Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer, but if I may, I would like to bring it to a more parochial level. The sunshine coast of Clacton has a proud history as a visitor destination. We had a Butlin’s and we have glorious sands. As a rural community we have often been overlooked by Government initiatives in the past. What can my hon. Friend do to assure me that that will not be the case in the future?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon, but I think that Mr Mahmood wanted to come in from the Front Bench.
Rural Crime and Public Services
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) in this important debate. As a district councillor and long-time resident of Tendring, I know that rural crime is all too common in the Tendring District Council area. To demonstrate that point further, only today I received a telephone call and an email from a couple of local residents who have both recently been the victims of rural crime. In the first incident, a constituent contacted me to report fly-tipping. I hear similar concerns on a weekly basis in my area, and fly-tipping is the most significant rural crime we face locally. It is estimated that my local authority spent over £74,000 last year alone on tackling this issue, which is £74,000 that should have been spent on improving public services for local taxpayers. That is an outrage: taxes should not have to be spent in this way.
Moreover, if the council is spending £74,000, unfortunate private landowners are probably spending much more. I say probably because we have no way of telling how much it costs them to clear up the mess. I am told by my local Essex police district commander, the excellent Paul Wells, that, on the whole, private landowners just get on with it and clear up the mess, so the actual cost to them and to the public is far higher than the headline figures suggest.
We must also consider the potential health risks of fly-tipping, because some people—some builders, et cetera—will just dump stuff that may contain hazardous waste, such as asbestos and the like. Consequently, we must continue to tackle this issue very strongly, and I agree with the Country Land and Business Association that greater penalties are needed. We need to punish offenders, and we need to make sure we use all opportunities for enforcement. Unfortunately, it appears that is not currently happening.
According to figures from the CLA, there were 1,132 incidents of fly-tipping in Tendring in 2016-17, yet no fines were given out, no vehicles were seized and nobody was prosecuted. To put it another way, 1,170 incidents were investigated, at a cost of £38,000 to the public purse, nobody was punished, and no costs were recouped.
Moving away from fly-tipping, an equally important local crime in our rural areas is dog theft, which has not been mentioned this afternoon. I am regularly contacted about this issue. I have previously raised the concerns of local residents in a Westminster Hall debate on the sale of puppies, and I would be grateful for more information from the Minister on what the Government plan to do about that issue.
According to Missing Pets Bureau, as many as 38% of all animals reported lost have been stolen, and as many as 60% of stolen dogs are tragically never recovered. I agree with the 93,557 individuals, and counting, who have signed a petition calling for the theft of a pet to be reclassified as a specific crime in its own right.
Rural crime in Tendring is not all doom and gloom. Our police are doing great work locally, and I thank our long-time rural and heritage crime officer Andy Long and all his Essex police colleagues for their hard work. Thanks to their efforts, the cost of rural crime has fallen by £10 million since 2010, meaning that the true cost of rural crime is now around £39.2 million—that is £39.2 million too much—which shows how effective our local police forces can be and demonstrates that things are moving in the right direction.
That brings me to my final point, because this debate, however focused on rural communities, comes back to a common word used in many debates in this House: enforcement. From knife crime to rural crime, we need bobbies on the beat to act, which is why I am delighted that the campaign I launched last year with fellow Essex MPs, as mentioned earlier, to get more flexibility in the police precept was successful.
Police and crime commissioners are now able to raise precept contributions by up to £1 a month. Together, this will mean force budgets can increase by up to £450 million nationally this year. There will be a welcome boost of £8.8 million across Essex to pay for around 150 new officers. These men and women, while enjoying the rural beauty of our fantastic sunshine coast of Clacton, will find their work cut out for them, yet I am pleased they will have the Government’s support.
I am also pleased that we have 150 extra officers in Essex, because I have just been informed on my mobile device that the police are currently out in my area looking for an escaped ostrich.
Mr Speaker
It is always useful to have a bit of additional information. We are deeply obliged to the hon. Gentleman.
