Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

May I begin by saying that I shall heed the advice that is often given by Mr Speaker about how we behave in the Chamber and, indeed, about our actions? Today has been a perfect example of point scoring—that is exactly what has been going on.

Let me begin in a non-partisan way. Since being elected as an executive member of the parliamentary Labour party, I have often objected to the association of Ministers, Prime Ministers and others with News International and other news outlets. After being elected to the PLP committee eight years ago, I raised that issue with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I found it obscene that he travelled halfway around the world to court Rupert Murdoch and gain his support. I do not think that that should be allowed in any democracy, and I voiced concerns in the PLP on behalf of a number of people whom I represented who felt the same way.

My very good friend the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was perhaps not as exercised as Tony Blair about going around the world and courting Rupert Murdoch’s support, but he had an opportunity when he was in office to introduce legislation that could have stopped at a stroke some of News International’s behaviour. From that point of view, I feel that I am exonerated, given the opinions that I expressed at the time. I genuinely believe that people outside are angry—people who do not have access to all the stuff about what he or she said and when and how they said it, and so on. They want to know that their politicians have the highest integrity and are not intimidated, bullied or bought by support. That is what they want to know, and that is the important thing about today.

The Secretary of State has an ally in the Scottish First Minister, who is dancing around the smoke signals in Scotland and is being equally evasive about his relationship with Rupert Murdoch. Hopefully, that will come out in the inquiry today, but we will have to see how it pans out. The Secretary of State has attended a number of meetings of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, of which I am a member, and I have the highest respect for him. However, because this whole thing has blown up, in future I would have difficulty taking seriously his judgment or his integrity. Conservative Back Benchers can speak for themselves, but I suggest that Labour members of the Committee would feel the same way.

We have heard recorded evidence or non-evidence about what happened, but we have not heard—perhaps my party is as guilty as anyone else—about the cosy dinners and meetings that take place at taxpayer-funded residences and are not recorded. We do not know what happened, what was said or what was agreed. That has got to stop too, because it does not help the public to understand exactly how the system works. Before the Conservatives came to power, their manifesto said that the party would clean up the image of politics and politicians. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us what the coalition, or the Conservative Government, have done to clean up that image. Certainly in correspondence that I receive people say that nothing has changed, or in fact that things have got worse.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Whitsun Recess

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is a great honour to speak in this Adjournment debate before the recess. Hon. Members should welcome the fact that I do not intend to speak for well over half an hour, so that everybody can participate in the debate and then go out to enjoy the sunshine and, more importantly, return to our constituencies to carry on the work that we do on a daily basis for our constituents.

I will talk about an issue in my constituency that I believe has an impact on other Members: the threat to the green belt in Broxtowe. I will address two direct threats to the green belt in Broxtowe. The first is an uncontroversial issue in that all political parties in Broxtowe are in agreement about it. We are united in our opposition to an application by UK Coal for an open-cast mine on a piece of land between Cossall and Trowell called Shortwood. It is a 325-acre site, and this is the third time that UK Coal has made an application to Nottinghamshire county council in respect of it. We have already held one public meeting, and there will be another one on Friday.

There is no merit whatever in the application that UK Coal has made. It would undoubtedly lead to an excess of dust and noise and the loss of an amenity that is much loved by many of my constituents. Perhaps the greatest irony of the application is that 1.5 million tonnes of coal and clay would be removed from the site and put into lorries. There would be eight heavy goods vehicle movements every hour along an already overly congested road, up to the equally congested Nuthall roundabout and on to the M1. The coal and clay would then be driven all the way back down the M1 to the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station. It is the stuff of madness that in this day and age we are still extracting coal in that way and burning it in power stations. We should now have alternatives up and running.

The second most important threat to the green belt in Broxtowe, which I believe also affects other areas, is housing development. Many hon. Members should be greatly concerned about it. What I will say is, in effect, an open letter to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. In a nutshell, we have a serious problem in Broxtowe and other boroughs in Nottinghamshire and, I suspect, across the land. Councils have adopted and accepted the targets that were laid down under the last Administration’s old—they should be old—regional spatial strategies. That means that they have no alternative but to build on our green belt.

