Debate on the Address

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is great to have this opportunity to contribute to this afternoon’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I assure you that I will not outstay my welcome.

I want to make a few remarks arising from the community consultation that I have just finished with people from across my constituency. I do this every September during the recess, and this year almost 1,000 people were involved in one of 37 events over three weeks. More than 1,000 shared their views by completing a survey that I circulated. They set out their concerns and the issues they wanted me to raise, and today’s debate provides a first opportunity to put some of those on the record.

Inevitably, Brexit dominated, and in the survey that formed part of the consultation, 71% of people said they wanted a further public vote; only 18% were against the idea; 77% said that they would vote to remain; 15% said they would support leaving with a close relationship; and only 8% wanted to leave without any agreement. That was reflected in the meetings, too, and it was reflected even more strongly among young people. The Government need to recognise that if they lead this country to a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus, there is a rising generation who will never forgive them.

For that young generation—and, indeed, more widely across all age groups—there was a real concern to see stronger action to address the climate emergency, on which they felt they had been failed over the past nine years and about which they will see little comfort in today’s Gracious Speech. I was interested to hear the Prime Minister’s comment that we lead the world on addressing carbon emissions, and that comment has been echoed by a number of Members during the debate. I have taken the opportunity—on the odd occasion when I was not paying attention—to google every survey I could find, and none of them indicates that Britain is leading the world on this. Other countries—Sweden, Morocco and many others—are playing a leading role, and there is much more that we can do. We also have a responsibility to do much more, given our historical contribution.

A wide range of different issues were raised across the meetings and events that I organised, but there was a common theme. I heard how difficult it is for carers to access the necessary respite, without which their lives are challenging. There was frustration that the Government have failed to meet their post-2017 promise to bring forward proposals to tackle the crisis in adult social care and, indeed, to meet the needs of young carers. Domiciliary care workers told me about how their capacity to care had been eroded by 15-minute appointments, poor support, poor training and inadequate supervision. During the consultation I was conducting, one local residential home announced its closure due to inadequate funding, and we all know that many more across the country will follow that path. There was a real sense that we need a complete paradigm shift on how we meet the challenges of an ageing population and how we provide the resources to support that change.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing up that group of young people and for talking about carers. I made a point at a meeting that the continual contracting out of services causes so many problems for voluntary groups. Does he agree that the Government ought to pay attention to that?

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall return to that point later in my comments.

On health, I was told about the difficulties in securing timely appointments with GPs, sometimes acute difficulties with waiting times in A&E, and difficulties in accessing other services. Young people told me about the pressures that are contributing to the rise in mental health problems, on which the system is failing them badly. Schools told me that they were dipping into teaching budgets to provide support for students in mental health crises. Teaching budgets are there for teaching, but that money has been diverted to cover the crisis in young people’s mental health. We need even more support and substantial investment in child and adolescent mental health services. Young people told me that waiting times of 25 weeks between first diagnosis and a referral to the first opportunity for help are the norm, not the exception, but early intervention is critical to tackling mental health crises.

Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities told me heartbreaking stories of their struggle to get education, health and care plans that met their children’s needs. Parents also talked about the challenges that schools face in delivering the plans once they are in place because of the lack of resources. We know that our schools have been hit by an 8% real-terms budget cut, but the particular failure to address special educational needs and disability funding is causing an enormous crisis.

Young people were increasingly worried about crime, talking about knife crime in particular. They made the case for the out-of-school activities that used to be common before the cuts, which have had a disproportionate impact on our local authorities and have led to a collapse in youth services. In other meetings, people highlighted how we miss Sure Start and the difference that the centres made in supporting families during the crucial early years. They talked about how school exclusions, driven by the lack of resources to support the most difficult children, are feeding gangs with recruits and sucking young people into knife crime.

