Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Rob Bailey, joined by Jonathon Hawkes, leader of Dartford Labour and Ashford Conservative Paul Bartlett.
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00:24 Welcome to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. I'm Rob Bailey. And this week, Labour's
00:29 conference had more glitter than dancing on ice. Leader Sakir Starmer stayed ice cool
00:35 after a protester tried to disrupt his speech. But will his plans for 1.5 million new homes
00:41 across the UK get a frosty reception here in Kent? Sakir says he won't let local objections
00:47 stand in the way of house building. Well, joining me tonight is Jonathan Hawkes, leader
00:52 of Dartford Labour, and Ashford Conservative Paul Bartlett. Welcome, both of you. Paul,
00:58 1.5 million homes over the next five years. What would that look like in Ashford, do you
01:02 think? Well, I mean, it would look extraordinary. And I think Sakir is getting well ahead of
01:08 himself to try and suggest that he can just bypass what local people want. I mean, what's
01:15 key about conservative development policies is actually we both want to deliver roughly
01:21 the same number of houses. But our approach is to engage with communities in order to
01:28 ensure that any local plans take fully into account what local people want and see as
01:34 part of the development. We don't want this Stalinist type of build, build, build from
01:41 Sakir. You said it would be extraordinary. The reality is 1.5 million homes is pretty
01:49 much the same as the Conservative pledge for 300,000 a year for the next five years. It
01:53 all adds up the same way. Is it just a repackaged pledge that the Conservatives have already
01:57 made? No, it isn't. And the Conservatives didn't build them. That's the key thing, Rob.
02:02 We need to build more houses and we need to build them faster. And that's what a Labour
02:06 government is going to do. The dream of home ownership for young people in Kent is exactly
02:14 that, a dream. The Conservatives have failed a generation of people who aren't able to
02:19 get on the housing ladder. And it shouldn't be out of reach for working people to own
02:24 their own home. And that's why Labour is going to commit to these targets. It is going to
02:28 get Britain building again. It is going to build these houses. That would mean in Kent
02:33 something like at the moment that the figure is around 12,000 a year to get to that national
02:38 figure 12,000 homes a year. And we're well short of that in Kent at the moment. You're
02:42 saying in Dartford you would welcome around 800 homes a year that would have to be built
02:47 in Dartford Borough to help meet that target? Well, we already do deliver a lot of homes
02:51 in Dartford. I think one of the things that we've seen around the Conservatives in Dartford
02:55 is they've created a rather two-tier borough in Dartford where all of the housing delivery
03:00 is in one particular area of the borough and lots of the other areas of the borough are
03:04 untouched. Now, if we're going to deliver the houses that we need for the future, we
03:09 need to look at where we can build them and make sure we can build them fast, quickly
03:14 and most importantly delivering affordable housing so that people can get on the housing
03:20 ladder. Paul, the Conservative government started
03:24 out with a target of 300,000, just over 300,000 a year. That was their election pledge in
03:30 2019. It's now an advisory target. Do you think that the Conservative Party needs to
03:36 get tough on this again in the way that Labour are and say these houses need to be built?
03:40 Well, I think the key point about the Conservative policy is bringing the communities with us
03:48 in our planning policy proposals. We're not interested in the new word, YIMBIs, yes in
03:56 my backyard, which is what we hear from Labour, build, build, build. What we're interested
04:02 in is working with the communities and developing them, the new houses, where people want. This
04:08 return to 1940s Clement Atlas style, build, build, build, is not what people in the UK
04:15 want. But Paul, you haven't built them. This is
04:18 the point. The Conservatives have failed to build them. They've failed to meet their housing
04:22 targets and as a result, a generation of people in Kent have been failed and are unable to
04:27 get on the housing ladder and make that dream of home ownership their own. Why should they
04:33 lose out because the Conservatives have failed to deliver the houses they promised?
04:37 Well, it's quite simple because we don't want to see the garden of England concreted over
04:42 like some politicians in the Labour Party do. I mean, that's an interesting point about
04:48 the democratic element of this, isn't it? Just this week in Faversham, we've seen a
04:52 developer cutting back 20% of homes on a development after residents said it was too intensive.
