Israel and Gaza

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Sir Oliver Heald—[Interruption.]

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that the taking of hostages, and particularly civilian hostages, is considered an abomination. It is a war crime. Does he agree that one of the things that is driving the Israelis on is a desperate desire to get their people home and that anything that can be done diplomatically to try to make that happen—to get the hostages back—would really help the effort for peace?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right: the taking of hostages is an abomination. That is why we are doing everything we can to ensure that the hostages are released, including the two British hostages and others with a close connection with the United Kingdom. He will have seen the reports both from Paris and from Qatar over the weekend, which indicate that every sinew is being bent to try to get the hostages back.

Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

This is an important issue, and I agree with the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) that all parties in this place should work to improve what is a very difficult situation for our constituents and the country.

My constituency has eight chalk streams, and I have been campaigning for many years to improve their quality, often with support from Labour Members such as Martin Salter—he is a keen angler—and cross-party members of the all-party parliamentary group on chalk streams, which I helped to set up.

I was shocked when two of my substantial chalk streams, the Beane and the Mimram, ran dry in 2007. I took the Labour Minister to see them, and he was shocked by their condition. The World Wide Fund for Nature joined me and others in starting a campaign, “Rivers on the Edge”, to reduce the huge amount of water being abstracted from these streams. We were successful in that campaign, although by then the Government had changed. It then became clear that not only were these poor streams being abstracted, but they faced pollution, problems with agricultural practice next to them, with nitrates going into them, and all sorts of other problems, including sewage overflow.

I pay tribute to Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who has been involved in all the campaigns, including those against pollution and soil erosion, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), whose Bill I supported; we both rebelled slightly against the Government on one occasion over that issue. Charles chaired Catchment Based Approach in producing a restoration strategy for chalk streams, which is a good document that the Government support. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) came to its launch by the River Mimram in my constituency, and it sets out a national chalk streams strategy. Although many of its recommendations are not about the problem of sewage overflows, it does cover that.

The Government have taken powers in the Environment Act 2021 and the Agriculture Act 2020 that would enable a catchment-based approach to tackling the range of issues involved in river quality. The water plan, which has been released recently, shows where the investment would be, with fines imposed and money reinvested in improving water quality. One of the main recommendations was to have some sort of protection and priority status for chalk streams. I know that the Secretary of State is concentrating on water generally, but Lord Trenchard has tabled an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and I wonder whether she would be prepared to consider it.

We know that the state of our rivers and streams is not what it should be, but between 2000 and 2010 we really did not know that, because the monitoring did not take place. It came as a shock that our rivers were in the state they were in. I welcome the fact that the Government are now being transparent, are committing to targets and are really taking this on.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The time limit has now reduced to three minutes.

Tenant Fees Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am delighted to answer the hon. Lady’s perspicacious point of order. She is absolutely correct that amendments cannot survive the withdrawal of the main motion. I will say it again that the selection of amendments is entirely a matter for Mr Speaker, and I am sure that if Mr Speaker had been here, as he will be at some future point, he would have been delighted to answer these questions.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you confirm that it would be in order for the Government to propose a future motion—hopefully very quickly—that would allow the Service Animals (Offences) Bill finally to make progress and get its Third Reading? The Bill has support on both sides of the House and had cross-party support in Committee last week.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am happy to confirm to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that that would be perfectly in order. He also reminds me that I did not answer the second point of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) about whether the Government intend to bring forward motion 4 again at a future time. I am not aware at this point of any such intention, but one would hope so.

National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I may have inadvertently said that the contract was let, but I do not believe that I did. The true position is that it was the right hon. Gentleman who took the decision to privatise the services in that hospital, and it is wrong for him to seek to deny it. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I appreciate that the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to ensure that the record is set straight. He has attempted so to do, but it is not a point of order for me to deal with.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 72, page 1, line 1, leave out clause 1.

[The Solicitor-General]

New clause 2 deals with the wearing of safety helmets by the Sikh community in Northern Ireland. Its purpose is to extend the provision in the Bill to Sikhs in Northern Ireland. We discussed the issue in Committee and it was hoped that it would be possible to introduce such a measure. Article 13 of the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1990 exempts turban-wearing Sikhs from legal requirements to wear a safety helmet while on a construction site. It also protects employers from liability should a Sikh suffer injuries as a consequence of choosing not to wear a helmet. The new clause extends the scope of the exemption to all workplaces, subject to certain very narrow exclusions, and extends the limited liability provisions associated with the exemption for other persons, such as employers.

The exemption in the 1990 order was limited to construction sites because, at the time, only workers in the construction industry were mandated to wear safety helmets. Legislative requirements regarding the wearing of safety helmets have since developed and now extend to a number of other industries in which a risk assessment identifies the need for specialist head protection.

There are certain jobs and industries in which the wearing of a turban may come into conflict with legislative requirements regarding the wearing of safety helmets or other coverings. Employers in non-construction sectors must therefore balance their obligation to protect the health and safety of their employees against their duty not to discriminate against a turban-wearing Sikh employee on the grounds of religion or race.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Oliver Heald

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Laing]

Exactly. Not for the first time, my hon. Friend has got it absolutely spot on.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the challenge will be not just here in the Chamber but in every marginal constituency? That is what happens in Australia, where they have the system in question. The equivalent of a Liberal Democrat Senator in a Conservative seat becomes that area’s parliamentary representative, and so it is in every marginal constituency.

[Mrs Laing]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Joint Committee took evidence from the Australian Parliament, and Members ought to look at that evidence and pay heed to Australia before giving away our primacy.

The most worrying thing of all is that as the primacy of the House of Commons is challenged, the unique link of accountability between the elector and his or her representative in Parliament—their Member of this House —will be undermined, so Parliament’s very accountability will be undermined as well.

Quite apart from the fact that there is no reasonable question to which the right answer is 450 extra elected politicians, having a second House of Commons at the other end of the corridor will not increase the chances of holding the Government to account. It will do exactly the opposite. A clash between the two Houses and a squabble over when and whether the Parliament Acts could be used will lead to a challenge in the courts, and I for one do not want vital political issues to be decided not by Parliament but by the judiciary. Our electors expect us to take responsibility, and they expect the buck to stop with us, their MPs. We ought to fight to preserve that.

I turn to the matter of consultation. The subject of Lords reform may have been talked about for 100 years, but we are not considering it in a proper, wider context. Reform of one part of Parliament is reform of Parliament as a whole, but we have been able to consider only the narrow proposals that the Deputy Prime Minister has put forward. I sat on the Joint Committee for eight months, and we recommended a constitutional convention so that the subject could be properly examined in context. The Government have ignored that recommendation, and now we face the possibility that we might not even be able to examine the Bill fully here in the House of Commons because of a narrow programme motion. At the same time, the Government are afraid of a referendum. They are afraid to ask the people. No constitutional convention, no referendum, no proper scrutiny in the House of Commons—that is not democracy.