Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
It is an honour to open today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, and it is the honour of my life to address the House for the first time as the Deputy Prime Minister.
We have been given a mandate by the British people to turn the page on 14 years of chaos and start the new chapter that they deserve. That began with this week’s King’s Speech, but it is not the words that we offer; it is the action. I know at first hand how Government can change lives for the better. I say that not as a politician, but as someone whose life was changed for the better by the last Labour Government, and I am determined to do the same for others. That is why we have set out a bold vision to smash the class ceiling, to get Britain building, and to improve the quality and standard of life for everyone everywhere across our country.
Let me give a huge welcome to all the new Members on the Government Benches, who are crucial in delivering that programme of national renewal. I also extend a welcome to new Opposition Members. We will disagree on much, I am sure, but we all share the honour and privilege of representing those who sent us here, so I wish the very best to all hon. Members making their maiden speech today.
Just over nine years ago, when I made my maiden speech on behalf of the people of Ashton-under-Lyne, I pledged that I would always tell it as it is, and I think that is one promise I have kept. Now I intend to fulfil another, because we promise the people of this country that we will serve their interests and not ours. That starts with us having the honesty to say that we will not be able to put right the mess of the past 14 years immediately. But after just two weeks, we have already made a difference by creating a national wealth fund to grow our economy; scrapping the failed Rwanda plan; lifting the near-decade-long ban on onshore wind; starting work on the 40,000 extra NHS appointments that people need each week, and on getting the 700,000 urgent dental appointments up and running; and resuming and expanding teacher recruitment. In my Department, newly renamed the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, we will replace slogans with substance.
We are getting back to the real work of governing in the national interest. We have already taken early steps to unblock our planning system, creating a new taskforce to accelerate progress on stalled housing sites in our country, beginning with four that alone could deliver more than 14,000 of the homes that Britain so desperately needs. The housing crisis is holding Britain back. Too many families face soaring mortgage payments, or sky-high rents for damp, unsafe homes, and there are leaseholders who are trapped, facing eye-watering charges with no way out. All this has been fuelled by the chronic housing shortage, after the last Government failed to meet their housing targets every single year. Housing completions are now set to hit their lowest level since world war two.
We know we have a mountain to climb. That is why we are already taking the first steps, starting with an overhaul of our planning system—a reform that will help us build the homes we need and speed up provision of the infrastructure to support them. We are committed not just to an ambitious target for overall housing building, but to building the biggest wave of social and affordable housing for a generation. That is a promise that we will bring back with meaningful housing targets.
It is right that local people have a say on what kind of houses are built and where, because our aim is not to build big, but to build well. We will work with local government to plan new housing in the best possible places, with the infrastructure, public services and green spaces they need. Social housing must be there when people need it, and affordable housing to own should be there when they want it.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister on her new role. My local councils in South Staffordshire and Dudley have worked hard to prepare local plans that provide the housing they have assessed that the local community needs, while also protecting key green belt. Will the right hon. Lady really tear up plans that have been adopted, or that are in the formal process of being adopted, if her bureaucrats feel that their assessment is better than the local council’s?
Angela Rayner
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments, and I congratulate the local authorities that have those local plans. If those plans are adopted, that is exactly what we want to see; we want to see more local plans, and more engagement with local leaders, so that we can build the houses that people want in their areas, working together with them. The hon. Gentleman talked about the green belt, but we have been very clear on the grey belt as well. We will not get the housing we need just from brownfield sites, although brownfield will be first. We will work with local leaders, because the mandate the British people gave us at this election was to get the housing that Britain needs. I am afraid that the last Tory Government did not take this issue on but failed people, and we have a chronic housing shortage. Everyone should have a place to call home, and we will legislate to make that happen.
Our renters’ rights Bill will give protection and security to tenants, as well as responsible landlords, levelling the playing field. We will plug the gaps left by the last Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rents and strengthening leaseholders’ rights. Our planning and infrastructure Bill will provide the extra homes we need, unblock stalled development sites and unveil the next generation of new towns.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)
Order. We have a lot of speakers to get through, including some maiden speakers, so I urge Front Benchers to make shorter speeches and take fewer interventions. Otherwise, we are not going to get through these maiden speakers.
Angela Rayner
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will take your advice, and I apologise to Members for the fact that I will not take more interventions.
We have to grapple with these issues and work with those in these areas. Obviously, flooding has been a major issue, and the Government will look at it. It is devastating to people when their homes are flooded, and we have to look at these things in the round when looking at planning.