Only last week Broxtowe borough council voted on and accepted, with only the Conservatives dissenting, a top-down housing target of 6,150 houses being built in a 16-year period or so, as set down under the last Administration’s structures. We have very little green-belt land left in Broxtowe, because we have built on it over the years. We are now the most densely populated borough in the whole of Nottinghamshire, and arguably in the whole east midlands. Hon. Members do not need me to remind them that the whole purpose of green-belt land is to prevent urban sprawl and protect communities so that they stay just that—identifiable communities that people love and enjoy, for all the reasons that one can imagine.

The other great benefit of green-belt land, as well as its preventing the coalescence of communities, preventing sprawl and retaining identities, is that it provides green, open spaces that people can love and enjoy in many ways. They walk their dogs there, take their children there and so on. We do not have much of it in Broxtowe, which has become overdeveloped. Now we have the housing target, and we have only brownfield land or green-belt land to build on, so we face the real threat of yet more of our green belt being lost.

The situation flies in the face of the national planning policy framework that the Government announced at the end of March, and of the statements of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and various other Ministers including the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister. They have made it crystal clear that green-belt land should not be developed on save in exceptional or very special circumstances, and then only after robust public consultation. There is a complete disconnect between what the Government are rightly saying—they could not say it in clearer or firmer tones—and what some councils are actually doing in the real world.

There is an argument about the amount of brownfield land that is available in Broxtowe, but up to 2,000 homes are to be built on our green-belt land. I believe that the majority of people in Broxtowe are against that. However, our Labour and Liberal Democrat council has steamed ahead in the face of local people’s views and without proper consultation. Instead of adopting Labour’s admirable policy of brownfield sites first and green-belt land afterwards, Broxtowe council is doing the reverse. The very first site that has been put forward for development—it is almost a done deal—is a place called Field farm in Stapleford. That piece of land separates Stapleford from Trowell, so it is doing its job and providing a buffer to prevent urban sprawl. It is also a place that people love very much. They go there to enjoy the wildlife and so on.

An application has gone in for 450 homes on that land, and the deep irony is that the two local councillors—Labour and Liberal Democrat—not only failed to vote against the plans that have made the land ripe for development, but spoke in favour of them last week. That flew in the face of the people whom they are meant to represent. Many people have found it ironic that it has been the Tories, and a Conservative MP, who have spoken out in defence of that green-belt land.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is speaking very well. I am an east midlands MP, as is she. She will recognise that a report published earlier this week suggested that the east midlands faces a potential housing crisis, and that in the next 20 years or so we will probably need 22,000 extra houses. I recognise her argument entirely, but those houses will have to go somewhere.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and understand his point. Unfortunately, when we run out of land on which we can build houses, we have to look elsewhere. This is not about nimbyism; it is about the fact that my constituency only has enough brownfield land for about 3,000 houses. The target has been accepted, and the only other place to build is on the green belt. He mentions homelessness, and it is a valid point, but the number of people on the waiting list in Broxtowe is 2,254. As he will understand, that list often indicates the level of interest in finding houses that the council may have available. The number of homeless people recorded in my constituency is probably fewer than 10, if that.

I do not want to trouble the House any longer, but people in my constituency are concerned that their voices will yet again not be heard. Only this week, I was publicly admonished by the planning officer in an e-mail that was unfortunately copied to Labour councillors and my predecessor. The e-mail told me that my advice to my constituents was in some way inaccurate, but it was not at all. I have come to this place to achieve a number of things, but perhaps most importantly I am here to represent my constituents, whether they voted for me or not. I intend to continue to do that. In so doing, I speak out in favour of protecting the green belt in my constituency, whether from open-cast mining or from a housing target that my borough council did not have to accept.

