Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Brandon Lewis)
As the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have made clear, law enforcement co-operation with our European partners will continue after the UK leaves the EU. We will do what is necessary to keep our people safe. At the Home Office we are exploring all options for co-operation once the UK has left the EU, but it is currently too early to speculate on what future arrangements may look like.
Emma Reynolds
I thank the Minister for that answer, but may I press him? Have the Government decided whether they will seek to retain the European arrest warrant after we leave the EU, and has the Home Secretary had some stern words with the Brexit Secretary, who voted against it only two years ago? Also, have the Government decided to sign up to the new Europol regulations, and if not, when are they going to do so? If they miss the January deadline for that, there could be some severe implications for our membership; what would they be?
Brandon Lewis
The decision on whether we opt into the further Europol regulations will be announced to Parliament shortly. We will take that decision very soon; we are giving good consideration to where we are on that and will make an announcement to Parliament in due course.
The hon. Lady is right that the European arrest warrant provides a basis for a swift, and indeed cost-effective, extradition process across member states, but I will not presume what may or may not be in an agreement. We are in the early days of negotiations and will be going through that over the Brexit period.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds
Brandon Lewis
No, I will not give way at the moment.
Eighty-six per cent. of people say that if they had a free choice they would choose to buy their own home. This Government were elected because the people of this country saw the evidence that we would give them that choice. This Bill underwrites that determination. The shadow Secretary of State says that it will not help people who struggle to own their home, but he is wrong. Let me remind the House of our record so far. Since the spring of 2010, over 230,000 people have been helped to buy a home using Government-backed schemes. I am sure that he will, at some stage, want to thank us for the fact that in his constituency housing starts are up by 57% since 2010. Help-to-buy schemes have already helped nearly 120,000 people to buy their own home. The help-to-buy equity loan has now been extended until 2020, helping a further 194,000 households. Forty-one thousand new shared ownership homes have been delivered. Now, because of this Bill, our ambition of 200,000 starter homes will become a reality.
This Bill will enshrine equality in the social housing sector. It will give the Government the ability to deliver on the side of aspirational, hard-working families. It will provide more people with opportunities to own their own home—that is more people with the financial security that a secure foundation of home ownership provides. I was pleased to hear many Labour Members outline their support in principle for people’s right to buy, and I hope they can convince their Front Benchers to take that forward.
Brandon Lewis
I am afraid not because we are so short of time.
The Bill will give this nation the fair housing market that it deserves. It builds on the 260,000 affordable homes built over the course of the past few years.
Hon. Members
Emma Reynolds
In the previous Parliament, one of the Minister’s predecessors promised a one-for-one replacement of the right-to-buy homes sold, and the Government did not achieve that. Why should anyone believe that they are going to achieve it with their current policies?
Brandon Lewis
In congratulating the hon. Lady and wishing her a happy birthday, I say to her that her gift from us is the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined, local authorities are already doing better than the one-for-one extra homes being built, and are almost at two-for-one in London. I use the words about building homes very cautiously and seriously, because this is at the heart of everything we do. We understand the importance of a home to people and their desire to have their own home.
We believe in having decisions made locally. The planning system should be driven by local people, for local people. That is why we want to facilitate speeding up and making easier further neighbourhood planning. It is why we have invested £22.5 million in the neighbourhood planning support programme, with more than 1,600 plans going through the process at the moment.
This Bill will change the way we think about our homes and the homes of our families. No longer will people be left behind, believing that a home to own is a dream for another generation, no matter what the shadow Secretary of State may say. No longer will a social tenant look at their neighbour exercising the right to buy and think, “Why can’t I do that?” No longer will councils and house builders grapple with a planning system that is too slow and does not deliver for local communities.
