Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The reason that we are talking about Victoria Tower Gardens is that it is next to Parliament. This is not a London memorial. We are talking about a national memorial, sitting next to the centre of our democracy. He is absolutely right: antisemitism does not start and stop within the M25.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Of course we should have a holocaust memorial and of course we should have a proper holocaust museum. It is not surprising that Westminster City Council turned this application down, or, indeed, that the Government have lost the case in the High Court and then in the Court of Appeal. Based on questions that I and others asked, the Act of Parliament dating from the beginning of the 20th century is very clear that the park was laid down as a park. May I suggest a compromise? Given that the debate is carrying on and on, the obvious solution is to have a holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to Parliament as everybody wants, and similar to the other memorials such as the Buxton and Pankhurst memorials. It could be a potent symbol, it could blend in with the park and the surroundings and there would be no controversy about it.

The controversy has been about the underground learning centre and all the disruption it would cause. The difficulty with the underground learning centre in that very constrained site is that it would be nothing like the proper memorials and museums in Washington and Berlin. Have the memorial in the gardens and a proper museum at the Imperial War museum.

[Paul Scully]

As I have said, the education centre would be complementary to the Imperial War Museum. We believe that the plans are consistent with the provisions of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900, and that is why we are disappointed by the result of the court case. The design is sensitive to the existing gardens and would allow residents and visitors alike to continue to benefit from the green space, but we will clearly reflect on the court decision.

Levelling Up

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Been there, done that, got knocked back twice, so I am afraid I am not going round that course again. I will agree that it is important that we talk to all local leaders. I personally think the devolution of power to mayoral combined authorities has been a good thing, but it is not right for everywhere in this country. There are ways we can strengthen the hands of local leaders, and I look forward to doing so in Cheshire.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Gainsborough South West ward is the 24th most deprived ward in the country. I thank the Secretary of State for awarding us £10 million in levelling up, but does he agree, looking at the overall picture, that the prosperity of northern industrial towns was built not with Government money, but by entrepreneurs in the 19th and early 20th century, when regulation and taxation were a fraction of what they are now? What plans does he have, with his colleagues, to try to reduce the burden of regulation and taxation on towns in the north of England?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is correct; that is why I sought in my statement to emphasise that levelling up can only succeed if British business and private enterprise succeed. That means the right regulatory framework, outside the European Union, as we spelled out on Monday. There are steps we have taken and can take to ensure that we have smarter and leaner regulation.

More broadly, I think that if we look at the success of great industrial towns in the past, we see that figures such as Joe Chamberlain were driven by the spirit of private enterprise, but by civic pride as well. Chamberlain provided an example of great local leadership, and also of ambition to improve education. The mission that he led in Birmingham to ensure that universal education was extended even to the poorest was the perfect complement to the drive that he showed in generating wealth through the market.

Oxford-Cambridge Arc

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for introducing the debate. It might be understood from his opening remarks that Buckinghamshire is the only place that is affected by and concerned about the arc, but that is not true. Oxfordshire is just as affected by it and just as concerned about it.

I want to start off with the example of the Oxford to Cambridge expressway, which was an essential part of the arc. That major infrastructure project was handled in the most abysmal way that I have ever seen. From the very beginning, nobody was consulted about it. In my own area, which had a large part of it, I was the first person to bring consultation on the arc to the parish councils in my area: I invited my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) to come with me and address them all at a meeting. By that stage, it was already too late. People had already formed their opinions on the expressway, based on misconceptions and information that came from nowhere. Most of that was wrong, as my hon. Friend was able to point out, but by that stage it was too late.

The other thing that I particularly stress about the expressway shows what could happen with the arc: from one end of the expressway to the other, from the Cambridge end to the Oxford end, there was an enormous difference. At the Cambridge end, most people accepted the need for an expressway to carry the traffic. From Milton Keynes to Oxford, there was no acceptance; there was a completely different attitude. Not once did I hear the Department for Transport, which was responsible for it, making sure that that distinction was well understood. If we are not careful with the arc, unless we go out of our way to make sure that we do things in a different way, we will end up facing similar problems. There is no doubt that road traffic is an issue that needs to be addressed.

