Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Guy Opperman
I will get the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work to write to the hon. Gentleman, but he will be aware that we spend £57 billion on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions. At the same time, we have reformed employment and support allowance in the light of covid and brought in supportive changes to statutory sick pay, local housing allowance and the Access to Work programme. We continue to support the disabled into work.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)
My third quarterly report to the Prime Minister on covid disparities summarises the unprecedented measures taken to promote vaccine uptake among ethnic minorities. This work includes establishing vaccination centres at around 50 different religious venues, with many more acting as pop-up sites, and, more recently, an NHS partnership with the Caribbean & African Health Network, which co-produced a toolkit to increase vaccine confidence and uptake. Thanks to such initiatives we saw an increase in both positive vaccine sentiment and vaccine uptake across all ethnic groups over the last quarter.
Felicity Buchan
On Friday, I was delighted to visit the Al-Manaar mosque in North Kensington, which has administered more than 750 vaccines in pop-up clinics and done vaccine information sessions in English, Arabic and Somali. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is an excellent model for encouraging vaccination in our diverse communities?
Kemi Badenoch
I do agree. I thank my hon. Friend for her engagement on this issue and for so effectively representing a very diverse constituency and its complex needs. I pay tribute to religious leaders in Kensington and everywhere else who have played such an important role in encouraging their congregations to be vaccinated. Initiatives such as the one that my hon. Friend mentioned and the NHS’s plan for Ramadan, which includes the use of twilight jabbing, all help to build trust, increase vaccine confidence and tackle misinformation.
Security of Ministers’ Offices and Communications
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
My hon. Friend has said that the ultimate responsibility for security lies with the Department, and that the Cabinet Office sets best practice. Given the importance and sensitivity of security, should we not centralise this to ensure that every Department complies and that there is no aberrant behaviour?
Julia Lopez
The ultimate responsibility is with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary, but it is for the accounting officers to be answerable on these matters for their Departments.
Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, I do—my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we have committed a total of £3.8 billion to fund energy improvement in the performance of social rented homes in particular.
Covid-19 Update
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman’s excellent points serve only to underline the extreme difficulty of the decisions that Governments in this country and around the world were forced to make and the terrible balances we had to strike. I am sure that the considerations he raises will be looked at by the inquiry.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the huge success of the vaccine roll-out. The economy in central London is hurting, partly because of the lack of commuters and partly because of the lack of international visitors. Can he confirm that the plan is to lift the work-at-home guidance as of 21 June, provided that we stay on track?
The Prime Minister
That is certainly our intention, provided that we stay on track, but I want to be sure that people wait until we are able to say that with more clarity a bit later on, because we must be guided by what is happening with the pandemic. My hon. Friend is so right about the dynamism of London. Indeed, London and our other great cities depend on people having the confidence to go to work. I think it will come back, and I think it could come back remarkably quickly, but it does depend on keeping the virus down.
Debate on the Address
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
In a moment.
We understand this crucial point: we find flair, imagination, enthusiasm and genius distributed evenly throughout this country, while opportunity is not. We mean to change that, because it is not just a moral and social disgrace, but an economic mistake and a criminal waste of talent. Although we cannot for one moment minimise the damage that covid has done—the loss of learning, the NHS backlogs, the court delays and the massive fiscal consequences—we must use this opportunity to achieve a national recovery so that jabs, jabs, jabs becomes jobs, jobs, jobs. That is our plan. We will address the decades-old problems that have held us back, and transform the whole United Kingdom into a stronger, fairer, greener and healthier nation. That is the central aim of the Queen’s Speech.
Felicity Buchan
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Conservative party believes in opportunity and equality of opportunity, and that the legislative mandate we have set out today seeks to achieve that, particularly through the skills revolution, which will turbo-charge our economic recovery?
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak on the first day of the Queen’s Speech debate. I will focus my remarks on three areas that are of great interest to my constituents—housing, the environment, and the economic recovery after the pandemic.
The Government have a proud record on the environment. We were the first country to legislate for net zero by 2050. Since 2000, we have decarbonised our economy at the fastest rate of any G20 country. Since 2010, we have cut emissions by more than any other G7 country. What we have done with offshore wind is truly phenomenal, so it can be said, “If you vote blue, you truly get green.” However, there is more to be done, so I welcome the fact that the Environment Bill is back in the Queen’s Speech. I welcome the fact that it sets ambitious targets in law, and that it cuts across all Departments, so that each has an environmental focus.
