Points of Order

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. This is obviously a matter that the House authorities will be dealing with, but I will ensure that his comments are fed back to see if anything further can be done. I am sure that he will appreciate that large numbers of people trying to gain entrance can inevitably cause some delays, and I am sure we are all sorry about that. As I say, I will feed back his comments.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Later today we will be voting on very sensitive matters that affect the whole House. At the start of that debate, Mr Speaker will no doubt announce which amendments, if any, he will allow to be put to the House. When he was elected, Mr Speaker gave a solemn promise that he would publish the advice he got from the Clerk of the House when he made controversial decisions. I do not know what he will decide or what his recommendation will be, but could you prevail on Mr Speaker, when he comes back to the Chair, to release the advice he is given by the Clerk on whatever decision he comes to on the amendments to the SNP motion we are debating this afternoon?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am sure that his comments will have been heard and that Mr Speaker will make his decision in due course, with all the comments the hon. Gentleman has raised about publication. I think we will leave it at that.

Point of Order

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Unfortunately, the Chair of the Liaison Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), is not able to be here, nor is the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, who is on a Select Committee visit to Canada. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee published a report on the private rented sector, with a reply expected by April this year. The Secretary of State promised that that reply would be with us before the Second Reading of the Renters (Reform) Bill. The Leader of the House has obviously announced the business for Monday, which includes that Second Reading, but we still have not had any reply from the Government to the Select Committee’s recommendations, including proposals for changes to the Bill. That will not help the House when it is considering the Second Reading.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order, but if questions relate to business, they should be raised during business questions, because it is not fair on the Leader of the House if people prolong business questions with points of order. I believe that the Leader of the House is happy to respond, but I want to make it clear that the hon. Gentleman perhaps should have raised this matter during business questions itself.

Conference Adjournment

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I beg to move,

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

I am speaking on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, the Chair of which has asked me to lead the debate in his absence.

I start with some bad news, namely on the ultra low emission zone. We are all incredibly disappointed that, despite the fact that the majority of Londoners overwhelmingly oppose the expansion of ULEZ, the out-of-touch, megalomaniac Mayor of London has gone ahead regardless.

The measure has already had an absolutely devastating impact on thousands of people across outer London. More than 2,000 Harrow East residents have signed my petition and shared their views on this measure. Even after a month of implementation, signatures are coming in faster and more frequently than before the expansion.

The expansion has isolated the most vulnerable in society. With elderly people unable to afford new vehicles, having spent their pensions on a car when they retired, they are now unable to make necessary journeys—going to the doctor, the pharmacist or the hospital, visiting family or doing grocery shopping—without having to pay £12.50 each day. One resident recently wrote to me. They said:

“I’m disabled and my wife is a pensioner and people will no longer visit because of the ULEZ tax, leaving us isolated from family and friends.”

How utterly tragic is that?

Once the daily charge has been incurred, it is not even a simple procedure to pay it. This is heightened for the elderly who are notoriously less tech savvy. That is assuming that they have access to the internet in the first place. If the charge is not paid within a three-day window, a £160 fine is incurred. To complicate matters further, there is an increasing presence of scam websites, which are posing as Transport for London to take ULEZ payments, but are actually frauds, with absolutely no association to TfL and it seems that no action is being taken against them.

Many of those on the lowest incomes, typically working night-shifts, are unable to update their cars, particularly as non-compliant cars have crashed in value—I spoke to some people at the weekend whose cars are now worth less than £50 even though they are perfectly serviceable vehicles. Public transport links at the times when people need to travel for night-shifts are also not available, so just to get to work and back they are forced to pay £25 per shift, £12.50 each side of midnight. That cannot be described as fair, particularly as the Mayor drives a gas-guzzling large Land Rover, which is non-compliant, yet he has given himself an exemption so that he can continue to drive his car while incurring no ULEZ costs. What a shambles.

The expansion will also drive up the costs of other services. I spoke to a gardener over the weekend, who says that he now charges his customers £12.50 on top of his daily charge just to get to work and back again. Furthermore, many charities will lose out because volunteers will no longer be able to get to the charity headquarters or deliver for local food banks. Yet again, this leads to the most vulnerable losing out.

