Category: Debates

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): This issue is creating a lot of passion, which I can understand. People’s homes are very important to them, and none of us wants to feel that the possession of our home is threatened or is subject to high-handed control from above. The morality of the argument, however, is not all on one side as the Opposition seem to suggest it is. Indeed, I would find their moral outrage more convincing if their Front-Bench team firmly pledged to repeal this measure if they were ever returned to office. I would also find it more convincing if when they were in office they had not taken the steps they did on private sector rented accommodation, probably as a prelude to going further.

On the basis of what the more moderate Opposition Members have said, they accept that there is a problem of under-occupation where free or subsidised accommodation is made available through the public sector. The morality on the Government side of the case is to say that we have obligations to all those people who want that subsidised or free accommodation but who cannot get it on the size and scale they need. There are two different groups here, and we need to look after the interests of both groups as best we can.

Of course there are visionaries on the Opposition side who say that the answer is easy: we just need to build hundreds of thousands of more homes at public expense so that everybody can have the accommodation they want. The issue then becomes why that did not happen when we had a Labour Government who knew how to do those things. The truth is that for anyone who sits on the Government Benches, such housing will always be a scarcer resource than people would like. If we offer something free or subsidised, there will be more demand than provision, even when we are trying to be very generous, so we must have rationing and allocation. All Governments, in good times and bad times, have had to allocate and ration public housing.

Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab): Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that there was a period—certainly in Wigan—when we could not let council houses and they were knocked down, because people were buying houses? Our biggest problem now is that people who want to buy houses cannot get mortgages. They do not go into social housing because it is subsidised; they go there because they have nowhere else to live.

Mr Redwood: It is a bit of both. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady if she is urging the Government to do even more than they are currently doing to make more mortgages available so that more people can afford to buy homes. Members on both sides of the House would welcome that. I happen to know that Ministers are desperate to ensure that more mortgages are available than were available during the last few Labour years, and are working away with the banks to try to make it happen. That is very much part of the solution to the housing problem. [Laughter.] It is all very well for Labour Members to go into fits of hysterics, but they really should try to take a serious interest in the problem. Believe it or not, quite a lot of us Conservatives want better housing solutions for many of our constituents, and for people in other parts of the country.

Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab): Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that there was a very different view of social housing in the past? Council housing used not to be seen as a precious resource. For example, at the time of the 1951 general election the Conservatives pledged to build 300,000 new homes. There was a view across the political divide that we should build council housing to improve social conditions. Is that not the vision that we should have now?

Mr Redwood: I seem to remember that the Conservative Government did indeed honour their pledge—and that was many more homes than the Labour Government were building each year—but, even in those days, why did they need to do it? They needed to do it because we were short of homes. It was the post-war period, the Germans had remodelled many of our housing estates, and trying to create the homes that people needed was a big problem.

I think that under-occupation is a problem, and I think that the Government have come up with one part of the answer, but I urge Ministers to listen carefully to all those who are saying that the positive way of proceeding is through incentive, encouragement, persuasion, and giving people a better answer than the one they currently have, which may be a larger property that may not be suitable.

The Government have excluded everyone of pension age from the proposals, and I welcome that. I think that it is smart politics, and very sensitive to the elderly population. However, in my constituency, where most people own their homes—elderly people tend to own them without mortgages, and younger people tend to own them with rather big and difficult mortgages—a good many elderly residents decide to sell the family home because it has become too big and unmanageable, and to buy a smaller property such as a flat or bungalow. Many then sell again when they are becoming more frail, and move to semi-sheltered or supported accommodation.

That is a natural process of trading down in the private sector, but there is sometimes too much of an obstacle for elderly people in social housing to be able to do the same. Perhaps not enough of the right properties are available; perhaps they are not offered in the right way; perhaps there should be some incentive. I think it perfectly acceptable to try to create an atmosphere in which there can be the same sensible mobility in public sector housing as occurs naturally in areas with rather more private sector housing, so that elderly people can have housing more suited to their needs.

