(2 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Government have a very good track record on animal welfare. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the fact that we were the first Government to introduce an animal sentience Bill. More Bills on animals were announced in the Queen’s Speech. We have a great track record on welfare and agricultural production in the UK; we are a proud nation of animal lovers, and I see no reason why that will not continue.
May I return to the issue of written parliamentary questions? I have frustrations not only about the timeliness of responses from the Department of Health and Social Care, but about the standard of those responses when we get them. For example, in relation to the immunocompromised, the clinically extremely vulnerable and the clinically vulnerable, I asked what equalities impact assessment the Department had made in relation to the Government’s living with covid strategy. The reply from the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), stated that she was
“unable to provide the information requested as it relates to the formulation of Government policy.”
That is why I asked the question! Will the Leader of the House pull his finger out and get Ministers to respond to written parliamentary questions not only in time, but at a much better standard than we are getting from the Department of Health and Social Care?
I have committed several times at the Dispatch Box to trying to improve the speed at which answers come from Departments. The hon. Gentleman will understand that the Department of Health and Social Care was smashed with questions when it was fighting a global pandemic; I think we can excuse the speed at which some responses came last year. We are now through that pandemic, thanks to the Department’s hard work, and I am sure we will see an improvement in the speed at which questions are answered. I cannot guarantee that the hon. Gentleman will always like the answers, though: there may be some political differences between us, and his not liking the answers may not be something to which I can deliver a solution.
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI pay tribute to Chris and the work of volunteers in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Sefton Council should be supporting their valuable work. Volunteers and community groups work incredibly hard to improve parks and green spaces, including the botanic gardens, Lord Street, Bedford park and Ainsdale village. Volunteers deserve to be celebrated for their work in the community, so I encourage my hon. Friend to apply for an Adjournment debate or a Backbench Business debate.
I think that the Leader of the House meant to say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) that we now have the highest tax burden in modern history, even after the Chancellor’s plan yesterday. People are really struggling. They are engulfed in a cost of living crisis, yet the Chancellor has written off £4.3 billion of covid loans to fraudsters and wasted £8.7 billion on duff personal protective equipment that was so useless it had to be burnt. So may we have a debate on fraud and waste in the public finances?
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Gentleman is a true champion for Dumbarton, and I enjoyed his history lesson. It is a demonstration that lots of places up and down our great British Isles are worthy of visiting and have a great tourism industry. We should celebrate that in this House and continue to draw attention to it, and he has contributed in that way this morning.
There are massive concerns across South Reddish at the proposal to merge GP services in South Reddish with the surgery in Heaton Norris, closing the site at South Reddish in the process. That will massively reduce accessibility. I am opposed to the changes, and a survey conducted by local campaigner Holly McCormack showed massive public opposition too. May we have a debate on GP service cuts and accessibility to GP services, so that these issues can be properly addressed on the Floor of the House?
The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that accessing GP services is a very important challenge that faces many of our constituents. He will be aware that lots of those policies in that part of the world are under the control of the Mayor of Manchester, who has some responsibility, too. The issue is worthy of debate and it would give the Government an opportunity to celebrate their record and acknowledge the investment that we are putting into the NHS.
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is a great campaigner for Southport and has secured millions of pounds for his constituents. It is right that he continues to hold the local council to account for how it spends that money. The potential for jobs, growth and investment is a key driver of the towns fund, which is a crucial part of the Government’s commitment to levelling up. I am sure his constituents will recognise that he is standing up for their best interests.
Last month, the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill containing powers to extend the line to Manchester was published and presented to this House. Hidden in it is a proposal to sever the Metrolink line to Ashton-under-Lyne, which runs through my constituency. The line would be mothballed and HS2 would run bus services instead. Can the Leader of the House indicate when Second Reading will be and can he, through his good offices, put in a request to the Transport Secretary to meet the three Tameside MPs to try to find a solution before then?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The business will be announced in the usual way and he will be updated at that moment. On 17 March, however, there is the opportunity for Transport questions; I am sure he will be present in the Chamber and able to ask the Secretary of State for Transport directly what his constituents want to hear.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberIn Somerset, they have ploughing matches, which are, as the hon. Gentleman says, things that people enjoy. Actually, a late cousin of mine was exceptionally good at winning those ploughing competitions, so I have a great deal of sympathy with what he is saying. Of course, taxation is a matter for the Chancellor, but I will ensure that his point is passed on to the Treasury.
