Finance (No. 3) Bill

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I think quite the reverse. What leave voters were promised was that the economic relationship would not leave anyone worse off and, in effect, would not be ruptured at all. That was the promise made in explicit terms by leading leave campaigners. Where there were concerns that motivated that leave vote, they were heavily about sovereignty and also about immigration. I do not think that the specific trading relationships that this country has with other parts of the world were a particularly paramount issue in the campaign. I know that it is a sensitive issue for leave campaigners to talk about the fact that immigration was a big part of that campaign, but, without question, it was in my constituency. In terms of that future trading relationship, it is by far the best thing to focus on what is simply in the best economic interests of the country once we leave the political side of the European Union with all of the objections that leave voters had to it. I do not think that leaving in such a way that preserves the best of our economy, minimises the disruption and honours our commitments under the Good Friday agreement is a betrayal at all. Many people want to see that economic relationship continue, even if they were of a position and a viewpoint that we are leaving the political side of the European Union with all that entails.

I will now get back to amendment 15, Dame Eleanor, before we are all rightly admonished for straying from the Finance Bill. The measure lays out a stipulation to provide clarity around which powers in relevant tax legislation have been transferred to the Treasury since June 2016 in connection with the UK’s exit. It also covers the powers that the Treasury expects to acquire, and, most importantly, it requires Ministers to set out a timeline for when these powers are to be returned to Parliament—I think the Minister missed off that last point in his speech.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is doing a good job on amendment 15, but I think that he has missed the good news of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) following his tenacious work. It looks like we have some movement on amendment 14 from the Government, and we will get these impact assessments before the meaningful vote. Will my hon. Friend, the shadow Minister, comment on the fact that the last time we saw such a thing was in the horrors of the Reading Room? We were shown that in every region of our nation, even in London where my own seat is, every sector of our economy will be worse off under every form of Brexit. Will he comment on that?

Summer Adjournment

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is good news that I have been called to speak so early, and I want to start with some good news relating to the last time that I was in this slot. I like to use this debate for unfinished business, and last time I mentioned a business in Park Royal called Sweetland, a baklava manufacturer of distinction. It is a patisserie that makes middle eastern food that goes to restaurants all over the west end, and it was having problems with HS2 over late payments relating to its relocation. The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) was the Rail Minister at the time, and he beavered away on this. As a result of his efforts and those of the Deputy Leader of the House, the company got its payments. In more good news, I am pleased to say that I was able to cut the ribbon the other day at the shiny new Sweetland factory in the East Acton ward. The company is very pleased.

I hope that the same magic can be worked again with a couple of other businesses whose cases I want to raise this afternoon. Next door to Sweetland is Med Food, which supplies olives. I emerged from there recently laden with jars of olives in different suspensions and flavours. It has not had a great time from HS2. Its relocation is being queried at every turn, and a receipt for bubble wrap that came in at under £200 was queried as unreasonable. Bubble wrap is the kind of thing that people need if they are relocating many hundreds of cubic metres of stock, and I wonder whether the Minister will look into Med Food’s case.

Altenergy of Chiswick, London, W4, is a solar PV panel manufacturer. Its business was booming as recently as 2011, when it was among the top 100 companies in that field. However, the industry has collapsed over the past couple of years, and the company’s turnover has gone down by 80% since the end of the feed-in tariff scheme was announced in 2011. This is part of a pattern from this Government. They used to want us to hug a husky, but now we see their love of nuclear power at Hinkley Point, which is actually two nuclear power stations, and their Heathrow expansion, which they pushed through the other day, is completely at odds with what they used to believe in, as is all the rest of the un-green stuff that they are doing now.

Will the Minister tell us what will happen to Altenergy of Chiswick, London, W4? The company wants policy clarity and fair treatment for rooftop solar, which is a popular type of renewable energy. It is cheap and obviously green; it is the most popular thing in the global renewables market. It dominates the market globally, but in this country, our Government seem to be dangerously in hock to the nuclear industry, which is getting all the subsidy. Altenergy is very worried. It used to have large offices, but it has now relocated to a shed belonging to the chief executive officer, Rajiv Bhatia. It has massively downsized. It used to employ 50 people, but it now employs just a handful. Can the Minister give me any assurances about what will happen when the feed-in tariff goes next year? The company wants to know about net metering, which would provide some certainty. There is no indication that the export tariff will be maintained after 1 April. May we have some assurances on that? Quinn McGovern from Elan Global Renewables of Acton, W3, is in a similar predicament. Several of these companies are wondering whether they might be about to go to the wall.

The issues being experienced by those businesses are not Brexit-related, but I shall now come to the Brexit-related ones. Hamish Orr Ewing of Ealing, W5, is a wine merchant who runs Wine Source Group, an importer of fine wines. He is concerned that the Government’s plan to ensure that importers pay VAT up front would

“be terminal for many merchants”.

He says that the UK wine industry contributes £9.1 billion to the public purse. He believes this plan to be an act of economic self-harm, and he would like some assurances.

We have heard a lot about the Windrush generation recently, and there are several Home Office-related business issues hitting Ealing and Acton. Manic Textiles wants to hire someone from Ukraine. He is skilled, but the company cannot pay him enough. When is this going to stop? We have ridiculous Government targets for the sake of targets that do not consider the skills gaps in our labour force. People may have seen on BBC News the case of a much-loved teacher at the Christ the Saviour Church of England Primary School who went back to Canada and now cannot come back because he does not earn enough. The situation is just nuts. In every case, the Home Office reply just seems to say, “Tough,” which is a bit embarrassing to pass on to the constituent, so I wonder whether the Department will consider the quality of its responses.

The last case that I want to raise is a really sad one. I was contacted on 12 July by Karl and Abbie Pokorny, who wrote to me to say:

“Our family has had a hard few weeks. Our previously happy and healthy three-and-a-half-year-old daughter has ended up in a drug-induced coma on a heart and lung machine and is on the transplant list, waiting for a new heart.”

I think that a new heart would have come for this little girl in March 2019, and their question was about EU organ donation. We have heard about Galileo and the European Medicines Agency—luckily, a new clause was passed last week with the aim of keeping us in the EMA—but they were wondering about our access to organ treatment networks. I contacted them this morning to ask whether it is okay to raise Sophie’s case this afternoon, and I am sorry to say that she passed at the weekend, on Sunday. Perhaps that particular case—[Interruption.] I am sorry for making the tone a little dramatic—I did not wish to do that—but let us hope that Sophie’s death was not in vain. Such things should be uppermost in the negotiations. The answers to my written questions about such things are vague in the extreme and always say “in due course” or whatever.

