Easter Adjournment

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment.

Having moved the motion on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I will start by paying tribute—as you did, Madam Deputy Speaker—to the late Sir David. I think the real problem was for the person replying to the debate, who had to try to give an answer to the 20-odd items that he had raised, as well as everyone else’s. We remember Sir David at this time. The debates cannot be the same without him, but as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, we have urged on behalf of the Committee that the summer recess Adjournment debate be titled the Sir David Amess Adjournment debate. We hope that we will not need a resolution of the House to make that our practice.

The Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), would have led this debate, but unfortunately he was taken ill this morning and has had to return home. On behalf of the whole House, I wish him well for a speedy recovery and some time off over Easter.

Before the House rises for the recess, I wish to raise a series of points. First, we are already dealing with the terrible situation in Ukraine and with Ukrainian refugees, but we should not forget that we are still dealing, as I understand it, with 12,000 Afghan refugees who are still in hotels in this country and have not been resettled. Most of them are on a six-month leave-to-remain visa. Those visas will expire very soon, but we have not received updates from the Home Office. In my constituency, 656 households have relatives who are seeking to escape from Afghanistan or have arrived here. They are all in a position of complete uncertainty about their future.

The response that my office is getting from the Home Office is “We are processing applications as soon as we can.” The responses lack clarity. I urge the Leader of the House: we need some clarity on what will happen to those Afghan citizens. Quite rightly, we are all concentrating on the Ukrainians at the moment, but we must not forget those who are here already.

At business questions today, I raised a situation relating to Harrow Council, but that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the council’s responses to my requests to resolve cases. As we all know, MPs have no control or executive powers over councils, but we constantly raise matters with them about items of business for our constituents. Harrow Council is incredibly slow in resolving cases. We now have many cases that have been unresolved for more than a year; earlier today I raised a constituent’s case that has not had a response for 19 months. It is unacceptable in the extreme that local authorities are in that position.

Equally, my constituents face frustrations with accessibility. Harrow Council and perhaps other councils have increasingly moved from answering the telephone to doing things online. Not everyone has online facilities, but the council refuses point blank to answer the telephone at all. That leaves many of my constituents frustrated and unable to get service.

I also wish to raise the issue of safety at night in Harrow. Now that the covid restrictions have ended, more people are commuting—coming into central London for work purposes, and then returning home. Of course the nights will get shorter and the days will get longer, but when women, in particular, are returning home after dark, they experience real fear owing to the distance they have to walk from stations to their homes and the risks they are running. Many residents have contacted me about this. I am pleased to say that the Metropolitan police are taking action to provide women with escorts, if required, to accompany them from stations to places of safety. That is a welcome move; we often criticise the Metropolitan police, but I think we should congratulate them on this particular initiative. Nevertheless, the matter is clearly of great concern.

Many private landlords, certainly in my constituency, are raising rents exponentially, terminating long-term contracts and leases and then converting their properties into flats or houses in multiple occupation. None of them is being registered as a house in multiple occupation. Because there is less scrutiny of the private sector, constituents are being left either homeless or completely out of pocket. This is an outrage, in my view. The Government need to produce the renters’ reform Bill that has been promised, and I trust that it will be in the Queen’s Speech and will be implemented very soon. In this context, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

In my constituency, mandatory water meters are being rolled out by the local water company, Affinity Water. Many of my constituents fear that bills will rise as a result, rather than being based on water rates. The company is installing the meters without consulting people or even asking for consent. This is a compulsory process, and is, I believe, meeting with considerable resistance.

I suspect that other Members on both sides of the House are, like me, receiving complaints from constituents about the lack of face-to-face appointments to see general practitioners. This, in my constituency, has continued for far too long. Obviously, under covid restrictions there was a reason for people to speak to their GPs either on the telephone or virtually, and, indeed, I think there are advantages in a telephone conversation between patient and GP to ensure that the GP routes the patient to the right service, but once the patient has been routed to that service, a face-to-face appointment will clearly be necessary. Most of the conditions that cause people to want to see their GP—or a medical professional—require proper examination, but that is not happening in my constituency, and I suspect that, despite efforts from the Health Secretary, they are not happening in other parts of the country.

