Greensill Capital
Wes Streeting Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Paul Scully
The Chancellor has published his text messages and there is a review that, rather than hiding, will go into the detail. As I said, all the parties involved have pledged their commitment to comply with that investigation, which will report back at the end of June.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The simple fact is that, again and again, Members from all parts of the House pleaded with the Chancellor to meet us to hear the plight of millions of people who were excluded from any Government support, and the Chancellor would never find the time for such a meeting; but a few texts from dodgy Dave, and Greensill has got 10 meetings and a ream of correspondence with senior Treasury officials—the type of access that most businesses in this country could only dream of. So I ask the Minister why it was that, in correspondence between Greensill and a senior Treasury official, they put in words:
“Whilst not using this precise phrasing, we have crafted a formulation both in substance and form which provides an even stronger political position.”
Why is a private company advising Treasury officials about political positioning; and does not this show that, despite his protestations, it is ludicrous that the Business Minister is here, not the Chancellor? If the Chancellor had nothing to fear, he would have nothing to hide and he would be here to answer the questions.
Paul Scully
I am afraid that in Government we have to deal with details, and that includes asking the right question in the first place. If a question is asked about a BEIS responsibility, I think it is fair and reasonable that a BEIS Minister should come here and answer it. However, I come back to the point that the hon. Gentleman can come up with all he likes about process, but what businesses want are outcomes, and that means capital flowing through those businesses. The outcome in this situation was that the Chancellor rejected such a proposal, but the detail that the hon. Gentleman talks about will be investigated by Nigel Boardman, and that review will be published by the end of June.
Uber: Supreme Court Ruling
Wes Streeting Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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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
Paul Scully
My hon. Friend raises a really good point. It is important that no employer seeks to wriggle out of its responsibilities, and retention is a sensible approach for any responsible employer.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I know that these issues are close to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker, as a constituency neighbour of mine, so it is good to see you in the Chair.
Does not the Minister understand that these issues cannot just be left to the courts and that, in this David versus Goliath battle with big multinational companies that are exploiting workers, avoiding tax and flouting safety rules, people need to see the Government on their side? With that in mind, will the Government finally legislate to give gig economy workers the protection they deserve? Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), is not it finally time to give taxi drivers and private hire drivers the support they desperately need as a result of the impact that the pandemic has had on the pound in their pockets?
Paul Scully
On the coronavirus support, as I have said, any further support beyond the self-employment income schemes, the grant schemes and the discretionary grant schemes will be outlined in the Budget by the Chancellor. However, the Government have already taken a number of commitments through, including extending the right for a written statement of core terms of employment for all workers; quadrupling the maximum fine for employers who treat their workers badly; and closing a loophole that sees agency workers employed on cheaper rates than permanent workers. There are a number of areas—I will not go on, Madam Deputy Speaker—where we have progressed, but there is plenty more to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wes Streeting Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick
As my hon. Friend notes, the £3.6 billion towns fund is being delivered in England with great success. There is, however, nothing to prevent the Welsh Government from investing in the same way in towns such as the one that he represents across Wales. At the latest spending review, the Welsh Government received an additional £1.3 billion for the next financial year through the Barnett formula and £12 million through changes in my Department’s overall settlement. I strongly encourage him to hold the Welsh Government to account and ensure that they invest more in communities such as the one that he serves.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab) [V]
Robert Jenrick
I do not think my right hon. Friend needs any reminding; he of course was the Chancellor who gave us the business rates holiday that has supported hundreds of thousands of businesses on every high street across the country. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait till the Budget next week, where the Chancellor will be setting out how he intends to continue supporting businesses and jobs in all parts of the United Kingdom over the course of the year.
Holocaust Memorial Day 2021
Wes Streeting Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab) [V]
It is a privilege to take part in such an important debate. I want to begin by particularly congratulating the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on the brilliant job it has done in marking Holocaust Memorial Day in these most extraordinary circumstances, as well as communities up and down the country that, like mine in the London Borough of Redbridge, have organised digital events—virtual events—so that people could still come together, albeit in a way that was different from usual.