Anyway, I will end my speech there, because I know that loads of people want to speak. Happy holidays to one and all!

Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the 70th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks carrying passengers from the Caribbean; further notes the critical role those passengers played in the post-war reconstruction of the UK, and in particular their work to support the establishment of the newly created NHS; and recognises and celebrates the significant social, political and cultural contribution that those passengers and ensuing generations have made and continue to make to communities across the UK.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate and to the many colleagues from across the House who supported my application.

Today is the first anniversary of the horrific fire at Grenfell Tower, and I want to say at the start of this debate that my thoughts—and those of every Member, I am sure—are with the families of the victims, the survivors, members of the emergency services and all those for whom the last year has been marked by the trauma of that dreadful fire.

On 22 June 1948, HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury docks from the Caribbean carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways. More than half the passengers came from Jamaica, and there were many from Trinidad, Bermuda and British Guiana. There were other nationalities too, including Polish passengers displaced during the second world war. The passengers were responding to advertisements in local newspapers, including The Gleaner in Jamaica, for jobs in the UK, with an opportunity to travel on the Windrush for £28.

The UK was desperate for labour to help rebuild following the devastation of the second world war. The ship’s records reveal that the passengers had a range of skills: they included mechanics, carpenters, welders, engineers, cabinet makers, housing domestics and scholars, and there was a hatter, a judge and a potter, along with many other skilled workers. There were also dozens of airmen who had volunteered to serve in the RAF during the war and had played a hugely significant role in fighting fascism in Europe, including Samuel Beaver King—Sam King—who became the first black mayor of Southwark.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. In the London Borough of Ealing, on the other side of London, we have had a Windrush physical memorial and events for kids in schools since 1998. Does she agree that the word “Windrush” is meant to be a celebration of the kinds of achievements she is talking about, but that it has now turned into one we associate with tragedy because of failures in the Home Office? We see it week in, week out in our surgeries—for example, in the applications that take so long to be processed even when people have paid for priority service. Does she agree that now more than ever the words of Lord Reid from our side—that the Home Office is not fit for purpose—apply?

Childcare Vouchers

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend is right. Some of the changes introduced by the Government have been positive in that regard, but far more still needs to be done to support families with disabled children. He is absolutely right to raise the issue so early in the debate, and I will return to it as we progress.

It is critical, if we are to tackle increasing rates of child poverty and a lack of social mobility, that we address this issue. Increasing the availability of good-quality, affordable childcare clearly enables more parents to get into or return to work or access education and training, while also improving educational outcomes for their children. It is not just an issue for individual families; it is of critical importance to our whole economy and our productivity levels.

That is why the Treasury Committee, of which I am a member, recently announced that we will be holding an inquiry into childcare policy and its influence on the economy. While examining the role that high-quality, accessible, flexible and affordable childcare can play in supporting labour productivity, our inquiry will also scrutinise the processes for delivering childcare schemes and the overall package of Government initiatives aimed at making childcare affordable, as well as how the individual initiatives interact with each other and their effectiveness and whether they have delivered an adequate provision of affordable childcare that facilitates parental employment.

I am delighted that we will be investigating that crucial issue. As the Family and Childcare Trust has commented:

“Childcare is as vital as the rails and roads for helping our country to run”.

I am not quite sure whether the Government have fully made that link, given that childcare received the briefest of mentions in the recently published industrial strategy, and no mention whatsoever in the autumn Budget speech, despite the Chancellor’s stated commitment to tackling the UK’s poor and downgraded productivity levels.

There is a raft of early years and childcare-related concerns that I could touch on, starting with the cuts to Sure Start. Funding for Sure Start services has fallen by a staggering 46% since 2010 across the north-east, which is my region. Parents were promised that 30 hours of free childcare would be in place for their three and four-year-olds by last September, but the Pre-School Learning Alliance recently reported that 18% of families registered for the scheme still cannot access that support. The long-term sustainability of the childcare sector is also at risk due to underfunding—more than 1,100 nurseries and childminders have gone out of business since 2015. However, this debate focuses on childcare vouchers and the new system of tax-free childcare, and whether one must replace the other, or indeed whether the two can coexist.

As hon. Members will be aware, the childcare voucher scheme was introduced in 2005 under the Labour Government, as part of the wider system of employer-supported childcare. Working parents signing up to the childcare voucher scheme agree to sacrifice up to £55 of their salary a week, or £243 a month, before tax and national insurance deductions, receiving in exchange vouchers that must be used to pay for Ofsted-registered childcare providers—nurseries, childminders, pre-schools, after-school clubs or holiday schemes—for children aged up to 15, or up to 16 for children with a disability. That equates to a maximum saving of £77.76 per month per parent for basic rate taxpayers, or £1,866 per year for a working couple who are both in receipt of childcare vouchers.

The Childcare Voucher Providers Association calculates that some 780,000 parents are currently using vouchers, with millions of parents having received support since the scheme was introduced almost 13 years ago. According to a Library briefing paper, the Government state that more than 50,000 employers offer childcare vouchers to their staff, which the CVPA estimates equates to between 20 million and 26 million of the 31 million UK employees working for organisations that offer the scheme. Indeed, one of the benefits of childcare vouchers has been that employers have used their membership of the voucher scheme as an incentive to attract potential staff, which has helped organisations to recognise the importance of childcare and family life for their workforce, often leading them to consider what more they can do to support the working parents they employ. The CVPA highlights that childcare vouchers are the second most popular company benefit; only workplace pensions, which employers must offer by law, are more popular.

However, there are a number of well-documented flaws in the current childcare voucher scheme. A person’s ability to receive that support depends on their employer being registered for the scheme, which means that those whose employers are not registered cannot receive it. That includes the ever-increasing number of self-employed people in our economy, which the membership organisation IPSE, the Association of Independent Professional and the Self Employed, estimates at around 4.8 million people in the UK.

A further concern is that the level of support available per family via childcare vouchers is linked to the number of parents, rather than the number of children. For example, a lone parent with three young children working full-time and facing high childcare costs is entitled to less tax relief than a couple, both claiming vouchers, with one older child who only attends an after-school club twice a week.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned lone parents. I wanted to flag the launch last week of a new all-party parliamentary group on single-parent families. There are all-party groups for every subject under the sun, but this is the first time that anyone has managed to create one on this subject. It is a fairly common form of family nowadays: according to figures from Gingerbread, more than 51% of families in some London seats are single-parent families. People talk about a benefits trap. Under tax-free childcare, some lower-paid single parents will automatically lose tax credits and universal credit. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the systems must be worked out better, so as to apply to all forms of family?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point and I will go on to highlight that key concern. She is right that we must focus on all types of families, not just the notional two-parent family that this childcare scheme seems to benefit most.

