Lord Pickles
Main Page: Lord Pickles (Conservative - Life peer)
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
1. What steps his Department is taking to encourage local authorities to provide weekly refuse collections.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The public have a reasonable expectation that their household waste, in all its various forms, will be collected weekly. That is why we have already ditched the last Government’s policy of imposing fortnightly collections, and we are now going to work with local councils to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish collections. We want to make it easier to recycle.
Mark Menzies
Does my right hon. Friend agree that by stopping Labour’s planned bin taxes, we are saving hard-working pensioners and families a lot of money?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about abolishing Labour’s plans for bin taxes, which would have hammered hard-working families. They were also ridiculous because they would have led to an increase in fly-tipping. The Keep Britain Tidy group has remarked that people would simply have dumped their garbage illegally in a bid to avoid the taxes. It seemed to me to be utterly unreasonable to pit neighbour against neighbour.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Wirral council’s ability to manage refuse collection is severely hampered by the financial settlement it has received. Will the Secretary of State or Ministers meet a Wirral delegation to discuss funding for local services, including refuse collections, in Wirral?
Mr Pickles
It is always a delight to meet people from Wirral, and if the council there—or, indeed, the hon. Lady—would like to meet me or some of my hon. Friends, we would mark it eagerly in our calendars.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
What incentives and support—financial or otherwise—will the Secretary of State’s Department give to small councils such as Purbeck district council, which has moved to fortnightly waste collections but would be interested, if funds permitted, in moving to a weekly food collection?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend makes my point very well. As the Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for local government and planning announced, we are considering financial assessments. Often the kind of authority to which my hon. Friend referred could do with some help with procurement—we have seen a number of smaller districts get together—and we would certainly hope to deal with weekly collections in all their various forms.
Mr Speaker
Order. If the Secretary of State could face the Chamber, we will all benefit from hearing the full flow of his eloquence.
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend suggests, from a sedentary position, that that was rubbish, and I cannot disagree with him. We are looking at delivering weekly collections and a financial incentive for providing them, but we had to start from the basis of dealing with the legacy—we had first to remove the Audit Commission and the instructions in the waste and resources action programme suggesting that it was best to close these things down after local elections, and we had to ensure that the fortnightly collections, which the right hon. Lady advocated so strongly when she was Minister for Housing, were also stopped.
Caroline Flint
Of course, under Labour, recycling went up, and last week we heard that across our islands, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have higher targets for recycling than England. I think that the record will show that most of the local authorities with fortnightly bin collections are Conservative-controlled. Is not the truth that this chaotic climbdown is a personal humiliation for the Secretary of State? He is making promises he cannot deliver, his own councils are not listening to him and he has been dumped on by his Cabinet colleagues.
Mr Pickles
I understand now why Polly Toynbee is so disappointed with the right hon. Lady’s opposition across the Dispatch Box. I apologise, Mr Speaker, for not directing my earlier remarks to you. She is concerned about the number of Conservative authorities, but their number is due to the fact that the majority of councils in this country are Conservative—she had a big chance in May to rectify that and failed singularly. However, we are removing the incentives for fortnightly collections, and looking at incentives for weekly collections.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
2. What plans he has to provide support through his Department’s housing policy to serving and former members of the armed forces. [Official Report, 13 July 2011, Vol. 531, c. 3-4MC.]
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
6. What steps he is taking to reduce the level of fraudulent claims for funding awarded by local authorities.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Last month, in conjunction with the National Fraud Authority, I published a 10-point plan outlining how councils can save £2 billion a year from tackling fraud. Whether it be through dealing with tenancy cheats or organised crimes, this is a key way to save taxpayers’ money and protect front-line services.
Mr Raab
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Will he join me in recognising the lead taken by Elmbridge borough council, which over the last year alone recovered £72,000 of overpaid benefit and is using data checks to crack down on the abuse of the single person council tax discount, cutting out waste and fraud and saving taxpayers’ money?