We will unveil the next generation of new towns, and we will learn the lessons of the past to create safe and beautiful homes and the sustainable green communities of the future. This Government are fully committed to the 13 targets set under the Environment Act 2021, and we will work closely with my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary to ensure that we protect the environment and nature. We will work with local leaders to ensure that these towns meet our gold standard of having 40% genuinely affordable housing, with homes for social rent a priority. In some places, we will extend urban areas and regenerate them so that everyone benefits from better public transport and extra public services. We are building not just homes but communities.
Our first port of call will be brownfield land. Previously used land will be developed first wherever possible and those sites will be fast-tracked, but brownfield development alone will not meet the country’s increasing urgent need. The green belt was designed for England in the middle of the 20th century. It is right to keep that principle but make it relevant for today. That is why we will release lower-quality grey-belt sites, disused car parks and garages, and ugly wasteland to meet the needs of 2024. Our golden rules will require developers to enhance local nature and public access to green spaces and provide the local services for communities’ everyday needs, such as schools and GP surgeries.
We will also reverse the damaging changes that the previous Government made last December. While they backtracked in the face of vested interests and scrapped mandatory housing targets, Labour will govern in the national interest and take the tough choices to get Britain building. We will do so under an updated national planning policy framework, which we will have by the end of this month, because the current system just is not working, either for housing at a local level or for projects at a national level. These are projects such as data centres, labs and research sites, which should unleash a modern economy, not to mention large-scale projects that help improve the environment.
Onshore wind is the cheapest form of electricity going, but planning policy has effectively banned it for nearly a decade. We are starting it up again, and we will go further. As part of our plan for cheaper household bills and achieving net zero, we are taking the brakes off the planning system. In the first three months of this year, just a fifth of major applications were determined within the 13-week period. As for nationally significant infrastructure, the average time for consent is now more than four years, compared to two and a half years as recently as 2021.
Our Bill will speed up and streamline the process from start to finish. It will modernise planning committees and increase the capacity of our local planning authorities. By reforming compulsory purchase, it will support land assembly for development in the public interest. We will unblock new grid connections, roads, railways and reservoirs—game-changing reforms for national renewal.
The leaders of our communities are best placed to take forward that mission, and I was delighted to invite our mayors to Downing Street with the Prime Minister, days into a Labour Government. They represent our biggest cities and our most beautiful countryside, and I know only too well the diverse challenges that our people need to overcome. There are now so many Labour mayors that I have lost count of how many we have. I also noted the positive words from Ben Houchen about the constructive engagement that local leaders have already experienced under this new Government. Along with their local citizens, we will give them a bigger say on how to transform their neighbourhoods and high streets. We will hand them the powers to transform their regions, so that they become the best places for people to live, work and enjoy.
We are under no illusion about the hard yards needed to repair the economic and social damage that the last Government left behind. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has said, we have the worst inheritance since the second world war. Back then, it was Labour that rebuilt Britain from the rubble of war, creating the NHS, the welfare state and council homes for our returning heroes. It will be a Labour Government who now rebuild Britain once again.
Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
It is a delight to be back at the Dispatch Box, and I have been looking forward to speaking opposite the right hon. Lady for a very long time. She and I have never really met, and certainly never spoken to each other, despite being in this House together for seven years. We have some things in common, although not much. We were both born in 1980, although I am older and wiser than she is. People often think we are both much younger than we really are, because we have got such great skin and good hair, and we are both known as being quite feisty. I am really pleased to be able to congratulate her on her elevation to Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister. This is a phenomenal achievement.
She will be a great inspiration to young people, particularly young women, in many communities across the country. That is a wonderful thing. That is the sort of Britain we are: where people from all walks of life can grow up and reach the top. It is an extraordinary story, dare I say it, of Conservative success. Because unlike me, the right hon. Lady grew up under a Conservative Government, with a welfare state that provided a safety net, a strong economy and opportunity. I mostly grew up in Nigeria, under a socialist military Government, who used a lot of the rhetoric that I heard her promote when she was sitting on the Opposition Benches. She may not credit the Conservatives for what she has achieved, but we will take some of the credit anyway.
I would like to extend a very warm welcome to the right hon. Lady on her first outing as a Minister in the Chamber, because it will only be downhill from here. The thing is, I have been a Secretary of State, and after five years as a Minister one learns a thing or two about government that cannot be learned in Opposition. I have been there and done it, and I can tell the right hon. Lady that she has been stitched up. It is quite clear that the Bills and policies from the King’s Speech that she just referenced were written not by her, but by the Chancellor and her advisers. We all know that because we watched the Chancellor announce them in far more detail in her speech last week.
