Building Safety

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I completely understand and appreciate the concerns expressed by the hon. Member. We are seeking to avert additional costs in the future. It will be difficult for us to make good all the injustices that have been visited on his constituents and others. I do not want to oversell what we are putting forward. It is a significant step forward, but it cannot resolve every issue from the past. I enjoyed listening to the conversation that he and the Father of the House had on Times Radio at the weekend, and I echo the very generous comments that he made about the Father of the House.

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his actions today, particularly scrapping the loan scheme for medium-sized buildings, which will help constituents of mine such as Susan Seal and the Russell Square residents in Horley. I really welcome the onus that he is putting on developers. Does he agree that, along with the other things he has talked about, transparency can be an effective tool in getting people to do the right thing? Would he speak to whether naming and shaming could be part of the solution?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the things that we saw just before Christmas with the Kingspan-Mercedes deal is the way in which public pressure from the Grenfell community meant that a very big corporate—Mercedes—did the right thing. I am very grateful to Toto Wolff and his team for doing that. We need to use a variety of tools, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that transparency is critical.

Planning (Enforcement) Bill

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Runnybridge and Weymede, who is not only a friend in this place but a neighbour. I have seen his work in supporting his constituents not only with challenges such as flooding but on so many other issues in Surrey. We are so lucky to have him. I know from the various WhatsApp groups that I am in that there is so much support for the work that he is doing in this area across Surrey.

I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), on the Front Bench. Not only is he known as one of the smartest people in Whitehall, but he has a much more important accolade: he is a former constituent of mine, so he knows the joys of the beautiful landscape in East Surrey. I am sure that he will be listening very carefully to the debate.

When we look at planning controls, we should start by thinking about what they mean. The reason they are so important is that they protect our heritage and ensure that planning improves the infrastructure that we all access. It is so fundamentally important that we have good planning, because it is a key part of people’s lives—of how they interact with their community and feel at home.

On heritage, I am lucky in East Surrey because I have not only areas of outstanding natural beauty but sites of special scientific interest, listed buildings and one of the largest proportions of green belt in the country. We have heard from many Members across the House, and I fully concur with them about the importance not only of green spaces, which my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) mentioned, but of protecting the landscape, the luxury of clean air, and the beauty of the biodiversity that we have in those wonderful spaces.

I do quite a lot of work on the environment. On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) made, it is not only that building on these spaces in this way might denigrate their green-belt status; the environment is a delicate chain, and once we take away parts of natural habitat, it is so hard to replace them. I work with so many organisations that are trying to do exactly that, but in these cases they should not have to.

The things that these rogue developers do are not limited to the rogue development that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) talked about; they also affect infrastructure, such as infrastructure to handle sewage and flooding—things that my constituents face particular challenges with. That is why it is so important that development goes through planning controls and that measures can be looked at as a whole, so we know that anything that is being built in an area is fit for purpose and fit for the local community.

However, that is not always what happens. We know that some of these rogue developers not only do things that might encumber the local infrastructure, but cause great upset in our communities by doing things that affect local heritage, whether it is the landscape or something else such as listed buildings. It is so important that we crack down on these things.

One of the challenges that I face in my community is that there is sympathy for the need for homes—when I talk to people about affordable homes in particular, they know that we need more homes—but there is a problem with trust in the planning system and in developers. People feel that where there are rogue developers and people not building to planning controls, there is not enough enforcement. When people feel like there is no rule of law, it makes it so much harder for them to trust in more house building, and I will be very clear—I have said it before in the House—that we do need some of that.

These people are not nimbys. Many have spent many hours and weeks working on neighbourhood plans. They have put forward sites, and sometimes there can be difficult conversations about green fields or beautiful places, and they say, “We all agree we can build some homes on that site.” What they do not trust is that developers as a whole will ensure that they build in the way that people would like to see. I know that the Minister will be considering that carefully.

This particular challenge around rogue builders and rogue developers is a real problem, and not just in affluent parts of this country; it affects deprived parts of this country, too. I visited a deprived part of Bristol recently, and I talked to residents there who had not only set up a local lettings policy, but had got their own equipment to go and check building standards. They would look at some of the developments that had been built and use their own equipment that they had personally bought to see whether building standards had been met, and they had not. They felt that they did not have a place to turn to. We should work out how we can give people that confidence when building standards are not being met.

