Easter and Christian Culture

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Nick Fletcher]

My hon. Friend said in 30 seconds what has taken me 18 minutes to say, so I thank him for his contribution. He is completely right.

As I was saying, I am sure there must be a way the Department can do much more to promote faith and family and our Christian heritage, values and way of life; encourage the country’s people to look out for each other instead of focusing inwards; embrace a culture of forgiveness and love for all our neighbours; and lead the nation to speak proudly of its past. The formidable Douglas Murray once urged people to have “an attitude of gratitude”. A nation that knows the boundaries of right and wrong sets them in stone so that we all know where we are and that no means no, not maybe, especially when speaking to and guiding our young. That is a nation where opportunity is available to all for the better of all. I want a nation’s people that believes what CS Lewis once stated:

“Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”

Can we not do all that while letting those who have called our shores home enjoy their culture, too? I think we can and we should.

If our Christian culture with its faith and families shines like the beacon of hope that it should, the ideologies and desires that are often negative will be starved of oxygen and will fall away one by one. The new people we welcome will see our culture and maybe even want to be a part of it, too.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I endorse my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this debate. He is articulating the fact that the most corrosive force in our country now is nihilism and the moral relativism associated with it. We hear people speaking not of truth, but of their truth, as though truth could be negotiated. But truth cannot be negotiated; it is an absolute, and is embodied in the message of Christianity.

Draft Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2023

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 General Committees

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I have a simple question that this excellent Minister will be able to address, but before he does, may I say that he has done a very good job on this issue, as was acknowledged by the Opposition? That needs to be put on record. He is an excellent Minister; I have had personal dealings with him on other subjects, and I know that he always responds to colleagues with diligence and alacrity. More than that, he listens, and acts when he has listened, so I thank him very much.

I have a technical question; I do not want him to think I am a soft touch, given what I have just said about him. Interestingly, schedule 1 sets out clearly responsibilities in respect of resident engagement, and schedule 2 sets out in considerably more detail information that needs to be provided. I want to be clear about new or potential residents. When they are offered a place in a block, how much are they told ahead of the game? My slight concern is that people will not necessarily know what they need to. Imagine that they are coming from a way away, and are not familiar with the location or building. What are the mechanisms by which people can know what to expect, and what they are taking on? I am sure that the Minister will have thought about, and will not have any trouble answering my question, particularly given what I said about him earlier.

Renewable Energy Providers: Planning Considerations

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Siobhan Baillie]

I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more; he says it far more eloquently than I ever could. Consultation is key, and good businesses, as Low Carbon has been, are getting caught in the mix with others who are riding roughshod over local people, and with situations where consultation is not happening. Also, where big solar farms are coming in, there is no compensation to local areas, unlike in the case of wind and other developments.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s contribution to this debate, but my experience of these things is quite different from hers. As both Minister with responsibility for energy and as a local MP, I did not see friendly, local energy companies that wanted to go to the local community. I saw profit-hungry and greedy big firms that did not give a damn what the local people felt. Let us be frank about these kind of businesses: they are less interested in energy than money.

[Siobhan Baillie]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He is an incredibly experienced local MP with ministerial experience in this field as well. Sadly, our experience on the ground with a lot of applications has been of big applications and big companies not listening to local people. However, I have found a good company and gone through the steps that it takes, and I think it is important for everyone to say that such companies exist. They are the ones that should win out.

A local area is under threat from an application for a potentially huge solar farm, and there would be two tenant farmers in the middle of it. Tenant farms are like gold dust—it is really difficult for any of us to find them for our constituent farmers—yet those farmers will lose their livelihood and home to landowners who could not care a jot about anything. Food security issues are also getting muddled in the mix. I want to highlight what we can achieve by working with good companies, by working sensitively, and by working with communities with solar farms—it is possible to do. It would be remiss of me to be completely down on these things, but I am incredibly worried.

