Appendix 1

London Assembly (Plenary) Meeting – 7 December 2016

Transcript of Agenda Item 4: Question and Answer Session – Gavin Barwell MP – Minister of State for Housing, Planning and Minister for London

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Good morning, Minister. It was good of you to come. There will be a lead- off question, but I understand that before I put the easy question you would like to make a statement.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Thank you, first of all, Mr Chairman, for your invitation. It is a pleasure to be here and I hope that this can be a regular thing. It is very useful to have a close dialogue between Members of the Assembly and me.

I will just say a few very brief remarks because I am conscious that time is short. First of all, the Government is committed to working with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and with the boroughs. London plays an absolutely critical role in terms of the United Kingdom (UK) economy and certainly, in terms of my responsibilities for housing and planning policy, the part of the country where the deficit between what we are building and what we need to build is at its greatest in this city of ours.

In relation to the Autumn Statement, there was some extremely positive news in terms of the affordable housing settlement, which I am sure we will come on to talk about in a second, and also some progress on devolution in relation to the Work and Health Programme and adult education.

I very much look forward to answering my questions. I will try to keep my answers as brief as possible to allow as many people as possible to ask me questions.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Thank you very much. The very easy starting question is: what do you see as the greatest issues and challenges facing London?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): I am not sure how easy a starter question that actually is, Mr Chairman, but probably, given my particular interests, I would refer to the housing situation in the capital. If London is going to continue to perform economically, it is vital that people can afford to live and work in the capital. We have seen for 30 or 40 years that across the country as a whole but particularly here in London we have not been building anything like the number of homes that we need to build. As a result, both house prices and rents have risen faster than earnings and certainly in some inner London boroughs the affordability ratio - the ratio of median earnings to median prices - has now reached a completely unacceptable level. Addressing the housing crisis that we face and making sure that we build more homes of all types so that ordinary working people have a chance to own their own home in this city would be the number one issue, in my opinion.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Thank you very much.

Florence Eshalomi AM: It is great to see you here as a London Member of Parliament (MP) for Croydon, not too far from my constituency in Lambeth and Southwark. 1

One of the main issues that has been on your agenda and I am sure in your inbox as well has been the issue around Southern Rail. In the run-up to the mayoral election, quite a number of the candidates committed to looking at further rail devolution in London and it is right to say that it is something that has worked quite well with London Overground.

Given that there is a lot of cross-party support not just from this Assembly but from councillors, council leaders and even MPs, including some of your Conservative colleagues, why do you feel that the Government is not supporting this move and looking at additional rail devolution at this time? Again, in another example this morning, we know that Southern Rail has strikes on and Brixton Station this morning was just a nightmare to get to. I am sure some of your constituents from Croydon were trying to get on that route this morning.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Let us start with the areas where we are all in agreement. The first thing to say is that the service on Southern Rail at the moment is wholly unacceptable and it is causing misery to tens of thousands of people on an almost daily basis. The reasons for the problems are complex. The company itself: its performance has been not acceptable. A lot of the problems that your and my constituents experience are to do with the infrastructure that Network Rail is responsible for, not the operator, and there are issues about the action that the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has taken as well.

The second area where I hope there is a strong degree of consensus is that the Government very much wants to work with Transport for London (TfL) to improve services on those franchises in south London.

Where you are quite right to say there has been a change of approach - and you will have heard the Secretary of State for Transport’s statement to the House of Commons yesterday - is that he has looked into these issues and feels very strongly that the right way to deliver the improvements to services that we all desperately want to see is to get much better integration between the running of the signalling and the track and the people running the service and to bring that much closer together in the franchise. He wants to work with both TfL and Kent County Council in relation to Southeastern, which is the first franchise that comes up, to try to achieve that. His view, which he expressed very clearly, I thought, in the Commons yesterday, is that if you try to separate out the services that serve London and the inner southeast from the services further down to Kent, that kind of major reorganisation of the network could make things worse rather than better. That is why he has come to that judgement.