[Mark Garnier]

I hope my hon. Friend will stay for the next couple of debates and will contribute to make that point about building standards in the debate on my Bill about a licensing scheme and rogue builders—hopefully that debate will not be too long away.

[Claire Coutinho]

I always like to listen to what my hon. Friend has to say, particularly in this area.

Turning to some of the interesting measures in the Bill, the database is particularly good. We all know that good government runs on good data, and the database should enable us to find some of the people who are repeatedly breaching proposals. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) made an interesting point when she said that for so many people, a breach is a first-time mistake and they learn about the planning processes through making it. Certainly we do not want to catch too many of those people out, but where there are major breaches and repeat breaches—I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has put this in his Bill—we should take that into consideration, so that we know who is carrying them out.

My hon. Friend talked about creating a financial offence, which is particularly important, because for so many of these people, they will keep committing the same offences over and over again, as he so clearly set out, because there is a lot of financial gain for them. It is not only the fact that they can do it multiple times, but the length of time it takes for enforcement. We heard earlier that it can take up to 16 weeks and possibly longer just to go through the appeals process set out in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I would welcome that being looked at again.

I have talked about the importance of why we must protect heritage and people’s confidence in their local infrastructure, while also allowing for the house building that we need, and this Bill is a very good starting point. My hon. Friend knows I have some technical questions that I would like to see answered, but this is an interesting area and I hope the Minister is listening carefully.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking me back to the halcyon days of 2016; it was not so much a torpedo being launched as an unexploded bomb going off in my own hands. As the former Member for Kensington and Chelsea, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, pointed out, one of the things about committing political suicide is that you always live to regret it.

On the hon. Lady’s broader point, it is only fair to say that the planning White Paper was mischaracterised by many. There is so much that is good in it, but it is important that we listen to concerns that were expressed in order to ensure that an already powerful and compelling suite of proposals is even more effective.

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Justice on increasing the supply of safe accommodation for domestic abuse victims.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

My Department works with others across the Government to tackle this serious issue. I am pleased that on 1 October the new duties in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 came into force to require local authorities to provide support for all victims who need safe accommodation. We are supporting councils with £125 million this year to help them to deliver on those duties.

[Claire Coutinho]

One of the really important parts of breaking the domestic abuse cycle is providing safe spaces for the women who need them to go to. I welcome the millions of pounds that the Government have invested in this area, but in East Surrey we have created an innovative local financing model, with the work of Surrey County Council and Reigate and Banstead Women’s Aid. Will the Minister meet us in order that we can explain how we have created this model, so that it could be recreated elsewhere?

[Eddie Hughes]

I am huge admirer of the work of Women’s Aid across the country. During the summer, I was delighted to have the opportunity to visit Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid to see the excellent work that it does. Of course, I would be delighted to join my hon. Friend in a visit to Reigate and Banstead Women’s Aid to see the innovative work that it is doing to provide more accommodation.

Planning System Reforms: Wild Belt Designation

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered a proposal for Wildbelt designation in planning system reforms.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. In the UK, we have seen a 41% decline in our species since 1970, and in England one species in eight is threatened with extinction. Wildlife habitats in this country are fewer, smaller and more distant than they ever have been, which is a problem not only for biodiversity, but for our fight against climate change. When nature is working, it can capture carbon, improve our air and water quality, and act as a flood defence. Restoring and protecting our natural system could provide more than a third of the carbon mitigation needed by 2030 to meet the Paris climate agreement. When nature is broken, however, it cannot protect us.

The Government are already taking action. We have an ambitious goal to build a new national nature recovery network in order to create 500,000 hectares of connected wildlife-rich habitat by 2042. To give some context, that is equivalent to 200,000 football pitches. The Prime Minister has also committed himself to protecting 30% of our land and sea for nature recovery by 2030. We are backing up those pledges by investing close to £750 million in the Nature for Climate Fund and restoring wetlands, peatlands and woodlands. Our historic Environment Bill introduces a new biodiversity net gain requirement for development, creating a sustainable funding stream for environmental improvements and ensuring that, when we build homes for people, we build habitats for wildlife alongside them.