The last time I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau was just prior to the 2019 general election, with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and it was, as visits to Auschwitz always are, deeply moving and deeply unnerving. In particular, going with groups of children from my own constituency, through the Holocaust Educational Trust, was a particularly powerful experience because of the responsibility that we bear, as current and future generations, to bear witness to the testimony of holocaust survivors, who are, sadly, fewer in number with every passing year.
One of the things that I find most troubling about the lessons of the holocaust—the lessons from Auschwitz and, in particular, from visiting Auschwitz just before the 2019 general election—is that it is very easy to look at the holocaust and the Nazi persecution and to ask, with confusion, bewilderment and a total lack of understanding in many respects, how it was that these uniquely evil people, the Nazis, could perpetrate such appalling acts of genocide, but the uncomfortable truth is that the Nazis were not extraordinary people. They were ordinary people capable of acts of extraordinary evil. That is the fundamental truth of the holocaust, and why we must always guard against antisemitism in our society.
It is very easy to condemn the antisemites of the world where they bear the swastika or march through the streets of Charlottesville, but it is much less comfortable confronting antisemitism among the people we know in our communities, perhaps even in our families or, indeed, in our political parties. So if the words “Never again” are really truly to mean something, being the light in the darkness is not just about our country’s responsibility on the global stage to tackle ongoing acts of genocide and atrocities such as those being perpetrated by China; it is also our everyday responsibility as citizens and Members of Parliament to tackle antisemitism under our very noses.
Westferry Printworks Development
Wes Streeting Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Robert Jenrick
I will just make some more progress, then I will come back to the hon. Lady.
In July 2018, Westferry Developments submitted a planning application for a large development comprising 1,500 homes, including affordable homes, shops and office space. The case was with Tower Hamlets Council for eight months, and over that period, despite having five determination meetings arranged, it failed to make a decision. It is disappointing that the council failed to meet its statutory requirements, but it is not surprising. In the past five years, 30 planning applications have been decided at appeal because of non-determination by the council.
The council had considerable time to process the application. Indeed, a meeting of the strategic development committee was cancelled in January 2019 due to lack of business. Is it fair to say that there is a lack of business when we are in a housing crisis and the council has applications such as this before it? Does the Labour party believe that is fair? In our system of law, justice delayed is justice denied, and that is what Tower Hamlets Council was trying to do here.
Robert Jenrick
I will in a moment.
This, I remind the House, is the council that has the highest housing deficit in England, according to the housing delivery test. Given Tower Hamlets’ failure to determine the case within the prescribed period, on 26 March, the developer exercised their right to appeal to the Planning Inspectorate and, after advice, my predecessor—not me, as has been said on many occasions by many individuals, including the hon. Member for Croydon North—took the decision to recover the appeal. All the parties were notified about this in a letter dated 10 April 2019.
So before I give way to hon. Members, let us be clear. I did not call in this application; I was not the Secretary of State. The application was not called in; it came to the Department because of the failure of Tower Hamlets Council. Here we have a council, described by one of my predecessors as a “rotten borough”, failing time and again to make decisions and get houses built and a Mayor of London with a dire record on housing leaving us to step in and take the tough decisions that they refuse to make.
Wes Streeting
I wondered how long it would be before we got on to the deflections on to Tower Hamlets Council and the Mayor of London, but it is a fact, is it not, that the leader of the Conservative group on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Councillor Andrew Wood, resigned from the Conservative party, not citing the Mayor of London or Labour Tower Hamlets Council, but citing the actions of the Conservative party and this decision, which he described as
“so shocking I knew immediately that I had to resign.”
Is that not a fact?
