Hilary Benn
Main Page: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
That was a valiant attempt by the Secretary of State to try to pretend that the centralisation of power at the heart of the Bill is nothing more than a bit of his muscular localism. The truth is that the whole House knows where the Bill comes from. It is the product of the Government’s panic over growth during a summer in which Nos. 10 and 11 Downing street thrashed around, trying desperately first to find people to blame and then to find things to do about the state of the economy and the longest double-dip recession since the second world war.
It is the Secretary of State who has been told to try to explain what on earth the Bill is for, and it certainly cannot be described as a growth Bill. First, it will not help to get the economy back on track. For example, he mentioned housing. Members should remember that construction output is estimated to have declined by 2.5% in the three months until September—there is a sector in trouble—and if the Government wanted to boost growth and tackle the housing crisis, the Secretary of State could have adopted our proposal to use the proceeds of the 4G auction to build 100,000 new affordable homes. He could also have repeated the bankers’ bonus tax to build 25,000 affordable homes. What would those two measures do? They would take people off the waiting list and unemployed building workers off the dole queue. The Bill does not do that.
Secondly, in a survey in the summer when the construction industry was asked—and it ought to know—what the main deterrent to investment in infrastructure was, what did 60% of the respondents say?
Hilary Benn
No, they said it was the lack of clarity from the UK Government.
Thirdly, the reason we have been one of only two G20 countries in a double-dip recession is not the planning system but the Government’s failed economic policies. The Secretary of State is in a very uncomfortable position today as his whole argument, which is that the Bill will give us growth, has been undercut by the Prime Minister. Let me remind the House of what the Prime Minister said in the summer:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
That is what the Prime Minister said.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Against that background, will the right hon. Gentleman explain why under the Government of whom he was a member the UK fell from fourth to 89th in the global rankings for the burden of Government regulation? How would he put that right if he were in our place?
Hilary Benn
I do not know which survey the hon. Gentleman means, but as he knows, we did a great deal.
Robert Neill
I mean the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report—those reports run from 1997 through to 2012-13. I can show it to him if he would like to see it.
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Gentleman has a wee bit more time on his hands these days, I would very gladly read a copy of that report. He knows that the previous Government did a number of things to boost the economy and economic development, and he must acknowledge that when the coalition Government took over, the economy was growing. The Chancellor’s spectacular achievement has been to put that growth into reverse.
This is a flawed and incoherent Bill that shows why the Prime Minister was right to say that it is not possible to legislate for growth. It is no wonder that Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, described it as a missed opportunity. The only thing that will grow as a result of the Bill will be the power of the Secretary of State, who is mentioned 144 times in just 45 pages—that is going some.
Now, why is that? The truth that the right hon. Gentleman would not utter is that the Bill marks the death of his commitment to localism—the localism that he used to proclaim with such passion and sincerity. It is actually a Bill that says, “You know what? You can’t trust local people to take the right decisions, so we’ll take the decisions.” It was noticeable that clause 1 was the bit of the Bill that he was most reluctant to talk about. It is extraordinary. Ministers have tried to dress it up today—the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who has responsibility for planning, did so when he appeared before the Communities and Local Government Committee—as a minor change that will be used sparingly in a few authorities, apparently, he said, for a maximum of one year. But the Bill says none of those things. Nowhere does it say that. The Government are making this up as they go along. What the Bill does say is that the right hon. Gentleman would take for himself the power to decide on planning applications and cut local communities right out of the process for as long as he likes.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Is it not noticeable that the Secretary of State refused to give way to answer the key question: how would he define what a failing local authority is in planning terms?
Hilary Benn
If my hon. Friend bears with me a moment, I shall come presently to precisely that point. The first question that the House must ask the Government is that if they are to propose such a fundamental change to the way in which planning decisions have been taken since 1947—that is about 60 years of local decision making—the Secretary of State must have had really strong evidence on why such a change is needed, so where is the evidence? I will make this very easy for him, and I will happily give way. Can he name one example of a so-called failing planning authority? Will he name an authority now?
Mr Pickles
As the right hon. Gentleman knows and, more particularly, as other Opposition Members know, I have been more than helpful to those Members who have had trouble with planning authorities and I have done my best to move things along, but I am very happy to name the worst, which is Hackney.[Official Report, 6 November 2012, Vol. 552, c. 5-6MC.]
