Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bob Blackman and Guy Opperman

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to support people aged over 50 into work.

[The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)]

The Government’s 50-plus plan and our offer to help older workers return to work are being rolled out. That includes more intensive tailored support for eligible jobseekers, 37 full-time 50-plus champions, delivery of the mid-life MOT in jobcentres, online and with the private sector pilot project, and multiple older worker job fairs up and down the country.

[Guy Opperman]

In common with anybody who is over 40, which I confess to, I think we should support all older workers in whatever shape or form—I certainly want to do so. I particularly recommend the Guildford jobs fair for older workers that is taking place in May, which I know my hon. Friend will try to support and which her constituents should go along to as well.

[Bob Blackman]

I declare an interest in the issue of older workers.

In addition to encouraging people who are 50-plus to get into work, it is also important that employers understand that such people have immense experience and capability to add to their organisations. What more is the Minister going to do to ensure that companies, and all sorts of employers, take the opportunity to employ older workers, as they can provide great benefit to their firms?

[Guy Opperman]

I promised my hon. Friend I would not mention the 6-1 drubbing that his beloved Spurs received from Newcastle United yesterday, albeit that Spurs are obviously looking for a 50-plus manager of quality to go forward.

More seriously, there has been much that employers are doing. I know my hon. Friend’s two local jobcentres in Harrow East are working together with Stanmore College and local employers to try to drive forward older workers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bob Blackman and Guy Opperman

Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)]

I am slightly puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s question. Clearly, we did raise a significant proportion of benefits in line with inflation at the autumn statement. He will also be aware of the taper that was reduced to 55%, and the work on increased work allowances, additional earnings thresholds and the in-work progression—I could go on. All of those things are designed to assist and progress people in work.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

T4. My right hon. Friend will be aware that my private Member’s Bill on supported housing exempt accommodation is making its way through Parliament. He will also have seen the Inside Housing exposé that demonstrates that more than £1 billion is going out in housing benefit to providers. Many of them are providing an important service for vulnerable people, but a large number of rogue landlords are ripping off the system. Will he undertake a review to make sure that people who are claiming this benefit are properly assessed and provided with the support they need?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bob Blackman and Guy Opperman

Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

Any customer with a building society or credit union account will be able to continue to access their benefit or pension payments at a post office, even after the closure of the Post Office card account, including all bank accounts. There is also the ability to open a basic bank account, for which assistance can be given.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

What steps her Department is taking to ensure that welfare benefits for rent are paid to landlords to prevent rental arrears building up.

HEALTH

Debate between Bob Blackman and Guy Opperman

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)

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Northumberland has much that it could teach the rest of Britain. My constituency is home to a vast number of civic groups, charities and volunteer organisations and people who give up their time to get involved, help their communities and improve people’s lives. They are passionate about the place in which they live. From the team in Tarset who organised the first oil-buying groups, pioneered a bastle trail and created the famous Murray henge, to Joan Russell, who runs her fantastic community allotment in Prudhoe, and Tom Martin, who led the creation of a community orchard in Wylam, there is a real sense of engagement, of getting involved and of local people creating the community they want.

Of all the places in the country that would engage in the concept, spirit and actuality of localism, this is the place. Indeed, when the previous Labour Government wanted to get rid of the district councils and move to a single unitary authority, the people robustly said that they would like to keep Tynedale and Castle Morpeth. The Labour Government famously held a consultation, complete with referendum, lost it and pressed on regardless. As a result, we now have Northumberland county council in its current form.

The Conservative party manifesto in 2010 promised specifically that

“people in each neighbourhood will be able to”

choose

“what kind of development they want”.

In 2010, I found that that commitment to localism resonated loud and clear with local voters, who wanted a better kind of local politics. Very rarely if ever do Government know best on local issues. For the first time since Queen Victoria sat on the throne—not dissimilar to you, Mr Deputy Speaker—this Government’s Localism Act 2011 saw real power going from Government back to the people, putting into reverse gear 100 years of centralisation. My simple phrase is: “Trust the people”. The Localism Act 2011 did just that.

Planning is the key aspect of the 2011 Act. It is most welcome for its transformation of the process that people have to deal with. We ripped up the previous top- down regional spatial strategy, which was a Westminster-enforced, target-driven system, which in any event failed to produce any houses, with the lowest house building since 1929. To deliver the change, a local development plan is required from each local authority. The plans will be crucial to deciding planning applications. The Government guidance is that local plans must be in accordance with section 20 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and the national planning policy framework. The only mandate is that the authority must complete a plan. Already, 48 local plans have been adopted since May 2011, and more than 65% of councils in the country have published a plan for public consultation. Those are accompanied by more than 100 smaller neighbourhood plans. The vast city of Manchester, for example, went from start to finish in less than 18 months, finishing in the summer of 2012.

