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Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

In response to the Queen's Speech, I want to address certain issues that affect my constituents. The speech has focused rightly on those matters, and that will be of enormous benefit to the people whom I represent. Looking at my constituency and what has changed in the past 10 years, I can already see enormous improvements in job availability. Unemployment is now down to the national average. That is something I do not think anyone believed was possible in 1997 when the Government were elected. We have seen enormous improvements to local schools, both in the resources that they have and the buildings in which they operate. The same is true for local health facilities. However, when people come to my surgery with two particular problems, my heart sinks. The first is housing. It is often young couples who come; I have met three or four in the past week alone. They are absolutely desperate either for a home of their own or to move home because they need somewhere larger. A young mother was telling me the other day that she lived in a two-bedroom house with four children and the house is simply not big enough to cope. Another young mother was living at home with her parents because there was not a home available. She wanted to remain in the area because the reality for family life is that grandparents will help with child care; if they do, mothers can go out to work and add to the family income and improve family life, and that is important to them. So people need a home in the area where they were brought up and have all their family and social ties. All too often, I have to say to people, ““I am very sorry, there is just an enormous waiting list.”” Even people who have priority because of their overcrowding or homelessness often cannot get housing in the south of Sheffield, where housing problems are particularly acute. Demolition is rightly taking place on two or three of the local estates there which were system built in the 1970s and the housing stock and fabric has simply failed. That puts additional pressure on the availability of empty homes. It would be enormously helpful if the Housing Corporation put pressure on housing associations to give their fair share of allocations to people on the council's list, especially people with priority need and homeless families. All too often, housing associations do not follow through on the commitments that they give, which puts all the pressure back on the local arm's length management organisation, Sheffield Homes, which is doing an incredibly good job. So the first issue that makes my heart sink is when people come and say, ““Can you help me get a home?”” and the answer often is, ““No, not in the foreseeable future.”” So what can we do to help? The Queen's Speech has got it absolutely right this time by focusing on the fact that we need 3 million additional homes to be built in this country. A good proportion of them need to be built for rent for people who cannot or do not want to buy a home. In my constituency, house prices are three times higher than they were in the late 1990s, and homes that were affordable then are not affordable now. Giving local authorities and ALMOs the chance to get into the house-building programme is incredibly welcome, but I caution Ministers that there are some practical difficulties in that process, which we need to remove. It is proposed that authorities will receive about £40,000 per unit in grant from the Housing Corporation. Six ALMOs are being given the opportunity to bid for funds, but will £40,000 be enough to enable an authority to embark on a house-building programme and make the sums stack up, especially given the complications of the housing revenue account? There are some pilot schemes under way to try to disentangle the housing revenue account problems and develop something more practical to allow authorities to build homes. At present, there is the perverse situation that they could build new homes and lose grant in the process. We need to speed up the procedures and consider whether we need to reform the whole housing revenue account system. That will be a major challenge for the Government in the next spending round. Are the methods by which ALMOs and local authorities are to be allowed to build homes, such as the development of housing companies and the involvement of various partners, so complicated that there will be a time lag before homes are actually built? My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) pointed out that the situation is not as simple as it was in the old days, when local authorities got the money and built council homes. Some of the mechanics for involving ALMOs and local authorities in the house-building process are difficult. The Government are right to consider a number of routes, but how quickly will they deliver the homes people need? The Government's intentions and motives are right: they are putting housing at the top of the agenda because 3 million homes need to be built, but have we got the mechanics right? Will the process enable housing for rent, which we need in constituencies such as mine, to be built as quickly as possible? That is a major and serious challenge facing the Government. I want to be part of the debate, pushing the Government onwards to achieve the extra housing we all desire. The second issue that makes my heart sink is when my constituents say, ““First Bus or Stagecoach has decided to take away the bus service I rely on.”” It might be the service they rely on to get to work because their shift starts at 7 in the morning. It might be the service they rely on to go and see their husband or wife who is in a residential home and it will now take them an hour longer to get there. It might be the service they rely on to take their children to the grandparents who will drop them at school because the parents are going to work. Family and social life and employment can be disrupted at the drop of a hat when bus companies take such decisions, so I am pleased by the Government's commitment to allow passenger transport authorities to take powers to use quality contracts, and to create and deliver a framework for services in their area. They will also be able to determine fares and service standards and other things that are important to my community. The restrictions on bus operators' powers to change routes and drop services at 42 days' notice are important. The Government's intentions are right, and those measures will be vital. Often the same people have housing and transport problems; the poorer people in the community need a home to rent and they rely on local bus services. Again, however, the Government have not quite got the mechanics right. I want to take up the proposals, and perhaps when we consider the legislation for giving powers back to passenger transport authorities we can make some changes compared with the previous draft Bill. The fundamental problem with the Government's proposals is the length of time it could take between a local PTA deciding that it might want to bring back quality contracts and review the operation of buses in its area and setting up those contracts. It could take up to two years. Another problem is that the Government do not quite trust elected PTAs enough—whether they are county councils or the metropolitan PTAs. Once an authority has decided, after a considerable amount of consultation and review, that the proposed system of quality contracts is the appropriate way forward, the traffic commissioners will have the right to second-guess the PTA's proposals. Why should an unelected traffic commissioner be able to veto a decision made by an elected PTA? If we believe in localism and the transfer of real responsibilities and powers to elected members locally, why should the traffic commissioners have that right? Even if the traffic commissioner agrees with the proposal, why is it necessary to have the right of appeal to a transport tribunal, which will merely prolong the process? Although voters, the PTA and the local community in general can determine that quality contracts are the right way to bring sense and order to the provision of local bus services, unelected bodies will still have the right to review and veto the proposals. Will the Government reconsider those proposals? By all means, let the traffic commissioners be part of the consultation process, but they should not have the right of veto. Their review should be undertaken in parallel with the decision-making processes of the transport authority, which would cut down the time involved and enable decisions to be taken more quickly. During this Session, I hope to comment on the Government's proposals on planning, which in general I support. It is right to try to speed up the process and to adopt a sensible approach to major projects. The existing system is nonsense; many inquiries take years rather than months so we need a consistent approach, with national policy guidelines on the provision of energy or airports. Individual applications for airports or energy-producing units would then be considered in the context of overall policy, which is a much better structured way forward. My only concern relates to the proposal to abolish the needs test for retail development. I shall need perpetual reassurance from Ministers that nothing the Government propose will in any way damage the improvements that have been made in the past few years in terms of more retail development in town and district centres and on the edges of such centres rather than on greenfield sites, with all the related problems of congestion and environmental pollution, as well as the fact that people with no access to a car cannot buy the cheaper food that is often available in supermarkets. I hope that Ministers will reassure me that the abolition of the needs test will not weaken the emphasis on building in town and district centres. That has been extremely important for the regeneration of cities such as Sheffield where there will be a £500 million shopping development in the centre of town over the next four or five years. The developers, Hammerson, point out that the project is being built as a result of the city council's clear rules—in line with Government guidelines—on planning policy for out-of-town developments.