Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I do.

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

My constituents in Fleetwood hear about levelling up an awful lot, but they are not really seeing the benefits of it. Applications by Wyre Borough Council for the future high streets fund and the levelling-up fund have been knocked back, so can the Minister tell my Fleetwood constituents when they can expect to get this levelling up?

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. I am more than happy to talk to Lancashire County Council and, indeed, to the hon. Lady about how we can ensure that levelling-up funds and UK shared prosperity and other funds flow to her constituents.

Budget Resolutions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I will keep my comments on the Budget specifically to youth work. I do so for two reasons. The first, more positive reason is that this week is national Youth Work Week, and I put on record my thanks to the youth workers in my constituency and across the country, who do a tremendous job in safeguarding, caring for and looking after our young people and guiding them through adolescence. Let us face it: adolescence is a difficult enough thing at the best of times, and in recent years we have not had the best of times, with covid, with lockdown and with education interrupted.

Secondly, youth work offers a good example of how this is a smoke and mirrors Budget. To give some context, youth work in England has seen a 73% cut in the past 11 years. That has had consequences. It has seen 940 youth centres closed and 4,500 qualified youth workers no longer working in frontline youth work—a figure that rises to about 13,000 if we take youth and community workers together. The National Youth Agency estimates that about £1 billion less per year is being spent on youth work than a decade ago.

I feel incredibly passionate about youth work, so I was glad two years ago when the Government announced a £500 million youth investment fund. The only trouble is that not a penny of that has been spent in the past two years. When the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and announced £560 million for youth funding, I was immediately suspicious, because I had already heard about £500 million for the youth investment fund, which we had not seen a penny of in two years. It is no surprise that the £560 million that has just been announced included that £500 million, so we could argue it was just a £60 million funding announcement. However, it gets worse, because when we read the small print in this Budget, we discover that the National Citizen Service funding is included in that money. Once we start crunching the numbers, we soon realise that the Budget includes a £450 million cut to youth services.

Our young people will get £450 million a year less under this Budget, yet the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and announced a £560 million investment. That is smoke and mirrors; it is deceiving to the young people and youth workers around the country, who have had a really difficult time over the past two years. For this to come during national Youth Work Week and at a time when the NYA has done research proving that young people in more affluent areas are twice as likely as those in poorer areas to have access to a youth centre and a youth worker shows that the Budget is not about levelling up; it is about smoke and mirrors.

If we are to do politics better, let us play with a straight bat and be honest: this Budget contains a funding cut to our young people. It is deceiving for the Chancellor to stand at the Dispatch Box and say it is an investment when it is quite clearly the opposite. I call on Government Members to be more straightforward with the voters, particularly with our young people. We need young people to engage in our democracy. When politicians stand up and say one thing, but once we look at the small print we discover that it is another thing, it gives our young people a sense that politics is not for them.

The consequences of that are far more than the loss of youth centres or youth workers—I fear that it will lead to a loss of trust among a generation of young people who have already faced 11 years of austerity and cuts to youth services, when they see further cuts. In youth services, 11 years is an entire generation. Given the scale of cuts we have seen to youth work and the 50% decline in youth work degrees, we know it will take an awful lot to build back a sector that is on its knees. We owe it to our young people to be straight with them and to be clear that this Budget contains a huge cut to our youth services.

Elections Bill (Instruction)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Instruction
Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

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

The Minister is telling us that we will have time to scrutinise and debate the amendment he is proposing tonight, but he might not be aware that this Bill has already started; we have already had Second Reading, where all Members of the House were able to debate the merits or otherwise of the contents of the Bill, and the Bill Committee has already met four times. We have already finished our evidence taking. I say to the Minister that on page 114 of the transcript of the Committee he can see that, as a member of that Committee, I made a point of order to the Chair, asking whether or not we could take evidence from witnesses on the issue of electoral systems. The Chair was very clear in saying that that was out of the scope of the Bill and so Committee members were not able to take evidence on electoral systems. So I have to question why this was not included already in the legislation. On 16 March, the Home Secretary announced that the Government planned to change the voting system for all PCCs, combined authority mayors and the Mayor of London from the supplementary vote system to first past the post. If the Government had wanted this to be in the Elections Bill, surely they should have put it in the Bill from the beginning, allowing Members to scrutinise it on Second Reading and in Committee.