The ULEZ is only the latest of a barrage of ludicrous ideas from the Mayor of London. I recently launched a consultation to hear the views of residents on his tenure, and I urge everyone to visit my website and submit their thoughts. It has never been more important, in my view, to elect Susan Hall as the new Mayor of London in the elections next May.

I move on now to the monstrosity that is Edgware Towers—a truly ridiculous proposal to build a cluster of 29 high-rise buildings, one block of 29 storeys and 14 others in excess of 20 storeys, in Edgware Broadwalk. That would totally change the character of Edgware, morphing it into a Canary Wharf twin and overwhelming the current infrastructure. It is important to note that I am supportive of reasonable development, but certainly not outrageous developments such as this. Ballymore Estates is trying to put in an amount of housing that would take up the entire area of St James’s Park on the space occupied by Edgware bus station. It is a nonsense.

There are many ludicrous things arising from the proposal. Construction would take more than 10 years, completely killing the small and medium-sized enterprises on the high street. The underground bus station poses a major threat to people’s safety, particularly women and girls, and then there is the fire safety issue with electric bus batteries. It would be the first place anywhere in the world where electric buses would be left underground overnight. There would also be very limited parking, with none for residents—and residents will need cars to travel east to west. It is all very well if they want to travel into the centre of London, but if they want to travel anywhere else, they will need a car. There will also be an impact on traffic, because all around the area will have to be controlled parking zones, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because there will be no controls on the residents in those particular properties.

The proposals completely ignore public opinion. My recent survey received more than 1,000 responses, 96% of which were against the proposals. Last week, I met Ballymore Estates to discuss its unacceptable proposals. It is fair to say that we had an interesting discussion, but I made clear my opposition to their plans. The sheer scale of the development is complete codswallop, and it is clear that the developers are not listening to the views of local people and businesses. They plan to submit the application to the local authority by the end of September, so it is vital that residents share their views and voice their objections as soon as possible. Again, I make clear that we are not against development; we are just against development of the scale and density proposed here.

I was pleased recently to meet Alex Dewsnap, the managing director of Harrow Council. We discussed the ways my office can work with the council to ensure better service for residents and swift and productive responses to casework; I have to say that that has not always been the case when dealing with Harrow Council. I am pleased that under the new Conservative administration, the council has begun a comprehensive plan for road resurfacing across the entire borough, ensuring that the quality of roads for residents is safe and not littered with potholes, as has previously been the case.

As I have raised in this Chamber last year, the Labour council was complicit in a huge corruption scandal, with contractors and officers sharing £2 million for themselves, money that was earmarked to fix dangerous pavements. I am frustrated that, while the investigation continues, the police are refusing to take action against the fraudsters because they consider the crime to be too small. I am afraid that, to me, £2 million of taxpayers’ money is no small deal at all.

One of the principal problems for the council is houses in multiple occupation, with unscrupulous landlords falsifying documents and cramming people into unacceptable tenancies, so that many residents then complain about the antisocial behaviour of people living in those cramped conditions. I am encouraged that the council is looking to buy 140 houses for use as social rented properties and is taking action to ensure that supply meets demand for vulnerable residents. Furthermore, there is a planning case awaiting a decision for 140 new houses to be built in the local area, showing that appropriate, sensible and realistic development will always be supported by local authorities, meeting the needs of residents and adhering to sustainable development—quite contrary to Edgware Towers!

Looking at international issues, the situation in Iran remains at a critical stage. Last Saturday marked exactly a year since the tragic murder of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—the devastating death of a young lady for simply wearing her hijab incorrectly. Mahsa’s legacy lives on, and the uprisings in Iran and by the diaspora around the world continue, calling for a free and democratic Iran. She has inspired a historic movement, “Woman, Life, Freedom”, but the threat from Iran remains. Over the last year, more than 30,000 political protesters have been arrested and over 750 executed.