Tony Devenish AM: Minister, thank you very much for the £3.15 billion. If we listened to the Mayor, we would think he had written the cheque rather than you, but we do appreciate the cheque that came from you.

One of my concerns is the lack of actual detail we have had from the Mayor on how he is going to deliver the 90,000 affordable houses and the rest of his commitments. Are you looking for more detail from the Mayor in due course to make sure he delivers? You have given him the money. He now needs to get on and build the homes.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): We will want to hold the Mayor to account but also other people around the country that we give money for affordable housing to make sure that the homes get delivered. The prospectus has been published by the GLA, to be fair, very quickly after receipt of the money.

Just on the figure, it is worth pointing out that the news is potentially even better than the £3.15 billion. The £3.15 billion is the share of what the Affordable Housing Programme was prior to the Autumn Statement. 2

London is getting 43% of the England-wide budget, which is a record amount and the Mayor has been generous enough to say that. It is the best ever settlement for affordable housing London has ever had. However, in the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor announced a further £1.4 billion for the England-wide affordable housing budget and London will get a share of that money. Therefore, there is even further good news to come in terms of the level of funding that we are providing. It is absolutely critical that we do that because it is clear from the data that the affordability crisis is at its worst in London.

I would just end by stressing one thing, which is that in terms of making housing in this city more affordable, there are two things that we need to do. First of all, we need to provide more shared ownership and more housing for submarket rent, but we also need to build more homes generally. The reason housing has become more unaffordable is because the supply of housing across this city for years and years has not kept pace with demand. Therefore, we need to get overall supply up as well as providing record levels of funding for subsidised housing.

Tony Devenish AM: There has been lots of cross-party support in terms of trying to get more building by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), by co-operative societies, by councils and by housing associations. The Mayor seems a little bit slow in getting going and at the moment and he is mainly working with the same old major developers. Can you urge him to broaden the supply chain so that we can actually get building in London?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): That is a critical issue. Our Housing White Paper is to be published early in the New Year. Our view is that in order to tackle the housing situation we face in this country, it needs action on all fronts. One of the depressing things I have found in my four months in the job, Mr Chairman, is that people come into my office and they offer a silver-bullet solution, “If you just do this, the whole problem will go away”. With respect to my predecessors, we would not be in this mess if there was an easy answer to it.

It is going to require intervention on, in my opinion, at least four fronts: releasing more land; speeding up how long it takes from when someone gets planning permission to spades getting in the ground; trying to overcome the - small P - political resistance to building and changing people’s attitudes to housing being built in their area. The fourth issue is the one that you have alighted on, which is getting a much broader range of people in this country building houses.

We are too dependent on a small number of large developers. They admit it themselves when they come in. They will tell me quite clearly that if I make some changes to the planning system they will build more homes, but they are not going to build the total number that we need in this country. We have to get local authorities, housing associations and - absolutely, as you say - more SME builders involved. We lost a lot in the recession in the early 1990s and then again in the 2008/09 crash. We have to get more SMEs into building. I am also very interested in whether we can get institutional investment into the private rented sector (PRS) and what we call build-to-rent. The broader the range of people we can get building homes in this country, the better served we will be.

Tony Devenish AM: That is good to hear. Can I ask a broader question about devolution? The Mayor goes on about more powers and I am keen for him to focus on trying to deliver what he actually has at the moment. If there is more devolution - I hope there will be - will you be considering double devolution down to the boroughs rather than to the Mayor?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): What we need to look at in London is exactly what you are saying: what are the powers that are currently being 3 exercised by central Government that could rightly be done here at City Hall and what are the things that are being done by the Government or here at City Hall that could be done at borough level? There may be some functions where there is a strong case for some kind of joint working between City Hall and the boroughs.

It is probably also worth, given that the Mayor and the Assembly have been in place for some time now, looking at the governance structures that we have in London - there is quite an evolving network of sub- regional partnerships there - and looking at whether we have the governance structures right as well. There is a really interesting agenda and I hope the Assembly, the Mayor and the boroughs will want to talk to the Government and look at how we can get those arrangements right.