As I have outlined, there are many downsides to the voucher scheme, which the Government cited to justify the introduction of the tax-free childcare alternative that was announced in March 2013. At that time, Ministers pledged that the new scheme would be phased in from autumn 2015 and that it would be available to families where all parents were in work and each earned less than £150,000 per year, as long as they were not in receipt of support for their childcare costs via tax credits or, when introduced, universal credit, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). Such families would receive 20% of their annual childcare costs up to a fixed limit, which was set at £6,000 per child, so parents would receive a payment of up to £1,200 per child per year. Eventually, that would cover all children aged up to 12, or up to 17 for children with disabilities.

Tax-free childcare is entirely independent of the parent’s employer, thereby dealing with the problems associated with the requirement for organisations to be registered for childcare vouchers. The value of the support available is linked to the number of children in the family and, therefore, to the likely childcare costs rather than to the number of eligible parents.

In March 2014 the Government published the outcome of their consultation into how tax-free childcare would work. They stated that the scheme was still on track to roll out from autumn 2015; that it would be rolled out much more quickly than previously announced so that all parents with children aged up to 12 would be covered in the first year; and that they would provide 20% of support for childcare costs up to £10,000 per year per child instead of the previous limit of up to £6,000, which equates to support of up to £2,000 per child per year, or £4,000 per year for disabled children.

Crucially, the Government confirmed that although existing members of childcare voucher schemes could choose to remain in receipt of vouchers, those schemes would close to new entrants once tax-free childcare was introduced. Quite understandably, it would not be possible for parents to benefit from both.

However, the original timescale for the introduction of tax-free childcare was significantly pushed back, partly due to the unsuccessful legal challenge from childcare voucher providers who were unhappy about the way in which the contract was awarded to National Savings and Investments. That meant that the new scheme could not be rolled out until April 2017, and then only for children born on or after 1 April 2013.

Eligibility requirements for tax-free childcare also changed. Each parent must now earn less than £100,000 per year to receive the support instead of the £150,000 limit previously envisaged. In addition, to access tax-free childcare, eligible parents must open an online account through the Childcare Choices website, pay money towards their childcare costs into that account, and have those payments topped up automatically by the Government at a rate of 20p for every 80p paid in by the parent, subject to the maximum limit. Parents then allocate that money to the qualifying childcare provider of their choice and the account provider makes the payment directly to that provider.

The ability for other parties to make contributions to those accounts and for parents to withdraw money from their childcare account—minus the Government’s contributions—should they need to do so, is clearly an advantage over the childcare voucher system. However, as we all know, the Childcare Choices website has been beset by technical difficulties since it launched in spring 2017 and many parents have been unable to access their tax-free childcare account or the 30 hours of free childcare that the website also supports.

As a consequence, Ministers confirmed to the House on 15 November that tax-free childcare would be rolled out for children aged six or under on 24 November. The assumption was that it would not be available to children aged 12 and under until the end of March 2018. That anticipated schedule has changed again, however: the Chief Secretary to the Treasury confirmed this morning—coincidentally—by written ministerial statement, that the scheme will be open to children aged nine and under from today and that all remaining eligible families will be able to access it from 14 February. If all that represents a simplification of the childcare support system, I would be interested to see how the Government could make it more complicated.

In July, the Financial Times’ personal finance, digital and communities editor, Lucy Warwick-Ching, published an article, “Why tax-free childcare account website makes me want to bawl”, that succinctly summed up the situation. She commented:

“What do you get when you take one frazzled parent and sit them in front of an officious government website? Answer: confusion. Add technical glitches to the mix and that bewilderment quickly turns to anger and frustration… No matter what time of day or night I tried to sign up, things kept going wrong. Once I had found the correct web page I had multiple problems logging on.

First, I had to set up a username and password. Then HMRC set me up with a government gateway user ID (via my mobile phone and email). This is a 12-digit number which you will need every time I log in…(you will need both parents’ national insurance numbers, payslips and/or your passport details—plus details of parental employment). If you go away to look for any of these, guess what happens? The website logs you out.

The last straw was the failure of the website. Even when I had the documents to hand, it repeatedly kicked me out, citing ‘technical difficulties’ and directed me to the government helpline instead… I finally managed to sign up to the tax-free childcare account. Can I sit back and relax now? No chance. HMRC says I must ‘manage’ my childcare service account, reconfirming my eligibility (by filling in a form) every three months.

If one of its aims is to encourage parents to stay in work, the new system appears to fall woefully short. Without rapid improvement, it risks becoming another chapter of disappointment in the saga of digital government.”

Crucially, the author highlighted that it is not possible to avoid those issues by signing up via post or over the phone; it must be done online. That leads me to ask the Minister: how many parents eligible to receive tax-free childcare will be prevented from receiving that support because they do not have easy, regular, and—crucially, given the type of data being provided—secure access to the internet?

When I was a member of the Finance Bill Committee in 2014, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), I asked the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), how many families would lose out as a result of that requirement. I received the answer that the Government estimated that as many as 9% of those eligible—up to 200,000 parents—did not have access to the internet, and therefore would be unable to receive tax-free childcare. Will the Minister set out whether that figure has changed and, if not, explain what the Government intend to do about it?

Concerns around the tax-free childcare scheme are not restricted to its digital woes but include the inescapable fact that it provides the greatest benefits to families who can afford to spend the most on childcare, because it is effectively linked to parents’ expenditure rather than income. That could mean that some families, such as a lone parent of two disabled children with high childcare costs, receive more support than under vouchers, which I strongly welcome, or that a couple earning a joint income of £195,000 receive £2,000 towards the costs of their childcare.

As the CVPA has pointed out, the way that tax-free childcare is structured means that it disproportionately favours wealthier families living in London and the south-east, who are more likely to have higher childcare costs and be higher earners. Tax-free childcare provides the same rate of saving on childcare costs irrespective of income—whether a family earns £240 per week or just under £200,000 per year.

Banks and Communities

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield]

The question that the hon. Gentleman raises of the tick-box attitude towards the investigations that banks carry out is one of the fundamental problems with regard to all consultation. Is it genuine consultation, or is it an economic decision that has been taken somewhere and then just implemented, almost irrespective of the evidence that they find when the consultation takes place?