The supplementary voting system that is used for all those different types of elections—

[Patrick Grady]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we should find a way, through the usual channels, to make sure that the Bill Committee can take some supplementary evidence and we can schedule in some additional sessions so that, assuming the instruction is passed tonight, the Committee can have that level of scrutiny that has so far been denied to the House on Second Reading?

[Cat Smith]

I find myself in agreement with my fellow Bill Committee member; I hope that the usual channels will find time for extra evidence sessions so that the Committee can be informed on the different types of electoral systems.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

On PCC elections, is my hon. Friend as staggered as I am to learn that the Conservative party’s PCC for Cleveland, Steve Turner, who was elected earlier this year, was sacked in the early 2000s for systematic theft of merchandise from his then employer, Safeway supermarket, at its Norton store? Does she agree that it is totally untenable for someone who was engaged in such criminal behaviour to hold the position of PCC and that he must resign from his role with immediate effect?

[Cat Smith]

I am as staggered as my hon. Friend to learn that the Conservative party’s PCC for Cleveland was sacked for theft from a Safeway supermarket. I would certainly agree that it is totally untenable for a criminal to hold the position of PCC, and if what my hon. Friend has shared with the House tonight is true, I would expect a resignation and some kind of by-election for that PCC role with immediate effect.

Turning back to the instruction, the supplementary vote system has been used to elect the Mayor of London since 2000, so it is certainly not a new system of voting. The instruction on the Order Paper suggests that it is somehow something that has come to light since the Bill has been published, but if we have been using this system of voting for the London Mayor for well over two decades, it seems inconsistent for the Government not to have been able to see fit to put this in the Bill before this late stage.

The Minister said that this measure was in his party’s manifesto, and indeed the 2017 manifesto stated:

“We will retain the first past the post system of voting for parliamentary elections and extend this system to police and crime commissioner…elections.”

However, if he reads his party’s 2019 manifesto, as I have done, he will not see it anywhere there. So this was not in the last manifesto and it has not been in the Bill since the beginning. Is this not just another example of Tory arrogance and some kind of apparent allergy to scrutiny and accountability? This Bill has been utterly chaotic and it seems increasingly likely that we are going to get a new Minister on the Bill Committee, although we do not yet know who it will be, and a new Government Whip mid-Committee. To top it all off, we are now not entirely sure whether the Bill sits within the Cabinet Office or the newly renamed “Department for Levelling Up”. So let me level with the Minister tonight: this instruction motion stinks of gerrymandering and we will vote against it.

Bay Local Authority in North Lancashire and South Cumbria

Cat Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered a proposal for the Bay local authority in North Lancashire and South Cumbria.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher.

I called for today’s debate because I believe that the current local government reorganisation process is being carried out in the wrong way and conducted at the wrong time. It is a rushed process, which councils are responding to at a time when they are also dealing with the pandemic. The reorganisation decisions that are about to be made will have a lasting impact on the Lancaster part of my constituency and how it is governed for generations to come. After all, it is 47 years since the last major review of local government in our area, which tore up the historic county of Lancashire and, I believe, got it wrong when removing Lancashire over the sands—that is, Barrow-in-Furness—from the rest of Lancashire. It could be another 47 years before we return to this topic, so we must get it right this time, both by creating effective structures and respecting cultural identities.

I would be grateful if the Minister could explain in his response to the debate why Cumbria was invited to put forward proposals and Lancashire was not. In September 2020, Lancashire County Council submitted a request to the Government to be in tranche 1. By consulting only on Cumbria and not Lancashire, the Government have limited the opportunity to develop solutions that work across both areas, despite their repeated claims to want to enable locally-led solutions.

When the consultation opened in February, it was unclear on the consultation website whether residents in Lancaster were entitled to respond at all, because the consultation only mentioned Cumbria, despite one of the options involving Lancaster. I am grateful that, thanks to the lobbying of Councillor Lizzi Collinge, some of the wording was finally amended a few weeks ago. However, it is still unacceptable that, without those changes, Lancaster may have faced a once-in-a-generation change in governance without its inhabitants being meaningfully consulted.

The consultation website is also difficult to browse, loaded with jargon and confusing, particularly for my Lancaster constituents. I am that the Minister will tell me that the consultation meets the minimum standards required by the relevant legislation, but let us be frank: a poorly designed consultation, rushed through in a pandemic, is no way to make a decision of this magnitude, and nor is it the locally-led, bottom-up process that the Government claim it is.

