Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bob Blackman and Hilary Benn

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)]

As set out in the King’s Speech, the Government are committed to repeal and replace the legacy Act. As well as scrapping conditional immunity, we will set out steps to allow troubles-era inquests and civil claims to resume. We will consult with all interested parties on a way forward that can obtain the support of victims and survivors, and comply with our human rights obligations.

[Bob Blackman]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his appointment. Clearly, any delays will in-build a legacy for the victims and their families, who have waited a long time for closure on these issues. I understand absolutely the need to create consensus across Northern Ireland for what will be proposed, but will he set out the timeline and the plan for achieving that and agree to come back to the House to update us when that plan is ready?

[Hilary Benn]

I am happy to give the hon. Member that assurance about keeping the House informed and reporting to it on my plans. As far as the independent commission is concerned, the Government have decided that we will retain it. That is because the Stormont House agreement—we want to return to the principles that it set out—envisages both information recovery and continued investigation. Those two functions are in effect combined in the independent commission. I met Sir Declan Morgan yesterday to talk about how that work can be taken forward. The commission is now open for business and available for families to approach to find an answer, for which many of them have been looking for so long.

Iran

Debate between Bob Blackman and Hilary Benn

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I will, if I may, make a bit of progress. I will take some more interventions in a minute.

On 8 December, the first protester was officially executed. Mohsen Shekari, who was only 23, was executed on grounds of committing “enmity against God”. He faced trial in front of Iran’s revolutionary court and he was found guilty without any due process. An appeal was lodged, but subsequently rejected. At the trial, he could not choose his own lawyer, and visible harm had been inflicted on him, with wounds covering his face. Since his tragic death, his family have reported that the Iranian authorities continue to torture them by refusing to release the body and by providing false information on where the body is. This account is echoed by many other families who have had loved ones executed on similar grounds. Only four days later, on 12 December, another 23-year-old protester, Majidreza Rahnavard, was brutally hanged in public.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I join others in congratulating the hon. Member on securing this debate.

In joining others in applauding the courage of those protesting in Iran, standing up for freedom, justice and the right of women to dress as they wish, does the hon. Member agree that it is a sign of the threat that this brutal regime perceives that it is going to such lengths to murder people who have protested, to hold dual nationals hostage as a matter of state policy and to threaten journalists for simply wanting to do their job, which is to tell the world about what is going on in Iran at the moment?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Clearly, the whole House offers its admiration to the men and women demonstrating on the streets and bravely standing up to this undemocratic regime. It is quite clear that the regime is becoming more and more desperate, which displays weakness. The persistence of the protests surely means the regime is crumbling.

Unfortunately, the executions I have described are not isolated cases, with more and more cases being unearthed. On Saturday, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a 21-year-old karate champion, and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, a volunteer children’s coach, were executed. Some 41 protesters have received notification of the death penalty and await their murder under this regime.

As has been said, the IRGC is threatening not only the Iranian people, but international communities including the UK. Journalists who have reported on the protests have been repeatedly threatened and found hostile Iranian surveillance teams outside their homes and offices in the UK. I commend British counter-terrorism police for alerting journalists of these potential attacks. One letter from the police to a London-based journalist warned that Iranian journalists working from the UK had been lured back to countries near Iran, then abducted by the Iranian Government and sentenced to death. It also warned that the Iranian Government have been seen to

“direct physical attacks against dissidents in Europe.”

Surely, when these attacks extend so significantly into the United Kingdom, it is time we acted to proscribe this organisation in its entirety.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Bob Blackman and Hilary Benn

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am delighted to echo the Father of the House. The partnership has been brilliant in its analysis of what has and has not been done, what the problems are and what the solution ought to be, and it has also been persistent.

I know the Minister will appreciate my final point, because he has worked very hard on this. Our constituents have waited long enough, with their lives on hold, and the sooner we can made all these bits work, the better. We have to enable them to wake up in the morning and think, “D’you know what? I don’t have to worry about the nightmare I’ve been living in for the last five years and I can get on with the rest of my life.” We owe it to them to bring the day they dream of around as soon as possible.