Furthermore, the IRGC continues to pose an unprecedented threat to the international community and to British interests across the world. Only a week ago, I jointly hosted a press conference with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, where my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) revealed that MI5 has intercepted more than 15 terrorist attempts directly linked to the IRGC in the last year alone. On top of that, the Home Secretary has outwardly declared the IRGC as the UK’s largest security threat.

I am encouraged that the Government have recently proscribed the Wagner Group. While there has been progress from the Government in introducing tougher sanctions on the IRGC, that is frankly not enough. The settled view of all parties in this House is that we must proscribe the IRGC in its entirety. It is a clear terrorist operation, directly threatening individuals across the world, including in the UK, supplying weaponry to the Russian forces for use in the Ukrainian war, abolishing free speech, executing thousands and thousands of innocent civilians each year and inhibiting the rights of women.

In better news, a free trade deal with India will be a tremendous opportunity for both the United Kingdom and India. It is disappointing that we do not have the trade deal yet, since it was initially anticipated for Diwali 2022. However, I agree with the Prime Minister that we should not sacrifice quality in order to do a deal quickly. The Government have assured the House that the majority of the negotiation conversations were concluded by the end of October last year, so I hope that this deal is still being prioritised to obtain a mutually satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible—and certainly not in a perfunctory manner. Along with many Indian residents in Harrow East, I look forward to a trade deal that will be the first of its kind for India, the first free trade deal that the country has done, hopefully as soon as Diwali 2023—so we do not have long—and certainly before the upcoming Indian elections.

I hosted 50 students in my constituency office over a two-week period for the annual work experience programme. The students were a real asset to the constituency, enthusiastically getting involved in a range of tasks from surveying residents to volunteering at London’s Community Kitchen, engaging in lively political debates and helping with some of the office admin. I want to say thank you to all the residents who took the time to answer the students’ surveys, as their contributions were truly helpful in assisting their learning—and none of those excellent students could be described as ragamuffins.

During this week, the students gathered over 1,045 surveys and delivered letters to nearly every ward in Harrow East, learning the importance of data collection. That helped my casework statistics to reach a staggering 66,000 since I was elected MP for Harrow East.

As a thank you for all the students’ hard work, we concluded with a day in Westminster. We had a tour around Parliament and a trip to Conservative campaign headquarters, followed by an interesting talk from members of the team and the party chairman. The day concluded with a visit to 10 Downing Street and a great photo opportunity.

I continue to run my weekly tours, as do many other colleagues, giving residents an opportunity to ask questions of me and allowing me to show off this wonderful establishment. Since being elected, I have welcomed more than 6,000 residents here and I look forward to continuing that after the recess.

Another area that I am passionate about is smoking cessation. Four years on from the initial Smokefree 2030 commitment made at the Dispatch Box, we are not on course to achieve it. I welcome the recent announcement that disposable vapes will be banned, because they encourage children to use tobacco products. I am pleased that the NHS will begin targeted lung cancer screening to help detect cancer sooner and speed up diagnosis for those with a history of smoking. Both my parents died of that, so it is a personal issue for me.

However, there is a long way to go. The Khan review last year demonstrated the need for urgent action if we are to get anywhere near the 2030 target. Research by Cancer Research shows that, despite significant momentum over the past few years, we have recently gone backwards on the number of people smoking. That is not good enough. Each day that the Government fail to take action is another day when 150 people will be diagnosed with smoking-related cancers. I was pleased to join representatives of Cancer Research UK as they presented to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street a petition of more than 13,000 signatures urging the Government to provide more funding to help people quit smoking.

I wish all colleagues in this House and the other place, the staff in our teams, the security teams, the catering teams, and everyone else who plays a key part in keeping everything afloat, a very restful, jolly and fruitful conference recess, spending time with family and—for those of us who are going—at our various party conferences, and, most importantly, serving our constituents over that period. To those who celebrated last week, I wish a happy Rosh Hashanah and Jai Jinendra. To those celebrating this week, I wish a happy Ganesh Chaturthi. Finally, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I was going to say “Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker,” but I should now say thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for presiding over it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening the debate. I remind colleagues that they should stay for the wind-ups. I call Siobhain McDonagh.