I am keen to hear remarks from the Minister about what the Government, who obviously represent the United Kingdom in that interface between banks and the consumer and constituents, are able to do to push back those bank closures and, more importantly, investigate and establish the bank’s view of the relationship between them and the communities that they serve.

Banking as an institution goes back many thousands of years. It began in the temples—other buildings that communities held sacrosanct and safe. Tensions between money and religion have run in parallel throughout the same period. I do not intend to investigate that, but I suggest it shows the close link between the trust that people put in the individual they give their money to, to look after, and religion. Looking forward through history, the banking sector developed with the European banking families, who established a way of transferring money across Europe and then the world. Then, the Bank of England was established in 1694 and, perhaps more importantly, the Bank of Scotland in 1695.

Deposit banking has been a part—a foundation—of our society from the very beginning. That relationship was not built on pure profit, but on trust; initially, trust of individuals who promised to take care of others’ money; promise and trust of families who looked after moneys, and then the institutions. Such trust has developed over time, reinforced by close contact. That trust moved and continued to deepen and develop as banks became the cornerstone of our high streets. What of that bond of trust today? What is the feeling of banks’ most important stakeholders—those community individuals? They still entrust their money, which is then used by the bank to do so many other business activities.

In 1998—20 years ago—there were more than 11,000 branches. Today, the most recent figures indicate that there are just 6,000 local branches. Bank closures have escalated rapidly, with just over 1,000 closures in the last two years.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. He talked about the shrinking number of banks in general; I am losing a NatWest apiece in Ealing and Acton. When high streets are hollowed out and they become ghost towns, small businesses have nowhere to deposit anymore. The elderly are on the wrong side of the digital divide and are disenfranchised. Who would he say are the winners? Not even the property developers are—in Acton, the HSBC has been empty since 2015. There are no winners in this at all. Does he agree?

[Martin Whitfield]

My hon. Friend raises a very interesting point about who the winners are in this situation. Certainly, we can identify the losers. The losers are the very community that we hold so dear; the losers are the high street—that geographical area where people gathered together and still try to. As my hon. Friend says, we have high streets that have been hollowed out. We need to find a way to stop this hollowing out and fracturing. The banks form a crucial, fundamental part of the foundation of maintaining our high streets, which we need to maintain our community and our society. We have reached a tipping point now—a point of no return—where the Government must step in with practical solutions to stop future closures and to address the fragmenting relationship with banks.

In 2015 we had the access to banking protocol, which spoke highly of financial inclusion and local engagement from big banks, but that fell short of any statutory protections. Members will be aware of the Griggs report the year following, which offered a series of constructive remarks and ideas to improve the settlement. Unfortunately, it addressed areas where the last bank had already left town. It does not, like my party's position, commit to a new legal protection that would enable banks to keep a presence in their local communities, which need them so much. Any new settlement should be constructively built in partnership with the banks and should engage with the shareholders of the banks who often engage with them most the local users.

What are the other answers? The Government have tried, and I suggest failed, over the past three years to try to displace some of the local bank branches with community post offices. The post office is another fundamental cornerstone of our high street and community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney), a campaigner on this matter, will testify, that alternative provision works only if the post offices are not themselves being ripped from our high streets and from the communities they serve at a similar rate. Post offices rightly have a valued position on our high streets, but we cannot place the burden and responsibility of banking on a workforce who are already stretched.

The decision to merge retail banking into our post offices is not workable in the present form, and nor is it a popular alternative. Figures from Which? show that although the British public think most post offices are doing a great job, many do not even know of the alternative banking options available there. I also tentatively welcome services such as the mobile branch service operated and offered by RBS and the idea of shared buildings. My constituents do not believe that such solutions go far enough to ensure a trustworthy banking presence in East Lothian. They may fit an economic model, but they do so at the risk of continuing to fracture the trust. The single solution of a banking van might work in one place, but will not work in another. To apply it as an idea across the country is foolish and short-sighted.

The trust that people have is also influenced by the quality of protection that communities witness. Local bank staff, placed at the heart of communities, have a responsibility to be the last check and balance in terms of consumer protection. Speaking with campaign groups, including Which?, this week, I was heartened to hear of cases where people had gone into their local branch to withdraw large sums of money and the bank teller has said, “This is unusual for you. What is this about?” With that simple question they have prevented a retired couple from losing substantial sums of their life savings. That solid local relationship with trained members of staff in the local bank can go a long way to protect current accounts from bank fraud, and staff can also advise on and discuss people’s challenging financial problems.

When it comes to the assessment of community safety, I raise the question of the bank’s responsibility when a sophisticated thief dupes an individual out of money. Is it right that the bank can absolve itself of all responsibility simply because the crime was so complex and maliciously delivered that the victim genuinely believed they were dealing with their own bank branch? Such a crime might be a lot harder if the perpetrator first had to build a branch on a high street to defraud retired couples of their money.

The advent of online banking has been transformative, and it will continue. There is no argument or objection to that, but I am concerned that focus has shifted solely to it as the answer to the banking problems. It would be completely irresponsible to abandon the 20 million people who still depend on face-to-face bank services. Online banking, which will continue to grow, must be accessible. It is certainly not the fault of the big banks that Governments have failed to implement a broadband service fit for the 21st century. Nor is it the fault of the banking industry that nearly 2 million people across the UK experience internet speeds of less than 10 megabits per second, meaning that online banking will not work. But banks should be made to consider broadband blackspots and digital inclusion when they plan closures, as well as the impact of shifting consumer services from face-to-face banking to online services.

Four in 10 Scottish consumers experience service issues with their broadband. How does the banking industry expect a transition to take place? In 2015, 80% of my rural constituents were dissatisfied with their internet speeds, and yet banks in Tranent, Prestonpans and Gullane in my constituency have closed in the past three years. I am interested in the thoughts of my Scottish colleagues and others here on this matter. Should big banks be made to consider broadband speeds in any meaningful consultation on bank closures?

Christmas Adjournment

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

As is customary, I wish everyone in the House a happy Christmas.

I want to raise an unseasonal tale of big infrastructure and small business, which affects the Park Royal chunk of my constituency. Park Royal was once Europe’s largest industrial estate. They built things such as planes for both world wars and munitions; the Heinz factory was there, and Guinness emanated from Park Royal, but now Park Royal finds itself on the receiving end of the heavy-handed High Speed 2—that is the big infrastructure. In Ealing Central and Acton, we are blessed: we have a lot of these big infrastructure projects. The planes going to Heathrow fly over us—we are on the flight path. Crossrail is coming to link east and west to our part of the world, and there is also HS2.

