Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

There is a real issue in Newham and other parts of the country about developments in back gardens. When I was in the Department, it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), then the Housing Minister, who did more to tackle the issue than any Minister before him, and that is now being carried on by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles). This Government are helping to deal with the issue the hon. Lady raises on behalf of her constituents.

I accept that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with his experience of the matter, understands that we need to find an article 4 system that actually works, rather than the well-intentioned but draconian outcome proposed by their lordships. Rightly or wrongly, concerns have been raised about how article 4 actually operates on the ground. That relates in part to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) made about a degree of risk averseness among local government officers in recommending them to their members.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Does my hon. Friend not agree with me, however, that it would have been easier to persuade the House of the merits of these proposals if the indicative costs of, say, the enforcement action likely under the new regime, and indeed the indicative economic benefit referred to by the Secretary of State, had been made more explicit in the course of the debate?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I accept the basis on which he does so. Equally, however, there is no doubt a great deal set out in the consultation. I very much hope that the consultation contains some constructive proposals on how we might make an article 4 system work more effectively in practice. I understand his point, but the details are particularly indicative and speculative in these cases because, in general, the Government have rightly taken a policy of not seeking to intervene in local authority applications for article 4 directions, which is a genuinely localist stance. We have in fact made the position more localist by requiring only notification of the article 4 direction, rather than approval by the Secretary of State—a general move back towards localism, which the previous Government never did. That is why I think that, rather than thinking about the indicative costs, we should look at finding a constructive means whereby local authorities have the confidence to use article 4 directions, knowing that they will work and will not create a disproportionate burden.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

When I was shadow regeneration Minister, I met One North East in a rather salubrious hotel in central Newcastle. I agree that it did some good work, but if we consider all the regional development agencies throughout the country, they failed in two respects. They did not ameliorate the internal divisions in the economies in their areas, because even in the north-east, the economies of Stockton and Middlesbrough are amazingly different from those of Morpeth and Hexham, and they are amazingly different from those of Bishop Auckland or the City of Durham. At the same time, the RDAs failed to tackle social, demographic and economic inequalities between the regions, and they did not facilitate the growth in private sector jobs and regeneration that we would have wanted in the north-west and the north-east, although that did happen in London, the south-east and the south-west.

[Robert Neill]

May I reinforce my hon. Friend’s point? I am sure that he is aware not only that the regional development agency system failed to address such regional inequalities, but that inequality between the regions actually grew rather than reduced under the Labour Government, despite the expense of such a top-heavy bureaucracy.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a typically astute point. The Local Government Association did not have an axe to grind against the previous Government, but it produced several reports showing that the significant public investment in regional development agencies under that Labour Government did not deliver objective outputs. My hon. Friend and I have scrutinised regeneration legislation that has addressed those points.

There is an intellectual coherence in the Bill because if we are devolving power to the lowest level, which the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole talked about, and if we are to give local authorities a vested interest—and fiscal incentive—in driving regeneration and growth on the basis of local priorities, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) mentioned, local enterprise partnerships are the model to use. Those partnerships are driven by business and give local authorities of whatever political persuasion the opportunity to show leadership and vision.

I will be honest with hon. Members: there are some fantastic Labour councils, such as Lewisham and Wigan. I am positive about Wigan, which is a fantastic place to live, because my wife is from there. It is unfortunate that it has a Labour council, but to give it its due, it is doing a good job. The local enterprise partnerships have a complementary relationship with the new homes bonus, and there is therefore a fiscal incentive to drive forward a philosophy on the basis of local need. Money comes into the pot via the new homes bonus, and then local authorities may make a value judgment about whether the quality of life in their area is such that they wish to build hundreds or thousands of new homes, or to keep things as they are. Authorities know that they will not get that fiscal incentive for the delivery of core services. My local authority in Peterborough wants to build 25,000 homes between 2009 and 2026, so it will have a fiscal incentive to encourage the building of private sector and shared equity housing, as well as social and affordable housing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I will happily answer that at an appropriate moment, but I doubt whether I shall be in order if I try to do so now. I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s interest in the fire service, but the discussions were about joint control room bids—a facility made available to all those interested in bidding. As he will recognise, the need to have such discussions about the future of joint control rooms arose partly because we were stuck with 30-odd-year leases on control rooms that were not usable because the previous Government never delivered the IT to go inside them

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

For the avoidance of doubt, the fire service college is in the Cotswolds rather than the Fens.

