Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

7. What progress she has made in ending the use of hotels as contingency asylum accommodation.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Our first duty is to break the business model of the people-smuggling gangs, stop the boats and reduce the number of those coming to this country illegally. Alongside that, we are working to ensure that decent but not luxurious accommodation is available while asylum claims are being processed. We are working with local councils and providers to develop regional dispersal plans and are pursuing a range of options to increase supply.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am very pleased to hear what the Minister says. When the dreadful invasion of Ukraine took place, many people welcomed with open arms refugees from Ukraine. Does he agree that it is still not safe for many of them to go home? Many have outstayed their time with their host, so can we have a coherent plan going forward to ensure that refugees from Ukraine are decently protected and housed?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman is right to celebrate the good work that we have done in this country to support people who came here from Ukraine. That has been the largest humanitarian visa effort in this country’s history. I have benefited from that personally, having had a family stay with me, as I know many Members across the House have. Over 500 individuals continue to come to the UK every week under the Ukrainian visa schemes, but he is right to say that the challenge now is as much about ensuring re-matches are available for people who, for whatever reason, are coming to the end of their stay with their original families. We are working very closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that those changes are as seamless as possible so that nobody ends up homeless.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that new housing is of the highest standard of environmental sustainability.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

Our proposed future homes standard will ensure all new homes from 2025 result in at least 75% lower carbon emissions than those built to the current standard. Earlier this month, the Chancellor announced £8.8 billion of new infrastructure, decarbonisation and maintenance projects, including a £3 billion green investment package, which could help support around 140,000 green jobs, and upgrade buildings and reduce emissions.

[Mr Sheerman [V]]

Can I urge the Secretary of State to look at the letter from 18 conservation groups, deeply worried this morning by the fact that they believe that the planning system is going to be radically deregulated? Does he not agree that we want sustainably built homes in sustainable locations? Will he talk to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and get his act together over this suggestion that there will be no more environmental impact assessments worthy of that name?

[Robert Jenrick]

I can give this assurance to the hon. Gentleman: the planning reforms that we intend to bring forward in the weeks ahead will not row back on any of our commitments to the environment. This Government want to bring forward homes that are truly fit for the future. We do not want to see homes being built in the years ahead that will need to be retrofitted at huge expense either to the state or to individuals in time. We want to ensure that we meet our obligations to the environment, to biodiversity and to the climate change challenge, and that is exactly what the proposals that I intend to publish later this month, or at the beginning of August, will do.

Building Safety

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very happy to take that up with the hon. Lady, although I think it is more likely to be a question for the Environment Secretary. I thank her for the work that she and I did over the course of the summer and for the hard work she did for her constituents.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that what my firefighters in West Yorkshire want is to be able to do the job? They want the training, the resources, the time and the prioritisation, and then they will do the job.

[Robert Jenrick]

With respect, that is exactly what we have announced today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

That was a very, very complacent answer to a very important question. Is it not a fact that the house is on fire? We want a radical tax like the one Mrs Thatcher introduced with Geoffrey Howe in 1981. Why do we not have a tax on banks, Amazon and all the other people making profits, and put the money into fighting climate change now, when the house is on fire?

[Robert Jenrick]

We on the Government Benches are not complacent about climate change; we are leading the world in this area. We are decarbonising faster than any other G20 country and we are investing billions of pounds in this area. If we want to tackle the challenge of decarbonisation, we will need to gather the greatest amount of private investment and innovation from the private sector. We will never be able to do that by going around nationalising industries below market value and making bellicose statements that shareholders are lining their pockets. The shareholders are the savers, the pensioners and the international investors that this country needs to thrive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

We do agree with that. All the evidence suggests that small businesses would benefit from better quality advice across a range of areas. Recently in the Budget, we have supported extra funding for networks, to bring businesses together, and we are working across the Government to think about ways in which we can improve the quality of advice and increase competition within business advisory services.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister should take some advice from someone who has been in the House a long time: bragging about being an “every 75 minutes” Minister is very dangerous. I have just checked and in Huddersfield it is cloudy but not cold, but the economic temperature is freezing: start-ups are not starting, the new creative businesses are putting everything on hold, and until they have some reassurance about Brexit, they will not move.

[Robert Jenrick]

If the hon. Gentleman wanted to give greater certainty to businesses in his constituency, he would support the deal. He did not do so in the recent vote, but I hope he will come forward and do so shortly. I would not be so negative about the business community and the state of the economy in Yorkshire. We have record levels of employment, the jobs market is the second best in the country and real wages are rising. In Yorkshire, real wages and household disposable income are rising above the national average.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Some Members may think that I was on the Mayflower, although as a young man I did emigrate to the United States. Some of my ancestors, the Sheermans, could have been on the Mayflower—[Interruption.] Just hold it for a moment. This is the 400-year anniversary. Is it not time that we celebrated migration and the talent, the genius, the innovation and the ideas that we in this country and America get from migration? Should we not use this quadricentenary to celebrate migration across the world?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman is testing my knowledge of the pilgrim fathers, but of course they were inspired by William Bradford, who came from Yorkshire, I believe. He was the one who said that from small things great things can emerge, and that it takes just one small candle to light a thousand, which was the way that the whole pilgrim fathers’ enterprise was summed up. So I want to see the commemorations take place in Yorkshire, as well as in Plymouth and the rest of the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I quite agree: Stoke-on-Trent is exactly the kind of city that we designed the Transforming Cities fund to benefit. From the meeting we had, I know that my hon. Friend sees opportunity in Stoke—in Stoke station, at junction 15 on the M6 and in the proposal for a ceramics park. With the dynamic Conservative leadership in Stoke at the moment, we look forward to receiving that application.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not often get angry in the Chamber, but can I ask the Minister to stop spending his time in Maidenhead and Runnymede and come to the real towns and cities of this country like Huddersfield, where we can see the deterioration of infrastructure everywhere we look? That is because this Government have cut and cut local authority spending—that is the truth. He should get out more and see what this country is really like.

[Robert Jenrick]

The independent Infrastructure and Projects Authority has said that by the end of this Parliament, central Government funding for infrastructure will be greater in the north than in the south. The hon. Gentleman is speaking to the wrong Minister if he thinks that we do not care about the north. This son of a Liverpudlian and a Mancunian, born in Wolverhampton and representing North Nottinghamshire, needs no lessons from him.

[Mr Speaker]

I accept that Huddersfield is a most admirable place. My grandma lived there all her life, as I have told the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) before. Splendid place, splendid woman.