[Bob Blackman]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular as chairman of the all-party group for fire safety and rescue. As I mentioned in an intervention, I have been involved in prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill from its beginning and in the various reports the Select Committee produced in the wake of the Grenfell fire. The eye-watering aspects of building safety across this country really only came to light with that terrible tragedy at Grenfell, nearly five years ago. We have all learned a lot.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, who is new to the job and to the Bill, on the rapid progress that has been made since he was appointed. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has dramatically changed the whole approach taken in this Bill. The Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), is no longer in his place, but I think he recognises the dramatic changes that have taken place during the passage of the Bill through the other place.

When preparing for today’s debate, I thought of one or two ironies. The first was that the Second Reading debate was so shortened that we all got three minutes to speak, but today, although we have a reasonable amount of time to debate the issues, the business managers are encouraging us not to go on too long. That seems suitably ironic.

There are several issues to address. I thank the Minister for making it clear that this will not be the end of the process. Secondary legislation will come along on the back of the Bill, and that will be the detail that really matters to the people we represent—the leaseholders, who are the one party in all of this who are completely innocent and should not be penalised in any way, shape or form. It is a contradiction that we are asking leaseholders to make a contribution to fire safety costs and cladding remediation for which they have no responsibility.

I welcome the cap, but I do not see why that cap has been set at a particular figure. Many of the people we are talking about are not wealthy. They may have bought their leases a long time ago, and they are often living on fixed incomes and have no disposable income to put towards the costs, because they are paying the other bills for their properties. They are not able to stump up huge amounts of cash. As has been said, many of those people have been presented with eye-watering bills, such as £250,000 or more, to fix fire safety issues that are definitely not their fault, are clearly the responsibility of the developer in the first place and should have been put right since.

Also in preparation for this debate, I had a look at the Select Committee’s first report on prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill—the Chairman of the Committee may recall it. If the Government had accepted our proposed changes, we probably would not be here today discussing Lords amendments. Almost all the proposals in our report are now in the revised Bill. That is a significant change and demonstrates that when we are dealing with issues of such a technical nature, prelegislative scrutiny is the right way forward. I commend its use to Ministers in the future.

I have a couple of points to make about where we are now, to put them on the record so that we can get through this phase in the secondary legislation. I would like clarity from the Minister on the position of housing associations when pursuing developers who have developed social housing that is clearly not fit for purpose.

Britain in the World

Debate between Bob Blackman and Hilary Benn

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that both the EU and the United Nations need to have a plan to deal with that. The UN special representative, Bernardino León, said at the weekend:

“Libya is on the verge of economic and financial collapse”.

He also said that Libya is

“facing a huge security threat”

from ISIL. The movement of migrants across the Mediterranean has indeed reached crisis point. As we know, thousands of innocent people have died and hundreds of thousands of others have been put at risk. It is clear that the traffickers are to blame for the conditions in which people make that perilous journey, but it is important that any action taken to deal with that trade is backed by the UN Security Council, has clear rules of engagement and has the consent of the relevant Libyan authorities. The Foreign Secretary will no doubt have seen the comments made over the weekend by the head of the rival Government in Tripoli about defending Libya’s sea and land from any EU operation.

I welcome the negotiations that have been taking place to reach a deal with Iran. After many years in which Iran has chosen to exploit regional tensions by supporting terrorist groups, under its new leadership there is an opportunity for it to play a more positive role. A nuclear-armed Iran would clearly pose a threat to peace in the region and the world, which is why a deal that ensures that Iran’s nuclear programme is purely civilian is so important, but for a deal to be concluded it must encompass all the elements: limits on Iran’s nuclear programme; strong and credible inspection; and assurances about the breakout period.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hilary Benn]

I will give way, but I will then make some progress.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for giving way on the issue of Iran. Is he confirming that the policy of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that no deal is better than a bad deal? That would allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and therefore threaten the stability of the region.

