Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Following the exoneration of Darren Grimes in a recent court case, what confidence does the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission have in the commission?

[Bridget Phillipson]

In the past four years, the commission has carried out approximately 450 investigations into a variety of electoral offences. The results of five of these have been challenged in the courts, and the recent appeal is the only challenge that has been upheld. The commission will review the full written detail of the judgment once it is made public, before deciding on next steps, including any appeal.

EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady is right: we have always known that we had an issue with the fourth carbon budget, and there is more work to be done. That is why it was a reasonable achievement to get cross-Government approval for the fifth carbon budget, and I thank her for her comment on that. There is still a lot of work to be done. There are policies to be decided on, and we will bring forward the emissions proposals by the end of this year in order to address those policies that are going to be needed in the 2020s.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

In a former life, I was the rapporteur in the European Parliament for the European Investment Bank. We are not only a stakeholder in the bank; we are a shareholder and one of its biggest funders. It funds projects across the planet, not just within the European Union. Surely there is no risk to investment in the United Kingdom while those factors remain the same.

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying that position, which will no doubt give the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) as much comfort as it has given me.

I want to make some more comments on investor confidence, which is central to this afternoon’s debate. Since the referendum, I have met investors from across the energy spectrum: nuclear, renewables, energy efficiency—all areas in which we need investment. Yesterday, I spoke to members of the managing board of Siemens to reassure them of the commitments that I am setting out here today. Officials across my Department have regularly kept in contact with investors and energy companies to reiterate that message.

The message from business is clear. It still sees the UK is a great place to invest in. Britain remains one of the best places in the world in which to live and to do business. We have the rule of law, low taxes, a strong finance sector and a talented, creative and determined workforce. We have to build on those strengths, not turn away from them. Those factors combine with a clear energy policy framework and a strong investment-friendly economy to make the UK an ideal place to attract much-needed energy investment. The UK has been the fourth highest investor in clean energy globally for the past five years. This is investment in the energy infrastructure that we need to underpin a strong competitive economy, and this Government will do all we can to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place for investment. Whatever settlement we decide on in the coming months, those fundamentals will remain unchanged.

I want to underline our commitment to addressing climate change. Climate change has not been downgraded as a threat. It remains one of the most serious long-term risks to our economic and national security. I attended the world-class team of British diplomats at last year’s Paris climate talks. Our efforts were central to delivering that historic deal, and the UK will not step back from that international leadership. We must not turn our back on Europe or the world. Our relationships with the United States, China, India and Japan and with other European countries will stand us in strong stead as we deliver on the promises made in Paris. At the heart of that commitment is our own Climate Change Act 2008. The Act was not imposed on us by the EU; it was entirely home grown. It was also a world first and a prime example of the UK setting the agenda that others are now following. And let us not forget that it was delivered with unanimous support from right across the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are short of time, so single-sentence, short supplementaries are needed.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

13. A small but important role in flood defence is played by farmers who clear ditches and drainage channels. What progress is being made to remove the bureaucracy that sometimes stops them from doing that?

[Rory Stewart]

Two weeks ago, we took through the House new legislation that will significantly simplify what happens. We will focus the efforts of the Environment Agency on the highest-risk cases, we have reduced red tape by 50%, and we are allowing farmers in non-specialist environmental zones to clear 1,500 metres of drainage ditch without having to get a bespoke permit.

British Waterways

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I am in full agreement. We do not know what would happen were British Waterways to be privatised, in terms of fees, uses and common access, and that sense of heritage, of a past coming down to us. The worry is that the Minister has decided to take no decisions until after the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. My worry is that by the time we reach the CSR, his colleagues in the Treasury might have decided that flogging off the property portfolio was too good an opportunity to miss. We might find ourselves in the awful position of watching the Chancellor stand at the Dispatch Box and sell our national heritage down the proverbial Kent and Avon, in the classic Treasury manner of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

In my constituency, I have a huge swathe of the Grand Union canal, with fantastic marinas such as Braunston and a huge interest of the populace, who spend much of their leisure time around the canals. Given the hon. Gentleman’s analogy that the dark spectre of the Treasury is lurking all around, will he remember that in the dark days of the last Labour Government, when European fines were levied on the Government, money was moved away from the British Waterways budget into other areas to cope with that funding black hole? I would like to think that there is definitely cross-party agreement on the idea of mutualisation in the future.