All the stuff that the Secretary of State worked on in Opposition, such as her new deal for workers, has been taken off her and given to the Business Secretary. I am sorry to tell the right hon. Lady that her colleagues—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and their many advisers—have written a manifesto and made promises that are not deliverable, and they have hung them around her neck and said, “Ange, you go out there and you sell it.” I am sad to see many of her shadow team not sitting beside her as Ministers. They worked for free, grinding in opposition for years, only to watch the children of the chosen ones get the ministerial cars and salaries before their maiden speeches were written. Wow. Sue Gray was a lot nicer to me when she worked in my Department.
I think we know who is in charge, and it is not the right hon. Lady. She has been stitched up—her colleagues have made her the fall guy. The Government have promised 1.5 million houses by the end of this Parliament—over 800 houses per day—and we are already two weeks in. As she goes on, day after day, she will realise that a backlog is building, and there is no way out. I want her to know that I am here for her. I will be here to hold her hand and walk her through what is likely to be a very difficult time. I may even give her some tips because, having worked in that Department, I know what needs to be done. I know what we should have done but did not do, and I know that the Labour Government will make the same mistakes.
It is not that 1.5 million homes by the end of this Parliament is unachievable, but it will require the sort of systemic change that Labour Members are not ready for. I know that because of how they voted in the last Parliament and how they campaigned in their own constituencies. I will not read out the long list of all the Cabinet members who have been opposing planning in their backyard, including the Housing Minister. Many of them thought that they would get into government and concrete over lots of Tory constituencies. Three weeks ago, just 15% of the green belt was in Labour constituencies. Now it is 50%. They are not Tory constituencies now—they are Labour. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Yes, they are Labour. I say to Labour Members, “They are now your voters and your electorate, and you’re going to have to tell them that you’re going to do something that many of you promised locally that you would never do, not that long ago.”
However, mostly it will not be the problem of the Cabinet, who will look after themselves. It will be the Back Benchers—all those bright, shiny faces I see sitting behind the right hon. Lady, who are really excited to be here. They have not started getting those angry emails that we have been replying to for 14 years. Many of those voters, on whom their narrow, slim majorities now rely, will be writing to them.
In the spirit of sisterly support, I will let the right hon. Lady know what will happen over the next few weeks and months. Labour Members are looking so nervous right now. The right hon. Lady will have a consultation period, which will take this long. Then, she will have to respond to that consultation, which will take that long. Assuming that nothing goes wrong with either of those processes, we reach December or January. Six months will have passed—10% of the Parliament—and the Government will not have built any extra homes. At this point, she will be running 500 homes behind the target every single day and they would not have started building properly. [Interruption.] The Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), is chuntering from a sedentary position, “You wait and see.” We have seen. We have been there. We know; you don’t.
And as it becomes clear to their voters what is happening in their new Labour constituencies—for which, congratulations—in the green belt, those MPs are going to receive a lot more emails. I mean, a lot more. They are going to want a lot of public meetings, because they will know that the decisions she announced are now being taken out of local hands and made by central Government. And the only way that they can register their concern is by appealing to their local MPs, who will all be appealing to her.
Well, this is what being in power is. Government is about making difficult decisions. Opposition is easy—we have been watching Labour do it for 14 years, and it has spent all that time telling the people of this country that they will do better. So here is the record that they are going to have to beat: we built 1 million new homes in the course of the last Parliament, while safeguarding the green belt; and 2.5 million since 2010, despite covid. We delivered nearly 700,000 new affordable homes and over 172,000 of those were for social rent. We put in place the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme. Does the right hon. Lady even know yet if the Chancellor will give her up to £11.5 billion? She is going to need a lot more than that if she is going to beat our record.
And let us not forget what Labour did just last year. We had a majority in this House, but not in the other place, where they whipped Labour Lords to vote against an amendment on nutrient neutrality, using new Brexit powers to unlock 160,000 homes. Many new Members did not see that happening. They are going to find it shocking. We legislated for that and they blocked it—destructive opposition. Are they going to reverse that decision? I have a feeling they will not. And that is why I am worried about the right hon. Lady. Is she going to be able to face down her Back Benchers? Or will Labour carry on not doing the things that have to be done in order to build homes?
