Levelling Up

Bob Seely Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am looking forward to a meeting. I recognise that there are real issues in the Wirral, which I hope we can work together to resolve.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State so much for taking forward the islands forum idea. Sadly, I did not get beyond page 132, because that is where it was. Can he assure us that the forum will give a voice to islands such as the Isle of Wight to be part of the prosperity agenda in education and high-quality jobs, as well as in landscape and seascape protection for some of the most unique and beautiful parts of Great Britain?

Second Homes and Holiday Lets: Rural Communities

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his intervention, which is really helpful and worthwhile. I would say two things. First, we have a desperate lack of affordable private rented accommodation, so we want both social rented houses and houses in the private rented stock. It seems to me that that is clearly the route for the hon. Gentleman’s constituent to go down.

Secondly, possibly the only thing in the coalition agreement that had anything to do with me whatsoever was a commitment to what we called “home on the farm”: the ability, which is still the Government’s stated policy, for farmers to convert underused or semi-used farm buildings into affordable homes for families, but also as part of the wider housing network. These are all small ounces that will help us to shift the problem, and I wish that the hon. Gentleman’s Government in Wales and his Government here would take up these suggestions.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having secured this important debate. It is clear from some of the questions that have been asked, and from what the hon. Gentleman is saying, that this is a complex issue. I will give an example: on the Isle of Wight, the village of Seaview has 82% second home ownership, so it has been effectively stripped out of permanent life, and Bembridge and Yarmouth have similar problems. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a group of us have written to the Secretary of State with over two dozen ideas for how to make the upcoming housing and planning Bill—if it does come—much better and stronger, and give it a much wider base of support? We have put forward recommendations, and some options on second home ownership.

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his helpful contribution, and for his ongoing concern and interest in this issue, which is very laudable indeed. In one sense, this issue is not complex at all. If a person is forced out of their community, it is not slightly complex; it is just bloomin’ tragic. Yes, there is a planning Bill, and I look forward to that. I might feel all sorts of dread about that Bill, but it is an opportunity to do something. However, every single day is an opportunity to do something. The opportunity was two years ago, a year ago, last week and the week before, and the Government do nothing.

The simple reality is that it is not that complex to do things that will shift the dial and save the dales and other rural communities that are being undermined in the way they are. That is what so frustrating to us: there are people from all parties in this Chamber today, and there are other people who would be here on a normal Thursday if it were not this time of year and if there were any votes today. The reality is that we know there is a problem, and we see no action from the Government. Every day that goes by is another day wasted. It is not complex—it is just tragic.

Planning

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the planning system and the upcoming Planning Bill.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummings.

I thank the Minister for being present and Members for taking part in the debate. I am very respectful of the Minister and I do not underestimate the challenges that he faces in changing a complex system. We need sensible reform, but we need to get it right, and it is in that positive spirit that I intend to speak. I will speak for no more than 10 minutes, because I want to get as many people in as possible.

I will reiterate some concerns and, significantly, suggest as many solutions as I can; some have been made by me and some by near 100 Members on the WhatsApp group. I sent those ideas to the Prime Minister and to the Housing Department a few weeks ago for thought, and I look forward to a response. I put forward an approach to planning based on three principles: that it should be community led, levelling-up led and environment led. I commend those to Ministers. First, however, I will outline some concerns.

Reform, I believe, is better than scrapping and starting again. Scrapping threatens to misdiagnose the problem. Nine in 10 planning applications are approved, but only 60% of permissions are built, so there are more than 1 million unbuilt permissions in a decade. The basic fact is that we have a flawed market. The building cartels, which build the majority of homes, restrict supply. That is not a secret; it is in their building model. They act to prevent prices falling. That is why using housebuilding alone, or predominantly, to lower prices will not work.

Furthermore, the standard method damages the levelling-up agenda. That is critical, especially given the Prime Minister’s excellent speech today. Levelling up is a moral and economic imperative. It is also a political imperative for the Government. However, a flawed planning Bill will undermine that levelling-up process. Some red wall colleagues are now beginning to see that.

Knight Frank reported that the current methodology, the standard method,

“systematically disadvantages poorer parts of the country, particularly in the North and Midlands”.

The north has 23% of the nation’s population, but its housing need is estimated at not even 16% of the total, and its share of public expenditure on housing is barely 18% of the total. The housing infrastructure fund spends £115 per head in the east of England and an astonishingly low £4 per head in Yorkshire.

The standard method directs investment away from levelling up communities. It heats up the already hot and it cools down those people who need to be cooking on gas—pardon the analogy. Other people will talk about the potential loss of democracy and other concerns, so I will not dwell too much on them, because I want to focus on one or two specific issues, but it is clear from talking to colleagues that there is much variation in people’s concerns. For some it is green fields and damage to tourism or quality of life, and for others it is suburban density, building height or the absolute absurdity of building on floodplains. For others, it is a system that is simply not delivering affordable homes.

I will say that there is a slight frustration. Opponents of reform—well, opponents of scrapping the system rather than reforming it—are sometimes portrayed as nimbys. On the Island, on the Isle of Wight, we have been yimbys for 50 years—we have been in our backyard. We have increased our population by 50% in 50 years. In that time, the cities of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Blackpool, Birmingham and Stoke have all declined—not relatively declined but declined in absolute percentage and numbers. So when people say that opponents of a developer-led system in the south are nimbys, I respectfully argue that they should acquaint themselves with some basic facts about the history of development that has taken place in this country since world war two. We have barely no new infrastructure on the Isle of Wight, and our key gas supplies, water and electricity interconnectors are already operating at near capacity.

So what are the solutions? I want most of this speech to be positive. I will look at our three principles and suggest perhaps a dozen or 15 ideas in the time I have available. Some of them are community led, some environmentally led and some levelling-upled, but they all gel together to look at ways we can support the Minister in the important work that he is doing, which we want to support.

Our reforms are: first, enshrine the ability to object to individual planning applications; secondly, give greater weight to reforming neighbourhood plans; thirdly, outlaw gazumping. We know that communities with neighbourhood plans accept higher housing allocations because they see what is in it for them. We know that gazumping slows down the market and imposes costs. Good democracy and good law help good development.