Assuming that levelling up is still the Government’s policy and that the Leader of the House thinks it is unacceptable for children to be taught in what the national media has called
“Britain’s worst built school where pupils paddle in sewage and get sick from toxic fumes,”
may I ask him to use his good offices to get the Department for Education to look again at the problems at Russell Scott primary school, caused by a botched £2.7 million refurbishment by Carillion, which has required a further three quarters of a million pounds just to patch up and needs a further £5 million to put right the structural deficits? I received yesterday an appalling response from Baroness Barran saying that she recognises the condition needs at Russell Scott but there are no capital funding routes available at this time to support the school. That is not on, is it?
Hon. Members and right hon. Members will have heard me say before that I view it very much as my role as Leader of the House, when Members seek redress of grievance, to help them in that process. I do not know about this specific school and I would not wish to comment on it in detail. However, if the hon. Gentleman provides me with the details I will take the matter up with the Department and see whether I can get him a better answer, but I cannot promise to be able to do so.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberAs I have said before, I think it a matter of routine that Ministers should make themselves available to Members of this House when those Members have important constituency issues to raise. If the hon. Lady has had any difficulty in organising such a meeting, I encourage her to come to my office; I will do my best to help.
May I ask the Leader of the House when we will have an opportunity to scrutinise the allocation of levelling-up funding? Stockport Council put forward a superb bid for the refurbishment of the Edwardian Reddish baths, fire station and library buildings into a new employment start-up space, learning centre and community hub. It ticked all the boxes: civic pride, employment generation, skills, community. No funding was given. If the Prime Minister is reallocating funds from his disloyal MPs, can we have them?
There is £4.8 billion in the levelling-up fund to help to regenerate town centres and high streets, upgrade local transport and spend money on cultural and heritage assets, and there is £2.4 billion in 101 town deals, investing taxpayers’ money in local economies. It is important to help our towns and cities in restoring local pride across the country. There are always more applications than ability to fund. That is a good thing—a good competitive spirit—and it shows that towns and cities are full of pride for their efforts, successes and histories, but there is not unlimited taxpayer money.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI note that the hon. Lady mentions her constituency. I thought on this occasion she might be talking about the seemingly illiberal behaviour of Lib Dem councillors on Bath and North East Somerset Council and the serious accusation of their bullying another councillor who has left the Lib Dems because of the way he was treated. He has made serious accusations of racist bullying, and I thought the hon. Lady might want to apologise for the level of illiberalism going on in her own patch.
In 2015 the Government lost a Supreme Court case on clean air brought by ClientEarth. The Leader of the House will know that, as a result, a ministerial direction was placed on the 10 Greater Manchester authorities to bring air quality within safe levels for human health and instructing a category C clean air zone, which is about to go live in May. The Government gave Greater Manchester just £120 million to fund the retrofit, which is woefully inadequate for the task and, as a result, the direction is now harmful to many small businesses that are unable to comply. Will the Leader of the House use his good offices to urge the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to look again at his direction?
I say to the hon. Gentleman that £120 million is a very significant amount of money, and that Greater Manchester has a devolved settlement and a socialist Mayor who must live up to his responsibilities. That is what happens when these mayoralties are created.
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThat was a very subtle campaign moment from the right hon. Lady, but under the circumstances, it was entirely permissible and orderly. She is absolutely right about the scourge of county lines. It is a very serious problem, which the police have been tackling very effectively in the past couple of years. They have managed to break up quite a lot of county lines and, crucially, rescue children. I understand that some of the children involved in county lines are as young as five—certainly as young as seven—so this a serious concern. The police are involved and it is being tackled; people are being arrested and charged with drug offences, and it is part of the drugs strategy that was announced this week. I cannot promise her a specific debate, but the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), is in his place.
Very sadly, antisocial behaviour continues to blight parts of Denton and Reddish. It needs firm action, so can we have a statement on whether the powers and resources available to local authorities such as Stockport and Tameside, and to Greater Manchester police, are adequate to tackle the tearaways?