As things stand, the sites of those hard-won green gains, where we are investing in restoring and repairing nature, are not protected under existing designations. In England, we have lots of land designations, but none of them exists to protect nature in recovery. The site of special scientific interest designation is critical for preserving individual sites that have been identified as wildlife hotspots, and the national park area of outstanding natural beauty and green belt designations—many hon. Members have them in their patch—protect landscape and amenity value, but do not directly protect biodiversity value. Although we very much like to spend time in beautiful green fields—I feel honoured to represent a seat with 94% green belt, which I think is the highest total of any seat in England—they can often be quite poor in terms of wildlife habitat. That is why I propose the new designation of wild belt to plug the legal gap and to safeguard our investments.

Wild belt is the brainchild of Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts. His proposal would provide longer-term protection for land being managed for nature’s recovery—a new designation that goes beyond conserving the nature we have to creating and connecting corridors across the land, making sure that wildlife and the natural environment have the time and space they need to flourish.

One site that would benefit from a new wild belt designation is Holmesdale wetlands in Godstone, east Surrey, which is one of three biodiversity opportunity areas being restored by the Surrey Wildlife Trust to create a connected living landscape across Surrey. All three are exposed under the current system, but could be protected by a new wild belt designation.

Left to degrade, those wetlands would emit carbon to the atmosphere, fuelling global warming, but restored they would be one of the most cost-effective methods of removing carbon—sucking out carbon, sponging up flood risks and enabling the return of a riot of bugs and insects. Those wetlands are a cost-effective natural means to achieve our aims, which is why this work deserves protection.

Across the UK, we see that nature recovery work is creating signs of hope. Take the return of the noble beaver, which is one of the best natural flood defenders, flow regulators and flora supporters we have. The beaver was once native to England, and we are seeing the beaver return after four centuries of extinction in Britain. Last summer, we had another biodiversity boost from the return of the white stork. Extinct for more than six centuries, it is back and successfully breeding in the south-east of England.

Last winter, we saw an ecological miracle on the River Don, which was once considered the most polluted river in Europe—for the first time in two centuries, salmon have spawned. East Surrey’s own natural haven, the Lingfield nature reserves, after decades of restoration work by hard-working volunteers, is home to more species of butterfly than are found across Northern Ireland. I am hopeful that our environmental treasure chest will expand again this year with the return of sand martins, nesting in Surrey for the first time in 25 years thanks to the work of the Surrey Wildlife Trust.

Bringing back species will be a key part of helping ecosystems to function, yet the examples I have mentioned are in the minority. We have seen a decline in our hedgehogs because their habitat has become so fragmented that many have struggled to find a mate. We have seen a decline in our bee population, whose abilities we rely on so as to grow food and crops, but the creation of a wild belt could create stepping stones for our hedgehogs and pollinator pitstops for our bees.

The benefits of wild belt would be far reaching not only for nature, but for our own health and wellbeing. We have seen time and again, especially during the past year, that people feel better when they are surrounded by nature-rich space. A survey carried out at the peak of the first lockdown last year found that 87% of people agreed with the statement, “Being in nature makes me happy.” The science is pretty clear: having good access to nature can reduce our risk of developing obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

The proposal also makes socioeconomic sense. Poorer households are 3.6 times less likely to live close to nature-rich space than richer households, and it remains the case that poorer neighbourhoods have poorer-quality green space, but by stretching round, through and between England’s towns and cities, wild belt could knock down those barriers and level up green access.

Making sure that we can build the right homes is our moral duty to the next generation and an important part of maintaining this country’s competitiveness in an increasingly competitive world, so it is important that wild belt works alongside housebuilding, not against it. Wild belt would, however, help to address the real concerns of my constituents about species loss, and help us to live in harmony with nature.

Schemes such as the Trumpington Meadows development in Cambridge have synchronised housing and biodiversity ambitions, although it was degraded agricultural land when the housing developer and the wildlife trust came together to build in an ecological way. Now it is home to a 1,200-strong community where 80% of the land remains biodiverse space and 40% of the properties are affordable housing.