Tony Devenish AM: There has been a lot of negativity by some people in London about the economy. I think the economy is doing well and the Government is doing a good job. Would you take the opportunity to say a few good things about the London economy and the UK economy? No more moaning from some people. We are going to leave the European Union (EU) and things are going to be better.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Clearly, we have been through a referendum, which was a difficult process for the country with strongly held views on both sides, but the country has made a decision. I would hope that for all of us in politics - for what it is worth, I campaigned for us to remain - whatever our views were in that referendum, what we all now have a common interest in doing is making sure that we respect the decision the British people have taken and that we make a success of it.

The underlying fundamentals of our economy across the UK and particularly here in London are strong. We have seen an amazing transformation in terms of our labour market and in terms of the levels of people that are in employment. We have made good progress on getting our public finances back into a more stable position, although there is more work still to do on that. The underlying fundamentals of the UK economy are strong.

As we exit the EU, that inevitably gives rise to uncertainty, but there are also opportunities. What we all need to do in Government, here in London government and at a local government level is to work together to make a success of the decision the country has made.

Tony Devenish AM: Thank you, Minister.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Assembly Member Copley.

Tom Copley AM: Good morning, Minister. Thank you for being here today. I listened with interest to your exchange with Assembly Member Devenish. It feels to me like your predecessor in the previous Government seemed to put all his eggs in the Starter Homes basket and in the affordable homeownership basket. What you seem to have said by saying that there is no silver bullet is perhaps that that was not the right approach.

Do you and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) support a full range of tenures and affordable tenures for London and does that include traditional social housing and council housing?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): I would say two things to that. The first is that it is quite right for all of us in politics to have a focus on ownership because all of the evidence suggests that the vast majority of the people we represent aspire to own their own property, but there are two important caveats to that. First of all, there are some people who are not going to be able to own their own home. Secondly, there is a larger group of people who, whilst they might in the long term 4 aspire to own, are going to be renting for a period of years prior to that. Therefore, it seems to me that any housing policy has to have a good offer to all people and has to have that kind of flexibility in tenure.

You will have heard what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the Autumn Statement: “I inherited an Affordable Housing Programme that was nearly wholly focused on shared ownership and we are now going to have a policy where, essentially, we have complete flexibility on tenure”. Housing associations and others can come forward with bids to that programme and we will judge them on their merits in terms of the total supply we are getting and whether they are a good fit for the market conditions in their area.

In terms of council housing, prior to becoming an MP I was a councillor in Croydon and I would note that when we took control of the Council in 2006 one of the things we did was to start building council homes again. You can take it from that that I have no problem at all with local authorities doing that.

If you were trying to ask me about social rent versus affordable rent, there is no bar, as it were. There is flexibility on tenure. What I would observe is that the reason that public policy shifted towards affordable rent is that it allows us to get more homes for a given level of public funding. There is still an interest in maximising the number of units we get and that will point in that direction, but there is flexibility.

Tom Copley AM: You mentioned Croydon Council. Croydon Council has set up a private housebuilding arm now called Brick by Brick, which is going to deliver 1,000 new homes on infill sites over the next few years. Do you support councils setting up companies to build housing, as a number of councils in London have done?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Yes.

Tom Copley AM: Fantastic. You talked about affordability of homeownership and aspiring to homeownership. Homeownership was most affordable when we were building lots and lots of council housing because councils were delivering a huge amount of the supply that was being delivered each year.

The previous Mayor advocated lifting the borrowing cap for councils. Why has the Government not done this when there are councils champing at the bit to build new council housing through their Housing Revenue Accounts (HRAs)?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): There is an issue here in relation to overall government borrowing. The Treasury has to consider the balance there, but there is still significant headroom and there are also councils with significant reserves in their HRAs and so there is plenty of capacity that is there. We will be looking at these issues going forward and monitoring that very closely.

