labour-run Wales, we are not seeing that rise in the number of teachers.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
Naturally, this error is very disappointing, but I welcome that the Department has rectified it speedily. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to work with school stakeholders to communicate the change and to support schools and local authorities?
Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: it was unfortunate. As a Minister, when officials gather outside my office to tell me great news about an error that has been made, my instinct is always to find out what the error is and rectify it as quickly as possible. That took about four weeks, compared with the normal six weeks to calculate the NFF, and we then published the figures as rapidly as possible. That is the approach that the Department and I have taken.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Earlier this year, the Sutton Trust reported that half of school leaders said that they had already been forced to cut back on trips and outings. That includes cultural trips to concerts and plays, which often have a profound effect on young people who would not otherwise be able to attend those events. The average secondary school is now being told that it will have around £58,000 less to spend than was announced in July—whatever the Minister says, those schools will have planned on the basis of that money. I am concerned that even fewer young people will now be able to access the benefits of cultural trips. What is the Minister doing to make sure that young people in state-funded schools still have access to cultural experiences that enrich their education?
Nick Gibb
The figures published in July were indicative figures. They are used by local authorities. Once the October census comes out with the pupil numbers, they then apply their local formula to those figures. That is the allocation that schools use for their budgeting, and that happens around December.
Over the period between 2021-22 and 2024-25, school funding has increased by 20%, so there has been a very significant increase. I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of cultural activities in schools, which is why we have a cultural education plan that is being worked on at the moment.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
One reason why this Minister has been in his post so long is that successive Prime Ministers have judged him to be rather good at his job. For the benefit of the House, can he confirm that the civil servants who discovered the mistake made it known to Ministers at the first possible opportunity, and that Ministers made it known to the public at the first possible opportunity? Does that not reflect credit on our parliamentary democratic system?
Nick Gibb
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind comments. He is absolutely right: as soon as we knew about the error, I wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to rectify it and find a solution to the problem that officials and the Department had caused. That was my approach, and that is why we recalculated the whole of the national funding formula notional allocations as soon as we could and published that detail on 6 October.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
For far too long, the Department for Education has been plagued by a litany of failures that have had a devastating impact on children, their parents and teachers. We have had the mutant algorithm and the RAAC roofs, we have a crisis in our SEND system, and now we have a bit of good old-fashioned incompetence. Does the Minister agree that it is high time that the Secretary of State offered an apology to the British public for all this, or does he think that—in her words—we should thank her for doing a flipping good job?
Nick Gibb
The last flippant comment was not necessary; these are all serious issues. Issues such as RAAC have been around in our school system since the 1950s and 1960s. When we discovered new facts and new evidence, we took swift action. There will always be almost no notice; when we have evidence, we cannot just sit on it until a more convenient time to announce it. We had to announce it straightaway. Every school with confirmed RAAC has a caseworker allocated to make sure that we are keeping children safe and keeping them in face-to-face education. So far, we have identified 174 schools with RAAC and in the vast majority of those—all but 23 schools—all the children are still in face-to-face education.
In terms of special educational needs, we published a Green Paper and an implementation plan to improve the experience of parents and children with special educational needs in our school system.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the update. Clearly, when formulas such as this are being used, it is important that they are tested first to see the results, before those are issued to the schools and other people are involved. Will he confirm that the position is that, even after this error has been corrected, all schools in this country will have enough money to fund the teachers’ pay award agreed by the Government?
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend is right. I have to say that my experience of this particular team in the Department is that they are one of the best teams I have dealt with. This was an error made by officials. They have owned up to it and we have corrected it. It does not affect school funding at all, and it relates to the next financial year, 2024-25. It certainly does not affect this financial year, 2023-24, and the funding of the pay award. Incidentally, it is the highest pay award for 30 years. The 6.5% pay award for teachers is fully funded, with an extra teachers’ pay grant of £525 million this year and £900 million next year. It is totally unaffected by this error.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Cambridgeshire schools are some of the lowest funded in England, and they will now receive £4.4 million less than they expected. The Minister will know that local authority officials and schools will now have to spend time recalculating their budgets. What will he do to compensate them for the time they are spending on that?
Nick Gibb
The situation is unfortunate for local authorities, which will have been spending time calculating their school budgets on a local authority basis. That is why we wanted to get the recalculation of the figures done as soon as possible and out to local authorities. Cambridgeshire is funded in the way it is because we base funding on the level of deprivation in our communities. We have targeted a greater proportion of the schools national funding formula towards deprived pupils than ever before. In total, about £4.4 billion, or 10% of the formula, will be allocated according to deprivation factors in 2024-25. If an area has fewer children from disadvantaged backgrounds than other areas, that will of course be reflected in its overall ranking for local authority funding.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Last week I visited Meadgate Primary School, which is one of the many good and outstanding schools in my constituency. I am sure the Minister will recall precisely how many good and outstanding schools there are today, compared with 13 years ago. Meadgate Primary School is part of an academy trust of seven schools, and across the schools this situation could account for a £70,000 difference between what they had calculated they might expect and what they will receive.
That is obviously concerning, but also concerning is the number of children now coming in who would have had an education, health and care plan done when they were at pre-school, but did not get one because of the pandemic and now face delays. Given that high needs funding has doubled, will the Minister raise this backlog in assessments with the children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), to try to make sure that our primary schools are getting the support they need today for those children with SEND?
Nick Gibb
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the great work that she did as children’s Minister in the Department for Education. She is right that the proportion of schools judged good or outstanding has increased. In 2010, it was 68%, and today that figure is 88%. We are not happy with that—our focus is on the remaining 12%. Every local school in our country should be a good or outstanding school.
My right hon. Friend makes an important point about education, health and care plans. She is right that the funding of the high needs budget has increased considerably over the past few years, and I will raise the issue of the backlog in EHCPs with my hon. Friend the children’s Minister. I should say that we are building significant numbers of new free special schools, so that there are more places available for children with severe special educational needs.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
We know that a child growing up in an area of deprivation is on average likely to do less well through our school system. I take the point that the Minister made about extra funding for deprivation, but will he accept from me that we know that money makes a difference? When will this Government get a grip on the problem of deprivation?
Nick Gibb
Deprivation and disadvantaged children have been the core driving force of all our reforms since 2010. We are spending record amounts of money on school funding—£59.6 billion is the highest ever in cash terms, in real terms and in real terms per pupil. Before the pandemic, we had closed the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and other children by 13% in primary schools and by 9% in secondary schools. That has been undone by the pandemic, but we are determined to close that gap again. All the reforms that led to that closure are still in place, and we are confident, particularly with the £5 billion of recovery funding and the tutoring programme, that we will close that gap once again.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s answers today, and I thank him for his leadership and his ownership of this issue, which is not his fault. He has approached it in exactly the right manner, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said. I welcome that we are continuing to deliver the core schools budget in full, not just for mainstream schools, but for high needs. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister set out what the percentage increase for those areas will be in 2024-25, compared with this year?
Nick Gibb
On the increases in funding last year and this year, funding is increasing by £3.9 billion in 2022-23 and by £1.8 billion in 2024-25. When we combine that with the £4 billion increase we had between 2021-22 and 2022-23, that is a 20% increase in cash terms over that period.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I wrote to the Secretary of State at the beginning of August, asking for a meeting to discuss a series of special educational needs funding issues in Harrow. The Minister will be aware that special educational needs are one of the many pressures on school budgets across the country. They certainly are a significant issue in Harrow. Can he explain specifically how much schools in Harrow will now not receive, compared with what they had expected to receive? Will he encourage the Secretary of State to respond to my letter, and to do so with generosity?
Nick Gibb
I say first to the hon. Member that no funding is being reduced in Harrow. All areas will be receiving significant increases in school funding. The error is about the allocation figures—the notional figures—for 2024-25, and those have been corrected. On special educational needs, we have increased special educational needs funding significantly over the past several years, because of the pressures that local authorities are facing with increased numbers of EHCPs. We are taking a number of measures to help address that, and I will of course ensure that the hon. Member has his meeting in the Department as soon as possible.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
This is yet another error and case of incompetence under this Government. The average primary school is expected to be more than £12,000 worse off next academic year and the average secondary school £57,000 worse off than under the July publication. How will the Government help headteachers in Slough and across the country deal with the extra stress and pressure on account of this error, especially when they have to make difficult decisions on staffing and additional support for those pupils who need it?
Nick Gibb
The actual allocations to schools happen in December each year in the normal way, so this situation will not affect the figures that local authorities have informed schools they will be receiving. Those are based on the October census of pupil numbers and the application of the local formula. We then fund the local authorities on the basis of the national funding. The record funding of £59.6 billion equates to an average of £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Minister’s argument in a nutshell is, “You didn’t have the money, so you’ve not lost it.” But the point is that local authorities received the notional funding allocation and were beginning to plan based on that figure given by the Government. In places such as Stockport, Tameside and Manchester, the figures that are going to be withdrawn from those areas are not insubstantial. I politely say to the Minister that his argument is incoherent—I will grade him D-minus. And his maths is appalling—I will grade him U. Can I suggest he goes into detention and fixes this matter, because schools in Tameside, Stockport and Manchester desperately need that cash?
Nick Gibb
The funding allocated for local authorities is ringfenced. This is an allocation and calculation issue—it is not that they have received the money—and we corrected it as soon as the error was made. Any Labour Members in the same position would have reacted in precisely the same way that I have.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
This blunder is going to cost schools in York dear. We are already in the bottom 20 in the country for school funding and in the bottom third for high needs. I had a meeting with parents on Friday night, and 150 of them were in tears and on their knees about the SEN funding. The formulas are just not working in areas where there is low funding. Will the Minister bring forward the fair funding formula to ensure that children in my constituency with SEND have fair funding allocated to them?
Nick Gibb
I understand the hon. Lady’s points, and I share the concern of parents with children with special educational needs and disabilities. We do want to make sure that local authorities are properly funded for children with those special needs, which is why we have increased funding for high needs very significantly over the past few years. Over £10 billion is now allocated to local authorities for those children. If we look at the national funding formula, we see that 10.2% of the formula—£4.4 billion—is on the basis of deprivation factors, and 17.8% is allocated on the basis of additional needs. These are very significant sums both in the national funding formula for mainstream schools and the extra money we are giving to local authorities for high needs.
Devolution (Employment) (Scotland)
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
13:09 - The House divided: - Ayes: 22 / Noes: 33 - Question accordingly negatived.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Scotland Act 1998 to grant legislative competence for employment matters to the Scottish Parliament.
At the outset, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a member of the SNP trade union group and in relation to my own membership of Unite.
As this Parliament begins to draw to a close, many of us are left wondering why the much-vaunted Employment Bill never materialised. After all, we were promised that Brexit—now supported enthusiastically by the Tories and Labour—would not lead to a diminution of workers’ rights, but would instead be an opportunity to enhance employment protections. Despite countless fire and rehire incidences—many of which have been referenced by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands)—ever more maternity discrimination and an assault on trade union rights by a Tory Government acting like Thatcher on steroids, the very opposite has happened.
The fact is that employment rights under this British Government are under attack. Far from dealing with workplace discrimination on issues such as the menopause, we have a Government actively and increasingly hindering the rights of workers with their Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. It is a piece of legislation that even the International Labour Organisation has expressed concern about. As the world of work continues to evolve and we seek to build back better from the pandemic, Brexit Britain is now on a steep decline when it comes to employment protections. However, this is an issue that extends far beyond the immediate rights available to workers, because it is fundamentally a matter of equality. The way in which we value workers in our legislative framework sets the expectation of what we should expect workplace cultures to emulate, and legislation must help build the foundations of a fair and equal labour market.
Let us take, for example, some evidence published in July by the charity Pregnant Then Screwed. Of 24,000 parents surveyed, it was found that 7% of women lost their job through redundancy, sacking or feeling forced to leave due to a flexible working request being denied. The charity estimates that, if scaled up, this would mean that over 41,000 pregnant women or mothers could be sacked or made redundant every year. Under-represented groups continue to face significant inequalities in the workplace, and I and many of my colleagues have stood here time and again calling for the enshrinement of flexible working as a day-one right, as well as mandatory gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting.
Given the powers, these are just some of the examples of workplace injustices that the Scottish Government would seek to remedy. However, it is an inescapable truth that Westminster’s crackdowns on workers’ rights—not to mention the assault on unions—have seen the UK’s global rating on workers’ rights fall. Indeed, the UK has dropped in the International Trade Union Confederation’s annual report on workers’ rights from a rating of three, which is for countries where ITUC considers there to be “regular violation of rights” to four, which is for those where it says there are “systemic violations”. Sadly, that puts the British Government on a par with the likes of Qatar and Oman. The latter is an absolute monarchy, where criticism of the Government is illegal. If that is the message the Government want to send out as Brexit Britain, it is certainly a bold move, but ITUC’s recent report is damning. It says:
“In the United Kingdom, union busting, attempts to introduce legislation curtailing the right to strike and protest, and violations of collective bargaining agreements have become systematic and led to the country’s rating dropping from three to four.”
Perhaps it is no wonder that the devolution of employment law is backed by some of the biggest trade unions in these islands, including the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the TUC itself. Only recently, the Trades Union Congress passed a motion calling for the repeal of current anti-union legislation and the devolution of employment law to Scotland. Roz Foyer, the outstanding STUC general secretary, is on record as saying:
“It’s clear, especially to any incoming UK Labour Government, that the voices of workers across the country now support the Scottish Parliament having full autonomy over labour and employment rights.”
That poses a question for our colleagues on the Labour Benches: why not Scotland? In his rush to out-Union Jack even the Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) has said no, nay, never—no further devolution. Today’s vote is also a first test for the new hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks). It poses a question for him when the Division bells ring shortly: whose side is he on? Is he on the side of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, or the side of his Westminster boss in Camden?
On blocking the devolution of employment law, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) has come in for criticism from Michael Sharpe, a former general secretary of Scottish Labour, who has said that ruling out the devolution of employment law was a “huge blow” and
“a slap in the face to the trade unions who have campaigned for this for many years.”
Since taking over the reins as Labour leader, the Leader of the Opposition has moved ever more to the right, distancing himself from trade unions and, ironically, deciding to go on strike from attending picket lines himself. We have even had the spectre of shadow Ministers being sacked simply for having the temerity to support workers on a picket line.
The blunt reality is that Scotland is already missing out on Europe’s enhancement of workers’ rights, thanks to a Brexit we did not vote for and do not support. Post pandemic, we could have been taking opportunities to empower trade unions, increase statutory sick pay, ban fire and rehire, and do so much more for workers, but it appears once more that the Labour party and the Conservatives have landed in the exact same space.
It is clear to us that a Westminster Government of whatever colour do not have workers’ rights as a priority. It is only by giving Scotland powers over employment law that the Scottish Government can entrench workers’ rights in law and build a fair work society for all our citizens. We can and we must do so much better for our workers and our trade unions. If Westminster is not up to the job, Holyrood will take this on, and working people will be better off as a result. It is for that reason, and with the support of our trade union colleagues, that I commend this motion to the House.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23).
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill
Tuesday 17th October 2023
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 17 October 2023 - (17 Oct 2023)
16:38 - The House divided: - Ayes: 307 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly agreed to.
16:53 - The House divided: - Ayes: 309 / Noes: 190 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:06 - The House divided: - Ayes: 301 / Noes: 195 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:18 - The House divided: - Ayes: 298 / Noes: 197 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 300 / Noes: 193 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:42 - The House divided: - Ayes: 297 / Noes: 193 - Question accordingly agreed to.
17:54 - The House divided: - Ayes: 304 / Noes: 159 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:08 - The House divided: - Ayes: 303 / Noes: 157 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:22 - The House divided: - Ayes: 302 / Noes: 152 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:35 - The House divided: - Ayes: 303 / Noes: 152 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:48 - The House divided: - Ayes: 299 / Noes: 148 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 304 / Noes: 12 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:17 - The House divided: - Ayes: 295 / Noes: 143 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 291 / Noes: 139 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:43 - The House divided: - Ayes: 289 / Noes: 136 - Question accordingly agreed to.
19:55 - The House divided: - Ayes: 285 / Noes: 132 - Question accordingly agreed to.