On levelling up, there are many things one could say, but I will stick to one. We need to fundamentally reform the standard model and redirect infrastructure funding and house building jobs to levelling-up areas as a deliberate act of policy. Without that, we will have to explain to our voters in a few years’ time why all that infrastructure funding, or so much of it, is going down south, and it will not be a pretty conversation with southern colleagues and voters or red wall and levelling-up communities.

Finally, a series of ideas linked to the environment. We need to end the use of lazy greenfield development. I know Ministers want that, but it would be great if they could want it more. We need a recycling culture in land use. I am aware that some good ideas in the White Paper are about infrastructure levies, but it needs to price in the true cost of using up very valuable rare greenfield land. For many areas I fear that will be a markedly higher price than will be factored into the Bill. We need, in short, to change the economics of land use.

We need a greenfield tax so that money goes into brownfield clean-up in a dedicated way. If we are using, especially in a place such as the Isle of Wight, rare greenfield land, we need to get a greater good out of it than Persimmon’s bottom line. We need to zero-rate brownfield development, encourage it and build in financial incentives, especially for small-scale brownfield in small towns and communities, to make it work.

There are many loopholes that I could suggest closing, but I will not, given the time. I will just say that we need greater powers of compulsory purchase to force people to act more quickly. There are 600 unused and derelict properties on the Isle of Wight. If the Minister wants to get 600 extra properties on the Isle of Wight, he should give the Isle of Wight Council more power. Make it easier for us to enforce action on derelict and unused properties in order to force sale or to force use. Introduce a character test to screen out dodgy developers. If he wants to clean up the system, let him be the sheriff who gets rid of cowboy developers.

Buyers who turn homes—I think this was suggested by a colleague who will be speaking shortly—into Airbnb or holiday homes should be required to apply to councils for change of use. Councils should be allowed to frame localised plans to reverse and lower the percentage of long-term holiday and commercial holiday rentals in specific communities.

We help first-time buyers, so why not last-time sellers with stamp duty exemption? It will cost money. One in five over-65s would be, according to facts and figures, more likely to move. That could affect 2 million people—£900 billion-worth of property. That would free up the market and allow market-driven solutions where there is not market failure. Clearly, there is an element here.

Finally, land banking. If we want to boost supply, we need to create a use-it-or-lose-it rule for permissions within a realistic time bracket. That means more than starting a development by digging a trench six foot by six. Agreeing a start date means agreeing just that and making council tax payable on all plots after a given date, regardless of whether they are built. If the purpose of the Minister’s planning Bill is to help developers, these ideas will not be attractive to many of them, but if its purpose is to get people into homes and to help first-time buyers—I am sure it is—these ideas, and many others suggested by colleagues, will help him produce a markedly better planning Bill, or a planning Bill that is as good and as attractive as we all want it to be.

We need solid principles behind the planning Bill. It should be community led, levelling-up led, and environment led. We need to be sensitive to local democracy. We need a levelling-up agenda that spreads prosperity and hope around our country. To make it environment led, we have to move away from unsustainable, lazy, car-dependent and carbon-inefficient greenfield development, and we need to build for communities and in communities.

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

I ask hon. Members to limit their contributions to around three to four minutes, because I plan to start calling the Front Benchers at 2.38 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate. He is a doughty campaigner for his constituents in the Isle of Wight, and I know that he thinks deeply and for a considerable length of time on these important, and sometimes intricate, planning matters.

I am very happy to look at the proposals that he has written to us about, because we all agree that we want to get our planning reforms right. We also all agree, including representatives from Shelter and KPMG, that we need more homes in our country. Both organisations will say that we need to build north of 250,000 new homes a year in our country to address our housing challenges. However, the present planning system, with all the plans calculated as a total, represents less than 180,000 new homes planned each year, so we do need to build more homes in the right places, and of the right quality, to serve our constituents. That is why we launched two consultations last year; that is sometimes, I think, forgotten. We launched the consultation on planning reform, because yes, we do want there to be more homes, but we also want a planning system that is more transparent, more predictable, easier to navigate and more speedy and that delivers good-quality, well designed homes. That is what we intend to achieve through our planning White Paper and the reforms that we will introduce later this year, and also a White Paper on local housing need in order to ensure that local authorities are planning for 300,000 homes each year. But the LHN—local housing need—number is not binding and is not an end to the process; it is a beginning point from which local authorities can then identify constraints, if they have them, or opportunities, if they want them, to build fewer or more homes than their target local housing need. The green belt is one example that local authorities can use as a constraint on building.

What is important is that local authorities keep their local plans up to date, because if they do not, they expose their constituents—all our constituents—to speculative development from applications that come forward, which the Planning Inspectorate will give great weight to if the local authorities do not have a plan, and do not have control of their local housing supply. I have to tell you, Mrs Cummins, that the local authorities in York, Gateshead, South Lakeland, and Bath and North East Somerset have plans that are out of date. They need to get them “in date” in order to protect their constituents from speculative developments. I say gently to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) that it is little use lecturing me about planning; what she should be doing is encouraging her local authority to get its plan in place and protect her constituents from speculative development.

We are keen to build a planning system that works for the 21st century and that moves faster than the present glacial pace of planning. It takes local plans seven years in many cases—on average—to be instituted. It then takes five years for many planning applications to see a spade in the ground. It is taking far too long. The process needs to be speeded up. But crucially, it needs to engage more people. That is a point that I know my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight has mentioned and that my hon. Friends for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) have also raised as an issue. Right now, sometimes as little as 1% of the local population in a planning authority area gets engaged in plan making. That rises to a whopping 2% or 3% when it comes to individual applications. And as we have heard, nine out of 10 planning applications—90%—are passed anyway. That is not particularly empowering; it is not particularly engaging. We want to do better.

[Bob Seely]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way in a moment to my hon. Friend, but I am conscious, if I may say so, that I have a lot of questions to answer that he and others have asked and he does get a second bite of the cherry later.