Veterans of these debates will know that I never let the opportunity pass without mentioning Stanmore station. The Mayor of London—who does nothing much at all times—has submitted a planning application, over the heads of the people of Stanmore, to build multi-storey high-density flats on the car park, thus drastically reducing the number of parking spaces available. Given that Stanmore station is the terminus of the Jubilee line and is therefore often considered to be the car park for Wembley stadium, this is an outrageous measure. I must congratulate Harrow Council’s planning committee, which rejected the Mayor’s planning application—on very good grounds, although it could have gone a bit further in terms of grounds for its rejection. What did the Mayor do? He called the planning application in for him to consider. The Mayor of London is marking his own homework. I wonder which way his decision will go.

I urge my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to ensure that if the Mayor does grant his own planning application, over the heads of the members of Harrow Council’s planning committee, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will call it in and make sure it is dealt with properly, effectively, and in line with what local people want to see.

The key point is that if the car park is radically reduced, people will be deterred from using public transport. Instead of driving to the station, parking and then using public transport, they will drive much further into London. So it completely defeats the objective. As I have said, Stanmore is the car park for Wembley stadium on event days, and that car park is full every day of the week at the moment.

We also have a proposal for high-density, multi-storey flats on Stanmore Broadway, which is raising some interesting responses from residents. Planning permission was given for a smaller development some 10 years ago and never implemented, but this is now a very high-density proposal indeed. Harrow councillors, the Stanmore Society and the development firm are holding consultation meetings and, to be fair to the developers, they are doing a good job of consulting residents and users of the shops to ensure that whatever scheme eventually gets submitted as a proper planning application, it will be in keeping with their concerns.

Another issue that is frequently raised with me is the do-nothing Mayor of London’s constant attacks on motorists. The latest wheeze is the ultra low emission zone expansion scheme. It will extend to the whole of the Greater London area, beyond the north and south circular roads, and have a dramatic impact on poorer people and those who run small businesses who cannot afford the most modern vehicles. What we need to understand is that there is a shortage of new cars because of the worldwide shortage of semiconductors. This has led to very high prices for second-hand vehicles, and fuel prices have already rocketed. This damages the people who have to travel to do their business. It is all very well talking about having transport links to central London, but this involves people travelling around London, which is becoming more difficult, particularly for people who have to travel with tools and other such facilities. It is an outrage that this extension is being implemented.

The Mayor was of course completely silent when his paymasters, the RMT, went on strike and brought London transport to a halt. He is very vocal when attacking motorists, but makes no comment on that kind of inconvenience to the travelling public. The issue here is that the consultation will commence in May, after the local elections, and run for 10 weeks. I urge everyone in London to respond to this consultation by saying that they do not want the extension and that it is an outrage that should not be followed through.

Finally, I have to raise an issue that some of us were debating yesterday: getting England to be smoke-free by 2030. Currently, one in seven people smoke, and the numbers are still going down. That is good news—in 1971, it was 50%—but we still have a long way to go to get to a smoke-free England. The worst aspect of this is that 280 children take up smoking every day in England, of whom only a third will manage to quit in their lifetime and another third of whom will die from a smoking-related disease. That is why I strongly support the age of sale being raised. When it was raised from 18 to 21 in the United States, smoking rates decreased by nearly a third among 18 to 20-year-olds.

The legislation proposed by the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health would raise the smoking age from 18 to 21 for legal sale. That proposal is supported by the vast majority of the adult population in this country, including more than 50% of 18 to 24-year-olds themselves. I would also urge the Government to consider the levy that we have proposed, which we debated yesterday. Implementing such a levy on the profits of the big tobacco companies would raise £700 million. They can well afford it, and that money could be directed into smoking cessation services and making this country healthier.

In closing, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish you, the staff and all colleagues a very happy Easter and a good break. I know that some people out there think it is holiday, but for the next two weeks I shall be teaching no fewer than 16 work experience students what it is like to be a hard-working MP, as we all are, in my constituency and giving them the opportunity to think about whether they want to pursue it as a career, although they may be a bit wiser than that after they have spent two weeks with me.

[Several hon. Members rose—]