Hilary Benn
That is extremely interesting. If the Secretary of State can name what is in his view a failing planning authority, he must know the criteria for judging a failing planning authority, yet the criteria are nowhere in the Bill; he is allowed to make them up as he goes along. Officials watching this will be thinking, “Oh, my goodness, he shouldn’t have done that,” because he has just fettered his discretion and the consultation that he will probably have to undertake in deciding which are failing planning authorities.
Mr Pickles
I also made it absolutely clear that, of course, we are working with the LGA and local authorities to define this, and we are prepared to consult on it. But the right hon. Gentleman asks what the worst planning authority is, and I have named it. Whether that will be regarded as a failing authority will be a matter of consultation.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Hilary Benn
Perhaps my hon. Friend will just bear with me for a second, as I am very interested further in the Secretary of State’s answer because he has not defined the worst. I have here before me a list of the slowest decision makers on all applications and the slowest decision makers on major applications. The top three—or the bottom three, depending on our interpretation, in those two categories are Stratford-upon-Avon, Stafford and Warwick for all applications, and for major applications Torbay, Kensington and Chelsea, and North Norfolk.
Government Members really ought to see where their authorities are in the league table that the Secretary of State is in the process of making up as he goes along. They may well find that, unless we remove clause 1, planning decisions will be taken not by locally elected councillors—that is my definition of localism—but by the Planning Inspectorate. The truth is that if he knows the criteria he should make them clear now. Clause 1 will in effect give the Secretary of State the ability to nationalise planning decisions in respect of as many authorities as he likes. It will completely change the basis on which planning applications have been traditionally considered by local communities. That is the very opposite of the localism that he used to speak about, because decisions will be taken not by councillors but by the Planning Inspectorate on behalf of the Secretary of State. There will be a strong reaction when the first local authorities discover that the power to decide has been taken away from them by the Secretary of State under the Bill.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman needs to go back a little in history and look at the imposed housing targets that local authorities were expected to deliver. This scaremongering—that the Secretary of State, in a micro-managing sort of way, will look at every planning authority and decide the plans himself—is frankly ridiculous. I sincerely hope that the right hon. Gentleman gets back to the real nub of the argument, which is that the coalition Government are trying to get away from imposing things on local people and are letting them choose how they want their areas to develop.
Hilary Benn
I say to the hon. Lady that it is not ridiculous; it is what clause 1 says. If she has not read the clause, I suggest that she does so carefully. On housing targets, the truth is that under the new arrangements the figures that local authorities will have to come up with for housing numbers in their area will not be very different from the figures produced by the regional spatial strategy, because there is still the same housing need. That is certainly the case for the authority in Leeds, because I have spoken to the chief planning officer about that.
The truth is that if hon. Members read the Bill, they will see that the Secretary of State will decide which authorities will lose the right to decide applications for themselves, he will decide what kinds of applications will come to him for decision, and he alone will take the decision in the place of local councillors. Of course, there will be no right of appeal—something the Bill also states.
I want to turn, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) invited me to a moment ago, to the grounds on which the Secretary of State may designate authorities. Clearly, he has made up his mind; he is just not telling us how he has done it. The clause gives him the power to do that anywhere, on any basis, for as many authorities as he likes, and there will be no check or balance from anybody else.
As for the criteria, when the Minister with responsibility for planning appeared before the Select Committee he said that speed and poor quality measured by decisions overturned by the Planning Inspectorate would be the factors that Ministers would take into account. On speed, I am genuinely puzzled. First, councils currently decide 82% of applications within eight weeks and 93% within 13 weeks. Those are the facts. The percentage of applications approved reached a 10-year high in 2011-12. Secondly, developers can already appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on grounds of non-determination in the required time under section 78(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. What does the Bill add to that power? Thirdly, there is a practical problem, as the planning Minister had to admit. He said that there was a wrinkle in the statistics. The data on timeliness do not take account of planning performance agreements. As hon. Members will know, that is where developers and councils jointly reach agreement to say, “Hey, this development could take a bit more time to approve. Can we agree, in effect, to set aside the time limits?” Instead of there being a simple measure, the Secretary of State will have to decide whether he thinks the reason given by an authority, when decisions are apparently slow, is good enough to justify his not taking the power away from them.