In Lancaster, there is a long-held view that cross-county options for local government should be considered. As I have said, the current county boundaries were imposed in 1974 and do not reflect local geography or local identity. I support Lancaster City Council’s wish to work with neighbouring councils in Morecambe Bay to develop a proposal for a new council. I am grateful to our local councillors in Lancaster and south Cumbria and in particular to the leader of Lancaster City Council, Councillor Dr Erica Lewis, for her work to encourage people in Lancaster to engage with the consultation and consider the options.

Joint working between Lancaster, Barrow and South Lakeland is very well developed in the Morecambe Bay area, which is already recognised as the functional economic geography of the area, with a footprint for public services such as the NHS that makes sense. The Bay councils developed their proposal in record time. Despite the time constraints, they have put together a strong proposal and demonstrated strong local support for it. I hope the Government will give the Bay proposal proper consideration.

However, the approach so far from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government does not seem even-handed. The legislation, and the invitation, for local government reorganisation proposals expressly allow for a type C proposal from councils in neighbouring county areas, yet Lancaster has not been treated as a full participant in the process.

The process that the Government are following is flawed. A type C proposal is a legal proposal, yet the consultation treats Lancaster City Council, Lancaster’s residents and local organisations differently from their equivalents in other areas where proposals are being put forward. I would like the Minister to give a categorical assurance that the views of Lancaster residents will be given equal weight in this process.

The Bay offers a positive vision of investment, skills and jobs growth, tackling the climate emergency, and protecting and enhancing natural resources, infrastructure such as roads, flood defences and housing, and services that meet real need across adult and children’s services. The Bay area has 13,000 businesses, with 18,000 jobs in advanced manufacturing, 4,300 in agriculture and 25,000 in tourism and hospitality. Some 30 million people visit Lancaster and south Cumbria, contributing £2 billion to the economy. It has five major wind farms, oil and gas operations, and two major nuclear power stations. It also has two universities, both already effectively co-operating across the Bay.

The Bay has the capacity to tangibly improve people’s lives and is a place that works in the real economy. Council spending would be on the same footprint as the NHS, providing clarity and focus. The proposal addressed previously missed opportunities to create a council structure that reflects the economic, geographic and population realities of the area. This proposal will strengthen rather than undermine people’s identity and affinity with the area.

Changing administrative borders does not change people’s identity and affinities. The people of Lancaster will always be Lancastrians. Many people in Barrow, despite being administratively in Cumbria, consider themselves to be Lancastrians too—indeed, as I was born in Barrow, I very much consider myself a Lancastrian—but they are also from the Bay and from the north-west.

What will change is locally focused services, with decisions made close to where people live, and a greater, more meaningful role for communities and town and parish councils if they want it. Throughout this process, the three councils of the Bay have said that they want young people to be part of shaping what is in their community and their future. To secure a job with long-term prospects and find a home that they can afford, some young people feel that they need to move away from the Bay. I want every young person to feel that they can have the opportunities and the future that they want in Lancaster and across the Bay. Can the Minister reassure me that the views of young people will be considered in making a decision on local government reorganisation?

This should not be about party politics. The Bay proposal is based on the natural affinity of the three councils and the communities they serve. It transcends party politics locally and is based on the long-term interests of the people who live, work and invest in the Bay area, not short-term political advantage—a sentiment also reflected in the surveys conducted as part of the consultation.

I was disappointed to see the Lancashire County Council response clearly split on political lines. In weighing this as a consultation response, I hope the Government will reflect on the fact that, although Lancashire County Council is divided on these issues, there is strong cross-party support in Lancaster, Barrow and South Lakeland. Lancashire County Council Conservatives are completely wrong to claim that the Bay does not enjoy local support. The Government will see in the consultation process that there is still very strong local support. This has already been evidenced by independent polling. This is not a Labour proposal, or a Lib Dem or Conservative proposal. It has been supported by parties on all sides in all three districts, because they recognise that it is the best solution for the communities across Morecambe Bay, and it is not hard to understand why. We are a community tied by history, family, work and education.

The Bay would allow councils in the remainder of two-tier Lancashire to consider their own future, develop new authorities and move to a position where all of Lancashire has a single-tier local government. The Bay also creates an opportunity for a new north Cumbria council. With an affinity with neighbours in the north of England and southern Scotland, there is potential for enhanced borderlands working.

The Government have set out three tests for proposals. I will address each and set out why I believe the Bay meets them. On the first test, the Bay will improve local government and service delivery, and provide stronger leadership and more sustainable structures. There is a public service imperative to focus on what public services need to do to respond to today’s society and needs. The Bay proposal is about reform as much as reorganisation. Mature joint working between the three councils and alignment with health services is a strong basis for creating the new council.