Let us look at Labour’s record. The right hon. Lady talked about what happened after the last world war. In the year to June 2009, when everybody here was alive and they were last in government, they only built 75,000 new homes—the lowest level of housebuilding since the 1920s. And what are they doing where they currently are in government? In London, Sadiq Khan has failed to hit his own targets, beginning just 21,000 new homes in 2022, despite us giving him pots and pots of money. We were forced to intervene on his housebuilding failures. Why has he not built on all those car parks that she was talking about in her speech? In Wales, the Labour Administration promised to deliver 20,000 new homes for social rent by 2026. They have barely delivered a quarter. The right hon. Lady may pretend that building homes is easy, but Labour know it is not easy because they failed in London and they failed in Wales, and they are already making new mistakes.
We all know that immigration increases housing demand. Just this week, we heard that they are going to be fast-tracking 90,000 illegal immigrants who already landed here. If they are permitted to stay, they will require permanent housing. We put the Rwanda scheme in place to limit illegal immigration. They have scrapped it. With no plans whatsoever to tackle the problem, has she got 90,000 homes ready for the people the Home Secretary is going to be fast-tracking through? If not, she is already 90,000 homes down on the target the Prime Minister has set for her.
So that is why I am feeling very generous towards the right hon. Lady, because she has been stitched up. She is going to need some friends, and I want her to know that we are all here for her. [Laughter.] Some people think opposition is about throwing mud across the Chamber or calling your opponents scum, but often it is about saying, “I told you so.” I want to reassure the right hon. Lady that I will be here to say, “I told you so” when these targets are missed.
We, of course, will be a constructive Opposition. We want to see homes built in the right places with the right infrastructure. We are here to help. I doubt the same can be said of the biggest local nimbys in the country, the Liberal Democrats. There are many more of them now—you wouldn’t know it, but there are—usually elected on promises not to build anything anywhere in their communities. In the last Parliament, I watched them oppose planning reforms on permitted development; reforms that would have allowed us to build on land that was already in use. It will be very interesting to see how they square their nimby tendencies with their manifesto promises—but then again, saying one thing and doing another has never bothered the Liberal Democrats. The right hon. Lady will not get any help from them, but we are here for her.
I have heard some of Labour’s plans. Introducing mandatory targets while introducing new regulatory costs will not work. Without taxpayer funding, Labour’s affordable housing targets are unviable. Where is that money going to come from? The mandate that Labour wants to enforce implies a consequence for missing the target. What will that consequence be for local councils? Is Labour going to scrap the neighbourhood plans that communities have put together to deliver more homes? What will those councils say when they are forced to do things that they promised they would not do just eight weeks ago?
We have heard from Labour Members that they will introduce mechanisms for overriding local decision making to identify the land for development. That is fine, but identifying land does not mean that homes or infrastructure will be built. I look forward to the Second Reading of the right hon. Lady’s Bill, when she will have to explain the plans that the Chancellor and her spads have written up for her, and she can tell us in great technical detail how they will be delivered—although I suspect that she will leave the tricky stuff to her junior Ministers. We Conservatives may not be as many as we used to be, but we still know all the stuff that we learned over 14 years as we delivered 2.5 million homes. We know where the difficulties are, and we know the technicalities; the right hon. Lady is just learning. We will be ready and waiting to show that she and her party have made promises that they cannot keep, and in many cases have no idea what they are doing.
The Labour Government have a tough act to follow—[Laughter.] They do! However, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I am pleased to see that they have been copying and pasting many of the policies that we had in government. We introduced metro mayors with substantial powers; now they are announcing that they are going to do more. We put billions of levelling-up funding into communities, backing metro mayors such as Ben Houchen; let us see whether Labour will follow that for all its new mayors. In the last local government finance settlement we made £64.7 billion pounds available to local authorities, a 7.5% increase in cash terms. Let us see whether Labour tops that, rather than just moving money from one part of the country to another.
We would like to see the Labour Government get the Holocaust Memorial Bill—which we initiated—on to the statute book, as the Prime Minister promised, and we will support them in that. We must do right by our Jewish communities, and we provided record levels of funding to protect them from harm and extremism. We took decisive action to tackle growing sectarianism, so we were disappointed not to see any mention in the King’s Speech of how Labour would continue that. In the election we saw independent MPs win seats from Labour on the back of sectarianism and integration failures, a problem whose existence Labour continually denies even as we are watching riots in Leeds.
It is time to put away the childish displays and fake outrage that Labour has been showing. The right hon. Lady will need to get very serious very quickly, and where she has the right ambition, we will do what we can to support her in facing down those members sitting behind her who still do not get it.