With the expressway, we had the ridiculous situation that the whole project was initially paused. That created enormous problems for me electorally. What is the difference between pausing something and abolishing it? It did not make any sense. People were saying that they did not believe it had just been paused; they thought it was just temporary, to take the election into account. It was very difficult to overcome those objections at the time.

The expressway has now been cancelled and the explanation given by Highways England is that it needed the information in order to be able to look at other projects in the area. Why could it not have said that at the very beginning? Why could the whole of the project not have been dealt with in a different way?

I turn to some of the points that have been made about the arc. What is the arc? In the Government’s paper on the arc, it notes that the body that is being put together to try to push it through is made up of three county councils, 17 district councils, six unitary authorities and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. That is before we take into account any involvement of different Government Departments. The Minister is an excellent Minister, but he cannot handle all Government Departments at the same time. There needs to be involvement from other Government Departments to make sure that the project works, but that means that the body becomes overwhelmingly large and very difficult to control, which goes completely against the project with which I was involved when I first joined the House—our localism agenda. I still think that localism and involving local communities in the development of projects is a good place to start.

I have been critical of the arc project, but I see the potential in joining up 10 universities or colleges along the route of the arc. I see the potential in joining up things such as Harwell in Oxfordshire with the equivalent in Cambridge and I see the enormous benefit in trying to line up the fusion project in my constituency at Culham, to hopefully provide the energy and critical science that comes from that across the whole of the arc, but I go back to what I said about the expressway—there is no common identity across the whole arc on which a common strategy can be based, which makes it very difficult.

On the 1 million houses, it would be nice to hear from the Minister how that number is made up. At the time the plan was put forward, I tried to analyse where those 1 million houses were going to come from. Some—in fact, the vast majority—are already in local plans; it is not a million new houses that are being imposed on the area, but a million houses in total, some of which are already there and about to go for planning permission. How is the number made up? What additional housing is left and how will that be dealt with?

I do not take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe that most of the housing is directed towards London. There is a very good aim in trying to make sure that most of the housing picks up local development and local growth. The risk is that it will become so attractive to people from London that it will be very difficult to keep that aim going.

I want to ask a little more on the spatial framework. How is it going to work? What rights will local people have to be able to assess the projects that are being put forward? What criteria will they use to judge them? Who will make the decisions about planning issues and what sort of consultation will they have? Without those things, we will have lost a huge element of our localism agenda, which, for me, would be a great loss. I have put a lot of effort into that agenda over however many years have passed—it is a long time—since I first started, so it would be nice to know whether we are keeping some of it and can use it as the basis to make something happen going forward.

To conclude, I see potential in establishing a brilliant arc of science and engineering across that part of the UK, but we need a properly balanced assessment of what that will involve and of the losses that will come out of it for people. As my hon. Friends have already mentioned, these are some of the most sensitive and beautiful landscapes in the country. Think of how Buckinghamshire rolls into Oxfordshire: it is a seamless entity of nothing but beauty. We trash that at the risk of our future as a Government in this country.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

We now go to the leafy glades of Northamptonshire to hear from Andrew Lewer.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con) [V]]

Thank you, Sir Edward. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for proposing this timely and important debate on an issue that will have significant implications for Northampton, the town that I represent.

Northampton, and indeed Northamptonshire, are a key part of the Oxford-Cambridge arc. Although Northampton may not have the international kudos of Oxford or Cambridge, let alone High Wycombe, it is none the less a vital component of this overall ambitious investment plan.

The Oxford-Cambridge investment arc has, at least, the potential to boost recovering growth in my constituency. Covid-19 has underlined the UK’s position as a global leader in the life science industry, and the Ox-Cam arc could be the investment accelerator that will help to create the infrastructure to prevent it from being strangled by its own success. Northampton is the home of Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA. It is within a 75-minute drive of the great universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Cranfield, which I was privileged to visit just last week to meet the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership, another critical piece of the structural jigsaw.

Northampton is a prime location, at the hub of the British strategic supply-chain network, for life-science and engineering businesses. The arc programme provides an opportunity to further realise that and, critically, to address the levelling-up agenda that the Government are championing. Northampton has a rich industrial heritage with great past glories—of which, incidentally, shoes and footwear were just part—and we must now focus our attention on the future of the industries that we do so well here, such as life sciences and high-performance technology. We do not just want the houses therefore; we want the business and the infrastructure from the programme as well.