Robert Jenrick
It is not a deflection to talk about Tower Hamlets Council because in all likelihood this decision would never have been made by the Secretary of State if Tower Hamlets Council had met its statutory obligations and taken the decision. With respect to the councillor the hon. Gentleman mentions, who I do not know but with whom I have no issue, he was standing up for the concerns of his local residents. I return to the point that I made earlier that in my job it is essential to make—[Interruption.]
Robert Jenrick
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think they actually want to hear an explanation.
We only have to look to London, which faces some of the most acute housing pressures in the whole country, to see examples of what a lack of leadership and ambition means on the ground. Under the current Mayor of London, housing delivery has averaged just 37,000 a year, falling short of the existing London plan and well below the Mayor’s own assessment of housing need. The average price of a new build home in London has gone up by 12 times average earnings. The need for bold action was clear earlier this year, when I was left with no option but to directly intervene in the Mayor’s London plan. I do not apologise for doing that, for continuing to push for homes to be built in our capital city, as across the country, to meet our ambition as a Government to build 300,000 homes a year and to give young people, families and the most vulnerable people in our society the opportunity and security that previous generations enjoyed.
In that endeavour, it is right that we seek to make the most of existing sites, particularly in urban areas, with jobs, transport links and other amenities close by— brownfield sites such as the one we are discussing today. That is why we as a Government and I as Secretary of State have consistently taken pro-regeneration decisions, in order to turn those sites into homes and into employment opportunities. This development would have done that, but every time a do-nothing Labour council and a do-nothing Labour Mayor plays politics with homes and jobs it is ultimately people who miss out. They miss out on homes and they miss out on jobs. That matters, because as we come out of covid and we are trying to recover our economy, we should be thinking about the brickies and the plumbers, the van drivers, the labourers—the people whose jobs and livelihoods depend on these projects. We will get building. We will build ourselves out of this crisis and create the jobs that we need in this country.
I hope that the publication of these documents and my remarks today will go some way to putting an end to the innuendos and false accusations from the hon. Member for Croydon North. He might just address the big issues, upon which he has been conspicuously silent since taking office. His predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), used to raise rough sleeping, how we were responding to covid, and pressures on local council finances. He used to be constructive. He also used to probe and hold the Government to account. I cannot say the same for the hon. Member for Croydon North. He lives on his Twitter account, and he lives for smears and innuendos, not substance. He might speak to substance, not just party politics.
Robert Jenrick
I will not; I am closing now.
This Government are determined to build the homes the country needs. We are determined to end rough sleeping, as the House will see today from the announcement of more than £100 million of funding to help local councils to provide better quality accommodation for the 15,000 rough sleepers that we have helped off the streets and protected from covid as a result of the pandemic. We will continue to help renters by reforming their rights and ensuring that they weather the economic storms to come as a result of the pandemic. We will promote beautiful, well-designed new communities, working with the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission to radically change the way in which we consider our planning system.
We will speed up and reform the planning system to get those homes built, to ensure that infrastructure is laid at pace and that developers, housing associations, councils and everyone who cares about the future of this country and the homes that people deserve to live in can move forward with confidence and certainty. And we will invest in more affordable homes through the largest affordable homes programme this country has seen in a decade, building hundreds of thousands of new homes of all types and tenures in all parts of the country, so that families in Tower Hamlets, in London and elsewhere in this country can live with dignity and security and pursue their dreams and the opportunity, which many of us in the House enjoy, to have a high-quality home of their own. That is what the British people expect, and that is what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I intend to deliver.
David Linden
This is the very point. The shadow Secretary of State has hit the nail on the head, because that was wrong. The Secretary of State should have run for the hills, never touched the issue ever again and flagged the conflict of interest to his departmental officials.
Wes Streeting
I wanted to put this question to the Secretary of State, who said he did not know that he would be seated next to Mr Desmond. He said that at the Dispatch Box and I will take him at his word. Are we seriously meant to believe, however, that Mr Desmond did not know that he was going to be sat next to the Secretary of State? Having talked to people I know who worked in professional fundraising and political fundraising, the question of cash for access is crucial. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Conservative party should publish all correspondence with Mr Desmond and his associates about the booking of the table at the dinner, and Mr Desmond’s expectations as to whether he knew that he would be sat with the Secretary of State?