Jagtar Singh Johal

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

Well, it seemed me that that is exactly what he was alluding to. The fact is that under Indian law, Mr Singh has the right to bring his case to the courts. The accusations of torture—which, of course, would be illegal under international law—should be listened to in the Indian courts, so he should bring that case to the Indian courts through his lawyers and legal representatives. That is vital.

Can my hon. Friend the Minister confirm that consular officers from the high commission have been granted access to Mr Singh more than 60 times during the duration of his arrest and detention? That means we are ensuring that the high commission is doing its job and that proper access and proper assistance is provided to our citizen, to ensure that we will eventually get to a conclusion of this case, however long it takes.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

As there are no further Back-Bench contributions, we will move to the SNP spokesperson.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

That last speech demonstrates what I have always believed: the Liberal Democrats will say one thing to one person and completely the opposite to other people.

I welcome the measures in the Chancellor’s Budget that pertained to local government spending, including the additional funding of £1.6 billion a year for adult social care. The reality is that most of the people who work in adult social care are on the lowest possible wages, so the increase in wages that they will receive and the opportunity to earn more money are good news, and I am glad that the Government are funding this appropriately. However, it is important for the Government to spell out the full detail of how adult social care will be funded not just for this year but for the years ahead. That is vital.

We know that as a result of the pandemic, an estimated 300,000 people who are renting privately are in serious arrears and at risk of losing their homes. The key here is the funding programme for housing, and particularly the affordable housing programme. I am delighted that we will see 1 million new homes created. I hope that it will be 1 million new houses, instead of multi-storey high-density flats that are unacceptable for people with families to live in. I also want to see the Government build 100,000 new homes for social rent, so that people can afford their rent rather than having to rely on benefits. The corollary of that is that we should reboot the right to buy, so that when people move into those homes, they are given the opportunity to buy them at the price that applies on the day they move in, however long it takes them to be able to afford to buy their own home.

The Government are to be commended for their work on combating rough sleeping. The Everyone In programme was a remarkable achievement, but we must ensure that we build on that and end rough sleeping for good by 2024. After all, that is the Government’s commitment. As I have said, Housing First needs to be funded and rolled out right across the UK. The reality is that every case of homelessness is unique, and everyone will need particular help and guidance. Some people just need a pointer in the right direction; others need a network of help and support to rebuild their lives.

I also welcome the confirmation of the £5 billion for replacing unsafe cladding. However, I remind Ministers that there was a promise not only of the £5 billion but of the details of the forced loan scheme for those people in low-rise blocks. We have still had no answer from the Chancellor as to how that funding will be made, the conditions that will be imposed or the mechanism by which it will take place. While the funding is welcome, and so is the tax on developers, it will not raise sufficient money to combat the amount of money that is having to be paid out. Equally, people still face the challenge of receiving huge bills for the replacement of unsafe cladding, and there is a huge backlog of that work still to be done.

I will raise two other matters before I sit down. The first is my disappointment that, after much lobbying, the Chancellor has still not seen fit to put right the long-term problem of refunding Equitable Life policyholders, who are still owed more than £2.8 billion. This issue is not going to go away; we will campaign on it until such time as the Chancellor comes up with the money that was promised in the first place.

Finally, I will just mention one tax increase in the Budget that is extremely welcome: the tax on tobacco. Often, we do not hear that announced from the Dispatch Box, but I am glad the Chancellor went there, increased the tax and carried on with the escalator. The fact is that smoking-related diseases cost the national health service £2.6 billion a year and the care budget £1.2 billion a year. I would like to see a levy put on the profits of the tobacco companies and the money put into smoking cessation services. That would be a welcome tax, and something we could do because we now sit outside the European Union. We would not have to pass that tax on to the smokers; we would hit the profits of the big tobacco companies.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

What with interventions and points of order, we are not really doing that well. After the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to four minutes. I call Clive Betts.