Steve Barclay
My right hon. Friend gets to the nub of the issue, because if a Government are promising change, they need to be able to say what the timelines are. They need to say what the budget is and what legislation they will pass to deliver that. On all those things, there is silence in this King’s Speech.
The Labour manifesto has lots of high-sounding things that are hard to disagree with. Labour wants more food security, and says that food security is national security, and we on the Opposition Benches agree. Labour says it wants to raise animal welfare, and we have done a huge amount to do so. That is fine. However, if the Government say they want to end the badger cull, when will they do that? There is nothing in the King’s Speech on that, so what are the timelines? Dairy farmers would like to know. Will the Secretary of State publish the analysis from the chief veterinary officer on what the impact of ending the cull would be on the trajectory? We know that the current approach has seen TB cases come down in England from 34,500 in 2018 to below 20,000. Certainly the advice that I had was that vaccinations would not be ready for some time. Will he publish the trajectory and tell us when the cull will end?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
You need to respect the science.
Steve Barclay
Of course we respect the science. The hon. Gentleman chunters from a sedentary position, but I presume he will get the same science brief—in a way, he makes my point—that I got from the chief vet, which was that the vaccinations were not ready and the cull was being effective. In fact, we only need to look at Labour’s policy in Wales, where the opposite is happening, to see that. I hope that, as he represents Cambridge, he will follow the science, because the Government made a commitment that does not. Perhaps that is the sort of change they mean—a change from what they committed to in the manifesto. It did not take long.
Speaking of things at a high level that no one can disagree with, the Government talk about making more use of public sector procurement. Again, the Conservatives not only agree with that, but we have helped the Government with it. The former Member for Colchester did a fantastic review, the Quince review, looking at how that will be done, but the Government are silent on the funding for that. Will it be funded out of the budget of the Department for Health and Social Care, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Defence, local government—or will it come out of the Secretary of State’s budget? It is difficult for him to say, because he does not even know what his budget will be.
The reality is that we have empty slogans from a party that does not care about the rural economy. The Government are not giving clarity to farming and fishing; they barely mentioned farming in their manifesto, and they did not even mention fishing. This King’s Speech does nothing for the farming and fishing communities. The decisions that we have seen so far take vast amounts of farmland out of food production in order to prioritise the eco-zealotry that we have heard so often in this House. I hope the Secretary of State will give the clarity that is sadly lacking in the King’s Speech on what the Government will do—and when—on the budget, on food procurement, and on dairy farmers and the badger cull, and will end the uncertainty that the president of the NFU and so many others in the farming and fishing community currently face.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
It is a huge honour, on my first opportunity to speak from the Dispatch Box as the Secretary of State, to close today’s debate on His Majesty’s Gracious Speech. I welcome my predecessor, now the shadow Secretary of State, to his place and thank him for the way he has worked constructively with me. I look forward to that continuing, although I prefer it this way around.
It has been an honour to be present for maiden speeches from across the House. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to go through their excellent comments in much detail, but I would like to mention my hon. Friends the Members for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody), for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer), for Hexham (Joe Morris), for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) and for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley). Many of them represent rural constituencies, and they all showed what great assets they will be to this House and to the communities they represent.
I cannot respond to everyone who has spoken—I am sorry about that—but I will do my best to cover what I can in the limited time available. I will start with the subject of planning. This Government were elected on a mandate to get Britain building again. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, reforming the planning system is the key to unlocking our country’s economic growth. The existing planning system is too restrictive, slow and uncertain, which undermines investor confidence and means that the homes that we desperately need do not get built. We will overhaul the planning system to tackle the chronic shortage of homes and power up the economy.
Alongside that, we were elected on a platform to deliver for nature, and will take urgent action to meet the Environment Act targets that the previous Government missed. We will protect, create and improve spaces that increase climate resilience and promote nature’s recovery on land and at sea, recognising that ensuring a positive outcome for nature is fundamental to unlocking the housing and infrastructure that this country so urgently needs.
We must take tough action to tackle the housing emergency and build the 1.5 million homes that we need over this Parliament, but we remain committed to preserving the green belt. Our brownfield-first approach means that that authorities should prioritise brownfield sites. However, brownfield development alone will not be enough, so we will also transform lower-quality grey belt land, such as wasteland or old car parks, into housing, including affordable homes for those most in need.
Steve Reed
I am sorry, there is not enough time for me to give way. [Interruption.] Members should have spoken for less time.