20:08 - The House divided: - Ayes: 286 / Noes: 131 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is engaged by Lords amendments 46, 73 to 75, 78, 82, 231, 241, 249, 301 to 327 and 349 to 367. If any of these Lords amendments are agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving Commons financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.
Clause 148
Guidance
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)
I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 117.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to consider:
Government amendments (b) to (d) to Lords amendment 117.
Lords amendment 231, and Government amendment (a).
Lords amendment 237, and Government amendments (a) and (b).
Lords amendment 369, and Government amendments (a), (c), (b) and (d).
Lords amendment 1, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 2 and 4, Government motions to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 3, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 6, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu.
Lords amendment 10, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 13, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 14, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (p) in lieu.
Lords amendment 18, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 22, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 30 and 31, Government motions to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu.
Lords amendment 44, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 45, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 46, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 80, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 81, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.
Lords amendment 82, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 90, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.
Lords amendments 102 and 103, Government motions to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu.
Lords amendment 133, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 134, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 137, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 139, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 142, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 156, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 157, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 172, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 180, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 199, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 239, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.
Lords amendment 240, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.
Lords amendment 241, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendments 242, 243 and 288, Government motions to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (d) in lieu.
Lords amendment 244, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 249, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 273, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.
Lords amendment 280, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 285, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) in lieu.
Lords amendment 327, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 329, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendments 5, 7 to 9, 11, 12, 15 to 17, 19 to 21, 23 to 29, 32 to 43, 47 to 79, 83 to 89, 91 to 101, 104 to 116, 118 to 132, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 143 to 155, 158 to 171, 173 to 179, 181 to 198, 200 to 230, 232 to 236, 238, 245 to 248, 250 to 272, 274 to 279, 281 to 284, 286, 287, 289 to 326, 328, 330 to 368 and 370 to 418.
Rachel Maclean
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill has had a lengthy passage. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all my predecessors in my role and to colleagues across the Department who have shepherded the Bill to its position.
The Bill reflects the huge importance of levelling up for the future of the country. For decades, successive Governments have failed to address the inequality of opportunity in our country. Economic growth has for too long been concentrated in a select few areas. The Bill will ensure that this Government and future Governments set clear, long-term objectives for addressing entrenched geographic disparities.
The Bill will expand and deepen devolution across England. It will devolve powers to all areas in England where there is demand for it, allowing local leaders to regenerate their towns and cities and restore pride in places by creating a new institutional model more suitable for devolution to whole-county areas outside city regions that have more than one council: the combined county authority.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
I do not know what the Minister is going to say about Lords amendment 14, but if she is agin it, will she reassure me that the voice of district councils will not be lost in combined county authorities, which would create a disparity of the type that she is out to remove in the Bill?
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. Friend for his view. I will come on to address that point substantially in my remarks.
We are modernising our planning system, putting local people at its heart so that it delivers more of what communities want. The reformed system will champion beautiful design in keeping with local style and preferences and ensure that development is sustainable and accompanied by the infrastructure that communities will benefit from.
The Bill further strengthens protections for the environment so that better outcomes are at the heart of planning decisions. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that we have reached agreement with both the Welsh and Scottish Governments on a UK-wide approach to environmental outcomes reports in part 6 of the Bill.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
May I welcome the amendment that the Government tabled in the other place that will have the effect of addressing the issues I raised on Second Reading about the propensity of developers simply to clear a site in advance, with no regard for the wildlife on it at all? We had a controversial case of that happening only last week. I think the amendment will make a real difference and stop that terrible practice happening. It is a good example of the Government’s commitment to wildlife and the environment. I am grateful to the Minister.
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. Friend from the bottom of my heart for all the work he has done to protect wildlife both in his constituency and across the country. Hedgehogs will be a lot safer for his determined work—and not only hedgehogs but all other species of our beloved wildlife.
Rachel Maclean
I will give way shortly.
We have committed to resolving a related anomaly by reinstating a devolved regulation-making function for the Scottish Government on Electricity Act 1989 consents. That was lost following the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. Our Governments will work together to transfer functions so that powers lost in the repeal of that Act can be reinstated, using existing processes under the Scotland Act 1998.
Since the Bill left this House, the Government have made a number of amendments to improve it. For example, we have addressed the issue of the payment of compulsory purchase hope value compensation by removing hope value from certain types of schemes where there is justification in the public interest. Part 11 of the Bill has been refined in response to concerns raised by the House about the need to specify the purposes for which the new information-gathering powers may be used. To bolster the Bill’s benefits for the environment, we have reduced opportunities for incentives for site clearance before development, just as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and included a clear requirement for plan makers to take into account the content of local nature recovery strategies.
I turn to the changes added by peers in the other place. Part 1 of the Bill provides the foundations to address entrenched geographic disparities across the UK. We have heard calls to be clearer on the third round of the levelling-up fund and tabled an amendment that adds a duty to lay a statement before each House of Parliament within three months of Royal Assent about the allocation of levelling-up fund round 3. Our views differ from those in the other place. We do not think that there is any connection between that further clarity on the levelling-up fund and the publication of the statement of levelling-up missions. Therefore, we do not think it is necessary to bring forward the laying date of the statement of levelling-up missions as proposed in Lords amendment 1.
We have been clear that the first statement of levelling-up missions will contain the missions from the levelling up White Paper. Missions may need to evolve over time and, if the detail of missions appears in the Bill, the process to adjust them in the future will become unhelpfully rigid and time-consuming. Therefore, in response to Lords amendments 2 and 4, seeking missions on child poverty and health disparities, the Government have tabled an amendment that requires the Government to consider both economic and social outcomes in deciding their levelling-up missions. That means that we retain that vital flexibility for future Governments to set missions according to the most important pressing issues of the day, while recognising that social outcomes such as child poverty and health inequalities are essential factors when deciding missions.
We are not able to accept Lords amendment 3, which would define criteria for assessing the success of levelling up, because those criteria will inevitably change as the data we have evolves. However, given the strength of feeling, I am pleased to announce that the Government can commit to publishing an analysis of geographical disparities alongside the first statement of missions. Linked to that, there have been calls for more specific reporting on levelling up and rural proofing in Lords amendment 6. We strongly agree that levelling up must work for all types of communities, not just those in urban centres.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Rachel Maclean
I will just finish this remark, and I will certainly give way to my former ministerial colleague.
The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs already publishes an annual rural proofing report, which reflects the Government’s consideration of rural challenges across policymaking.
Dehenna Davison
As someone proud to represent a predominantly rural community, does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways to level up in rural areas is by ensuring that those areas get strong devolution deals with strong local leadership?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Just a little reminder that if Members intervene on a speaker, it is customary to stay until the end of their speech.
Rachel Maclean
I want to reiterate my thanks to my former colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who did so much to shepherd the Bill to its current position. I completely agree with her. The best way to ensure levelling up across the country is by voting Conservative, because we have done more than any other Government to spread opportunity around the country.
To avoid anything that would duplicate the work I just mentioned, we have tabled an amendment that will require the Government to have regard to the needs of rural communities in preparing the statement of levelling-up missions. That is consistent with the approach we have taken in other areas, including with respect to the devolved Administrations.
We have heard the concerns highlighted through Lords amendment 199 on access to banking facilities for communities, and we share those concerns. Branch closures are commercial decisions for banks, and we do not believe that a blanket requirement on local authorities to produce strategies to inhibit that would be effective or proportionate. Instead, the Treasury will continue to support the roll-out of alternative services, such as banking hubs, which will ensure that communities across the country have access to the facilities they need.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
On Lords amendment 199, a lot of constituents have written to me with their concerns about bank closures. In West Kirby in my constituency, when the last bank closes next year there will be a banking hub, but it will not meet the needs of everyone across the constituency. Does the Minister agree that banks, post offices and so forth are incredibly important, particularly for those who are not able to or do not have the facility to access the internet and do their transactions online? Will she reconsider that position?
Rachel Maclean
The hon. Lady makes some good points. As I said, we agree on the importance of those services, particularly for the rural communities that we represent. That is why we are pushing through with the other work being done by our colleagues in the Treasury, and with the banking services model.
Turning to combined county authorities, the Government have heard the strength of feeling in both Houses about combined county authority associate member voting rights, and the combined authority boundary changes. The Government are therefore content to remove the ability to vote from associate members of both combined authorities and combined county authorities, the latter of which is called for by Lords amendment 14. We are also content to accept the requirements that must be satisfied before local government areas are added to an existing combined authority for the first nine months after Royal Assent, as proposed in Lords Amendment 18. The Government have accordingly tabled amendments in lieu, which we hope the House will support.
The core feature of combined county authorities is that only upper tier local authorities can be constituent members. That principle is essential to ensuring devolution, and its benefits can be expanded to two-tier areas. The House will not need reminding of several previous devolution deal negotiations for combined authorities that have failed in these areas, despite majority support for the deal. Allowing non-constituent members of a combined county authority to become full members would undermine our efforts to address the problem in future and would reduce the effectiveness of devolution in those areas. We remain of the view that combined county authorities must engage all relevant stakeholders, and wish for district councils to have voting rights on issues pertaining to them, but they must be established at local level. Let me reassure the House that the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young), who is next to me on the Front Bench, is having detailed discussions with districts on that point.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Given the Minister’s enthusiasm for devolution and the wish to spread investment more sensibly around the country, what extra powers will local communities have to decide what is a realistic number of new homes in any given area?
Rachel Maclean
I will address that matter in due course, so I hope my right hon. Friend will allow a little patience.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I would like to reinforce what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said about the concern at district council level that they may be sidelined in combined authorities. We have received a persuasive letter from New Forest District Council, and I would like the Minister to reassure the House that her pledge that they can vote on areas relevant to them will be honoured.
Rachel Maclean
New Forest MPs are definitely speaking up for their residents today. My right hon. Friend will have seen the Levelling Up Minister next to me; he has heard that vital point. These matters must be decided locally, but I can reassure both my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) that their voices have been heard and those points will be considered in future arrangements.
It is our strong view that one of the core principles of local democracy is that citizens can attend council meetings to interact in person with their local representatives. There are no limits placed on authorities broadcasting their meetings online and we do not agree that councillors should be able to attend those meetings and cast their votes remotely. It is important that they are present, active participants in local democracy. Therefore, the Government are not able to support Lords amendment 22.
The Bill removes a key barrier to transferring police and crime commissioner functions to combined authority Mayors, a long-standing Government commitment. Those powers do not permit the removal of a police and crime commissioner in favour of a mayor mid-term, as some have suggested. The powers simply allow the May 2024 mayoral elections to elect the Mayor as the next police and crime commissioner for an area, where Mayors request that the election be conducted on that basis. It is to allow the proper preparation for, and administration of, those elections that the Government are seeking to commence the provision upon Royal Assent, and so we are unable to support Lords amendment 273.
Turning to planning, we have heard the strength of feeling across both Houses about the need for national development management policies to be produced transparently, with clear opportunities for scrutiny. We have therefore strengthened the consultation requirements in the Bill, to make it clear that consultation will take place in all but exceptional circumstances, or where a change has no material effect on the policies. Draft policies will also need to be subject to environmental assessment, which in itself will require consultation. That will give everyone with an interest in these important policies—the public and parliamentarians alike—the opportunity to scrutinise and influence what is proposed.
Housing provision has been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood).
Rachel Maclean
Will my right hon. Friend allow me to finish my point, and then I will gladly give way?
As our existing policy makes clear, it is important that every local plan is founded on a clear understanding of the housing needs in the area. In response to Lords amendment 82, we have tabled an amendment that puts that important principle into law: plans should take into account an appropriate assessment of need, including the need for affordable homes. Any assessment of need is only a starting point for plan making; it will remain the case that local planning authorities will make their own assessment of how much of that need can be accommodated.
Theresa Villiers
Will the Minister assure the House that the compromise set out in the Secretary of State’s letter to colleagues of 5 December last year will be implemented? It is an important way to amplify local control over what is built in a neighbourhood, while still delivering the volume of new homes that we need.
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that point, which I think is a matter of interest to all colleagues. She will know that we have had an exceptionally high level of interest in the consultation on the national planning policy framework, with over 25,000 respondents across the country. That demonstrates the keen interest of parliamentarians and their constituents in this important issue. She will know that officials need to work through those responses, as they are doing directly with her and others, before we make proposed changes. Officials will continue to work with her and other colleagues, and we look forward to publishing the updated document shortly. To be clear, the position remains as outlined in the Secretary of State’s letter of December 2022.
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
The Minister is endeavouring to strike the right balance in a tricky area. Does she agree with me, as a former Housing Minister—there are one or two in this place—that actually the most important thing beyond what happens in Westminster is that local authorities get their local plan in place? We have a Liberal Democrat-run council in Elmbridge. It does not have a plan in place and has not for years. That is what exposes the green belt and unwanted developments such as the Jolly Boatman site which local communities do not want.
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. Friend and esteemed predecessor in my role. I will come on to speak a bit more about the “banana” policies of the Liberal Democrats later in my remarks. For the avoidance of doubt, that stands for—
Rachel Maclean
No. The hon. Lady will have her chance to speak later. It stands for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”. That is their policy. The whole House and the whole country know it. We on the Conservative Benches are building the homes that the country needs. My right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) is absolutely right to say that where local authorities have a local plan more houses are built, and that where local authorities do not produce a local plan they are failing their residents and letting down future generations who will live in those areas. I will not take any more interventions now; I need to make some more progress.
The Government agree that it is vital for local planning authorities to have the resources they need to deliver an effective planning service. On 20 July, we laid draft affirmative regulations that, if approved by Parliament, will increase planning fees by 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications. This is a national fee increase that will benefit all local planning authorities in England. We are also undertaking a programme, with funding, to build capacity and capability in local planning authorities. The Government do not believe that enabling authorities to vary fees and charges is the way to answer resourcing issues. It will lead to inconsistency of fees between local planning authorities and does not provide any incentive to tackle inefficiencies. It would also create significant financial costs to the taxpayer. We do not require the fee income to be formally ringfenced, as there is already a requirement through primary legislation for planning fees to be used for the function of determining applications. We have been very clear that local planning authorities should use the income from planning fees to fund their services. That will allow them to build their capability and capacity, and improve their performance. Therefore, the Government are not able to support Lords amendment 82.
On the environment, the Government agree that the planning system must support our efforts to meet our legal net zero commitments by 2050 and to tackle the risks of climate change. We have committed to updating the national planning policy framework to ensure it contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation as fully as possible. What is crucial, however, is that we address climate change in a way that is effective without being unnecessarily disruptive or giving rise to excessive litigation for those seeking to apply the policies once they are made. That is why we cannot support Lords amendment 45.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on her stewardship of the Bill. It is clear that it will be to the further benefit of the environment and devolve power democratically in terms of local decision making. Does she agree that it is this Conservative Government that are best for levelling up, whereas the other political parties in this Chamber constitute no progress at all and will bring no progress in the unlikely event they are ever put in that position? Is not the fact of the matter that, both democratically and transparently, it is the policies she is setting out and the position of this Government that will be for the benefit of the whole country?
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend. I think Northampton North speaks for the whole House on this issue. With that, I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox).
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
My hon. Friend says, very importantly, that we will be getting an update to the NPPF to reflect the changes made in the Bill. Can she give us an idea when we will get it? We were promised it before the summer and then we were promised it in September. When will the House and the country actually see the updated NPPF?
Rachel Maclean
I recognise that there is a keen appetite to see the update. As I set out earlier, there has been a huge amount of work to analyse the very significant volume of responses. We will be bringing forward the update as soon as the Bill receives Royal Assent.
Rachel Maclean
I am not going to give way at the moment, I am afraid.
The Government agree that the quality of our homes is vital, but we do not agree that further legislation is needed to achieve that. The healthy homes principles contained in Lords amendments 46, 327 and 249 cut across building safety, building standards, building regulations, planning policy and design. They are already considered and addressed through those well-established systems.
Caroline Lucas
I am truly grateful to the Minister for giving way.
In its latest progress report, the Climate Change Committee was clear that planning policy needs what it calls “radical reform” to support net zero. Will the Minister therefore say more about her bewildering decision not to accept Lords amendment 45, which would simply ensure that all national planning policy decisions, local planning making and individual development decisions are in line with net zero? If the Government are serious about wanting net zero to be a priority, why would they not ensure that all their planning decisions support net zero, rather than undermine it?
