Extreme Heat Preparedness

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Obviously, that is not within my ministerial remit but, as far as I can see, they are all fine, upstanding people who take climate change seriously. I would be happy to serve under any of them, particularly given that I have been a proponent of the hydrogen economy for more than 20 years. Whoever becomes leader, I hope they will drive forward that aspect of our climate change work.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

With forest fires across Europe, and with temperatures set to exceed 40° for the first time, what more evidence do we need that the climate emergency is here? Yet the Minister’s answers suggest that he and his Government are still in denial about the very real emergency we face. This Government are still building new homes that are prone to overheating and they are still not investing in a proper retrofit strategy. When will this Government take climate change seriously?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is living in an alternative universe, as this is the Government who legislated for net zero and who fought tooth and nail at COP26. How short memories are about what we saw at that global conference in Glasgow, where my right hon. Friend the COP26 President fought tooth and nail with some of the world’s biggest polluters to keep 1.5° alive. When we have these debates in the Chamber, I wish at least some credit were given for the work that has been done, at the same time as challenging us on the work we are doing.

IOPC Report on Metropolitan Police Officers' Conduct: Charing Cross Police Station

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

That is our intention.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The report not only makes for incredibly uncomfortable and difficult reading, but destroys public confidence. This is not just about the Met. Alongside the Government’s failure in the criminal justice system, where victims are let down and rape prosecutions have fallen to just 1.3%, how can the Minister expect victims of serious sexual assault and rape across the country to come forward? What will he do about that?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have previously expressed sincere regret for the results in the criminal justice system on rape. I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that some of our actions—not least Operation Soteria, which is showing good signs of making progress in this area—will give people more confidence in getting a result. However, the incidence of reported rape in this country continues to rise as more and more people come forward to report that appalling crime, and we must ensure that they are confident of getting justice through the criminal justice system. That is what the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and I are dedicated to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

That case obviously caused consternation not just in the House but across the country, and Law Officers will be looking carefully at its implications. I am more than happy to consider the issues raised by my hon. Friend during the passage of the victims Bill, not least because we want to ensure that every victim of crime in this country not only gets justice, but sees that justice is done.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

For six years the Government have promised a victims Bill. Indeed, five Secretaries of State have promised that that will be their priority—will this be the one, Mr Speaker?—but meanwhile, victims are left waiting and traumatised, their rights ignored. I recently spoke to the father of a young girl who reported sexual assault two years ago. Delay after delay has meant that the family have been left not knowing when their case will be heard, with no explanation, poor communication, and the young girl having to relive her trauma. We now learn that one-third of victims would not report a future crime because of past experience. Labour has a victims Bill ready to go. Will the Minister work with us to bring that in? If not, will he tell that young girl why the Government continue to treat her as an afterthought?

[Kit Malthouse]

I think that is a deeply unfair characterisation of the work to which all Ministers, and indeed the professional public servants who are involved in victim and witness care across the country, including police officers, devote themselves every day. Having said that, we recognise that many victims are dissatisfied with the support they get, and they do not necessarily see the victims’ charter writ large in their experience of the criminal justice system. As I said, we will soon be bringing forward legislation to enshrine their rights in law, and a consultation on that matter will be issued in the coming days.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Henriett Szucs and Jan Mustafa were brutally murdered, and their bodies were found in the freezer of a known violent sex offender. Their deaths were avoidable, had it not been for a catalogue of failures within the justice system—failures that allowed this man the freedom to repeatedly commit horrifying crimes—and the collapse in victim safeguarding. Two women each week are murdered by a current or former partner, and apologies simply are not enough. I do not see the necessary action being taken to prevent the next Henriett or Jan. Labour has a ready-to-go plan, including a review of domestic violence and homicides; new progress indicators, as we have in Wales; more sustainable funding; and better access to specialist support services. The Minister has the power to stop violence against women being an afterthought in the justice system, so will he work with us to achieve it?

