Oral Answers to Questions
Cat Smith Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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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)
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(5 years ago)
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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(5 years, 6 months ago)
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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)
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.
Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration
Cat Smith Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
I came to this subject 10 years ago as a neutral, because I have a scientific and engineering background and am usually driven on issues such as this by the evidence, rather than political or ideological reasons. I deeply believe that we need a very varied energy mix for this country, and obviously as much renewable as possible, but I still think that nuclear power has an important role to play because it is much safer nowadays. In a very unstable world where we still need carbon fuels—with Russia and countries in the middle east and north Africa producing oil and gas—it is very important that we have our own indigenous carbon fuels that we can turn to as and when we need to. I was therefore quite agnostic when it came to the development of shale gas production in Lancashire.
I thank the House of Commons for producing an excellent paper on shale gas and fracking on 6 November, because it has provided a great deal of background on and insight into the issue. Until fairly recently, the issue hinged on exploratory development in Lancashire and, if I may, I will look back at what has happened in Lancashire in the past. On 1 April 2011—getting on for nine years ago—Blackpool, which is not far from my constituency of Preston, experienced seismicity, or a tremor, of 2.3 on the Richter scale, which was far too large. On 27 May 2011—again, nearly nine years ago—there was a subsequent tremor of 1.5 on the Richter scale. We were told that this was due to fluid injection into a fault zone, and that the fracking company, Cuadrilla, had already mapped out parts of Lancashire and knew exactly where the fault lines were so that it should never occur again.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. As a fellow Lancashire MP, I am sure he also hears from his constituents about their concerns about earth tremors and earthquakes caused by fracking. In response, the Government have brought in a traffic light warning system. Many of my constituents are concerned that that traffic light warning system is maintained and stays in place, despite the pressure from some fracking companies. Do his constituents tell him the same?
Sir Mark Hendrick
Yes, my constituents do feel the same, which is why I have risen to speak on this important subject. The city of Preston is obviously very close to these fracking sites.
To move on, the Government have insisted that controls are in place so that operators will have to assess the location of faults before fracking, to monitor seismic activity in real time and to stop if a magnitude greater than 0.5 on the Richter scale is detected. The figure of 0.5 is the one promised throughout the time that the developers were going through the exploratory phase and the development phase before they turn to production in Lancashire.
It is good to see the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) in his place. He was the Secretary of State at the time, and I recall being present in his office when he gave a great number of assurances about how fracking would be conducted in Lancashire. Of course, things have turned out rather differently from what he said at the time. He was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change between 2012 and 2015, and he made the following statement to The Guardian. He said:
“I wanted to make sure that…we have tough regulations to tackle things like methane emissions and any pollution to make sure that we have got things like water sustainability right.”
He went on:
“If we are going to do fracking we have got to make sure that it does not hurt our environment and local communities benefit from it.”
We have yet to see local communities benefit from it. With coal, people in the north dug the coal, but it was those in the south and around London who made the profits from that. I do not want to see the same happen with fracking.
Since then, local communities have been subjected to much higher levels of seismic activity. Over a two-week period in November 2018, there were something like 30 recorded events of seismic activity with a 1.1 magnitude tremor. That is twice the level indicated by the former Secretary of State, the Government at the time or Cuadrilla itself. The people of Lancashire have had enough of this. I came to this as an agnostic, and as somebody who wanted to believe that 0.5 was the level Cuadrilla was going to stick to. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Brian Baptie, head of seismology at the British Geological Survey, told journalists at a briefing in 2019 that the limit could safely be raised to magnitude 1.5 since that was a level similar to vibrations caused by a heavy bin lorry. I am sorry, but that is not what was promised. Since then, 50 geoscientists have sent a letter to The Times, on 9 February 2019, arguing that we should increase the limit even higher. That is not acceptable, and the people of Lancashire will not accept it.