We do need to ensure that more people are engaged, and we believe that by digitising the planning process, by creating map-based plans of local areas, we can engage many more people in the planning process, and they can get more engaged up front, making real decisions about the sorts of buildings that they want in their local geographies—the densities and the designs—and about the infrastructure to support those homes. That is real power, given to people much earlier in the process, so that they can become much more engaged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I think that I am describing exactly that process. We want more people to be involved and we want them to have a say earlier on about specific matters that should concern them, including what areas may be sites for accelerated development in their areas and what the designs, the design codes and the infrastructure should be. I think that is deliberative democracy.

[Bob Seely]

I am not for one second trying to catch the Minister out, but at the beginning of the White Paper the Prime Minister said that he wanted to tear the system down and rebuild it. We are now evolving into a reform process rather than a scrapping process, as part of the very sensible evolution and listening process. Is that correct?

[Christopher Pincher]

As I said, we want to reform the system. If my hon. Friend listens to what I have said and to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, he will know that we are keen to make sure that we have a process that reforms our planning system, which is outdated and needs change. However, we are not proposing to scrap it, to use the term that he used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely]

I thank you very much, Mrs Cummins, for your contribution and for keeping order. I thank everyone for taking part in this debate, and I thank the Minister. I am sorry that he does not have a copy of my letter; I will send it immediately. I just highlight the greenfield tax, the windfall taxes and the many other great ideas from myself and other colleagues in it. Finally, I am glad to see that we are moving from scrapping the system to reforming it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of the planning system and the upcoming Planning Bill.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I note what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said about second homes, because we have a similar problem on the Isle of Wight.

I genuinely wish the Secretary of State and Ministers well on this issue. Our planning reforms should be community led, levelling-up led and environment led, and it would be great to see even more evidence of that, if at all possible. Communities help development to happen, as long as they can shape it. One initial study has shown that places with neighbourhood plans accept more development. Therefore, working with communities gets better results than treating them as the planning equivalent of a foie gras goose, with ever more housing shoved down them. Stripping away democracy, at whatever level, should be avoided by a Conservative Government.

When it comes to levelling up, I believe that the standard method is still a problem at the heart of this matter, and many red wall colleagues are beginning to realise this. In the words of one expert report, the current housing methodology

“systematically disadvantages poorer parts of the country, particularly in the North and Midlands”.

Simply put, we are actively depriving the red wall of investment, because the construction jobs, the infrastructure jobs and the household spend jobs all come down to the south-east. If this process continues reductio in absurdum, like some planning wheel of doom, it is a road to nowhere. We need a better system. I hope the Minister will take that and what others are saying here to heart.

As one of my hon. Friends said earlier, we need a recycling agenda. I suggest that the Secretary of State puts at the heart of that a tax on greenfield sites, to recognise the true cost of greenfield, and the money should go into major campaigns—a massive process—of cleaning up brownfield. It is a disgrace that 70% of finishes on the Isle of Wight are on greenfield. Why, when we have 35 potential brownfield sites? We need to do more with greenfield in the way of taxing it, then spending the money on brownfield. There are many more ideas, and I will be writing to the Minister this week about this, because it is such an important problem. We need to do more to prevent land banking, to ensure legal priority for brownfield and to provide more powers for compulsory purchase. We have 600 empty homes on the Isle of Wight. If the Minister wants to do something to help us on the Island, let the council compulsorily purchase long-term empty buildings and we will take 600 people straight off our housing list.

We need to get our planning right. Surely we have reached the end of using unsustainable, car-dependent, low-density greenfield sites. Our reliance on them must come to an end. We need clear principles, and I recommend these to the Secretary of State: planning should be community-led, environment-led, and levelling-up-led.

Land Banking

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My message to all local authorities that do not have up-to-date local plans is: “Move as quickly as you can. If you do not, you do your constituents a disservice, because you leave them open to speculative development based on the presumption of sustainable development. It means you cannot protect your land, or support the communities that live on or around it, because you do not have a plan in place.”

Home building statistics show that in 2019 to 2020 there were nearly 244,000 net additional homes, including 220,000 new build homes. That is the highest annual increase for 30 years. The 2020 housing delivery test measurement, which we published in January, shows that around two thirds of local authorities have risen to the challenge and are supporting the delivery of the homes they need. The other third need to follow suit.

My hon. Friend referred to empty homes. I am pleased that the number of long-term empty homes has fallen by more than 30,000 since 2010. We have given councils powers and strong incentives to tackle long-term empty homes, including the power to increase council tax on them by up to 300% and to take over the management of them. Councils also receive the same new homes bonus for bringing an empty home back into use as for building a new one. It is probably worth mentioning that not all empty homes are habitable without some significant expenditure, or are in places where people need and want to live, but he raises an important point. I hope that I have demonstrated the Government’s commitment to getting appropriate empty homes back into use.

My hon. Friend also mentioned infrastructure. If we are to build new homes, we must have good infrastructure to support them. We recognise the crucial role that infrastructure plays in supporting new communities and improving neighbourhoods. Our manifesto committed to amending planning rules to ensure that the right infrastructure is in the right place before people take the step of moving into their homes. That is why we announced the national home building fund in the 2020 spending review.

The fund brings together existing housing, land and infrastructure funding streams into a single, flexible, more powerful pot, ensuring that roads, GP surgeries and schools are ready for people moving into new neighbourhoods, and driving an increase in supply in the areas of greatest need over the long term. At the next spending review, we will set out our proposals for the future of the national home building fund, to deliver on the Government’s commitment to invest £10 billion to unlock homes through the provision of infrastructure. That is on top of the £7.1 billion that we have already allocated, which we believe will unlock 860,000 new homes.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Government’s commitment to building back better after the pandemic and the importance of protecting the environment. Through the national planning policy framework, we have made it clear that planning policies and decisions should minimise the effects on biodiversity from development, protect our most sensitive habitats and provide net gains. That means that opportunities to incorporate biodiversity improvements in and around developments should be sought, especially where they can secure measurable net gains for biodiversity.