David Linden
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Many of us, for very understandable reasons because of what is in “Erskine May” and the Standing Orders of this House, are trying very hard to stick to the rules in here, but the reality is that members of the public watching this debate on TV or reading it in Hansard will find it rather strange that a Conservative party fundraiser was organised and that the Secretary of State, who has a quasi-judicial role in the planning process, happened to be sat next to Mr Desmond.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) on his excellent maiden speech. He will understand when I say I dearly wish he had not been here to deliver it; Paula was a great friend and colleague to so many of us on the Labour Benches, remains a great friend, and we hope will be a colleague again in the future. The hon. Gentleman made a wonderful and personal maiden speech which was enjoyed by Members on both sides of the House.
Turning to the matter at hand, let us begin with the facts. The Secretary of State has accepted that his decision to approve the Westferry Printworks plan was unlawful due to apparent bias. That in itself is a serious issue. The second fact is that the Secretary of State’s decision went against the advice of his own Department’s planning inspector, who had recommended permission be refused; that is a fact, and it is not in dispute. During the process, the developer reduced the percentage of affordable housing in the proposed development; again, that is a fact. The timing of the Secretary of State’s decision was such that it was made the day before a new community infrastructure charging schedule was introduced in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets; again, that is a fact.
It is also a fact, and not disputed, that the Secretary of State attended a Conservative party fundraising dinner where he was seated next to Richard Desmond, the developer behind the scheme. It seems that we are expected to believe that that was a coincidence. I find it hard to believe that the fundraising department of the Conservative party—which is far too successful in my opinion—is so unprofessional that table plans were not prepared in advance, that briefing was not prepared for attendees about who was on their table, and that factors such as the political sensibility of the guests and the Ministers they were dining with would not have been taken into account. As I have said, I perfectly accept the Secretary of State’s account that he did not know Mr Desmond would be at the table until he arrived. What I would like to know, though, is whether Mr Desmond knew he would be sitting with the Secretary of State; whether he was given any expectation that he would be seated there; and whether he made any request to be seated there. Furthermore, on the matter of the Secretary of State’s judgment, why, when he saw Mr Desmond there, did he not run a million miles?
The second thing we are expected to believe is that the Secretary of State could not discuss the development and did not discuss it. In fact, the Secretary of State is quoted as saying:
“I advised the applicant that I was not able to discuss it.”
It has since transpired, as the facts have been dragged out of the Secretary of State, that he was shown a promotional video, and that Mr Desmond’s account, as we have already heard from the shadow Secretary of State, is rather different:
“What I did was I showed him the video”,
Mr Desmond said. He had a video of the site. He said the Secretary of State “got the gist” and thanked him with no protestations. That was what was relayed to The Sunday Times by Mr Desmond.
We are also expected to believe that the Secretary of State is committed to transparency, which is why he is producing almost all the documents—doing so, conveniently, following this debate, so that we cannot scrutinise and debate and ask him further questions now.
We are also led to believe that this is all about the Mayor of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, when the fact is that the only resignation we have seen on this matter so far has been that of the leader of the Conservative group in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, who says that the police should be called in to investigate the judgments applied in this case. [Interruption.] I did not say the police should be called in; he did.
The reason why this issue is so serious is twofold. First, it is about the integrity of the planning system. Secondly, in December, for the first time in 32 years, the people of this country gave the Conservative party a significant majority and, looking at this, they will be concerned that straight away the Conservatives are back to their old tricks: one rule for them and one rule for someone else—scrap the Department for International Development and do not pay public sector workers fairly. On this particular issue, the question of cash for access and the influence of donations is a reminder of the Tory sleaze of the 1990s. I deeply hope we have not gone back to those days.