The all-party parliamentary group on devolution, which I chair, recently produced an inquiry report on levelling up and devolution. Although all that I have heard about the Ox-Cam arc programme—including from my right hon. Friend the Minister—marks it out as ambitious and far reaching, it can also be complex and difficult to navigate, with its plethora of overlapping decision-making bodies—councils, LEPs, the central area growth board and the arc. How, where and with what legitimacy the programme’s decisions are made will be critical to its success. I say that with particular feeling as the first elections for the new unitary authority of West Northamptonshire, under the leadership of Councillor Jonathan Nunn, have just taken place. In our APPG’s report, we concluded that the UK is:

“one of the most fiscally centralised countries in the world and we should look to learn lessons from our international partners, many of whom are governed successfully with a more decentralised model. The UK also has one of the most regionally unequal economies in the world. Greater devolution of responsibility for local economic growth has long been necessary, but it is now extremely urgent.”

There is an opportunity, therefore, to use the Ox-Cam arc not only to recalibrate our economic fortunes but to rewire and improve the way that we make those decisions. To me, that means powers from Whitehall and those formerly held at Brussels—as my years on the European Committee of the Regions followed by years on the Committee on Regional Development of the European Parliament as an MEP have informed me—coming down closer to the people of the area. If that is what this means, then it is generally welcome. However, if it also means powers taken away from local government upwards and outwards to new regional structures—again, informed by my past as a county council leader, regional assembly member and a founding director of a local enterprise partnership—I would be much less happy about that.

The formal consultation on the Ox-Cam arc is about to begin. Details of the levelling-up agenda are about to emerge, into which the promised devolution Bill has either been folded or—let us hope not—buried. So my challenge to Government is to bite the bullet and transfer some of those distant Whitehall decision-making powers into the hands of local leaders, and that way unleash the potential of the Ox-Cam arc into something far more wide-reaching that will truly power the pistons of the levelling-up and devolution agendas in our country.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi. Sorry, I call Richard Fuller. I apologise. How could I miss you out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Baker]

It has been an interesting and informative debate. I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for some of the things he said. Before I come on to those, I was grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) reminded us that her constituents are so entrepreneurial. If people have taken enormous risks all their lives, in order to buy themselves a large house in a nice place, they are going to be upset and push back if we build houses in their view. We need to ensure that the system gives them some opportunity to say no and to be compensated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) was right to chide me that I had created the impression that this was a matter only for Buckinghamshire. He was followed very nicely by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer). It was important that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley set out some of the co-ordination problems, and reiterated the importance of the localism agenda, which, Sir Edward, you will remember we were all great fans of early on when we came here. My right hon. Friend the Minister reinforced the importance of those ideas.

The highlight of the debate for me, if my right hon. and hon. Friends will not mind my saying so, was when my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South expressed a sentiment from my heart to his lips, about the pre-eminence of the name of High Wycombe. I was grateful to him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire was right to remind us about the regional development corporations. He spoke most articulately, and I was grateful to be here for his speech.

There was tremendous agreement with the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that we had better appropriate the slogan “affordable homes for heroes” before the Opposition put it on all their leaflets. I certainly would like some affordable homes for the heroes of Wycombe.

My right hon. Friend the Minister made a very strong case for a doubled economic output, with 1.1 million new jobs. I hope he will not mind my saying that, when people hear of another 1 million jobs, they will wonder about the homes to go with them. He has been clear that the local plans remain the building blocks that drive the numbers. That will be heard across the region, in all the counties. I very much hope that councillors and officials will be reassured by that.

Finally, my right hon. Friend the Minister made the point that he wants to ensure that local people have their say over what is done. That is the fundamental point on which everyone here is agreed; and I am most grateful for that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

On the part of the pre-eminent town of Gainsborough, I must now put the question.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes planning works best when developers and the local community work together to shape local areas and deliver necessary new homes; and therefore calls on the Government to protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications.