Certainly in relation to my own Council, I would observe that in 2014 the Government offered £300 million of additional headroom and Croydon did not bid at that time for the money that was there and available and, actually, not all of that offer was taken up. If you are asking me if all of those caps are going to be removed and people can borrow as much money as they like, no. Are we open to looking at that issue as time goes on and making sure there is resource there?

One of the things that I am particularly interested in - and we would probably have a political disagreement about this - is that I support the Right to Buy and I believe that one of the things that makes Right to Buy acceptable as a policy is making sure that, as well as helping individuals own their own home, we get replacement affordable housing for rent. Therefore, I need to make sure that the policies we have allow those replacement homes to get built. At the moment, we are just about meeting the commitment we have to 5 replace within three years but, if we do not raise our game, we are not going to be meeting that commitment in the future. We need to look at these issues to make sure councils have the ability to build those replacement homes.

Tom Copley AM: It seems a slightly odd argument to say you are worried about getting into too much debt if you lift that borrowing cap but that councils are not borrowing anyway. That would indicate that there is not a danger of borrowing running out of control and, of course, any borrowing would have to be prudential borrowing anyway. They could not just go and borrow unlimited amounts.

I talk to council housing executive members and cabinet members who have borrowed up to the limit and want to borrow more. What is the issue with allowing those councils prudential borrowing beyond the cap?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): You can look at the problems that we got into as a country five or six years ago when we allowed the level of borrowing to get out of control. We do not want to return to those days and so it is perfectly reasonable that the Government wants to exercise some control on the total levels of borrowing --

Tom Copley AM: It would through prudential borrowing rules.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): If you allow councils to borrow more money, you are increasing government borrowing and so you are increasing the level of borrowing in any given year. It is perfectly understandable that we want to have controls but, as I said, we will be looking at these issues in relation to the White Paper.

I certainly want to make sure that councils are able to replace the homes that they sell over Right to Buy and I am certainly supportive of the principle of local housing companies --

Tom Copley AM: Would that be like-for-like? A replacement of one-for-one is not like-for-like. Do you want to see, if a four-bed council is sold, it is replaced by a four-bed?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): The policy is one-for-one replacement. It is not necessarily like-for-like. There may be reasons why you would not want to do like-for-like. You may have views that the needs of your area have changed over time. The policy is one-for-one.

Tom Copley AM: Thank you.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Assembly Member Duvall.

Len Duvall AM: I would like to return to the issue about rail privatisation and the issues around that. Can I thank you for your earlier statement in saying that you would come back before us? We are very grateful. We know that you do not have to and we look forward to further opportunities to pose questions to you on topical issues.

In terms of the transport announcements made yesterday and the links with the wider issues around economic performance, would you agree that the issues in Kent and London coincide? We all want the best for the rail customers and we understand the role of the Department for Transport and the Secretary of State [for Transport] taking the decisions that he did, but we are not talking about major reorganisation of that. We are talking about the management of franchises and the franchises can operate within a Government framework. 6

In terms of the two franchises that have been passed to TfL, they are your top performers in this area. They are one and two at the moment. You have some very poor performers who are going to be rewarded, really, in terms of the new ways of working that the Government is proposing.

Could you just cast a little bit more light on what that decision really was about and why TfL cannot be entertained as a new provider of the management of the franchise, not providing the service? People forget that. There is a mixture of this within those issues. The only people who will be jumping for joy at this will be transport operators who do not want contracts that are in favour of customers in some senses but actually continue the blame culture, which the Secretary of State is trying to reduce and to eradicate.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): On your last point, no, that is not the case at all. What we want to do in terms of the franchise process going forward is to have the Government working closely with TfL and with Kent County Council on the refranchising and making sure that we get a franchise that delivers for passengers. I do not think there is anything between us in terms of what we are trying to achieve. There clearly is a difference of opinion about the best way to achieve that, but the objective is entirely a shared one.

In relation to the Southeastern franchise - and the same would apply to the Southern franchise that we were talking about earlier - these are complex franchises that have a mixture of services that serve the Greater London area or maybe go just over the border into Kent and services that go further down into Kent and beyond. If TfL was solely responsible for the franchising there, there is a democratic deficit issue because there are lots of people served by that franchise who do not say in the election of a Mayor or in the democratic control of TfL.