A big worry across all ages and among all parts of the community was the rise in homelessness, rough sleeping and street begging. At a meeting on housing, we talked about the rising number of people in temporary accommodation without a permanent home of their own, the rise in sofa surfing, and the increasing dependency on friends and relatives for accommodation. People were clear that the only solution is a concerted programme of building affordable social housing. The problem of rough sleeping and street begging is clearly more complex, and we talked about mental health and alcohol and drug dependency problems that need intensive interventions to support people into getting off the streets and rebuilding their lives. There was a huge willingness from people in statutory services and the voluntary sector to resolve such problems, but there was also a real sense that the problems had risen over the past nine years as a consequence of the cuts that had affected statutory services’ ability to support and work with the voluntary sector in a way that has a real impact.

Those are all different issues, but there is a common theme. Nine years of cuts have sapped the capacity of our public services and much of the voluntary sector to meet the needs of those who need them most. Austerity has corroded the quality of too many lives, but it did not have to be like that. Such decisions were not forced by necessity, but by political choice, and those choices need to change. The Gracious Speech offers a few convenient headlines, but there is no real recognition of the scale of the change that we need: the fundamental new direction for our country that my constituents spoke about and which this Government clearly cannot provide.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me thank my right hon. Friend for everything she has done for the people of Northern Ireland and for rightly raising this issue in her constituency with me. Of course she will understand that decisions affecting Leek Moorlands must be led by clinicians, but I hope a solution can be found that benefits everyone in her constituency.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Q7. In a desperate attempt to win yesterday’s vote, the Prime Minister apparently made emotional appeals to Conservative MPs that he was serious in seeking a deal, but his answers in the House yesterday and today make it clear that there are no real negotiations, in public or in private. Those with whom he claims to be negotiating in the European Union have said:“Nothing has been put on the table”. So does the Prime Minister understand why, across this country, people find it difficult to trust a word he says?

[The Prime Minister]

May I tell the hon. Gentleman that what the people of this country want to see is us come together to come out of the EU on 31 October with a deal? We are making great progress with our friends and partners in Brussels and Dublin, and even in Paris, but I am afraid those talks are currently being undermined by the absurd Bill before the House today. I urge him to reject it. If he must pass it, will he have a word with his right hon. Friend and ensure that that Bill is put to the people, in the form of a general election?

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight this, and I am pleased to say that the conflict, stability and security fund has been used to help the Turks and Caicos repair its radar, so that it is able to detect boats that may be carrying people trying to access the islands. He may be aware that early in 2018 the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Mounts Bay was also deployed in order to provide a deterrent to those who wish to make that perilous crossing. We will consider other ways of using the CSSF in this region in the future.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T6. July is set to be the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. Areas such as the Lake Chad basin, where more than 4.5 million people are already displaced, are the most vulnerable to these temperatures. The Secretary of State’s ambition to double spending in the long term is admirable, but what more does he think could be done now to support those countries that are in the frontline of the climate emergency?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the issue of climate is now driving conflict. In the Lake Chad basin there simply is not enough ground for people to feed their oxen or plant crops. We need to invest in climate-resilience projects, which means looking not only at the crops but at the reasons why there are now conflicts, from the Chad Basin and Nigeria right the way across east Africa, between people with oxen and people who are planting. In particular, Sahel is central to DFID’s new initiative. We are opening embassies in Mauritania, Niger and Chad, and much more of our investment is now going to go into the Sahel region.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise concerns about Iran’s destabilising behaviour in the region. Our objective continues to be to work with our international partners to find diplomatic solutions and to de-escalate tensions.

My hon. Friend is also right to raise cyber-capability. We have a dedicated capability to act in cyber-space through our national offensive cyber programme, and last year we offered our offensive cyber-capabilities in support of NATO operations.

My hon. Friend talks about working with others: we were the first nation to do that, and we will continue to ensure that we have effective offensive cyber-capabilities that can be deployed at a time and place of our choosing across the full range of international threats.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Q3. The Prime Minister hopes that net zero emissions by 2050 will be part of her legacy—although many of us would hope that we will achieve that objective sooner—but it needs policies to match that ambition. Developing onshore wind farms will help us to tackle the climate crisis, reduce prices for consumers and has overwhelming public support, so does she agree that now is the time to scrap the barriers that have seen new installations fall to the lowest level since 2011, restore subsidies for wind farms and allow them to compete in the contracts for difference auctions?

