Bird Nesting Sites: Protection

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I think this is the first time that you have chaired a debate that I have taken part in, Ms McDonagh, so it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today.

It is good to see so many hon. Members here to discuss this important environmental issue. We have already heard some excellent speeches on the consequences of netting and the action required. I commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), who set the scene well.

In a short speech, I will concentrate mainly on my constituent, Maggie Moran, who started the petition that is the reason we are all here this afternoon. Maggie and her family are in Parliament today. She started her petition in the early hours of the morning after a long shift at Hull Royal Infirmary, where she works. At first it was shared among friends; it went on to gain more than 300,000 signatures, national media coverage and a response from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which I understand has written to developers reminding them of their legal obligations.

Maggie was kind enough to write to me before the debate. I know that she has also spoken to the media and received a lot of media coverage, and has explained why this issue is so important to her. In her note to me, she talks powerfully of her upbringing and how her family instilled in her a deep love and respect for nature. She speaks fondly of holidays where she and her father calculated the age of hedgerows. As she reminds us, our hedgerows are ancient, beautiful, rich ecosystems. They are homes, breeding grounds, safe corridors and hibernation spots for birds, bats, dormice, reptiles, insects, hedgehogs and others. They play a major part in preventing soil loss and reducing flooding. I represent a constituency in east Yorkshire. The Humber estuary is prone to flooding and 95% of the city of Hull is below sea level, so flooding is an important issue for me and my constituents. Also, hedgerows help to reduce road noise, and they produce oxygen, which of course helps with the climate challenge. Hedgerows are not obstacles to be removed, but life support systems to be protected. As has been discussed in more depth today, netting puts those fragile ecosystems at risk. It can entrap birds, dormice, bats and hedgehogs, separating them from their nests and food, injuring them and even putting their lives at risk.

We must look seriously at ending the practice of netting, but we must also think beyond that. Last year in the UK, numbers of bats, hedgehogs, birds and insects continued to plummet. The UN report last week spoke powerfully of how nature’s decline will presage our own. Awareness is growing that to support society, we must change the rules to give nature room to thrive. The Government must look again at how the developments we need—houses, schools and hospitals—can be achieved without destroying nature. As Maggie said, we must look at prioritising brownfield land, which the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said can be used for more than 1 million homes on 18,000 sites. When greenfield is the only option, we should include original habitats, including hedgerows and trees, in the designs.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech; I hope her constituent appreciates what she is saying on her behalf. As parliamentary species champion for the swift, I am keen to ensure that in urban development we put swift bricks into houses, which provide those birds with a habitat,. That is a really easy step and councils such as, I think, Exeter have made it compulsory for new developments. Does she agree that that is an excellent way to provide a home for swifts?

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend, who is a great champion of nature and the environment, makes an important point. If that practice could be spread far and wide, it would be an excellent measure.

I will conclude by saying that it was nice to meet Maggie’s children Nell and John today; they are seeing at first hand what campaigning can achieve. Maggie told me that she put together the petition and brought her children to Parliament today because she hopes they will witness the lesson that, if we speak out, we can create real change for the future. To use her words:

“I want them to see that…if they believe in a cause, and if they have conviction and are willing to speak out and work hard, then anything can be achieved”.

I am profoundly thankful to Maggie for raising this issue with us. I hope that this debate will prove her right and that action will be forthcoming to deal with netting of hedgerows.

Buildings with ACM Cladding

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point. He has expressed the frustration that so many of us feel. There are companies that have done the right thing, and I have named a number of companies that are still fulfilling and standing up behind the commitments that they have already made. Equally, however, there are those that have not done so. He asked about the condition. We are trying to find a way of acting as a lever or catalyst. We can say, “Okay, you have made an application and accepted those works, but we need to have a means of staying in contact to get an update to ensure that the work is actually being done.” For me, what matters is seeing that the action is followed through and fulfilled. It is difficult to give the right hon. Gentleman a set period, because of the different nature of the works required on each building. Different cases will require different works, but the purpose behind the condition is to ensure that those buildings are remediated.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am not sure that the Secretary of State responded to the last question that the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), asked him, which was whether there was a hard deadline by which all the work had to be done and all the cladding removed from private and social buildings. If there is no such deadline, why not?

[James Brokenshire]

I thought I had responded to the question on timing. We know from experience that the remediation and construction works could take many months in some cases, so it is difficult to set a specific period. Each building and each set of circumstances will be different, and the nature of the works required will therefore be different in each case. However, if the hon. Lady is saying that we need to act at pace and with a sense of urgency, I entirely agree with her. That is why we have sought to construct the scheme in this way, and we will follow through to ensure that action is taken.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We should stand firm against terrorist atrocities wherever they are perpetrated. We should stand strong as a community, both in the United Kingdom and in the global community, against such acts of terror. We should call them out wherever they take place.