We intend to go further: 2021 will be a landmark year for environmental policy because in November we will host the UN climate change conference in Glasgow. Our Environment Bill will be a pivotal part of delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment to create the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth. We will make provision for a mandatory 10% of biodiversity net gain improvements for a range of developments, including house building. That will ensure that future developments result in measurable enhancements to nature, strengthening the biodiversity of our environment overall. We will also give new powers to local authorities to tackle air pollution in their areas.

My hon. Friend made important reference to the green belt, and our priority as a Government is to continue to protect the status of our green-belt land. We stand by our manifesto commitment:

“In order to safeguard our green spaces, we will continue to prioritise brownfield development, particularly for the regeneration of our cities and towns.”

We are clear that green-belt land should be considered for release only if an authority can fully evidence that it has examined all other reasonable options for meeting its development needs.

In addition, the national planning policy framework makes it clear that there should be no approval of inappropriate development in the green belt, including most forms of new building, except in very exceptional circumstances, as determined by the local authority. That means that the authority should use as much brownfield land as possible, optimise development densities and co-ordinate with neighbouring authorities to accommodate development.

We are committed to working with local authorities to turn old, disused brownfield land back into use for vibrant, exciting new places, levelling up for communities across the country. We have announced a package of measures that sets a new and far-reaching cross-government strategy to build more homes, protect and enhance the environment and create growth opportunities across the country. It includes: our home building fund, providing £2 billion of funds to support often SMEs in the delivery of larger, mostly brownfield sites through loans for infrastructure and site preparation; and £2.9 billion to support small and medium-sized enterprises, custom builders and construction innovators to build housing, including on brownfield land.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend, because I have not got very long left and I appreciate he has only just arrived in the Chamber. If he will forgive me, I will continue.

Additionally, we have made available £400 million in brownfield housing funding, which has been allocated to seven mayoral combined authorities, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South, enabling around 26,000 new homes across the region—brownfield site homes. He asked me what we can do to encourage Mayor Burnham to build the right homes in the right places in the right way. I point him to the investment we are making in the combined authority in Manchester to ensure we are unlocking the opportunity to build homes on brownfield sites and not greenfield or green-belt sites, which people understandably want to see preserved.

My hon. Friend has spoken passionately and eloquently in support of his constituents in this, his very first Adjournment debate. I congratulate him again on securing it and being such a champion for his constituents. I hope it is clear to him and to others that the Government are committed to delivering a planning system that is fit for purpose and that works for everyone.

The Gracious Speech announced that the Government will bring forward a planning Bill in the current Session of Parliament. We are working hard with our stakeholders, and with colleagues across the House and in the other place, to make sure that we get the Bill right. We want to hear people’s views. We want to ensure that we refine our proposals in such a way that we introduce legislation that works for everyone in our country and provides the right homes that the country needs. It will be a Bill that gets more infrastructure built, that will modernise the planning system and that will bring the entire system—more democratic, more engaging—into the 21st century. It will propose simpler and faster processes, giving communities and developers much more certainty over what development goes where, what it looks like and what the infrastructure should be, and ensuring that developers have to contribute their fair share to funding affordable homes.

Our reforms will empower local people to set standards for beauty and design in their area through design codes that put beauty at the heart of our system. We want to grow the supply, boost affordability and unlock opportunity, and to do so for every community in every region in our United Kingdom. I am very pleased to be able to say those words and to commend my hon. Friend for his debate.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and many of the policies we are pursuing are UK-wide. They include, for example, the mortgage guarantee that is enabling young people to get on the housing ladder with 95% mortgages, which will benefit his constituents as much as it will benefit mine. Through these schemes—such as the 95% mortgages, our reformed and more consumer-friendly model of shared ownership, and the Help to Buy equity loan—we are helping more people on to the ladder. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), the First homes scheme will ensure that there are 30% discounts for first-time buyers, those on low incomes and key workers such as our NHS and social care workers, veterans and young police officers to get the keys to their own property.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

We all want to see more affordable homes, and we badly need them on the Isle of Wight. Why are we not doing more to free up the 1 million homes—planning applications for properties—that have been landbanked by developers? This is a massively quick win. What can we do about it?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will come to that point in a moment, if I may, because the good news is that the planning reform Bill does that as well. We are not divided on this issue; we are united. We want a better planning system, and we want planning applications that are granted to be built out as quickly as possible. The Bill will achieve both of those objectives.

But again, just as no reasonable person could contest the fact that we need to build more homes, no reasonable person could argue that we are going to achieve those aspirations through the demand-side interventions that this Government have been pursuing alone. However significant those are—even though we have now given the keys to the 300,000th property purchased under Help to Buy—and however beneficial those schemes are to people across the country, we also need to tackle the supply side of this challenge, and we are doing that.

Last year alone, more homes were delivered—244,000—than in any year in my lifetime. Were it not for the pandemic, more would have been delivered than at any time since Harold Macmillan stood at this Dispatch Box as Housing Secretary. To put these numbers into perspective, under the last Labour Government, in one year work began on just 95,000 homes—the lowest peacetime level since the 1920s. Behind these numbers and targets, the millions of ordinary working people trying to achieve their dream of getting on the property ladder are being frustrated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend touches on the litmus test for our reforms. Each and every one of our reforms must help small and medium-sized builders to prosper, so that small builders in every one of our constituencies, local entrepreneurs and the people who depend on them, from plumbers to brickies, benefit from the reforms, creating a more diverse and competitive industry. Everyone can be assured that it is in their interests that we are working day and night in my Department, not for the big volume housebuilders. They have the money to navigate the current system; they hire the best QCs and consultants; they love the current planning system. It is the little guy whose side we are on and that is why we are committed to reforming the system.

[Bob Seely]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way again. We all agree on the principles. My worry is that by saying we have to scrap the current system, we simply create a whole host of new problems. By reforming the system and improving it, which does need to be done, we have a much better chance of the Government achieving their goals, rather than a big bang with all the unforeseen consequences.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has not seen the Bill yet. When he does, I hope he will be reassured and converted into an enthusiastic supporter of it. He and I are going to meet in the coming days, and I hope I will be able to reassure him that this is not about casting aside the good, but about reforming and building on it so that we can have the planning system we all deserve.

