Live webchat with Grant Shapps, local government and housing minister, Tues 7 Dec, 2.30pm - 3.30pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're very pleased that our webchat guest on Tues 7 Dec is local government and housing minister Grant Shapps. He has recently been in the news over homeowners' rights and the government's social housing policy.

On Mon 6 Dec, he's setting out how the government intends to put more power into the hands of local councillors. Part of this is that the govt wants to encourage women, particularly mothers of school-age children, to consider becoming councillors. Grant would like to know what you think about becoming a local councillor? Are there any obstacles to you doing so? If you're already a councillor, what are your experiences, and what do you think are the opportunities for women in local government?

Grant is the MP for Welwyn Hatfield, he's married with three children - a boy aged nine and six-year-old twins.

Hope you can join him on Tues, 1.30pm-2.30pm. But if you can't and you have a question or comment, please post it here.

Actually, I do have another question about your encouraging people to be local councillors initiative.

In my local area, which is very Conservative, becoming a councillor is not as simple as saying - me please! You have to be a very active member of the local Conservative/Labour/Residents Association party and then once you have put in the requisite years you will be given an unwinnable seat. Then in the elections after that you'll be given the chance to run as a councillor in a seat you can actually win.

Please don't say run as independent as we all know that is rarely successful.

In addition, 10 - 20 hours a week is the estimated time commitment for a local councillor and you currently receive approximately £9,650 as an annual allowance before tax. Assuming it's 20 hours a week, if I were to do that and use childcare to cover even half the hours that it suggests as an average I would have spent over £3500 on nursery fees.

I could go on but surely you can see that this doesn't exactly inspire me to be bashing down the door of my local political party begging them to let me stand?

Hello Mrs Chaps, I think that you've been given a poisoned chalice of a portfolio. Just a few observations on the questions posed.

I've worked in local government before and councillors were overwhelmingly stale, male and pale as they were seemingly the only ones who had the time, money and political support to take on the role.

You almost have to make it a full time job to take on all of the reading, research, committee meetings, visits, parish/town council meetings and local surgeries. As other posters have stated, motherhood is a full time job anyway.

I have seen councillors do well by being portfolio holders on district and county groups, you can make quite a bit in allowances, expenses and pension contributions, but this in effect makes it a real fulltime job. Why would mothers want to take this on when their children are young?

Also, if you are not part of the controlling party, your opportunity for input and really making a difference is limited. The main party will just have everything rubber stamped as a matter of course.

There are also the rules that mean that you cannot be seen to be involved in decision making on areas where you are judged to have a personal and prejudicial interest, meaning that people who are elected on a campaigning ticket - particularly in relation to planning matters - often cannot take part in debates or decisions on matters that they were elected by local people to address.

Aligned to this is that fact that councillors are often in seats for decades. How are new candidates supposed to come forward when incumbents are constantly reselected?

I don't think that there are any easy solutions to encouraging more mothers to become involved in local democracy. There would need to be a complete overhaul of how local government works and what it is responsible for. Can't see that happening any time soon.

Mr Schapps,

Why would anyone want to be a councillor when your Government is determined to push tough decisions onto Councils so that you can turn around and say "it wasn't our decision, talk to your Councillor"?

Pickles talks down Councils all the time, only this weekend he was moaning about how much Chief Execs get paid. Being a councillor or working for a council is a thankless task and is only set to become harder now that your Government is slashing budgets and at the same time expecting councils to do more and more. Do you really think that hard working, talented people want to take the blame for your spending cuts?

Stop press!!!

This webchat has had to be put back an hour - Mr Shapps has Commons business, which is immoveable (and his job!) so we're off to Westminster to start as promptly as we can at 2.30pm.

He has asked us to apologise on his behalf and says he is looking forward to the webchat and thanks to the people who've posted questions and comments so far.

Hope you can manage the new time tomorrow.
Thanks
MNHQ

Lamb to slaughter.

I will enjoy reading this one.

This is going well isn't it?

Mr Shapps,

I am a university student receiving housing benefit. Currently, this is not so much of an issue (ha), as I am a single mother. When my husband lived with me, we could only claim housing benefit during the summer holidays (July & August, despite exams finishing in the middle of June & not returning until the end of Sept), as we were told that our student loans should cover our rent otherwise. As a student parent, a financially allowance is made for some of the additional costs & 85% of the childcare costs are (currently ) paid. This is of course very helpful & I am appreciative that I am able to continue to study despite having a child. However, this left us having to pay for the rent on a 2 bedroom child-suitable home out of thin air. We have substantial credit card debts as a result.

Worse still is that the initial advice that I received from the 'FirstPoint' centre (on at least 3 occasions) is that we would be entitled to 'full' (if you can call it that) housing benefit throughout the year. We took this, after many reassurances, to be the case &, as complete newcomers to the world of benefits (me & my husband are from working families & had no prior knowledge of the workings of the system) we did not realise that we had to inform the government that we'd returned to university in the September. We believed that because it was known that we were at the beginning of our courses, that it would be assumed that we would continue to attend university unless we stated otherwise. We now realise that this is not the case, but were not told anything to the contrary (not at any time in person, or by letter, etc).