Mr Pickles
I will indeed join my hon. Friend in congratulating his council. As I said in my original answer, this is quite a big deal, amounting to £2 billion a year. I think it was Cheshire East council that managed to save £500,000 a year on the single person discount. We are not talking about trivial amounts here; we are talking about something that will make a big difference.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
7. What steps his Department is taking to support home ownership.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
16. What plans he has to increase the powers of local authorities to tackle unauthorised development.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The Government take the problem of unauthorised development very seriously. There are already strong powers to enable local planning authorities to take action, and the Localism Bill, which begins its Committee stage in the House of Lords today, includes provisions in clauses 108 to 111 to strengthen authorities’ powers to tackle unauthorised developments, particularly when people have deliberately tried to conceal them.
Mr Evennett
I thank my right hon. Friend for his response and the work he and his Department are doing in this field. Does he believe the policies in the Localism Bill to which he has just referred will speed up the planning and enforcement process to help tackle the problems caused by unauthorised developments and business operations?
Mr Pickles
I do. A particular problem has been unscrupulous developers rather playing the game by both appealing against enforcement in respect of unauthorised developments and putting in fresh applications. In future, the applicant will have a choice of either appealing the enforcement or making a fresh application.
Andrew Jones
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. The 2006 planning enforcement review recommended that planning fees should not include a charge for enforcement. Will the Secretary of State confirm what the current position is, and is he considering changing it?
Mr Pickles
We will lay out changes with regard to enforcement and issue guidelines. For instance, we will increase the fine for enforcement from £1,000 to £2,500. It is important to send out the message that unscrupulous developers will no longer be able to play the system and get those vital months of freedom in which to continue with a development no one wants.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
One of the planning enforcement steps that the Secretary of State has made it harder for Slough local authority to take is dealing with what we call Slough sheds, which is people erecting garden sheds in their back gardens and letting them out for others to occupy. The Secretary of State has taken away the funds we had to be able to enforce against that abuse of garden sheds. What is he doing to ensure that local authorities have sufficient powers and resources to deal with the letting out of inappropriate buildings to needy people?
Mr Pickles
I regret to have to inform the House that, in all our deliberations, Slough sheds have not been at the forefront of the Department’s mind. If it is an important abuse, I frankly do not believe that the local authority cannot find the necessary resources to prioritise tackling it. However, we are looking at ways in which we can encourage small business and private enterprise to set up in private homes, and I hope the point the hon. Lady raises would not stand in the way of that.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
11. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of empty homes.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
12. What steps he is considering in relation to senior pay in local government.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
We have been clear that we expect councils to demonstrate much more restraint in the local decisions they make on senior pay. In addition, we have introduced measures in the Localism Bill and we are improving transparency arrangements to ensure greater local democratic accountability in determining senior pay.
Steve Baker
Many senior business men and their staff in my constituency have taken pay cuts as a result of part-time working through the downturn. Is local government sharing that pain?
Mr Pickles
I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that a survey by one of the trade papers showed that chief executives’ salaries have dropped by 14%. In my view, that is certainly a very good start. We have asked chief executives who are earning more than £150,000 to take a 5% cut, and those earning more than £200,000 to take a cut too. They need to do that so they can look their front-line staff in the eye when taking these difficult decisions.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the level of transparency being applied to the public sector should also apply to the private sector, and how can that be achieved?
Mr Pickles
That is a matter for companies and their shareholders. However, I am sure that somebody who has been a champion of the low-paid, such as the hon. Gentleman, will be very pleased that we are extending that transparency. It will apply not only to highly paid people but to low-paid people in the public sector, so that we can clearly see the level of remuneration that local authority workers receive.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The local government resource review is considering options to allow authorities to receive the repatriation of business rates. We will publish our proposals in July for consultation. We have been clear all along that the review will continue to support people where needed, to consider how to fund authorities where locally raised funding would be insufficient to meet budget requirements and to control council tax levels.
