Racism in Football

Julian Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Lady is, again, right. We share a passion for Liverpool football club. I fear that I have opened myself up to some online abuse by admitting that. Commending the words and actions of Gareth Southgate is absolutely the right thing to do, and she is also spot on about stronger education measures. I know the football authorities are keen to pursue this area, and we will consult and keep in touch with them. I have met them a couple of times, and this issue has already been on the agenda during my short tenure in this post. We will monitor how the authorities implement their plans through the season, but she is absolutely right about education.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I watched my first football match in 1977, and it took until 1990 for us to see anti-racism messages coming out in our football. I know the Minister will agree that it has taken UEFA and FIFA far too long to get a grip on this issue. The fact that this is the first time the protocol has been enacted indicates that those two bodies have not taken this issue seriously enough. The Minister is going to write to UEFA, but will he consider going to meet UEFA and FIFA to express the anger of this House and the fact that we believe that enough is enough?

[Nigel Adams]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: enough is enough. I am sure my letter will be published shortly and he will be able to see its contents. I am happy to meet UEFA and FIFA any time to get across the mood of this House. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) on securing this urgent question. It is going loud and clear to UEFA that action needs to be taken. We have had far too many incidents of this and UEFA must get its response right. There must be no doubt in the mind of any football authority that the consequences of failing to tackle this issue will be severe.

Sub-Committee on Disinformation

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. Earlier this week, the Select Committee published its 10th report on the creation of the Sub-Committee on Disinformation, which followed our reports on disinformation and fake news—the final report was published in February this year, with the interim report published in July last year. Our reports on that important subject were based on an inquiry that spanned about 18 months and that took in thousands of questions and many witnesses.

The focus on disinformation and fake news comes from our belief that there is a genuine danger to democracy and society in the deliberate and malicious targeting of disinformation at citizens, largely using social media to influence what they see and their opinions about politics, society and institutions. In the discussion about disinformation, much of the focus has been on it being used in election campaigns or around political events, but it is by no means limited to that. Disinformation is becoming a serious issue in the health sphere, in particular, with anti-vaccine information and stories being disseminated through social media.

The problem of disinformation is not limited to the period of our inquiry. When we established our initial inquiry, we were particularly concerned about the role of disinformation in the United States presidential election and other elections around the world, and about the role of foreign states and, in particular, agencies such as the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg that deliberately create campaigns and mechanisms to spread disinformation through social media and target people relentlessly.

That has become a bigger societal problem as people increasingly get their news and information through social media. In this country, about half the population receives news principally through social media. That means that, rather than going to a curated news space, such as a newspaper, a broadcaster’s piece of news or a news organisation’s website, they are receiving news and information that has been shared by their friends on social media in bitesize chunks, or they are being targeted with information by advertisers and other organisations that promote content.

We know that, during the US presidential election, the number of shares of the top 20 fake news stories was greater than that of the top 20 real news stories. The issue is fundamental to the way people receive news and information because, on the channel where they increasingly receive it, they often do not know why they are receiving it or much about the organisation that is sending it. Disinformation is often dressed up to look like real news, but it could be hyper-partisan content from people with a high degree of bias or, more seriously, content that is totally fabricated. That has been an issue for some time, but it is of growing importance because of the scale and reach of social media.

When we look at the potential application of technology, the problem is only set to get worse, given the phenomenon of deep fake content. That is when someone takes a recording of your voice—I am sure they would not do it in your case, Mr Gapes—and creates a fake video image of you, then writes their own words and has them played out through your mouth in the film. We are all familiar with those grainy films that emerge during political campaigns whose production quality is not great because they are often shot on someone’s smartphone. Imagine the capability to do that easily in a totally fake way and to release a film of a politician supposedly saying something malicious or misleading during the final days of an election campaign. That capability exists, and we need the tools in place to fight back against it.