Bill Esterson
In an intervention a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State said that he would be working with the Local Government Association. Of course, the LGA has said that the barriers to growth are nothing to do with the planning system. Does my right hon. Friend intend to come on to that point—I am sure he does—and comment on the fact that it is the lack of funding that is the problem, not the planning system?
Hilary Benn
I certainly will come on to that point, but those conversations with the LGA will be jolly interesting. The Secretary of State is apparently going to say, “Can we sit down and talk about the criteria? By the way, whatever they are, they have to include Hackney, because I have just told the House of Commons that Hackney is the worst of the lot.” He has fettered his own discretion and will regret that answer.
The argument that this proposal is like the regime for failing schools falls at the first hurdle. We can judge whether a failing school is improving, because it will still be treating the children, but if we take responsibility for planning applications away from local councils and decide them centrally, we will have no way of knowing whether the planning authority is improving because it will not be taking any decisions. That is nonsense. And as for quality, I say to the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for planning that there can be no real measure of it, because it is a matter of opinion and local democratic accountability, which is why we have had local decision making on planning applications for 60 years.
Robert Neill
Where was the local democratic accountability in the regional spatial strategies?
Hilary Benn
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The regional spatial strategies meant that local authorities had a responsibility to build houses. He has to acknowledge, however, that the regime before us, which I recognise he played an important part in setting up, will produce exactly the same numbers. That is because the same number of people will need to be housed and there will be the same increase in population. They are two different ways of doing it. However, it is the Secretary of State who has made great play of localism but who is now turning it on its head.
If the Secretary of State is thinking of using as his proxy the speed and percentage of planning applications overturned, people should, as I have indicated, go away very quickly and see where their local authorities are in the league table. To add insult to injury, however—this is pretty bad—he is taking the power to require local authorities to do all the work in connection with applications, even though they will not be taking the decisions and even though the Planning Inspectorate will be paid the fees. That is what he is doing in the Bill.
These are the same planning officers in whom the Secretary of State, in effect, had no confidence to start with—that is why he chose to designate authorities. It is therefore crystal clear what the clause is about: it is about his saying, in respect of councils whose decisions he does not like or which he thinks are being too tardy, that it is the elected council members whom he does not trust. That makes the purpose of the clause plain. He is saying, “I want this power because I think I’m in a better place to take decisions than the local communities themselves.” That is why the clause is so objectionable.
Mr Betts
My right hon. Friend makes a good case against the Secretary of State taking from local authorities the power to determine planning applications. He has also pointed out that the applicant will lose the right to appeal. When this matter came before the Select Committee, the Minister with responsibility for planning accepted in effect that the consultation arrangements for local communities would not have to be the same as if the local authority was taking the decisions, but that the statutorily required level of consultation would apply, which could be somewhat less. Local communities could suffer in that way as well.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee so ably, is absolutely right. That is another example of how local communities will lose out as a result of this change.
I am genuinely surprised that the Secretary of State has turned out like this, especially given what he said in his speech to the Conservative party conference last month. He explained, in a purple passage, why, alongside the bust of Disraeli and the poster of Winston Churchill, he had a photograph on his wall of Che Guevara smoking a large Havana cigar. He told the delegates:
“It is there to remind me that without constant vigilance, the cigar-chomping Commies will take over. Well, that isn’t going to happen on my watch.”
Well, it has happened—with this Bill. There are a couple of words for what he is doing. It is a concept much loved by communist parties the world over. It is called democratic centralism—telling other people what to think and do. The powers he is asking the House to give him in clause 1 are, frankly, enough to make any self-respecting democratic centralist slap him on the back in gratitude and give him a cigar to chomp on. In no time at all, he has gone from claiming to be the friend of localism to taking a hammer and sickle to local democratic decision making. He fools nobody by trying to describe it as muscular localism. The really puzzling question is whether this is a genuine conversion. The House must ask itself whether the Secretary of State decided of his own volition to dump everything that he previously believed in. I doubt it; I suspect that the truth is rather different.