On the second test, the Bay has strong local support. It is the only proposal on the table that has very clear local support from the public. It is not clear how the assessment of local support will be made by the Department. Can the Minister reassure me that he will not place the self-interested opposition of Conservative councillors from the other end of Lancashire above the wishes of local people in the Bay area?

The third test relates to population. The Bay is within the range proposed by the Government and has a credible geography. There is obviously a lot of work to do to develop the detailed plans for any new councils that are created, whether that is bringing together current district services or county services. There is also work to do with the police and fire authorities to develop arrangements. Can the Minister assure me that the Government will not put the district-led proposals, and specifically a type C proposal, at an immediate disadvantage? It would make nonsense of the invitation for a type C option if the Government were to rule it out on the alignment of police and fire authorities. There must be a pragmatic approach, and it must be recognised that there is an opportunity to work out new arrangements in the transition to a new authority. Those could be worked out locally and, indeed, the Government can intervene if they wish to.

Local government reorganisation must be about more than rearranging the deckchairs. On issues such as social care, public health, climate change and youth services, more of the same will not be good enough. The Department commissioned a research report from Cardiff University that concluded that size is not a detriment with respect to performance, and the implications for performance should be evaluated in the context of the reform proposed for each local area. The Bay is a chance to shake things up and to do things differently, on a geographic footprint that makes sense for services and local people.

Finally I want to say a word about democracy, which should be at the heart of the discussion. I agree with the Government that our current two-tier local government arrangement does not work. Routinely people do not know which council provides which services, who they should hold accountable for them, or where they should turn for help. I assist thousands of constituents with their issues each year as their MP, and I feel their pain. A change to unitary local government is welcome and in principle it has broad political support, because it would simplify services for residents and businesses. It would vastly improve the accountability of councils and councillors, and by doing so it would improve local people’s ability to understand and have a say in decisions that affect them. However, that sense of connection to local government will be realised only if the authority reflects the local identity and local patterns of living and working.

I believe that only the Bay will deliver that for Lancaster, South Lakeland and Barrow. Unlike proposals for county unitaries it operates on a scale that works, and unlike such options as greater Blackpool it represents real geography that will centre all the residents in decision making. The feeling is clear, from surveys, opinion polling and representations that have been made to me. Residents and businesses in Lancaster say that they would feel distant from a one Lancashire or greater Blackpool authority. The Bay would give leadership that local people would identify with, and enhance local democracy rather than weakening it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful Members of the House on this subject, which he and I have discussed many times. Fewer than one in five children from a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller background meets the expected standard for English and maths at GCSE. I am firmly committed to delivering a cross-Government strategy to improve life chances in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and, as my hon. Friend says, to encourage greater integration, particularly in education. In the depths of the pandemic, my Department has invested £400,000 in education and training programmes for GRT children, so that they can receive extra tuition and catch up on lost learning.

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

In November, the Public Accounts Committee published a damning report on the towns fund, stating that the selection process was not impartial and was almost certainly subject to political interference from Ministers. Wyre Council’s strong bid for the future high streets funding for Fleetwood, which I supported, was rejected last month. Was that selection process, which saw Fleetwood’s town centre miss out, also not impartial?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady misrepresents even what the Public Accounts Committee had to say about the towns fund; I urge her to re-read what it said and not to be so liberal with her language. I can assure her that the high streets fund used a 100% competitive process, and Ministers had no say in choosing the places selected.

If fault lies anywhere, I am afraid it lies with the hon. Lady’s local council, because despite our giving it hundreds of thousands of pounds to produce plans, and despite the no doubt great need in the community, it failed to put forward proposals that met the Treasury’s basic benefit-cost ratio value-for-money standard. That is a great pity. The people of her local community have missed out, but if the blame lies anywhere, it lies with her local council.

Towns Fund

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we are looking to the shadow Secretary of State as the guardian of value for money and the Exchequer, I think the public will be sorely disappointed. It is probably about time that he spoke out about the activities of Croydon Council. Croydon Council’s mismanagement of public money has been, frankly, catastrophic and shocking. Who will lose out as a result? It will be the people of Croydon, who will see their services reduced and will have to deal for years to come with the toxic legacy of a Labour council that the shadow Secretary of State has fastidiously supported.

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

Who authorised the 18 taxpayer-funded adverts that were placed on Facebook by the Secretary of State’s Department and were subsequently removed by Facebook?

