Degraded Chalk Stream Environments

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Charles Walker

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker]

That was a great debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Indeed it was. Very informative indeed.

Question put and agreed to.

Business without Debate

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Charles Walker

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During the urgent question on proxy voting and baby leave, I saw you standing behind the Speaker’s Chair, taking a keen interest in the announcement that the House was moving forward in the matter. Was that out of personal interest, or the wider interests of the House and its Members?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

That is the most interesting point of order I have ever been asked in my life, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking it. First of all, he is absolutely right in having noticed my presence in the Chamber—of course I cannot sit on the Benches when Mr Speaker is in the Chair, but a very important matter was being discussed.

I should make it absolutely clear that my personal interest in proxy voting or baby leave is historical. That is probably rather obvious, but it as well to make the point. I am one of those who dealt with giving birth to my son when there was no such helpful support from the House, the House authorities or anyone else for that matter. I therefore have every sympathy with those who are going through such matters at present. My son was born one week after the 2001 general election, and that was not easy to navigate, because there is no such thing as maternity leave on election day.

The hon. Gentleman was right in the latter part of his point—my interest now is general. It is very important that we make this House work as a reflection of the society that we represent throughout the whole country. That means understanding that producing the next generation is an important and necessary duty, which has to be done by women at the same time as they are doing other things. I am very grateful to him for having noticed my presence, because I thought I was invisible. I should say, while I am waxing lyrical, which I should not be from the Chair, that the hon. Gentleman and his Committee have done a wonderful piece of work on this important matter.

I apologise for the delay. We now come to the petition.

Leaving the EU: No Deal

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Charles Walker

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

You are being ridiculous.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am determined to prove this evening that the House can be well behaved.

Nomination of Members to Committees

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Charles Walker

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that as Chairman of the Procedure Committee, I am not afraid to cross swords with my Government. I have been the Chairman of that Committee for five years, and we have had several run-ins. For the record, I will go through them. We had a run-in over amendments to the Queen’s Speech and the bouncing of Parliament over the election of the Speaker—a particularly raw moment in my political career. We had the impenetrable and unnecessary complexity of English votes for English laws—although the Committee made excellent suggestions, they fell on deaf ears, as the Government chose to ignore them. We have had the Government’s belligerence regarding the reform of private Members’ Bills, but I shall continue in my efforts to reform that bit of nonsense. Most recently, Opposition Members will remember that I stood up and berated the Government for not giving Opposition days in a timely fashion to Her Majesty’s Opposition. I said that the Government were being ungenerous and that they should be generous.

I am, therefore, no friend of the Government Front Bench. I trash them and I lash them—thwack, thwack, thwack—on a regular basis. [Laughter.] Have I broken with parliamentary convention, Madam Deputy Speaker? If I have, let us put it before the Procedure Committee.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is being wonderfully dramatic; that is perfectly within parliamentary convention.

[Mr Walker]

Politics is show business for ugly people, and I am a frustrated actor.

Try as I might, however, I cannot work myself up into a lather about this. I would love to be furious with the Government—I really would—but I cannot be. I get angry very quickly and blow up, and I make some spectacular apologies, but I cannot get too wound up about this.

If the House will indulge me, may I go back in time and revisit the 1970s? From March 1974 until April 1979, the Wilson Government, despite being a minority Administration at times, had a majority on the Committee of Selection for all but three months of their five years in office.

Lea Valley Greenhouse Glass Industry

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Charles Walker

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a number of excellent points. This application is hugely contentious. It is on the edge of Hertfordshire. I do not want it in my backyard, and up until 2015 Veolia did not want it in my backyard. However, what Hertfordshire County Council, the sponsor of the facility, is actually proposing is that all the smoke ends up in Harlow’s backyard and Epping Forest’s backyard, so it is your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the constituents of my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow who are downwind and will get the fallout.

The critical point is that we have an industry that is turning over half a billion pounds a year and producing huge amounts of fresh produce that graces the restaurants and cafeterias of the House of Commons and is to be found in the homes of millions of people up and down this country, and the producers of that food get very nervous when half of the 350 acres of glass might fall within a 5-mile radius of a 350,000-tonne incinerator. Their concerns need to be heard.

It is simply unacceptable for Hertfordshire County Council, the sponsor of the incinerator, to be the determining authority for the application. Hertfordshire both owns the contract and is the determining authority for the contract, and if it does not determine in Veolia’s favour it has to pay a break-up fee of £1.2 million. This cannot be a safe decision. It cannot be a safe decision for my constituents, but it certainly cannot be a safe decision for your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the constituents of my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow or for the 85 businesses that risk suffering the fallout from the facility.

It is no good for the Environment Agency to say, “There’s no worry here. These are tall chimneys. This is not a problem.” I am not saying that it will say that, but it does not matter what the Environment Agency says about this. The fact of the matter is that 85 producers are concerned that if they are downwind of this facility, they will lose contracts with supermarkets. That could be devastating. There are 2,500 jobs on the line and a half a billion pound industry.

I know that the Minister is not a miracle worker—he is pretty good, but he is not a miracle worker—and it would be unfair of me to suggest that he was, but what we do have in this Minister is a champion for the farming industry and a champion of our industry in the Lea valley. My simple request to him this evening is please to engage with the concerns of the Lea valley growers and our greenhouse industry, and please to reflect those concerns to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, because we need this application to be called in.

We need the chance to argue our case before an independent planning inspector—not just me, not just my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow and not just you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the NFU, the Lea valley growers, my constituents, my right hon. Friend’s constituents and your constituents. We need the chance to argue our case before an independent inspectorate. That is what we are asking for today. Please, as our voice for agriculture, will the Minister listen to the concerns that I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow are raising today and take them to the Secretary of State, because this is a very important industry? No doubt he will have received representations from Madam Deputy Speaker, who is not allowed to speak in this debate. If she could, I am sure she would join me on these Benches.

I do not want to go on for too long. I said that I would be brief and I want to get home for my moussaka— I genuinely am having moussaka tonight. I thank my colleagues who have remained in this place for attending and for listening so intently and politely to what I have had to say on behalf of 85 businesses in the Lea valley that do an outstanding job, produce an outstanding product, employ 2,500 people and make a huge contribution to farming and agriculture in this country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Before I call the Minister, I commend the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for his eloquence in putting the case so well, and the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for supporting the case. I of course am not able to make any comment from the Chair, but if I were able to do so I would tell the House how much I am in agreement with the hon. Member for Broxbourne.