I think the truth is that the Secretary of State lost control of planning policy during the summer. He told us just a few months ago, “Here’s my shiny new national planning policy framework. It’s fit for a new century”, and he must have been bewildered to read those unattributed briefings suddenly appearing in the newspapers—the criticisms of his shiny new planning system from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I bet he was particularly irritated by the summonses to attend urgent meetings at 10 Downing street. Whoever was in charge of planning policy over the summer, I do not think it was the Secretary of State.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman count it a success that the previous Government had a planning policy which ran to 1,300 pages? Does he not think it is a success that the policy these days is much simpler and accessible to all?
Hilary Benn
I made it very clear, I think in my first speech after taking on my new responsibilities last autumn, that everybody is in favour of sensible rationalisation. I have never opposed that, but the Government have to get it right, and the Bill self-evidently does not get it right. I suspect that the Secretary of State’s heart is not really in these changes; maybe the planning Minister’s heart is. I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, smokes cigars, but a photo of him smoking one ought to go on the Secretary of State’s wall behind him as a reminder of what can happen if he lets down his guard.
Mr Raynsford
I have been following my right hon. Friend’s remarks with considerable interest. Does he think it significant that the ministerial team surrounding the Minister is entirely different from the one that sat with him in the early period, when he was formulating the national planning policy framework? Might that also be an indication of what has happened in Government?
Hilary Benn
That is an extremely interesting suggestion by my right hon. Friend, and only those on the Government Front Bench can say whether that is the case or not.
Clauses 2 and 3, which I do not think the Secretary of State mentioned, would allow the planning inspectorate to award costs. What is the purpose of this? Perhaps the Minister could say when he winds up. How can he assure us that it will not turn into a tax on local democratic decision making? Why should the Planning Inspectorate want to impose costs of its own volition, when developers can already ask it to do so under the law as it currently stands?
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the purpose of clause 2 is possibly similar to that of clause 1, which is to blackmail local authorities into giving in to the worst property developers, and that this is a belated compliment to the Conservative Property Forum, which has given £4 million to the Conservative party over the past few years?
Hilary Benn
I can only say to my hon. Friend that I do not know whether there is any connection between the two things, but it is quite an interesting pair of clauses. What are they for? Why do Ministers apparently want to make it easier for the Planning Inspectorate to fine councils for the decisions that they have made?
Clause 5 proposes significantly to weaken the contribution that section 106 agreements make to the much needed provision of affordable housing. If section 106 really was the cause of stalled housing developments, why does the clause focus only on the affordable housing requirements, rather than other section 106 requirements—for example, contributing to transport, other infrastructure or new schools? I ask because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) pointed out, the National Housing Federation tells us that 35,000 affordable homes are provided each year because of section 106 agreements, yet the Secretary of State failed to make the case that the lack of house building is because of the affordable housing element.
Where is the evidence? This will be a familiar theme in this debate. We are told that there are 1,200 sites and 75,000 homes that are stalled. Apparently the figure comes from something called the Glenigan database. When I asked the planning Minister if he would publish it so that we could see for ourselves the information on which the statement is based, he refused to do so. So we cannot see—[Hon. Members: “Why?”] Apparently it was something to do with commercial confidentiality, but are we as Members of the House not entitled to see the evidence base on which the policy is allegedly founded?
Perhaps that is why, when the planning Minister was sensibly asked by the Select Committee how many of these sites were stalled because of section 106 requirements, he came over all vague.
He said:
“It is very difficult to say. It is quite hard to say why nothing is happening.”
Let us look at what others have to say about section 106. The chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency stated in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Committee:
“We are not aware of any current issues relating to section 106 agreement on the very small number due to start on site this financial year.”
What about the National Housing Federation? It has stated: “No evidence has been provided to suggest that planning obligations are routinely stalling development.”
What about the Council of Mortgage Lenders? It has stated:
“We are not convinced that section 106 obligations are necessarily the key sticking point”.
Well, if it is difficult to quantify and really hard to say why nothing is happening, and if the HCA does not think it is a problem, the National Housing Federation does not think it is a problem and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which ought to know, does not think it is a problem, what is the purpose of clause 5? Everyone knows what the real problem is: people cannot get mortgages or raise deposits, so developers are not building houses because they do not think that they will be able to sell them if they do.