I hope that Ministers will consider the question of elderly under-occupation, which I think is very much part of the story, but will do so in a positive way that encourages, promotes and helps, rather than removing benefit or imposing a tax. I wish that the Opposition understood the meaning of the word “tax”. Imposing a tax means taking money from people who are earning it for themselves; it does not mean paying them less benefit. I hope that Ministers will work out an answer to that soundbite. I have heard soundbite arguments before, but I congratulate the Labour party on thinking up a brilliant and misleading one. I am afraid that it is better than the soundbites we have heard so far from this side of the House, and I urge my hon. Friends to come up with a soundbite that represents the truth. This is not a bedroom tax, but a reduction in the amount of benefit paid, which is very different.

Several hon. Members rose-

Mr Redwood: I am afraid that I cannot give way again. I am running out of time, and if I give way I will not be given any injury time.

We need to look at the issue of under-occupation among the elderly, and we need then to look at the issue of the disabled. That was why I approached this debate with considerable nervousness. As I think my hon. Friends know, I wish us to be more generous to the disabled, not less generous, and I think we all feel a little nervous about how far we should go. I was somewhat reassured to see that there are different definitions of disability and a rather wider definition is being used than would, perhaps, be normal. I am interested in the people who are seriously disabled, as recognised through the receipt of disability benefit.

I urge my ministerial friends to be as generous as possible. We must not presume that there is an easy solution, however. Again, if there are issues that need to be sorted out, the best way to do that is through support and persuasion and offering people something better. That must be the aim. Why would somebody move if their new home is going to be worse than their current one? If it can be shown that there would be better, more appropriate and better supported accommodation, however, I might be more willing to accept that we should follow the proposed course of action. I urge my ministerial friends to be extremely careful about the definition of the disability category, however.

One Opposition Member argued that this is a cynical policy and there might not be many savings if it works. That is a misunderstanding of the true nature of the policy. It is not primarily a public spending-cut policy; it is a policy designed to try to get more people into public sector housing that is suitable for them. That is the bigger picture.

We have an inadequate amount of housing stock, and some people have more of it than they strictly need, whereas others do not have as much of it as they strictly, technically need on the needs definition. We are arguing here about the balance between those two groups, and whether it would be feasible to solve the overall shortage by producing more housing. Even the Labour party must understand that if we were to go for the big build answer, that would take several years to come through. Ministers are feeling very frustrated at present that they have identified places for building and the means of financing that building, but it is taking a very long time to get the building to come through so we can start to tackle this problem.

My next topic is how to tackle the problems of insufficient housing and excess welfare spending. The issue of eligibility is key. My constituents tell me that they feel much more inclined to pay taxes to make sure that people who have been settled in this country for many years, or who have been born and brought up here, can get access to proper housing than to provide housing for people who have only just arrived and seem to know how to work the system to get access to housing. The Government could productively focus on that. I am sure there will be European Union rules, but we need to negotiate on this with our European partners, and make a stand if necessary, because there is a strong feeling in our country that public housing will be limited—more limited than some would like—and if we are to make choices, the priority must be those who have been here for some time and who have made a contribution and are part of our settled community. That does not always seem to be the case. I hope Ministers will see the issue of eligibility as a proper avenue for addressing both excess benefit expenditure and the shortage of available property.

These are difficult waters. Anyone who looks at the situation rationally will agree that there is under-occupation and we need to tackle it sensitively. They will also agree that we need more housing provision overall, and we need to do what we can to tackle that. I hope we can all agree that the best answer is to find a way to enable more people to enjoy what every MP takes for granted. We take it for granted that we have a well-paid job and that we can afford to buy a house. I think that every MP owns a property. Indeed, some of them own rather more than one property, I believe, and that has sometimes become a matter of comment. It is normal for an MP to own a property—to be an owner-occupier—and to enjoy a good income, and I am sure most MPs own a spare room or two.

I do not think there is anything wrong with people striving, getting a better job, earning more money and having spare rooms. I am personally very much in favour of spare rooms when people can afford to have them. We also need to make sure we have a fair tax system so that we are all making a decent contribution to those who cannot afford spare rooms.

Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab): May I ask the right hon. Gentleman how many spare rooms he has in his house—or has he not got round to counting them yet?

Mr Redwood: My spare rooms are a matter for me because I paid for them myself, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman has spare rooms and I dare say he paid for them himself. That is exactly the kind of society we all want to live in, I would have thought. I do not know of any Labour MPs who could stand up and say that they are at the minimum accommodation level—I invite them to do so, but I do not see anyone rushing to stand up.

Mr Russell Brown rose—

Mr Redwood: The hon. Gentleman stands up but he has no voice. I think that means he does not want to say that he has the minimum accommodation available or thought specific to certain people.

I want to live in an aspiration society. We want to promote better jobs, better paid jobs and more people owning their own home. Where that is not possible, we need a fair distribution; we need to provide more and to distribute it more fairly. I just hope that Opposition parties, if they have serious aims to be in power one day, will think more carefully before pledging to repeal things, or will come up with better ideas on how we can promote that better use of the housing stock that must make sense.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Does the Chancellor agree that the state balance sheet would look an awful lot better, and that the economy would function better, if RBS was sorted out more quickly and sold back to the private sector in a way that promoted banking competition?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne): I agree with my right hon. Friend. RBS is now pursuing a policy of becoming a much more UK-focused bank than it was under the strategy we inherited. We are absolutely clear that it should not be in the universal banking business on the scale that it has been and that the investment bank should be supporting its corporate and retail business in the UK, and it has made important steps in that direction.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Does the Secretary of State see any difficulty in this coalition Government pre-empting a future Chancellor of the Exchequer over tax policy, when I thought everybody in the House wanted a different kind of Government after 2015, who might have their own ideas?

The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt): We have funded these proposals until 2020 on plans that have been agreed by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. We hope very much that we will have the support of the Opposition for these plans as well. Then we can have a national consensus around them, which is what we need because in the end, if we are to create that certainty in the markets, people need to know that whichever Government are elected, they support the basic approach that we are endorsing.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I congratulate the Prime Minister heartily on a very professional outcome to the negotiations. Will he take this opportunity to ask all party political leaders in this country to urge their MEPs to uphold this deal and to vote for it in the European Parliament? I am sure Conservatives will, but the public would not take kindly to being let down by MEPs after he has done so well.

The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron): My right hon. Friend makes an important point. All the UK MEPs account for a decent percentage of the European Parliament, so it makes a real difference if socialist MEPs and Liberal MEPs from Britain vote for this budget, and they should do so in an open, transparent manner. The idea of having a secret ballot in a Parliament seems to me completely wrong. The fact is that you send MEPs to Brussels—and, regrettably, to Strasbourg—so you can see what they do on your behalf.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): If break-up and segregation may be necessary for a bank in a future crisis, why do the Government not understand that they may need those techniques to deal with the inherited, still very serious banking crisis that we are living through, which is preventing the financing of a full recovery? Will the Government look at what they can learn from their studies to sort out the problem of RBS today, which is our biggest obstacle to recovery?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark): My right hon. Friend makes a forceful point. The legislation is about the future. It is quite right that it should proceed with consideration and that we should not introduce things that might have unintended consequences without adequate consideration in this House. The Government are obviously the major shareholder in RBS. It is important that RBS should be returned as swiftly as possible to private hands. The current situation is far from ideal, and I know that my right hon. Friend shares our ambition on that.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Who governs? That is the fundamental question before us in this mighty debate today. At what point does a self-governing country have to say it is no longer self-governing because the body of European law and the wide-ranging body of European decisions are so fundamental that Ministers and this Parliament can no longer effectively govern the country?

Too many of us have watched and seen as Governments have given away mighty powers of self-government from these islands and from this once great Parliament to the European institutions, and we have worried greatly. This has been done in the name of the British people, but it has not been done with the consent of the British people. There has always been an excuse not to trouble the British people, and so often outside this House political parties have misled the British people.