Since we published the Committee’s report in February, we have seen other events that lead us to believe that this is an ongoing and growing problem. We were all shocked and appalled at the way in which harmful footage from the terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, was livestreamed on Facebook and shared continuously on social media platforms around the world, and particularly YouTube, for a number of days afterwards.

We are also concerned about the role of organisations that spread news and information about political events in this country—this is particularly linked to Brexit—but that we do not know much about. The Committee’s inquiry identified an organisation called Mainstream Network, which was contacting people through social media with adverts and asking them to lobby their MP to vote in favour of a hard Brexit and to “Chuck Chequers”—to use the expression at the time—and not support the Prime Minister’s negotiating strategy.

People have a right to a political opinion, and there is nothing wrong with that, but when they are being targeting by an organisation and they do know who is doing that, who is providing the money or who is supporting that organisation, that becomes a problem. In our campaigns as politicians, we have to put legal imprints on our leaflets, posters and flyers to make it clear who they are from, but people do not have to do that online, and those loopholes are being exploited. We have also seen campaigns and organisations other than just Mainstream Network, such as We are the 52% and Britain’s Future, where large amounts of money are being spent to target people with messaging, but we do not know who is doing that. That is going on all the time and on a growing scale.

The purpose of the Sub-Committee is to provide an institutional home for the Select Committee to build on the work of its initial inquiry, to look at new incidents of disinformation campaigns, where they lack transparency and where they are deliberately misleading, and to recognise that this is a form of harmful content that needs to be addressed. We look forward to the publication of the Government’s White Paper on online harms, which I believe will happen early next week, so that we can see what ideas they propose and understand more about their response to the Select Committee report, which covered many of those issues. The Sub-Committee will look at the issues arising from the White Paper and at the areas where the Government are looking for a response and consultation.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

rose—

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions are not allowed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Knight]

I was not certain whether I was allowed to intervene, but I will ask my question now. I welcome the advent of the Sub-Committee. In terms of the scale, this is not just about Russia or potential foreign actors intervening in our Brexit-related political crisis from a UK base or from overseas; it goes on worldwide. It is not just one foreign actor, but perhaps up to 39 foreign actors. Does my hon. Friend, the Committee Chair, agree that we need the Sub-Committee to be long standing and its scope to be as wide as possible in looking at all those other countries and what they are up to in terms of British politics?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. This is a worldwide problem. As he knows, we took evidence during our inquiry about problems to do with disinformation in South America and across Europe—this is not just about Russian campaigns of disinformation. The reason why we decided to create this institutional home for our work on disinformation is that such work runs beyond the scope of any one particular inquiry; indeed, looking to develop successor inquiries with a narrow, defined remit could restrict us from looking at other material from elsewhere around the world.

We look forward to the Government’s White Paper and their response to the Select Committee report, because this country could provide a world-leading framework for understanding the liabilities and obligations of technology companies in terms of acting against known sources of disinformation, and I would include disinformation as a form of harmful content, along with other forms of extreme harmful content.

My hon. Friend is quite right that this is a global problem, and I hope our work in exposing what is going on can benefit other inquiries. As he knows, one reason why we established the international grand committee as part of our disinformation inquiry was to aid our partnership work with other Parliaments that are investigating these issues so that we could benefit from their insights and to share our own work.

Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Julian Knight Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who is respected and acknowledged throughout this House as a champion not just of her own constituency but of communities across the UK, and the Jewish community in particular.

There can be few if any constituencies in the whole of our country that are not affected by the shadow of the holocaust. In Solihull, we hold a remembrance service every year. Not too long ago, I was privileged enough to hear a holocaust survivor address pupils at Tudor Grange School in Solihull about what she and her family have gone through. I am sure that every other Member has had similar experiences and that they are aware, as I am, that we are increasingly among the last people who will have the opportunity to do so. Too soon, the last of those who lived through the camps will pass on, and the opportunity to hear their stories at first hand will pass with them.