The principles behind our planning reform are simple. This will be good news for smaller developers, and everything that we do is designed to assist them. It will move the last paper-based system into the digital age, with interactive maps at our fingertips. It will get more local people—more than the 3% who currently engage with plan making—actively engaged and interested in what a local plan is. It will return planning to the social and moral mission that it began as, inspiring plans for the future of a local area, not simply paper-pushing and development management.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).

On principle, we need a planning agenda that is community-led, levelling up-led, flexible, thoughtful and environmental. If the planning Bill is about those values, I will support it; those values are good Conservative aims and I recommend them to Ministers and their special advisers. However, I have a couple of caveats. I do not believe that Ministers have made the case for why we need to scrap the current system rather than reform it. We are better off improving what we have. To seek revolutionary change rather than evolutionary change is un-Conservative and more likely to result in failed policy, unforeseen outcomes and, frankly, disenfranchised and irritated constituents.

Specifically, when it comes to the plan to strip away local democracy in individual planning applications, there is going to be considerable disquiet. The plan threatens to give our opponents throughout England a rallying cry of “Save local democracy from the Tories”. That is a very bad position for us to be in. The system is already weighted far too much in favour of developers.

Let me give an unfortunate example from the Island. AEW, a multibillion-pound property firm, bought a site, Ryde ice rink, a few years ago. The firm fell out with the community group that was using it, kicked them out and finished skating on the Island, meaning all the kids have had to go to the mainland. AEW’s tactics have been to sweat our council to allow a change of use—it has gamed the system to make more money by achieving a change of use. Its behaviour has been utterly wretched—the firm is little more than white-collar bully boys who care little about Ryde, my community and the Island more generally. When asked to do something about it, the firm boasts about its exceptionally expensive lawyers—it is part boast, part legal intimidation of Isle of Wight Council and, presumably, me. Under the current system, as imperfect and in need of reform as it is, we can fight these dreadful, arrogant people, in the hope that they will eventually give up, get fed up when they do not get change of use and, frankly, go forth and multiply. I am genuinely worried that under the new system communities like Ryde will not have a voice in what is happening to the property—especially significant property—in their patch, and it is ethically questionable companies like AEW that will profit.

Many Government Members and, I am sure, Opposition Members have a lot of ideas, and I strongly advise the Government and Ministers to engage with us, because we are only too keen to come up with workable ideas that get the planning Bill through and deliver for our communities. In the one minute I have remaining, I will rattle through some of those ideas.

As the excellent Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, we must introduce a “use it or lose it” system for land-banking, because 1 million land-banked properties is a scandal. Secondly, for future development, there must be a meaningful start-by date or the developer loses permission to build. They must start paying council tax on a given date in the future, and if they have not built the properties, they must pay the council tax anyway.

Thirdly, if we are serious about our environmental agenda, we must lift VAT on brownfield sites and slap VAT on greenfield sites. We can then use the VAT from greenfield sites to equal out the equation, equal out the economics, equal out the true environmental and social costs and double down on brownfield sites. Fourthly, we must give councils more permission to make compulsory purchases. There are 600 long-term empty properties on the Isle of Wight alone; we could be using every single one of those. Fifthly, we must provide a legal requirement for brownfield sites.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s constituency is not an area that I know well, but could he tell me what realistic prospects there are for young people to buy their own home there?

[Bob Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am aware of what you just said about timing, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will go on for no more than another 30 seconds. There is not enough—we badly need affordable development, and that is what I want to see on the Island. What we do not need is speculative, low-density greenfield development that is not built for Islanders but is built for second home owners, is bad for our community and is dreadful for our visitor economy.

Seventhly, we must ban, except in exceptional circumstances, low-density greenfield development. Let us close speculative loopholes that allow people to game the system and introduce a character test that is applicable for planning applications. Out of respect to others, I will leave it there.

Local Government Finance (England)

Bob Seely Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I will not take up too much time. First, I thank Ministers for the excellent work they have done over covid. We on the Isle of Wight have had an additional £100 million in the course of the past year in loans and grants to support businesses and individuals, and that money has flowed pretty quickly through the Isle of Wight Council. I am very grateful for the Isle of Wight chief exec, the council leader and, in fact, the entire team on the Island, who have done a great job.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) for his attention to this matter and, indeed, the entire ministerial team, because I talk to them quite a bit on this issue. As he knows, we have been in discussions about the fair funding formula in regard to the Isle of Wight. It was mentioned in the fair funding formula review specifically as an island, recognising the potential additional costs, and that is the first time, as far as I can see, in modern local government history that the Isle of Wight has been recognised as an island. That is an important moment for us, and I am grateful to the Ministers who have been dealing with that, including the Chancellor when he was in a previous job.

It is hugely frustrating that the fair funding formula has been put on hold. We completely understand the reasons why. Clearly Ministers are acting in good faith when they say they have had to put it on hold because of the covid crisis, and they will look to get back to instigating that fair funding formula as soon as possible. Having talked to the Minister just this morning, I understand why we cannot tinker with the current system. Indeed, it would probably be illegal and open to challenge if they tried to do so and apply some additional fair funding formula to the Island now. I am grateful for what the Minister agreed this morning, which was a funding package that will be used for research to be conducted by Whitehall—by his Ministry—and the Isle of Wight Council to investigate the true additional costs of providing public services on the Island.

I know that the Minister is aware of the work of the University of Portsmouth, but I fully accept that, in order for the Government to make sure that they are spending taxpayers’ money wisely, it is right and proper that they commission additional work. Let me remind the Minister that the University of Portsmouth found three reasons why additional costs were needed to provide public services on the Island that are of the same standard as those on the mainland. First, there is the lack of spill-over of public services. For example, we cannot share a fire engine with Portsmouth until somebody designs a fire engine that can float on water, because we are separated from the mainland. Secondly, there are additional costs of providing services to communities on an island. There are not only additional transport costs, but issues arising from economies of scale, which mean that care home providers on the mainland may not necessarily want to set up on the Isle of Wight. Thirdly, there is the perceived separation factor that may prevent skilled workers either moving to the Island from the mainland or, indeed, moving from the Island to the mainland.