04:58 In Wingham, we've got residents opposing this week plans for 70 homes in what they describe
05:02 will just turn their roads into a car park. In East Morling, a developer has given up
05:06 on plans for 900 homes because of the strength of local opposition. Kirst Armour is really
05:12 going to say to people, you cannot stand up for your community anymore.
05:15 No, that isn't what is being said. And local engagement is important. And it's really important
05:21 that every single council has a local plan. And every single council that has a local
05:25 plan enables residents to feed into that local plan. But ultimately, we need to build more
05:32 houses. We can't get away from this fact that ultimately, we are not building enough houses.
05:37 And as a consequence, a generation of young people are being failed and are unable to
05:43 realise the dream of home ownership. That's what we've got to fix. You know, it's not
05:47 easy, but we are determined to do it. And as long as we have got robust local plans
05:52 and those local plans have been fed into by local people, we think that we can do and
05:56 we will do. Paul, it's quite interesting. When you said
05:59 people don't want that, obviously, this is where one of the big political divisions over
06:02 the next year will be. It's quite interesting at the Liberal Democrat conference, which
06:07 it wasn't quite as widely reported as the other two. They put forward an idea around
06:12 advisory targets, softening the targets. And the people who put the amendment forward for
06:16 that were the young Liberals, their caucus of younger voters who said, no, we want houses
06:21 and in fact, we want 380,000 a year. Do you think the Conservatives might be on the wrong
06:25 side of the debate? Well, it's very interesting because if you
06:28 listen from the debate that came out of the Liberal Democrat conference about advisory
06:34 targets, about it working with the community, yet again, the Conservatives are closer to
06:41 the Liberals than the Liberals are closer to Labour. I wouldn't be at all surprised
06:46 if after the election, we don't see coalition version two and that would maybe not be such
06:52 a bad outcome because the coalition government, it did a lot of good work to get us out of
06:57 the mess that Labour got us into during the financial crisis. And the other point is that
07:02 Sakhir hasn't really grasped the nettle about why we need one and a half million houses
07:09 under his proposed leadership. The issue is that we have uncontrolled migration into the
07:17 UK of in excess of 600,000, 700,000 a year. These are the issues that a grown up politician
07:25 needs to address, something that the Prime Minister is actively doing. And we heard not
07:30 a word about how Sakhir is going to deal with uncontrolled migration.
07:36 That's just deflection, Paul. It's categorically not true. The reason why we need to build
07:41 more houses is that for the last 13 years, the Conservatives have been failing to build
07:45 them. They've been failing a generation of young people and it's going to be up to Labour
07:50 to repair that mess and deliver the homes that we need so that working people can realise
07:55 the dream of home ownership. That should not just be something that only wealthy people
08:00 can enjoy. Everybody should enjoy it and Labour will make sure that everybody can enjoy it.
08:05 There's a message here, make sure you buy some shares in some concrete companies because
08:09 that's where the Labour Party is going to create wealth.
08:14 It leads us quite nicely onto the wider picture of what's happened over the last couple of
08:17 weeks and the divisions that we saw between the two parties. You mentioned there about
08:21 immigration and obviously it was such a strong feature of the Conservative conference, particularly
08:25 Suella Braverman's speech. There are people saying that Keir Starmer rather ducked that
08:30 issue. Jonathan, do you think that that's fair?
08:32 No, no I don't. If you listen to Yvette Cooper's speech, Shadow Home Secretary, she mentioned
08:38 it quite a lot. I think we're quite happy to talk about the complete mess that the Conservative
08:44 government have made of our immigration and asylum system. We've got huge backlogs, we've
08:48 got an increased number of small boats crossings. The Conservatives are not able to tackle that.
08:54 We've got spending millions of pounds putting people up in hotels. This is all on the Conservatives'
08:59 watch. Labour will fix our broken immigration and asylum system which has been broken so
09:06 badly by the Conservative government. Paul, do you want to come in on that?
09:10 Yes, well absolutely. I mean the reason why it's taken so long to get control of our immigration
09:14 policy is the difficulty that we've had in getting out of the EU constraints that we've
09:19 had. And we've seen time and time again Sir Keir Starmer's Labour group blocking changes
09:28 and blocks to EU laws. For example, just a couple of weeks ago, the Labour Party blocked
09:36 the government proposals to clear up the EU mess related to the Stob Marsh contamination.