The concern that the Secretary of State for Transport has, which he expressed to the House of Commons yesterday, was that if you had a situation where TfL was franchising the metro services - if I can term them in that way - and somebody else was franchising the strategic services down to Kent, it was quite a significant reorganisation. We would have different operators operating on what is a very congested part of the rail network and that could make things worse, not better. That is the concern that he expressed yesterday.

Len Duvall AM: Minister, they were the issues when we first had the option for the Southeastern franchise under Boris Johnson [MP, former Mayor of London]. It was sad that we did not get it then, but we had to reach out and persuade those opinion-formers as well as public institutions in the rest of the southeast that we could meet their needs as well as provide ours and that we would treat them fairly because they thought they would lose out.

Your colleagues and MPs, as well as councils of all political persuasions, are fully supportive of these proposals. They do not have the reservations that the Secretary of State or the Department for Transport have. Surely we have between now and March to overcome some of those reservations and still have franchise contracts that work for the customers, not just for the train operators. That seems to be the nub of the issues at the moment. If you look in terms of the performance and what TfL has done in terms of its creativity and in terms of its innovation, we have a better service on that franchise than was previously in the past. Surely that must be at the forefront of where the Government wants to be and surely you, in your role as Minister of London, has to be as an ambassador back into the Government saying, “What works for ‘UK plc’”? If we do not make it work in London and the southeast, then we reduce those issues, the issues of population growth, job opportunities and making sure that interaction between London and its hinterland gets better and we can cope with the challenges of the future post-Brexit. Surely that is something that is worth walking the extra mile for between now and March just to say, “What is the real problem?”

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There is no problem in consultation between Kent and TfL and no problem with them coming back into the Government, but surely it is getting control of the franchises. Is it best that the Government does it or is best that it is devolved, closer to the customers and delivering a service with the Government holding TfL to account in providing that service and TfL holding the train operators to account?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): The first thing to say, again, is to start with a point of agreement. It is absolutely critical to London’s economic success and also, bluntly, to the life chances of the people we represent that we sort this problem out. I am in absolutely no doubt about the scale of the problem. Every single night when I get home and check my email, I have furious emails from constituents who are experiencing misery at the moment on that Southern franchise and I experience it myself. I use the service myself. Since we are on webcam, be under no doubt that I understand the scale of the problem.

The second thing - and if this is a misconception at all, I want to clear this up completely - is that the decision that the Secretary of State [for Transport] announced yesterday is in no way a reflection on TfL’s ability. In my constituency, the main service we get is Southern, but West Croydon Station is on the London Overground route. That is a good service and TfL has done a great job on that. I would not want anyone watching to think that the decision is in any way a reflection of the Secretary of State’s judgement on TfL.

His concern is about the best way to deliver the improvements for passengers that you were talking about. How do we get a franchise that delivers a step-change in the quality and reliability of services for passengers? To be fair to him, he has looked at this in incredible detail and he would have known when he announced this decision yesterday that he was going to upset some people who were expecting something different, but his judgement is that the best way to do that is to have the Government, TfL and Kent working together on that franchise process rather than the previous model that we had looked at.

I will feed back to him the concerns that you have expressed this morning, but rest assured that he has looked at these issues in a great deal of detail.

Len Duvall AM: Thank you.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Just following up on that, is this now ruled out for the Southern and the South West Trains franchises, which will come up at a later stage?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Clearly, he will take decisions on those at the relevant time, but I think you can see the clear principle in the statement that he announced yesterday of where he wants to go in terms of the rail industry in this country, which is to get better integration between the people responsible for running the track and the signalling and those operating those the services.