Equitable Life

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House expresses grave concern regarding the Government’s continued inaction with respect to the injustice suffered by Equitable Life policyholders, the vast majority of whom have only received partial compensation compared to the confirmed losses directly attributed to regulatory failures despite the Government’s acceptance of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s findings to compensate victims in full in relation to the maladministration of Equitable Life; notes the concern previously expressed by the Public Accounts Committee on the transparency and accuracy of the payments being made to victims; further notes the Government’s failure to fulfil the Committee’s request to publish an intelligible and transparent explanation to policyholders on how to verify the correctness of the compensation they have received; notes examples of grossly inaccurate payments, adjusted only when identified by policyholders, gathered by the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG); notes the Government’s continued insistence that there have been no mistakes in the methodology for calculating payments to policyholders; and therefore calls on the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to establish a joint inquiry into the accuracy of the payments made to victims of the Equitable Life scandal.

This debate has been delayed since 26 March 2020 because of the covid pandemic. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding the time for it, and the Leader of the House and Mr Speaker for allowing us to participate virtually in debates so that we can explore these issues in some detail. I declare my interest as co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for justice for Equitable Life policyholders. I co-chair the group with the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who sadly has a prior commitment and cannot be with us this afternoon. Our all-party group now has 289 members—almost a majority of the House—which demonstrates how important the issue is to all our constituents.

I want to set out several things during the debate and to frame it appropriately. The Equitable Life case is absolutely unique. There have been other failures of pension schemes and of financial institutions—failures that unfortunately happened, and where, quite rightly, the Government have not chosen to bail out the organisations. But this failure was unique. Back in the 1980s, Equitable Life started what can only be described as a Ponzi scheme. I distance the current Equitable Life board from what was going on in the 1980s, but the company then deliberately set out to create a scheme whereby it promised bonuses that could not be achieved and could not be sustained in the long term.

As a result, over 1 million people invested their money with Equitable Life, in the expectation that it was a safe and secure environment in which to hold their money. That led to a position in which it was all very well while the money was coming in, but when the money had to be paid out in such a way that the scheme was recognised as being unsustainable, action clearly had to be taken.

The Equitable Life case is unique because, of course, it was a conspiracy between Equitable Life, the regulator and the Government of the day. Equitable Life was considered too big to fail because if it did, the Government would have had to pick up the costs. The scandal went on, and the House of Lords was involved in setting aside the position way back in 1999, as a result of which Equitable Life closed to new business in 2000.

Some 10 and a half years ago, I was proud to stand and be elected on a manifesto—as was my hon. Friend the Minister—that promised full and proper compensation for the victims of the Equitable Life scam. Basically, people lost their livelihoods and the pension that they all looked forward to in their old age. It should be recognised that Equitable Life victims are typically retired nurses, teachers, civil servants and factory and shop workers, plus small business owners, who had no choice following the scandal but to set up a personal pension. The majority of those individuals had less than £20,000 in their pension pot.

In 2010, we promised the victims proper and full compensation, neither of which has been delivered. Almost 1 million pension savers have received just 22% of the losses they suffered following maladministration. It is worth reminding the House that way back in 2008 the parliamentary ombudsman ruled that this was the most severe case of maladministration ever seen and that the victims’ loss was directly attributable to a decade of serious, serial regulatory maladministration. It is therefore right that we set out to compensate the individuals affected.

So far, the Treasury has refused to disclose the full workings of the calculations of the payments that have been made. That can hardly be considered transparent. In 2010, we promised that victims’ losses amounted to £4.3 billion and that they would be provided with full compensation. The amount was later revised to £4.1 billion, but so far only £1.5 billion has been allocated for compensation. The Government allocated £620 million to those already receiving an annuity, leaving only £780 million to share among the 1 million other victims, plus £100 million of contingency. That has meant that the pension savers have received only 22.4% of the money that they lost as a consequence of a decade of failure by the Treasury and the financial regulators.

Let us be clear about what else has happened. For some bizarre reason that I have never been able to fathom, those people who were classified as the pre-1992 trapped annuitants—the most vulnerable and the oldest victims of this scam—were excluded from the scheme. It is true that we were able, through lobbying and the good work of Ministers, to ensure that those victims received a one-off payment of £5,000, increased to £10,000 if they were on pension credit. That went some way towards compensating them.

