Afghan Resettlement Update

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I note from the Statement that half of the people who need to move out of hotels are children, and a proportion of them will be in school. If they are given three months’ notice at the end of April, I have worked out that that would take them to the end of term. Can priority be given to ensuring that children who are in school are rehoused before the beginning of the next term and are found suitable schools to go to? That is really imperative for the integration of the younger people who have come.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the point about education, because it is very important. It is one of the reasons that we have chosen April as the date, because that helps with coming to the end of the school year. My understanding is that the responsibility for providing school places rests with the receiving local authority, which has a legal obligation to allocate a school place to a child in its catchment area within 20 school days to minimise any potential disruption. The hotel closures will be staggered, region by region, so that we can help support families.

We need to get on with this step change. A hotel is not a home and we need to find homes for these people. We need to get their children into schools and we all need to welcome them into our communities, so that the Afghans who helped us in that terribly difficult time have a happy and well looked-after future in our country.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, like all noble Lords, I support this Bill in the round. Having said that, it contains hints of an ugly intolerance; it sometimes gives the impression that those responsible for it know all the answers. A more open attitude would pay dividends and avoid error. After all, a short while ago, some of the same people were confidently and wrongly demanding that we all switch to diesel engines. The truth is that science evolves and new discoveries are made all the time. Humility in scientific matters is essential.

My concern in this group is with a small matter, economically speaking, where I fear an error could be made. It matters because this Bill could bring about the death of Thomas the Tank Engine and his or her nautical steamboat equivalent. Noble Lords will recall my repeated requests for cost-benefit analyses and my concern about the perverse effects of legislation, however important and well intentioned. I rarely receive a satisfactory answer, but that does not mean the request was not valid.

By making it impossible in practice to use British coal for heritage trains, boats and steam engines, we would, I fear, be consigning them in time to the scrap heap. This is unjustified. It is not in the spirit of reuse and recycle, which some of us supported earlier in Committee. Without a small exemption for the use of coal sourced in the UK, we will be importing coal from elsewhere. This would be worse for climate change, as you would have travel emissions as well as the impact of coal use. Also, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, explained to me this morning—we often agree across the political divide—we are talking about small and often impecunious operators who need one or two suppliers to source, pay for and distribute this coal. What supplier would think of taking that risk if it had to be imported from Russia?

Alternatively, of course, we will be consigning these heritage vehicles to a sad death. That would lead to a loss of tourist engagement and income as travellers move elsewhere, often overseas by air. The rotting of the vehicles and railways would create its own waste pile, and the whole dismal process would be a wholly unnecessary and self-inflicted harm and error. As is often said by our Green colleagues—I am sorry that they are not here this evening—we must look in the round at these resource issues. I am very hopeful that my noble friend the Minister will listen to the concerns expressed by me and others and propose a suitable amendment on Report. Like others, I support Amendment 279.