One of the observations that I would make - and there are other Members here who rely on the Southern route, as I do - is that there is a real problem with a lack of transparency there at the moment. Quite often people will turn up at Victoria or London Bridge and see a huge number of services delayed or cancelled and instinctively they blame the operator of those services, but actually the data that I get to see as a local MP shows that in about 60% of the cases the problem is Network Rail and has nothing to do with the rail operator. To be fair to Network Rail, part of that is about a historic lack of investment in the infrastructure, which they are struggling to maintain --

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Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: I do not wish to be rude. Sorry. I just wanted you to clarify on that. I have literally under a minute.

I just want to ask you my actual question. Given that one in four people is living in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) in London, do you agree that more needs to be done to protect tenants and rogue landlords and will you consider devolving to the Mayor the power to approve landlord licensing schemes across London?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Definitely, this is a big issue that we need to get right. The Government has done a lot. We took extra powers in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 in relation to rogue landlords. We have taken further decisions that we announced in the Autumn Statement. We are going to ban letting agent fees, which is something that I suspect will be widely welcomed here. We are always open to discussions about further steps that we could take either at a national level or issues that could potentially be devolved to the Mayor.

Shortly after I came into office, we started a discussion with James Murray [Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development] about what we could do in terms of devolution of housing and planning. We have suspended that not because there is no longer any enthusiasm to do it but because, frankly, until we have landed the Housing White Paper and have set out clearly where we are going on national housing and planning policy, it is very difficult to have a detailed discussion about what we would then do in terms of devolution. However, if it is helpful to you, I absolutely agree that it is critical.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Assembly Member Berry.

Sian Berry AM: I want to go back to housing again but also just to ask about public land and alternatives to selling it off. The new Mayor and TfL have made the positive decision to focus more of their public land on joint ventures and long-term rental homes, which will help to deliver the homes London needs and will create a long-term revenue stream, rather than selling them off. I recently visited Holloway Prison, which is owned by the Ministry of Justice and has great potential for this.

Do you agree that this approach of not selling off land but keeping an interest and focusing more on revenue has potential not just for TfL but also for other public land owned by other parts of government?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): It can be part of the solution. What I would say to you is that the historic approach of just flogging off sites to a large developer is not necessarily the best way of going about these things. It might maximise the short-term capital receipt, but it does not necessarily maximise the number of homes you get. It certainly does not maximise the buildout rate that you would get.

I suppose where I would slightly disagree with you is that although more homes for rent are part of what London needs, it is not the sole thing. Most Londoners want to own their own home and we also, therefore, need to make sure that we build more homes for ownership in order that affordability comes down.

Coming back to Assembly Member Devenish’s question, one of the things that we are looking at as part of what we call our Accelerated Construction Programme is to take a large site of public land, break it up into small chunks and go into joint ventures with individual small builders. If you want to get the quickest buildout of a site, you want a mix of tenures. You want different developers, some doing private rented, some doing submarket rents and some doing homeownership. That kind of mixture with different builders doing things onsite maximises the buildout rate, which is what I am most interested in.

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Sian Berry AM: That is good to hear. If I could pitch again, though, for the benefit of affordable rented homes, a report last month from the New Economics Foundation looked at public land that is planned for sale and the potential for affordable homes on ten sites. It estimated that building affordable housing in these places could reduce the Housing Benefit bill by £231 million and that is on top of the rents that you collect.

It seems that if you look at it a Government level above the single ministry level, at the Exchequer level, departments holding land could bring benefits to other parts of Government by doing this and by focusing on affordable homes for rent. I wondered if that more strategic approach is something that you could try to take up to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): The Government is hugely interested in this agenda. We have a target to dispose of public land across the country equivalent to 160,000 homes. We are also going to try to work with local authorities to get a similar level of disposal.

Here in London we have the idea agreed of a London Land Commission that would bring the Mayor and me together. There is huge potential to work on looking at Government land, GLA land and London borough surplus land and what we can do in terms of disposal both to ensure that we get the mix of housing that London needs - affordable rent and also the PRS and homeownership - and to, crucially, get the buildout rates. As I said in response to Assembly Member Devenish, one of the real problems we have in terms of housing policy is that it takes far too long from when you get planning permission for homes to actually get those homes built out.