We (or should I now say I) am almost £3000 in debt from housing benefit 'overpayments' & lost the initial appeal. I have a tribunal arranged for the 23rd December (& can't help but wonder if that timing is deliberately awkward, seeing as this all started in April, I believe, when they started doing 'random checks') & have no faith in the system at all. I am losing money weekly as it's taken away in order to repay these 'debts', and when I finally graduate & get a job & no longer qualify for housing benefit, I will have to pay it out of my wage.

This system is unfair. I feel as though I am being punished for the incompetence of others (the professionals alleged to be the experts, who are paid to know these things!) because I did not have a working knowledge of the paperwork involved in claiming benefits.

Believe me, my situation is apparently so unusual that even the manager at the FirstPoint centre has given me incorrect information pertaining to the case (about how much of my student income should be considered in the benefit calculation), which has been illustrated by the lovely people at the CAB (& then thrown out of the appeal without any regard for the regulations). The people I have dealt with at FirstPoint have often been rude & patronising too, as though I am an inferior being due to relying partially on benefits at the moment. That alone is a disgrace.

So, after a lengthy rant (sorry - I've condensed it as much as I can), I suppose my question boils down to this:

How can you allow the vulnerable to be treated in such a confusing & disrespectful way? If we can't trust what we are told repeatedly by exactly those who are paid to know what they are telling us, why should we be punished? I am a highly intelligent (normally more modest than this, but I have a point to make!) literature student & I cannot understand some of the reams of nonsense which gets thrown against me in order to make me pay up for a mistake which isn't mine. Are you not ashamed that people, most of whom are more disadvantaged than I am - people who aren't as highly educated, some of whom are illiterate, even, are paying out of their own empty pockets because your system requires them to do so? I sincerely hope that as it seems inevitable that those of us on housing benefit are going to be receiving less for one reason or another very soon, that you spend some of that money on retraining the staff which put it into practice, because frankly they are rude & worse than useless.

Please can Mr Shapps confirm how many people will be forced to move due to the effect of the cap on housing benefit, how many of these are in London, how many children will be affected, and what plans are in place for their relocation (where are they going to go, will there be places at local schools for their children etc).

That post from Grant Shapps at lunchtime today is by some distance one of the must buttock-clenchingly ill-judged spiels I have ever seen on MN. And I have seen a fair few, as politicians have attempted to court us over the years.

Rather than whiffling to us about talent shows and our talents in getting children to school (urg), please understand- I have an MA in Public Policy (far from unusual on MN), a huge concern about homelessness and social housing, and would like to be spoken to like an adult. There are some very sensible questions on here about local politics and housing, so it would be fantastic if you or your aides could try to address them and not warble on about talent competitions. Otherwise this is going to be the most awful webchat ever. Thank you.

Grant Shapps: 'The Government is giving power away ? pushing power from Whitehall to your town hall and from Downing Street to your street.'

No, it isn't. Governments never give power away. This government is preparing the way for the privatisation of all local services, including the NHS, and it is trying to set us against each other by 'elevating' some of us to the ranks of local councillors - who, as it has been pointed out, will have no money and therefore no clout.

'Councillors will have more clout than ever before to get things done.' No they won't, not unless they have links to local companies.

However, you might have a point with this:
'So now becoming a councillor is more important than ever.' Yes, it is more important than ever before that we become politicised, because we need to wise up to the way in which you are fundamentally redesigning society.

'Whether it is that playground at the end of the street that needs new equipment, that bus service that should run or bin collections that get your blood boiling, as a councillor you will have the power to get it sorted'. No. As tax payers, we pay for schools to buy new equipment, the council to sort the buses out and run the bin collections! You have the duty and responsibility to do these things. We don't want private companies making a profit out of our education and health services. That's what we pay our taxes for!

'Or if you think you need more housing, better shops or a new leisure centre, you will help make the decisions. We are putting councillors in charge of what is happening in their communities'. If this was true, you would give us the money to do it with. What you mean here is that you are opening the door to private developers and global supermarket chains, who do have the money.

So my question is this: 'Can you assure us that your government is not trying to prepare us to accept the mass privatisation of the NHS and Higher Education systems and the involvement of for-profit organisations in local services, by getting us to accept your Big Society idea?'

Wow, 2.30? I, and many others, will be on the school run then convieniently. Skillfully juggling our petty lives and managing our football clubs

Have fun.

And please don't say 'What's wrong with privatising everything, and 'profit isn't a dirty word'. Private schools can choose who they admit, so can hospitals; private landlords don't have to let their flats to vulnerable people. The Council has to do all these things.

We need services to be run by the state so that we can be sure they are impartial. And we do pay for them, after all!

Dear Grant

You'll have to forgive me for some pre-amble here - I promise there is a question at the end of it.

I am a councillor, elected to a unitary authority in a city with around 250,000 residents. Having achieved a first-class degree and having worked in the construction industry, I can honestly say that being a locally-elected representative is the hardest, most challenging thing I've ever done.