The Government admit that clause 5 will reduce the number of affordable homes built, which is why they have come up with an extra 300 million quid. If that really is the cause of the problem, I do not for the life of me understand why the Government do not just approach the developers on the 1,200 sites and offer them money to get them moving and bring forward the affordable housing numbers that were previously agreed. To reduce the number of affordable homes through the Bill and then come up with £300 million to try to replace the lost homes in an alternative way seems to me to be an extraordinarily roundabout way of addressing the problem. The truth is that everyone wants to get stalled sites moving. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged, to be fair, many local authorities have demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to enter into negotiations with developers in order to vary the conditions relating to affordable housing because they, too, want to get the homes built, and Leeds is one example of that.
The other thing that is puzzling about clause 5 is this: what will it give developers that they do not already have? I hope that the Minister will answer this when he responds. Under the existing arrangements, could not a developer who wants to change the affordable housing requirements on an existing permission simply put in a new application with the lower figure and then, if it is turned down by the council, go to the Planning Inspectorate on appeal and cite the new provisions on viability set out in paragraph 173 of the national planning policy framework?
What is the problem that this clause is trying to solve, and will it work? I doubt it. This is my last point on section 106 agreements. For a measure that is supposed to speed up movement on stalled sites, it might result, as the Royal Town Planning Institute has pointed out, in the very opposite. A developer that hopes to reduce the affordable housing obligation will now have a clear incentive to wait for the Bill to reach the statute book rather than entering into negotiations with the local authority—in other words, delay.
Mr Redwood
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that, given the weakness of the banks and the problems in the credit markets, section 106 deals will be far less generous than they were prior to the boom going bust?
Hilary Benn
Of course, and the fact that local authorities have been willing to renegotiate the section 106 affordable housing requirements is proof of that—[Interruption.] Well, lots of them have done so, and no doubt the planning Minister will tell us about those that have not.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Why does the right hon. Gentleman think so many local authorities have been unwilling to renegotiate section 106 agreements up to now? Will the Bill not encourage them to do so?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman says “so many”, but the Government have not given us the evidence. The whole Bill is based on supposition, what was whispered in someone’s ear, what was in the newspapers and what the Prime Minister fulminated against. We are legislating, and we should do so on the basis of evidence. I look forward to seeing that evidence.
The third leg of the Secretary of State’s assault on local democracy is clause 21. It, too, gives him wide powers to take planning applications away from local communities. It significantly extends the lists set out in the Planning Act 2008 by including business and commercial projects, as we have heard. We have seen the lists the planning Minister gave the Select Committee, but can he or the Secretary of State clarify whether that would include major retail or leisure developments? I will happily take in intervention. Any takers? No? It is interesting that we have not received an answer.
Do the Government intend to develop national policy statements for the new categories? The Secretary of State floundered when my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) asked that question earlier.
What is this change for? The press notice issued by the Department on 6 September states:
“Thousands of big commercial and residential applications to be directed to a major infrastructure fast track”.
It only took about a month for that policy to change—another example of the Government making it up as they go along—because residential applications appeared to be pulled from it, as clause 21 now makes clear. Instead, the Government seem to have decided to make greater use of their call-in powers, as the planning Minister set out in his statement last week, but that will have the same effect—Ministers, not local people, will decide what happens in their community.
The Bill Committee will no doubt explore the extent to which the Government intend to use that call-in power to deal with applications for residential developments. If they call them in, Government and Opposition Members will suddenly find that, as a result of the change in policy, their local councils are not taking the decisions. Given that call-in powers have existed for a very long time, will the Minister who responds to the debate explain what the clause gives Ministers that they do not have already under existing planning law? How will the Planning Inspectorate cope with the additional work load? It is a mess.
Charlie Elphicke
My reading of the clause is that it is directed at projects of a national significance, particularly in the field of energy, which will cut through the problems with getting power stations built. That is important. The lights are likely to go out in 2015, because the previous Government were asleep at the wheel on power station developments, which are needed to keep our lights on.
Hilary Benn
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that we made changes to the system and that one of the groups that we brought into the new national set-up was, indeed, energy. The Government’s provision does not change how decisions are taken—it adds big commercial applications. We await an answer on whether that will include leisure and retail. The hon. Gentleman needs to consider that carefully.