[Kit Malthouse]

I obviously reject the assertion that violence against women—or, indeed, anybody—is an afterthought for this Government. I do not think anybody could look at what we have done over the past two years and think that we have done anything other than throw our entire weight behind the fight against violence. Specifically, the hon. Lady will have noted that one of the five key priorities set by the National Policing Board for the whole of the criminal justice system, including the police, has been the suppression and reduction of murder, a third of which are domestic. She will be interested to know that I am now entering the second round of homicide murder roundtables with police forces across the country and looking at their murder prevention strategies to ensure that they get ahead of exactly the kind of heinous crime that she points to. We know that the perpetrators of murder in this country have, on average, seven previous offences. That means that we should be able, as she rightly says, to identify them before they commit that catastrophic and appalling act, and that is exactly what we are trying to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

The first duty of any Government is to protect and deliver justice, but justice for victims of violence against women and girls is becoming ever more distant. Rape convictions have fallen by more than 50% in the last two years—a record low, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Worse still, more and more victims are dropping out of the process altogether. The Government are due to release a violence against women and girls strategy, but Labour’s is ready to go and includes: a fast-track system; a dedicated Minister for survivors of sexual violence; and a survivors’ support package, which would aid victims before, during and after the process. Will the Minister commit to taking these proposals forward now? If not, can he explain to victims why this Government choose further delay and inaction?

[Kit Malthouse]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her appointment, but I am afraid that I reject her rebuke as to inaction. With my other hat on at the Home Office, I have been working very hard over the last two years to address some of these issues, in particular, for example, by setting murder as one of the key national priorities; a third of all murders are domestic. In order to prevent murders, the police and others have to reach back into the crime types that result in that catastrophe, not least domestic violence and abuse. There is an enormous amount of work going on.

The hon. Lady should not believe that the fact that we have not yet published our rape review—I hope to publish it shortly—means that work has not been under way. For her and other Members’ information, I chair an action group—a taskforce—that brings together the police, the CPS and other partners across Government to focus on this issue, and to see if we can drive better outcomes for victims and better performance in the courts; there is an enormous amount of work going on. Having said that, this issue is not one on which there should be a political divide. If there are good lessons to be learned from the Opposition or, frankly, from around the world, we would be foolish not to have a look at them.

Housing

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Kit Malthouse

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

That was a remarkable example of a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge and conviction about what my hon. Friend rightly says should be not only the Government’s top domestic priority but the entire country’s primary moral mission: to build the homes that the next generation need and which are currently denied to them.

It is unusual for me to hear strains of my own speeches read back to me. I know that my hon. Friend has not been to listen to many of my speeches, but what he said resonates strongly with me: many of the themes he laid out in his preamble and diagnosis I am myself going around the country promoting—not least the dysfunctionality of the house building market. The one element that he omitted, but that I am sure he is aware of, is that the situation is not helped by the fact that in the crash of 2007-08, 50% of all small house builders were wiped out—removed from the market—having produced, as my hon. Friend said, more than half of all new homes. That proportion has now dropped to about a third, I think.

Both in coalition and since, the Government have done their best to try to push output up from a low of 124,000 in 2012 to 222,000 last year. The forward indicators for next year are looking pretty good as well.

[Anna McMorrin]

Why did the Government scrap the requirement for homes to be carbon neutral, when that would go a long way towards helping with living costs and budgets, as well as meeting climate targets?

[Kit Malthouse]

I totally acknowledge the role that high environmental standards have to play in a sense of social justice about housing. I went to a factory run by Accord Housing, which produces 1,000 modular homes a year. So good are the environmental standards in those homes that they have lower arrears because people can afford to heat them. That is definitely something on which I want to focus.

I want to address some of the questions that my hon. Friend raised. He is right that we need to do something about the way in which the house building market functions at the moment, and my job is to wander around being disruptive, supporting new entrants and players to create the competitive landscape that he is looking for—competing on quality and type; being disruptive on technology and encouraging modern methods of construction, including off-site manufacture and new techniques, so that new entrants find it easier to overcome the barriers to entry that he mentioned; and being disruptive on finance.

My hon. Friend is a little negative about Help to Buy, but I ask him to take care. Many tens of thousands of young people have accessed homes for the first time when the market was denied to them before, because of a Government-backed effective bank of mum and dad. While there will be assessments of that scheme, there is no indication at the moment that it has pushed up prices.