Rachel Maclean
I have set out that, of course, the planning system puts the environment and net zero at the heart of all its work.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I just want to go back to the point about the Government coming forward with the NPPF. She indicated that it would appear very quickly after Royal Assent. Presumably the Bill will receive Royal Assent very quickly, so surely that piece of work must be almost ready. Why can we not see it sooner rather than later?
Rachel Maclean
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We very much hope we will, with the consent of the House after these debates, see the Bill receive Royal Assent. We are working at pace to bring forward the long-awaited detail that she and others are rightly pressing for.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Will the Minister give way on healthy homes?
Rachel Maclean
I will come to colleagues very shortly. I want to say a few words about healthy homes, which I think my hon. Friend may want to speak about. The Government do not agree that an additional regulatory framework to promote healthy homes, including a schedule setting out the principles and process for providing a statement, is necessary, because it is already considered and addressed through well-established systems.
Steve Brine
I understand why the Government are resisting Lords amendment 46, a cross-party amendment from Lord Crisp, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Blunkett. I understand what the Government are saying. At the moment, a big Select Committee inquiry is under way into prevention and we are looking at healthy homes. Is the Minister satisfied that the Government are addressing the fact that poor-quality housing is a major determinant of ill health that cuts across inequalities and is directly comparable to that? Is the Minister satisfied that all the stuff in the letter yesterday from the Secretary of State to all Members is in place to address that inequality?
Rachel Maclean
I thank the Chair of the Health Committee for all the work he is doing on this issue. I will read his report with great interest. I draw the House’s attention to the work that the Government and the Department are doing to tackle the damp and mould that is in so many houses and that caused the tragic death of Awaab Ishak. It is always right that we look to see what more we can do.
Rachel Maclean
I need to make progress.
On the important issue of building in flood risk areas, which was raised in the other place, amendment 80 is well intentioned but would have wholly impractical implications. Under the amendment, a ban on residential development in land identified as flood zone 3 would take no account of flood defences and where, in reality, it is safe to build. For example, some 60% of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham lies in flood zone 3, as do many parts of Westminster. Planning policy and guidance make it clear that residential development is not compatible with functional floodplain, and should not be approved.
There is strong policy and guidance in place to prevent residential development where that would be genuinely unsafe. In high-risk areas, such development is only acceptable when there are no reasonably available sites with a lower risk of flooding, when the benefits of development outweigh the risk, and when it can be demonstrated that the development can be made safe for its lifetime without increasing flood risk elsewhere and, where possible, will reduce flood risk overall.
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
I appreciate that the wording of Lords amendment 80 is not suitable given its likely scope, but flooding is a big issue in my constituency. It has affected a number of building sites, the Linden Grove development being just one example. Can the Minister assure me that the wide panoply of powers available to the Government, including the forthcoming planning policy framework, will create the infrastructure and apparatus necessary to ensure that a robust system will be in place to prevent flooding from affecting future housing developments?
Rachel Maclean
I can, with pleasure, give that assurance to my hon. Friend’s constituents, and to those in other flood-risk areas. We have considered this matter very carefully. We have strengthened planning policy and guidance, and put capacity into local authorities to enable them to assess risks properly. We believe that the policy strikes the right balance between allowing house building where it is safe and, of course, protecting homes from flooding in the future.
We are grateful for the constructive discussions that have taken place on the important topic of ancient woodland. We are content to accept the principle of Lords amendment 81, which means that within three months of Royal Assent we will amend the Town and Country Planning (Consultation) (England) Direction 2021 to require local planning authorities to consult the Secretary of State if they want to grant planning permission for developments affecting ancient woodland. That clause will ensure that a Government commitment made during the passage of the Environment Act 2021 is enacted to a specified timeframe.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Ancient woodland is already highly protected. Will the Minister consider how this will interact with major infrastructure delivery in line with the commitment that she has given? I am particularly mindful of the fact that in Dover we are seeking an upgrade of the A2, which has already been planned to take account of ancient woodland. I am keen for that to progress, taking account of the existing environmental considerations.
Rachel Maclean
My hon. Friend is an excellent champion of infrastructure and housing in her constituency and, of course, throughout the country. She has made an important point, and I should be pleased to meet her and, possibly, her local representatives to talk about it in more detail.
Last month, in response to the concerns of Members of both Houses, the Government made changes to the national planning policy framework in relation to onshore wind, which were designed to make it easier and quicker for local planning authorities to consider and, where appropriate, approve onshore wind projects when there is local support. We need to allow time for those changes to take effect, so we will keep the policy under review, and will report in due course on the number of new onshore wind projects progressing from planning application through to consent. We also intend to update planning practice guidance to support the changes further, and to publish our response to the local partnerships consultation for onshore wind in England. The response will set out how, beyond the planning system, the Government intend to improve the types of community benefits that are on offer for communities who choose to host onshore wind projects, including local energy bill discounts.
Sir Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
Conservative colleagues and I, along with the Minister’s Department, worked together to end the de facto banning of onshore wind, and I am grateful for that. However, as the Minister has acknowledged, we need to see whether this policy is working, and a key determinant of that will be whether onshore wind really has meaningful community benefits. The consultation closed three and a half months ago; will the Minister tell us when we will see its conclusions? I am not suggesting that she should pre-empt those now, but could she also specify some of the likely monetary benefits that might flow to communities, so that we could have an indication that the Government are moving in the right direction?
Rachel Maclean
I thank my right hon. Friend for what he has said, and for all the vital work that he did in his previous role in taking forward the country’s reaction to climate change. This is a key plank of our policy. Our commitment to renewables is beyond question, and we have done more to drive forward that agenda with the help of my right hon. Friend and others. I have been discussing some of the questions he has raised today with my colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, because I think people want to see what this means in practice for their communities. We have some exciting work planned, and I can assure him that, as I have said in response to earlier interventions, we will provide the response to the NPPF—which covers this and other matters—as soon as we can.
The Government remain committed to repealing the antiquated Vagrancy Act 1824 as soon as replacement legislation can be introduced, and once that has happened there will be no need to publish a report. Lords amendment 240 would require a Minister to publish, within 90 days of Royal Assent, an assessment of the impact of the enforcement sections of the Vagrancy Act on levelling up and regeneration. Given our commitment to the repeal and replacement of the Act, and because identifying and gathering the information would take significant time, we propose that a year should be provided rather than 90 days.
To ensure that the leaseholder protections on remediation work as originally intended in the Building Safety Act 2022, we have tabled an amendment to remedy a gap in the Act so that a qualifying lease retains its protection if extended, varied, or replaced by an entirely new lease. We do not, however, agree that Lords amendment 242, which would secure parity between non-qualifying and qualifying leaseholders, and exclude shares in a property of 50% or less from being counted as “owned” for the purposes of calculating whether a lease qualifies for the protections, should be accepted. There are a number of defects in the amendment; in particular, it would remove the protections once remediation work was complete, which a number of stakeholders have described to us as a potentially worrying change.
The Government made amendments to the Bill—clauses 239 and 240—which will allow us to transfer the building safety regulator out of the Health and Safety Executive in the future. That will ensure that we are ready, and have the flexibility in place, to respond to the Grenfell Tower inquiry report when it is published. When the regulator is moved, the essential committees established under sections 9 to 11 of the Building Safety Act will need to be transferred. We are therefore unable to accept an amendment that prevents us from removing the references to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 in relation to the committees. I should, however, make it clear that the Government have no intention of amending the make-up or role of those committees.
The Government take the condition of school and hospital buildings very seriously, which is why we already have extensive, well-established and transparent data collection arrangements for schools and hospitals. In addition to annual funding and central rebuilding programmes, we provide targeted support for schools and hospitals with specific problems such as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. The creation of a new register, collecting new data and following up relatively minor issues easily managed locally, will take limited resources and focus away from the most serious issues which require additional support to keep our schools and hospitals safe, undermining overall safety. That would carry unavoidable significant financial implications for both the NHS and the school system. The Government have listened to the arguments about local authorities opening their own childcare provision. While we did not feel that there was a legislative gap, we are willing to concede that point in full, and an amendment will be added to the Bill.
You will be delighted to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am nearing the end of my remarks, but I have no doubt that you will hear from the Opposition Front Bench a torrent of complaints and criticisms of the Government’s entire policy. Before we hear from them, however, let me make a few things clear. Despite having listened to numerous speeches from Opposition Front Benchers, I have no idea what their plans are for this vital policy area—apart from the rare instances in which they have simply repeated, and passed off as their own ideas, what the Government are already doing. They claim that they would magically make all these things happen without any additional public spending. Oh, I am sorry; perhaps I have missed their saying where they will spend the VAT charge on private schools, for possibly the ninth or 10th time. We can all see that for the fantasy it is.
Rachel Maclean
I am not giving way.
The Leader of the Opposition says that his is now the party of the yimbys. We all want housing for our own children and grandchildren—I am a mother of four; my second grandchild, Henry, was born just last night—so this Government stand squarely behind the aspiration of families across the country to buy a home of their own and get on the housing ladder. But what have we seen from Labour? At least 19 members of the shadow Cabinet have conspired to block houses being built in their own constituencies, including the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne and the Leader of the Opposition himself, who just two years ago voted to protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications. That is what he voted for in this place, yet he now says that local communities will be completely ignored. Presumably what he means is that what is okay for him is not okay for anyone else. He wants to rip up the protections for precious green spaces, not just on the green belt but on the brownfield sites. Of course these are a vital aspect of our brownfield-first planning policies, but they often also form a vital green lung in heavily urbanised areas—[Interruption.] There is an awful lot of chuntering from Labour Front Benchers. They do not like what I am saying, but I will not be shouted down in standing up for house building across the country.
I would like to refer to a quote:
“Green space is vital in our communities to give children a safe place to play and to enhance community well-being.”
Not my words but the words of the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, who went on to say:
“I wanted residents to know they have my support in their bid to stop contractors entering the site to start building.”
I hope that the Leader of the Opposition has explained his position clearly to the residents of Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth, who I am sure will be interested to know exactly which sites on their green belt, urban brownfield and rural farmland the Labour party would like to determine, at the stroke of a north London lawyer’s pen, should be built over with zero regard to local communities.
Rachel Maclean
I will not give way.
There is no credibility at all on the Labour Front Bench. You do not have to take my word for it; just look at housing delivery in London and in Wales, where Labour has been in government, with all the powers, funding and levers, for many years. It has an atrocious record on house building, housing delivery and affordable house building. It is hardly surprising, when house building fell to the lowest level since the 1920s the last time Labour was in government. That, along with everything else, is something that the Conservatives had to sort out when we took office.
We are on track to deliver our manifesto pledge to build 1 million homes during this Parliament, with housing delivery at near-record 30-year highs. We are not complacent, and we need to deliver more of the right homes in the right places. That is why the Prime Minister and the Housing Secretary set out our long-term plan for housing in July—a plan based on the principles of building beautiful, with homes built alongside GP surgeries, schools and transport links, where communities are listened to and where we enhance the natural environment and protect our green spaces. It is a plan where we will build beautiful neighbourhoods modelled on the streets of Maida Vale, the crescents of Bath or the rural and suburban vernacular of Poundbury, not on soulless dormitory towns.
Now I shall turn to the Liberal Democrats. Even by their own standards, we have seen the most extraordinary fiasco unfolding within their party. I have to hand it to them: their balancing act is pretty impressive. They are taking the high-rise tightrope walk art of holding two entirely different positions at the same time to newly dizzying heights. Historically, the Lib Dems have been the BANANA party—build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone—but amid incredible scenes, their youth wing has thrown out the yellow bendy fruit and forced on the party a top-down Whitehall-driven target of 380,000 houses a year.
Rachel Maclean
No, I will not give way. The hon. Lady can speak later.
This policy has been described by the Lib Dems’ own former leader—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Just a little reminder that we are on Lords amendments. I am sure the Minister will be referring her remarks back to the relevant ones.
Rachel Maclean
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We did discuss the matter of housing targets in the Lords debate.
The Lib Dems’ policy to have 380,000 houses a year—that is certainly this week’s policy—has been described by their own former leader as Thatcherite. So anyone contemplating voting Liberal Democrat needs to know what this means. I am afraid that they can no longer sustain a position of objecting to every single house being built in their area, or avoid making local plans to give communities a proper say over housing and the green belt. As we have seen with so many Liberal Democrat local authorities, they have kicked the can down the road and failed their residents.
I shall finish by expressing my gratitude to all my colleagues, both here and in the other place, for their continued and dedicated engagement with this complicated and complex Bill during its passage. We have listened carefully to the views of Members on both sides of the House, stakeholders and members of the public. The amendments we have made to the Bill as it has progressed to the Lords have further enhanced it and I commend it to the House.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Well, what can one say about that last 20 minutes, apart from that it must have felt far more persuasive when the Minister practised it in the mirror this morning, but I do congratulate her on the birth of her grandson.
I will start by thanking their lordships for the extensive and forensic scrutiny to which they have subjected this complex and demanding piece of legislation. I put on record the appreciation felt on these Benches for the tireless work of our noble Friends, Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lady Taylor of Stevenage, ably assisted as ever by Ben Wood and the whole Labour Lords team.
This Bill has been with us for some time now. First published in May 2022, it has progressed slowly against the backdrop of significant political and economic turbulence, the responsibility for which lies squarely with the Conservatives. It has survived an unprecedented degree of ministerial churn: three Prime Ministers; four Secretaries of State, albeit one a retread; four Housing and Planning Ministers; and four Levelling Up Ministers. With so many minds on the Government Benches having grappled thoughtfully with the implications of each of the Bill’s many provisions, one might have hoped that it would have been significantly improved and that its worst features would have been substantially mitigated, if not removed altogether. Sadly, despite the addition of scores of new clauses and a large number of new schedules to the extensive number it already contained, the Bill remains not only eclectic but deeply muddled. It is a rag-tag mix of measures—some sensible, but many more ill-considered or downright damaging—that attempt but fail to render coherent a Tory levelling up, devolution and planning agenda that is anything but.
In the eight months that the Bill was considered in the other place, the Government were forced to give way on a variety of fronts. I am glad that, in a range of areas, the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) and I made in Committee last year have been partially accepted.
However, although the Government’s concessions have rendered the Bill slightly more palatable, they have not resolved the fact that it still contains a range of measures, from the new infrastructure levy to community land auction arrangements, that are riven with flaws. We regret the fact that Ministers did not reconsider their inclusion entirely. It will now fall to a future Labour Government to halt, review or rescind each of them.
We do not have an opportunity today to attempt, again, to address many of the more problematic parts of the Bill but, as a result of the prodigious efforts of noble Lords in the other place, we have a chance to make a number of important changes that would modestly improve the Bill and, in so doing, enhance outcomes for local communities across the country. It is with that objective in mind that I turn to a selection of the unusually large number of amendments that the other place has sent to us for consideration.
Lords amendments 1 and 10 relate to the levelling-up mission set out in part 1 of the Bill and the distinct, but related, third round of the levelling-up fund. They seek respectively to ensure that the missions and the fund application process are properly integrated and that round 3 of the fund takes place not only in a timely manner but on the basis of a reformed application process. We support both.
The Opposition’s views on the Government’s levelling-up missions are well known, but, if we are to give statutory force to a statement setting such missions for a period of no less than five years, it is right not only that it comes into effect soon after the Bill receives Royal Assent but that it is accompanied by a statement detailing the application process for round 3 of the levelling-up fund, including transparent criteria so that the two can be fully aligned.
Similarly, our criticisms of the levelling-up funding process are a matter of public record, but, if the fund is to be the primary means of delivering priority local infrastructure projects for the foreseeable future, it is right that steps are taken prior to the opening of round 3 to simplify the application process and to reduce the onerous requirements and resources it presently involves.
We recognise that, by tabling an amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 10, the Government have sought to enshrine in the Bill an assurance in respect of round 3 of the levelling-up fund. However, not only is the content of the proposed statement left completely undefined, but the proposed amendment in lieu fails to achieve one of the central objectives sought by their noble Lords, namely that such a statement be published within the same timescale as a statement on the levelling-up missions so that the two processes, which are clearly connected, fully complement each other. For those reasons, we cannot support the Government amendment in lieu and we will support Lords amendment 10, along with Lords amendment 1.