It was only last month in the Queen’s Speech debate that we warned the Government that they would reap a political whirlwind if they went ahead with their plans to silence communities and hand control over planning to developers. They felt the first blasts of that whirlwind in Chesham and Amersham, but it will not finish there because it is fair to say that the Conservatives’ planning reforms are not popular with voters. That is not because voters are nimbys, as Ministers rather offensively like to brand them, but because residents rightly want and deserve a say over how their own neighbourhoods are developed.

Under the Conservatives’ proposals, planning decisions will be taken away from democratically elected local councils and handed to development boards appointed by Ministers in Whitehall. These new quangos will help zone areas for development. Residents living in areas zoned for growth will find that they no longer have an automatic right to object to individual planning applications on their own doorsteps, no right to object to oversized blocks at the end of the street, no right to object to concreting over precious green space, and no right to object to new developments that overburden local infrastructure such as roads, doctors’ surgeries, schools or public transport.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I can quite understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to make a doomed bid for prosperous Tory voters in the south-east, but will he answer the question, on behalf of my children, young professional people working in London and the south-east: how on earth are they going to get on to the property market?

[Steve Reed]

The point the right hon. Gentleman makes is important. If he listens to my speech, he will hear me go on to talk about the 1 million consented homes that have not been built, which all those people could be living in if the Government would address that issue, rather than tackle the wrong issue, which they seem intent on doing, despite the backlash from their own political supporters against their proposals.

Under the Government’s proposals, residents will be gagged from speaking out, while developers will be set loose to bulldoze and concrete over local neighbourhoods pretty much at will. These proposals are nothing less than a developers’ charter that silences local communities, so developers can exploit local communities for profit.

Household Overcrowding: Covid-19

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Chair, am I allowed to intervene, if the Minister is willing to give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

If the Minister wants to give way, yes.

[Eddie Hughes]

Of course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

That sounds like a particularly moving case. During the pandemic, we have seen society pulling together in incredible ways, and that is a great example.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. You have three minutes left, Minister.

[Eddie Hughes]

I will move quickly.

We welcome the report from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s housing commission, and we will continue to work with all organisations, such as the Church of England, to develop affordable housing programmes. The Government are reviewing our own land ownership to ensure that it is put to good use.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden mentioned people in temporary accommodation who have not registered with their GP for a vaccine. I urge them to do so urgently. We are doing great work to ensure homeless people have access to the vaccine across the country, and I want to ensure that those in temporary accommodation have access. Regarding the invitation to her advice surgery, I have good examples in my own constituency of cases such as the ones she raised.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for his kind comments at the start. I was lucky enough to attend a number of meetings of the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings, and I value the great work it does.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) mentioned a social house building programme. As I said earlier, I feel that the Government are already committed to a strong investment in building houses of all types and tenures.

The hon. Member for Bristol West mentioned the idea of the Government doing whatever it takes. I feel that councils up and down the country will be incredibly grateful for the investment that this Government have made—we have provided un-ring-fenced money for councils to use at their own discretion. Finally, we have the £50 million social housing decarbonisation fund through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which will be looking at ways of not just decarbonising social housing, but reducing the cost of fuel and therefore fuel poverty.

Uber: Supreme Court Ruling

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

As I have said, the Government are clear that everybody deserves to be treated fairly at work and rewarded for their contribution to the economy. The judgment has been laid down and there are no further avenues for appeal, so Uber must respond accordingly. The hon. Gentleman talked about clarifying employment status and rights. We are committed to continuing to look at workers’ rights, and to ensure that we consider carefully and in the round all the questions about the various workers’ rights, while keeping flexibility in our employment market.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May I urge the Government not to take an Uber free market approach in these matters, and to recall that the Conservative party has a long history of defending workers from ruthless entrepreneurs? For instance, in the 19th century, Disraeli resisted attempts by the then Liberal Government to prevent workers from picketing when on strike. Can the Minister be absolutely robust today and say, following the question from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), that we believe this is a landmark judgment and that Uber must now accept that its hard-working drivers, many of whom have come from abroad and deserve protection, are employed and deserve all the rights of fully employed people?