09:44 So yet again, we find that the Labour Party is stopping the Conservatives from being able
09:50 to deliver properly on Brexit, which is what people wanted to. And if we're given another
09:56 five years in power, we will finally throw off the shackles of the EU because that's
10:04 what's causing the uncontrolled immigration. And we've heard nothing about that from the
10:09 Labour Party during their conference. Paul, you've had 13 years, 13 years in power
10:16 and you have completely broken the asylum and immigration system in this country. And
10:20 now you're wanting another five years to do even more damage to it. I think that's just
10:25 a laughable proposition. We need to get our asylum and immigration system back under control,
10:31 back working again, processing applications, returning people where they don't get a valid
10:35 claim, taking people out of hotels and make sure we're assessing applications properly
10:40 and stopping the small boat crossings. It is only the Labour Party that has a plan to
10:45 do that. And we cannot, this country cannot risk another five years of Conservative incompetence
10:51 after the last 13 where you have completely broken the system. We spent so much of that
10:56 first 13 years clearing up the mess that the Labour government created in the global financial
11:05 crisis. They took our GDP, the percentage of borrowing from GDP, from 30%, which they
11:14 inherited after the John Major government, to over 70% during the bailout of the banks.
11:23 It was just a ludicrous waste of money. And we've spent a number of years just trying
11:29 to clear up the mess that they've created. And then, of course, we had Covid and then
11:33 we had the Ukrainian invasion by Russia. I'll need to stop it there. I'm sorry, we've got
11:40 another break coming up. But we've after a short break, when we come back, which council
11:44 is cancelling Christmas and which one has saved it by finding a temporary home for its
11:48 star studded Panto. Stay with us.
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15:10 Welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. Next tonight, a quiz question. Which
15:16 Kent council makes the most money from parking? You got a guess? According to the AA, it's
15:22 Canterbury with a profit last year of almost £6 million. Medway makes more than £4 million,
15:28 with almost all Kent councils netting seven figure sums. It comes as Tunbridge and Morling
15:33 is considering making charges up to 8pm in most of its car parks, an extension of two hours.
15:40 Here's the council's leader, Conservative Matt Borton.
15:44 Car parks are very, very expensive to maintain. We have significant costs around business rates
15:50 and we've got significant costs for CCTV provision in car parks in the borough and that's the same
15:57 everywhere you go. So we're looking at whether to extend hours in car parks. At the moment,
16:06 they finish at six o'clock, but we're consulting on whether that should extend to eight o'clock.
16:10 That would free up spaces in the evenings, which is a particular time in which high streets are
16:16 being used. Well, still here with me is Conservative Paul Bartlett from Ashford Council, which made £121,000
16:23 in car parking profits last year, and Labour's Jonathan Hawkes from Dartford, where the parking
16:28 profit was £69,000. Welcome back. According to the AA, I should say, always going to be one of
16:34 those issues that gets people really kind of concerned about where their money's going,
16:38 isn't it? I mean, first of all, Jonathan, there's quite a big disparity there. £6 million in
16:44 Canterbury, £69,000 in Dartford. Why do you think that might be? Well, it will vary on the number of
16:49 car parks that the council operates, the charges that they levy. There'll be a huge kind of
16:55 disparity in those things. I think more generally, I think we need to get back to the fact that
17:01 councils charge for car parking to pay for parking services. So obviously to maintain car parks is
17:08 expensive, to fund parking enforcement is expensive, and residents tell us all the time,
17:14 you know, how fed up they are of seeing kind of cars parked on yellow lines or on pavements or
17:19 roads and antisocially. That all costs money. And the context of that, of course, for councils across
17:24 Kent is how they've had their funding cut by the government year on year since 2010.
