Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As I set out in detail in my evidence to the Liaison Committee, three of the contracts were actually awarded before the profit warning. The two from HS2 Ltd were part of a joint venture. The other joint venture partners stepped forward, in line with their contracts, to ensure that the project continues with no additional cost to the public purse.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T5. We know that having a job massively reduces reoffending, so will the Government commit to lead through their own example by giving ex-offenders a fair chance of a job?

[Mr Lidington]

I strongly support Ban the Box and other such initiatives. The Cabinet Office will work hard with other Government Departments to ensure that we maximise opportunities for ex-offenders to be given that second chance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State look at how families are treated by the insurance industry when a householder gets a criminal conviction? The Salvation Army recently highlighted several cases in which insurance had either been denied or made prohibitively expensive in a way that seems to me, as a former chartered insurer, to be neither reasonable nor necessary.

[Mr Lidington]

I am happy to look at that and would welcome a conversation with my hon. Friend to examine the matter further.

Business of the House

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I simply do not see the connection between there being a general election and this House being in a weaker position. I would have thought that the fact that we had a House of Commons charged with a new mandate from the people to carry through the referendum outcome meant there was greater strength of purpose in this House and indeed on the part of the Government in going forward to what will be very challenging negotiations. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about the utter determination of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to secure the best possible deal for all the people of every part of the United Kingdom at the end of those negotiations.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will the Government make time for a statement on North Korea? Although security concerns there are currently uppermost in many people’s minds, will the Government convey the concern of many of us in this House that the policy of the Chinese Government of returning refugees and escapees from North Korea to the North Korean regime to near certain death or lifetime imprisonment, sometimes going on for three generation of their families, is not something that many of us in this House want to be silent about?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes a very cogent point. The Government are concerned that China continues to regard North Koreans fleeing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as economic migrants rather than treating them as refugees under the terms of the 1951 UN convention. As we all know, the scale of human rights abuses in North Korea is too severe for the international community, including China, to ignore. We have repeatedly called on the Chinese authorities at the very least to respect the fundamental principle of non-refoulement that is built into the United Nations convention, and we did that most recently at our regular UK-China human rights dialogue.

Business of the House

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

We know that the exit negotiations have to be conducted under the process set out in article 50 of the treaty. The other 27 Governments and the European institutions have made it clear that they are not prepared to engage in negotiations until article 50 has been triggered, so the straight answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that we do not yet know the details, but the Prime Minister and the entire Government are committed to seeking a deal that delivers on all the principles that were set out in the Government’s White Paper.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

May we have an early debate, followed by legislation, to prevent the unacceptable practice of large developers buying freehold land on which they then sell new houses on a leasehold basis? Taylor Wimpey has, to its credit, stopped that practice, and I very much hope that Persimmon and Galliford Try will do likewise. Many young people and first-time buyers using the Help to Buy scheme feel that they are being ripped off by this practice, which is unnecessary and unacceptable, and we need action.

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue today. Developers should be building homes for people to live in, not creating income opportunities from ground rents or charging fees to alter properties or selling on freeholds to investors or financial institutions. Other than in a very few exceptional circumstances, I do not see why new houses should not be built and sold with the freehold interest at the point of sale. My hon. Friend the Housing Minister has said that he intends to stamp out the

“unfair, unjust and unacceptable abuse of the leasehold system”—[Official Report, 20 December 2016; Vol. 618, c. 1354.]

and our housing White Paper highlights the Government’s commitment to consult on a range of measures to tackle all unfair and unreasonable abuses.

Business of the House

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I happily endorse the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for waiving their royalties.

I will pass on to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary the hon. Gentleman’s wish for a further statement on Aleppo next week. I think the House is united in a sense of horror at what civilians there are having to endure. I know that Foreign Office Ministers are normally very keen to ensure that the House is informed as soon as possible about recent developments.