Wild belt might encompass some greenfield sites, but it could overlay the area of outstanding natural beauty and greenbelt designations and make use of forgotten bits of land: river valleys, roadside verges, railway lines, scraps of golf courses. Members here today will all have such pieces of land on their patch and those could be rewilded to create a network of green continuous corridors from the countryside all the way through our towns and cities.

I shall bring my remarks to a close and allow time for other Members to speak. However, just as we have led the world in reducing carbon emissions and in renewable energy, we now have an opportunity to lead the world in restoring nature. Alongside COP26 in Glasgow this year, we have the largest biodiversity conference in a decade a month before, in COP15. I believe these planning reforms are a national opportunity, and the introduction of a wild belt designation would give us the chance to put nature at the heart of our recovery.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Members who contributed today; looking around this room, I see such a wealth of experience in environmental matters, and it has been a privilege to hear from everyone. I am grateful to hear so much enthusiastic support for this proposal, and I am grateful to the Minister for a gracious and detailed response. Most importantly, I welcome his wise recognition of the level of support that he has heard in this room.

We have heard passionate speeches today about the tragedy of species decline and the importance of access to green space, but I think the most important word has been “strategy”, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and so many others. It is always a good day when I hear my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) talk about trophic pyramids. Finally, I thank the Wildlife Trusts; those are the words we have heard the most today, and for very good reason. I am very glad to put this proposal forward.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered a proposal for Wildbelt designation in planning system reforms.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

I think everyone in the Chamber agrees that it is our duty to ensure that this country has the homes we need. It is our moral duty not only to the next generation but to the current generation, because having the right homes in the right places is key to our ability to remain a competitive country in an increasingly competitive world. If we lose that edge, we lose the means to pay for the excellent public services we all enjoy. Badly formed planning policy comes up time and again when we look at economists’ views of the challenges ahead for British growth and prosperity.

However, we also have a duty to ensure that those needs are balanced against the needs and legitimate concerns of existing communities, such as the ones I represent in East Surrey. Those who worry about flood risks, infrastructure constraints or house building harming nature should be heard, and solutions should be found. That is why I support ambitious approaches towards restoring biodiversity, including my campaign for a new “wild belt” designation and the Government’s plans to create new biodiversity units that will help us to create connected corridors that can be wildlife-rich. I notice that those plans have not been mentioned by the Opposition today.

I back local input to a strict standard of beauty and homes design, and increasing online access to local plans so that more people can have a say. We should also prioritise the next generation of local families and key workers for new affordable homes, and ensure that infrastructure needs are addressed. The Government are looking at these things, and I thank the Ministers for their ongoing conversations with me. I would like to see greater flexibility on what the right number of homes should be, based on local areas’ capacity to deliver. Combining all of this together would mean that we were increasing local input, not reducing it.

I have talked about the difficulty of achieving the balance between protecting existing neighbours and providing for future ones, but however hard that is, it is right that the Government are trying to grasp the nettle, and it is morally defunct of the Opposition to try to face two ways at once. We saw this in Chesham and Amersham, where the Liberal Democrats campaigned locally against their own national position on house building and HS2. We also see it in Labour’s motion today, and I have some sympathy with it, but Labour is trying to create division on the Government side of the House in the hope of making political capital while not contributing any ideas to solving a national problem. I wonder how that sits with the constituents they were elected to serve.

In 2008-09, when Labour was most recently in government, only 75,000 new homes were started—the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. In some of the areas where Labour is currently in power, where there are lots of brownfield opportunities, widespread support for house building—I should know: I used to be one of those offering support—and considerable Government funding, Labour is falling far behind. Sadiq Khan promised to build 116,000 new affordable homes by 2022; as of 2021, he has started fewer than half that number.

The problem is Labour, first in national Government and now in local government. Instead of working constructively together to ensure that this country has the homes it needs, Labour just tries to create division, sits on the fence and ignores its own record of failure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to protect green spaces.

[Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to protect green spaces.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

The pandemic has shown how vital our green spaces are for the wellbeing of the nation, from sharing our national parks together to inviting loved ones over to our gardens. That is why it was a priority for me and my Department to reopen our parks at the start of the pandemic—something that has offered a lifeline to many people and families over the past year. As we build back better and greener in our recovery, we will enhance our environment and provide more green spaces through our forthcoming planning reforms. They will build on and embed our already extensive protections for the green belt, areas of outstanding natural beauty and our ancient woodlands.

[Claire Coutinho]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to protecting our green spaces and the broader Government investment in our nature recovery programme. Will he consider looking at a new “wild belt” designation as part of the planning proposals to ensure that we protect those hard-won gains for generations to come?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would like our planning reforms to create a legacy of enhancing our environment and leaving the natural world in a better state for future generations. We are continuing to consider how best to achieve that through the ongoing detailed design of these reforms, but I am interested in wild belts, as I know my hon. Friend is. We are already bringing forward a raft of changes to support nature’s recovery, including introducing mandatory net gain for biodiversity through the Environment Bill and requiring tree-lined streets in all new developments—something that we are increasingly seeing in new housing across the country.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con) [V]]

I suppose I should thank the Opposition for giving us this chance to talk about the Conservative record on tax and all the support—including an extra £10 billion for councils—that we have put in place during the pandemic. The level of support across the board has been unprecedented in peacetime.

I have a local example of Conservatives’ record on tax versus that of the Labour party. In Conservative Surrey, it was decided that council tax would go up by between 2% and 3% this year, whereas across the border in Labour-run London, the Mayor is looking at a 10% increase. In Labour-run Croydon, which also borders Surrey, the council has mismanaged its finances so badly that is has had, in effect, to declare bankruptcy.

I pay tribute to all my local councillors and council officers in Surrey, who have worked during this time not only to provide a brilliant service to residents but to take a careful look at our public finances and make sure that they are providing value for money for residents. The House will have heard today example after example of Conservatives being better with public taxpayer money. Frankly, no one believes that their taxes would have been lower under a Labour Government. Every single MP on the Opposition Benches stood on a manifesto that committed to hiking taxes in this country by £80 billion, taking them to the highest level ever in peacetime history. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that Labour’s spending plans were not only “colossal” but “simply not credible”.

I want to spend the rest of my time talking about the council tax hardship fund. I am incredibly disappointed that the shadow Secretary of State and every single Labour MP have failed to mention it. This is a fund for which we put aside £500 million last year and £670 million this year, and it is there to help struggling families. Although I fear the Labour party is more interested in playing party politics, it is our duty as MPs to signpost families to the support that is there, instead of playing on their fears.

I notice that on the Labour leader’s Twitter feed today, there is a council tax calculator, which I tried out to see whether it would signpost people towards this support. It did not: it did ask for a variety of contact details that the Labour party could use for further electoral purposes, but it did not offer any real guidance. I urge every Labour MP who is going to be asked by Labour headquarters to pump out these scaremongering graphics later today to actually do their job, and signpost people to the support that this Conservative Government have put in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

What plans he has to support the regeneration of high streets.

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

What plans he has to support the regeneration of high streets.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

What plans he has to support the regeneration of high streets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

That idea lies very much behind the comprehensive package of support that the Chancellor has made available, with £200 billion specifically targeted at supporting small businesses on the high street. It is also why we have brought forward the further top-up grants, worth up to £9,000, to help small businesses through this next—and hopefully final—phase of the pandemic. We will of course continue to review the situation. Such concerns lie at the heart of our plans through the towns fund, the high streets fund and now the future levelling-up fund.

[Claire Coutinho [V]]

Just before Christmas I met businesses on the Oxted high street. Even with the unprecedented Government support that the Secretary of State has laid out, it has been a difficult and anxious year for them, with many going above and beyond for their customers. Surrey County Council and the Surrey economic growth board, on which I serve, are doing important work to revitalise and transform our high streets; will the Secretary of State meet us so that we can share our ideas on how we can best support such hard-working family businesses?