I welcome the opportunity to raise the important matter of local government funding in an Opposition day debate, especially considering how scarce the opportunities are for the Opposition to raise matters in such debates. I pay tribute to the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), whose dogged pursuit of that issue has allowed us to debate this important matter today.

In this place our discussion has been dominated by Brexit, but across the country our local councils, and the local services people rely on, are straining at the seams. I pay tribute to councillors of all political persuasions and none for the work they do in serving their communities. I pay tribute to the council officers and dedicated public servants who deliver neighbourhood and care services on the frontline. Years of uncertainty and unfair funding have created a quiet crisis that is now impossible to ignore. Under this Government, the facts speak for themselves: local authorities have faced a reduction to core funding of nearly £16 billion since 2010. That means that councils will have lost 60p out of every £1 that the previous Labour Government provided to spend on local services.

When the Prime Minister entered Downing Street, she promised to build a country that works for everyone, and she then promised an end to austerity. As her time in office probably comes to an end, we are able to reflect on both of those promises. Like in many areas of her leadership, I am sure we will all find that in both those areas she has been sorely lacking.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

As usual, my hon. Friend is making a very clear statement about the situation local government finds itself in today. My council is one of the 10 councils to have suffered the heaviest cuts, yet I represent a constituency and a city that is one of the most disadvantaged in the country. It is clear that the decisions that were made about where the cuts should fall have meant that they have been put on the shoulders of the poorest and the most vulnerable, not the richest in society.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She champions the cause of the communities of Kingston upon Hull. It is one of the most deprived local authorities in England, yet it is one of the areas that have received the heaviest cuts to their spending power since 2010. That was a political choice, and one that has decimated many communities, including the one she represents, across England.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The Housing First pilots are in the Greater Manchester, Greater Birmingham and Greater Liverpool areas, and £38 million has been put aside to assist with them. The Mayor of the Greater Birmingham area, Andy Street, phones me regularly to tell me about the progress on the Housing First pilots in the west midlands. The pilot in Liverpool is going quite well too but, sadly, the one in Manchester is not going as well, but I like a bit of competition between the three Mayors and I am sure they will all step up.[Official Report, 9 April 2019, Vol. 658, c. 2MC.] [Official Report, 11 April 2019, Vol. 658, c. 6MC.]

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Hull Daily Mail reported that in Hull alone 35 homeless people died between 2013 and 2017, part of the 24% increase in rough sleeping deaths across England and Wales in five years. That has happened on the Government’s watch. Why does the Minister think that has happened?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Again, I say that anyone dying is a tragedy. For the hon. Lady to give those numbers is a salutary lesson on how councils need to work very hard. The rough sleeping and homelessness reduction taskforce is driving forward the implementation of our cross-government strategy to achieve our commitment to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and to end it altogether. The latest figures, in 2018, show that the number of people sleeping rough on our streets has fallen for the first time in several years, and that the number sleeping rough in our specialist areas has reduced by 19%.

Tower Blocks: Dangerous Cladding

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the New Providence Wharf situation is one of those that is currently unresolved. We are engaged with Ballymore, which is the owner at the moment, and it is making the case that leaseholders should carry the cost. We have made it clear to it that that is not the case, and we will keep up the pressure and hope for a resolution soon.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Local Government Association says that it continues strongly to urge the Government to ban the use of any combustible materials on high-rise and high-risk buildings. Rockwool has been in touch with me about two buildings in Hull North: the Bransholme Health Centre and the Allam Medical Building. I am concerned to hear that these buildings have materials that are combustible and could be dangerous. Is the Minister concerned, as I am, about these type of buildings not being part of his proposed plan?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am, of course, concerned to hear that, and the hon. Lady will know that we introduced a complete ban on combustible materials on buildings over 18 metres just before Christmas. That ban is not retrospective. However, all building owners have a duty to ensure that their buildings are safe, and if they believe, after assessing their buildings, that they are not safe, they also have a duty to remediate. It is almost impossible for us, I guess, to tour the country and review every single circumstance, which is why we are stressing that the primary responsibility for this lies with the building owner. If she knows of buildings that she believes are not safe, and the building owner is not taking the action that is required, she should, in the first instance, speak to her local authority colleagues who have the power to intervene. If that fails then, by all means, write to me.