As the atrocities of the Nazis start to depart from living memory, it is more important than ever that we renew and live up to our promise to the Jewish people, the Roma and the other victims of the holocaust: never again. This is especially true in the light of the growing plague of antisemitism running rampant in this country right now. I never thought in my lifetime in this great country that I would have to utter such words. It really is unimaginable, but it has come to pass once again. I am horrified to read online the testimonies of many Jewish people who are, for the first time, feeling apprehensive or even afraid about their future in this country. It is simply an absolute disgrace, and I believe that every single one of us has a duty to do everything we can to combat antisemitism and racism in all its forms and to make this country safe and welcoming to people of all communities. The horrors of the holocaust can never be undone, but that just makes it all the more important that we do everything we can to deliver justice and redress for the remaining survivors and their descendants. I am therefore very pleased that my right hon. Friend has introduced this Bill and that the Government are giving it their full support.

I understand why the drafters of the original Bill chose to insert a sunset clause. They were doubtless conscious of the important role the institutions named in the 2009 Act play in preserving cultural artefacts both for the nation and for humanity. They were right, too, to recognise that over time the evidence base for claims could only grow thinner, and they were acting in accordance with the views of a majority of respondents to the original 2006 consultation. However, it is clear that they were mistaken in their belief that a single decade would be enough to resolve any outstanding claims.

In fact, although the number of new claims is falling, I understand that there remains a huge amount of work yet to be done when it comes to tracing the origins of possibly looted artefacts. Anne Webber, the co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, has said that relatively little of the relevant provenance investigatory work has in fact yet been undertaken. Furthermore, any worries about the potential for our great museums and galleries to get bogged down by a succession of increasingly difficult to resolve claims must surely be assuaged by the fact that not only have new claims been less frequent in recent years, but the museum community itself is strongly supportive of my right hon. Friend’s campaign to lift the sunset clause.

It is only just that we continue to offer redress to the relatives and descendants of those whose treasures were plundered by the Nazis for as long as we are able to do so. There may in future come a time when as much has been done as can be done to verify the provenance of individual pieces and the window of opportunity for returning them to their rightful owners has finally closed, but it is clear from the testimony of Ms Webber that this time has not yet arrived and may not for many years to come. We ought, therefore, to hold the door open for just restitution for as long as we possibly can.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend probably knows the answer to this, but I do not. The question is: how are we going to be absolutely clear which people are the rightful owners? Is there a system to work that out—is it the legal system or what is it?

[Julian Knight]

That is an interesting question, and there are people in the museum communities much more qualified to answer it than I am.

[Theresa Villiers]

Let me provide reassurance on this issue. Establishing ownership obviously involves looking at the facts of the case. The 2009 Act provides for that to happen with the oversight of the Spoliation Advisory Panel, and its recommendation to return property is sent to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. That is the process—the facts are considered, the panel assesses them, and the Secretary of State decides whether to approve the recommendation to return the property.

[Julian Knight]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that clear explanation, and I am delighted to have been an interlocutor between her and my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

[Bob Stewart]

And will that recommendation have legal force?

[Julian Knight]

I give way to my right hon. Friend to answer that.

[Theresa Villiers]

Yes it has legal force when establishing the ownership of property, and the 2009 Act removes the legal barrier to recognising correct legal ownership.

[Julian Knight]

I shall move on.

This Bill should not be seen as a rebuke to those who drafted and passed the original Act 10 years ago. The whole point of sunset clauses is that they make us revisit previous pieces of legislation, test their underlying assumptions and decide in the light of new evidence and experience whether and how to update the law. That is good legislative practice.