I am focused on electric cars—I am one of the Conservative Environment Network’s electric car champions —so I am looking forward to June, and to hearing about our transport decarbonisation strategy. I want it mandated that all new build homes and offices have electric vehicle charging points.
That leads me into my next theme—the economy. Most people in this House will agree that we need to build back our economy, we need to build back better and we need to build back greener. I represent a central London constituency, Kensington, and there is no question but that we have suffered hard during the pandemic. We have lost lots of commuters who would normally come into central London and lots of international visitors, both businessmen and women and tourists, and lots of our residents have moved out of London—temporarily, we hope.
It is important that we look to kick-start the London economy, and one way of doing so is with a focus on business rates, which need a fundamental review. Central London picks up a disproportionate share of business rates. Commercial property rents in my constituency are three times the national average, but the cash flow of a bakery in my constituency is not three times the national average. Two tiny boroughs in central London—Kensington and Chelsea and its neighbour, Westminster—make up 10% of all the UK’s business rates, so we need fundamental reform.
We have made great progress in dealing with the pandemic, and especially with the vaccine roll-out, so I would encourage the Government to start thinking about reconsidering the “stay at home” guidance, because we need people back in our cities. We need them to feel confident about taking public transport into our cities and going about their normal lives.
Another thing that I would like to see that would kick-start the central London economy is a review of stamp duty. Stamp duty levels are so high that they are preventing social mobility and preventing property transactions. One final request I would make for the central London economy is for our two international centres—Knightsbridge, which I represent, and the west end—to be included in the exemptions for Sunday trading. That would make a huge difference.
I want to move on to another topic that is hugely important for my constituency—housing. We need safe, good-quality housing that is in the right places and suitable for local communities, and I want to work on delivering that housing. The building safety Bill announced in today’s Queen’s Speech is crucial. It will implement the recommendations of Dame Judith Hackitt’s review, and it will transform our regime for building safety. We need to try to get that Bill enacted with a sense of urgency, and we also need to address and clarify the issues that many leaseholders are facing through no fault of their own.
I also want to talk about social housing. There is a lot of social housing in my constituency. I was delighted when the Lancaster West estate received just under £20 million from the Government to decarbonise the estate, which links the environment with housing. In our manifesto, we committed to a social housing White Paper. We have produced that White Paper, but we need to see more progress on it and we need to see it enacted. It was not mentioned by name in the Queen’s Speech, but I want us to continue the work on social housing to improve its quality and its regulation.
In my last minute, I want to touch on the planning Bill. There are good things in the Bill, including digitisation, the focus on carbon-neutrality and the focus on beauty in design. However, we need to finesse the Bill. There is no question but that my constituency needs more housing, especially more affordable housing, but we need to ensure that that housing is sensitive to our existing areas, particularly in my constituency, 73% of which is covered by conservation areas. The housing also needs to be sensitive to the skyline, which is very important. So I would ask that we really look at the detail of that Bill. I am concerned that if an area is delineated as a growth zone, there will be no individual planning applications. That is something that I am looking forward to working on.
In summary, there are great things in the Queen’s Speech. We need to work on other elements, but that is a task that I am relishing.
Ministerial Code
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Gove
As I pointed out in response to some earlier questions, every PPE contract that was awarded went through an eight-stage process. It was supervised by independent civil servants, and the imputation that lies behind the hon. Gentleman’s comments is unfair to those dedicated public servants, who worked incredibly hard at a difficult time to make sure that those on the frontline received exactly what they needed. Of course, it is the case that there needs to be an inquiry in due course, but that inquiry should cover every aspect of the handling of the pandemic and we should all be suitably humble in recognising that it will necessarily make recommendations that all of us should take account of as we prepare for future health and other challenges.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that all Ministers, both at the Treasury and at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, followed the ministerial code in all of their dealings with Greensill Capital?
Michael Gove
Yes. The point that was made earlier is that when Lex Greensill and others with whom he was working were making representations to Government, those representations were dealt with in an appropriate way, and the critical thing is that the efforts that they were soliciting were rejected—that is quite clear.