I think that Ministers have said that the rules on solar farms should be changed to protect agricultural land. The Government need to define the protections for land used in food production to make it easier for communities to decide whether a solar farm application is right in the light of the UK’s long-term food security issues. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), who has done an amazing amount of work, and has proposed amendments that I know the Government have looked at carefully, but such changes will need to go hand in hand with changes to planning rules about rooftop solar, or massive farms will always fill the gaps. Will the Minister give us an update on the issue of solar farms, to reassure local people that even though local planning is erratic, the Government are taking steps to protect agricultural land? What is happening, and when will we feel it on the ground? When will we feel those protections that we say are coming?

Turning to national barriers, I have had some really amazing briefings, and my thanks go to people who are sending them in, including the Conservative Environment Network and RenewableUK. I defer on this to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who will speak for me on a number of the things that she is concerned about. When it comes to the national grid, we want to see the Government looking more lively. The new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero said at an Onward conference event that she had 99 problems and they are all the national grid. I know that she is working really hard on it, but again, we need to see the detail.

Before I conclude, I again thank all here for indulging me, as this matters so much to Stroud constituents. I have two tiny little children who cause me chaos before I even get here, so this is a lovely, calm existence for me. I look at my baby and I think about the world she is growing up in, and the desire to ensure that we protect nature and the environment runs really deep. I know that many parents feel the same. I get really angry about all the abuse I get from eco-campaigners who say that I do not care. I do care. I care about this every day, but I make no apologies for taking a practical approach to net zero, as I always have done. I can see that the Prime Minister is trying to do the same thing in the face of great opposition.

I have always picked organisations and local businesses to work with, such as WWT Slimbridge, BorgWarner and PHINIA. I am about to ask about hydrogen combustion engines at Prime Minister’s questions. I work with those people to run campaigns that will make a difference, because they are the ones in which I think that I can carry influence. I do that rather than just virtue signalling or shouting into an echo chamber on Twitter. I desperately want to help businesses such as Bee Solar and Big Solar Co-op, who have smart people taking a smart approach to difficult issues.

The Government and local government should remove barriers that do not need to be there. My constituents and I will work on whatever is necessary to make that happen, but as I said, we cannot keep banging our heads against a brick wall. We are answerable to people who come to us saying, “We want these things in our houses, but it is just not happening.” I am very pleased to see the Minister who will respond to the debate in his place; he has so much experience from his career. I look forward to hearing what he and all our colleagues have to say.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on introducing this important subject with such knowledge. She will not be surprised to hear that I too face a lot of abuse online, but for sometimes taking the opposite position. We on the Opposition Benches are concerned that what the Government call a pragmatic approach to net zero means further delay, which is the one thing we cannot afford.

Net zero should be non-negotiable. At a time when we should be strengthening our climate commitments, it is folly to weaken them. The UK has done well to lead the way on climate change, but recently this Government sadly seem to have given up on the country’s leadership position. How unnecessary! Renewables are the cheapest form of energy and would secure our energy supply. Moving rapidly towards renewables is central to reaching net zero by 2050, and will help to limit the devastating impacts of climate change. The Climate Change Committee has said that we are not moving fast enough towards renewables. Offshore and onshore wind development has been slow, and solar is particularly off-track. It is just not good enough.

The proportion of renewable projects being delayed is on the rise. Grid capacity, which the hon. Member for Stroud mentioned, is the obvious issue. However, the planning process must also be improved. My region of the south-west built the UK’s first transmission-connected solar farm. Despite its success, the developers said that planning was one of the most significant hurdles to delivering renewable energy at scale. Speeding up the planning process is vital; it takes up to five years to gain approval for an offshore wind farm after the application has been submitted to the planning system. We do not have the time for that in this race to net zero.

Resourcing needs to improve. The Planning Inspectorate and statutory consultees do not have enough resources to carry out timely and accurate reviews. It is all well and good saying that there is a debate, and ping-pong about what or who is responsible—is it the national planning framework, or is it local planners? However, if we do not have enough local planners to make these decisions, all these things get desperately delayed. Local government needs more resources and funding to make sure that planning decisions are made in a timely manner; otherwise, there are delayed projects, and delayed progress towards net zero.