Sian Berry AM: Very finally, you did not mention earlier on community-led housing models. I know that you visited the Cornwall Community Land Trust (CLT) recently. Do you think those play a part as well?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): Hugely. I am hugely interested in that as an agenda. There is a great scheme in east London that I visited as well. It is the idea of getting low-cost homeownership where the homes are permanently affordable so that you sell them to someone and, when they sell on, they get sold on at that lower price. Those homes are permanently affordable for low-cost homeownership. CLTs also do a lot in terms of affordable rent. It is a really interesting model.

George Osborne [MP, former Chancellor of the Exchequer] announced £60 million for these kinds of community housing schemes a little while ago and news will be coming very shortly about how we are allocating that. It is something I am very interested in.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): . Assembly Member Kurten.

David Kurten AM: Thank you, Minister, for coming. If I may, I would like to ask a few questions on education in London.

I understand from the Autumn Statement that adult education is going to be devolved to City Hall in the financial year 2019/20. What do you see as the potential benefits and potential pitfalls of that move?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): We need to make sure that we have readiness for that to happen, but there are huge benefits, potentially, in terms of ensuring that decisions about adult education are made at a more local level by people who have a better understanding of the needs in particular communities. 10

In a number of ways, London has led the way in terms of devolution, but we have now had a number of major devolution deals to other major cities across the country. It is quite right that the Government looks at other areas where there are things that are being done in Whitehall at the moment that could rightly be done either here at City Hall or in combination with the London boroughs.

David Kurten AM: One thing that does worry me, though, is that I understand that the adult education colleges and further education colleges that would come under this will be able to take on their own debt to a much greater level than they are now and will have the potential of going bankrupt if they make unwise financial decisions.

What safeguards do you have in place to make sure that no further education or adult education colleges in London do go bankrupt? That would leave a very big hole in the middle of the communities in which they are.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): That is a totally understandable concern. If you will forgive me, what I will do is I will look into that and write to you with the details subsequent to this meeting.

David Kurten AM: I have one more question, if I could, which is something you might be able to help with. I sit on the Education Panel here at the London Assembly and with devolution there might be a larger role for the Assembly in scrutinising the Mayor on education.

However, on some issues, there seems to be a lack of London-wide data in terms of teacher recruitment, teacher retention, job placements and so on. At the moment, there is a whole range of different bodies and organisations that collect data. There are the boroughs, there are three Regional Schools Commissioners and then, from 2019, there is going to be the Mayor as well.

Would it be possible to put together or to get someone, perhaps, from the Department for Education (DfE) to start putting together some London-wide data on recruitment, retention, student numbers and so on so that it is possible to plan better for the future?

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): You raise a really good and important point. One of the things that I am very passionate about in the job I do in relation to housing and planning is making sure that we have good data because policy needs to be evidence-driven. It is not entirely clear from your question where the problem is and if it is a difficulty aggregating up the borough data or if that is not there. Perhaps if you could drop me a note afterwards spelling out in more detail where you think the problem is, I am very happy to raise that with colleagues at the DfE.

David Kurten AM: Thank you very much.

Nicky Gavron AM: Minister, good morning. I wanted to ask you a question about permitted development rights, which allow a change of use from offices and other workspaces now to residential without going through the planning system. Everyone around this horseshoe agrees that we need more affordable housing and we need more housing generally, but we also desperately need affordable workspace. Change of use is offering a windfall in terms of upping value to property owners and to developers. What we are seeing in London is that rents are going up and, in many cases, land prices are going up, too.

We now have the latest figures. I know you are a data man and I know you like evidence-based policy. I have been reading Hansard and seeing that. We now have the latest figure and we have mounting evidence of the 11 negative impact of this policy on London. If you just take the latest figures for boroughs, Brent has lost through prior approvals 67% of its office space, Harrow 40% and Sutton 53%. Croydon and Richmond have also lost a lot. We are in a position now where 38% of offices are fully occupied. People are being turfed out and rents are rising. Of the 21,000 homes given prior approval permission, only 3,000 have been completed as houses, whereas in the same period 9,000 have gone through the conventional planning system.