[Paul Scully]

My right hon. Friend talks about Uber in isolation, but clearly any number of other operators in the gig economy will be looking at the judgment, and it is important that they respond accordingly. The Government will also respond accordingly, because we always recognise the valuable contribution made by those working in the gig economy, and people do value the flexibility it offers, but we must also ensure that those workers are adequately protected.

Building Safety

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I do think this is a fair intervention. It is the largest of its type I think any Government in this country have ever made. It is a balance between the interests of the leaseholders and those of the broader taxpayer, as I have already said.

In terms of wider building safety defects, as I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell), we will do everything we can to support leaseholders to pursue action against those who made those errors and omissions in the past. I share the anger of leaseholders at the mistakes that have been made—both by industry and by regulators who came before us. What we must do now as a Government is move forward, make sure this never happens again and support leaseholders as much as we practically can, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May I once again say a word on behalf of a group of people who hardly ever get a mention in this Chamber, namely, the poor, benighted general taxpayers? Barely a single one of my 75,000 constituents lives in a house or block of flats over four storeys high, and although they live in poor rural areas they are once again being asked to bail others out—in this case, greedy developers in wealthy areas. Can we have a balance?

Before I finish, may I also ask my right hon. Friend about Lincoln University, which has been forced to reclad one of its residences? What discussions has he had with the universities and with his Education colleague on this issue?

[Robert Jenrick]

On the important second point that my right hon. Friend raises, we have worked with the Department for Education and the Department of Health on buildings in the wider public sector—universities, student halls of residence and, in a small number of cases, buildings in the NHS—to ensure that the works there proceed at pace. I will happily update him with respect to Lincoln University.

The first point that my right hon. Friend made is actually extremely important. We have had to strike a careful balance because millions of our fellow citizens are not homeowners, and we have to protect their interests, just as we want to provide safety and fairness for the leaseholder. That is the balance that we have tried to strike today, and I hope that fair-minded people on both sides of the House and in the country will appreciate that and understand the choices that we have made.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to end and add:

“notes that council tax doubled under the last Labour Government, but has fallen in real terms in England since 2010; asserts that council budgets are a local decision for elected councillors and mayors, but local taxpayers are now protected from excessive council tax increases, a policy opposed by the LGA Labour Group; disagrees with the Labour Party’s ‘Land for the Many’ proposals to hit hard-working families and pensioners with a new homes tax; notes that the biggest increases in council tax have been under the Labour Government in Wales thanks to their council tax revaluation and lack of referendum protections; welcomes the fact that Conservative councils set the lowest average Band D rates; and further welcomes the additional government funding of over £30 billion provided by the Government to support councils during the Covid-19 pandemic.”.

The Labour party position on this most important question is so inconsistent and contradictory that it is difficult to know where to start, but let me give a few basic facts to the House. The Leader of the Opposition thinks councils should not be given limited flexibility to decide themselves, locally, to raise their council tax rate. Yet, as we have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), the Labour Mayor of London has decided to hike his share of council tax by 10%, while still finding the room to up his personal PR budget to £13 million, run by a £130,000-a-year spin doctor based in California. I am all in favour of working from home, but that really is quite a leap.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May we just leave London for a moment, because there is a real dissonance between what people pay in a big city such as London and what people pay and get back in a rural area such as West Lindsey, with which my right hon. Friend is very familiar? We pay slightly more and we get a lot less— sometimes not even a street lamp; maybe a rubbish collection every two weeks. So can he address this real issue on behalf of rural people and say what he is doing to help us in rural areas?

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can. My right hon. Friend is fortunate to have a good Conservative council and it will benefit from the largest ever rural services grant in the settlement, which will give more money to help deliver the sorts of services that his constituents will rely on in a very rural part of the country.

The shadow Communities Secretary as leader of Lambeth Council hiked council tax by more than £100, including a 5% rise at the height of the unemployment crisis presided over by the last Labour Government. Yet today he believes that councils should not even have limited flexibility to do the same. Labour leaders in local government do not want limited flexibility to increase council taxes; they want to abolish the right of local people to veto excessive tax increases altogether, so that they can increase taxes by as much as they want. We all know where that leads for Labour councils: while council tax has fallen under the Conservatives in real terms since 2010, the last Labour Government presided over a doubling of council tax and, in Labour-run Wales, it is trebling.