Paul Goggins
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for his answer. I am sure he will agree that local authorities have a key role to play in promoting growth. There are very strong arguments in favour of allowing local authorities to keep their business rates, but given the great disparity that exists between local authorities across the country, can he give us a bit more detail about how he will make sure that local authorities in disadvantaged areas that do not have a strong business base will still be able to fund essential services?
Mr Pickles
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s question, because it allows me to make it absolutely clear that there is absolutely no intention whatever for councils to receive anything less than they currently receive with regard to the amount of grant. Manchester receives £714 per head and Trafford receives £325 per head. That kind of bridging is not easy to do, but I want him to understand that the system we are proposing will fully meet the aspirations of places such as Manchester, which has a very dynamic economy. We want to ensure that we no longer take from areas where growth exists, as happens under the existing provisions.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
Hastings recently fell to 19th from the bottom on the index of multiple deprivation. Can the Secretary of State reassure me that in the new assessment, with business rates as a right incentive for councils, areas of deprivation will still get the support they need from central Government while growth comes back?
Mr Pickles
The short answer is yes. My hon. Friend is a doughty defender of her constituents, but there is irony in the fact that the worse an authority can present itself, the more grant it gets. When I was council leader I often wanted to state what the good reasons for coming to the area were, and I think we have found a system under which councils will be able to do that. Hon. Members should not be under any illusions—the existing system is bust; it is broken. It simply does not deliver and we want a system that will deliver for the richest and the poorest.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
But while the Stockport part of my constituency would broadly break even from localising business rates by raising almost the same amount as it gets in formula grant under the current arrangements, the Tameside part of my constituency would see a massive 35.7% drop—a shortfall of some £30 million funding. Does the Secretary of State understand that coming on top of his front-loaded cuts, such a massive reduction in funding for one of England’s poorest local authorities would be an unacceptable outcome?
Mr Pickles
My advice to the hon. Gentleman is to cancel the leaflet. If it has already gone, pull it back. There is no intention whatsoever, under any circumstances, that he should lose 34%—not in one lump, not in a series of lumps. He is going to have to trust me. We are producing a scheme that he will like. We are producing a scheme such that he might even consider crossing the Floor.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Since the last oral questions we have announced plans to build 100,000 homes and create 25,000 jobs by selling off surplus public sector land. We have unveiled a new planning protection to help communities to protect valuable green open spaces. We have opened up the books on the lavish spending of the previous Government via the Government procurement card—Whitehall’s flexible friend.
On a more sombre note, we are making a £2 million contribution to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation to ensure the long-term preservation and restoration of its memorial site. It is our collective responsibility to educate future generations about the horrors of the holocaust and never to forget why we need to challenge and combat the forces of hate.
Mark Pawsey
The need for more new homes is accepted across the House. In addition to Firstbuy and the new homes bonus, one way of increasing the supply of new homes will be to relax the planning rules, including allowing the conversion of empty commercial space. The Government’s current consultation on that proposal will be welcomed by first-time buyers as well as the Opposition. Will the Minister tell the House when the legislation might be introduced and estimate the number of new homes that might be created in this way?
Mr Pickles
I think the proposal will be welcome in all parts of the House. We heard opposing views from the hon. Members for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), but my hon. Friend has until 30 June, when we will be closing the consultation. The proposal could produce 70,000 new homes over 10 years. I share his commitment to that aim.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
We have already heard today about the concerns over the level of charges being raised on the old and vulnerable in our communities as a result of the cuts, but it is not only those people who are facing increases in charges. Tory-run Wandsworth and Bexley councils are planning to charge children to play on their swings. Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning this fun tax, or is pay to play now official Government policy?
Mr Pickles
Let us be clear: under the Labour Administration councils were harangued about not charging. Councils were instructed to charge more. We will look at the level of charging in the context of the reform of local government finance, but it ill becomes the Labour party to suggest what the right hon. Lady is now suggesting when under Labour charges went up and the council tax doubled.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
T4. I would like to bring to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister the good work being done by Erewash borough council and the private landlord sector across the borough to encourage landlords to consider housing benefit recipients on an equal footing with tenant on private lets, which has strengthened the process of moving families into appropriate accommodation more quickly. Will he welcome this cross-sector work?