A number of other clauses give rise to concern and will be scrutinised carefully in Committee. Clause 7 seems to propose to scrap the special protection enjoyed by our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and to allow telecoms companies to install cabinets and masts wherever they want. First, the Secretary of State told us earlier not to worry and that that applies only to broadband, but could he please point to where in clause 7 it says that that is the case? It does not.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend see the irony, as many Opposition Members do, in the fact that the Government, after a great hue and cry over wind farms last week, are now intent on dismantling the very special place of our national parks in British culture?
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why those who care passionately about the national parks are so concerned about the clause.
Secondly, the Secretary of State said that the clause would make no change to the power of planning authorities to object. I draw his attention, however, to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport press notice of 7 September, which says that the Government will legislate to do a number of things, one of which is to ensure that
“broadband street cabinets can be installed in any location other than a SSSI”—
in other words, in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty—
“without the need for prior approval from the local council”.
The notice then goes on to say, in paragraph 5(c), that
“overhead broadband lines can be installed in any area without the need for planning or other permission”.
No wonder there is great confusion and concern about this clause, because it is not clear what the Government’s policy really is. Section 109 of the Communications Act 2003 refers to the use of “electronic communications apparatus”, not “broadband boxes and cabinets”. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State, and he did not give one single example—again, there was no evidence—of the problem specifically in relation to national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. As he should know, the national parks want broadband to be rolled out, but they want it to be done in the right way. I can give him lots of examples of national parks authorities that are taking precisely this approach, but here is just one: in the past five years, North York Moors national parks authority has approved 94% of planning applications and notifications for telecoms equipment. Where is the problem and where is the evidence? In the light of this, I can entirely see why the English National Park Authorities Association and the Campaign for National Parks want the clause removed. The current protection to which the Secretary of State must have regard—conserving the beauty of our national parks and AONBs—cannot be allowed to be undermined by the Government’s desire to look as though they are doing something about growth.
The Secretary of State used to boast that he was protecting village greens, but his proposals will make it much more difficult for people to register them. For instance, there is the positively Kafkaesque proposal that the moment a planning application is published, someone can no longer seek to register a green. Since the first that most people will hear of an application is when it is published, this seems to be a pretty clever way of stopping people exercising their rights, unless they happen to be mind readers. In a very small number of cases there is a problem—that is why we published the consultation paper when we were in government—but this is a heavy-handed, disproportionate and clumsy measure, and we will table amendments in Committee to create a more balanced way forward.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise, as many of us do, that the provision for registering village green status is routinely used by people who are serial campaigners against any type of development in their area and causes huge delay and cost in the planning system?
Hilary Benn
Having looked at this when I was Secretary of State, I recognise that there are some such cases, but there are also lots of others where the provision in the Commons Act 2006 is used quite properly to protect in perpetuity the public’s use of green space—village greens and so on—which they have had the right to enjoy for many years. Like lots of things, it is about getting the balance right, and this clause, as formulated, has not got it right; that is certainly the view of the Open Spaces Society.
I listened very carefully to what the Secretary of State said about delaying business rates revaluation. We all want to support measures that will help businesses at a difficult time, but we will want to scrutinise this in Committee to understand the balance of the argument. It would be extremely helpful—I put this to him in all sincerity—to see his and the Department’s assessment of who would gain and who would not, because a lot of businesses are saying that an earlier revaluation would help them. It would also be of assistance if he could set out the impact of a change on the finances of local authorities now that the Local Government Finance Act 2012 is on the statute book.
Mr Pickles
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very reasonable point. Of course we will publish an impact assessment and the calculations of the Valuation Office Agency on Report.
Hilary Benn
That is extremely helpful, and we look forward to seeing those documents.
Amid all the centralisation, there are some clauses that seem sensible and that we will support—the Secretary of State smiles—such as those on the energy industry, on removing the anomaly on disposal of land for less than best consideration, on the review of minerals permissions, and on allowing the process for stopping up or diverting highways and public paths to run alongside the planning process— which is perfectly sensible recommendation of the Penfold review. Overall, however, the bad in the Bill far outweighs the good.