Protection for Homebuyers

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on securing this debate and on the eloquent way in which she set out her case. She and other hon. Members showed that there is a major problem, and I hope the Minister will address it in her remarks.

When my hon. Friend said that she was seeking a debate on this issue, I immediately said, “I would love to be part of that debate,” because for the past eight or nine years I have been having problems with house builders in my constituency. I have been most struck by the fact that, of all the casework I deal with, they are the most difficult group to get a response from.

My hon. Friend said that Persimmon has a policy of not dealing with Members of Parliament, and that is certainly my experience. Despite numerous letters and telephone calls, it was only when I sent it a message saying that I was about to stand up in Parliament and make very derogatory remarks about its failure to respond that I even got the courtesy of a letter. It then took many months to get a meeting—I got one after, I think, five years of trying. That part of the house building community really needs to sort itself out.

We have heard a lot about the leasehold scandal. We have heard about snagging with new properties, and homeowners’ problems in getting that sorted out. I want to talk about two issues that have been a problem for me in my constituency. As a background, I should say that Hull is one of the most successful Help to Buy areas of the country. Lots of my constituents have scrimped and saved to get together the money to buy their home, and they are really proud that they have been able to do that. They are then faced with developers who, once the house has been sold, seemingly wash their hands and think they have no responsibility for sorting out the problems they have left behind. My constituents are left high and dry.

I want to give two examples. The first involves Harron Homes and Persimmon Homes, which developed a housing estate around Whisperwood Way in my constituency. The estate was completed in about 2007, but it took me and the residents four years of campaigning to get the road surfaced by the developers and adopted by the local authority. Of course, that should have been done before the residents moved in. It was unsafe, it damaged people’s cars and it was dangerous to children and the elderly. There were also problems with Yorkshire Water completing the sewerage works. Harron Homes dragged its feet to get the road surfaced.

It is clear that developers, utilities and, in some cases, local authorities, should have stronger responsibilities placed on them to ensure that issues such as that do not drag on for four years. The residents have to pay their council tax, their water rate bills and everything else, but there is seemingly no mechanism to ensure that the problems they face are dealt with.

While all that was happening, I was approached by some more residents from Whisperwood Way. They came to me because they had moved into properties in Leadhills Way that were built right up to the edge of the Sutton Cross drain. Those families told me that their homes had been built by Persimmon in 2006, and they were having two problems. The first was that the homes were built too close to the drain, which caused their gardens to sink and their fences to collapse into it. The second was that the pathways on the estate were not surfaced to a council standard. A local resident said:

“My children are extremely eager to play on their garden toys but I am reluctant to let them do so because of the fear that the fence and land near to it will simply fall/slip down into the drain if they so much as go near it. Our garden (and I’m sure several of our neighbours’ gardens) are extremely fragile due to erosion caused by the ‘drain’ and the tractors who ‘dredge’ the sides by simply pulling the ground away. I feel like myself and my children are living like prisoners. I appreciate that this sounds extremely dramatic, but this is how this issue is making us feel. It’s especially hard during the school holidays when both of my children are off.”

The key issue in that case is that there was no way for the council to take any enforcement action against Persimmon to compel it to sort out the problem that had developed on the land very close to the drain that it had built houses on.

If residents had someone—an ombudsman, for example—to turn to, backed by real powers to compel developers to put right problems, such matters could be sorted out, without adding to the years of stress and misery, which my constituents are still going through. Although finally, after five years, we got Persimmon to a meeting where we agreed that it would carry out a report into what was happening, proper resolution of the problem at the back of those houses is still lacking.

[Danielle Rowley]

My constituency of Midlothian is the fastest growing in all Scotland, and every town and village has a huge new development. That is the same for a lot of areas throughout the UK, which is why it is such a big issue. With huge new developments, although there are also good developers, a lot of problems come to the fore. Such issues need to be tackled now as we are building on a scale we have not seen in a long time. I hope that the Minister will take note of all the fantastic contributions today, because this is an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with.

[Diana Johnson]

We also want to see more house building, so we need to get this sorted out and to get it right.

My constituents have asked me to say that they feel that the way in which a company such as Persimmon has behaved—with disregard for their problem for so many years—is an utter disgrace. Persimmon should be facing massive fines for its behaviour, not giving out the massive bonuses to which many hon. Members have referred.

As I started by saying, in Hull we have one of the most successful Help to Buy schemes. Persimmon has benefited, as did the former chief executive Jeff Fairburn with much of that £75 million in pay, shares and bonus that he pocketed. He has gone, obviously, but his successor at Persimmon, David Jenkinson, is getting about £40 million from the bonus scheme. That is not acceptable, and I hope that the Minister will comment.

