Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Lilian Greenwood
Mr Pickles
I have a War Memorial hospital in my own constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has been vocal in pressing local health authorities on this practice, which particularly affects people who are visiting patients who are in hospital for a long stay. It does not seem to be the most sensible way of raising funds.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
10. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of (a) homelessness and (b) rough sleeping.
Flooding
Debate between Lord Pickles and Lilian Greenwood(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
I vividly remember the visit to my hon. Friend’s constituency in 2007. There is rarely a time when I pass Tewkesbury that I do not think of that. He makes a very reasonable point. Historic Tewkesbury remained relatively dry, while the new bit has experienced a degree of flooding. Things have to be managed. Ten per cent of the country is a large area; London is a large area. We need to ensure that a degree of caution is exercised, but ultimately we have to ensure that our citizens are safe.
Mr Pickles
If the hon. Ladies will bear with me, I want to talk about the challenge of climate change and then I will give way.
The same approach should apply to climate change. There are certainly man-made causes to the recent flooding and the main cause needs man-made management. Policies on dredging, development and even tree planting directly affect our landscape, but the weather is a factor in itself. The debate on climate is highly charged and polarised between sceptics and zealots, but the conclusions should not be. We know that Britain’s weather and climate is fickle. If Britain was to have a national symbol, it would undoubtedly be the umbrella. Any expectation that the Met Office could have predicted the amount and severity of that rain is simply unreasonable. It does not have a crystal ball, despite improvements in predictions.
The Met Office still does not definitively know whether climate change contributed to the recent weather patterns. This might be a short-term trend or a long-term one, but I would simply say this: the risk is there to our nation of a changing intensity in Britain’s weather. Given that risk, we should prepare. It would be irrational not to insure ourselves against that risk, and if there is a long-term trend, we should adapt to such change, as my noble Friend Lord Lawson has advocated.
“Just as science and technology has given us the evidence to measure the danger of climate change, so it can help us find safety from it.”
That seems a very reasonable statement and I commend it to the House. It is the view of a former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and I think he spoke very wisely.
Lilian Greenwood
If the Government really understand the potential impacts of climate change and extreme weather, why does their draft national policy statement on roads and rail contain no reference to ensuring that our existing transport infrastructure is resilient?
Mr Pickles
The hon. Lady is pointing to various documents and looking for omissions, but the facts speak for themselves, and the schemes that we are operating speak for themselves. We have been able to protect 1.3 million households, and although these have been perhaps the worst storms that we have faced for two and a half centuries, the number of properties affected has been relatively small.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Lilian Greenwood(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
I have had a number of meetings, as recently as last week, with various wildlife groups to discuss how to build into development an understanding of the needs of wildlife. My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point about the bird population, which, outside my day job, I enthusiastically follow.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Tenants in Nottingham who have been forced to downsize from a two-bed social home to a one-bed private sector home can expect to pay an extra £24.83 a week in rent. The Secretary of State’s bedroom tax is a costly mess; why does he not scrap it?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Lilian Greenwood(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Last year, Nottingham city council, which serves some of the most deprived communities in the country, was subjected to the biggest cuts in funding, while rural shire counties were protected. Will the Secretary of State look again at this year’s settlement and get a fairer deal for my constituents?
Mr Pickles
We had to put in place protection for Nottingham because the Labour party withdrew the working neighbourhoods fund; we had to protect Nottingham from Labour cuts. My advice to Nottingham is that if it wants to get favourable treatment from the Government, it should publish its expenditure online: publish and be damned!
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Lilian Greenwood(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Today, a bus full of Nottingham people has travelled down to Westminster to highlight the devastating impact that cuts to local authority funding will have on them, their families, their communities and our city. Will the Minister or a member of his team come and meet them in Committee Room 5 after questions to explain how it is fair that a city such as ours with a high level of need is suffering some of the largest reductions in funding?
Mr Pickles
No doubt it is essential for the people of Nottingham to get into a coach and travel all this way down here, because Nottingham councillors are so frightened of transparency and the truth that they have refused to publish on their website items costing over £500. It is the only council in the country to treat its electorate with such contempt.