In this instance, after a decade in operation it is clear that the work of the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 is far from done. We do not know how many more items may yet prove traceable to legitimate owners once proper provenance work has been done, and it would be perverse to make it impossible for institutions to return such items in future in order to uphold what has proved to be an arbitrary deadline. The Bill provides us with an opportunity once again to renew our covenant with the Jewish people and all the victims of the holocaust, reflect on the crimes of national socialism and reiterate our commitment to pursuing justice for its victims. I am therefore proud to offer the Bill my full support, and I hope that Members across the House will do the same.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, I am happy to agree to that proposal. It is worth our understanding more clearly the exact picture in Scotland, as the hon. Gentleman says. Broadcasting is a reserved matter and sport is a devolved matter, so we must make sure that the two work in sync. In England, we support a range of sports—I am sure that the same thing happens in Scotland—and we want to see whether we can give such sports greater prominence so that people can find a sport that they get on with, that they want to do and that they enjoy, in order to promote greater participation in sport more broadly.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

This lunchtime sees the official launch at Lord’s of the women’s parliamentary cricket team, which will attract media coverage. Will the Secretary of State, on International Women’s Day, wish the venture all success? Will he perhaps offer a word of congratulation to my senior parliamentary assistant, Megan Williams, who has gone to huge efforts to make this happen and will be captaining the side?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am very happy to do that, and I wish Megan and the rest of the side the very best of luck. My hon. Friend is a doughty champion of women’s cricket. He makes the case for it very well and often, and we hear him. We are also talking about the broadcast of women’s sport, and I know that he will recognise that it is a step forward that the first stand-alone women’s world T20 competition this year will be broadcast on British free-to-air television.

Digital Economy

Julian Knight Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The Digital Economy Act 2017 introduced the requirement for commercial providers of online pornography to have robust age-verification controls in place to prevent children and young people under 18 from accessing pornographic material that is made available on a commercial basis.

Section 14(2) of the Act states:

“The Secretary of State may make regulations specifying…circumstances in which material is or is not to be regarded as made available on a commercial basis.”

So, in a sense, this is a small part of the legislative jigsaw needed to implement age verification. It is the last piece. I therefore ask that the draft Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2018, and the two pieces of guidance published by the British Board of Film Classification on age-verification arrangements and on ancillary services providers be approved.

I should bring to the attention of the House the concerns of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which I thank for their work. I will address their concerns in a moment but, before coming to the specific points related to this debate, I remind the House why we are introducing this requirement.

In the offline world, there are strict rules to deter children from accessing adult content. A large amount of pornography is available on the internet in the UK, often for free, with little or no protections to ensure that those accessing the content are old enough to do so.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

This legislation is long overdue and I really welcome it. I ask the House to indulge me for a second. A parent came to my surgery soon after I was elected to discuss how their child had suffered a sexual assault in a school. During the conversation, the mother mentioned to me, at some length, the ready availability of online pornography at school, how this was a motivating factor—or at least a contributory factor—to the assault and the fact that it just damages our relationships with one another, particularly in young minds.

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that heartfelt intervention. I am very sorry indeed to hear about that case. There is great validity to the concerns the mother expressed to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Women’s Twenty20 cricket is a fantastic spectator and TV sport. May we have it in the Commonwealth games?

[Jeremy Wright]

We will certainly consider that. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s advocacy for the game. He is right to say that women’s cricket is starting to take off, and he will know that recently, viewing figures for women’s cricket have increased substantially. It is important that the Commonwealth games showcases in the United Kingdom—and more specifically, he would want me to say, in the west midlands—all such sports in any way we can. He will recognise that decisions on which sports are included are not solely—or indeed at all—a matter for the Government, but I understand his point of view.

Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation

Julian Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The matters to which the right hon. Gentleman refers were recently the subject, and continue to be the subject, of an Information Commissioner’s Office inquiry. I am confident that the ICO has the necessary resources and expertise to undertake these inquiries. Leaving the EU does not mean that we will be abandoning our data protection standards. We fully expect to maintain them and develop them further over time.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Will the centre have the scope to look at AI and data usage in political campaigning and quasi-political campaigning?

[Margot James]

The inquiry I referred to in the previous answer has been reported on by the Information Commissioner, and she is setting forth a code of practice for political parties to sign up to on their use of data and how data are processed.

Historic Battlefields

Julian Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the preservation of historic battlefields.