[Tristram Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman confirms the point that the traditional model of funding is really no longer credible, not least under this Government’s rather aggressive approach to the public finances.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we are in some form of agreement, and that is why we have come together this evening to support the Minister in his lonely pilgrim’s progress against the big beasts of Whitehall. He might call it the big society, we might call it the co-operative spirit, but what we must seek to establish is a modern national trust for British Waterways, and a financially secure, democratic and sustainable future for the inland waterways that made our wealth and now help to shape our national identity.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye in this important debate and enabling me to make my maiden speech. Let me begin by commending the maiden speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray)—a wonderful lady who will grace this side of the House very well—and my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who is a friend of mine. I am so pleased to see him elected and sitting on these green Benches.

Alas, I must also thank someone who, annoyingly, raised the bar in maiden speech terms just before I spoke: my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). He talked a great deal about tradition and horticulture in his speech. I knew he was going to do that because I know that, on accepting the honour of being elected for Salisbury, he then sang the “Ode to the Turnip”.

As you will know, Mr Speaker, I was a member of the European Parliament between 1999 and 2009, representing the east midlands region of the UK in Brussels and the very expensive and completely superfluous Strasbourg. Many hon. Members here have asked me what the notable differences are between being a Member of the European Parliament and being an MP. There are very many indeed. For example, there is no obvious need for simultaneous interpretation here and it does not take me the best part of a day to commute to my place of work. However, the biggest difference I have seen so far is the amount of constituency work that hon. Members do.

When I was elected to the European Parliament I was, like all new members of any Parliament, as keen as mustard to prove my worth to my constituents. However, I had to wait a very long time for my first constituent to actually contact me––over two months. When it came, it was quite unexpected, as the constituent in question had somehow got hold of my home telephone number and called me quite late on a Friday night. Never mind; this was my first real punter and I was going to help him no matter what. I asked him what his problem was and he said, “It’s about my drains.” This was not necessarily a European matter but I was keen to help. We spent ages going over what he perceived his problem to be and, at the end of our conversation, I told him that I had a plan. My plan was that, on Monday morning, I was going to phone his environmental health officer and get things moving. He said to me, “Oh no, I don’t want to take it that high.” It was then that I realised that perhaps the public do not hold politicians in very great esteem. I very much hope that this new Parliament can rectify that, given time. That story keeps coming back to me each morning when I receive the dozens of phone messages, the bags of mail and the hundred-odd e-mails from my constituents in Daventry.

The seat of Daventry itself has only been around in parliamentary terms for the last 92 years. I am only the sixth MP returned for it. Indeed, when the seat was created in 1918, it returned a man who occupied your chair for a very long time, Mr Speaker. Edward Fitzroy had quite a reputation as Speaker of the House. According to Harold Macmillan, his speakership was “severe but fair” and he had a particular method of dealing with bad, tedious and too-lengthy speeches. Mr Speaker Fitzroy would remark to himself in a voice audible to at least the two Front Benches, “Oh, what a speech!” or “When is this boring fellow going to sit down?” Whatever you might be thinking now, Mr Speaker, I am obliged to you for not saying it.

The hon. Member for Daventry for the past 23 years was the hon. Tim Boswell, a man well regarded and much respected on both sides of the Chamber and very much so in his constituency. If I had a pound for each time someone said during the election campaign that Tim Boswell was “such a nice man” or that I would have very big boots to fill, I could have afforded not to have had any dealings with IPSA at all in my first parliamentary term. It is with some trepidation that I come to this place as the successor of a man called a saint by some in the national media, as everyone is disappointed that he chose to retire at the last general election. I am sure that all hon. Members will join me in the hope that we will get to see him working in another place very near here in the not too distant future.

I first met Tim Boswell back in the 1980s. I was working in New Covent Garden market, in my family’s fruit and vegetable import and wholesale business. At about 5 o’clock one morning, a mild panic swept through the market. A number of men in suits were touring around. Obviously there was no need for people to worry because everyone there had, of course, paid all their taxes. Soon the mood relaxed when the junior Minister for Agriculture, who was in charge of wholesale markets, started to introduce himself. Yes, Tim Boswell took seriously every job he was given in government and opposition and did them better than anyone else had ever done. No one in New Covent Garden market could remember seeing a Minister beforehand and I know that no one has since.