I am very grateful for the discussion that we had this morning and for the Minister’s promise of funding. I think that it showed great diligence and also creative thinking on his part. There is one thing that I should have asked him this morning. If we show that there are additional costs, which there undoubtedly are, and those are caused by our separation by sea, and the aim of the fair funding formula is actually to be fair, will the Government give me a commitment, within reason, that, if those additional costs are identified in the research that will be done by his Department and the council, those additional costs will be met? In terms of his budget, we are not talking about large sums of money. Even a few million pounds in additional costs would be very valuable for the Isle of Wight and for our local government, which is the smallest unitary authority. I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who opened this debate that this is about fairness. If we cannot provide the same level of services as the mainland because of the additional costs of being an island, it is obviously important for those additional costs to be met.

I have one final point, which is partly relevant to the relationship with my right hon. Friend’s Ministry, but also with others. If the Government want to treat the Isle of Wight as being part of the mainland, they need to provide a fixed link. We are very happy being an island, but the dynamic of islands is different from that of the mainland. If we are given targets that effectively treat us as part of the mainland—be it for housing or for anything else—there is an understanding potentially that the Government need to connect us with the mainland. If we are not connected to the mainland, the Government need to understand that there is an island dynamic, which has an impact on us as a society but also on us economically.

For example, we have an unavoidably small hospital on the Isle of Wight. We need a hospital, because we do not have a fixed link to the mainland, but that hospital is not as economically viable as other district general hospitals, because our population size is different from that using other district general hospitals. That is just a generalised plea to this Minister and also to the Government that islands have to be treated and understood as islands. None the less, I am delighted and very grateful to the Minister for his call this morning and the agreement that we will have, I think, £50,000 to work on research to make sure that the Government are satisfied that the additional costs that we talk about on the Island are genuine and should therefore be a matter for public support.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for all his work and that of his Committee over the year. He is right to say that the figures we quote of an up to 4.5% real-terms cash increase in core spending power are dependent on the choices that local councils make in the weeks and months ahead, but one would expect that; local councils and the local democratic process will have to balance up the competing interests of providing public services and ensuring that hard-working people are not facing excessive increases in local council tax, and those will be different judgments in different parts of the country.

I will of course keep the covid costs being incurred by local councils under review. We have made good on our promises time and again since the start of the pandemic. Early in the pandemic, the Local Government Association came before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee and estimated that costs incurred by local councils would be around £10 billion. We are going to end this financial year having provided local councils with, I suspect, about £10 billion, and we are providing further billions of pounds into next year. So we can see the Government’s commitment and determination to support local councils.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) [V]]

First, I wish to thank the Minister for his decision on the housing algorithm, the statement today, and the very significant work that he, his Ministers, the Department and indeed the Isle of Wight Council has done during the pandemic, which has been vital. In the fair funding review, the Government for the first time recognised the additional cost of providing public services on the Isle of Wight— in effect, they recognised the Island as an island, and I am grateful for that. For understandable reasons, due to the covid pandemic, the review was put on hold. Does he accept that this delay has prevented Isle of Wight Council, despite its undoubted best efforts, from supporting Islanders to the same extent that mainland councils can support their residents? Finally, will he meet me and my local council to discuss funding these additional costs, as part of a consultation process and prior to the local government financial settlement for 2021-22?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend and the leader of his local council, as would, I am sure, the Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall). I do not agree that the Isle of Wight has lacked the resources to respond to the pandemic; from what I have seen it has done a sterling job. The Isle of Wight has had significant amounts of additional support, and total covid-19 funding for the council so far has been £20.3 million. We have also provided support for the local business community amounting to £48 million, which has been brilliantly dispensed by my hon. Friend’s local council, supporting 4,500 small and medium-sized businesses on the Isle of Wight. I am pleased that my hon. Friend supports yesterday’s announcement on the local housing need question and that he will get on and build more homes on the Isle of Wight in the years ahead.

Planning and House Building

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Government’s levelling up agenda and supports appropriate housing development and the Government’s overall housing objectives; further welcomes the Government’s consultation, Planning for the Future, updated on 6 August 2020, as a chance to reform housing and land use for the public good; welcomes the Government’s commitment to protect and restore the natural environment and bio-diversity; and calls on the Government to delay any planned implementation of the changes to the standard method for assessing local housing need proposed by the Government’s consultation, Changes to the Current Planning System, published on 6 August 2020, and Proposal 4 of the Government’s consultation, Planning for the Future, on a standard method for establishing housing requirement, until this House has had the opportunity to hold a debate and meaningful vote on their introduction.

I speak in support of the motion, which is supportive of the Government’s aims overall but requests that the new algorithm, process and formula should not be introduced without a meaningful parliamentary vote, I assume in a Bill next year.

In our manifesto, we promised to level up and connect the country so that everyone can get a fair share of future prosperity. If levelling up means anything, it surely implies an integrated plan for infrastructure, jobs and housing to revive overlooked northern and midland towns and to stop the endless drift of jobs and opportunities to the south, the shires and the suburbs. I support levelling up 100%, but broadly speaking, the danger in the way the new targets have been shaped is that the biggest housing increases will be in rural shires and suburbs, and the biggest falls will be in the urban north and midlands. The worst of all worlds would be to hollow out our cities, urbanise our suburbs and suburbanise the countryside, yet I fear that that is what we might accidentally achieve. That is not levelling up; it is concreting out, hence this debate.

The figures I will be quoting from the House of Commons Library show that in rural and suburban England, excluding cities, the new algorithmic process demands an additional 772,072 homes—more than three quarters of a million—or more than 100 new towns of 7,000 souls. The new total for shire England, minus the cities, is 1,513,529 properties, or more than 200 new towns. Both those figures are underestimates, in that, for example, they do not include Dorset, Cornwall or the Isle of Wight. So over 15 years, compared with current agreed local plans, rural and suburban Gloucestershire will see an additional 29,000 homes, taking the total to 54,000; rural and suburban Surrey will see an extra 45,000, creating a new target of 84,000; and in rural and suburban Northamptonshire, an extra 26,000 will take the total to 72,000.