The reality is that to compensate the entirety of those pre-1992 victims would cost no more than £100 million. They were excluded because of the position on their having taken out their policy before 1 September 1992. The question of what happened between them taking out their policies and 1 September 1992 seems bizarre. The ruling seems to have been that they could not have known that this was a Ponzi scheme and they could not have known about the regulatory failure prior to 1 September 1992, so even though they were in ignorance, they should be excluded. In my view, that is an injustice that we need to put right.

In addition, we seek to achieve full payment for the 895,000 traced pension saver victims, which would finally settle the unpaid debts covering their losses that were incurred through no fault of their own. That would cost £2.6 billion and could be phased over time. We also want equality of treatment for the pre-1992 trapped annuitants, which could easily be met with the underspend of the £1.5 billion already allocated.

We need to see full transparency on the Treasury calculations. There remains serious doubt over the accuracy and reliability of the methodology that has been used by the Treasury to calculate moneys owed to qualifying Equitable Life policyholders as part of the compensation scheme that was established under the Equitable Life (Payments) Act 2010. The Treasury should disclose full details of how those calculations were made. The motion calls for the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to hold a joint inquiry into payment accuracy.

The Equitable Members Action Group, which represents the Equitable Life victims, has uncovered cases where policyholders were significantly undercompensated for their losses due to errors in the Treasury’s calculations. In those instances, no attempt was made by the Treasury to contact the policyholders, and cases were only revealed following appeals made to the independent review panel. In all cases of appeal to the independent review panel, the appeal was upheld and the panel made recalculations that resulted in increased payments made to the policyholder. Not a single appeal has failed to be upheld. The most extreme case brought to our attention so far is that of a policyholder whose losses were calculated as £17, when they were actually £8,661. He won on appeal. EMAG is calling for a joint inquiry into the accuracy of the payments made to victims of the scandal, which is something we all wish to see.

We are all living through an immensely challenging and unpredictable period due to covid and the current economic position. The virus has had a significant impact on people of all ages, but especially the elderly. Many Equitable Life victims are currently confined to their homes, increasingly vulnerable and worried for their futures, which makes the need for this issue to be settled all the more important. This, after all, is a debt of honour. Equitable Life victims were pushed to one side as a direct consequence of the timing of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw the UK’s banking corporations bailed out, while hard-working and responsible pension savers took the hit. The same must not happen again.

Equitable Life victims did the right thing and saved prudently for their retirement. The Government should now do the right thing by them. The current crisis has shown that money can be found when the political will exists. As I said, this is a debt of honour that must finally be paid. The compensation payments would be spent on or shared down the generations, and in doing so would be recycled in the economy, supporting the economic recovery that we all need.

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to introduce the debate. I look forward to hearing contributions from Members on both sides of the House and to the response from my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As colleagues will know, a large number of Members wish to contribute to the debate, so I will introduce an immediate four-minute time limit. When Members are speaking virtually, a clock will appear on the screens of Members participating virtually and the screens in the Chamber. For Members participating physically, the usual clock in the Chamber will operate.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Debate between Bob Blackman and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I just confirm something? We only have 23 minutes until the statement, and is it correct that this very important debate must conclude then?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

There will be a statement at 11 o’clock, but the debate will not conclude then.

[Bob Blackman]

For the hon. Gentleman’s information, I am coming to the end of my speech. I am very supportive of the Bill, and the debate will be interrupted while we have the statement, but it will continue to its conclusion thereafter, so he does not have to worry about that.

I have another concern about the legislation’s implementation period. The explanatory notes state that the provisions will come into force three months after the Bill becomes an Act, but will the Minister consider whether there is any need for secondary legislation—for any regulations—when the Bill becomes law? The Government are introducing myriad secondary legislation next month in relation to my Homelessness Reduction Act, and we do not want to reach a situation where much-needed secondary legislation is not ready in time for this legislation’s commencement, which could lead to problems later on.

In summary, I strongly support this Bill and trust that it will receive the House’s unanimous support. If the hon. Member for Westminster North wants me to serve on the Bill Committee, I will be delighted to do so to help her get the Bill through Parliament.