[The Prime Minister]

The Committee on Climate Change was clear that 2050 is the right target date for net zero emissions. There is no ban on onshore wind. In 2015, local communities were given more say on onshore wind applications in their areas. Onshore wind has successfully exceeded its expected contribution to our 2020 renewable energy target, but at the same time we are backing offshore wind through a new sector deal, maintaining the UK as the largest market in Europe over the next decade.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

We in the DWP have introduced a range of measures across the whole Government to make sure that we are supporting those across all sectors of society into work. As I said, the hon. Lady just needs to look at the jobs figures: we have joint record high employment, record high women’s employment and record high ethnic minorities in employment.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

3. What discussions she has had with the Home Secretary on the timetable for the publication of the next four-year hate crime action plan.

[The Minister for Women (Victoria Atkins)]

The current action plan runs from 2016 to 2020 and it was refreshed last year to ensure that it remained fit for purpose. The Government are delivering on these commitments, but we will of course continue to review what needs to be done to tackle hate crime, including what will follow the current action plan.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for that reply. She will know that, disturbingly, the latest police figures record a 17% increase in hate crime. Does she accept that this is at least in part encouraged by the casual racism of some in public life, and does she agree that anyone who compares Muslim women with “letter boxes” and describes African children as “piccaninnies” is not fit to be Prime Minister?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to remind us all that our use of language is very, very important in public life. There are many examples across the House, it is fair to say, where, for example, people have liked Facebook pages which they then come to regret. I think there is a particular duty on all of us to ensure that the language we use is respectful, tolerant and reflects 21st-century Britain, which is a vibrant, multicultural, diverse country with much, much talent and potential among all our people.

EU Parliament Elections: Denial of Votes

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

The Government were never tearing themselves apart over whether to hold the elections. We were clear that we would fulfil our legal obligation to hold them if necessary as a member of the European Union, and we did. Regarding the exchange of information that already takes place electronically, there is a clear need to finalise registers at a certain point, and to ensure that information is collated and then exchanged with other member states. The timescales now are similar to those put in place in the past, and the UK is one of the first countries to vote, on the Thursday, along with Holland. Even though some countries vote later, we have to be ready for the start of the European elections, not halfway through.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The empty Government Benches will send a powerful message to EU nationals across the country. Many of them in my constituency contacted me to say that they had registered to vote online, after it became clear on 11 April that the elections would be taking place; they told me that the system did not alert them to the need to complete a UC1 form, nor was it available online. Does the Minister accept that the Cabinet Office’s failure to ensure that proper processes were in place denied them their vote?

[Kevin Foster]

To be clear, the Electoral Commission website had guidance on registering to vote; the UC1 form was available; and there were links to the Your Vote Matters website, where the form could be downloaded and returned. It was available online. There were some issues with those who mistakenly used unofficial registration sites, and perhaps the Electoral Commission will consider how we can make clearer the differences between unofficial websites purporting to be for electoral registration and Your Vote Matters, the official Electoral Commission site.

Proportional Representation: House of Commons

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

I do not entirely disagree. Certainly that 13% or 14% of the electorate may have felt disenfranchised by the result to some extent, but during that election I think we all recognised the extremist nature of some of the views held by that party and some of its candidates.

The hon. Gentleman is correct on the broader issue. We now have a much more fractured politics than we did half a century ago, when there was a stronger argument for first past the post, and many groups do not feel represented in their constituencies. For example, I received more than 60% of the vote in my constituency at the last election, but consistently about 15% to 20% of that electorate have voted for the Labour party. Indeed, in Suffolk as a whole in 2010 and 2015, 25% of the electorate voted for Labour and yet seven Conservative MPs were returned. That is not representative of the general feelings of Suffolk residents.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. Does he recognise that proportional representation is about more than electoral outcomes and that, actually, proportional systems change political culture in a way that delivers more effective social outcomes? Societies with PR are more likely to have lower income inequality, better developed welfare systems, higher social expenditure, better distribution of public goods and better environmental controls. It is a much wider issue.

