Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

There are challenges in the private rented sector and with housing supply everywhere. I would say two things: first, we need to work together to unlock additional supply, which is why it is important for the Mayor of London—I am not criticising him—to play his part; secondly, we need to ensure that renters have the protections that they deserve. That is why we are bringing forward legislation, which I know the hon. Lady supports.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

The Help to Buy scheme has helped hundreds of my young constituents to get on to the housing ladder, yet it is due to end shortly. Can the Secretary of State assure me that he is badgering the Chancellor to ensure that that vital scheme continues?

[Michael Gove]

I do not need to badger the Chancellor; we are not just constituency neighbours, but brothers from different mothers. More than that, the newly appointed Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), was immediately on the case. We will secure an extension to make sure that my hon. Friend’s constituents get the benefits from the scheme that they deserve, and I look forward to meeting him next month.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I am pleased to hear about this successful development and look forward to seeing it. Due to the quasi-judicial role of Ministers in the planning system, I cannot comment on specific planning applications. However, as part of the new infrastructure levy, we are very committed to ensuring that the infrastructure delivery strategies, which councils will have to put together, will make it clearer to communities what will be provided. That should include things such as GP surgeries, which should have the integrated care board’s support.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

17. What steps his Department is taking to help first-time buyers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lucy Frazer)]

There are currently no plans to further extend or replace Help to Buy, but all options to increase home ownership are kept under review. Our other schemes, including shared ownership, the mortgage guarantee scheme and First Homes, which have been trialled in my hon. Friend’s constituency, continue to support first-time buyers.

[Mark Fletcher]

The Help to Buy scheme has been an invaluable way of getting on the housing ladder for so many people. I was recently visited by a constituent—a young nurse—who was desperate to use the scheme but worried that it runs out in March. Will the Minister give us an update? Will we be able to keep this invaluable scheme?

[Lucy Frazer]

We do not currently have plans to do so, but we will keep that under review. Since 2010, more than 819,000 households have been helped to purchase a home through Government-backed schemes. That includes how we cut stamp duty land tax, and extended the mortgage guarantee for a further year to maintain the availability of mortgages to buyers with only a 5% deposit.

Draft Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 Draft Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections and Welsh Forms (Amendment) Order 2022

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris]

The Government Whip perhaps gets ahead of himself. I wonder how long we would have to stand in Parliament Square before we met a person who thought that addressing the issue before us was even in their top 50 priorities—a long time indeed, I suspect.

As we heard from the Minister, the draft instruments flow from the Elections Act, which the Opposition strongly opposed at all stages before it became law a few months ago, and we do so again today—it was bad law then, and it is bad law now. Indeed, the Act is the latest in a long line that have exhibited the very worst tendencies of this Government in recent years, including the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022—remember that one?—the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 and the Trade Union Act 2016.

Underlying all those Acts was a determination to strengthen the Executive at the expense of the legislature and by shrinking the civic space for those who oppose this Government, including through an often complete disregard for the views of those affected as the Government ran through their proposals. That was mirrored in the proceedings on the Elections Act, which had these measures shoved into it halfway through Committee stage and after Second Reading; indeed, Bill Committee members could not even ask witnesses for their opinions about them, because that moment had passed. That is not the way to make good legislation, and these provisions are not good ones. I hope the Minister will reiterate in closing that the Government will make good on the commitments made during the passage of the Act to provide proper post-legislative scrutiny, because the Act needs it.

The measures before us once again seek to solve a problem that we have not yet been able to identify. I cannot think of a point where strong concerns have been raised about the conduct of supplementary vote elections—that they were perhaps too confusing or that the outcome did not reflect the public will—and where there was therefore a compelling case for change. I cannot think of Mayors or mayoral candidates who have raised significant concerns, and we did not hear that from the Minister in his opening speech. For all the noise on the Government Benches, it was a Conservative Government that introduced police and crime commissioners and this system of voting for them. Metro Mayors were introduced under the Government using this system, so it was good enough for them previously. The system has worked; the case for change is weak, and it is a terrible idea.