I hope the Deputy Leader of the House will forgive me if I am not here at the end of the debate. I will be quiet very soon, so that others can speak. I hope that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will make the Government’s policy quite clear yet again. I hope he will say that local authorities are under a duty to determine their own housing targets and make their own plans, and to protect their green belt from development at almost all costs.

Business of the House

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My party plans to overtake the population of pandas before the next election—[Interruption.] At the next election. In view of the fertility of pandas, that may not be a very high hurdle, but we do plan to do better than them.

As for the House twiddling its thumbs, I think that the hon. Lady demeans the debates that I have announced in the forthcoming week. There is a debate on Europe. What can be more topical than that? There is the Opposition-day debate. Are they going to choose something that is of no consequence? I am amazed that she has repeated the accusation that we heard last week. The fact is we have managed the business in the House of Commons much better than the outgoing Government. We have managed to scrutinise the Government’s legislative programme with adequate time. That programme is now in another place and we will deal with the Lords amendments in due course.

I am amazed that the hon. Lady raised the issue of the debate and vote on Tuesday. We provided a debate in Government time after the autumn statement. That is something that the previous Labour Government did not always do. We had the pre-Budget report, and we did not always get a debate in Government time. Having provided a debate in Government time, the Labour party then brought it to a premature conclusion by moving that it should stop before we reached 10 o’clock. It then complained that we did not have enough time to debate the motion. A number of Labour MPs who took part in the debate then solemnly went through the Division Lobbies to assert that they had done no such thing; that they had not considered the economy. At a time when we are trying to reconnect the House of Commons with the public, I wonder whether the sort of antics that the Labour party got up to on Tuesday really advanced our cause.

On benefits for pensioners, if the hon. Lady looks at the coalition agreement, she will see clear commitments on benefits to pensioners on bus passes and other issues and that remains the policy of the coalition Government.

I am amazed that the hon. Lady chose to raise the subject of lobbying. For 13 years, the Labour Government did nothing about lobbying. They ignored the recommendations of the Public Administration Select Committee, which reported in 2009. By contrast, we are actually doing something about lobbying. We will produce our consultation paper within the next few weeks, proposing a statutory register of lobbyists, which is something that the Labour Government consistently failed to do. On the question of boasting, I have to say that in the previous Parliament, there were ex-Labour Ministers who were boasting, while they were still Members of Parliament, of the influence that they had on Government.

Finally, on Europe, I gently remind the hon. Lady that when we had the vote on the referendum, her party was split as were all three parties. On the Government Benches, we are delighted that the person representing this country in Europe today and tomorrow is the Prime Minister and not the Leader of the Opposition.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I do not wish to fall out with Labour Members who represent Leicester constituencies but it is a long-standing fact that the queen of the east midlands is Nottingham.

There was good news today for the city of Nottingham, and that is good news for my constituency, which forms part of Greater Nottingham. Will the Leader of the House be so good as to find time for us to discuss cities and today’s good news for all the core cities?

Business of the House

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

On the first point, the hon. Lady is quite right to say that, because the Session is longer than it would normally be, there are implications for days allocated to private Members’ Bills, Opposition days and Back-Bench business days. Early in the new year, discussions will commence through the usual channels, and also involving the hon. Lady, to allocate more days because the Session is to run until spring 2012. On her point about Thursdays, roughly a third of the days allocated to her Committee have not been Thursdays, but I take her point. So far as the Doorkeepers are concerned, I hope they are as accurate with their arrows as they are in forecasting the time at which the House will rise.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House be so good as to ensure that time is set aside so that we may debate the Government’s Green Paper on sentencing as soon as possible, and long before the end of the consultation period, please?

[Sir George Young]

I note my hon. Friend’s interest in this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) had a debate on this important subject in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, and the Sentencing (Reform) Bill is going through the House, which will give Members ample opportunity to debate the Government’s proposals. The Green Paper makes it clear that, despite record spending, we are not delivering what really matters, and society has the right to expect the criminal justice system to protect it.