[Robert Jenrick]

All spending by the Department is approved, by definition, by the Department, through the accounting officer and the permanent secretary.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

Yes, I can. My hon. Friend is a hardy campaigner for her constituents. When I came to the House before the recess to answer a similar urgent question, I told the House that we had injected into the welfare system some £6.5 billion of further investment to help people in difficulty. I can now report to the House that, as she has pointed out, we have now spent £9.3 billion on the welfare system. That is a very tangible example of the investment that we are putting in to help people out during this crisis.

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

Young people have been hit hardest by the coronavirus jobs crisis and receive less local housing allowance. As a consequence, 100,000 young people are now at risk of eviction. What discussions has the Minister had with youth organisations working with young people who are homeless, at risk of homelessness or perhaps sofa-surfing to ensure that they do not face an evictions crisis?

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. My Department and my officials are in regular contact with a large number of stakeholders and groups concerned with those affected by this crisis. I myself have taken part in a large number of roundtables with various interlocutors. As I say, we will keep our policies under review to deal with the challenges that people face. I simply point her again to the interventions that we have already made, including the job retention scheme, the help with local housing allowance and the discretionary housing payments that have been disbursed to local authorities to help people in difficulty, including young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend, who I know campaigns vigorously on these issues. I reassure Members on both sides of the House that the Government intend to bring forward a review of the planning system and how it interrelates with flood plains, to ensure that homes are not built irresponsibly on parts of the country that routinely flood.

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

On 20 November, two days after meeting Richard Desmond at a Conservative party fundraising dinner, the Secretary of State’s office instructed departmental officials to speed through the Westferry decision before the date when the new community infrastructure levy came into force. The Secretary of State was informing his officials of that date, so it cannot have been them who told him about it. That begs the question: who did?

[Robert Jenrick]

The fact that Tower Hamlets Council was preparing a new local plan that included a CIL schedule attached to it was a matter of public record; anybody knowledgeable about London’s housing issues would have known that. It is a perfectly legitimate planning consideration to ensure that a decision is made prior to a material change like that. That is exactly how my officials rightly advised me.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Cat Smith Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

This year we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I thank the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for everything it does to ensure that the whole country remembers the 6 million Jews murdered during the holocaust, as well as the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution and in subsequent genocides. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who joins me on the Front Bench, is a trustee of that trust.

I also pay tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the work that it does to ensure that the UK plays a leading role internationally on holocaust education, remembrance and research. One of its earliest achievements was ensuring that the holocaust was included in the national curriculum for history, and it continues to play an important role, working with teachers, students and policymakers to ensure that we are equipped to speak out against intolerance. Its “Lessons from Auschwitz” programme is not only about taking young people to see with their own eyes the evidence of the lives that were taken at Auschwitz; it is also about ensuring that the human stories of the holocaust are not forgotten.

Finally, I pay tribute to the survivors and the many who lost loved ones. Although it is now 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the physical and mental scars of the horrors that holocaust survivors have had to endure have not necessarily faded with time. It is therefore all the more incredible that so many survivors dedicate their lives to sharing their experiences and educating young people about the horrors of that era, and the need to oppose antisemitism and any form of racial or religious hatred. These survivors—now of a generation who were just young children when they went through some of the most awful experiences that any of us can imagine—have collectively helped to educate millions of schoolchildren against the hatreds that are tragically still too prevalent in society. I want to put on record my gratitude for their work, the benefits of which I am confident will endure for many decades as today’s schoolchildren become the adults of the future.

I highlight the words of one survivor, Mindu Hornick, who was recently awarded an MBE for her holocaust education work. She was just 13 when she was taken with her family from Prague to Auschwitz. After living through tragedy, she made a home here in the UK, in Birmingham, where she married and raised her daughters. In December she said,

“with everything that is going on in the world today—with Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other unacceptable things that are happening—I think it is important to educate young people… it is very important to educate young people to love each other and to appreciate each other’s faith and beliefs.”

Holocaust Memorial Day is a reminder that we all have a duty to ensure that such an event can never happen again, but also that the hatred that culminated in the genocide did not start with the biggest of crimes. It emerged from a climate of scapegoating and victimisation of minorities—primarily Jews, but also Roma, Sinti and others—which is much closer to the racism that we know still scars our society today. Words never seem able to capture it, so I need to borrow from Primo Levi. As he recalled his time in Auschwitz, he set out why we must always fight the evils of racism, because far from being an aberration totally set apart from the rest of history, the holocaust is most tragically something that could happen again. I share his words with the House:

“it is the duty of everyone to meditate on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that Hitler and Mussolini, when they spoke in public, were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods…And we must remember that their faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with a few exceptions) monsters: they were ordinary men.”

