Lord Stunell
Main Page: Lord Stunell (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
14. What steps he plans to take to abolish the Standards Board for England.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
We shall be abolishing the Standards Board for England. The necessary legislation will be in our localism Bill, announced in the Queen's Speech.
Dr Pugh
I thank the Minister for that answer and welcome him to his position. He brings enormous experience of local government to the post.
We all agree that £10 million could be better spent to better effect, but what rights of appeal will there be if the local process goes wrong or goes amiss, as it sometimes does?
Andrew Stunell
I thank my hon. Friend for his welcome. He is right that a safety net is needed, and we are in discussion with our local government colleagues about the most appropriate way of moving forward.
Andrew Stunell
I would like to claim that, for my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I already was, but I am happy to be so for others as well.
Around the country, there are councillors of every political persuasion deeply frustrated by the fact that the Standards Board remains a burden and a threat to them. It costs £7.8 million, but it dealt with only 1,000 real complaints last year, which is £7,800 per complaint. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. That will be done on a statutory basis through the decentralisation and localism Bill.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
12. What steps he plans to take to improve the standard of social housing; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
It is an astonishing but sad fact that after 13 years of a Labour Government there is a backlog of £3.2 billion to bring decent homes to all social housing, and that is in the context of the previous Chief Secretary to the Treasury leaving a note saying that he was afraid that there was no money—or, as my brief says, future funding for the decent homes programme will be decided in the context of the Government's spending review.
John Robertson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his inept answer. Could he possibly tell me how he intends to find the money to help social housing? His party stood on a manifesto to try to help people who needed help, unlike the party that he joined in coalition, which did not give a toss about the poor people.
Andrew Stunell
The coalition Government and the agreement make it clear that we have a firm commitment to dealing with social and affordable housing to bring housing up to standard. We have the job of making sure that we can do that in an affordable way while getting Britain back on its feet. The hon. Gentleman’s Government caused the problem; we are giving the solutions.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is a question not just of the standards of housing but of the legacy. After the last couple of decades of development in social housing, there is a desperate shortage of three and four-bedroomed family houses. There are a lot of families in my constituency and throughout the country who are crammed into one and two-bedroomed houses. It is simply unacceptable. It has an enormous impact on their lives and children’s life chances. Will the Government be addressing that as well?
Andrew Stunell
The question is about social housing, and of course my hon. Friend is right that we must have the right mix of accommodation in each local area. One thing that we are making clear is that local areas should take the decision, and that local bids should be made.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
May I start by congratulating the new Minister on being appointed to work in my old office? He has a great team of civil servants, and it was a privilege to work with them. I congratulate also the new Housing Minister on his promotion, but it is a real shame that he, along with the Prime Minister and, this week, the Chancellor, should choose to use their first appearances at the Dispatch Box to give such inaccurate information about the housing pledge that the previous Government announced two years ago. The Housing Minister knows full well that the costs were agreed with the Treasury and would have been met with £340 million from capital under-spends in other Departments and £540 million in greater departmental flexibilities. If that had not been the case, the Government’s accounting officer would have prevented us from making the announcement. If that pledge—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman should resume his seat. I think that we have got the thrust of it. We are pretty clear.
Andrew Stunell
Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is wrong, and, as it will become clear when statements are made in the emergency Budget and elsewhere, we are putting the financial package back together again.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
13. What steps he plans to take to increase the supply of affordable housing in areas of high demand.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
We recognise that there is a continued need for affordable housing, and we remain committed to its provision. When we announced on 24 May the £6.2 billion of savings to tackle the deficit, we made available £170 million to safeguard the delivery of about 4,000 otherwise unfunded social rented homes, starting on site this year and prioritising provision for the most vulnerable. Decisions on future levels of funding for affordable housing will be made in the spending review.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that reply. Given his professed support for social housing, will he explain why the Homes and Communities Agency has put a moratorium on all spending on new council housing, including the site in central Bristol on which work was planned to go ahead?
Andrew Stunell
As the hon. Lady will know, the moratorium is in existence until the emergency Budget is announced, and I cannot go much further than that at this point. However, the reason why there will be an emergency Budget, and the reason why there is a moratorium, is that there is not enough money to complete the programme that was put in train by the Opposition’s Front Benchers when they were in government.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that, although the previous Government made lots of pledges, the problem is that they never lived up to them?
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Why did Ministers not make an announcement about the first £230 million of cuts to the affordable housing investment programme instead of sneaking them out on the Homes and Communities Agency website? Do they not accept that the hardest-hit areas are the poorest, and that the poorest families will be hit first? Given that the Prime Minister said this week that the Government’s cuts will be open, responsible and fair, can the Minister not see that that fails each one of those three tests?
Andrew Stunell
I shall not be quite so quick to do so this time. The fact is that we have tried to do our work in a measured and careful way to protect the vulnerable, as the coalition agreement set out. That is what we are about. That is what we are doing.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
17. What timetable he has set for the ending of regional spatial strategies.
Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
T4. I understand that, notwithstanding the announcement that the Standards Board will be abolished, the big cheeses of that organisation have written to chief executives of local authorities asking them to supply more business in the form of complaints against accountable and elected representatives. Has the Treasury Bench considered making an example of this quango for its impertinence?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
I have already told the House that the cost of dealing with every successful complaint is approaching £8,000. The hon. Gentleman is right that something needs to be done about that quickly. We have indeed, in the proposals that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) was criticising a few moments ago, drawn back on spending by that quango. As soon as legislation permits, we will get rid of it completely.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T2. Can the Secretary of State explain to people in Chesterfield, who suffered so badly from unemployment under the last Conservative Government, why one of the first measures that he has taken is to move £160,000 out of the working neighbourhoods fund? That money was being well spent by our council helping unemployed people back into work. Was not the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), right when he said that the poorest people will bear the cost of the cuts under this Conservative Government?