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for your generous words and for chairing the debate. I chose this subject to allow other Members to contribute, as I am aware that there are historic battlefields, both on land and at sea, in or near many constituencies. This is a national issue, and it is right that it is given national attention by the Minister. However, I wish to turn my attention to a specific battlefield that is currently under threat. The battle of Bosworth is one of our nation’s most historic and important battles. It is where the last English king to be killed fighting in battle, Richard III, fell. It is where the Tudor dynasty under Henry VII was born. It truly changed the course of English history.

I must declare an interest. As the author of a book about the battle of Bosworth itself and a recent biography of Richard III, I have spent years researching the battlefield. I went from climbing rickety ladders to the top of St Margaret’s church in Stoke Golding to view the original site of the battlefield, to searching for original documentary evidence in the Vatican library. I was present at the 2010 conference at which a new location of the battlefield site was unveiled. It was demonstrated that the battlefield was far larger and stretched across a far wider area than previously thought. An expert archaeological team led by Dr Glenn Foard found nearly 40 cannonballs—the most ever found on a medieval battlefield—and the famous gilt silver boar badge, Richard III’s insignia, demonstrating that Richard’s men fought in a different location from previously thought. Those archaeological surveys of the battle, limited though they naturally were by time and resource pressures, provided a glimpse into what lies beneath the fields of Bosworth battlefield. More will surely be discovered if future archaeological investigation is allowed. Who knows what new technology will reveal in time?

The battlefield site, which is centred on Fenn Lane in what was then a marshy area known as Redemore, retains its rural setting and, crucially, provides us with an understanding of the contours and landscape of Henry Tudor’s approach to the battle on the morning of 22 August 1485. Given that we know Henry himself remained at the back of the battle as fighting began—he had never actually experienced open combat—only for Richard III to spot his standards and charge with his household cavalry towards Tudor, who was surrounded by his men, it is also likely that the final phase of the battle took place around the location of Fenn Lane.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I also congratulate him on growing a beard over the summer, in true Tudor fashion. I have received a host of emails about this matter, from Ricardians and non-Ricardians alike, which shows how much the preservation of the Bosworth battlefield matters to the public. As I think he will agree, the battle marked the transformation of this country from the middle ages to the early modern world, with all that means for our national story.

[Chris Skidmore]

I could not agree more. I know that, aside from representing a constituency in relative proximity to the battlefields of the midlands, my hon. Friend is himself an historian and scholar and has read several books about the battle. We have talked privately about the matter, and I appreciate his input to the debate.

Henry VII was crowned at Stoke Golding and instituted a battlefield chapel at St James church in Dadlington. That indicates that the battle of Bosworth was fought in that area rather than in the traditionally accepted area of Ambion Hill, where Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre is based. Ambion Hill seems more likely to have been Richard III’s encampment the night before the battle. The fact that recent archaeological and documentary evidence demonstrates that the site of the battle was far wider and in a different place—around Fenn Lane—from the previous registered battlefield location overwhelmingly proves the need for caution in preserving the existing battlefield area and its surroundings.

However, that need is not being heeded. As the Minister will be aware, a recent planning application for an 83-acre driverless car testing track in Higham on the Hill, adjoining the Fenn Lane area, has been the subject of intense local and national opposition. Earlier this week more than 12,500 people had signed an online petition against the application, and hundreds of written objections have been submitted to the official planning process. A final decision on the application by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has been deferred to 25 September.

I am fully aware—I am sure the Minister will remind me—that that is a local decision that will be made by the council. I am sure the council will reflect on the overwhelming number of written submissions and the huge petition that will be submitted later this month. I want to put on the record my gratitude to the people and organisations who have been in touch with me since I secured the debate. I thank in particular the Battlefields Trust and Julian Humphrys; the historian Michael Jones; Richard Mackinder, who has been integral to some of the archaeological work on the battlefield site; and of course the Richard III Society, for their kind input to my speech. Their voices, along with those of the thousands who have expressed deep concern about what may happen to an area of the Bosworth battlefield, should be listened to closely. I hope councillors do so, for the sake of future research and knowledge about the battle. The application threatens to destroy precious historical material that I believe should be preserved.