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very eloquent speech. Is she aware that 75 years on, Germany still refuses to pay victims of its atrocities in Poland—Poles and Polish Jews—while hiding behind an agreement that it signed with the illegitimate communist-era Government imposed on Poland by Stalin? Does she agree that the time has come for Germany to make war reparations to Poland and those who suffered at the hands of the brutal German oppressors from ’39 to ’45?

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and I hope that it is one of the points that is explored during the debate, but if he will forgive me, I would like to get on with my speech.

As Primo Levi said, monsters do exist in our world, but they are too few to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are those who are willing to follow their evil without asking questions. It is our job in this place to ensure that those questions are asked, and clearly we need to do more.

Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust has suggested that the recent rises in antisemitism are not just about attitudes to Jewish people but are the results of our society weakening as a whole. Extremist movements in the UK and abroad have given confidence to those that previously hid in the shadows. Antisemitism always flourishes when extremism takes hold, and our current times are no different. This is a problem that all British society must confront, and it demands leadership that is prepared to turn its back on inequality and division. Prejudice and hatred of Jewish people has no place whatsoever in society, and every one of us has a responsibility to ensure that it is never allowed to fester again.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I want to raise an issue around social media and the way that it has been exploited by, I am afraid, the hard left in what I would call almost holocaust weaponisation. The hard left are trying to close down any constructive debate that we can have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are trying to fuel modern antisemitism and trying to silence many Jews in public life. I regularly receive images which, for example, have piles of dead bodies from Nazi death camps, and swastikas alongside Israeli flags. I am likened to SS guards, and I have seen online remarks calling for a final solution to my sort of politics. Does my hon. Friend agree that the internet remains an under-regulated and unchecked medium in which these attitudes can grow? Does she agree that we should be taking action both to regulate better and check better what is allowed on social media?

[Cat Smith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that incredibly valid and painful point with regard to social media companies. I pay tribute to her work on always challenging antisemitism wherever it raises its head, even when it can be very uncomfortable to do so. She raises topics around the way in which social media companies seem to be given a free rein and how it is so hard to remove these pieces of hate from many platforms. That is worthy of a debate in this House in its own right as a single issue.

Members of the Jewish community are on the receiving end of this hate, but today’s debate is a chance for us to acknowledge that they cannot be left to tackle this problem alone. We need to be vigilant, because the events that led to the holocaust appeared, not as a single grotesque event, but through the normalisation and mainstreaming of hatred, inequality and intolerance.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am privileged enough to have been in this place so long that, when I arrived, I knew Harold Wilson and Denis Healey. We could not find better champions against antisemitism and the ghastly things that happened during the war. They were true champions. They were great travellers, and they had a network across the world working against these wicked people and those who made apologies for them. I think we can be quite proud of our heritage in the Labour party, and I wish we could restore that reputation now.

[Cat Smith]

Absolutely; I want nothing more.

As Primo Levi said,

“we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.”

I regret that I am not able to stay for the duration of today’s important debate, because I have committed to taking part in Holocaust Memorial Day events in my constituency this evening, as I have done for many years. But I will be catching up on the contributions made by all Members in what I know will be a powerful and essential debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

Of course, the hon. Lady is absolutely right: this is a Home Office matter. I apologise for not explaining myself correctly before. It is a matter for the Home Office, and I will refer her question to the Home Office.

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

11. What steps he is taking to ensure that planning policies on fracking provide for the safety of people and communities.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

National planning policy makes it clear that, in considering planning applications, mineral planning authorities should ensure there are no unacceptable adverse impacts on the environment or on human health.

[Cat Smith]

Fifty seven earthquakes of up to 1.5 magnitude were detected in Lancashire last year in the two months when Cuadrilla was fracking at Preston New Road. Will the Minister commit to listening to communities such as mine in Lancashire and act in their interests to prevent permitted development rights being granted for shale gas exploration?

[Kit Malthouse]

As the hon. Lady will know, we have consulted on these permitted development rights. I am hopeful, once consideration by colleagues at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has finished, that we will be able to issue our response to that consultation. I would, however, point out to her that our ability to access gas allows us to stop burning coal. This country has just been through its longest period of not burning coal, by far the dirtiest of fuels, since the industrial revolution.