Putting aside the partisan aspects of this, it is a terrible idea to set the precedent that we in this place can change electoral systems without talking to the general public. I ask colleagues on the Government Benches to think where that could lead. If they are resistant to electoral reform—and I think many of those facing me probably are—they should consider that the approach being taken today is completely out of line with how we would originally have done these things, and it opens a Pandora’s box. I am surprised the Minister is so keen to do so, and I hope he will reflect on that in his closing remarks.

I gently say to the Minister that there is an awful lot that his Department has not delivered: huge regional inequalities that its plans are too modest to address, a housing crisis that has been ignored while the Government have a roll-around with their Back Benchers, and local councils that have been withering away because of Government cuts. It is beyond belief that, with all that in the in-tray, the three nonsenses in front of us are the priorities. That prompts only one question: why are the Government doing this? Once again, it seems that they are doing nothing more than seeking political advantage and moving the goalposts to make life a little easier.

I understand why a preference-based system so discomfits the Government; they know that a huge portion of the British people, if given a second, third and fourth choice alongside their first choice of candidate, would not use any of them for the Conservative party of today. Perhaps it is better to remove that option, but this narrow pursuit of political interest is what political projects do when they are past their sell-by date, unable to tackle big problems and devoid of big ideas.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

Can I just clarify whether it is now the Labour party’s position that first past the post is no longer the premier electoral system for UK elections?

[Alex Norris]

That is not the case that I have made. The case that we are making is that these systems have worked for these positions, and we do not believe that they ought to be changed. The irony is that, if we applied my Parliament Square test and asked people outside, “What are your priorities for your democracy?”, they would say that they would like a general election at the earliest opportunity—and we know why. I urge colleagues to vote against these instruments.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your leadership of the Committee, Mrs Murray. I rise briefly to raise a couple of points about the provisions.

These are quite ingenious ways of moving from one system of voting to another, and the details are extremely complicated to follow. However, there are helpful explanatory memorandums for each of the provisions, and I went to those to try to understand the details of the various measures that are being changed. I was particularly interested in the consultation process, which does not seem to have taken place. The explanatory memorandum to the Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 says that there is a statutory duty to consult under paragraph 12(4) of schedule 5B to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. What did the Government do? They consulted the Electoral Commission—full stop. They did no further consultation at all, and we can identify fairly easily from the explanatory memorandum why they did not. Another reason, of course, is the politics of all this, which are always interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North exposed some of that.

Some of the arguments developed in the explanatory memorandum are difficult for the Government to sustain. I want to probe why, in paragraph 10.3, whoever it was who wrote the explanatory memorandum on behalf of the Government says, “Well, we had a referendum, and people decided they did not want a change from first past the post.” However, the referendum was about the alternative vote—a different kind of proportional representation from SV, which is in place for the mayoralties. Why are we applying the lessons of a referendum about one system of voting to a completely different system of voting and saying that people have expressed a view? They have not expressed a view on SV, because they were never asked.

The truth is that, as the explanatory memorandum says, no consultation took place with the public at all. The Government decided not to bother. The Conservative party used to be the party that would protect and conserve the constitution. What the Conservatives are doing here is playing around with the constitution in a number of ways. I will come to my second point in a moment, but first I ask the Minister why that paragraph is praying in aid a referendum about one voting system to argue that we do not need to consult on a completely different voting system.

My second point—I know that you will listen to me carefully, Mrs Murray, and tell me if I am out of order—is that moving from the system we have is that probably no Mayor in the country will ever be elected with more than 50% of the vote. If we look at the 2019 North of Tyne mayoral election—I will develop the point in a second to show why it is relevant to today’s proceedings—Jamie Driscoll, who is an excellent Labour Mayor, was elected on a 32% turnout. However, in the first round he received only 33% of the vote, which means that only 10% of the electorate voted for him. One would imagine that that is what will happen under first past the post: a person with executive duties, making decisions about the nature of a region, will have been elected by only one in 10 voters.

[Mark Fletcher]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

Let me just make the second point, and then the hon. Gentleman can come in.