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition should pick up the phone, check in with his own local leadership from time to time and get their ducks in a row before opposing the very same flexibility that their councils are the greatest advocates of. From Leeds to Telford to the Wirral to Sefton, the A to Z of Labour local councils have demanded that we allow them to increase council tax “without limit”. They describe in their responses to the local government settlement that keeping their tax-raising instincts in check is frustrating, “an imposition”—not an imposition on tax payers, I hasten to add; they barely get a look-in. It is all there in black and white in the Labour councils’ responses to the local government settlement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to promote house building.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to promote house building.

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

The Government care deeply about building more homes and delivered more than 243,000 last year, the highest level for more than 30 years. We have gone to great lengths to keep the whole industry open during the pandemic, sustaining hundreds of thousands of people’s jobs and livelihoods, while continuing to stimulate the market through our stamp duty cut. Covid will impact starts significantly, so we are taking steps to sustain activity, including delivering up to 180,000 homes through our £12 billion investment in affordable homes, the biggest investment of its kind for a decade.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There are about 100 small rural villages in my Gainsborough constituency, and I doubt there has been any building of social housing in any of them over the past 40 years. It is virtually impossible for young couples, who often do precisely the jobs we want in rural areas, to buy into villages. We do not want our English villages filled with people like me; we want young people. [Interruption.] That is the truth. Will the Secretary of State do a massive campaign, like the Macmillan campaign at the beginning of the 1950s, to build social housing and rent to buy in our rural villages in England?

[Robert Jenrick]

Like my right hon. Friend, I want to see more homes of all kinds built in all parts of the country, and I want to deliver as many social and affordable homes as we possibly can. I was delighted that the Chancellor gave us the funding for the £12 billion affordable homes programme, which as I say is the largest for a decade. It has a target to deliver 10% of those homes in rural areas, so it should support his community in Lincolnshire.

To answer the broader question, rural areas need to consider how they can bring forward more land in the plan-making process in their neighbourhood plans for homes of all kinds. The current planning system permits local communities to choose the type of homes that they want, so when they allocate sites, they can say that they should be affordable homes, through which they can support the next generation. I do not think any village in this country should be deemed to be set in aspic. Organic growth has happened throughout the generations and can and should happen in the future.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Of course we all want agreement and we all want a trade deal, but what happens if relations break down? Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that, first and foremost, the Labour party is a Unionist party that believes 100% in the economic integrity of the United Kingdom and will not act as a poodle for nationalists? Can he give me an absolute guarantee that if relations break down and we reject this Bill, we will not be in a very difficult place in terms of the economic integrity of the United Kingdom?

[Edward Miliband]

The right hon. Gentleman and I agree absolutely about the United Kingdom, and I am now going to come on to why I have such fear about this Bill. I fear that it is ignorant and blundering on the most important question about the way in which we share power across the United Kingdom. My fear about that and about the Bill is that it has given those who want to undermine the United Kingdom a further weapon with which to do so. That is why I want to turn to the devolution aspects of the Bill.

I particularly want to put on record my thanks to Lord Hope, former Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General, for his work on the Bill. The common frameworks are a complex issue, but it is worth spending some time explaining them. The common frameworks process—the Government deserve some credit for this—was established in 2017 to enable us to agree high standards across the United Kingdom and manage any divergence in those standards. The problem with the Bill is that there is no mention of common frameworks. Instead, it provides a blunderbuss principle that the lowest standard in one jurisdiction is the standard for all, with no voice for the devolved nations.

Take the issue of single-use plastics, which is a very concrete example. The Welsh Government want to legislate to ban the use of single-use plastics, but the problem is that the Bill as it stands enables the UK Parliament to simply come along, without discussion and without a voice for the Welsh Government, and legislate to stop them doing that. In a written answer earlier this month, they said very clearly that they believe that they will not be able to make that legislation stick. The Bill in its current form allows the UK Government simply to undercut the powers of the devolved Administrations in key devolved areas, including the use of plastics, other environmental standards, animal welfare and other consumer standards. That is very serious, because the common frameworks are a way in which we can both secure high standards—this is the intention of Lord Hope—and manage divergence when it occurs across the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