National Security and Russia
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
I am exceedingly grateful for this opportunity to speak. This is a timely debate, and I am much saddened that we are having to address this serious issue. My contribution will be short, as I fully support the steps that the Government are taking to protect our national security, especially after the terrible events we have recently witnessed in Salisbury.
You may be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have worked closely with our military personnel since my election, and I am pleased to stand here once again to thank them for the exceptional job that they do to maintain our national security. However, my time working with the armed forces parliamentary scheme has also shown me that the threats we face as a country are ever changing, and I firmly believe that it is imperative to continue to invest in defence to counter those threats. It will therefore come as no surprise to colleagues that I welcome the Government’s commitment to increase the defence budget every year and to ensure that the NATO pledge of spending 2% of our national income on defence will be met for the rest of this decade. If Ministers are listening to this debate, there should also be a substantial increase in spending.
It is also right that the Government will spend £178 billion on new equipment for the military in the coming decade. However, we must not ignore the increasing threat to our cyber-security. As a member of the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I have seen worrying evidence of attempted influencing of our elections and referendums through the spreading of fake news. I believe that in future we will come under further and more devastating attacks in that arena. That should not be underestimated.
Although it is clear to me that the Government will ensure that threats to this country are met with sufficient force, I continue to be concerned by the threat posed by Russia, which, according to our national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, has become troublesome more quickly than anticipated. Russia continues to rearm itself, even during a period of economic hardship. Moreover, its military forces continue to probe at our boundaries, at a cost to its state and ours. Those are not the actions of a rational state with a stable leadership, and neither was the reckless and unprovoked attack in Salisbury earlier this month. Given the continued provocations, I agree with the Government that we must send the strongest possible message to the Russian leadership.
Of course, as the Prime Minister said earlier, we have no disagreement with the people of Russia, who have been responsible for so many great achievements throughout their history. However, I believe we now have an unfortunate and profound disagreement with their leaders, due partly to the extraordinary reaction to the almost universal condemnation they received. One of their television presenters said:
“The profession of a traitor is one of the most dangerous in this world… traitors or those who simply hate their country in their free time: don’t choose Britain as a place to live.”
He added:
“Something is wrong there. Maybe it’s the climate, but in recent years, there have been too many strange incidents with grave outcomes there.”
Those words are chilling indeed. I would call that playground bullying if it were not so sinister and serious.
I say all that with some regret, because, like many people throughout the country, I viewed post-Soviet Russia with hope. I grew up with bombs pointed at me; I got used to that when I was a young man in the ’50s and ’60s. I was all too aware of the destructive forces pointed at us. That is why I am so concerned that the Russian state continues to act in an unstable manner. I do not want another generation to grow up in the shadow of those weapons, due to the reckless actions of a state such as Russia which makes thinly veiled threats and acts more like a bully boy in the playground than a responsible member of the international community.
In the face of such hostility, it is right to deploy a range of tools from the full breadth of our national security apparatus to counter the threats. I am pleased that our allies clearly support that course of action, and I am grateful that that will be maintained in the future. Even after Brexit, the UK is unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe’s security, and the Government want to ensure that Europe remains strong, prosperous and capable of defending itself.
Russia, acting as a reckless bully, with no qualms about making threats against people in this country, is clearly an obstacle to a peaceful and prosperous Europe, of which we want to be part. I fully support the steps that the Government have taken to hold Russia to account. Let us not forget Litvinenko, Georgi Markov and countless others.
Mr Speaker
The winding-up speeches should begin at 9.40. I call Alberto Costa.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. If everybody asks a short, one-sentence question, and if replies are correspondingly brief, far more people will be able to contribute—it is not magic—and then we will spread the happiness across the Chamber.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Giles Watling and John Bercow(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it is as much in the interests of the EU 27 nations as it is in the interests of my constituents in Clacton and, indeed, people throughout the UK, for there to be a seamless continuation of civil co-operation between the EU 27 and the UK to provide companies, individuals and families with confidence that judgments can and will be enforced across borders? Will he update me on what is being done to secure that co-operation?
Mr Speaker
I was going to suggest that the hon. Gentleman seek an Adjournment debate on the matter, until I realised that in fact he had just conducted one.