We must recognise the national precedent that the local application risks setting, and ask ourselves how we managed to get into a situation in which a battlefield of historic national importance is threatened in this manner. It is worth considering the current national framework for the recognition and preservation of battlefields. Battlefield sites in England are material considerations in the planning process, and they are designated by Historic England and put on the register of historic battlefields under powers conferred by the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953, as amended. Although that legislation does not confer a specific responsibility to create a register of battlefields, one was created in 1995 by a joint project of English Heritage, the National Army Museum and the Battlefields Trust. In 2011 that register was incorporated into the national heritage list for England, which is administered by Historic England.

In Scotland, an inventory of historic battlefields was introduced in 2009. It is compiled by Historic Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Ministers under the Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2011, which followed the Scottish historic environment policy of July 2009. Further guidance was issued in March 2011.

Since 1995, 47 battlefields in England have been designated as registered battlefields by Historic England—previously called English Heritage. Under planning legislation, the effect on the site and setting of a registered battlefield should be a material consideration for any proposed development. Planning policy statement 5, “Planning for the Historic Environment”, states that there should be a presumption in favour of the conservation of designated historic assets, and that local authorities should assess whether the benefits of an application for development outweigh the disbenefits. It also recognises that many historic assets are not currently designated and that, despite that, there should be a presumption in favour of conservation such that substantial harm to, or loss of, the battlefield should be “wholly exceptional”.

Several issues with the legal status quo deserve to be reconsidered. Substantial harm to a battlefield location should be “wholly exceptional”, but what of “minor harm”? Notwithstanding that those definitions are entirely subjective, a series of planning applications granted over a period of time may individually be defined as causing only minor harm, but in combination may cause incremental damage that is defined as substantial harm. The culture of permissiveness in our planning process allows for historic sites to be substantially eroded without the law ever being broken. Over time, subjective decisions that encroach on an historic battlefield site create an objective reality of destruction. No one would suggest that to take a single stone from Stonehenge would be considered minor harm, for clearly that would not be the case. One stone of many, once taken, would permanently alter the appearance and the historic preservation of the site.

Perhaps one of the long-standing issues with getting battlefield preservation taken seriously is that so much of it is not visible to the naked eye. The dead, their remains and their relics are buried, so we are faced with what is unknown rather than what is known. If we knew what was there hidden beneath the fields, we would preserve it; yet not knowing currently allows for battlefields to be thrown into the mix of the planning process. To argue that just 1% of a battlefield might be affected by a development is entirely to miss the point. That could be the 1% of a battlefield that witnessed the most important stages of combat or may yield archaeological treasures of national importance, just as the discovery of the Bosworth boar demonstrated.

In the past, planning and development were dealt with with consideration for battlefield heritage by the then English Heritage battlefields panel, a non-executive specialist panel that advised the organisation on policy and practice and included membership of organisations such as the Battlefields Trust. Yet following the establishment of Historic England, that specialist panel was disbanded. Will the Minister consider either writing to, or convening a meeting with, Historic England to see whether the panel could be re-established? Will he also investigate whether the Battlefields Trust could be registered as a statutory consultee when it comes to any planning applications within the area of registered battlefield sites? Currently it is not, which has resulted in the trust becoming aware of the planning application at Bosworth only at a very late stage, placing the battlefield at risk. It would have made sense for it to have been consulted and indeed advised earlier on in the planning process.

Finally, there is the issue of the boundary of the registered battlefield site to consider and whether the register meets all of the preservation needs of historic battlefields. Bosworth battlefield has been on that register since its inception in 1995, originally as an area of 632 hectares. That has been expanded to 1,072 hectares, together with an extended area of newly located battlefield agreed by the English Heritage battlefields panel in July 2011 and formally adopted in June 2013 following an extended consultation period.