[Robert Jenrick]

I praise my hon. Friend for her hard work to support Oxted high street in Surrey and the work of her local councils. The truth is that the pandemic has not so much changed things but magnified and accelerated enormous market forces that were evident even before the pandemic. There will now be a very significant role for local councils in bringing forward imaginative plans to bring private and public sector investment back to the high streets over the course of the year, and to make good use of the licensing and planning reforms that we have already brought forward and that we will bring forward more of in future. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to hear her plans for Oxted.

Planning and House Building

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

In East Surrey, neither I nor my constituents deny that we need more homes. When I go to schools, I ask the teachers if they live in the area. They rarely do and that is a red flag. It comes up in my work, from trying to increase GP provision, to talking to families who tell me that their children cannot afford to live nearby. We should not be blind to that, as it is the current residents who will suffer from worse public services and local investment if working families cannot thrive.

However, I seriously worry about centrally designed housing numbers which do not take into account a local area’s capacity to deliver. This is a legitimate concern raised with me by many with longstanding expertise, such as Councillor Jeremy Webster, who led the work on the Caterham local neighbourhood plan. There is already a major worry in my area about a potential new village or town of thousands of homes in south Godstone. As one of the highest green belt areas in the country, in East Surrey we do have particular constraints and they must be taken into account. If high housing targets have to be met by ’70s tower blocks in Oxted or Horley, we will not be serving old or new residents well.

I would, however, like to thank the Secretary of State and his team for their many conversations with me about my concerns. I hope we can hear more from them about their assurances about the numbers, in particular that the final target will be decided with local input and that only once that has been agreed between local and central Government—only then—will that number be binding. That would be an important distinction between a binding number, foisted on local communities by central Government, and a number that is agreed by local people but which then local government is bound to deliver—in other words, a binding build-out rate, which I would support.

My second point is that it is mission critical that we address the very legitimate concerns of local residents. In the past 10 months alone in this job, I have heard from families in Smallfield facing raw sewage overspill inside their homes because the sewers are at capacity; from the Caterham Flood Action Group, which says that inadequate maintenance and overdevelopment has put existing homes at risk of flooding; and of the sore need for investment in our creaking junctions on local roads. My East of Surrey local economic taskforce, which I run with my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), is working to ensure that we get our fair share of funding for infrastructure. We are making progress, but there is much more to do.

Lastly, it is crucial that the new homes live up to our Conservative principles of creating places that strengthen rather than erase family ties. I would like to see an ambitious, affordable target of 40%, with homes that are affordable for local people, and earmarked for local people and key workers. We must also ensure that they meet local design aspirations, to create communities where families can thrive, and that they come with the required infrastructure and provisions to protect and enhance our natural environment. I believe that that can be done, and look forward to ongoing conversations with the Secretary of State, and his Ministers and team, to ensure that that is the case.

Criminal Law

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

This is only my third contribution in this House, and I am glad to be making it on these statutory instruments. Indeed, I welcome the wider package of measures that we are introducing to toughen up the criminal justice system overall. I have been humbled by the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), who I know has campaigned for a long time on this issue, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who gave the House a deeply moving and personal account. Members of the public sometimes worry that politicians are out of touch, but those two contributions alone show how in touch we on these green Benches are on this issue.

We must remember that these measures deal with the very worst of offenders. We have heard about rape, grievous bodily harm with intent and child sexual exploitation. I have heard directly from my constituents about the devastation they have felt at being victims of such crimes, which is then amplified when the offenders are released at the halfway point. It is a second betrayal, and it puts a serious strain on victims and communities.

I agree with the concern that automatic release at the halfway point does not provide an incentive to change behaviour sufficiently, and that is not just a wrong committed against the victims who feel that justice has not been served, but a wrong against future potential victims, against communities and their ability to feel safe, and against perpetrators who have not been rehabilitated. I understand and wholeheartedly agree with the worries about increasing sentences to the full-term point, but there is an issue of capacity and ensuring that we can deliver on our promises, so I welcome this measure and its expedience. I also welcome the spending of billions on the prison system and downstream costs within the criminal justice system so that we can deliver for victims.

One of the greatest duties that I have in this place is to ensure the safety of my communities and to ensure that victims feel that justice has been served. I support this SI and welcome the measures brought forward today.