However, in this season of good will and good faith—I voted in good faith for the HS2 project, and I like the idea of high-speed rail, connectivity and all those things—a bunch of small businesses in the Park Royal industrial estate feel that they have been shafted. Sorry, that is perhaps unparliamentary language; these businesses have been ill treated by HS2—at this time of year—and they wanted me to raise their plight.

I am doing that in this forum because, talking of good will, Robert Goodwill—sorry, I cannot remember his constituency.

[Hon. Members]

Scarborough.

[Dr Huq]

That’s it. He’s a good Yorkshireman, isn’t he?

I remember raising HS2 issues with the hon. Gentleman in the House, and it worked for a time, so I want to see whether it will work again. In 2016, when he was the Minister for rail—he is now the children’s Minister—he came to Park Royal. I asked him to see for himself what was going on.

Park Royal used to be a place of big businesses; now, the businesses are much smaller. We have Mediterranean food manufacturers, prop hire, laundries and all sorts of small family businesses, so families, livelihoods and that sort of thing depend on the area. Park Royal has been named in The Independent as a sort of mini-Beirut, which sounds quite scary, but a lot of middle eastern food manufacturers come from the area. If Members have baklava in a west end restaurant, it is likely to have been made in my constituency.

A number of these small companies were initially told that when the HS2 project happened, they would be given six months to relocate. There was no assurance about when that would happen, and these companies are having compulsory purchase orders put on them. So the Minister came with me, and we saw that assurances were received that people would have a relocation grant and be given good time in which to get their businesses up and running again. One of the companies is a prop hire business—probably no one in this House has ever been to one of those. It covers acres and acres, and has vintage telephones, whalebone corsets, ’70s cereal packets and all sorts of things, and it is not easy to relocate those things. Superhire props is the business I am thinking of.

The Minister said there would be a £250,000 disturbance payment, which is a strange phrase describing what happens when someone is forcibly moved elsewhere. However, these payments have not been forthcoming. The thing is that HS2 is very clever: it can operate within the letter of the law, and we are talking about assurances, not legally binding guarantees.

Three hundred employees and their families have written to me. They are facing Christmas with a very uncertain future, because they are about to be CPO’d on 10 January. Some of them have two premises now, so they are paying for two lots of rent, leases and staff. One of them was on BBC London recently. The workers have downed tools and gone because they are not being paid since the advance payment from HS2 has not been forthcoming. When the ghost of Christmas past—the Minister—came to visit and saw what was happening, he gave those promises in good faith, I believe.

Something has gone wrong with HS2. It seems to be haemorrhaging CEOs, and the project has run over time and over budget. Hon. Friends whose constituencies are further into London—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq)—opposed it. I did not, but I am losing patience with HS2.

There is also what HS2 does to residents. Three roads in my constituency—Shaftesbury Gardens, Midland Terrace and Wells House Road—face 10 years of works 24/7. Imagine a child born now getting to its 10th birthday and only knowing living on a building site! The only assurance that these residents have been given is for secondary glazing on one side of one of those roads. That is just not good enough.

When I raised this with the Secretary of State for Transport, he said, “My door is always open.” I have written letters and submitted written questions, but I feel a bit like I am banging my head against a brick wall. When we had the initial chink of light after I raised this with the Minister, I saw that it worked to raise these matters in this House, so that is why I am trying again.

It seems as though people are negotiating a Kafkaesque web of bureaucracy in order to get these payments. For a big business with a turnover in the millions, £250,000 is a drop in the ocean. The relocation costs will be much more than that. They feel that the number of hoops they have had to jump through is insupportable.

Old Oak, which Park Royal feeds into, has been identified by the Mayor of London as a super-development opportunity area. There will be 26,000 new dwellings and two tube stations, as well as Crossrail and HS2. There is a lot of promise there. The marketing spiel says that it will be an incubator for new business, but the old businesses that have been built up over years—family businesses—are facing a very bleak Christmas this year.

HS2’s mission statement says that it will give

“sufficient liquidity…to be able to make satisfactory arrangements for relocation”.

That is not the approach that is being taken. This is undermining public confidence in the project. I have been voting for it and trying to defend it, but my local residents and businesses have had enough of HS2.

It is very disappointing that this has come at this time of year. As I say, assurances are only assurances—they are not legally enforceable. They are not worth the paper they are written on, quite frankly. As for Christmas future, I hope that in the new year, which is only next week, we will have better news for the businesses and residents who feel that they have been done over by HS2.

Public Country-by-country Reporting

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), my trusty co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption, on securing this highly relevant and timely debate, given that it is Budget day. I also congratulate him on his thoughtful opening speech.

With last year’s Panama papers and then the Paradise papers the other week, there is a sense that systems of international finance and taxation seem to be working for the benefit of individuals with access to vast wealth and an army of lawyers, rather than—to coin a phrase—for the many, not the few. We are in the grip of a culture of secrecy and silence in our overseas territories and Crown dependencies, enabling tax avoidance and evasion on an industrial scale. It looks suspiciously like there is one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest of us.

Lord Sugar has blamed “bad advice” for the fact that these sitcom celebrities, sports stars, pop stars, the Duchy of Lancaster and all those other people have been caught up in the latest whirlwind. Lord Sugar said that tax avoidance is un-British and that we are blessed to be

“in a country that has a police force, a National Health Service, an army…and all the good things we get here.”

To the delight of Transparency International, Christian Aid and Global Witness, we were promised Government action by David Cameron in the flurry of the 2016 anti-corruption summit, but the Government seem to have fallen disappointingly short. Country-by-country reporting, which we are addressing in particular today, is an issue that I first came across as a candidate in 2015. Before I was elected, I experienced my first mass email petition from potential constituents. It was called, “What will you do to crack down on tax dodging?” I assured them I would insist that multinational companies are required to publish details of the amounts of tax they pay in their countries of operation.

As soon as I was elected, I was happy to back the “show us the money” amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). When the Criminal Finances Bill came before the House, I spoke from the Opposition Front Bench on the need for public registers of beneficial ownership. Then we had the snap election and the legislative provisions were swirled into the vortex of wash-up. For this Government, “could do better” is perhaps an understatement. In 2012, David Cameron declared that organisations investing in complicated schemes

“to just minimise their tax rates is not morally acceptable. Some of these schemes…are quite frankly morally wrong.”

Even if he acted within the letter of the law, the behaviour of Bono of U2 was close to the edge.