In addition, the battlefield has its own conservation plan—effectively a form of local plan—drawn up by Leicestershire County Council and approved by the local planning authority, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, for use as part of the evidence base for its local plan. The conservation management plan includes a set of guiding principles and policies intended for those involved in the management of the battlefield area, including those dealing with recreational activity, land management and planning matters.

It is interesting to note that in the plan, policies were drawn up to

“ensure that topographic views across the Battlefield and within its setting are conserved and managed in order to protect significance enabling understanding and interpretation”

and also to ensure that

“any new development within the area and its setting does not have an adverse visual or landscape impact on the special qualities of the area, and that existing development which detracts from the area, where appropriate, is mitigated”.

One might ask whether that conservation plan was not being mitigated by the current planning application, which indeed seems to run contrary to those policies. That is for Hinckley and Bosworth borough councillors to decide on 25 September, but councillors can be responsible only for implementing and adhering to existing legal guidance and frameworks as they stand in the national planning policy framework.

The current guidance and frameworks clearly do not afford historic battlefields adequate protection against development and destruction; hence we are faced with this important test case at Bosworth. I have called this debate today because this issue is of national significance. It is time to think again and revisit the entire topic of how battlefields are protected through the register of historic battlefields, and indeed the spatial limit in which the register itself self-defines battlefields. The register was first created over 23 years ago, and it is perhaps worth reflecting on the massive advances in battlefield archaeology and heritage studies since then. A review of how we could best preserve our historic battlefields and landscapes should be considered. Just as we have areas of outstanding natural beauty, it is worth considering whether for the future we should be creating areas of national historic importance that would recognise historic sites and their surroundings as areas that we wish—and need—to conserve for the future, just as we do with parks. I urge the Minister to consider my suggestion for a review. Perhaps he would be kind enough to consult his Department and see whether that might be possible.

Bosworth is the battlefield under threat today but, while the current legal framework continues, no doubt there will be others. To build over one part of a battlefield site threatens to set a precedent of permissiveness that could erode our ability to protect our battlefields across the country. We should plant our standard squarely on preserving Bosworth and its heritage, both past and yet to be discovered.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to ensure that public broadcasters reflect and provide for the whole of the UK.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to ensure that public broadcasters reflect and provide for the whole of the UK.

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)]

Public service broadcasters should do what they can to spread prosperity and opportunity across the whole country. For example, my Department has supported Channel 4 in moving 300 and more of its staff outside London and increasing its out-of-London commissioning spend. I look forward to other broadcasters following its example.

[Julian Knight]

First, may I warmly welcome my right hon. and learned Friend and near neighbour to his post? I am sure he will do a superb job.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend think that the decision to run the Government’s 5G pilot in the west midlands makes the case for Channel 4’s HQ relocation to Birmingham almost unarguable and that that would go some way to closing the regional public broadcast gap?

[Jeremy Wright]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generous welcome. He is right that the 5G testbed announcement is good news for the west midlands. In the longer term, it is good news for the whole country, because it will give us the opportunity to test what 5G can do across a range of different communities.

As far as Channel 4 is concerned, my hon. Friend will understand that I need to be a little careful. As things stand, the Secretary of State, the Minister of State, the shadow Secretary of State and, indeed, our Parliamentary Private Secretaries all come from the west midlands. None of us, of course, would be disappointed if Channel 4 came to the west midlands, but we would all agree that the strongest bid should win and it is up to Channel 4 to decide which that should be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that public broadcasters reflect and provide for the whole of the UK.

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Hancock)]

It is very important that our broadcasting sector reflects and provides for the whole country. Moving Channel 4’s national HQ outside of London is part of that, but there is much more besides.

[Julian Knight]

Although I thank the Secretary of State for his leadership on Channel 4, does he agree that chronic under-investment in the west midlands by the likes of the BBC is a grave injustice and that the 5.5 million people in the west midlands deserve a better deal?

[Matt Hancock]

The west midlands has an awful lot to say for itself, in terms of more broadcasting. The move of BBC 3 to Birmingham soon is a step in the right direction, but I am sure there is much more to do.