Bob Blackman

- Hansard -

The process of local plans is key for local people participating in democracy. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is quite wrong for any councils to drag their feet on this, postponing the process of getting democracy into planning at a local level?

Guy Opperman

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I entirely agree. It does not really matter which political party is in charge of the local authority. I am criticising Northumberland county council, which happens to be Liberal Democrat in its persuasion, but I would still be criticising it if it were Conservative or Labour. It is a question of competence and leadership, organisation and logistics; it is not about money. Lots of authorities up and down the country have been able to sort this out over an 18-month period—we should bear it in mind that authorities have up to three years to do so. Otherwise, 65% would not have gone down this track.

Everybody knows that the plans have to be completed by spring 2013. Indeed, I was present when the then Communities and Local Government Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), came to Stannington in Northumberland in August 2011 and met NCC planning officers and developers. He stressed the need for NCC planning officers to press on with their plan. It is not as if the local authority has not been warned. It appears certain that Northumberland will now not complete its plan by the March 2013 deadline. I have had that confirmed to me in person by senior councillors and it is an open secret at county hall. Indeed, it appears that the situation is worse: the plan might not be produced and finalised before 2014.

The county council’s failure to deliver the local plan will be an unmitigated disaster for Northumberland. The law is absolutely clear. If a planning authority has an up-to-date local plan, with identified sites to meet five years of objectively assessed need, it has all the powers it needs to resist speculative applications for development. However, if an authority does not have a plan in place or even a draft plan containing an objective assessment of housing needs and identifying five years of developable, deliverable sites, it runs the risk of speculative planning applications from developers and its decisions being overturned on appeal. As the Minister with responsibility for planning, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), told the House on 7 November 2012, an authority with a local development plan has nothing to fear from the Planning Inspectorate.

The Liberal Democrat county council’s failure will, I sadly suggest, be a green light for developers to run amok—in Ponteland, in Darras Hall, in New Ridley, in Ovingham and possibly in the west of Hexham. All those applications are mooted and the list is growing every month. Nor do we have minerals or renewables plans as part of the local development plan. That makes it hard to resist applications to do open-cast mining on green belt land, and our landscape is being affected by the random development of wind farms with little consideration of the cumulative impact.

I am not against development; far from it. I see the need for more houses. I have supported developments at the police headquarters in Ponteland, on the Prudhoe hospital site, and in villages such as Allendale. I must be the chief advocate for house building on the redundant Stannington hospital site. I even brought the developer to Westminster to meet a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government, to try to make it more likely that that development could happen in a sustainable way.

In the past, I have been harsh in my criticism of developers and big business seeking to cash in on the council’s slow progress in delivering a local plan. Perhaps that is just the old socialist in me, but I do not believe that the market always knows best. However, I am all too aware that Northumberland county council is the architect of all our problems. By failing to create a local plan, it is failing Northumberland. I do not blame the staff at county hall, who are as bright and capable as those at any county hall in the land. I do not blame the squeeze on council budgets, as more than 50 other councils have delivered a plan. A comparison with the other authorities shows that that is not the issue. This is an issue of competence, leadership, management and organisation.

The situation is not satisfactory; it is divisive. Worst of all, it creates a sense that democracy is not working, that big business holds all the cards and that the protector of local people’s rights, the local authority, is failing them. I am helping local people all I can, but as the county council is stuck in the slow lane, I must ask the Deputy Leader of the House whether there is anything the Government can do to aid that incompetent administration. How can we ensure that cumulative impact is considered so that applications are not treated in isolation, creating a patchwork quilt of development with no real thought to its impact on local people? How do people challenge developers when local authorities are not prepared to fight challenges to their local decisions which are appealed?

I know that, if we had a local plan, we would have the tools to fight, and the local will to create a sustainable Northumberland, created by the people, for the people, and with appropriate development for the people. The sad fact is that there is a fundamental lack of leadership to drive things forward and get things done. To say that there was better leadership on the Titanic would be unfair—accurate perhaps, but unfair. An expedited plan would provide a way forward. Without one, I fear for my county, and I fear the sense of unfairness that local people will feel. That cannot be good for sustained locally driven development, and it is not good for democracy.