In conclusion, my constituents’ issue has gone on for far too many years. It needs to be resolved. I hope that we see progress on an ombudsman with some real powers on the side of residents who have done their best—they are aspirational and want to buy their own homes—but find themselves in a nightmare scenario in which companies can simply ignore them and their problems.



[Mr Virendra Sharma in the Chair]

Local Government Funding Settlement

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the approach he has outlined. Certainly, as we look to the spending review and to different ways in which we can drive further innovation, we will consider how unitarisation has brought benefits to some parts of the country in producing savings on back-office and other arrangements. We do want that to be locally driven and for there to be such support for it, but he makes an interesting suggestion and I will certainly reflect on it further.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

In the Secretary of State’s statement, he said that he has been

“listening carefully to councils of all shapes and sizes across the country and responding.”

May I therefore ask him how exactly the £650 million for adult and children’s services, and apparently for the NHS as well, will deal with the national funding crisis now—I repeat, now—in adult social care and children’s services, which is currently estimated to be about £3 billion?

[James Brokenshire]

With the additional funding announced in the Budget, the Government will have given councils access to £10 billion of dedicated funding that can be used for adult social care in the three-year period to 2019-20. I know that longer-term reforms are obviously required to put the system on a sustainable basis. That is why we have now gained the £650 million to support councils in dealing with a number of these pressures. Again, I highlight how we deliver care and support better by having stronger linkages between our NHS and our council services, which this will help drive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

20. What recent assessment he has made of (a) trends in the level of home ownership since 2010 and (b) the opportunities available for council and social housing tenants who wish to buy their homes.

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

Home ownership has been stable over the past four years at about 63%. The right to buy has helped more than 86,000 council tenants into home ownership since 2012, under the reinvigorated scheme. This summer we launch a major pilot of the voluntary right to buy for housing association tenants.

[Diana Johnson]

Since 2010, we have seen home ownership levels fall to a 30-year low, while homelessness has doubled. If we want to end this dual failure to meet housing need and aspiration, and put choice in the hands of the many, not the few, should we not invest in building and renovating enough council and affordable homes to rent and buy, without taking away the rights that council tenants’ have had for 38 years under the right to buy scheme?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is definitely right to say that the solution to everybody’s housing problems is to build more homes—as many as we can—across those parts of the country that need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

I am certainly willing to meet my hon. Friend, who is right to champion innovative ways in which we can build and innovative techniques within the construction sector. That is why we have the £3 billion home building fund to provide loan finance to builders using those methods, as well as our modern methods of construction working group looking at ways in which that can be advanced.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

T4. The Secretary of State has just talked about councils’ role in prevention. Given that they are now responsible for public health and the Local Government Association claims that public health cuts of £600 million mean that they are unable to deal with unforeseen outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases, is he concerned that we have the highest rates of syphilis since the end of the second world war, and strains of gonorrhoea that are resistant to treatment?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting those particular cases, the details of which I am not intimately familiar with. I would be happy to look into the matter. She is absolutely right to highlight the important role that local authorities play in prevention, particularly when it comes to public health. As we approach the spending review and the fair funding review, I would be delighted to talk to her to see how we can best capture the role that local authorities play in delivering that.

Govia Thameslink Franchise

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The Secretary of State has indicated that he is open to looking at the shape of the franchise in future. Discussions have been held with the Mayor of London about perhaps including some elements of the current franchise within the orbit of Transport for London’s Overground service. We are totally open-minded to solutions that work in the passenger interest.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Following on from the final question asked by my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, and in the light of speculation in the Railway Gazette, will the Minister give an undertaking that he will be coming before the House in the next few days, leading up to when we finish on 24 July, to announce that the electrification of the TransPennine route has been cancelled?

[Joseph Johnson]

I am here at the pleasure of Mr Speaker, and I cannot predict when I will be called. The TransPennine upgrade is a massive programme of investment. It is the flagship enhancement programme of the next control period for our railways. We will spend £2.9 billion on the TransPennine route in the course of the years 2019 to 2024. It is a phased programme that will include major civil engineering work, and it will also include electrification.

Govia Thameslink/Rail Electrification

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The answer is yes, and the terms of reference of the Glaister review, which are public, allow for that.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

As we have been talking about the north, I want to ask a question about it. I believe that the Rail Minister is also the Minister for London; it is a shame that the Secretary of State, who has the whole country on his watch, is not here today. If it is true that the Department has not yet signed off the trans-Pennine money, why can we not transfer the power to decide what is best for the north from the Department to Transport for the North, which is what the One North campaign has been asking for?