This Government were elected on a strong mandate to make sure that the homes this nation deserves are built where communities want them and need them. This Bill is proof that we are a Government of opportunity, choice and prosperity—a Government empowering the “generation rent” of today to become the “generation buy” of tomorrow. I commend the Government’s Bill to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It has been a pleasure to visit and meet the excellent council in Dartford, which is doing some superb work on this. He is right. The number of long-term vacant homes in England fell by some 10,000 in the year to October 2014, so we are at the lowest levels we have seen. That is good work and we want to go further.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his promotion and join him in his condemnation of the terrorist attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the victims, families and friends.
The reason the Secretary of State does not know when he is going to bring forward his housing Bill is that the policies were written on the back of a fag packet during the election campaign and were based on forcing councils to sell 15,000 homes a year. Since then, I have asked his Department how many of these homes will become vacant every year, and it said it does not know. How many council homes will he force councils to sell off every year?
Affordable Housing
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma ReynoldsWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Brandon Lewis
The hon. Members for Nottingham South and for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and I have spent many times at the Dispatch Box in the past few months in full agreement, so it is probably a healthy return to normal that we disagree today, but I suggest they go away and read some of the documentation before they come to this place and make comments that are absolutely inaccurate. For example, it is worth having a read of the Hansard transcript of the Communities and Local Government Committee sitting last week, where we made it clear that the right to buy programme is delivering on the replacement of homes in the way it was designed. There is an interesting contrast, because the replacement rate was 1:170 under Labour. Opposition Members should be very aware of that. It is important to understand that with the starter homes—it is clear in the documentation that the Government have put out—we are looking at making available land that has not been viable before. We are doing that without section 106 agreements and we are reducing regulation for developers so that they can offer those homes at a minimum discount of 20%.
Ebbsfleet
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement, and for giving me advance sight of it. As he said, there is cross-party support for the development at Ebbsfleet, and Labour Members support it strongly. I agree with him that Ebbsfleet has huge potential to deliver a substantial number of homes and an outstanding new community.
Having been to Ebbsfleet, I have seen with my own eyes not just the opportunities that it offers but its terrain, which presents significant challenges. We want to see a new generation of garden cities and new towns, and we believe that Ebbsfleet could make an important contribution to such a programme. That is why, as the Minister said, we have sought to work with the Government constructively and on a cross-party basis to deliver the UDC. As the Minister also said, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) participated actively in the discussions with the Government, and is strongly committed to the delivery of a new generation of garden cities. She has spoken about the subject eloquently, in the House and elsewhere.
We naturally welcome the forming of an urban development corporation to drive this development forward, but we are concerned about the use of UDCs to deliver a full programme of garden cities. As the Minister knows, they are not set up to deliver garden city principles, which is why we pressed for the inclusion of a sunset clause. I am pleased that agreement was reached on that.
Although I welcome the Government’s initiative in establishing the UDC over the past five years, it would be remiss of me not to mention the number of mixed messages that we have received in regard to both Ebbsfleet and garden cities more broadly. In 2011 the then Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), spoke of rebooting garden cities, and in 2012 the Prime Minister announced that he would publish a consultation on garden cities by the end of the year. Six months later, the Deputy Prime Minister said that some lively debate was taking place within the Government, but promised incentives that would deliver projects that were “big and bold”. In December 2012, the Government announced that Ebbsfleet would be the site for a large-scale development of 20,000 new homes.
Subsequently, however, rather than seeing the “big and bold” projects that had been promised, we saw reports in the newspapers that the Prime Minister was suppressing a document and had gone cold on the idea. Later that year, the Housing Minister said that he was not aware of a report that was supposed to have been published, but the Deputy Prime Minister said that there was a prospectus, and that the Government should be honest about their intentions. The Secretary of State then contradicted his own Housing Minister, saying that his Department had told him that there was a report, but not a report from the Department for Communities and Local Government. We were a little bemused by all that. However, a prospectus for garden cities was finally published, and in last year’s Budget statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that there would be a new garden city at Ebbsfleet containing 15,000 homes—5,000 fewer than had been promised in 2012.