I want to just say to you: would you be prepared to look again at this policy and to modify it? It is not really working in London.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): The first thing I would say is that I would acknowledge that this is a controversial policy. The data you have used is not necessarily right. The figures I have are that in 2015/16 the specific policy of office-to-residential permitted development delivered nearly 13,000 homes in this country. People say to me, “There are huge housing problems and we desperately need more homes”. This policy has delivered a significant increase in the number of homes.

I entirely recognise there are concerns people have in terms of loss of office space and there are also concerns in terms of, when you go through permitted development, you do not have to make a contribution to affordable housing. It is something we are debating at the moment in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill and I met recently with Lord True from Richmond [Council], who made exactly the same points that you have just made. We will continue to keep these issues under review but I would say that at a time when I am rightly under huge pressure to ensure that we get this country and this city building the homes we need, this is a policy that is contributing to that.

Andrew Dismore AM: Could I go back to rail devolution? In the Evening Standard today there is a letter from Chris Grayling [MP, Secretary of State for Transport] to Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson wrote to Mr Grayling supporting the idea of rail devolution. The letter says this:

“Thank you for your letter of 17 April about the possibility of TfL taking on responsibility for a number [of] rail services in the London area, but outside the Greater London boundary. While I am generally a great supporter of what you are doing in London, I would not be in favour of changing the current arrangements – not because I have any fears over the immediate future, but because I would like to keep suburban rail services out of the clutches of any future Labour Mayor.

What this decision yesterday is about is about party politics, not about the hard-pressed commuters who are coming into London, is it not? That is what is about. That letter gives the game away.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): I do not think that that is a fair thing to say at all. If I look at my own record in terms of what I have done since becoming Minister for Housing, as we were talking about earlier, we have just given the Mayor of London - despite his party political allegiance - a record level of funding for affordable housing. I want to make it very clear today that we are going to have issues where we disagree - that is politics and I understand that - but this Government is absolutely committed to working with the Mayor and with the Assembly to try to deliver the changes that we need to see in London. I do not think that is a fair characterisation at all.

Certainly, Assembly Member Duvall referred to the views of some of my colleagues and, actually, they are mixed both in London and without. There are people who have supported the principle of rail devolution and there are others who are concerned about the democratic deficit.

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Andrew Dismore AM: I do not think anyone is disputing your good faith and the work that you are doing, but Chris Grayling has a record of being rather hostile to London. What that letter shows is that what his decision - I am not talking about your decision - yesterday was about was about crude party politics, not about allowing a Labour Mayor to act in the interests of commuters in London. That is what that is about. The decision yesterday was not about having the best results for rail because we all agree here, the previous Mayor agrees, this Mayor agrees and London MPs as a whole agree that that is the thing to do. Chris Grayling wants to play party politics with it rather than looking after the interests of commuters.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): I would refute that. If that were the case, the Secretary of State for Transport would not have offered for TfL and the Mayor to have an integral role in designing the new franchise. Absolutely, we want to work with the Mayor and with Kent County Council.

We can disagree about the best way to achieve what we want to achieve, but there is complete unanimity across the political spectrum that the level of service that people on the Southern and Southeastern franchises are experiencing at the moment is wholly unacceptable and we need to work together to sort it out.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Everybody is out of time except for the Conservatives, who have a full tank, but it is a matter for them. Thank you very much for coming. Can I personally thank you for actually answering the questions? We have got through a great many questions and there was no filibustering. I very much hope that you do come again. It has proved to be a very useful session indeed.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): I would be delighted to come again and if there are individual Assembly Members who want to meet with me to take forward some of those issues, I am very prepared to do that.

On housing and planning, where I have responsibilities beyond my London role, one of the things I want to do is to build the widest possible consensus about what we need to do to get this country and this city building the homes that we need.

Tony Arbour AM (Chairman): Thank you very much for coming.

Gavin Barwell MP (Minister of State for Housing and Planning and Minister for London): A pleasure. Thank you.

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