However, while the suburbs and countryside see dramatic rises, the numbers for the cities, where there are already infrastructure and services, will fall. For example, over 15 years, against the current standard method, Manchester falls by 14,000 over 15 years, but Cheshire East rises by 10,000; Nottingham city falls by 3,700 while Nottinghamshire rises by 25,000, and Southampton falls by 2,500 while Hampshire rises by 26,000 to 115,000 overall. Targets for Liverpool and Newcastle are 48% and 56% lower than their current building rates, and 30 local planning authorities in the north have targets lower than their current building rates.

We have shrinking targets in cities and rocketing targets in shires. The glaring exception to that urban free pass is London, which sees astonishing rises against local plans over a 15-year period. Westminster’s housing requirement is up 438%; Barnet sees an additional 50,000 properties, Bromley 27,000 and Hillingdon 21,000.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

My constituency of Kensington sees a seven-times increase relative to the December 2019 proposed London plan. While we all want to see more housing, does my hon. Friend agree that targets need to be achievable and realistic?

[Bob Seely]

If the targets are unrealistic, it will cause grief for no purpose, so I thank my hon. Friend for her remark.

In the last three London boroughs that I mentioned—Barnet, Bromley and Hillingdon—alone, the algorithmic process demands a total of 153,938 new properties, or the equivalent of 20 small new towns in three London boroughs. I am sure the Minister and I would agree that we need to increase density to make better use of land, but we need our targets to be achievable.

All this is being done for the absolutely laudable reason of affordability. That is exceptionally important, but the Royal Town Planning Institute says that increases in house building do not necessarily have a discernible impact on price. The why is complex; developer choice, foreign investment purchases, stamp duty and slow wage growth all play a role, but, above all, land banking may show why the liberalisation of permission does not necessarily equal more supply.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I praise my hon. Friend for the work he has done on this; the Isle of Wight is incredibly lucky to have him as its MP. Will he consider that we have a million permissions unbuilt in England and we have failing councils, such as in Eastleigh borough, which I represent a part of, that still do not have a local plan in place. Should we not be looking there as one of the ways of trying to get to the 300,000—an absolutely right figure and a manifesto commitment—before we start some of the destruction he talks about?

[Bob Seely]

I am just coming to that point. The 10 largest developers control 70% of supply. They withhold land to inflate value; while 80% of residential permissions are granted, half remain unbuilt and 900,000 permissions, as my hon. Friend says, are outstanding. If just 10% of those were finished every year, the Government would be close to or on target. That raises two critical questions. First, is the problem with the system, or with the building firms that are abusing it, maybe because of the foolish laws being put in place? Secondly, do we need to scrap the current system and potentially face the law of unintended consequences, or do we need to reform it?

I think the Minister and I can both agree that the market is failing first-time buyers. The answer is not greenfield sprawl or unachievable targets, but a new generation of community-based, affordable housing, accompanied by creative rent-to-buy schemes accessible to first-time buyers in existing communities, whether in city, suburb or countryside.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the detailed work he has done and the figures he has shared. Does he agree that this is not about the national figure, which many Members on this side of the House fully support and want to see built, but that the test of any good planning system is whether it reflects the true geography of an area and fully takes into account the need to protect things such as national parks, to take care of floodplains and the inability to build on them, and to make full use of brownfield land?

[Bob Seely]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and I agree wholeheartedly.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he has done supporting communities such as mine in Totnes in south Devon. He talks about the need for a plan to be reasonable, but it also has to be realistic for our communities. He has also just mentioned engaging communities and ensuring that there is a community spirit about the way in which we develop. It was our party that pushed forward the idea of neighbourhood plans, and neighbourhood plans must be enshrined in the development of housing across the country.

[Bob Seely]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention.

I will now make a few brief points about my constituency. The Government tell rural England that it needs to do its bit, and the Isle of Wight has a story that is similar to many others. Since 1960, the population of our beautiful small Island has grown by 50%—not 15%, but 50%. In the same period, the populations of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Stoke-on-Trent have all declined, not relatively but in absolute terms. The message from many parts of Britain is that we have been doing our bit for decades, and levelling up is about other people now doing theirs. The new standard methodology simply does not make sense for the Island. It is based on local income calculations, but housing demand in my patch, and others, is driven by other factors—in my case, the migration of retirees from across Britain.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, particularly because he emphasises the localism that comes into question. Areas such as the Isle of Wight are distinct. Kent is also distinct. Does he agree that local control exercised by local councillors at county, district and borough level is exactly where this should lie?

[Bob Seely]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend. The good folks who retire to the Isle of Wight use assets. They use cash from house sales, not income, to buy. Therefore, affordability criteria based on income make little sense and artificially inflate our housing need by 70%. Our targets have little to do with our need. The indigenous population of the Isle of Wight is expected to decline by 11,000. Official figures show that all our population growth until 2034 will come from those who are 65-plus, either indigenous or retirees. It is great that we have retirees—don’t get me wrong—and I look forward to being one, one day. However, the demographic imbalance damages our society as well as our economy. For the first time in 50 years, we need the White Paper to prioritise Islanders, young and old, and not primarily to build for a mainland retirement market. I have yet to meet a single Islander who disagrees with that agenda.

We face exceptional housing constraints. We have our own housing industry. As a legal baseline, our housing industry can build 200 to 250 units a year. We have managed 350 units in the past few years—not affordable, and almost all on low-density greenfield estates that damage our tourism economy. The Government might as well be asking us to lead a moon landing programme, for all our ability to deliver either the current targets or the new ones. We are being set up for failure, and like other Members, I find that difficult to accept. If the Minister wishes to build for young Islanders, I will show him where and how to build, and I will tell him what we need. The answer is not low-density greenfield sprawl, or the numbers demanded. The Isle of Wight Council and I are at one on that.