That brings me to clause 23, which is an absolutely astonishing proposal. Labour Members are in favour of businesses giving shares to employees and think it a jolly good thing. We do not, however, need the Bill for that because companies are already perfectly free to give shares to their workers. The clause does something completely different, and, for the first time that I can recall, employers will be allowed to buy their way out of legislation that protects their workers. The legislation is explicit and there is a tariff—[Interruption.] I hear the cry of “voluntary”, and we shall come on to whether that is the case.
The fact is that for between £2,000 and £50,000, a company can pay to strip its workers of their rights. That is what the clause does. Never mind cash for questions; this is cash for repeal. What on earth is the connection between giving an employee shares, and taking away their fundamental rights in the workplace? Given the wording of the clause, some might say that such a change could happen only if the company and the individual agreed on it. That, however, is true only for existing employees at the time the legislation comes into force. Their choice will be quite simple: take the cash and lose the rights, or lose the cash and keep the rights. Many of them will ask, “How lucky do I feel today and when I think about the future of the company?”
The Government have made it crystal clear that in future employers will not have to get an agreement and will be able to offer only contracts involving shares. It means that the only way someone will be able to get a job with that company is if they give up their rights—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, shouts from a sedentary position that it is a choice, but one feature of this Bill seems to be that those who are sponsoring it have not actually read it.
A Treasury background note published at the same time as the Bill states that
“new start-ups can choose to offer only this new type of contract for new hires.”
The English is a bit dodgy, but I think it refers to new workers whom a company is taking on—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary says it is a choice, but—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is unhelpful in a debate to have Ministers shouting from the Front Bench, and then for their question to be answered when the rest of us are not exactly clear about what is going on. If you wish to make a point, Minister, you should step up to the Dispatch Box; otherwise, I hope that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will concentrate on his speech and ignore the heckling.
Hilary Benn
I was trying to encourage the Under-Secretary to provide clarity to the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I take your strictures.
If someone wants to take a job but finds that it is offered only on the basis that they give up their employment rights, that is not a choice. If that is all an employer offers to someone who is unemployed and wants to do the right thing and contribute to the economy, that is no choice whatsoever. As for shares, what if the company is not listed on the stock exchange? Who will assess the value of those shares? They could be worthless. Who will buy them? Will they carry voting rights? The Secretary of State said nothing about any those points this afternoon, and the House must ask why holding shares should mean that someone loses the right to protection against unfair dismissal. What is the argument for that?
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can help me to understand this despicable proposal and explain where in the Nuttall report it is stated that someone has to sacrifice their employment rights and protections in order to extend share ownership? I have read that report in detail and cannot find it anywhere.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the Bill has nothing to do with that report at all and is about something else entirely. Why should holding shares mean that someone has to give up their right to redundancy payment? What is the argument for that? Why should they give up their right to apply to undertake study or training?
The Government rightly remind us how important it is to have the right skills for the future. Without a hint of irony, however, the background note published at the same time as the Bill tries to claim that this measure is particularly aimed at small and medium-sized companies
“that benefit from a flexible workforce”.
In clause 23 we find that one right workers will lose is the right to request flexible working. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker, except that that is exactly what the Government are doing.
The director general of the CBI described, in very polite terms, this provision as a “niche idea”—a pretty underwhelming endorsement. The clause will, however, be a lawyers’ paradise, because one of the consequences of it—if it passes into law—is that dismissed employees who find themselves in the position of being employee owners will try to shoehorn their unfair dismissal claims into the rights that are still left to them. That is exactly what will happen—the clause will not even work in the way the Government intend.
One might think that the Employee Ownership Association would sing the praises of the Bill, but, of the clause, it has stated:
“There is no need to dilute the rights of workers in order to grow employee ownership”.
The clause is Beecroft by the back door, and Labour Members oppose it. When the Minister winds up the debate, will he give me a very simple assurance on process? The Government are currently consulting on the employer-owner idea. Will he therefore promise the House that they will make any amendments to the clause either in Committee or in remaining stages in the Commons?
In conclusion, the Bill is not a growth Bill. It will not get the economy moving and will not build infrastructure. It is a “must be seen to be doing something” Bill. The tragedy is that the only thing it does is take power from local people and locally elected councillors and give it to developers and the Secretary of State. Today marks the halfway point of this Parliament, and all we have to mark the occasion is a shoddy, clumsily cobbled together, half-baked Bill. That really shows, and I urge the House to reject it.