[Hilary Benn]

The policy of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that we need the right deal to address the threat and to offer the opportunity of a way forward. We should support those talks as they continue. One reason for that is the situation in the middle east where, as the whole House would acknowledge, the only way forward is a comprehensive two-state solution: a secure Israel alongside a viable and independent state of Palestine. There can be no military solution to that conflict, and all sides must avoid taking action that would make peace harder to achieve, including firing rockets and building illegal settlements, but we should also be straight about where things are. There is no peace process to speak of at the moment, and the fear is that, with each passing day, the window on that two-state solution is closing. That is why every effort must be made to press for an immediate return to negotiations, but the blunt truth is that nobody can want that, or an agreement, more than the parties to the conflict themselves. That is going to require compromise and courageous political leadership on the part of both Israel and the Palestinians, which sadly is not currently evident.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Bob Blackman and Hilary Benn

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I make no apology for having a brownfield-first policy when we were in government. One of the reasons why more and more development is going to be seen on greenfield sites is that in revising the national planning policy framework, the Government have weakened the extremely sensible brownfield-first policy.

There was a hurried consultation on permitted development rights. Reference has already been made to the fact that although the consultation closed on 24 December last, anyone who looked this morning on the Communities and Local Government website to remind themselves of what the Government’s response was, given the great hoo-hah that there has been and the many views expressed, would have found this simple statement:

“We are analysing your responses. Visit this page again soon to download the outcome to this public feedback.”

I find it extraordinary. Given the extent of the concern and the discussions that have been taking place at the last minute with colleagues on the Government Benches who are immensely concerned about the matter, how is it that all these months after the closing date for the consultation, the Government have not even been able to publish what people said and to respond to it?

I am not surprised that the Government have not been keen to do that because of the extent of the concern expressed. Two arguments have been made. The first was that the Government’s proposal would boost economic recovery. That view is not shared by those who should know. When the Planning Minister was asked by the BBC what would be the economic impact of the measure, he replied, “I don’t know.” The truth is that nobody knows. The Select Committee was not persuaded by the economic argument. It said that the case that the Government had put was

“so tentative, broad-brush and qualified as to provide little assurance that the financial benefits suggested will be achieved.”

Even Anglian Home Improvements, who know a lot about building conservatories, said that the proposals would on their own

“achieve little if anything in terms of securing economic growth”.

If the Government wanted to boost the construction sector and the building of conservatories, they could do a lot worse than to reduce the rate of VAT on home improvements to 5%, as the National Federation of Builders has suggested.

The second argument and the substantive one is that it should be made much easier for people to be able to extend their homes. The Secretary of State knows, as we have heard in this debate, that about 90% of those planning applications for extensions beyond the existing permitted development rights are approved. That shows that the planning system is working to allow these extensions, but what it also shows is that the planning system works to weed out the 10% of applications that are not acceptable. The right hon. Gentleman wants those 10% to be able to go ahead, come what may. That is the consequence of what he is proposing.

[Bob Blackman]

It is interesting that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to a key point in the debate—the 13% of applications that are currently not approved. Can we be clear about the Labour party’s policy on permitted development? Is it in favour of a free-for-all or in favour of vast restrictions?

[Hilary Benn]

I shall be very clear. The reason I shall be going through the Lobby to vote against the Secretary of State’s motion today is that I believe that decision should be taken by local communities and local authorities, as the other place suggested. Instead of being decided from the centre, it should be decided locally.

That is the reason why, for example, Richmond council called them “very foolish proposals”, and why the leader of Sutton council said that the Government’s proposals were

“a recipe for disaster....If this is allowed to happen it will set neighbour against neighbour and split communities”.

It is why the leader of Bromley council spoke about

“an uncontrolled planning free for all, causing major problems for future generations”

which would

“undermine the rights of our residents to voice their views on what will affect their immediate surroundings”.

And it is why Councillor Mike Jones, who leads on the Local Government Association in this field, said:

“All this policy will do is give a green light to the unsightly and out-of-place small scale developments which have already been turned down because of legitimate local reasons.”

The right hon. Gentleman made an argument about article 4. It is an argument that the Planning Minister made when he appeared before the Select Committee back in October, although as we have heard, article 4 is designed to deal with particular problems in particular places. The right hon. Gentleman said he could not find any examples of people who had been able to claim compensation against their councils, although a fair point was made that councils are reluctant to find themselves in that position. It was rather strange, therefore, that back in September the Secretary of State went to great pains to say about councils that do use article 4:

“If they do that, then a member of the public can seek damages against them.”

That sort of suggests that he was saying, “Well, if you don’t like what your council is doing by using article 4, you can always try to get some compensation.”