I am not looking only at Labour Mayors; Andy Street in the West Midlands received 48% of the vote on a 31% turnout, but the truth is that, of the total number of people who might have voted, only 15% voted for him—[Interruption.] Has the hon. Member for Bolsover been told by his Whip not to intervene on me?

[Mark Fletcher]

No. Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

I will give way with pleasure.

[Mark Fletcher]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I apologise for not thanking the hon. Member for Nottingham North for giving way earlier. I am slightly curious about how the hon. Member for Hemsworth feels Members of Parliament hold up when it comes to their electoral share, given that we are elected by first past the post. I am also delighted to point out—this was the point the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar, was just making—that Ben Houchen did all right.

[Jon Trickett]

I will come to precisely that point. I was the leader of a great council—Leeds City Council—for almost 10 years under Mrs Thatcher and then under John Major’s premiership. I was elected under first past the post, but we had a parliamentary system, as we do here. The Prime Minister is not elected by the people; he or she is elected by parliamentarians, and it was the same with the council. I was elected as leader of the council by the councillors, who had been elected by the public. What we have here is a presidential mode of running local regions and councils, in the sense that we have directly elected Mayors—who are not really accountable to a council or a group of councillors and who are able to make executive decisions of some significance, often spending large amounts of money—elected by only 10% of the population. That is quite an issue, and it needed to be properly debated with the public.

We are back to the failure to consult the public. Why on earth did we not consult the public? Why on earth have we allowed a situation in which only one in 10 voters might vote for an elected Mayor, who will have executive decision-making powers of a kind that the Prime Minister does not have? Certainly, under the normal system of council governance, a council leader would not have those powers. That is quite a mistake.

In paragraph 12.3 of the explanatory memorandum, under the heading “Impact”, we find out that we can save money by moving from one system to another, but are we really going to put a price on democracy? The memorandum says that we will save £7.3 million by moving from one system to another. That cannot be a justifiable reason for changing the way we do things without consulting anybody in the country. I have major reservations about this. I remain to be convinced of the case for moving away from first past the post in parliamentary elections. Once we establish a system for setting up and electing what are effectively neo-presidential authorities, having tinkered with the British constitution, we should not change that system without at least speaking to the public. If we spoke to them, perhaps we would end up with more engagement.

My final point is not at all in the documents before us—you will probably rule me out of order, Mrs Murray. If the Government stopped this system of Mayors who simply operate with delegated powers and administrate decisions made by central Government, and if those Mayors were given real powers, we might get more engagement with the public and might not have to tinker with the electoral system.

Affordable Housing: Planning Reform

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing, as he called it, a timely debate that is at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. I question the Cornwall and Devon bias to my right; Derbyshire is where people should be going for their holidays.

Like many former coal communities, the Bolsover constituency is fairly rural. Small pit villages, such as Glapwell and Shuttlewood, and small towns are its backbone. Anyone who has driven through the constituency recently will have seen the number of new dwellings popping up—439 since 2019. I have had the pleasure of visiting many of them, and many are affordable. It is a step in the right direction. It is great to hear how welcome those new residents are, many of whom are moving from outside the constituency and, indeed, from the south-east because they realise the benefits of living in Derbyshire.

In my relatively short time as the Member for Bolsover, my mission has always been focused on four things: infrastructure, skilled jobs, education and housing, which are all tied together. An area needs those things to thrive. They cannot be looked at in isolation. There is no point having housing without jobs and infrastructure, and there is no point building it all without equipping people with the skills they need to take advantage of those opportunities. Places in my constituency such as Shirebrook have suffered cycles of stagnation and deprivation that are difficult to disrupt. Nothing has ever really replaced the jobs and pride that the mines brought to many of my local communities. Honest people can work hard their entire lives, but because of the social and economic facts of the area, it is hard to grow the standard of living.

It is crucial that the Government continue to make bold decisions to promote the sustainable building of new homes in parts of the world like Shirebrook, which the Minister visited recently. On top of the tremendous benefits to the construction sector, new affordable housing is an important part of our offer to young people in our community. For too long, it has been accepted that, to find a good job and start a good life, people have to move away from places like Bolsover, where there are limited services and opportunities. Building affordable homes gives young people an incentive to stay local and invest their energy and creativity in the place they grew up. It can keep families together; staying local allows young people to maintain their most powerful support networks during a mental health crisis, takes pressure off the social care system and breaks down the worrying trend of loneliness in old age.