Given the scale of the housing crisis and the evident cross-party support for garden cities, I should like to know what is behind the Government’s stops and starts on the Ebbsfleet initiative and on garden cities more generally. I should also like to know where the additional 5,000 new homes have gone. That seems to be something of a mystery.
I welcomed what the Minister said about infrastructure. The Government said last year that, once established, the Ebbsfleet UDC would be expected to identify sources of additional funding, further to the funding for basic infrastructure that had already been announced. Will the Minister tell us how much additional funding he and his Department think might be necessary to get the Ebbsfleet project moving, and whether its source in either the private or the public sector has been identified?
The garden city movement, which was founded by Ebenezer Howard, has a long and proud history of promoting and providing outstanding places for people to live in. Although I support what the Minister has said today, I am anxious for the founding principles of the movement to be respected, albeit in a modern setting. Perhaps the Minister will explain why he did not mention affordable housing, and why his predecessor told my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham in a written parliamentary answer that
“The Government do not impose a particular level of affordable housing for housing schemes.”—[Official Report, 9 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 239W.]
Can the Minister reassure us that the master plan will include a commitment to a significant proportion of affordable homes? If it does not, I fear that there will not be much garden to the garden city. The Government’s garden city prospectus invited communities to come up with proposals, or “big and bold” projects, as the Deputy Prime Minister called them. Will the Minister tell us how many bids have been submitted so far?
Let me end by echoing what the Minister said about securing the Ebbsfleet development. This is a long-term project that presents significant challenges but also has huge potential, and, as such, it requires a long-term approach from Members in all parts of the House. On that basis, I welcome the fact that we have reached cross-party agreement.
Brandon Lewis
I thank the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) for expressing what could broadly be described as cross-party support. She did, however, ask a couple of questions, and mentioned the pace at which the garden city programme had proceeded. She was absolutely right to refer to the terrain at Ebbsfleet. I think that anyone who watches our exchanges, or reads the Hansard report, and wonders why it has taken so long for us to reach this point needs to be aware of a couple of facts. I shall explain in a moment how the programme has been structured in the past, but there is no doubt that the terrain is an important element. Ebbsfleet is an astonishing place to visit: a map simply does not do justice to its contours and topography.
At one point, the hon. Lady asked how much garden there would be in a garden city. We want to deliver something of which we can all be proud. We need to have a vision of the way in which not just community housing but real communities should be built. That means ensuring that there is the right mix of residential, retail, commercial and open space for people to enjoy, so that they can get to know their neighbours and be part of a strong community. The community must be at the forefront of this project.
We opted for an urban development corporation in this case—with Opposition support—because three local authorities and various landowners were involved. In fact, the Government have a small landholding interest. That makes the position very complex.
The hon. Lady said that it had taken several years for us to make progress. As she knows, we have been dealing with a legislative process over the past few months, since last year’s Budget statement. I found her comments slightly ironic. Let me politely suggest that she might like to stand up and name some of the eco-towns that have not been built since they were announced by the last Government.
We are now able to deliver on the garden city principles, at Ebbsfleet, at Bicester—which I visited again just last week—and in other areas because ours is not a top-down approach. We are not making decisions from on high; local authorities are coming to us and saying that they want to develop on the basis of those principles. It takes time for authorities to get organised and prepare to submit their proposals to the Government, but I think that that is right. The longevity of delivery that the hon. Lady rightly mentioned enables long-term plans to be developed properly, and to be locally designed, locally supported and locally proposed.
The hon. Lady referred to funding more generally, and to affordable housing. I repeat that ours is not a top-down approach. Once the urban development corporation has been set up, it will become the planning authority, and levels of affordable housing and section 106 agreements are a matter for planning authorities. On the basis of localism, we let the local authorities deal with such matters, and I trust them to do so. Some agreements are already in place, and are delivering substantial infrastructure and section 106 agreements for the area.