The question of whether the Government’s proposed levelling-up missions are comprehensive enough to reduce inequalities between and within regions has arisen since the White Paper was first published in February 2022. Lords amendments 2 and 4 seek to augment the 12 missions set out in that document by requiring the addition of separate missions relating to child poverty and health disparities. We welcome the Government’s acceptance that addressing the impact of economic and social disparities warrants a greater focus in respect of levelling-up missions and that they have tabled amendments in lieu of Lords amendments 2 and 4 to that end. However, in our view, the requirement that Ministers “must have regard” to these disparities in the preparation and review of all the missions falls some way short of the implications that establishing dedicated new missions on child poverty and health disparities would have for life chances across the country. For that reason, we cannot support the Government amendment in lieu and will support Lords amendments 2 and 4.
We also support Lords amendment 22. We remain firmly of the view that there are circumstances in which virtual or hybrid meetings are necessary or useful, and that their use could help to reduce barriers to public engagement, particularly in relation to the planning process. As we argued in Committee last year, a number of organisations, including the Planning Inspectorate, already enjoy the freedom to offer such meetings as they deem necessary, and there is widespread support for putting local authority remote meeting arrangements on a permanent footing, including from the Local Government Association, Lawyers in Local Government and the Association of Democratic Services Officers. The Government have offered no compelling reason why this amendment should not be incorporated into the Bill, and we therefore urge the House to support it.
As the Minister will know, the establishment of a new tier of national planning policy in the form of national development management policies, and their precise relationship and standing in respect of local development plans, has been a point of contention throughout the Bill’s passage. The Opposition feel strongly that it cannot be right that national policies that will have a far greater impact on local communities than any existing national policy statement and that have significant implications for the status and remit of local planning can be developed without an obligatory and defined public consultation and parliamentary approval process. Lords amendment 44 stipulates such a process, including minimum public consultation requirements and a mechanism for facilitating parliamentary scrutiny based on that which currently applies to designating a national policy statement.
Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that people deserve to have their voices heard and to decide for themselves who they want to represent them as their police and crime commissioner?
Matthew Pennycook
My hon. Friend is right. As I was about to say, we believe that this change is clearly driven by political expediency and is intended to facilitate the transfer of the PCC functions in the west midlands to its Mayor prior to the elections that will take place in May 2024. This is the latest attempt to achieve that end—a provision enabling the Mayor to expand the boundary of the West Midlands Combined Authority without the consent of the constituent authorities, having been defeated in the other place on 13 July. Lords amendment 273 does not engage with the substantive issue of whether a transfer on this basis is appropriate. All it seeks to do is to delay the point at which the measures contained in clause 59 come into force, so that this not insignificant change can be enacted in a considered manner after the next set of elections take place. The amendment has our support.
Finally, Lords amendment 329, which was tabled by Lord Best, would require local plans to identify the scale and nature of local housing need and to make provision for sufficient social rented housing so that homelessness and the use of temporary accommodation can be ended. The importance of this matter cannot be overstated. As a result of the reduced supply of genuinely affordable homes over the past 13 years, more than 1.2 million households languish on local authority waiting lists; millions of families are trapped in overcrowded or unsuitable properties; and, to our shame as a nation, the number of households in temporary accommodation, many of whom contain young children, surpassed 100,000 for the first time this year. National planning policy is clear that local plans should, as a minimum, provide for objectively assessed needs for housing, but we know that the true extent of local housing need, and in particular the need for social rented housing, is not often reflected in them.
We strongly support the principle that underpins Lords amendment 329: that local planning authorities should be required, rather than encouraged, to properly identify local housing need and plan to meet it. We recognise that the Government have made an important concession with their proposed amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 329, which would ensure that local plans must take account of an assessment of local housing need, including affordable housing need. However, the Government amendment in lieu falls short, in failing to require local planning authorities to plan to accommodate that identified need. For that reason, we are minded to support Lords amendment 329 today, with a view to encouraging the Government to consider whether they can move a little further on this matter.
Rachael Maskell
Having served on the Bill Committee for six months, I have to say to the Minister that I found it really disrespectful that she would not take my intervention; I am here to scrutinise the legislation. I say to my hon. Friend—the future Housing Minister—that I welcome our adoption of these measures to ensure that we get the right tenure, not least because of the housing crisis that I see in my constituency. Let me push him further by asking whether we will accept the principles of Lords amendment 46 on healthy homes and the built environment, because we know that housing is about not just bricks and mortar, but the environments in which people live.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I thank her again, as I did at the time, for the many months of work that she did on the Bill Committee. She is right to raise the point about healthy homes; we fully support the principles of that campaign. We disagree with the Government’s suggestion that the issue is already well addressed, and I gently encourage the Minister to continue the conversations that I believe the Government are having with Lord Crisp and the other proposers of that amendment in the other place.
To conclude, while we welcome a small number of the concessions that the Government have felt able to make to the Bill, we believe that most do not go far enough. This unwieldy and confused piece of legislation is flawed on many levels. We have an opportunity today to make modest but important improvements to it. On that basis, we urge the House to support the many reasonable amendments that the other place has sent to us.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Father of the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on the way she presented the Government’s approach to these over 100 amendments— on heaven knows how many pages, if one tries to read through them. I also congratulate the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), on martialling the points and presenting them in a way that the House can understand. In particular, I join him in saying to the Government that Lord Crisp’s proposals have much that should be incorporated.
Amendment 327, which would be inserted before schedule 7, talks about houses designed
“to provide year-round thermal comfort for inhabitants”;
to have reduced opportunities for the “risk of crime”; to be free, as far as possible,
“from adverse and intrusive noise and light pollution”;
and to ensure that
“living areas and bedrooms…have access to natural light”.
The amendment addresses a whole series of issues that did not get as much attention as they should have done. When developers are able to convert office blocks into homes, some of those homes are, frankly, substandard.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I very much agree with the point that the Father of the House has just made. Does he agree that healthy homes should incorporate the idea of green space and more equitable access to good-quality green space within reach of those homes, as set out in the Lords amendment? We know about the improvements to physical and mental health that can come as a result of access to green space.
Sir Peter Bottomley
The hon. Lady reminds me that I meant to say that when Dr Christopher Addison became the first Minister for Health in 1919, the first action he took was to help build social housing on a scale that would allow people’s health to be improved by living in far better environments, inside and outside their homes.
Yesterday, in levelling-up questions, the Secretary of State very kindly spoke clearly about the approach to the development at Lansdowne Nursery, on the A259 in my constituency, and the threat to Chatsmore Farm, in what is known locally as the Goring gap.
It is important that the words that the Secretary of State spoke yesterday should be passed on to planning inspectors, including the one in Arundel today, who is considering the appeal against the properly justified refusal of planning permission to put homes on the Lansdowne Nursery site.
I invite Ministers from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to come to my constituency—and to the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb)—to see how every bit of grass is under threat from opportunist developers.
Those developers have rightly been turned down by local authorities—boroughs and districts. They should be supported by planning inspectors, not at risk of what I would call “a rogue decision” by someone from Bristol.
Turning to amendment 22, after clause 70, the Government are wrong to ban parish councils from meeting remotely if they want to. Some parish councils cover a large area and many elderly people kindly serve on them. If they want to have a valid meeting, why can they not tune in, if they are ill, remote or for some other reason? It seems to me to be totally unnecessary for central Government to say to local councils, especially parish councils, “You cannot do that.” I hope that the Government will think again, if not in this Bill then in another one. Let people have autonomy and a degree of sovereignty. If their powers are limited, then how they use them should be up to them, in my view.
In amendments 242 and 243, Lord Young of Cookham has helped qualifying and non-qualifying residential leaseholders. I accept that the Government proposals are limited to residential leaseholders and do not cover commercial leaseholders.
What the House should not accept, and where the Government should think again, is why there has to be a distinction between qualifying and non-qualifying leaseholders. Many non-qualifying leaseholders have homes on which they cannot get a mortgage or sell, and on which they cannot avoid paying high annual costs, as well as remediation costs.
I repeat the question put by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, about what happens to people who have paid but who will now not qualify. Will the Minister give clear advice when she winds up, or in a later statement, on what happens to leaseholders facing claims for payment that they think they should not have to pay? Can people get out of this dilemma, which is caused by too many people in Government not understanding the legal status of residential leaseholders?
I do not believe that Dame Judith Hackitt understood it when she put forward her fire safety proposals, and I do not think the Government understood in the early days. Now that they do understand, will they please remove the distinction? The idea that if people live in homes below 11 metres they are not facing an un-mortgageable and unsellable home is wrong. Many people who have leasehold homes under that level are frankly in a dilemma that Government ought to be able to resolve.
I could go on for longer, but many other Members wish to speak. I congratulate those who have helped to improve the Bill. There are many elements that I support—the Government can take that for granted—but on issues where they are allowing injustice or ineffective approaches to continue, let us change that.
Let us be on the side of the 5 million to 6 million residential leaseholders whom we have ignored for too long, whose situation has been understood poorly. Now that it is understood better, we ought to allow them to have better, healthier, happier and more financially secure lives.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
This is my first scrutiny of Lords amendments as the SNP’s levelling-up spokesperson, so I would like to start by thanking my hon. Friends the Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for their work scrutinising the Bill so far.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) is making her maiden speech today—I made mine just two years ago. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I were to give her any advice, it would be this: watch out for the grey hairs—you will get lots of them. Work in a collegiate manner—the public think that we in this place all hate each other, but we really do not. And wear trainers where possible.
I felt a tad left out earlier, because when the Minister went on her bizarre monologue about Labour and the Liberal Democrats, she left out the SNP. Does that reflect the fact that she does not think Scotland matters? That remains to be seen. The intention behind the Bill—to help areas across the four nations—is admirable. However, as per usual with this Tory Government, their aim is commendable but their journey towards that aim is terrible. The Bill is muddled, confused and not fit for purpose.
The Tory track record on levelling up is weak at best and politically motivated cronyism at worst. On the SNP Benches, we have been clear from the start that the Bill is simply not good enough. But, because of the approach that the Government have adopted, it is now doomed to fail, arguably like most of their policies. It pushes funding, which is so desperately needed in struggling areas across the four nations, to be allocated to boost support in politically beneficial regions.
Take Scotland, for example. The second round of levelling-up funding in January 2023 saw only £177 million distributed to a nation that was promised very much more. In Scotland we are continually told that we are in a Union of equals, yet that figure is only 8.4% of the possible £2.1 billion, meaning many local authorities, including North Lanarkshire in my Airdrie and Shotts constituency, have been left behind and forgotten by this Government. The Conservative Government cannot be trusted to level up Scotland. They have neither the will nor the desire to do so.
Ms Qaisar
I wish to make some progress, but I shall give way in a bit.
It will shock no one that the UK Government have sought to reduce the measures that are designed to increase scrutiny of levelling up. Lords amendment 1 would require the Government to produce a statement on their initial plans for levelling up within 30 days of the Bill becoming law. If levelling up is such a fundamental aim, then I do not quite understand why the Government are unable to produce such a statement to the House. The Minister’s opposition to Lords amendment 1 is, to my eyes, another example of this Government trying to evade scrutiny.
It should be noted that the Bill aims to tackle issues of the UK Government’s own creation. They say that they want to level up, but it is their policies that have resulted in years of austerity that have run infrastructure and services into the ground. There is little doubt that the situation has been made worse by the gross mismanagement of the economy by successive Conservative Governments since 2010.
I am also not surprised that the Government have sought to change Lords amendment 2, which would have ensured that reducing child poverty was a levelling-up mission. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to expand the impact of levelling up, the Minister seeks to drop this amendment. The Lords amendment was narrow in scope, seeking only to reduce the proportion of children living in poverty rather than seeing its complete eradication. Tackling child poverty is desperately needed. The Government’s action in this area stands in stark contrast to the efforts of the Scottish Government, for whom tackling child poverty and inequality more generally remains their main priority, with £4 billion being spent on targeted social security support. The Tory Government could look to copy the lead of the Scottish Government and prioritise tackling child poverty through levelling up, but they have made a conscious decision not to do so.
Politics is all about choices. The public should be aware that the Government had an opportunity, through Lords amendment 2, to include a mission to reduce the proportion of children in poverty as part of their levelling-up agenda, but they chose not to do so. But am I surprised that the party of the two-child cap has chosen to oppose measures to reduce child poverty? No. Yet this is an issue within the Westminster establishment, and the Conservatives are not alone in their beliefs on this. The Tory-lite Labour party are also supporters of the two-child cap.
The provisions in Lords amendments 3 and 4 would tackle geographical disparities in housing, education, private sector investment, public spending and health. All are aims that should be at the core of an effective levelling-up strategy. The UK Government should follow the Scottish Government’s approach of attempting to tackle geographical disparities and look to emulate their investment of more than £831 million in affordable and energy-efficient housing. The amendment in lieu put forward by the Government is a cop-out and barely pays lip service to countering geographical disparity and inequality.
Lords amendment 10 seeks to improve accountability and make it easier for councils to apply for funding. Additionally, it would put measures in place to prevent the Government from making politically motivated levelling-up decisions. It seeks to put in law that the Secretary of State sets out the application process and criteria for round 3 of levelling up. I do not understand why the Government are opposing that. The amendment seeks to set out measures in greater clarity to ensure that local authorities are in with a chance.
Over the last two rounds of levelling up, my constituency of Airdrie and Shotts has been unsuccessful, so ensuring that there is a requirement on the Department to set out the process and criteria would help my local authority—it is a Labour-run authority, but it would help them none the less—and, ultimately, my constituents in Airdrie and Shotts. If I were a cynic—I am not saying that I am—I would say that the UK Government have treated public funds for levelling up as an election tool, prioritising taxpayers’ money for their own constituencies —a tactic that the Prime Minister was not even trying to hide when he was Chancellor, publicly bragging about taking money from deprived areas and handing it to better-off areas in England. That was, of course, during the Tory leadership election, so perhaps he was hoping that no one was listening.
The system and mechanisms for allocating funding are broken and Lords amendment 10 seeks to fix that. Wales and Scotland are getting less levelling-up funding per person than England. Once again, we are seeing the Tories spending money that should be for Scotland on improving their own areas. We know what the Tories think of spending in Scotland. Those of us on the SNP Benches remember Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister and champion of levelling up, saying that a pound spent in Croydon
“is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde.”
Once again, the Government’s proposed changes to the amendment show the contempt that they have for scrutiny and allow them to continue their political cronyism when it comes to levelling-up funding.
Ms Qaisar
No, I will not take an intervention. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to speak, I am sure that he can put in a card.
It is not surprising, but incredibly concerning, that the Tories are attempting to water down issues that would quite literally improve the quality of people’s lives. The Lords amendments could strengthen the Bill, but, at the end of the day, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill was underwhelming in its inception: it will not level up the areas that need it the most; it will not work towards eradicating child poverty; and it will not increase the Government’s accountability. However, it will be another unsurprising Tory policy that hands more power to this untrustworthy Government and fails to deliver an ounce of what they promised. The reality for Scotland is that it is only through having the full powers of independence that we will truly unlock our ability to decide what is best for our diverse communities.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
It is a joy to have the opportunity to speak in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, because I can see the direct benefit that it will have for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which I am proud to represent.
The ministerial team have been helpful in their dialogue with me on the needs of levelling up rural areas. I ought to say at this point that I chaired the all-party group on rural services. I want to refer to Lords amendment 6, which places a requirement on the Department to produce a rural-proofing report detailing ways in which the levelling-up missions have regard to their impact on rural areas and will address the needs of rural communities. As somebody who represents a large rural constituency of West Cornwall and Scilly, I cannot stress enough the importance of policy and measures actively designed to support the needs of rural communities. The House does not need me to remind it that the need to level up rural Britain is urgent and critical. Wages are lower, house prices are often higher, homes are more expensive to heat, delivering public transport and other services, such as social care, are more challenging, and the list goes on.