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
On behalf of the residents of Kensington, I would like to pay the deepest tribute to His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, who gave a lifetime of service to our nation and to the Commonwealth. Prince Philip had a long association with my constituency of Kensington. As a boy, he spent time at Kensington Palace in the apartments of his maternal grandmother, who was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Like his predecessor Prince Albert, Prince Philip was very much a man ahead of his time, and I want to focus briefly on three particular aspects: his passion for science and technology; his support for young people; and his advocacy for the environment and conservation.
Prince Philip had long and deep links with the Science Museum, first visiting in the 1960s. In 2014, he was elected a fellow of the Science Museum, a real accolade in appreciation of his sponsorship of science and technology. He was also very close to Imperial College, which lies partly in my constituency. Indeed, he was one of the first to receive a degree from Imperial when it attained its independence from the University of London. In 2007, he became an honorary doctor of science in recognition of his contribution.
As many colleagues have said, Prince Philip was a great supporter of young people. Rather than alluding to the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, I want to mention an email I received at the weekend from a constituent who sent me photographs from the 1950s of Prince Philip visiting youth clubs and boys’ clubs in north Kensington and Notting Hill.
Finally, Prince Philip had a huge passion for conservation and the environment, to which the Natural History Museum in my constituency paid great tribute.
On behalf of all residents of Kensington, I want to say thank you to Prince Philip for everything he did for Kensington, for our nation and for the Commonwealth.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s Budget, and the honesty and openness with which it was delivered, because the Chancellor has levelled with the British public as to the scale of the debt challenge that we face as a country. This Budget achieved a delicate balance. It extended Government support to businesses and individuals until the end of September, while at the same time setting out a road map for rebalancing our books. Very importantly, it delayed any tax rises for two years to give the economic recovery time to bed in.
The Chancellor set out that the total cost of coronavirus support will exceed £400 billion. That is very difficult to get a visual sense of, but to put it in context, it is 10 times last year’s defence budget—huge numbers. I warmly welcome the focus on business investment in the Budget. Productivity has been a perennial problem. I also warmly welcome the tiering of corporation tax. In fact, I was with Kensington and Chelsea chamber of commerce last night, and someone suggested that on the call, so perhaps the Chancellor was listening in.
On that note, I want to talk briefly about three constituency matters. One is stamp duty. I welcome the extension of the nil rate, but I feel we need a fundamental reform of stamp duty. Stamp duty is a tax on social mobility, and in my constituency, where property prices are high, it is a disincentive for people to move, with the result that the Exchequer’s tax take goes down. Secondly, I did not see in the Budget any further detail on cladding remediation and the property development tax, so I look forward to seeing those details over the course of the next few weeks. Finally, I warmly welcome the restart grants, but one point I would make is that in London business costs are way higher. Typical rents in London are two to three times the national average, so I would ask the Chancellor to consider a London weighting for grants.
To summarise, I warmly welcome this Budget, and the honesty and openness. We have big challenges ahead, but collectively we can deal with them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I welcome the constructive approach taken, as ever, by the hon. Member, and we will look at his proposals. It is already the case that we are revising the way in which proxy voting can work in order to help those who may be suffering as a result of the pandemic, but I will look at the proposals that he has put forward, which do seem to be in the spirit of greater democratic inclusion and engagement.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con) [V]
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We want to promote democratic inclusivity, but we also want to protect the integrity of the voting system. It is important, when we have elections being carried out in the circumstances that we will face this May, that we make sure that both requirements are met. Again, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution is working with local authorities to ensure just that.
Northern Ireland Protocol: Disruption to Trade
Felicity Buchan Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that terrible case. We will get straight on it and look specifically at how we can ensure that her constituent receives the products she needs.
On the broader point about working to ensure that the protocol operates effectively and safeguards the integrity of the United Kingdom, I thank the hon. Lady for her work; as well as Minister Poots, I also thank Minister Diane Dodds and the First Minister, Arlene Foster, for raising these issues with me in a timely and urgent fashion.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I know that the Union is very important to my right hon. Friend—as it is to me; we are both Scots born. Will he reassure me that he will do everything to ensure unfettered access between GB and Northern Ireland?
Michael Gove
Yes, absolutely. Let me stress again that many of us in this House had reservations about aspects of the protocol, but now that it is in place, we have to do everything possible in order to ensure that it works for the people of Northern Ireland. They are an integral part of the United Kingdom. It is our moral duty to do everything to stand up for them.