The British people were told that they were joining a common market. It was very clear from the treaty of Rome onwards that they were joining a political, economic and monetary union in the making. They were told that they just belonged to a single market, needed to guarantee jobs in certain export industries. There were two misleading things there. First, we do not need to belong to the EU to export to the EU. Many other countries outside it export much more successfully than we have done from inside it. Secondly, it was always a far bigger and more noble venture in the eyes of its architects, its fathers and mothers, than a mere single market or internal market.

I ask Members of this Parliament to look around and see what has been done in their names—to see how difficult it is now for Ministers of the coalition, future Ministers, Conservative or Labour Administrations to do many of the things they would like to do or their electors wish them to do, because so many powers have been given away. The bigger the corpus of European law becomes, the more constrained are not just our Ministers, but this once-great Parliament.

Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op): Does not the right hon. Gentleman accept that the cars exported from the UK to mainland Europe today are a result of foreign direct investment to the UK because the UK is within the European Union, not outside the European Union?

Mr Redwood: No. That is a trivial point compared with the issues that I am raising, and it is entirely wrong, because there are many countries outside the EU that attract as much as or more inward investment than we do. I want, as does the hon. Gentleman, to keep those jobs, and we will continue to attract and support that inward investment as long as we have a satisfactory enterprise economy here and a decent market. We have a very large market of our own. That is why those investments come here.

The hon. Gentleman needs to look around and see how many powers have been taken away. We can no longer have an agricultural policy of any kind unless it is the approved one from Brussels. Our fishing grounds are completely controlled and regulated from Brussels. Our energy policy is greatly circumscribed by a large amount of European legislation, regulation and price control, and many more decisions coming along on climate change and energy, which means that it is very difficult to have an enterprise-oriented energy policy in this country.

We find that we do not control our own borders. We have no say over who comes here from the continent of Europe, and they have come in very large numbers in recent years. Many of them are welcome, but a sovereign country has the right to decide who comes and on what terms. We were always assured by Governments that we kept control of our welfare policy—that that was a matter for domestic consideration. We now find that the EU presumes to instruct us to whom we give benefits and what benefits we give them.

Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab): This is a grand opportunity to ask the right hon. Gentleman, as I asked the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), to outline what position he would take and on what issues he would vote to leave the EU—on a matter of emotion, or can he give me some specific issues that he says should persuade his party and his Government to vote no when it comes to a referendum?

Mr Redwood: I wish to help restore democracy in our islands and to do that we need to regain the veto. We should not have sacrificed 100 vetoes at Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon. This Parliament needs to be able to decide whether a new law goes forward or not; otherwise we will find that in ever more areas—I am just beginning to illustrate some of them—we are a fax or an e-mail democracy. We receive the e-mails or the faxes from Brussels and this Parliament has to put through the measure, whether we like it or not. That creates a tension within our democracy. Successive Governments bring measures to this House and recommend them to this House. They are very fundamental measures, but they often sneak them through this House, or sneak them through upstairs, because they fear they are unpalatable to us. However, they know that there is nothing that the House of Commons can do once the agreement has been made in Brussels—and very often it is made without the wholehearted consent of the British Minister. In the case of this Government, it may often be made against the wishes of the British Minister, but this House is still expected to put through these measures come what may.

That is why we need a Government who resolutely negotiate a new relationship for us with our partners in Europe. Of course, I give no ground to anybody in wanting to maximise jobs and investment in this country, and my recommendations would increase that rather than reduce them, as we find with non-EU members already. However, I also wish to see the Prime Minister’s great speech used as a platform for setting out how we recreate a democracy and secure the right in this House to say no to European laws if we do not like them. We have waited a long time for a Prime Minister who would say honestly that this country does not share the aim of the treaties and of many of the member states of the European Union because we do not wish ever-closer union.

I have heard very few Labour Members say that they want ever-closer union, because they know that that means political, monetary, fiscal, economic and every kind of union known; it means the creation of a united states of Europe. Those who wish to join that, I wish well, but it was never Britain’s view that we wanted to be part of a united states of Europe. The British people, if asked, would say no to that idea. It is up to us now, at this late hour, to say that too many powers have gone and that they need to be returned if we are to restore this once-great Chamber to what it once was.