[Dr Poulter]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Broadly, there is a strong case and good evidence that in countries with proportional representation, or a more proportional system, there tends to be more consensus government, which tends to recognise certain common goods. Today, there is an urgent question in the main Chamber on climate change. In many other countries in Europe, climate change’s importance in the legislative agenda is reinforced by that sort of consensus politics.

For example, the work done by the former leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the latter part of the last decade, was broadly supported across the House, but if there had been a sudden lurch to a Government who perhaps did not believe in climate change, a lot of that work could have been undone under the British system. That is much harder to do under a proportional system, under which there has to be much more work through consensus between political parties. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point about the sort of politics that many of us here would like to see.

I want to allow other hon. Members to speak, so I will be very quick. In my view, if we are to have a PR system that is effective, it has to maintain the constituency link. It also has to ensure that we deal with the issue of having a potential threshold, even under PR, for election, be it 5% of the electorate in a particular area or whatever. The best way of doing that, I believe, is by doing something broadly along the lines of what we have currently for the European elections—perhaps not on the basis of a large-scale region, but on a county basis or a city-regional basis. That would allow people in, for example, London, where boroughs identify together, to elect from those boroughs a proportional number of MPs from different parties, according to how those electors voted.

That strikes me, in comparison with our current political settlement, as a much fairer way of electing people. It certainly would have given a voice in 2010 and 2015 to the 25% of constituents in Suffolk who voted for the Labour party but did not have any MP to represent them. I hope that, going forward, it would also give rise to the more consensus-based politics on the big issues of the day, such as climate change, and other forms of policy making that all of us here, I hope, believe in.

UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

We are in a desperate position. That has been reflected in many serious speeches today—too many to list—but that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was a real highlight, and we support his amendment (j).

In her closing remarks yesterday, the Prime Minister said that the House needed to say not what it did not want, but what it did want. It is a fair point, but the problem we face is due to her refusal to give us that opportunity at the start of the process. She herself went to the EU27 not with clarity on what she wanted, but with red lines on what she did not want. Those red lines boxed her into a corner and produced this damaging deal that fails the country and has been rejected twice by historic margins.

What is the Prime Minister’s reaction? To try again. It was my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) who coined the phrase “meaningful vote” when seeking to ensure that Parliament had a role in this process, and it is a phrase that the Prime Minister has embraced. We have had meaningful vote 1 and meaningful vote 2, but how, as the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) asked, can meaningful vote 3 be meaningful in any sense of the word?

On 26 February, the Prime Minister set out the process for this week: vote on her deal, vote on no deal and then vote on an extension. She set out the options to be considered at that stage—her deal, no deal, another deal or a public vote. This week we have ruled out two of those options, so we should now be looking at the other two and seeing what consensus can be built, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (James Frith) and for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), among others.

The Chancellor was right when he reminded the nation on the radio this morning that the 2016 referendum decision was carried by a narrow margin—a painfully narrow margin—and was not the overwhelming mandate that some Conservative Members claim. It was a vote to leave, but not an instruction to rupture our relationship with our closest neighbours and allies. If there was any doubt, the Prime Minister gave the people a second vote: she called a general election, accusing this House of trying to thwart her plans and seeking a mandate for a hard Brexit—and she lost her majority. She could then have reached out to build a consensus.

The Prime Minister could also have done so after her deal was defeated in January, but she did not. Yes, she spoke to people across the House, but she did not listen to what they had to say. She focused on the backstop, which may be an obsession of the party within her party, but is not the primary concern of the majority of the 432 MPs who voted against her deal. Of far more concern to us is the way that deal damages our economy, damages jobs, damages livelihoods and damages public services, and does not offer the certainty that business needs. The political declaration is deliberately ambiguous, and we know there are those on her Benches who intend, if she gets her deal over the line, to remove her and to rip it up.

Last night, the Prime Minister had another chance to reach out and build consensus, to deliver on the expectations that she had given the House, and to create the opportunity to explore all the options and find a way forward. The Government’s shameful decision to go back on their word and frustrate our democracy with this motion should be rejected by the House. Our amendment (e) provides the way forward that this House expected and wanted, and it would not have been necessary, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) pointed out, if the Government were doing their job.