Time prevents me from going into other reasons such as infrastructure, all of which are made worse by the Island’s electricity, sewerage, water supply and hospitals, which are under pressure. In 40 years, we have had a 50% increase in population, and we had have half a mile of dual carriageway, and some cash last year to tinker with the wrong roundabout in Newport. Our 1938 rolling stock on Network Rail will now be upgraded to stock from 1970, which I suppose is modernity of a sort.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I am sorry to have two bites of the cherry, but—

[Anthony Mangnall]

Fine, Mr Speaker, but my hon. Friend is making an important point about the need for infrastructure. Our manifesto said that it would be “infrastructure first”.

[Bob Seely]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, as well as you, Mr Speaker. In general, whether we represent suburbs or national parks, islands or cities, there is worth in the beauty of nature and place. We cannot keep ramming in housing without damaging our stewardship of the world. We must think long term, and not just until the next election. The poet Tennyson and the painter Turner did not come to the Island because it was convenient; they came because it was beautiful and it inspired them. That is one reason why the Island is an UNESCO biosphere reserve. Our beauty has an economic as well as a moral value. Visitors spend half a billion pounds a year on the Island, and the greater the urban sprawl in the name of random algorithmic targets, the greater the damage to our economy, our quality of life and the intrinsic worth of our landscape and natural beauty. I fear that long-term overdevelopment in some parts of Britain is now destroying the things we love.

As I am keen to get as many other people in as possible, I am just going to make a couple of points on the White Paper, but I will speak for no more than another three minutes or so. There is good stuff in the White Paper, but I fear the Government have not made the case for why the current system should be scrapped, as opposed to reformed. What are the unintended consequences here, and is the way to stop building firms land banking to give them more land with which to land bank? I am not quite sure that that makes sense.

Here are some ideas that a Conservative Government should follow, in my humble opinion. They should stick to the levelling up agenda; if not, shire Tories will be furious and red wall Tories betrayed. They should legally exhaust brownfield sites before greenfield is allowed; give communities the right to ban low density greenfield development; strengthen, not weaken community engagement; respect the rural, suburban and, indeed, city natures of a place; and develop a plan-led system. Above all, we need to change the incentives. If the Minister wants a sustainable future, let us be radical: put VAT on greenfield sites and provide financial incentives for brownfield sites; make developers pay council tax on undeveloped plots—that will get them focused; incentivise small developers to build out small plots or build above shops, where there is much more popular support for unused buildings; free up Government land for large-scale projects, but let us make it beautiful and respect the work done by Sir Roger Scruton and others; and, potentially in London, tighten the rules on foreign buyers who leave property empty and ban offshore shell purchases.

The White Paper needs to herald an era of sustainable, greener development in significantly greater harmony with the world around us. I hope this will not be a missed opportunity, and for that reason I support this supportive motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely]

I read this morning that this was going to be a traditionalist rant, but actually it has been a very thoughtful debate, as we are trying to balance the needs of constituents and the needs of the environment with new housing. There is a clear message from this House, which I hope the Minister has heard from almost every single Government Member. My hon. Friends the Members for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), for East Devon (Simon Jupp), for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) would also like to state their support for this motion. If we get this wrong, we will do a great deal of harm, not just politically but environmentally, economically and socially. If we get this right, we can do a great deal of good, and I do not think we are there yet. I hope the Government will take that on board. I thank the Minister for his time.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the Government’s levelling up agenda and supports appropriate housing development and the Government’s overall housing objectives; further welcomes the Government’s consultation, Planning for the Future, updated on 6 August 2020, as a chance to reform housing and land use for the public good; welcomes the Government’s commitment to protect and restore the natural environment and bio-diversity; and calls on the Government to delay any planned implementation of the changes to the standard method for assessing local housing need proposed by the Government’s consultation, Changes to the Current Planning System, published on 6 August 2020, and Proposal 4 of the Government’s consultation, Planning for the Future, on a standard method for establishing housing requirement, until this House has had the opportunity to hold a debate and meaningful vote on their introduction.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will suspend for three minutes for Members to exit safely and for the sanitisation of the Dispatch Boxes.

Housing, Communities and Local Government: Departmental Spending

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who as ever, on this and many other issues, talks extremely good sense.

I want to start with a couple of thanks yous and then move on to some Island-specific points. First, I thank the Isle of Wight Council and all its staff for their exceptional work in looking after Islanders during this dreadful pandemic. On behalf of Islanders, I thank John Metcalfe and Wendy Perera and all their teams, and council leader Dave Stewart and his senior team, Councillors Stuart Hutchinson and Wayne Whittle. I mention those people because it is important to give recognition where recognition is due.

I also thank the Government. I understand that local government has now received £4.3 billion from the Government. In the Isle of Wight, we have received about £105 million. That has gone through largely to our local businesses, and some has gone to the council. We are keen to try to keep the final £8 million for reasons that, in the next 120 seconds, I will briefly outline.

I was going to talk about housing, which, as the Minister knows, is a big issue on the Island. However, because he is here and the Housing Minister is not, I will talk about the Island deal, which, as he knows, is in six areas. I am delighted to say that we are already getting a better deal on the Island. We got £100 million of extra capital investment last year—£48 million in the NHS to drive forward reform, some great pilot schemes, and about £46 million for Ryde railway pier and Ryde railway—so we are getting there.

There are six other areas that I would like to talk about—but not now; I am only going to do one now. Those include NHS provision; unavoidably small hospitals have different economies of scale from significant hospitals, in the district general hospital model, that have the required or approved number of users. We also have agricultural issues, transport issues and, as I say, housing issues.

However, on local government funding specifically, I say to the Minister and his officials—I know they are working up some options, which I am delighted about—that any support for the Island must consider the additional costs of providing public services on an island. It is academically proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that it costs more to provide public services on an island—in isolated communities—than elsewhere. There is no serious debate about the additional costs. None of this will set a precedent, because the Isle of Wight is the only island of any significant size in the local government structure in England and Wales. There is no precedent being set at all.

We have an ambitious council. I very much hope that it is going to buy a critical site in East Cowes this evening as part of a jobs hub and jobs investment programme, and I look forward to that. However, when I meet the Minister and his officials to talk about the Island deal, can we please do so understanding that there will be no precedent being set? There are additional costs of providing public services on an island, which sadly have not been recognised in the past half-century.