Financial secrecy feeds into legal and illegal approaches to not paying a fair share. Last year the Conservative Government said that all countries needed to reach a gold standard of public registers of beneficial ownership, yet there has been a palpable rowing back. Now the Foreign Office only expects UK tax havens to go down that road when it becomes a global standard. Montserrat has already committed to put in place a public register. We have a duty to justify our claims to be a global leader on transparency and anti-corruption by facilitating that, rather than ducking the challenge in a dereliction of duty. The tax abuse in the Paradise papers and the corruption in the Panama papers are two sides of the same coin of financial secrecy. In both cases the Government’s stated intentions are undermined by their willingness to tolerate offshore financial secrecy.

The Cameron Government at least made the right noises. I have to see the detail of what was announced in the Budget statement, but I am cheered by the idea of extending offshore time limits. Until now, however, the Prime Minister—who is often responding to events rather than mastering them, being in office but not in power, and all that stuff—seems to have had a comparatively lackadaisical attitude.

[Luke Graham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

I will not, because I only have a couple of seconds left and I have more to say.

We were promised an anti-corruption strategy by 2016, and now we are hearing it will be 2018. The other day, in one of the many debates of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), a question was asked about the anti-corruption tsar. It used to be Eric Pickles, but the Government seem to have forgotten that the post even exists.

As a London MP, I am acutely aware of the housing crisis in our capital. The UK property market seems to be skewed by the apparently uncontrolled flow of anonymous and potentially laundered money from those secrecy jurisdictions. I know a stamp duty exemption has been announced, but the Office for Budget Responsibility is already saying that it will only inflate prices rather than address the real problem.

Mandatory disclosure of payments and operations on a country-by-country basis mitigates political, legal and reputational risks and generates timely, disaggregated and easily comparable data. Companies should ensure high levels of corporate transparency since that also allows citizens to hold them accountable for the impact that they have on communities. One international tax avoidance scandal might look careless; two starts to look like something of a habit.

Rather than hiding behind the jargon of the written answers we have had up to now, the Minister must tell us today what is being done concretely by the international community to reach agreements on multinational firms filing public reports on their dealings, country by country. When does he expect to reach a multilateral agreement under which the UK may adopt public country-by-country reporting? I thank the media for exposing this stuff by shining a light into murky corners—not necessarily leaking, but turning on the tap in this instance. Warm words are not enough; we need action now.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) on introducing the debate, and I agree with very much of what she said.

It will be useful to go over a little the chronology of how tax avoidance measures have evolved in recent years. If we go back to 2010, the main source of industrial-scale tax avoidance was not in the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands. It was a few miles down the road in the City of London, where industrial-scale activity was taking place in the big banks such as Barclays. There was a man called Jenkins, who was the head of the tax department in Barclays and was paid £40 million in one year for his contribution to avoiding tax that should have gone to the Treasury. The agreement that the Government then had with the banks was so loose that they perpetuated it indefinitely until there was a change in Government. My Lib Dem colleagues and I pressed the then Chancellor very hard and such activity was made illegal and, as far as I am aware, has largely stopped.

The next big step was the introduction of the general anti-avoidance principle, which was important in clarifying the murky area between avoidance and evasion. It is now clear that if individuals or their advisers engage in activity that is specifically designed to circumvent the intentions of Parliament, they can be pursued. Many of us have constituents who are being pursued, rightly, by HMRC and who are in substantial arrears. I hope that one of the good things that comes out of the Paradise papers is that HMRC has a substantial list of names and can now investigate whether those names have subscribed to the law as it is now redefined. As I understand it, HMRC pursued 65 individuals for £100 million a year after the Panama papers. That is a positive step and something to build on.

The third step in the evolution of tax avoidance measures was the introduction of the open register of beneficial ownership, to which various Members have referred. I know a little bit about it, since I was the Secretary of State who brought it here and took it through Parliament, together with the abolition of bearer bonds. It is fair to say that David Cameron was supportive of that at the time, but that he was slightly less impressive when it came to standing up to lobbying from the Crown dependencies and overseas territories.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned David Cameron. Does he agree that much was promised after the flourish of the anti-corruption summit in May 2016—how long ago it all feels—and none of it seems to have been delivered. The anti-corruption champion, Eric Pickles, stood down and it seems that the Government have completely forgotten that the post existed at all. We were promised a strategy in 2016, but we are now being told that that will be in 2018.

[Sir Vince Cable]

I think I was in political exile at that time so I cannot testify one way or the other, but I was in government when we introduced much stronger anti-corruption measures in 2011.

As far as the register is concerned, the argument that the overseas territories and Crown dependencies advanced was that they had to keep information secret because of privacy concerns, but precisely those same privacy concerns applied to the UK. Where there was a genuine concern about privacy—for example, when people were worried about being pursued by animal rights terrorists—that has been protected, so that was a transparent and weak defence. Many things that the overseas territories do are, in fact, perfectly reasonable. There is no reason why people should pay double taxation, but serious anti-avoidance activity should be pursued.

I hope that the Government will now be much more aggressive in pursuing the issue of the open register. They could give the overseas territories a deadline for the introduction of an open register. If the overseas territories do not comply, a series of sanctions could be introduced—for example, initially stopping companies registered there bidding for public contracts. Of course, the ultimate sanction is what happened in the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2009, when there was direct rule. If overseas territories egregiously avoid taxation in a way that seriously damages the UK, that is the kind of measure that should be introduced.

Much of the discussion we have had—the right hon. Member for Barking said this in her introduction—is not about individuals but about companies, because the scale of avoidance is much greater.