When I voted to leave the European Union, it was not primarily over concerns with immigration or concerns about how we would divvy up the money that came back from the contributions we would not be making to the European Union; it was entirely as a constitutional lever. I believe in the principle that the people who live under the law should have the right to choose the people who make the law. Incidentally, that also shapes my views on how the House of Lords should be reformed. However, that principle could not survive as soon as we had the direct application of EU law and the use of the ECJ. Therefore, for me that meant that there was only one choice, which was to leave the EU. I explained that to an American audience by saying that, if in the United States there was a court in Ottawa or Mexico City that could override the US Supreme Court and there was nothing legislators could do in the US, how would they like it? They said, “Absolutely, we would never ever accept it.” That, for me, is the key principle.

When I first heard of this internal market Bill, I was at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and, frankly, I was shocked to hear that the Government were intending to break international law. That was until I came back and looked at the provisions themselves, and found out that nothing whatsoever was actually being broken in this Bill. In fact, nothing was actually being done in this Bill, other than setting out a set of contingency measures, which is of course a well-accepted legal principle.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Fox]

I will give way once—to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There has been virtually no discussion during this entire debate about the fact that this is a safety net, which we hope will never be used. If we are on the high wire—and when we are dealing with the EU, we are on the high wire—we may not want to use a safety net, but it does no harm to have one.

[Dr Fox]

I entirely agree. I have used the analogy myself that this is a lifeboat that we hope we never have to launch. We hope the ship will never go down because we will reach a trade agreement, and we should reach a trade agreement because, as I said earlier in the House, there has never been a trade agreement that has begun with the two parties in complete identity of trade law, of tariffs and of regulation. It should be, if it was only about trade, an easy agreement to reach, but it is not just about trade. The main stumbling blocks are constitutional—the very constitutional issues that made me want to vote to leave the European Union in the first place.

There are those who have said that this Bill is outrageous and that it sets new precedents, but in fact it says only that, under certain circumstances, domestic law might have to be used to overrule treaty law. Is it revolutionary? Is it unprecedented? Well, on 12 February 2016, the German federal constitutional court said:

“Treaty overrides by national statutory law are permissible under”

the German constitution. It added:

“Under the system of the Basic Law, international treaties have the same rank as statutory federal law. Therefore, they can be superseded by later federal statutes that contradict them.”

That is merely the power that the United Kingdom Government are seeking to use as a contingency power, should they need it, yet nobody screams about the German Parliament being able to exercise an identical power.

In the short time that I have, I want to make a couple of comments about the value of free trade in the internal market to the Union itself. The 1707 articles of Union between England and Scotland, and those between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800, abolished all customs duties between the different parts of the United Kingdom. Free trade across the whole of the United Kingdom was not only integral to the development of the whole of the United Kingdom from the industrial revolution on, but it was particularly important to Scotland and Ireland, whose citizens could freely trade with the much bigger English market—something that exists today. That point was made very well by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) earlier in this debate.

It is easy, given how successful it has been, to forget how important that single market is, and how easily it could be damaged and what the what the implications would be if it were interfered with or restricted. Of course, that is why the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady)—I am sorry that he has left his place—was unwilling to engage in debate with me last week when I asked what estimates had been made by the Scottish nationalists of the break-up of the UK internal market in terms of the Scottish economy. He said, “We will come and make those arguments in due course,” because they do not want to hear those arguments aired in front of the Scottish people at the present time.

The devolved legislatures were created after the UK joined the European Community and then the European Union. Because the single market rules apply to regional Governments and legislatures as well as central Governments of member states, there was no pressing need during our membership of the European Union for specific UK-based rules maintaining the UK internal market against fragmentation. Brexit changes all that, and that is why I believe that we should reject the Lords amendments tonight.

However, in supporting the Government, I just ask this one question: when did the Government’s legal advisers advise Ministers that the withdrawal Act indeed, by direct application, threatened the internal market of the United Kingdom? It was not something that I heard discussed at the time, but I would like to know the answer to that question, as would many of us who are supporting the Government tonight and who believe that what we are seeing is proportionate contingency planning, fulfilling the duty of the maintenance of the UK internal market, the key part of the United Kingdom itself.