Will the Minister support me in saying that we should pursue further shared and combined services with other fire authorities on, for example, payroll, administration and human resources rather than moving immediately to front-line cuts such as the closure of Stanground or Dogsthorpe fire stations in the city of Peterborough?

[Robert Neill]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there are sensible means of meeting deficit reduction targets, without having an impact on stations and staffing. I pointed that out in a letter to the shadow fire Minister, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), in December 2010. References to shared service, joint working, joint procurement, flexible shift patterns and working patterns are exactly the sort of issues that go-ahead fire authorities are taking on board.

Localism Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker.

I will encapsulate the technicalities as swiftly as I can, but it suffices to say that these amendments are necessary to ensure that those commercial activities that are undertaken by the GLA are done so within a taxable environment. As a local authority, it would normally have tax-exempt status, but some of those activities are not of a local authority nature but more of a commercial nature and so have to be properly taxable. There is a long-established tax principle in that regard to ensure a level playing field between the public and private sectors in relation to commercial activities. That is particularly important in this case because the GLA will inherit, as a consequence of our devolution measures, a significant portfolio of land interests, some of which operate on a commercial basis and are subject to corporation tax and capital gains tax. It is not a new state of affairs. Section 157 of the 1999 Act made like provision in relation to the activities of Transport for London. That is the background to what we are doing.

In a nutshell, the list of specified commercial activities, which will be set out in a detailed order, will be worked up by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the GLA during the passage of the Bill, but essentially the activities of the London Development Agency and Homes and Communities Agency will be transferred to the Mayor. That is how new clause 20 kicks off the whole proposition.

New clause 21 introduces new schedule 2, which will neutralise certain tax consequences—the other side of the coin—that might otherwise arise from the transfer of various property, rights and liabilities from the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords, the Homes and Communities Agency and the London Development Agency to other public bodies. There is a measure to enable the Treasury to make similar tax provisions for future mayoral development corporations. As we know, one is proposed, and we will come to that in a moment, but the provision will technically permit others to be set up and, therefore, embrace properly, within a legal framework, all those related activities.

Essentially, every Government new clause and amendment with which we are concerned relates to that process. The Opposition have tabled a couple of amendments, which I can deal with conveniently either now or in due course once they have been spoken to, but suffice it to say that the only Government amendments that do not form part of the tax treatment provisions are amendments 212 and 213. They relate to the mayoral development corporation, which is proposed for establishment, and I hope that we can find some common ground, because in Committee there was a discussion and Members generally accepted as desirable both the idea that the Mayor of London should have the power to establish a mayoral development corporation, and the current Mayor’s intention to establish such a corporation broadly relating to the Olympic park in east London.

The provision is more widely cast than that, for good reasons, and it will permit the establishment of other mayoral development corporations. None is envisaged by the current Mayor and I am not conscious of any envisaged by potential Mayors, either, but it would be on the books for the future.

The question that arose, and which the Government seek to address with the proposed changes, was what are the appropriate means of holding the Mayor to account for mayoral development corporation proposals. If a future Mayor—I am sure that it would not be the current Mayor—were to come up with a proposal for a mayoral development corporation which was thought objectionable, by what means would a control or brake be put on that process?