As I have said, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the departmental team for their engagement with me. My right hon. Friend assures me that, rather than accept the Lords amendment, the Government will give greater force to the commitment to level up, and that they will be obliged to consider economic, social and other outcomes in setting up levelling-up missions, including the specific needs of rural communities. I welcome the acknowledgement that rural communities have a specific case worthy of consideration. In his concluding remarks, can the Minister explain in practice how the needs of rural communities will be addressed and not sidelined in favour of more densely populated areas, especially in relation to Cornish people who need secure, affordable housing.
In conclusion, I pay specific tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who, in her time in the Department, proved to be a good friend to Cornwall in our ambition to secure meaningful devolution and sought to address important gaps in the spreading of levelling up funding. Lords amendment 10 seeks to address areas that have been left behind and those gaps in levelling up and other regeneration funding. Such areas are looking to the Government to set out their approach to the third round of the levelling up fund.
One such area is Helston, an important town serving the Lizard peninsula and many other rural communities. Some 42,000 people live in and around Helston, which is famous for Flora Day and the Flora Dance, but is also known as one of the few towns in Cornwall that has missed out on much-needed levelling up and regeneration funding. A fantastic team, including Helston Town Council and many other important organisations in the town, have identified some critical projects designed to revive the town and make it a safer, healthier and wealthier area in which to live and work. I hope that the town will be successful in its future bids for levelling up funding, particularly in the very near future.
Mr Speaker
We now come to a maiden speech and, as we know, there is no interruption. I welcome the new Member, Sarah Dyke, to make her maiden speech.
Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting me the opportunity to make my maiden speech today. I begin by paying tribute to my predecessor. The hon. Gentleman served his constituents over his tenure in Parliament, and I thank him for his service. He also spoke up for one of the major cultural exports in our region, cider.
Written records of cider production in Somerset exist from as early as the 12th century. Somerset has become synonymous with the cider industry and is proud to be its ancestral home. Cider is so important to our region that until the passing of the Truck Act 1887, which prohibited the practice, labourers were often paid in cider, with some of the top labourers often earning eight pints a day in payment. Although prohibited, I understand that the practice was slow to dry up in Somerset and continued well into the 20th century.
The industry today sustains thousands of jobs and hundreds of farmers. Our cider is renowned for its quality and I will champion the industry during my time here. Somerton and Frome is also a large agricultural base and is home to many of the country’s finest farmers and rural businesses, all producing food for our tables to high environmental and animal welfare standards. Farmers are essential to the UK economy and our way of life. We must back our hard-working farmers and provide them with a fair deal to ensure that we have food security long into the future.
I herald from a family that has been farming in the area for more than 250 years, so I will always stand up and fight for our farmers, who not only produce delicious and healthy food and drink, but protect our precious environment. The importance of improving the environment is critical to a rural area such as Somerton and Frome, because we face the effect of climate change first-hand and the damage it can cause will be devastating for our local communities. I am committed to campaigning on the issue and I call for the positive changes that we need to see.
It is an honour to be elected as the latest Liberal to represent the area, and I am proud to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Hughes and, more recently, David Heath, the last Liberal Democrat to represent the constituency. David is a true champion of this area who fought for 18 years for the people of Somerton and Frome. I thank him for all he has done in Somerset during his career. If I am able to achieve half of what he was able to do, I am confident I will have done a good job.
Leading women are often overlooked, and I would therefore like to recognise some of the pioneering women from my area. I am the second woman to represent the town of Frome, following on from Mavis Tate MP, who represented Frome from 1935 to 1945 and used Parliament to campaign for and champion women’s rights. Alice Seeley Harris, a documentary photographer who helped to expose human rights abuses in the Congo Free State under Leopold II of Belgium, also lived in Frome. Finally, I would like to mention Emma Sheppard, another Victorian pioneer who called for workhouse reform.
From people to places: let us take a short tour of the seat that I am so proud to represent. We start in Somerton, the ancient capital of Somerset, from which the county gained its name. The old English name for Somerset means “the people living at or dependent on Somerton”. The terms Somerton and Somerset derive from “the land of the summer people”, as Somerset was marshy and wet during the winter months and only dry and useful in the summer—that is, until the Somerset levels were drained by the monks to farm there during the middle ages.
We move on now to Langport, which is aptly named as it was a port town. Langport is the natural crossing point on the River Parrett, and the Royalist soldiers fled through the town while being pursued by Cromwell’s forces after the battle of Langport, held on Pict’s Hill nearby. It is also home to the Langport Mummers, who perform the Alfred play, based on King Alfred and his battle with Guthrum, the Viking. Alfred is known to have been based close to Langport before his battle with Guthrum’s great heathen army around the eighth century.
From the westernmost part of the constituency, we move to the south-eastern edge, to King Alfred’s Tower, which was built by Henry Hoare on the county border with Wiltshire. The folly tower is sited where King Alfred rallied his troops before defeating Guthrum and, in so doing, regaining control of Wessex. We must not leave this part of the constituency without mentioning Wincanton, which is close by. In 2002, Wincanton was twinned with Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” series, making it perhaps the only place in the UK to be twinned with a place that does not exist.
Just north of Wincanton is the ancient Selwood Forest, which reaches north to Frome. Unfortunately, Selwood Forest is something of a rarity in Somerset, as the county only possesses 8% tree canopy cover. That figure signifies the urgent action needed for our environment, as does the lack of tree cover across the country. At the last election, all political parties pledged to increase tree cover across the country. I will be working hard throughout my time in Parliament to restore our natural environment, and I hope that progress continues to be made.
We emerge from the Selwood Forest into Frome, the home of JW Singer & Sons art metal works, which represents the industrial legacy of the town. The foundry used to produce iconic monuments such as Lady Justice on top of the Old Bailey. Closer to this place, in 1902, the magnificent statue “Boudicca and her Daughters” was assembled on the Thames Embankment on the south-west end of Westminster Bridge, where it stands today—quite some feat, given that JW Singer cast his first brass candlesticks in 1848 using turnips as moulds.
Turning to the current debate, too often when we talk about levelling up we think of urban areas in the north of England. There is no doubt that those areas need support, but rural communities such as mine are often forgotten, and without action they risk falling even further back. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who have worked hard to ensure that rural areas are not forgotten in this Bill. They have tabled amendments to improve rural bus services, which are sadly neglected in Somerton and Frome and other rural constituencies, and to introduce new planning classes for second homes and holiday lets, so that local authorities have more power to limit the impact on local housing supply.
Rural areas such as Somerton and Frome are suffering deeply with the cost of living crisis. The cost of housing is often disproportionate to the level of wages available, and people have to use their cars to travel further for work or to access services such as dentists, GPs, hospitals or schools.
Off-grid fuels have been significantly more expensive than gas in the heating of homes. I will work to ensure that off-grid rural homes never have to face this crisis again. That is why amendment 6, on producing a rural proofing report, is so important. I need not say that the cost of delivering services in rural areas is greater than in urban areas, so it is vital that the Bill takes that into account, and I am delighted that my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the other place have tabled that amendment. Although I am disappointed that the Government have not gone so far as to support the amendment entirely, their concession is welcome.
Dr Fox
It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke). We have all been through either the thrill or the ordeal of our maiden speech, and many of us will look back with different emotions—pride, affection or regret. Hers was certainly one to be proud of. I am sure that the whole House will recognise that we have in her a Member of great calibre when it comes to speaking in the House. She paid a very generous tribute to her immediate predecessor, which I am sure many of us would echo. She spoke in staunch defence of the cider industry, which is perhaps one area in which I can genuinely offer my personal help for the profitability that she seeks. She set out a wide range of rural matters that are extremely important to those of us who represent different parts of Somerset.
The hon. Lady, in placing herself in context with a range of well-known predecessors from the part of the country that she represents, who were accomplished in different walks of life, demonstrated a lack of self-absorption that she will find somewhat rare in the House of Commons. I hope that she retains the refreshing self-effacing attitude that she brought to the House today. In the light of her top-to-bottom description of her constituency, if she were ever to leave this House, voluntarily or involuntarily, she is certainly likely to get a place on the Somerset tourist board.
I thank all those who brought the Bill this far. During her speech, the Minister referred to local plans, which are extremely important for my constituency. She said that it is not just the assessed housing need that matters but how much of that need can be accommodated in any one area. That matters hugely to a number of us. In North Somerset, for example, 40% of land is green belt, 30% is floodplain and 12% is in an area of outstanding natural beauty. One reason we are so delighted that the Government are abolishing the national housing targets is that they cannot be applied equally to areas with a lot of land that can be built on and areas where there are natural constraints. Such constraints are imposed by Government, who say, “You cannot build on green belt and you cannot build on floodplain.” It makes a lot of sense to hand the power back to local areas so that they can make decisions for themselves.
The removal of the five-year land bank is also an important increase in freedom for local authorities. I am delighted that, throughout the passage of the Bill, including in the other place, the Government put the protection of the green belt at the centre of what they were doing to stop urban sprawl—which, of course, we face in North Somerset as we are so close to Bristol—to protect our environment, as has been mentioned in relation to a number of issues, and to stop inappropriate development. That is likely to become an important election issue given that the Labour party has said that it will build on the green belt, and the Liberal Democrats have said that they will reintroduce national house building target numbers if they are able to do so.
I echo what a number of my colleagues said about encouraging nature recovery strategies in the amendments, as well as about banking hubs, which have been raised on a number of occasions. It is important in rural areas and small towns, particularly for the elderly, for those who are not necessarily computer-literate, and for those who find it difficult to travel, that we maintain some form of connection with traditional banking. I fully accept the Minister’s argument that these are market decisions to be taken by individual banks, but we cannot have banking deserts when our constituents need access to banking services.
Wendy Morton
We often think about rural communities when discussing banking hubs, but my right hon. Friend’s point about banking deserts is equally important to constituencies such as mine, which now has only one bank left. Some in the banking sector think it is fine for my constituents to have to drive into Walsall or Sutton—it is not.
Dr Fox
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. It is incumbent on us all to work with Government and the banking sector to ensure that our constituents have access. She makes a good point: the lack of access was previously more pertinent to rural locations, but then it applied to smaller villages, then smaller towns, and now even larger towns face the situation that she describes.
I wish to make two points to the Minister, one of which I raised during an intervention when I asked, “When will we see the new NPPF?” She indicated that we will see it as soon as the Bill receives Royal Assent. I hope that means that we will have the new NPPF by the time we get to Prorogation, which is not far off. I am sure that we will all hold the Minister to account for the very welcome timeline that she placed on that today.
I would like the Minister to consider one issue above all else, and to respond to it during the debate. There will be a hiatus between the passage of the legislation and its implementation date, but planning permission requests for housing developments will still be made. Will the Minister make it clear that the Planning Inspectorate needs to take into account this legislation, rather than the previous NPPF, when considering such planning applications? It would be quite wrong and profoundly undemocratic if both Houses produced legislation along the lines that the Government have proposed but planning inspectors applied an older version of the NPPF, thereby allowing planning applications that are clearly against the expressed will of Parliament to be approved. We cannot have unelected inspectors making decisions against what this Parliament has clearly decided. I hope that the Minister will give an assurance in her wind-up that, for any planning applications in that hiatus, instructions will be given to the planning inspectorate that it is expected to follow what the Government have set out in the legislation.
Daisy Cooper
First, I associate myself with the remarks of the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I agreed with almost all his points, including on having the right measures in place to stop opportunistic developers, on supporting virtual meetings of local government, and especially on leaseholders.
May I reiterate my support for some of the comments made by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), particularly his call for a timeline for the national planning policy framework update? The Minister will be aware that I have tabled a number of written questions asking her to clarify for the record the status of that consultation. She has very kindly confirmed that it is just a consultation. There is a lot of confusion among my constituents, who believe that the NPPF has already been updated when it has not. I therefore associate myself with the other Members across the House who want to see the NPFF updated—in the Minister’s words—“as soon as possible”.
I rise to oppose the Government’s motion to reject Lords amendment 82, on planning application fees. Ministers will know that I originally tabled this amendment to the Bill 11 months ago, and in March I also tabled a presentation Bill that would have had the same effect. I had a number of meetings with the Minister to explain the reasoning behind this amendment.
My amendment, ultimately, is very simple. At the moment, a Government-imposed cap on planning fees means that local authorities cannot charge big developers the true cost of processing their applications, and the result of that is scandalous. In 2020-21, council tax payers across England effectively subsidised big developers to the tune of almost £2 billion. In St Albans district alone, the figure was a shocking £3.2 million. That’s right: during the biggest cost of living crisis in recent history, taxpayers in St Albans district are subsiding big developers to the tune of £3 million a year.
The Government themselves have recognised this problem. They have run a consultation and agreed to raise the cap on planning fees, but they still refuse to scrap it altogether. According to a “Dear colleague” letter that was circulated yesterday, the reasons are twofold. The first is that the costs might become inconsistent between local authorities. All I would say to that is that planning fees are less than 5% of all professional fees, and that would not cause a huge problem. The second argument is that it would not provide any incentives to tackle inefficiencies in planning departments. I think it is fair to say that local authorities are not awash with cash at the moment, so that is a pretty spurious argument.
The fact is that planning services up and down the country are operating on a shoestring. Funding cuts mean that in many cases, planning departments can no longer even meet their statutory time limits to determine planning applications. Developers and householders find their proposals delayed, in some cases for many months, as councils lack the resources to process them. The Local Government Association says that the current Government caps are
“resulting in significant capacity and skills challenges”
and “undermining” councils’ ability to deliver the quality housing and infrastructure that communities desperately need. It also says that
“councils must have the ability to set planning fees at a level which cover the true costs of processing applications”
if they are to improve the system to the benefit of both communities and developers.
This amendment would allow local councils to put an end to developer subsidies and take steps to pass on the costs of planning applications to those who submit them. Let us look at one specific example. As it stands, a multibillion-pound developer with an incredibly complex development is not obliged to contribute any more than £116 to have each of its planning conditions discharged. In 2014, the Conservative Government decided that a freight terminal the size of 480 football pitches should be built in my constituency of St Albans.
Where the Government decide to build a big piece of infrastructure in a constituency, it is up to the developer to decide whether it wants to enter into a voluntary planning performance agreement and to agree to pay non-statutory fees—effectively volunteering to pay additional fees—for the delivery of a larger site. Some developers do enter into such agreements, but some do not, and there is currently no obligation for them to do so. Where they do not, there are considerable resource implications for local authorities that are trying to discharge planning conditions imposed by Whitehall. Many constituents can face years of misery and chaos due to the construction of a large site and end up paying the developers’ planning costs. It is absurd, and it is unfair.
This vast underfunding also leaves effective planning enforcement activity a distant memory for most people in England. I am sure colleagues across the House will recognise that portrait. What is more, as planning departments across the country struggle with fewer qualified planning officers, developers and applicants say they are willing to pay what it costs to ensure they get a better service. In the light of big developers being prepared to pay this money, it is inconceivable that the Government would tie local authorities’ hands behind their backs by rejecting the amendment.
Government’s refusal to allow local councils to pass on the true costs to developers is lumbering local people with poor planning services and delaying the delivery of sustainable housing, with unscrupulous developers not brought to account for breaching planning conditions in a timely way. All the while, local residents are subsidising big developers. There is no excuse for that to continue. I urge Members across the House to support Lords amendment 82 and oppose the Government’s attempts to vote it down.
Wendy Morton
There are many amendments to consider this afternoon, but I assure you that I will keep my comments very brief and specific, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak about Lords amendment 44, which was clearly designed to address what some of us see as a deficit when it comes to scrutiny.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I draw Members’ attention to my role as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on her excellent maiden speech; I know she is going to join her Liberal Democrat colleagues in being an excellent champion for rural communities. There is a lot to get through, so I am going to restrict my comments to a specific number of amendments that I think are particularly important. However, it is important to acknowledge that 418 amendments were made to this legislation in the Lords, which is testament to the fact that it was a confused piece of legislation and possibly poorly drafted in the first place.
As we have just heard, Lords amendment 44 requires national development management policies to be reviewed through public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. NDMPs offer a bold change to the planning system, and the Bill grants them primacy over local plans if they are in conflict. However, there was no provision in the initial Bill for NDMPs to be scrutinised by Parliament or the public. The Government have tabled an amendment in lieu, but that amendment still allows the Secretary of State to avoid parliamentary and public scrutiny and block any community intervention in the implementation of policy. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches strongly believe that Government should be scrutinised by Parliament, rather than just being able to dictate planning policy from the top, and that Lords amendment 44 was superior to the Government’s amendment in lieu.