Low-Cost housing

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

That is absolutely right. There are some people who, from a purely aesthetic point of view, love brutalist concrete architecture and rather more who dislike it a lot. For most of the rest of us, one of the crucial tests is not merely the aesthetics but whether this stuff remains liveable, not only in the first few years after it is built but over many generations. Another is whether it is therefore acceptable to the rest of the community. It is not just a question of what somewhere is like to live in as a location; it also has an impact on other people as they walk past.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it depends on how the design stands the test of time. There are places such as four or five-storey Regency terraces and Victorian town houses, which people still want to live in and walk past a century or two after they were built, or their slightly taller and more modern equivalents, which provide trendy new city centre living space for young professionals or well-designed retirement homes for older folk. We do not need to be scared of these buildings. One of the densest urban areas in Britain is Kensington and Chelsea, which is hardly a byword for inner-city decay. Elegant continental cities such as Paris and Madrid are far denser than almost anywhere in Britain too.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is giving a very powerful speech so I am loth to interrupt him. He mentioned the international comparisons and Kensington and Chelsea, but I think he is missing the suburbs. I represent a suburban seat. He said that housing is the single biggest bill, but it is also the single biggest issue in surgeries. I had a candidate stand against me as a “no to tall buildings” person. His slogan was, “We want to be living in Acton, not in Manhattan.” Has the hon. Gentleman had similar experiences as a constituency MP? People just do not like these buildings; they crowd out light and are not in keeping with the suburban landscape.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. May I remind Members that interventions are supposed to be short and not too discursive?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I absolutely agree. One advantage of building up rather than out in existing urban environments is that an awful lot of infrastructure is in place anyway. Less brand-new infrastructure needs to be constructed as a result. Other problems come from building in urban environments—for example, existing infrastructure may be put under strain and need to be expanded in some way—but flood defences are a good example of where the effects are perfectly scalable. When a flood defence wall has been built, an awful lot more can be built behind it. The flood defence wall does not need to be upgraded just because more has been built behind it, even though it may need to be upgraded when it wears out in 50 years’ time. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very good example.

As I was saying, prices will never stabilise, still less fall, unless the supply of housing increases dramatically. Cheaper homes are one of the cheapest, simplest, most effective ways of raising living standards for everyone and, by making our available cash go further, of improving the country’s economic productivity.

In the 1970s and ’80s, our towns and cities were places without an economic purpose. Their industrial manufacturing centres were dead, social problems multiplied as jobs dried up and people left in droves. But now, urban living in towns and cities is fashionable again, because, even in our highly connected, distance-defying online world, it turns out that there is huge value in people clustering together. Ideas flow more freely; skills and knowledge too. Firms in similar sectors create clusters that feed off their neighbours’ energy, hire each other’s staff and drive each other on. Building up, not out helps those things to happen more easily, so more wealth can be created. It is greener and cheaper, and it makes us richer and improves our quality of life, so clearly, the idea’s time has come.

To their eternal credit, I think the Government get that. The new White Paper has much to say about developing smaller sites of half a hectare or less, and subdividing large sites so that smaller developers can get in on the act as well. Local development orders and area-wide design codes, which streamline planning permission if people want to build particular pre-approved types or styles of property in a specified area, make a strong showing too. There is a range of new permitted development rights, which allow everyone from hospitals to brownfield site owners to build without all the red tape, heartache and uncertainty of getting planning permission.

[Dr Huq]

From a design point of view, I completely get the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but how would he inject affordability? The rate in London has been at up to 80% of market rates, and units in high-rise buildings in my constituency seem to be bought off-plan by people at property fairs in Singapore and by Russian oligarchs—the lights are always off—so how would he make that link and build affordability in?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady tempts me into a slightly wider area of discussion than the one I was focusing on. However, my broad point at least is that we will not be able to make all housing more affordable, whether that is for those on lower or middle incomes, unless we dramatically increase the supply of new homes of whatever tenure—whether we are talking about homes for rent or for buying. Only by doing that over the longer term will we manage to reduce the cost of housing for everybody at all income levels. The hon. Lady might like to propose some additional measures and, if so, I am sure that she will make some remarks later to turbo-charge some other opportunities for those on lower incomes as well. However, as a starting point and a fundamental, we are kidding ourselves if we think we can get away without increasing the overall level of new homes that are being created in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under you again, Ms Gillan. I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing the debate.

I wondered whether there had been a mix-up by the Chairman of Ways and Means, who decides on these debates, but knowing him and understanding the process as I now do, I know that that is not possible. Hon. Members may have attended this debate and people may have watched it in anticipation of a debate on low-cost housing, perhaps hoping to hear some more detail about the White Paper that the Government released yesterday or some more meat put on the bones of the essential topic of low-cost housing. Instead, this debate has been about a small proposal to tweak the planning system.

I will address the proposal from the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare in a moment, but first I will address low-cost housing, which is the topic of the debate and is what I expected to be speaking on. Of course the overall supply of housing—which the hon. Gentleman states it is the intention of his policy to address—is important, because we have a shortage of housing in this country, as the Secretary of State said yesterday. In a pure supply and demand curve, one expects more supply to mean lower cost, and the obverse—shortage of supply—means higher cost, which is exactly what has happened in the open market; so housing becomes more and more unaffordable for more and more people.

That has happened in the last seven years. Under David Cameron, the UK built fewer homes than under any peacetime Prime Minister since 1923. The number of home-owning households rose by a million under the 1997 to 2010 Government, but it has fallen by 200,000 since 2010, and this shortage has meant that the price of buying has risen and risen, putting homes out of the reach of even well-paid young people. Members here today may have watched “Newsnight” last night, in which there were reasonably well-paid young professionals who could not get on the housing ladder. In my constituency in west London, working people earning reasonable salaries cannot even afford to rent, and if they can just about pay more than 50% of their income on rent, they have no money left to save up for a deposit. The market is not delivering affordable homes to rent or to buy, except in some economically deprived areas, where there are more homes than there are people who want to live in them.

In most of England, because house prices have risen, more and more people need some kind of subsidised low-cost housing. Since 2010, however, Government funding for all types of affordable housing—there were eight definitions of affordable housing in the White Paper—has been withdrawn, except for one, which is for first-time buyers. The level of new affordable house building has still managed to hit a 24-year low. The number of shared ownership homes and other low-cost home ownership homes being built annually has fallen by 66% since 2010, to just 7,540 homes a year, meaning that 34,170 fewer affordable homes have been built since 2010 than in the last six years of the last Labour Government. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) clearly described the problems—and the potential solutions—of delivering truly affordable low-cost housing.

For social rented housing, official statistics show that the number of social rented homes that were started in 2009-10 was almost 40,000, but in 2015-16 the number of social rented homes being delivered was less than 1,000—a fall of 98% and the lowest figure since records began.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said yesterday in the main Chamber that private house builders, housing associations and councils need to fire on all cylinders to build the homes that we need, and councils need to be allowed to build homes again to meet the needs of local people. At the moment, they are not allowed to do that.

[Dr Huq]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I agree with what she is saying, that this “Pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap and leave it to market forces” solution does not sound like it is enough. When it is left to market forces, in a place such as Ealing, people seem to use these high-rise homes that are going up as a very expensive piggybank; they are not even living in them. Obviously we need more social housing to counteract all this.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is absolutely right. I have experienced that in my own constituency. We still have newly built homes that are never let, because they are seen as nothing more than an investment, and many of them are very high in price.