17:30 So I don't think it's right to sort of talk about kind of vast profits. This is important for
17:37 council funding to be able to provide the services that residents rely on. Paul, this isn't always
17:43 going to be, as I say, a bit of a hot topic, isn't it? I know Ashford did put its parking fees up for
17:47 the first time in a while this year, I think from the beginning of this month. There's always a
17:52 danger, isn't there, that higher parking fees are just another reason for people to not go to high
17:55 streets? Yes, I mean, our policy in Ashford has been that we only increase the car parking charges
18:01 every three years. And there's a rather boring reason for that is because it actually costs quite
18:06 a lot to change all the signage on the car parks. And so we only like to incur those costs every
18:12 three years. But our car parking policy is all directed about trying to bring people into the
18:20 town centre. We've got two jobs here. We have to make the town centre safe. And we've invested
18:26 considerable sums in delivering 11 new CCTV cameras in Ashford. And it's also about providing
18:35 somewhere with easy, readily accessible car parking to support services and businesses in the
18:44 town. So in Ashford, we have free parking after three, free after three. And that's to try and
18:52 encourage people to use the cinema in the town centre, to use the eating places in the evening.
19:00 So we see our job is bringing footfall into the town centre. And we're doing that pretty
19:06 successfully, I think. There's some kind of alchemy, I think, going on at Dartford,
19:10 because Dartford has held its council tax for quite a few years now at the same rate,
19:15 doesn't put it up every year. And according to this, it has the lowest revenue in Kent
19:20 from car parking charges. And you would expect low council tax must mean the money's coming in
19:24 somewhere else. Does Dartford need to put them up, do you think? No, no, I don't think so. We
19:28 don't actually have that many car parks in the town centre, which might be part of the explanation.
19:33 I think most councils take the same basic approach, actually. I don't think there is a
19:40 division here along political lines. It will be different because of how, what the size of the
19:45 estate. But all councils try and attract people into their town centres. They try and keep car
19:50 parking fees as low as possible. Everybody wants to do that. But services, maintaining car parks,
19:56 CCTV, enforcement, cost money, council funding is being cut. So unfortunately,
20:01 charges do have to be levied. Council cuts moves us on quite nicely to our last topic tonight,
20:06 because there will be no Christmas light displays in Medway this year. Medway Council leader Vince
20:11 Maple made the gloomy decision as he attempts to tackle a £17 million funding gap. And he's not
20:17 alone. Gravesham Council cancelled its firework display this year after failing to find sponsorship.
20:22 We asked people in Medway whether they would miss the festive lights.
20:26 Maybe they could have scowled back rather than just cutting it completely. When people are
20:31 struggling, like things going out and watching the Christmas lights being turned on, just cheers
20:35 people up. I think it's just going to be a gloomy Christmas without the lights. It's just going to
20:39 dampen people's spirits. I'd rather have them cut back on the lights than maybe cut back on the
20:44 schools and dinners for the kids. Kids love it as well. So you go along the high street, wherever
20:51 you live, and you see Christmas lights, the kids are loving it. They'll come here and there's no
20:54 lights. Mixed opinions there. But everyone will sort of feel that Christmas is a time when
21:01 the high street gets a bit of a lick of paint, when people have more of a motivation to get
21:05 there. It's an enormously disappointing decision for a lot of people that they won't have the
21:09 lights available, isn't it, Jonathan? Well, the leader of Medway Council, Vince Maple, has been
21:13 really open and honest about the scale of the financial challenge that Labour has inherited
21:18 from the Conservatives in Medway. And we've also been really clear that we're going to take and
21:23 not duck difficult decisions in office because we're responsible with taxpayers' money. There's
21:29 a wider context here, Rob, I think. Medway, in common with lots of councils, has suffered a 91%
21:34 cut in its government funding since 2010. Now, no organisation can sustain that sort of drop in
21:41 funding without difficult decisions being made. And unfortunately, this is one of those.
21:47 There'll be some people in Medway looking at those parking fees. I know you've already
21:51 explained where that comes from. £4 million of revenue from parking, which is essentially a tax
21:55 on using the town centre in many ways. Couldn't a little bit of that money be put aside, even if
21:59 it's not the full £75,000, a little bit of money just for a few lights? Well, I'm not an expert on
22:05 Medway's finances, but what I would imagine is that all of that money is allocated in budget lines.