The Prime Minister should also listen to her Chancellor. However much he proclaims support for her deal, he recognises that it is dead and that she should reach out across the House to look at the sort of deal that might be forged around a customs union, single market alignment, membership of the agencies and partnerships we have built together and, indeed, a further public vote between a credible leave option and remaining in the European Union—a vote that we support. An extension needs clear purpose—a purpose of building a consensus, which the Prime Minister has failed to do. An extension should be as short as possible but as long as necessary, because we have seen the folly of fixed deadlines.

We warned the House and the Prime Minister that throwing red meat to her Brexit extremists by fixing 29 March in law was a mistake. Now she must legislate to remove that date. We should also reject her new bullying tactic, which states that failing to back her deal means UK participation in the European elections. It does not, as many Members—notably the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)—pointed out. Powerful legal voices have been cited, but let me quote a Minister on this issue. The Advocate General for Scotland said in another place on 27 February that

“the noble Lord’s point that the EU Parliament could sit without the UK having had an election…is correct”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 February 2019; Vol. 796, c. 292.]

We must not be deflected by threats. We cannot succumb to the Prime Minister’s obstinacy. Her deal has been rejected. No deal has been rejected. We must now seek the extension of article 50 that is needed to move on and consider the remaining options: a different deal, or a further public vote.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

May I begin, Mr Speaker, by congratulating you on your stamina staying in the Chair for more than 12 hours now? I welcome the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) in what I think is his first outing in his new role as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. I notice that there is a rapidly diminishing tenure for those in the post—the first Brexit Secretary lasted 24 months and the second five months—so I hope that the new occupant of the post can at least make it through to oral questions on Thursday.

It is a privilege to give the winding-up speech for the first of five days of debate on the Government’s withdrawal agreement, and to do so on a day on which Parliament has asserted its sovereignty so dramatically. Today’s debate has confirmed that the Government have forged a remarkable consensus on one thing at least: opposition to their deal, which fails not only Parliament but the British people.

Labour campaigned to remain in the European Union because we believed it to be in the economic and political interests of our country and of the continent that we share and will continue to share, and for all the reasons that were set out so powerfully by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). But we accepted that we lost the referendum, which is why we voted to trigger article 50, setting the clock ticking. The past two years, though, have been squandered, as negotiations with the EU27 have taken second place to those between the warring factions in the Conservative party—and the country is paying the price.

It did not have to be like this. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) made the point that the Prime Minister has worked hard over the past two years and won respect from many in the country. That is a fair point, but working hard is not enough. The problems that she faces now are the result of the decisions that she has taken. At the outset of this process, we urged the Prime Minister to reach out to the majority in Parliament who would have supported a sensible Brexit, by acknowledging and saying that the people had voted to leave the European Union, but by the closest of margins. I was bewildered to hear her question the legitimacy of the 1975 referendum because one third of people voted against remaining in the EEC, while she is seeking to deliver this damaging Brexit on a result that split the country down the middle.

The 2016 referendum gave a mandate to end our membership of the European Union, but not to rupture the relationship with our closest neighbours, our main trading partner and our key allies. If the Prime Minister had said two years ago that she would seek a deal that reflected that position, and that was right for people’s jobs and their livelihoods—in a customs union, close to the single market, and in the agencies and partnerships that we have built together over 45 years—she could have secured a majority in Parliament, and she could have united the country that was so deeply divided by the referendum. And the Northern Ireland border would not have been an issue.

Our amendment sets out the position that the Prime Minister should have taken. Instead, she let the demands of the management of the Conservative party shape her agenda. She set her red lines and she boxed herself in, and the result is this doomed deal that pleases nobody, as the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) demonstrated so powerfully. The deal fails the six tests that Labour set for it at the outset. I remind Government Members that those tests were based on the Government’s own goals. They were tests that the Prime Minister looked at and said were reasonable, and that she was “determined to meet.”

One thing has changed since the deal was struck, and that is the Government’s narrative. A little honesty is finally breaking out. Those who spent the past two years endlessly repeating the mantra that no deal is better than a bad deal are now arguing that this bad deal should be accepted, because the alternative is no deal, which they rightly say would be a catastrophe. We, as an Opposition, will work with the overwhelming sensible majority in this House to prevent that from happening. We welcome the amendment passed by this House and moved by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), which provides a framework for ensuring that.