This Parliament wrestled power from over-mighty monarchs. This Parliament took on those who wished to dominate the continent of Europe and rejected the imperial ambitions of first Spain, then France, and then Germany. Because of the work of our predecessors in the House of Commons, we as a nation said to Europe: “We want a Europe of the free. We want a Europe of independent nations. We want a Europe where people’s sense of local belonging is respected. We are against a tyranny. We are against an over-mighty Europe. We do not believe that Europe can be governed as a whole.”

How proud that vision was, and how right it is that our Prime Minister has reminded us of the foundations of our beliefs: no to ever-closer union, yes to more democracy; no to restrictions and too much centralised government from Brussels, yes to greater freedom to breathe and to decide and to choose among all the smaller countries of western Europe. I suspect that many countries out there and many politicians in them respect that vision and are rather impressed by its boldness. We should all join together now in rallying the peoples of Europe to say yes to friendship, yes to trade, yes to co-operation, but no to centralisation and no to authoritarian interference.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Just as we want to make sure that anyone who is eligible to vote is able to do so, we also need to make sure that only those eligible to vote do vote. Will the Minister remind us what checks there will be on an individual to prevent that individual from registering twice under different names?

The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The innovation of data-matching will allow us to cross-reference, we hope, about 70% of electors against other sources of data held by the Government. That will, in large part, assist the endeavour outlined by my right hon. Friend. It will help to ensure that the register is both as complete and as accurate as possible, and that those who should not on the register are not included.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Is the Secretary of State looking favourably on the idea that workers coming here from Europe to earn a living should have to establish a contribution record over a reasonable period of time before becoming eligible to receive benefits?

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith): The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) and others are engaged on this matter with our European partners. We do not think it right that somebody who has made no contribution to this country should be able to walk in here on day one and take benefits, as is being proposed. I promise my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that I will not allow that to happen.

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): One of the worst constitutional innovations of the previous Government was their decision to automatically timetable every piece of legislation they brought before this House, which I regretted and opposed at the time. When the coalition Government took office, I was very pleased with their language, because they told us that they were committed to a stronger democracy and a stronger Parliament. What better proof could there be that they not only have those beliefs, but wish to put them into action, than that they not automatically timetable every Bill brought before us?

I rise to speak on the timetable motion because there is a feeling in the House that it is wrong and because it relates to a constitutional Bill. If there is any kind of legislation that should be hammered out and discussed in full on the Floor of the House, it is on matters relating to our constitution. We are the custodians of the constitution. That constitution either expresses the freedoms we believe in or it lets us down, depending on our point of view and the state we have reached. It would be a great day if the Deputy Prime Minister, a former lover of freedom and of an independent Parliament, rose from the Front Bench and said, “I hear what you say. We will give you the freedom to debate this at the length of your choosing.”

Often when we have guillotines, we find that legislation is rushed through with insufficient consideration. Last night an important Bill went through with a big chunk of work left undone by the House of Commons, which means we have to leave it to the House of Lords. There is no reason for that. We could have a few more sitting days, or we could stay here a little later in the evenings. Some of us want to do the job properly and time should be made available for that.

It is even more important to allow proper consideration on something of this magnitude. We have heard today from hon. Ladies and Gentlemen who have a range of very different views on the country they belong to, the oath they wish to swear and the allegiance they wish to show. We are going to the heart of what this nation is, how it expresses itself and how it represents itself at the highest level. I think that it is quite wrong to shorten debate on that. It might be that when we get to the debate we will not need much more time than the Government have allowed, but surely they can trust a free Parliament. Surely, on this issue, they can let Parliament have its way and discuss what it wishes for a reasonable length of time.

Before the Labour Government, previous Governments always reserved the right to introduce a guillotine motion if they felt that the Opposition were behaving unreasonably and not allowing sensible progress to be made. All democratic Oppositions ultimately agree that Governments have a right to get their legislation through if it has been properly advertised and argued for in general elections. Surely, on this issue, this is the time for the Deputy Prime Minister to strengthen his reputation, make his name with a blow for freedom and allow us to speak for as long as we wish.