I would also like to highlight Lords amendment 82. Earlier this year, the National Audit Office found that local authority planning services have been cut by £1.3 billion over the 10-year period to 2020. The Government have acknowledged the issue and agreed to increase planning fees by 35% for major applications and 25% for all other applications, but there is an issue with that: those percentage increases do not account for regional differences in cost. Who is left to pick up the bill for all these costly planning applications? As we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), it is council tax payers. Setting a national percentage increase in planning fees is a pretty sloppy solution: it will not cover the cost of the applications, but it will burden council tax payers who are already struggling with the cost of living crisis. As such, I urge the Government to consider adopting amendment 82, which would allow local authorities to set appropriate fees for planning applications.
On Lords amendment 241, quality education and quality healthcare require quality facilities. Since the start of this academic year, 147 schools across England have been forced to close because their buildings have been found to include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. That has impacted well over 100,000 students, with many being forced into e-learning at home. This is a generation whose education has already suffered during the pandemic; it is not really good enough to keep them away from classrooms now because the buildings they learn in are at risk of falling down. Of course, it is not just schools that have been found to be in a state of disrepair: multiple NHS trusts have confirmed that hospitals are crumbling around their staff and their patients. For that reason, the Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment 241, which requires the Government to keep a register of schools and hospitals that are in serious disrepair and update that register regularly, so that there is full transparency about the problem and Government can be held to account for ensuring its speedy rectification.
I move on to the proposed removal of subsection (5) of the new clause in Lords amendment 231, which prevents regulations under that clause from amending provisions in the Building Safety Act relating to building safety committees and building safety reporting. That is particularly relevant to the condition of electrical installations, stairs and ramps, emergency egress for disabled people, and automatic water fire suppression systems in relevant buildings. We do not need to be reminded that the Building Safety Act was passed only last year. I am at a bit of a loss as to why the Government would want to start undermining its provisions so soon, particularly since lots of buildings have not yet been made safe in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, despite that being so many years ago. I welcome the Minister’s reassurances from the Dispatch Box that those provisions would not be used in practice, but that begs the question: if they are not intended to be used, why are they included in the legislation? Again, I urge the Government to keep subsection (5) of the new clause in amendment 231.
I also want to talk a bit about Lords amendment 6, which a number of Members have already spoken about. Levelling up was meant to spark life across the whole country: not just the south-east or northern towns, but rural parts of Britain that sometimes conceal their deprivation behind a veil of beautiful greenness. Others have already highlighted this issue. I know as a rural MP that, while it is a privilege to live in a rural area, it does not come without drawbacks. Some 13% of my constituency of North Shropshire has hardly any mobile connection, and only 46% of rural businesses have a decent 4G broadband connection. There is only one bus on a Sunday, as Members will have heard me say on multiple occasions, and poor connections throughout the week mean that young people are missing out on opportunities to access further education and, critically, businesses are missing out on the skilled labour they need to thrive and expand.
As the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) pointed out, the logistics of living in the countryside mean that council services cost more. Council taxes are up to 20% higher than in urban areas, while rural workers are paid 7.5% less on average than their urban colleagues and are faced with house prices that—if we exclude London—are often over eight times higher. Sadly, those differences were not recognised in the original drafting of the Bill. I support the concessions the Government have made in relation to amendment 6: they are taking steps in the right direction, and I think those concessions have been entered into in good faith. While I support them, I would have preferred Lords amendment 6 to have been retained in its entirety.
Finally, I will speak to Lords amendment 329, which deals with local housing. The amendment specifies that
“The local plan must identify the local nature and scale of housing need…and must make provision for sufficient social rent housing, to eliminate homelessness”
and provide a home for the more than 1 million people who are currently on social housing waiting lists. Again, the Government’s amendment in lieu is a positive step, but it does not go far enough in tackling the scourge of homelessness.
I am sure the Minister was avidly watching Liberal Democrat conference at the beginning of conference season, but I am afraid she has slightly misunderstood Lib Dem policy, which offered to deliver 150,000 social homes a year for people who are facing homelessness and temporary accommodation. However, despite our very Lib Dem debate about whether we should set targets from the bottom up or the top down, that policy also emphasised the importance of bringing the local community with us—of building those needs and requirements into the local plan and ensuring that we build the right housing in the right place, with the right infrastructure and the consent of the local community. It is a shame that the Government are criticising us for providing a way for young people to aspire to home ownership and to get people out of the terrible situation of not having a safe and secure home to go to. Amendment 329 needs to be retained in full, and we will therefore be supporting the retention of the original Lords amendment.
In conclusion, the Bill is so long and complex; it has not been a masterpiece of legislation, and there is much confusion involved in it. I urge the Minister to take on board some of the comments that have been made today by colleagues on both sides of the House, who have made some excellent recommendations and suggestions, so that we can improve the Bill a bit before it goes to its next stage.
John Redwood
First, I wish to address the question of housing supply in the national planning policy framework, amendment 44 and others. I support the Government in rejecting the Lords amendments—in most cases, those amendments make the Bill worse—but we need greater clarity from the Government about how the national planning policy framework and the definition of needs in any national intervention relate to what is done locally. The Minister has been a clear advocate of more devolved power, and the one power my local community would like is more power to decide how many houses we can fit in and where they could be built. That is not clear yet, and I look forward to further clarification and further documentation.
I am pleased that the five-year supply of land calculation has been amended, because that was causing considerable trouble. Wokingham Borough Council was more than hitting the five-year target, but we were constantly told by inspectors that we were not, because they calculated the numbers in a different, and we thought rather perverse, way. We never got any credit for greatly outperforming the average that we were meant to be building under the local plan, with all the difficulties that were being created by people living on many building sites in the local area.
That brings me on to the amendments and the debate, and the commentary that we have been hearing on the general issue of levelling up—the subject of the Bill—and how that relates to devolved government. I remind all parties in the House who have a fit of enthusiasm for the proposition that more devolved government will naturally lead to levelling up to look at the experience so far. They should understand that there are many occasions on which devolved powers are created or granted when levelling up does not occur or when things even go backwards. I will not argue with the decisions of the many local communities who have voted fairly in a referendum to have various types of devolved government. I am a great supporter of referenda and a great respecter of their results. I am not urging changes to the current complex structure of devolved government, but that should not stop us analysing whether it is working and whether it can be improved within its own terms and in how it operates.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who as ever spoke with sense and clarity. I have been heavily involved with this Bill throughout its passage, not least when sitting on the Bill Committee for six months. The Bill has been materially improved as we have gone through the process. I am not saying that it is all the way there yet, but it has been materially improved along the way. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the time she has given me and right hon. and hon. Friends over recent days and weeks to engage on the substance of the Bill.
I start with Lords amendment 239 and the Government amendments in lieu that will remove the restrictions that have perversely persisted in the childcare system and local government for some time. I will not rehearse the arguments that were well made in the House last night in a general debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) about the supply and demand challenges in childcare, but I genuinely believe that the Government amendments in lieu will make a big difference to the provision of childcare, which presents challenges in many of our communities.
I want briefly to add my voice to the debate about Lords amendment 22 on the challenging question of virtual meetings in local government. I have said before and I maintain my position that I hate virtual meetings. I cannot stand them and would always much rather meet someone in person. However, the Bill talks much about local decision making, devolution and letting people decide, and there is overwhelming demand—the evidence from the National Association of Local Councils shows that some 90% of town and parish councils want the ability to hold virtual meetings in some way to expand the ability of people to participate—so it is beyond me why we cannot in some way permit such local decision making to take place.
Helen Morgan
The hon. Member is making a very good point, and I agree with him entirely. It is really important to expand the range of people who have access to becoming a local councillor. People are not paid to be a full-time councillor, so they need to be given lots of opportunities to get to meetings and participate fully. Does he agree that this is a really important point about expanding representation?
Greg Smith
I do agree with the fundamental principle of expanding accessibility and the ability for people to take part in local government, particularly those heroes who are completely unpaid and unremunerated for the many hours they put in to town and parish councils around the country. Like the hon. Lady, I represent an entirely rural constituency, where parishes are often quite big. To look back to my own local government days in my 20s, I was a councillor in a London borough that was smaller, at 6.1 square miles, than every parish in the 335 square miles I am lucky enough to represent today. We have to look at the distances, even within a parish, that some people have to endure to go to a planning meeting or to get their voice heard on the very local issues that their town or parish council is determining. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to reflect on whether there is a way the Government can meet local demand for allowing, at least in part, some virtual access to local democracy.
The bulk of the Bill is about planning reform, and the lion’s share of the amendments we are considering relates to planning reform. It is a Bill that will affect every community across our entire United Kingdom, and the lens through which I look at a number of the amendments is to ask: do these amendments support, do nothing to, or hinder the so-called December compromise? That is the compromise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agreed with me and a number of right hon. and hon. Friends last December, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely).
I shall start with Lords amendment 6 on the question of rural proofing. I absolutely and totally support locking into the Bill the concept of rural proofing, but there are a number of points I would ask the Minister to reflect on while making this particular commitment. Of course, anybody can say that they are going to “have regard to” anything at all. When I find myself in the supermarket with my children, I could have regard to their demand to put only chocolate, crisps and ice cream into the trolley. It does not mean that I am necessarily going to follow through on that, in my view, unreasonable demand. Much of the legislation we pass in this place can be judged upon, and under a legal challenge it is not unknown for the judiciary to look back at what was said at the Dispatch Box. I would therefore find it incredibly helpful if the Minister, in summing up, expanded a little on how the Government see that rural proofing. What are the defining principles of the rural proofing that the amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 6 talk about?
Inextricably linked to that has to be the content of the new national planning policy framework. It is a frustration that we are unable to see the final text of the NPPF until after the Bill achieves Royal Assent, not least because there are a lot of points that some of us fought hard for in the earlier stages of our consideration of the Bill that we were promised would be in the new NPPF and that will help to define this question of rural proofing. In particular, I was pleased to secure an amendment to the NPPF through the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) that explicitly changes the old language around
“best and most versatile agricultural land”
to the very tightly defined and binary question of land used in food production. That is because “best and most versatile” was always a lawyers’ paradise—a subjective test that could be argued to the nth degree. Changing the wording to protections for land used in food production makes it binary: it either is or is not. That will give clarity to planning authorities up and down the land when considering applications within our rural communities. I fear that food security is playing second fiddle to energy security when we see the vast swathes of solar applications and, likewise, the level of commercial and housing planning applications on agricultural land —on land used for food production. I include in that category 3b land, which is what most of my constituency is. It still manages to produce 10-tonne-a-hectare wheat yields, to graze cattle and sheep, and to produce the food we all like to eat.
The point I am getting to is that it is incumbent on the Government to recognise within rural proofing that rural needs to remain rural. Without farming—without agriculture, without farmers—there is no rural, because it is the farmers who maintain the landscape: it is the farmers who cut the hedges and keep our countryside as beautiful as it is. If we do not have that, there will be knock-on consequences on everything else that happens in the countryside, not least on the backbone of many rural economies: tourism. If it is not beautiful and it has all become solar farms, housing or commercial warehouses, we will not have the tourism offer either. I therefore encourage the Minister, when summing up, to reassure the House that in respect of the amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 6, rural proofing really does mean keeping the rural rural.
Turning to Lords amendment 44, I have considerable concern that when so much of the December compromise was about vesting local decisions in the hands of local authorities—in the hands of local people, where I believe decisions on planning matters absolutely should be taken, whether on housing need, commercial development or developments to do with energy security—the national development management policies are explicitly listed in the Bill as having primacy over those local decision-making mechanisms. I welcome the amendment in lieu that the Government have tabled to extend consultation to some degree; my initial preference was that the full parliamentary scrutiny lock that the Lords suggested would have been the preferable measure.
I ask the Minister and the wider Government to find a way of absolutely ensuring that when we say that local decision making is paramount, we really mean it and that there are not those get-out clauses that sometimes a statutory consultation simply cannot answer. Otherwise, we will set a dangerous precedent where people put in place their local plans and neighbourhood plans and believe that they are in control, but then a national monster—in whatever form it takes—comes along and walks all over that. The people of Buckinghamshire are all too aware of that with certain infrastructure projects being built through the county right now—I never miss an opportunity to get that in, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Theresa Villiers
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith). I rise to give my general support to the Bill and to speak to that, as well as to reflect on some of the housing and planning issues, which are relevant to many of the amendments, including Lords amendment 44 on national development management policies, which several hon. Members have referred to.
But I will first say a quick word of welcome and support for additional protections for ancient woodland, which are much needed for conserving valuable habitats. I also add my voice to those urging Ministers to consider in their discussions with the other place whether they could accept some flexibility in allowing councils to meet remotely in certain circumstances. During the covid emergency, we saw how, in some ways, the ability to meet virtually did have advantages. We see the Planning Inspectorate using virtual meetings very well—and it is not often that I say positive things about the Planning Inspectorate. That is something for the Minister to reflect on in relation to Lords amendment 22.
Turning to the general issues on housing delivery that are envisaged by a number of amendments, excessive housing targets have been making it harder and harder for councils to turn down bad development proposals. That is leading to the loss of agricultural, greenfield and, in some cases, green-belt land, and to increasing pressure to urbanise the suburbs. Plans for blocks of flats, including some massive tower blocks, are appearing all over my constituency and the surrounding area. To name just a few of the problematic proposals, there is the North London Business Park, Victoria Quarter, The Spires, Whalebones, High Barnet tube station, Cockfosters tube station, Barnet House and, last but not least, Edgware town centre, where the centrepiece is proposed to be a 29-storey apartment blocks. It is just relentless.
Where councils refuse applications, planning inspectors can often overturn the decision on the basis that the development is needed to meet the target. That was why, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham and for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), I tabled new clause 21 on Report, which obtained the backing of 60 Members of the House. In response, the Secretary of State brought forward important concessions to give communities greater control over what is built in their neighbourhood, in what has become known as the December compromise. But I am afraid that the battle is not over. We need to see the reform delivered. The extent to which the compromise fixes current problems depends on how it is implemented in the new national planning policy framework, which has yet to be published. I join others in calling for that to happen as quickly as possible, although I put on record my thanks to the Secretary of State for today’s briefing from officials on what the new NPPF is likely to contain.
The consultation on the NPPF promised that brownfield development would be prioritised over greenfield, but we need more detail, and certainty on how that “brownfield first” approach will be delivered in practice. Even on brownfield sites, it remains crucial to respect matters relating to local suburban character and density. Brownfield first does not mean a brownfield free-for-all. The Secretary of State crucially promised that if meeting the top-down target involves building at densities that are significantly out of character with the area, a lower target can be set in the local plan. If the Bill is to deliver real change, we need to know that a substantial proportion of councils are likely to be able to benefit from that new flexibility, and depart from the centrally determined top-down target. That is the only way to ensure that the centrally determined target will become, as the Secretary of State has promised, an advisory starting point rather than a mandatory end result.
The Secretary of State also promised to clip the wings of the Planning Inspectorate. That means firm and clear instructions need to be given to the inspectorate to accept local plans from councils based on reasonable evidence. Scrapping the duty to co-operate was another promise but, according to the consultation document, the NPPF envisages that it will be replaced by an unspecified alignment policy. We do not yet know whether the duty to co-operate is being scrapped or just re-labelled. We need to understand what that alignment policy will involve.
Turning to Lords amendment 44 on national development management policies, local development management policies provide a bulwark of defence against overdevelopment, for example by constraining height, preventing family homes being replaced by blocks of flats or providing extra protection for green spaces. What is proposed in the Bill is central control over these policies by replacing them with national development management policies. That is quite a radical change—probably one of the most radical planning changes in the Bill. It undermines the long-standing principle that the local plan has primacy. Ministers say that is not intended, but NDMPs could still be used, in theory, to re-write more or less the entire planning system, which would significantly restrict local decision making.