Even more significantly, the Government’s narrative has changed because claims that the country will be more prosperous as a result of Brexit have been abandoned, and rightly so, not least because this deal fails to provide the frictionless trade that we were promised. The Government have confirmed that we will be economically worse off to varying degrees under every Brexit option, and it was a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) in another very powerful contribution. Instead, the Government argue that this deal should be accepted on the basis that failing to deliver on the 2016 referendum would have serious social and political consequences, and it is a serious point that should not be lightly dismissed, but they should recognise that there will more serious consequences if Parliament votes for a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus. The public will not forgive politicians who do that. This deal fails not just the 48%, but the 52%, too.

As they have discarded the idea of a brighter economic future, the Government say that the deal deserves support because it delivers on the other pledges, particularly to take back control of our borders. Indeed, that is top of the Government’s “40 reasons to back the Brexit deal” on their website. But the expectations unleashed by the rhetoric of “taking back control” are a long way from the reality. The Government have had complete control of non-EU migration for the past eight years and, in every one of those years, net migration from outside the EU was higher than from within it. As last week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show, falling immigration from the EU, because people no longer wish to come, has simply been replaced by non-EU immigration hitting a 14-year high. On the central issue, the Home Secretary said this week that we are unlikely to see the Government’s plans before next Tuesday’s vote. The long-promised White Paper has been delayed beyond then and it is a disgrace.

On other issues, the Brexit blindfold is tightening, too. Let us take fishing, where the rhetoric of being an independent coastal state is not matched by the reality of the new deals that will need to be struck to ensure that we continue to have access to the European markets that buy 80% of the UK’s catch—another issue kicked down the road. However, the political declaration kicks so much down the road. It offers no certainty and it opens the door to a hard and damaging Brexit. A document that we were promised would be “detailed, precise and substantive” setting out clearly our future relationship with the EU is nothing of the sort. After two wasted years, we have no clear picture of our future relationship, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) pointed out. This is a blindfold Brexit. The Government are asking Parliament to take the country over a cliff with no clarity on the safety net, and we will not do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I know my hon. Friend’s long-standing commitment to this cause. We are committed to delivering value for money for the taxpayer by extending best procurement practice into the wider public sector. The Crown Commercial Service, which manages procurement of common goods and services for both central Government and the wider public sector, including the NHS, has already delivered more than £600 million of savings this year.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T5. The Minister chairs the cross-departmental homelessness reduction taskforce. Rough sleeping is a huge concern to my constituents in Sheffield, but the voluntary and statutory sector tells me that it is held back from tackling it by disproportionate cuts to local government. The recent Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government strategy provided no new money, so will his taskforce look at the issues so that we can actually do something?

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. The homelessness and rough sleeping implementation taskforce, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and on which I serve, supports the Government’s cross-Government strategy, which was announced earlier this summer. The taskforce is also monitoring the implementation of the new Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the proposals he raises directly.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

We are very clear that we need to have a link between the future relationship and the withdrawal agreement, but we are a country that honours our obligations. We believe in the rule of law, and therefore we believe in abiding by our legal obligations. However, my hon. Friend is right that the specific offer was made in the spirit of our desire to reach a deal with the European Union and on the basis, as the EU itself has said, that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Without a deal, the position changes.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Q9. The Prime Minister was right yesterday to be promoting electric vehicles, but she also needs to focus on electricity production. Investment in renewable energy has halved as a result of the Government’s policies. Instead of encouraging carbon-emitting technologies such as fracking, which is deeply unpopular in Sheffield and across the country, will she recognise that our future depends on serious investment in wind, solar, tidal and other renewables?

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that in the provision of energy across the United Kingdom we need to have a diverse range of supplies. That is why, yes, we do support, we have supported and we will continue to support renewable energy, but it is also why we are ensuring, for example, that we have a supply of energy in the future from nuclear and that we look across other forms of energy as well—for example, ensuring that we see an increase in the number of interconnectors with Europe. A diverse supply is what we need in our energy sector.