This issue is fundamental—I am sorry to hear of the antisocial behaviour in Denton and Reddish—because the police and local authorities have powers, but we all know that low-level antisocial behaviour can lead to more serious crime. I am beginning to sound a bit like a broken record on the 11,000 extra police, but I must mention that, because having police who are available and present is a very good way of stopping antisocial crime. Dealing with drugs and county lines—this goes to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—also reduces antisocial behaviour, because of the enormous quantity of crime that is drug-related, and particularly the theft that is responsible for the purchase of drugs. I believe that half of murders in this country are drug-related, so antisocial behaviour, drug crime and more serious crime are all interrelated. He is absolutely right to raise this matter in relation to crime week and I am sure that the House will discuss it on many occasions.
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is a very sad day, because, rather than taking this on the chin, admitting they made a mistake, which they seemed to be doing last week, and moving on constructively, the Government just want to give the very false impression that all MPs are for sale. That is simply not true and they know it.
Paid advocacy has been against the rules since 1695, so it is not a new rule, but, throughout the centuries, especially in the past three decades, the standards system has been strengthened—until the last fortnight. That consensus has been systematically shredded by this Government—whether it is the Prime Minister not enforcing the ministerial code on his Cabinet or the Leader of the House seeking to undermine the standards procedure—and this has to stop. It is not good enough. The public—our constituents—rightly expect and deserve better than this.
The previous Labour Government legislated to clean up politics after the Tory sleaze of the 1990s. I give as examples: the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000; the ministerial code; freedom of information; public registers of donations and national election spending; and the Electoral Commission, which this Government also seem to want to undermine. Those all came about because of the Labour Government, whereas in 2018, when the independent and external Committee on Standards in Public Life, set up to deal with the previous Tory scandal, recommended that the MPs’ code of conduct should be updated, the Tory Government ignored it. The report said:
“MPs should not accept any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant, for example, advising on parliamentary affairs or on how to influence Parliament and its members. MPs should never accept any payment or offers of employment to act as political or parliamentary consultants or advisers.”
It could not be clearer, and that is what our motion today sets out to achieve. I hope that the Government will be supporting this, because, as I have said and I will say it again, no MP should be for hire. This is not about outside interests per se, because the vast majority of Members work tirelessly to represent their constituents and are not seeking to privately profit from that work. Outside interests are often a way for MPs to connect with the world outside of this place—a point that has been made by many MPs and others.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important point. It should not take a report of the Committee on Standards to state the blindingly obvious to Members of this House. If they are a full-time Member of Parliament, they do not have the time outside of their constituency affairs, outside of their parliamentary duties in this House, to do other paid work. Is not that just clearly obvious to all except a few Members who are on the take?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that up, because, of course, that is one thing that my right hon. and learned Friend, the Leader of the Opposition, stated clearly in his speech yesterday. He said that the default setting should be that there are no second jobs. He did say that, in certain professional circumstances, there may need to be exceptions, but that should be up to the independent body to determine, not us. The way that the Government have behaved over the events of the past few weeks, including the case of Owen Paterson, former MP for North Shropshire, have shown us that the rules are obviously not strong enough. It seems to be too easy for the Government to try to rip them up when they fancy. They have sought to weaken and undermine the rules around standards, whereas our intention with our motion is simple: we want to strengthen standards and we want to restore the public’s trust in Parliament and this is the necessary next step.
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt is obviously important that planning decisions are taken efficiently and that matters of national importance come to a national level. I have to say that 4,000 football pitches sounds like a very large area. I do not know very much about football, but I know that a football pitch is not an entirely small space. It cannot be that dissimilar to 4,000 cricket pitches. I note my right hon. Friend’s concern, and he is right to raise it in this House. The opportunity to discuss it will probably be best provided through an Adjournment debate to ensure that this specific issue can be raised and that a Minister of the Crown can be held to account.
Earlier this year, I sky-dived for Florence, a beautiful seven-year-old girl from Dukinfield who sadly has a life-limiting degenerative condition called GM1. This Sunday, I will be zip-wiring for her at the same place that the right hon. Gentleman visited in north Wales recently. Can we have a debate on GM1, and can I have some tips for Sunday?
I sincerely congratulate the hon. Gentleman on what he is doing. I think all of us in this House find the greatest pride when we campaign on issues such as these for people like Florence and try to help them when they have a terrible disease. I am probably not allowed to say this, but I wish him every success in his campaign to get a treatment for GM1 and to get the appropriate support from the Department of Health and Social Care. As regards going down a zip wire, it is enormously exciting. It really is the most exhilarating thing to do. I would say to him: just lie back and enjoy it. They run it extraordinarily well and it is very safe.