Why? Because the pay's crap (£11k pa for at least 28 hours a week, which I juggle with a part-time job and caring commitments - meaning I often end up working late into the evening and at weekends on constituents' correspondence etc), the hours are anti-social, and the Kafka-esque workings of the Independent Remuneration Panel locally mean that it's almost impossible to claim for childcare costs incurred by out-of-hours meetings.

My DH is a saint and I could not be a councillor if it wasn't for his support, both financially and at home. It's no coincidence that many of my female colleagues struggle to maintain relationships and plan families - I am truly lucky to have met my husband before I entered local politics.

What could you do to enable more women to become councillors? Well for starters you could set a basic allowance which is comparable to professional remuneration, ensuring that being a councillor isn't just an option for the rich or retired.

Also, you could introduce "democracy leave" to enable all people of voting age in the UK to take one afternoon per month of leave from work to allow residents and councillors to attend daytime meetings, precluding the need for evening meetings which eat into precious family time. Again, it's no coincidence that the vast majority of "community activists" are of an age where their children have left home and so are free in the evening - but this is not representative of huge swathes of the community.

But Grant - these obstacles aside, why would anyone want to be a local councillor under your Government's programme of cuts? policywonk hit the nail on the head above when she said "surely the next four-and-a-half years are going to be absolutely murderous for local councils. Funding cut, powers devolved, revenue-raising powers taken away - responsibility without power is going to be the motto for councils up and down the land".

A colleague of mine also commented earlier today: "Did you agree to become a local councillor because you felt that you had lots of spare time to offer your efforts towards the mitigation of painful expenditure decisions at a local level?"

Your 'Localism' agenda is utterly toothless without ensuring that a) local authorities have real powers to raise revenue, and b) your Government gives LAs sensible financial settlements. Yes you've removed a lot of ring-fences, but that's not worth the shit on my shoes if you're cutting my Council's overall settlement by 30% this year

Anyway - to summarise:

Grant - your Government's policies are confused and conflicted;

MNers - DON'T sign up for being a councillor until Grant and his millionaire mates make sure you'll be paid properly for the pain privilege.

My question:

Mr Shapps, will you end the 'right to buy' and will you empower local authorities to build new social housing without the need for a costly ALMO / LDV, in order to solve this country's housing crisis, reduce local waiting lists, and help those most in need?

Somerset council has made a 100% cut to support for its voluntary-sector support organisations; and councils everywhere are slashing support for the voluntary sector.

This is combined with a slashing of funds for the Charity Commission, and a castration of the Comapact agreement that regulates parnership working between state and third sector. You are not even any longer committed to full cost recovery for voluntary organisations that provide public services. It is at local level council level that third sector organisations will suffer most from these changes. They lack the infrastructure of national charities.

How can you claim that the rolling back of the state at national and local levels is an exercise in building community action when you are acting so decisively to undermine the established third sector?

Do you really think we believe you when you say that the handing over of local public service provision is an opportunity for community rather than business? Even your newspeak references to 'civil society' equivocate between for-profit and not-for-profit organisations, unlike talk of the 'third sector'.

The Chartered Institute of Housing predicts that the private sector will be closed to social tenants by 2020 and housing associations have warned that banks will raise interest rates and refuse fresh borrowing once they realise that income streams ? rents ? are no longer secure.

Is this the sort of ethnic cleansing that Boris was talking about?

LadyBlah, what does that mean??

It means that some important people with experience of the housing sector think that Grant's policies will mean that socially disadvantaged people will be excluded completely from the private sector, and this was described by the Tory Mayor of London as a form of social cleansing - i.e. keep the scum confined to their enclaves only, and segregated from the nice hard working people.

Marking place, though frustrated by time move which means will miss most due to rather pressing and non negotiable school pick up.

Question: Will they let me take the children into the council meetings when I'm elected? They are the souls of discretion & I'm sure most councils are family friendly.

As a single parent with little money & no family near, have no other choice.

Agreeing strongly with Eleison - Barnet Council is looking at a 45% cut to Third Sector organisations over 2 years, so I look forward to answer to her point.

test

Does this gov share nu-labs desire to keep property prices at their current artifically inflated levels? If not what changes in fiscal policy can we look forward to in order to bring about a much needed correction?

Agree with others re your posts and desire to discuss councils
you're housing minister we want to discuss housing.

Grant wrote "That's why this week I will be launching a new type of talent show. It's called 'Your Community Needs You!'"

I am really looking forward to hearing about the glorious details of this project......who will be on the judging panel?.........will it be rigged like the X Factor?...........what is the prize for the winner? (we know how much your Dave likes winners)

My only thought for now is that there has clearly not been much thinking behind the name: "Fall Guy Idol"?
"Strictly Big Society" ?
"Trading Mums" (for fuck all)"
"Council SOS"
"Saved by the Mums" (for fuck all)
"Community Knocks"
"Britain's Next Top Mum"
"Hell's Council"

Just a few suggestions that might more capture the theme

Is he here already?

nope, just testing log-in here at MNHQ

OK

so what biscuits are on the table?