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the anecdotal evidence from the Thames Gateway is that the level of accountability and the funding streams were often indistinct, that there was an insufficient level of democratic accountability through boroughs outside London, London boroughs and the mayoralty, and that the proposed changes before us seek to rectify that situation?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a history to the incremental growth of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, which did not prove satisfactory, and as he knows the Government are looking at the matter in a different context.

We seek to introduce proper accountability to the London mayoral development corporation. There was a debate about whether it would be appropriate to give the boroughs a veto, and that possibility has foreshadowed an Opposition amendment. The Government have reflected on the matter, and we take the view that it probably is appropriate and sensible to include a check and balance in the system, but we conclude that, because the Mayor of London is a strategic authority and charged with the economic development policy and oversight for London, the check and balance should not be through any one London borough or group of London boroughs, as they have their own important role, are in any event the statutory consultees on these matters and would have the opportunity to put their views forward anyway.

It is more appropriate if the check and balance mirrors other checks and balances in the GLA’s governance scheme, so that the London assembly, which is democratically elected and represents all Londoners, is able to veto a proposal for a mayoral development corporation by a two-thirds qualified majority vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

Yes, the corporations could act in that way. They do not have to, because we have not been as specific as was the case in the past with the old-style development corporations as to exactly what they have to include. The likelihood, it is fair to say, is that they would, because part of the objective of a development corporation generally is to bring the development function and the planning function for a particular area together to speed up development. In practice—I hope that this will reassure my right hon. Friend—the east London MDC that was proposed for the Olympic park area has been involved an iterative process, with a degree of discussion between the Mayor and the five London boroughs affected. There has been some negotiation, which is probably a mature thing to have in the current circumstances. The upshot is that we now have a proposal to which the Mayor and the London boroughs are satisfied they can sign up. The boroughs accept that they cede some planning power for a period, but now do so by agreement with the Mayor. I think the same process can be achieved in other cases.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Setting aside the sui generis nature of London governance, does my hon. Friend agree that the level of direct accountability of these Government proposals is greater than that which existed hitherto in, for instance, West Northamptonshire Development Corporation, North Northants Development Company and most of, if not all of, the housing market renewal areas? This is indeed an improvement in terms of direct accountability for regeneration policy.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, for two reasons. First, the power to set up the corporation is devolved, and a directly elected regional figure, in the shape of the Mayor, takes that decision. Secondly, there is the veto, which did not exist in relation to the other, earlier-style development corporations. There is therefore a significantly enhanced degree of accountability.

Firefighters (Industrial Action)

Debate between Robert Neill and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The attempt by the hon. Gentleman to distract us from the immediate situation in London by making reference to the spending review does him little credit and is frankly unworthy of the seriousness of the situation. This dispute was in existence long before the spending review took place, and I hope that he will concentrate on resolving it. We can have debates about the spending review in more appropriate circumstances.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I speak as a former member of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority and as only the second graduate of the parliamentary firefighters scheme. I congratulate the Minister on his robust line, which better represents the public than the hard-left leadership of the Fire Brigades Union. Is it not a fact that the previous Labour Administration allowed the Fireguard resilience planning programme to fail? Will my hon. Friend give the House an undertaking that he will work with the Chief Fire Officers Association and other key stakeholders to ensure that resilience planning is in place, particularly in the run-up to the Olympics, so that we can be prepared for any further industrial action and other eventualities?

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his interest and expertise in these matters. He is right to say that Fireguard did not succeed; that leaves a limited number of options available to us. It is also fair to say that, since becoming a Minister, I have made it my business to keep in contact with all the principal players, including the Chief Fire Officers Association and the union, whose general secretary and assistant secretary I have met on a number of occasions. I want to put it on record that my door remains open to them as much as to anyone else.

The Audit Commission recently reported on resilience, and it is important that we should never be complacent about it. That applies right across the country. The chief fire and rescue adviser, together with officials in the Department, continue to keep in touch with the fire authorities to ensure that we review and maximise the resilience arrangements that are available to the fire and rescue authorities.