As I have said, the latest affordable housing statistics have fallen to their lowest levels in 24 years. Of course I welcome any credible initiatives to provide low-cost housing, but where is the evidence that this well-meaning initiative to extend permitted development rights, which the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare has discussed today, will actually deliver low-cost housing?

Between February and April in 2016, the Government consulted jointly with the Mayor of London on proposals to deliver more homes in London by allowing a limited number of additional storeys on existing buildings through a permitted development right, local development orders or development plan policies, which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is seeking. That was part of the Government’s commitment to explore how more homes could be built on brownfield land, in order to reduce the pressure on greenfield or metropolitan open land. The Government summary of the responses that they received to that proposal says:

“More than half of those were not supportive of the proposal, with a one-size-fits-all permitted development right approach considered unworkable. While it was noted that it could support town centres and deliver more homes, it was recognised that the complex prior approval that would be required to protect neighbours and the character and amenity of an area would result in a permitted development right that is no less onerous than a planning application.”

Specifically, a couple of the consultees—the Planning Officers Society and Historic England—did not support the proposals. I am well aware that the British Property Federation welcomed them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose). He has been fortuitous in securing this debate on low-cost housing the day after the White Paper was published, but he is rather disadvantaged by the fact that the Minister responsible is so busy selling the White Paper that he has to put up with a reply from me, but I will endeavour to answer the points he has raised.

The tone of the debate has frankly been a bit miserable, in truth. My hon. Friend has come forward with a proposal to expand the supply of housing. We all know that supply is the biggest challenge in delivering low-cost housing. Houses have become less and less affordable because we have not been building enough houses, period. We need to look at what we can do to unlock a bigger supply of houses, and that is what the White Paper is all about. I could happily trade statistics with Opposition Members, but the reality is that we have not been building enough housing in this country for decades. There are many reasons for that. Some of them are to do with planning, public opinion, finance and land prices, but what is clear is that our housing market is broken, and I do not think we should be ruling anything out in fixing it, because we have a real problem in terms of fairness for everyone in society being able to live in a decent home that they can afford. We in Government and as politicians should be seeking to deliver that.

That is where my hon. Friend has it in a nutshell, in coming forward with a proposal that could unlock substantially more housing. Listening to him and the reaction to his remarks from Members highlighted a massive cultural prejudice against building up, rather than building out, and there is a reason for that, which he alluded to in his remarks. We were very badly let down in the ’60s. That was the zenith of building up, not out, but we built buildings that were ugly and unpleasant, and they became unpleasant places to live. That is in people’s minds when they start thinking about high-rise housing and development. I have it in my constituency. We are on the border of London, so we have a substantial need for new houses. We have a substantial amount of brownfield land and green belt. Members will not be surprised to hear that we get a lot more planning applications for housing on green-belt sites, because we all know that it is cheaper to build there. We are also on the river, and if there is one place where high-rise developments would work, it is on the river.

My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—I think we were all impressed by his courage in turning up for the vote yesterday—came to my constituency when he was housing Minister. He did me no favours because he described one of my riverfront housing developments as pig ugly. It was a four-storey housing development on the river, and people want to live on the river, but his point was that if the planners had been a little more adventurous, we could have built something higher and more beautiful. When one visits places such as Greenwich in south-east London, one can see that they have shown imagination. They have opened up the river and created nice places to live, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s interest in this.

To give my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare some comfort, the White Paper sets out clearly the importance of high-density brownfield development, which is a part of his proposal. We propose changes to national policy to make it clear that local plans and individual development proposals should encourage building up where acceptable. We also propose to make better use of public land. The Department would welcome my hon. Friend’s response to the White Paper so that we can take this forward. It is incumbent on all of us, and it is very easy. We all react to our postbags—Mr Grumpy always complains about the planning application that is proposed—but we have a role now, because this is such an important issue, to sell what will really deliver more housing, so I encourage my hon. Friend to make his submission as robust and as forthright as he wishes.

The Government welcome the opportunity to discuss low-cost housing in its wider sense. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) made some excellent points, but we need to recognise that the problem has been in the making for decades and the issues are complex. We do not say that the White Paper has all the answers or all the solutions. There is no silver bullet. If there was, the previous Labour Government would have delivered it, as would we in the last Parliament. Let us get real here. This is a serious problem, and unless we have a grown-up discussion about it, we will not solve it and we will let down future generations.

[Dr Huq]

There is some stuff in the White Paper that was nicked out of the Ed Miliband playbook—we are pleased to see that there will be a ban on letting fees—but it could have been a little more aggressive on the “Use it or lose it” idea. I apologise, Mrs Gillan; I should have said my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). In Ealing we have a site, which my 12-year-old remembers as a building site for most of his life—it was a cinema—that is going to be rebuilt for residential use, but it has been land-banked for the best part of a decade. What does the White Paper say about that, and how can we be more aggressive with developers who simply sit on land while the value goes up?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Lady has hit on a major structural problem that is inhibiting the ability to supply. There are many examples of what she talks about. Some developers are bringing forward a supply of housing and others are sitting on the land.

The White Paper on housing that we published yesterday advocates shortening timescales for the implementation of planning permissions where appropriate. That is very much on our agenda. We are considering legislative changes to simplify and speed up completion notices, which will encourage developers to build out or face losing the site. I am a big fan of naming and shaming. Transparency is an effective tool. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Where we have developers clearly engaging in predatory behaviour and exploiting the marketplace, we should be prepared to name and shame them. Every one of us in this room has a voice. Where we see bad behaviour by developers, let us shout out about it, because we have to deliver more houses. It is that simple.

I trust that hon. Members have had the opportunity to digest some of the housing White Paper, if not all of it, and I hope that they will engage with the debate. I want to make it incredibly clear how committed the Government are to grappling with this problem. We want to make sure that all hard-working families have the housing that they need at a price they can afford. The root cause of the problem is that demand outstrips supply. Only by increasing supply substantially will we stop the increasing spiralling of house prices and rents.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Let me move on. I appreciate the point made. The betrayal was why the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green resigned. I have not agreed with a single policy that he has brought forward, but I do not doubt his sincerity in the policies that he has pursued.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree with the words of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) that this Chancellor’s policies are

“in danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it”?

Was the right hon. Gentleman not right when he said that?

[John McDonnell]

I believe that the right hon. Gentleman’s interview on the Marr programme on Sunday expressed a profound concern that he had about the unfairness of the Budget, and we agreed with this. As I said, I have not agreed with a single policy he has pursued, but I do not doubt his sincerity. The right hon. Gentleman saw—