It should be noted that the boundary Commission changed the constituency boundaries quite considerably, so the new Daventry takes in areas that were previously represented by my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Northampton South (Mr Binley). Those Members all have excellent reputations among their former constituents, and they are all distinctive characters in this place, too.

The new constituency of Daventry has a great deal going for it, with almost 100 distinct and beautiful villages and the town of Daventry itself. Daventry, or Danetre for those who are truly local or like their Shakespeare, has its origins as a settlement back in the 9th or 10th century. It has had a market since the 12th century, which still continues to this day. The town once—but no longer, alas—had a railway station on the former London and North Western Railway branch line from Weedon to Leamington Spa, but it was closed back in September 1958. The local weekly newspaper, the Daventry Express, is nicknamed “The Gusher” after the steam engine that used to service the town.

If people know anything about Daventry, they will know that from 1932 the BBC Empire Service, now the World Service, broadcast from it. The radio announcement of “Daventry calling” made the town famous across the globe. They might also know that early in the morning of Tuesday 26 February 1935, the radio station on Borough hill, Daventry, was used for the first ever practical demonstration of radar by its inventors, Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Frederic Wilkins.

Many beautiful villages are tucked away in the beautiful rolling countryside. Earl’s Barton is the home of Barker shoes—yes, I am wearing a pair now—a stunning Saxon church and a beautiful market square housing the famous Jeyes chemist, who invented and manufactured Jeyes fluid. Brixworth, with another Saxon church, lies just a mile or so away from a factory that builds McLaren’s Formula 1 racing car engines. Naseby is a beautiful village sited beside the battlefield where a decisive parliamentary victory was won in 1645, and at Ashby St Leger the plan was hatched to blow up the House of Lords during the state opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605.

Yelvertoft, Crick, Preston Capes, Hanging Houghton, Maidwell, Draughton, Lilbourne, Watford, Winwick and West Haddon are all stunning villages in my constituency, but they are also linked by the fact that every one of them has, or has had, proposed planning applications for wind farms with turbines of up to 126.5 metres tall, which is almost the height of the London Eye. The total number of turbines suggested for this small swathe of my constituency is 53.

This debate is about energy, and I must mention the folly that is onshore wind energy. Not only does it dramatically change the nature of the landscape for ever—and as we have very little beautiful English countryside left, so we should try to treasure the bit we have—but it does little to help us in our battle to reduce carbon emissions. Leaving aside the damage these turbines do visually, I believe that science is not on the side of this sort of wind power. We still need to have the ability to produce 100% of our energy requirements by other means for those times when the wind is not blowing, and when the wind does stop, there is plenty of research suggesting that firing up gas and coal power stations quickly to take the slack created by the wind stopping burns those fuels so inefficiently that much of the good that has just been done is undone. I also hope Ministers will give better planning guidance to local councils that have to deal with these matters. That guidance should perhaps borrow an idea from our European friends: a 2 km exclusion zone, meaning that no turbine can be constructed within 2 km of any dwelling.

I am a great believer in renewable, sustainable and locally produced solutions to our energy problems of the future. Plenty of miscanthus grass is grown as a true biofuel across my constituency. I also believe we have to face up to the fact that nuclear energy must play a part in the medium and long term.

Across Daventry, there is also huge pressure on housing, and there is also great concern that the previous Government’s top-down housing targets driven by quangos will mean building on greenfield sites and wrecking the countryside we love. I hope and expect to see this coalition Government return local planning to local people and incentivise the reuse of brownfield sites.

I imagine that everyone in this Chamber will have driven through my constituency, because the M1 carves it almost in two. At junction 18 stands Daventry international rail freight terminal, where what many people refer to as “big sheds” employs thousands of my constituents in skilled and unskilled work. My constituency is a key national hub for many large businesses, and I will always try to make the case for them in this place because I have noticed that wealth creators are often ignored, dismissed and perhaps even viewed with disdain by some in this Chamber. My constituents are excited about the proposals in parts of the Gracious Speech, especially those relating to the roll-out of high-speed broadband, because villages such as Spratton and Sibbertoft struggle to receive any connection.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye and participate in this debate. Daventry is very much a part of middle England, and I consider myself fortunate and privileged to represent it in the House of Commons.