Rural communities have been severely undermined by the previous Conservative Government. For a party that once claimed to be the party of the countryside, their track record is one of abject and absolute neglect. Voters in the countryside rejected their failure and embraced Labour’s positive vision. That is evident from the huge increase in Labour MPs representing rural constituencies, and the collapse in rural support for the Conservatives. Thanks to the Conservative party, transport links in many rural areas are now close to non-existent; there are more potholes in England’s roads than craters on the moon; schools cannot recruit enough teachers; GP surgeries are full; families cannot find an NHS dentist; thousands of rural businesses have collapsed; and rural crime goes unpunished. This is an abandonment of the countryside on a historic scale.
Yet instead of apologising for their failure, the Conservatives choose to deny the reasons why rural voters turned against them in their millions. They are at it again today. I take it from the comments the shadow Secretary of State was making just now that they are so out of touch that they do not understand that rural communities want more affordable homes, more dentists, more teachers, more GPs, better public transport, energy security, more digital connectivity, well-paid jobs, better access to the countryside all around them, and their rivers cleaned up, after the Tories left them swilling with raw, stinking toxic sewage. They are out of touch, out of ideas and now, thank goodness, out of office.
This week, Britain starts a new chapter. Rural communities will be central to our mission to rebuild Britain and fix the issues that make a real difference to people’s everyday lives, as we grow the economy, mend the NHS, fix our schools, tackle crime and address the cost of living crisis. Over a decade of national renewal, this Labour Government will serve the British public, wherever they live. The Prime Minister has been clear that this Government’s priority is to grow our economy. We will boost rural economies with our new deal for farmers; seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to get food exports moving again after the Tories locked them out; and stop farmers ever again being undercut by dodgy Tory trade deals that sell out Britain’s environmental and welfare standards, as they sell out Britain’s exporters and food producers. We will set up a new British infrastructure council to steer private investment, including for broadband roll-out, into rural areas neglected by the Tories, and reduce our exposure to volatile global fossil fuel prices, protecting farmers’ energy bills against future price shocks.
Steve Reed
I am very sorry, but there are only three minutes left and I need to cover the points that have been raised. [Interruption.] They had their time.
We will do that by switching on GB Energy as we make Britain a green energy superpower. We will speed up the building of flood defences to protect rural homes and farms, and rebuild our NHS with 40,000 more appointments every week, 8,500 more mental health professionals—[Interruption]—and a hub in every rural community to tackle loneliness and the mental health crisis. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Christopher Chope)
Order. The right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) has behaved abominably.
Steve Reed
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
And that is not the end of the Tories’ failure. We will take back our streets from the criminals, with the first ever cross-Government rural crime strategy and more police patrols in rural towns and villages. We will break down barriers to opportunity in rural communities, so our children can realise their ambitions, wherever they grow up. They are the party of broken dreams; this is the party of aspiration.
Nature underpins all the Government’s missions. Without nature, there is no economy, no health, no food and no society. Nature is at crisis point. The Tories left Britain one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. A third of our bird and mammal species face extinction. Record levels of sewage are poisoning our rivers, lakes and seas. This catastrophe cannot be reversed overnight, but we have already turned the corner. This week we introduced our water special measures Bill to strengthen regulation and reverse the tide of sewage that is killing our waterways. Water bosses will no longer reward themselves with multimillion-pound bonuses—which the Tories allowed—while they oversee record levels of water pollution. If they refuse to clean up their toxic filth, they will face criminal charges. Last week, water companies signed up to my initial package of reforms, including ringfencing funding for vital infrastructure investment. If that money is not spent as it is intended to be, companies will refund their customers. It will no longer be diverted for bonuses or dividends, as the Tories allowed it to be.
The Tories had 14 years to take such action, but they failed absolutely. It took this Government less than one week. That is what change looks like with Labour. This Government are committed to the legally binding environmental targets set under the Environment Act 2021—targets that the Tories missed, but that this Government will meet by working in a new partnership with the nature non-governmental organisations.
I thank all Members who have taken part in this constructive and insightful debate for their perceptive contributions and their dedication to making progress on important matters. After 14 years of chaos, there is once again hope for our environment, hope for our countryside, and hope for our rural communities. I welcome the King’s Speech, and I commend it to this House. Change has come after 14 years of chaos and failure.
The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 9(3)).
Ordered, That the debate be resumed on Monday 22 July.
Adjournment
Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—(Anna Turley.)