I welcome the Government’s amendment to ensure that NDMPs are consulted on, but I urge them to consider going further and accept that there must also be parliamentary scrutiny. NDMPs, as the shadow Minister was correct to point out, will have a more widespread impact than national policy statements, which tend to be focused on a single sector or even a single project. It is therefore only reasonable to apply standards of scrutiny to NDMPs that are equivalent to those applying to NPSs, and that is what amendment 44 would do. It would be useful for the Government to look further at that point.
Finally, I welcome the indication by Ministers that the flexibilities contained in the December compromise will apply in London, but there is still an urgent need to curb the power of the Mayor to impose targets on the boroughs. He has used the London plan to try to load additional housing delivery obligations on to the suburbs, especially on boroughs, such as Barnet, that have already built thousands of new homes. We are the party that promised to scrap regional targets, but regional targets are alive and kicking in our capital city.
Crucial progress on rebalancing the planning system has been made as a result of the engagement between Ministers and Back Benchers on new clause 21 on Report and engagement throughout the parliamentary scrutiny process. If properly implemented, the December compromise will give communities a greater say on what is built in their area, while also accelerating the delivery of new homes, especially on the inner-city brownfield sites referred to by the Secretary of State in his long-term plan for housing published in July.
But all that would be at risk if there was a Labour Government. They want to rip up the rules that have protected green-belt land for decades, leaving us vulnerable to urban sprawl and jeopardising precious habitats. Moreover, the Leader of the Opposition is clear that local voices will be “ignored” in the planning system if he ever gets the keys to Downing Street. That is a grave threat to the local environment in my constituency and it is one of many reasons why I will be campaigning so hard to return another Conservative Government and a fifth historic election victory next time around.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I am really pleased to see the Bill finally back in this place—it has been a while. I remember saying to a former Housing Minister a year or so ago—one of several former Housing Ministers—when the planning elements were introduced to what was previously quite a tightly written regeneration and devolution Bill, that it might cause some challenge and delay that was perhaps not entirely necessary. But here we are. I will leave it to your judgment, Mr Deputy Speaker, whether I have been proven right or not.
I do not want to talk about planning, actually. I want to talk about the key thing in the Bill for my part of the world, which is the element of levelling up, regeneration and devolution. There are a number of elements and amendments I want to touch on. First, I want to mention something that is slightly aside from that, which is Lords amendment 22. The Levelling Up Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young), will not be surprised—I have already had this conversation with him—that I agree with the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who is no longer in his place.
When we have a Bill that seeks to devolve powers down to local government, it seems a little bit mad to be so prescriptive from Westminster on whether and how they hold their meetings, for example on whether they could do so in a hybrid way. A number of colleagues on the Government Benches have expressed reservations about that, perhaps on the basis that local government leaders might all go off and hold their annual budget meeting entirely on Teams, but I do not think that would happen. As the Father of the House said, it would give small rural parish councils, which are manned largely by volunteers, the flexibility to be more accessible. My deputy leader is currently unwell and cannot drive, but he would still be able to attend hybrid meetings if that were allowed. Flexibility in a Bill that aims, overall, to pass more powers down to local government would be a welcome and consistent thing.
That said, many of the elements of the Bill are really positive and important. The devolution element in particular and the creation of the county combined authorities is the thing that unlocks devolution and investment for the east midlands, and for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, for the first time. That is a really exciting prospect. We saw in the Prime Minister’s conference speech last week £1.5 billion of additional transport funding for my constituency, county and region in the next term of the combined authority, with elections to be held, subject to the passage of the Bill, in May 2024.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I begin by adding my congratulations, in her temporary absence from the Chamber, to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on her maiden speech, which strongly impressed the House with her environmental commitment and credentials and which included generous tributes to some of her predecessors—not least to David Heath, whom many of us remember with affection and respect, and also to the late Mavis Tate, who may not be so well known to hon. Members of the House. She was a Conservative Member of Parliament during the war years, and indeed before the war. Unfortunately, she was a member of the team of 10 parliamentarians who went to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp, and what she saw there so undermined her mental health that she took her own life two years later in 1947. It is sad to reflect that, nearly 80 years later, comparable atrocities are still being carried out, for not dissimilar reasons, in parts of the middle east.
As a leaseholder myself, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), on the vulnerability of leaseholders to abuse of power by freeholders. That is something on which he has campaigned most effectively for a number of years. I also share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) about building work that is allowed to proceed in the face of accurate predictions of future flooding. I know of more than one case of that happening in my own constituency.
My primary reason for making a brief contribution to the debate is to flag up the concern that I referred to earlier about the decision of the Government not to accept Lords amendment 13. I am to a degree reassured by what I heard from the Front Bench, which was reiterated quite effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) a few moments ago—namely, the assurances that district councils will in fact be able to make a contribution when decisions are made that directly affect them. Yet if there is an opportunity for further elaboration on that, I would like to hear it. I have probably heard enough to prevent me from rebelling against the Government, but whether I feel I can go all the way and vote against what the New Forest District Council chairman Jill Cleary, a Conservative chairman of a Conservative District Council, feels is so important is another matter.
For the record, this is what those concerns amount to. Lords amendment 13 states that, for combined county authorities:
“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations establish a process for non-constituent members to become full members.”
The district council feels this is a vital addition to the Bill, otherwise power will steal away from communities and be concentrated at county level without sufficient active district involvement. Indeed, the district council points to a survey of people in shire areas earlier this year, which shows high levels of trust in and satisfaction with district councils—higher levels than for other parts of local and national Government.
I conclude by quoting directly from Jill Cleary’s letter:
“District councils hold levers which are indispensable in creating jobs, improving economic opportunity, addressing skills shortages, tackling inequalities and reviving local pride—precisely the outcomes at the heart of levelling up agenda that the Bill seeks to reinforce. District councils are the housing and planning authorities in two-tier areas. We drive economic development in our places. We have strong links to local businesses, big and small, and a track record of attracting inward investment. It simply makes no sense that districts should be excluded from these new devolution deals.”
I appeal to the Minister, once again, to make it clear both to this House and to my concerned and esteemed local district council that it will not be sidelined or excluded by the Government’s refusal to accept Lords amendment 13.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Peter Aldous to make the last Back-Bench contribution, so anybody who has contributed to the debate should start making their way to the Chamber. We are expecting a large number of votes.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I will speak to three amendments, to highlight some concerns about why the Government are opposing changes made in the other place that, at face value, appear to have some merit, and to seek further clarification as to what they are doing to address those concerns.
A number of my hon. and right hon. Friends have mentioned Lords amendment 22, which relates to local authorities holding virtual meetings. I am a vice-president of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, and the feedback I have received from all tiers of local government in Suffolk is that they support the Lords amendment, which the Government oppose. I acknowledge the Government’s view that a core principle of local democracy is that citizens should be able to attend local council meetings to interact in person with their local representatives. However, instead of an absolute bar on virtual attendance, I would suggest that allowing local discretion, pursuing a common-sense approach, is more appropriate for the following reasons.
First, 90% to 95% of councils at all levels, based on their own individual experiences, support such an approach, which is endorsed by the Local Government Association, the National Association of Local Councils and the Society of Local Council Clerks.
Secondly, many town and parish councils have difficulties in retaining a full slate of councillors. They regularly have to co-opt new members, and contested elections are invariably the exception rather than the rule. Allowing some local discretion with regard to the holding of council meetings would remove barriers to becoming a councillor for such groups as the disabled, parents, carers and full-time workers. These groups all have a great deal to contribute to their local communities, but many of them are put off by the straitjacket of being expected to attend all council meetings in person.
Peter Aldous
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend on that point. Coming out of covid, a lot of parish councils have raised that issue with me. From their perspective, they have made well-reasoned cases. They are not going to go daft. There is perhaps a nightmare scenario of local councillors never leaving their homes and, as a result, being abstract from the communities they represent. But they will not do that. They will be very mindful of their responsibilities and they would use this provision sensibly. At a time when we are talking about cascading down responsibilities to local authorities, it appears slightly perverse to be saying, “No, you’ve got to do it this way.”
My next point relates to Lords amendments 46 and 327, which would require the Secretary of State to promote healthy homes and neighbourhoods through a regulatory framework for planning and the built environment. As we have heard, the Government are seeking to strike out those amendments, on the basis that they will cut across the actions the Government are already taking to improve the quality of new homes, will create uncertainty and risk legal challenge and delay. I would readily accept that argument if the existing policy was working well, but it is not; it is complex and focused only on risk reduction. We should bear it in mind that from a high-quality home a host of benefits ensue and cascade down: better health and less pressure on the NHS; and an enhanced environment for learning, doing homework and passing the exams and getting the qualifications that enable people to realise their life ambitions, thereby ensuring social mobility. That in turn leads to improvement in national economic productivity. If the Government are to strike out those amendments, they need to fast-track their reviews of the decent homes standard and future homes standard and to put them in a coherent, positive and ambitious framework.
Finally, Lords amendment 45 requires the Secretary of State to have special regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation in preparing national policy, planning policy and advice relating to the development or use of land. As we have heard, the Government oppose the amendment on the basis that it could trigger a slew of litigation, which would hinder action needed to safeguard the environment, and that it repeats existing policy and statutory requirements. They also say that the importance of the environment is already restated in the Bill. I take that on board, although I would highlight three concerns.
First, to achieve our net zero obligations, there is a need for an enormous amount of private sector investment. As the UK Green Building Council points out, pension funds, corporate investors and construction companies require clarity, consistency and certainty in the policy framework. At present, that is missing and the business and investment community is confused.
Secondly, the existing system has created an inconsistency whereby local authorities must take net zero into account in developing their local plans, but the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State, as we heard on a number of occasions, do not have to give net zero the same level of consideration. If this Lords amendment does not stand, at the very least the Government need to remove that ambiguity as quickly as possible.
Finally, I am mindful that in Waveney, my own backyard, in Suffolk and across East Anglia, we are at the forefront of the challenges and opportunities arising from climate change. We have an exposed and vulnerable coast, we are low lying and prone to flooding, and we are the driest region in the UK. That said, we have great economic opportunities arising from the low-carbon economy, in the form of offshore wind, nuclear and hydrogen.
Local authorities and local business in the eastern region have innovative plans to best address these threats and to maximise the benefits arising from these opportunities. However, as matters stand, they are constrained by the inconsistencies I have outlined. A greater emphasis on climate change mitigation would provide some certainty and would help to attract the private sector investment I mentioned that, as we are seeing, is globally footloose.
These are the concerns I have. I acknowledge that the Bill should not be seen as the panacea for all our ills and I have listened to the assurances that my hon. Friend the Minister has provided. I hope that she might be able to allay some of the concerns I have outlined in her summing up.
Rachel Maclean
It is a pleasure to be able to respond to the points made by colleagues across the House. This is a complex and important Bill, and it has been a thoughtful and well set out debate; everyone has contributed.
I thank colleagues across the House for their remarks. I can assure everyone that the Government have listened extremely carefully to those. Because I have limited time, I may not be able to give as full an exposition on every single point, but I hope colleagues will not be disappointed and my door is always open to colleagues —as are the doors of all my ministerial colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—to listen to any specific problems that people will have. Therefore, I want to thank the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) for their comments.
I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) for her maiden speech and congratulate her on how she delivered it and its content. I listened to it with great interest and particularly noted her advocacy for and championing of the cider industry in her constituency, as well as her standing up for farmers. I am sure that is something that every single Member of the House can strongly agree with. I wish her all the best for her parliamentary career.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and my hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for their comments. I also thank colleagues from the Opposition Front Benches for their constructive comments. We have definitely reached agreement on some points, although not all, which is not surprising given the range of issues we have been looking at.
I want to touch on a few themes that colleagues have raised. I hope that we can go some way to addressing the specific questions put to me by them. Colleagues have raised concerns about how national development management policies will operate in practice; people have said they are thinking ahead to how those could operate in practice. I want to be clear that, where a decision is made in accordance with the development plan, national development management policies and a specific local policy, and NDMPs are relevant considerations but not in conflict, as part of a planning judgment, it will still be for the decision maker to decide how much weight is afforded to those different policies based on their relevance to the proposed development. The precedence clause sets out only what should be done in the event of a conflict between policies and where they contradict one another. We do expect such conflicts to be limited in future because of the more distinct roles that national and local policy will have. In response to questions asked by many hon. and right hon. Members, I can assure the House that we will be consulting further on how that will operate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills asked: what does the provision mean when it says the Secretary of State can act urgently? I reassure her that that refers to very limited circumstances such as the unprecedented situations that we saw during the pandemic. It is envisaged that that provision would be used only in those sorts of urgent and emergency situations.
There has been much debate about the role of district councils in the future combined county authorities. I have definitely heard the points that colleagues have made. We do value the amazing work that is done by district councils. I wish to thank my own district council—Redditch Borough Council—for the incredible work that it does. I know that Members have thanked their own local authorities. I listened very carefully to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield. It is right that we want devolution to work and the voices of those district councils are really important. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young), has been very clear in his discussions that we are encouraging potential areas to consider how best to involve district councils—they make a unique contribution—in recognition of the role that they play, without holding up those important devolution arrangements.
I have been struck by the number of colleagues who have talked about remote meetings and challenged the Government’s position on that. It is the Government’s view that face-to-face democracy should remain in place and that physical attendance at meetings is important, not just to build strong working relationships, but to deliver good governance and democratic accountability. It is clearly right that councillors are regularly and routinely meeting other councillors in person and that members of the public can ask questions in person. Some of these measures were brought in during the pandemic. Now that the pandemic has passed, it is right to consider reversing those and getting back to that face-to-face democracy. However, we are looking at a call for evidence on this matter and we will publish the results of that as soon as possible.
Sir Peter Bottomley
It seems to me that it would be a good idea to consult parish councils in particular and to have a debate in the House of Commons when the Government have had their responses. For the Government to say what their view is, is one thing. For Parliament, which gives powers to authorities, to decide we do not want to tell them how to discuss using those powers is another. Those authorities are limited by the powers. In my view, they should not be limited in how they discuss them.
Rachel Maclean
I thank the Father of the House for those comments. I can assure him that the Government are carefully considering his points, and those made by other colleagues.
I turn to rural-proofing and the vital role of rural areas—a point made by a number of colleagues, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham. He asked how we will make sure that we abide by our commitments to rural-proofing in the Bill. I wish to be clear that we are fully behind the objectives to make sure that rural areas benefit from our levelling-up agendas. We want to make sure that the needs of people and businesses in rural areas are at the heart of policymaking, including through rural-proofing. The report that we published early last year demonstrates that we are making real progress on all sorts of issues, including digital connectivity and action to tackle rural crime.
My hon. Friend also asked about the use of agricultural land for food production—again, an issue close to the hearts of many of us who represent rural areas. The Government agree that we must seek to protect our food production and rural environments, and we will publish the consultation response on that issue very shortly.
Dr Fox
I hate to take my hon. Friend back to my earlier question, but she has not answered it. Until we get a new NPPF, planning inspectors will refer to the previous one, and that leaves the option open to them to make decisions that are not in line with the legislation. Will the Minister give guidance to planning inspectors now that in the interim, until the new NPPF is in place, they must take account of what is in legislation passed by the House, rather than referring to the previous NPPF? Otherwise, we will find ourselves in the perverse position where local authorities can give permission to developments that are against what the Government are proposing on areas such as the five-year land bank and housing targets. We cannot allow ourselves to be politically exposed like that. This is a party that wants to win a general election and that expects Ministers to give direction to the planning inspectors.
Rachel Maclean
I assure my right hon. Friend that I heard his remarks and concerns. Until we have published the response on the NPPF, it is not possible for us to give directions to the planning inspectors in the way that he has asked. He will also know that the Planning Inspectorate has to work within the framework policy and the legislation of the time. It is important to set out that local areas must get their local plans in place, and I hope that his local area is doing so. That is the best way to ensure that it delivers houses that command the consent of his constituents, for whom he is advocating superbly.
The Bill addresses the entrenched disparities that exist across the United Kingdom, backed by billions of pounds-worth of funding, including, I must add, for Scotland. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar), who spoke for the Scottish National party, was a little ungenerous in her remarks, so I want to land with her the significant investment that this Government are making in Scotland—I think the figure is £394 million—to boost communities across the country.