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
T7. Does the Minister agree that the Government’s recent statement of 13 April on Traveller sites provides excellent advice to Wiltshire council when it comes to consider contentious planning issues in Alderbury and Salisbury?
Mr Pickles
It is quite reasonable to see this as an emerging policy. We have put out a consultation document on Traveller sites, and there are a few more days before the consultation closes. It should be clear in the council’s mind that this is a policy that is changing and emerging.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
T5. The Housing Minister is familiar with the blight caused by private landlords in old terraced houses in Manchester and Salford. The area-based registration of private landlords has had some success in dealing with the problem, but those schemes under the Housing Act 2004 are coming to an end. If local authorities can show that there has been some success, will he agree to the extension of those schemes?
Mr Pickles
Of course, that is because Bolton receives an enormous grant from the Government.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
T9. In the week of the anniversary of the emergency Budget, what additional steps is my right hon. Friend’s Department taking to help the Government to achieve their fiscal mandate?
Mr Pickles
We have delivered a good settlement for local government; we are looking to reduce our own Department, including reducing at the top and reducing numbers; and we are looking to extend that by offering help on growth, on enterprise zones and on local partnerships for growth. This Department has changed enormously over the past year by becoming pro-growth and helpful to local communities, offering power to local government and ensuring that ordinary people do not face a big increase in council tax.
Mr Speaker
I think the hon. Gentleman might want an Adjournment debate on the matter.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
In the Westminster city council area, 3,000 elderly and disabled people are losing social care, children’s centres are being cut, street cleansing is being cut and the youth service is being cut. In the light of that, does the Secretary of State think it is a good use of public money to run a summer roadshow
“to counter the messages that people are hearing about council services being reduced or withdrawn”?
Mr Pickles
We have been most careful to ensure that priority has been given to the most vulnerable. That is why we made sure that £6.5 billion went into the Supporting People programme, and £400 million into homeless programmes. We expect that to be reflected by local authorities prioritising the most vulnerable.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
It is a national scandal that wanted and profitable pubs are being closed against the wishes of the communities they serve and simply to serve the interests of greedy developers and pub companies. I was delighted to welcome the Minister with responsibility for community pubs to the launch of the all-party save the pub group’s new planning charter. Will he welcome that charter and work with the group to ensure that the Government do all they can to protect pubs?
Mr Pickles
I dare say that, if Labour had been in control, we would have seen even bigger increases. After all, this is the year that Labour was going to impose pretty big front-loaded cuts on local authorities, and it was urging local authorities to increase their charges. A Labour MP should therefore not castigate a local authority that increases charges after listening to a Labour Government; he should be encouraging it.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
I have a council that is keen to transfer assets to community groups, and community groups are, encouragingly, interested in taking them on. However, there seem to be some barriers in terms of not only VAT and the complexity of the VAT system but community insurance policies, so will the Department put in place a working group to look at the barriers that are stopping people transferring assets to community groups?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend makes some very important points, but such matters are way above my pay grade. With regard to charitable trusts and the like, however, it would be sensible for her to talk to members of my Department, and we will do our best to help her.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
On waste, will the Secretary of State confirm that his Department spent £1.3 million in the first four months of this year on legal advice and consultancy? How much of that was attributable to the consequences of his unlawful decision to try to abolish regional spatial strategies?
Mr Pickles
I am delighted to tell the right hon. Gentleman that the bill has come down from what it was under Labour, and that quite a lot of that money was actually expended on decisions taken by my Labour predecessor. We have been using that money to unravel the mess that he and his friends left behind.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The village of Braybrooke in my constituency is gradually being surrounded by unauthorised developments in open countryside as a result of applications from the Gypsy and Traveller community. What additional powers and guidance will the Secretary of State give to the local planning authority to ensure that the village is not completely encircled?