Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am only too happy to meet my hon. Friend at any time. I can assure her that we want to find the workforce to pick the flowers—the beautiful Cornish daffodils—that should not be “born to blush unseen”, if I remember the quote right. They should be properly picked. In addition to developing the local labour force, and making sure that we line up younger people and people across Cornwall with the opportunities that there are, she must not forget that, thanks to the EU settlement scheme, there are 6 million EU nationals still entitled to live and work in this country, who have taken advantage of that scheme. Never let it be said that we have done an injustice to that group.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Local residents in Lancaster are opposing the conversion of a popular local pub, the Britannia, into a 10-bedroom student let. The Housing Secretary says that the current planning system does not give people influence over local developments, but his party’s developers’ charter gags local residents and hands power to a Whitehall-appointed board of developers, resulting in low quality, unaffordable housing. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister is paying back his party of developer paymasters by selling out local communities?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think that I have heard such total cobblers in all my life, except possibly from the Leader of the Opposition. That is not what the Bill does. On the contrary, it gives local people the power to protect.

If I understood the hon. Lady correctly, it was a pub called the Britannia that she wanted to protect. We are bringing forward measures to allow local people to protect such places of vital local importance. When it comes to development, the power remains vested firmly with local people, to make sure that they protect their green spaces and the green belt, and they have development only in the places where they, the local people, want it.