In my previous ministerial role, I worked with Ivan Rogers for a number of years. He is a formidable public servant who always reports to British Ministers in successive Governments what he picks up and what is said to him by various people in different Governments and EU institutions. It may be hard for you to believe, Mr Speaker, but in some countries people in the same Government say slightly different things about the future of Europe; that is not that unusual. The truth is that we have not set out the Government’s objectives in the negotiation to our 27 colleagues, nor have they yet met to hammer out their mandate for their appointed negotiators, so the speculation about how long the negotiations will take seems to me to be remarkably premature. If there is good will and strong political intent, I am confident that an amicable and good negotiation can lead to an agreement in which all sides can take pleasure.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

As we approach the time of the year at which there was no room at the inn for Jesus to be born in, may we have an early debate on the position facing many of our constituents who are moving into new shared ownership properties? Many of my constituents exchanged contracts in early September, but the completion date has been rolled forward endlessly. They are being chased by their current landlords, and some of them have been taken to court. Some of them are pregnant and expecting to have children shortly, and they do not know when they can move in. To make matters worse, I understand that some of the developers are concentrating on finishing off their own properties first, leaving the shared ownership tenants totally at their mercy when it comes to when they will be able to move into their new homes.

[Mr Lidington]

I am concerned about what my hon. Friend says about the case in his constituency. The Government are right to press forward with an ambitious programme of new home building for all types of tenure, but we need to be very clear that where sites have planning permission, developers have a responsibility to move ahead as quickly as possible. The most important step on shared ownership is for developers and authorities to work closely together at a local level to ensure, once permission is granted, that work on building out such sites is taken forward as rapidly as possible. As my hon. Friend knows, we are taking action through the Neighbourhood Planning Bill to remove some of the causes of unnecessary delays to development, but I hope that local councils will use their powers—both through setting conditions on development, and through the negotiation of section 106 planning agreements—to ensure the rapid delivery of shared ownership properties alongside properties for sale.

Business of the House

Debate between David Lidington and Andrew Selous

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Mr Speaker, I am not sure how I respond to that compliment. I have felt, as a student of Elizabethan history, that the last three or four weeks have been the closest thing to living through one of the crises of the 16th-century Tudor court that any of us is likely to experience, and I suspect that events in British politics this year will have given Hilary Mantel ample material for her next trilogy.

I thank the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) for his warm welcome to me and for the deserved tribute that he paid to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, who indeed did act as a champion of the House, not just in the Chamber, but in the many exchanges behind the scenes that fall to the Leader of the House. I, I hope on behalf of the House, wish him well in his new responsibilities.

Listening to the shadow Leader of the House, I felt that the three R’s he laid out before us—reasonableness, rationality and restraint—summed up our Prime Minister’s approach to Government and to politics. In fact he may have presented us with a motto for my right hon. Friend’s Administration and approach to Government.

The shadow Leader of the House is a man of undimmed ambition who has leapfrogged on to the Opposition Front Bench after so many years of parliamentary experience, and for whom two shadow Cabinet roles are just a bagatelle—something with which he can easily cope. I think his ambition should not be restrained, even now. I have been studying his remarks and I note that he said of the Leader of the Opposition that it is very difficult to see how he can unite the Labour party, and he said:

“We’re in the worst position we’ve been in the whole history of the…party”.

I think there is an embryonic leadership campaign there. I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to disregard any taunts and to throw his hat into the ring while there is still time.

On the serious point that the hon. Gentleman made about the legacy of Jo Cox, the security risks that Members face need to be considered very carefully and action needs to be taken. Without going into details on the Floor of the House, I can say that there has been agreement among members of the House of Commons Commission that new measures should be taken. We will be able to go into further details very soon after the House returns in September.

Finally, I hope that Members of every political party would look to Jo Cox and see someone—whether we agreed or disagreed with her on a particular issue—who was motivated above all by a drive to improve the lot of the people whom she served in her constituency, nationally and globally. In that sense, I think there could be few finer examples for us to follow.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on his deserved promotion to the position of Leader of the House. May we have an early debate about the troubles of Southern rail, which are causing significant problems not only for commuters south of London, but for my constituents coming in from Leighton Buzzard? Does he agree that the way to relieve the problems of commuters south of London is not to wreck the rail service north of London, but to pay attention to what needs to be done south of the river?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and the new Rail Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), have already met the operators responsible for Southern train services and Network Rail. They have emphasised the need for the operators to work with the trade unions to try to find a rapid and full solution to the current dispute, which is causing misery to many thousands of passengers every day. The Secretary of State is making the issue his personal priority and I hope very much that there will be a satisfactory resolution soon.