This Government set clear long-term objectives for levelling up and are held accountable for—
Rachel Maclean
I am supposed to be winding up, but I will take one final intervention.
Wendy Morton
I am grateful and will be brief. During an earlier intervention, I asked the Minister for clarity on the specific question of the duty to co-operate. Can she give me that clarity before she winds up?
Rachel Maclean
I can confirm for my right hon. Friend that we will scrap the duty to co-operate for the reasons that she mentioned. We will consult on how we expect local authorities to work together. I urge her to work with us and to contribute to that consultation when we bring it forward in due course.
The Bill devolves powers to all areas of England, modernises the planning system and strengthens environmental protection. We have, of course, heard hon. Members’ points, which we will consider carefully as the Bill completes its passage. The Government are on the side of the builders, communities and homeowners —present and future—across our country. I commend it to the House.
Amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 117.
Government amendments (b) to (d) made to Lords amendment 117.
Lords amendment 117, as amended, agreed to.
After Clause 214
Power to replace Health and Safety Executive as building safety regulator
Amendment (a) proposed to Lords amendment 231.—(Rachel Maclean.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Business without Debate
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Childhood Cancer Outcomes
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Roger, for granting me this important Adjournment debate following September’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
I know that many of us have experienced the suffering of a loved one with cancer, but there are very few of us who have had to endure the unimaginable pain of seeing your child suffer with cancer and, worse, losing a child to cancer. Yet cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children and young people, with 490 cancer deaths in the UK each year. That is 490 lives lost and families forever changed. The lack of a bespoke, stand-alone children’s cancer strategy leaves those children with aggressive cancers even more vulnerable.
In the short time I have this evening, I want to focus my comments on a little boy, a “tough cookie” from South Shields called Ethan Adams. Ethan attended the dentist with toothache in November 2020. The dentist treated him for a tooth infection, but Ethan was still not right, so he and his family returned to the dentist and Ethan was given some antibiotics. A week later, he developed a lump on the roof of his mouth. The dentist thought that this was an abscess because of infection and removed his tooth, but Ethan continued to be unwell. He was referred to an oral specialist at Sunderland Royal Hospital and, after an emergency MRI, the family were told that it was a benign tumour and to expect a follow-up call in a few weeks from the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
The very next day, the family received an urgent call asking them to head to the accident and emergency department as soon as possible. That is when the worlds of his mam and dad, Tracey and Mark, crashed. They were told that Ethan had an aggressive cancer and that it was eating up through his skull and pressing against his brain. Ethan was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, often referred to as RMS. A large tumour was present in his face, pushing through on to his brain. A large tumour was also found attached to his spine and traces were visible in his lungs and bone marrow.
His family were given a glimmer of hope when they were told that Ethan’s diagnosis was embryonal RMS, the lesser of two evils, and that the medics could shrink the tumours, but they were not sure that they could stop it coming back due to the aggressive nature of the cancer. Little Ethan had 32 days solid of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He did not complain once. After going through so much, the family felt hopeful for a good result, but after an MRI they received the heart-breaking news that the cancer was buried in layers of his brain and it was terminal.
The family made sure that Ethan spent his final days carrying out his bucket list of all the places that he wanted to see and all the things that he wanted to do. This very determined independent little boy, even at his weakest and when losing his sight, would insist on climbing the stairs at home instead of being carried. On 5 August 2021, just a week after his ninth birthday, Ethan passed away at home, with his mam Tracey, his dad Mark, his sister Ellie and his brother Evan.
Ethan loved Yoda, Sunderland football club and the colour gold. He loved entertaining people and was a mischievous and funny kid with a big heart. Even when unwell in hospital, he was found sharing his toys and helping another little boy. He was all about friends and family, and talked about being a daddy himself one day. His school, Harton Primary, has named a sports hall after him and has buddy benches in each yard. His grave, which his brother calls his forever home, has on it “Ethan, a friend to all”. Ethan left a hole not just in his family’s and friends’ lives, but in our community. South Shields will never forget him.
Ethan’s family, in an effort to ensure that no one else ever has to go through what Ethan did, have become part of the charity Alice’s Arc, founded in memory of Alice Wakeling, who lost her life to RMS aged seven. The charity has created a community of families through Arcs. Alice’s Arc, Ethan’s Arc and all the other Arcs represent children who have had or are fighting RMS. The Arcs exist to find a cure, to find kinder treatments for RMS and to raise awareness. However, I gently say to the Minister that they should not need to exist; such charities exist because the state has failed them, and it continues at times to fail these children. As Mark said, it should not be left to charities to fund research.
The hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) held the first ever debate on childhood cancer in this Chamber back in April 2022. I pay tribute to her and all hon. Friends and Members who took part in that debate. It was a rare moment of this House coming together, regardless of politics, in unanimous agreement that there needs to be a children’s cancer strategy combining early diagnosis, research funding and increased training for GPs and healthcare professionals.
Mark Tami
I am a parent who was told the devastating news that my son had leukaemia, and he subsequently had to have a stem cell transplant. It is devastating news. Fortunately, we were lucky, but something I have campaigned strongly on is the fact that we address the physical side of the illness, but not the psychological support that those children need, and that they might need in later life as well. We need a more rounded approach. People should not have to go out there and seek that support as something extra; it should be part of the overall treatment path.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my right hon. Friend. I know he has spoken movingly before in this Chamber about his son Max. He is right that, for those who are lucky enough to recover from cancer, there is always an after-effect; it remains with them for life and there should be more support. I give way to my other hon. Friend.
Jim Shannon
I commend the hon. Lady on bringing this debate forward. Her constituents should be very proud of their MP and how she has illustrated and put forward the case on behalf of one of her constituents. She has referred to others having big hearts, but I think she has a heart the size of an elephant, if that is possible.
Estimates suggest that around 75% of children diagnosed with cancer survive. However, that statistic has not seen an increase in many years. Does the hon. Lady agree that the 25% who do not survive must never be accepted as a statistic, but must be fought for with more funding and greater research resources, exactly as the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) has said, and that those must be put in place as a matter of form and not just granted for one or two years? I know that the Minister will respond in a positive fashion, and I commend the hon. Lady on what she is doing.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very kind intervention. He has pre-empted what I will talk about later in my speech.
The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), in responding to the debate last year, said that GPs had access to training and that National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
“guidelines are trying to support GPs”.—[Official Report, 26 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 656.]
However, having access to training is not the same as mandated training, and NICE guidelines are for all cancers. It is widely known that many signs and symptoms of childhood cancer are the same as those for many common childhood illnesses, and that the types of cancer diagnosed in children are different from those seen in adults. In short, those guidelines are not enough.
The Under-Secretary of State also said that, despite some progress in treatment for childhood cancers, for
“conditions, such as rhabdomyosarcoma, that is not yet the case. Research is crucial to how we deal with it in the long term.”—[Official Report, 26 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 658.]
Yet no breakdown is available for how much funding is directly linked to childhood cancer research, let alone RMS. What we do know is that funding for research of all cancers has dropped from £132 million in 2018-19 to £101 million in 2021-22, and that Great Ormond Street hospital has found that, on average, only 2p of every £1 spent each year on cancer research goes towards dedicated research projects for childhood cancers.
So here we are, over a year later, and it appears that nothing has improved. The Government’s change in approach to their cancer plan has not been welcome either. In February 2022, the Government launched their call for evidence for a standalone 10-year cancer plan for England, which was intended to be a new vision for how we will lead the world in cancer care. Yet in January this year, they announced that cancer would be incorporated into a new major conditions strategy, effectively scrapping the dedicated 10-year cancer plan. As Cancer Research UK said:
“by bundling in cancer alongside other conditions via a short-term strategy, ministers will fail to give cancer the due care and attention it requires… Cancer isn’t a single disease…in medicine it’s one of the hardest problems to solve and scientific discovery takes time… Ultimately, beating cancer requires a long-term approach.”
The Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group and Young Lives vs Cancer rightly note that this strategy will not give sufficient attention to children with cancer, and are asking the Government to commit to a children and young people’s 10-year cancer plan addressing diagnosis, treatment, patient experience, research, psychosocial support and living beyond cancer. The Royal College of Radiologists, which represents specialist paediatric radiologists and clinical oncologists, has said that after years of under-investment, the workforce is stretched and shortages are causing backlog and delay.
Access to paediatric radiologists already depends on postcode. In the north-east, there are 0.2 consultants per 100,000 people, compared with 0.7 per 100,000 in London. It takes seven years to train in this specialty, and as a percentage of specialists are due to retire, I am not sure that the Government’s workforce plan will sufficiently address the shortfall in those paediatric specialties. International comparisons show that the countries with the biggest improvements in cancer survival are those with long-term, adequately funded cancer plans. Every single parent who has lived in this painful cancer bubble knows what works, too: proper training, early diagnosis, research and access to treatment.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for her speech. Ethan really sounds like an amazing little boy whose memory will live on, as we have heard tonight. He reminds me of a little boy called Adam in my constituency, who will also be forever in our memory after losing his battle to childhood cancer. His mum and dad, Sara and David, are fighting not only for what the hon. Lady is fighting for, but for financial support for families in the initial weeks after diagnosis—currently, children have to wait three months to receive disability living allowance. Does she not think that the Government should introduce immediate payment for families whose children’s care needs start immediately?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. My heart goes out to her constituents, and I could not agree more with what she suggests.
This remarkable little boy had his future taken from him, and without a robust and long-term plan from the Government, other children’s lives will be lost to this terrible disease. I know that the Minister is a decent man and that he does care and will want to give some words of comfort to my constituents, but we would like to know from him what progress, if any, has been made since last year’s debate and how, against the backdrop of decreased funding for research, a dwindling workforce and limited training, he believes cancer outcomes for children will improve. As Ethan’s parents said,
“We shouldn’t be putting children through this… Children deserve to be invested in, they deserve a future”.
I am sure we can all agree that little Ethan definitely did deserve a future.
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
I thank the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for securing this important debate. I begin by sending my sincerest support and sympathy to Ethan’s family and every family involved in the work of Alice’s Arc. Their mission to find a cure and kinder treatment for rhabdomyosarcoma is one that I am sure the whole House can support.
As the hon. Lady rightly mentioned, September was Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and I think I speak for the whole House when I say that our thoughts are with every family touched by childhood cancer, particularly those who have felt the bitter grief of losing a child. I commend the efforts of so many to bring light to the darkest of situations and support families in need, including the hon. Lady, who made such a powerful and emotive speech. I also join her in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for her tireless efforts to improve childhood cancer care.
I want to assure the House and all families affected that cancer services for children are an absolute priority for this Government. Working alongside the NHS, we have three priorities to improve childhood cancer outcomes: improving early diagnosis, delivering more research and driving progress in genomic medicine. Let me take each one in turn.
First, improving early diagnosis will give more children the best chance of beating cancer. The NHS is working to deliver the ambition it set in its long-term plan to diagnose 75% of cancers at stages 1 and 2 by 2028. Achieving that will mean 55,000 more people surviving cancer for five years or more. That is why the Government are investing more than £2.3 billion to transform diagnostics services. Thanks to that investment, we have opened 123 new community diagnostic centres, giving millions of patients the chance to access quicker, more convenient checks outside of hospitals, and we are on track to open 160 CDCs by March 2025.
In this year’s operational planning guidance, NHS England announced £390 million of funding to cancer alliances in each of the next two years to support the operational priorities for cancer treatment capacity. That includes commissioning key services in early diagnosis and supporting systems to develop local cancer plans. We are now expanding direct access to diagnostic scans across all GP practices, helping GPs to recognise cancer symptoms, cutting waiting times and speeding up diagnosis.
Secondly, as the hon. Member for South Shields rightly pointed out, delivering more research is key to understanding the causes of cancer and increasing survival rates further. Over the past five years, the National Institute for Health and Care Research has invested almost £14 million in 38 research projects into childhood cancers. Alongside Cancer Research UK, health Departments across the UK are jointly funding a network of 18 experimental cancer medicine centres, collectively investing more than £35 million between 2017 and 2022.
Our world-leading scientists and clinicians are driving the discovery, development and testing of new treatments. That includes the paediatric network that the National Institute for Health and Care Research co-funds with the Little Princess Trust, which is dedicated to early-phase research on childhood cancers. NHS children’s cancer services are provided by highly specialist principal treatment centres that manage care through multidisciplinary teams across diagnosis, treatment and research, making research breakthroughs available to every child.
Turning to our work to drive progress in genomic medicine, the UK is a world leader in that sector, and cutting-edge research already benefits children with cancer. However, the Government are committed to going further: our priority is ensuring that all children with cancer get access to genomic medicine. The NHS now offers all children with cancer whole-genome sequencing to enable comprehensive and precise diagnosis, along with personalised treatments. In July this year, the Government announced a multi-year partnership agreement with the pharmaceutical giant BioNTech, which will accelerate that company’s clinical trials here in the UK and could provide up to 10,000 patients with personalised cancer immunotherapies by 2030. It will work with NHS England’s new cancer vaccine launchpad to improve access to treatments and trials. This Government will continue to support groundbreaking genomic medicine to give children with cancer the high-quality personalised treatments they deserve.
Children with cancer also deserve a supportive experience in hospital, as do their families. That is why I am pleased that NHS England is working with the Starlight Children’s Foundation charity to review and improve play facilities and guidance to hospital trusts, and we will learn from the first under-16 cancer patient experience survey. More than three quarters of children with cancer said they are looked after very well by healthcare staff, and almost 90% of parents or carers rated the care their child received as eight or more out of 10. That shows what our brilliant cancer workforce does so well, and also where we have more work to do.
Once again, I thank the hon. Member for South Shields for tabling this vitally important debate.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I sense that the Minister is coming to the end of his comments. I have listened carefully to him, but he has largely referred to funding and research into cancers overall. He knows full well that childhood cancers are distinct from adult cancer, so could he offer us any clarity on how much money goes into childhood cancer research, and what the workforce plan is for those specialists working in paediatric cancer?
Will Quince
I am very happy to take both those questions. First, in relation to childhood cancer research specifically, my officials in the Department are working really closely with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to set up an expert roundtable on childhood cancer research. Many trials will be applicable to both adults and children, but by their nature, some will need to be childhood cancer-specific. I welcome that important initiative, which is designed to encourage more research into cancers affecting children.
The Government do not, in effect, commission research directly. Bids are made to NIHR; around £1 billion a year is spent directly on research through NIHR, but it is reliant on those bids. That is why it is so important that we get more bids for research into childhood cancer coming forward.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for his response and also for his clear understanding of the issue. We appreciate his words. On Saturday past, we had our party conference. There were a number of stalls, including for a cancer charity. It has a charter, and at the top of that was a target that 70% of those who have cancer will survive and heal. Can the Minister indicate whether he and his Department have the same ambition to secure 70% of people with cancer surviving and being cured, especially children?
Will Quince
Where I very much agree with my hon. Friend is that research is so much at the heart of this matter. The hon. Member for South Shields asked specifically how much funding is going directly into childhood cancer research, and my understanding is that over the past five years, the National Institute for Health and Care Research specifically has funded 38 projects relating to childhood cancers and has spent just under £14 million on research specifically into childhood cancers. She is absolutely right that children’s cancer risk factors are not very well understood, as this group of cancers is rare and diverse—I think it makes up around 1% of all cancers. That is why the expert roundtable on childhood cancer research is so important, and I will continue to consider with colleagues across the House what more we can do on this important matter to get more bids for funding specifically for research into childhood cancers to come forward.
A handful of months ago, the Government published the NHS long-term workforce plan. Although it does not go into specific detail on speciality or cancer services, we are working closely with cancer charities and others to determine what the requirement would be going forward. To ensure that we get it right, I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady and any others with an interest in this area to feed into the team looking at implementation of the NHS long-term workforce plan.
I again thank the hon. Lady for tabling this vital debate, and I thank all Members who have contributed today. Families who have been affected by childhood cancer have a right to know that the Government and everyone across this House stand with them. I assure the House that improving childhood cancer outcomes is a top priority for this Government and for me personally. I will continue to work with the NHS to ensure faster diagnosis, further and broader research and greater access to groundbreaking treatment. I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the House that we will leave no stone unturned in our mission to beat cancer.
Question put and agreed to.