That is why I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to launch the First Homes scheme in Shirebrook. It allows local people and key workers the opportunity to buy their first home at a 30% discount. I was grateful to host the then Secretary of State for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who I think appreciated the unique challenges associated with regeneration in my constituency. Actively building new homes allows us to plan and grow our public services sustainably. Why do we build a few more houses in a village, with a salami-slice approach, rather than building a proper new estate with a school and GP practice, which can benefit the whole community? Building sustainably means a stronger local market for public services, which means better services for residents. When residents are against developments, it is almost certainly because they are unsustainable.

That is also why I am supporting and working with a number of local stakeholders on a project that has been known by many names, but which we will refer to as the Shirebrook growth corridor. We are looking to bring together infrastructure, housing, education and employment opportunities, which can help to break the cycle of stagnation that places such as Shirebrook have seen and unleash our potential.

I am sure the Minister will agree that now is the best time to embrace developing sustainably. We need to look at how we can use green technologies, such as mine water heating, electric vehicle charging points and heat pumps to reduce energy bills, reduce emissions and make the journey to net zero much more achievable. That is precisely what we are doing with the Shirebrook growth corridor.

All of that is not without its challenges, however. During the summer, I did a series of village hall meetings across my constituency and was slightly amazed that the most raised topic was not anything on the national agenda; it was parking in rural villages. Many of those areas were built at a time when most families did not have a car and if they did, they had one. Now, it is perfectly common for families to have two or three. That puts a huge burden on the villages in question and people do not like the traffic that builds up. I therefore encourage the Minister to get his officials to give some serious thought as to how we can solve the great parking issue in rural areas, particularly in areas such as Pinxton.

I would also raise section 106 moneys, because unfortunately, we hear time and again that although section 106 moneys have been agreed, they do not appear. Serious efforts are needed to ensure that residents are not being undersold by developers.

In closing, Dr Huq, as I can see that you are giving me that look, affordable housing is a vital cog in the system, but we need to see it in line with all the other elements that make sustainable communities. I am grateful for the way the Department has engaged with me so far, but I look forward to further conversations on the Shirebrook growth corridor, among many other things.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

I warmly welcome last week’s Queen’s Speech, which helps to meet the challenges of recovering from this pandemic while also delivering on our 2019 manifesto commitments. More importantly, it aims to improve people’s lives on a day-to-day basis. Whether it is backing our NHS, supporting our police to protect our communities, or improving our infrastructure, this Queen’s Speech and this Government show that they are committed to delivering the people’s priorities.

Our challenge in Bolsover is to try to change our local economy so that we have skilled jobs and a skilled workforce to meet those jobs. There are huge elements of the Queen’s Speech that help us move in the right direction—whether it is the skills and the lifetime skills guarantee; whether it is the freeport, which is bringing £1 billion of investment just down the M1 to the east midlands; whether it is on infrastructure and connectivity; or, indeed, whether it is on affordable housing. Bolsover has been a location for many houses that are worth £400,000 or £500,000, but that is astronomical for people who are on the average wage in my constituency. Unfortunately, we cannot improve an area in a sustainable way without having jobs, housing and education side by side.

There are too many young people in my constituency who cannot get on the housing ladder. As we increasingly move towards an ageing population, it will be incredibly important that these communities are sustainable, that young people are able to live near their parents, and that they are able to send their own children to good schools locally. I really welcome the fact that we are making affordable housing a central part of what we are doing as a Government, because without that, communities such as South Normanton, Clowne, Shirebrook and Bolsover will not be sustainable over the coming years. We already have fantastic communities in my constituency, but our challenge is to build a better Bolsover where every young person can fulfil their potential to get a good job locally and buy their own home. This is not about Westminster giving us free gifts or giving us anything; it is often about working locally and it is good to know that this Government have our backs when it comes to our local endeavours.