22:11 So, it isn't really just as simple as just taking a chunk of money because that would have a
22:16 detriment on the parking service. So, you have to use the budget lines, which you've already
22:21 established. But Medway's not alone here. Councils across Kent are facing this challenge. There's an
22:25 extremely concerning financial situation developing now at Kent County Council. And we really do need
22:32 to understand that we need to see proper funding given back to local government, which we haven't
22:39 seen for the last 13 years, as unfortunately, more councils are going to be forced into making
22:43 these really difficult decisions. Nobody gets into politics to take decisions like this. Nobody wants
22:50 to. But when you're faced with the scale of financial challenge that they have in Medway,
22:55 that they've inherited from the Conservatives, then we do have to take difficult decisions in
22:59 office and we're not frightened to do so. Paul, with difficult decisions in Ashford,
23:03 obviously, a slightly different approach there. It's selling off the headquarters to save money.
23:06 Is that what saved Christmas in Ashford, do you think? Well, not quite, because we believe,
23:12 as I've just said, about bringing people into the town centre. And we think what we call the
23:17 Carnival of the Baubles is a really successful way of doing that. 25th of November, as soon as it
23:23 gets dark, be in Ashford, because it's a terrific, terrific display. And it really is one of the best
23:30 days of the year to be into the town centre. And it gives people the opportunity to spend their
23:35 hard earned where it needs to be spent in the town centre. And just... Some marks for getting the
23:40 sales pitch in there. Well, absolutely. I mean, I'm here to push Ashford a bit. But can I also
23:45 speak about the council financing? Because I think that there's an awful lot that has been said about
23:50 the way in which council finances have been overhauled during the last 13 years. Yes, we...
23:59 councils had to pay part of the price of the cost of the banking bailout by Gordon Brown.
24:07 We've already spoken about that. But what we've also... Well, what we've not spoken about is the
24:12 opportunities that central government, successive central governments, have given to councils in
24:19 order to bolster their financing. We've got the new business rate uplift, which is paid to the
24:25 councils. We've got the new homes bonus, which is paid to the councils. And in 2016, Teresa
24:33 introduced the new homes loans in order to bolster council fundings. And for years and years,
24:41 ever since Eric Pickles was in charge of the local government department, councils have been allowed
24:48 to put up their council tax above inflationary. Only with a referendum. But I mean, there'll be
24:54 conservative councils even who are saying that none of that's enough. And you've got Kent County
24:58 Council selling off Sessions House, you've got Ashford Council selling off its headquarters
25:02 because there just isn't enough money. Well, it's about... And here I'm talking from the government
25:08 perspective. What the government sees is local authorities sitting on assets worth billions
25:15 and not properly accessing them. So absolutely well maintained and well run councils like KCC,
25:23 like Ashford Borough Council, will be looking at trying to access some of the assets which
25:28 aren't working for them. And that's all about the new council rules which were brought in.
25:34 Actually, a lot of these were brought in by the coalition. We're talking about council assets.
25:39 We've only got a very small amount of time left. But the big one in Dartford, of course,
25:43 very positive news today, the Orchard Theatre has been closed because of rack concrete. But now
25:47 there's going to be a temporary solution. How important is that for Dartford? Very important.
25:52 The theatre is a huge part of our community. It has a big positive impact on our local economy.
25:58 I was really concerned that the Conservative Council were considering closing the theatre
26:01 for good. And I'm really glad that we've got to a position now where that's not going to happen.
26:06 We've got a temporary structure that's going to be in place. We still do need to find out
26:10 exactly how this happened in the first place. And if any of this costs, and there's huge costs
26:16 involved to Dartford taxpayers of rescuing this situation, whether any of that could be avoided.
26:20 But the good news is we've got a theatre, hopefully, in place for Christmas and the
26:26 Panto and that's going to have a huge positive impact on us. Panto is back on. Absolutely. Well,
26:30 that's all from us here at the Kent Politics Show. Thanks to our guests tonight for coming
26:34 into the studio. We'll be back next week. There's more politics news, opinion and analysis in the
26:40 Politics tab at Kent Online. And stay with us because Kent Tonight is coming up next with
26:45 all the latest news from around the county. Have a great evening. Good night.
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