In terms of the total cost of development at Ebbsfleet, developing a prioritised infrastructure list will be one of the first tasks the development corporation will be taking forward. In advance of it even being established, we have been working with partners to identify the key items of infrastructure needed to support development. We do not yet have a total cost for the infrastructure because there will be many items that partners would want us to consider and include, and the development corporation needs to be the body that looks carefully both at what infrastructure is needed to support the garden city development and who should pay for it. Of course, much of the infrastructure building work will be paid for by developers, not by the Government or the development corporation directly. That is where the section 106 agreements that are already in place, and those that are developed for the major developments with outline planning consent, will take us forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds
Brandon Lewis
No issues have been reported at this time, but if my hon. Friend has any particular concerns, I would be happy to meet her and any concerned residents.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The Minister keeps peddling the myth, but we are not proposing rent controls. The Government have taken no meaningful action to promote longer-term tenancies. Both the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), and the current housing Minister told us last year that rent levels were falling, with the Under-Secretary saying that rents were falling even in London. But now the Office for National Statistics has confirmed what everybody else knew all along—that rents are rising faster than wages and rising in real terms. Will the Minister now admit that he was wrong and that millions of private renters are facing insecurity and rising rents?
Brandon Lewis
I am afraid to say to the hon. Lady that real-term rents have been lower than the changes in inflation, so rent costs have fallen in real terms. We need to continue to see supply come through and get that institutional investment that was mentioned a few minutes ago so that we continue to see good-quality housing available at good prices.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds(9 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Brandon Lewis
I have not seen the details of that case, but if the right hon. Gentleman forwards them to me, I shall be happy to look at them. In my experience, planning inspectors tend to challenge local authorities about their evidence bases. The national planning policy framework makes it clear that green belt constitutes an environmental constraint, and local authorities can use such constraints as evidence bases when it comes to what they can actually provide. It is for them to do the research, build those evidence bases, and make their case.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The Minister recently suggested that councils did not need local plans, and that there was no role for central Government if they failed to adopt one. As he knows, however, without local plans communities have absolutely no say in where new houses are built. If he is really serious about local people deciding, why does he think that councils do not need local plans, and why will he not back our proposals to make it a statutory requirement for every council to have one?
Brandon Lewis
I am afraid that the hon. Lady has got the planning process slightly wrong. Obviously local authorities in all circumstances have a say in planning, which is a quasi-judicial process. Planning applications go through local authorities. As I have said, there is no need for a statutory rule, because it is in authorities’ own best interests to have local plans, which mean local involvement and local decisions about what development should be allowed and where it should be allowed to take place. If there is no local plan, those matters will fall within the national planning policy framework.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Emma Reynolds(9 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Brandon Lewis
I would say to the right hon. Lady that planning decisions are obviously matters for the local authority, and it would be wrong for me to comment on the core strategy of a particular area. However, if she wants to come and see me, I will be happy to go through any queries she has.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his new position. According to his Department’s own forecasts, housing starts are due to fall in this financial year. His predecessor admitted that that was due to an expected hiatus between the current affordable homes programme and the next one. Will the Minister explain what steps he is taking to avoid this? Does he think that there will be such a hiatus in 2015?
Brandon Lewis
No, I do not. The more than 41,000 affordable housing starts in 2013-14 is an increase of 15% on the previous year.
Emma Reynolds
Regrettably, the truth is that the Government have undermined affordable housing, not promoted it. With the 60% cut to the affordable homes programme, the watering down of section 106 agreements, and the hated and discredited bedroom tax, will the Minister now admit that for all Ministers’ talk on affordable homes—we have heard the same today—the number of homes built for social rent has dropped to a 20-year low and that simply changing Ministers will not overcome this Government’s failed housing policies?
Brandon Lewis
I am slightly astounded that such a question has been put by the hon. Lady, who represents a party that oversaw a drop in the number of affordable rental homes of 420,000 between 1997 and 2010. Under this Government, house building has got going again. We need to keep on top of that to deliver the houses we need, and we are looking at an increase of 170,000 in this period alone.