The Government must make proper funding available. Local authorities depend on national Government to give them more money, so that the Planning Inspectorate can also do its job. That resource is also missing at national level. That is simply about funding.

[Sir John Hayes]

On a point of clarity, is the hon. Lady saying that local people should have more say, and local communities should be more empowered, or that they should have less say, and that there should be more direction from the centre? I could not quite understand the point she was making.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am happy that the right hon. Gentleman made that intervention, and happy to clarify for him. We Liberal Democrats believe passionately in local decision making, so that is obviously what needs to be strengthened, but local decision making cannot happen if we do not have the resources in our planning departments.

We have also been talking about consultation. I was a councillor for ten years, and was always appalled at how poor consultation was, mainly because councils had statutory obligations to consult only in a very small area. Why do we not widen that out, particularly in rural areas? If the obligation is just a matter of distance, then 10 people will be consulted, and awareness of big planning applications will spread only through local knowledge, rather than as a result of the council approaching people directly. Why do councils not do that? Because they do not have the money. If they do not have the statutory obligation to consult widely, they will consult only a small number of people. If we want to strengthen local decision making, that must change. I absolutely believe in local decision making, and if a planning decision does become a national decision—if an inspectorate comes in—then, of course, we do not want delays there either, because delays are unacceptable either way. That applies to any planning decision, by the way, not just renewable planning.

The Government must also do more to remove the barriers to renewable energy. Renewables developers still face a planning system that is stacked against onshore wind. It is treated differently from every other energy source or infrastructure project. If that persists, we will not get the new onshore wind investment we need to rapidly cut bills and boost energy security. Onshore wind farms are actually popular: 74% of voters are supportive of onshore wind, and 76% of people would support a renewable energy project in their area. That support holds strong in places that already have an onshore wind farm; 72% of people who live within five miles of one support building more. That addresses a problem that we have: people are anxious about things that they do not know, and a lot of political hay can be made with that, but when people actually have a wind farm development nearby, they support it. That is not surprising: communities benefit massively from onshore wind, both directly—for example, from developers, through bill reductions—and indirectly, through the wider socioeconomic benefits that such investment can bring.

Carbon Brief calculated that the de facto ban on onshore wind cost consumers £5.1 billion last year. That is unforgivable during a cost of living crisis. Planning rules must not block the benefits of renewable energy. The Government must bring the planning rules for onshore wind in England back in line with those for any other type of energy infrastructure, so that it can compete on a level playing field, and so that each application is determined on its own merits.

We Liberal Democrats recognise the importance of community buy-in. We need to win hearts and minds, and to persuade people that renewable projects are good for their communities. Yes, good consultation is part of that; if local communities feel that they have not been properly consulted, they will get their backs up. I absolutely believe in proper consultation. Only with consent from our communities can we deliver the path to net zero. That is why empowering local communities is so vital. More and more power and decision making has been eroded from local government—I can say that, because I was a councillor between 2004 and 2014. We still had a lot of decision-making powers, but they have been eroded in the last 10 years.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Member for the intervention. A long time ago, when I was a councillor, a big wind farm was built in my ward. I remember well the local objections to it; people said, “Oh, the beautiful, natural environment of our hills!” The natural environment of the hills had been destroyed decades or centuries ago. There were no trees any more. Local people come forward and talk about our beautiful natural environment, but the natural environment had become like that, and wind farms are now becoming part of the landscape that we are creating for people. Once wind farms are there, people stop objecting to them; surveys are very clear on that.

Of course, it is clear that people are always worried about change. We are building something new and taking away something that was there, but if we are doing so for something that is so important, why can we not make the case that a wind turbine might be a much nicer thing to look at than, for example, a coal-fired power station, which we also need to put somewhere if we need energy? What we do as humans creates some disruption to our local environment, and it has done so forever, so what do we want? We need to get to net zero, build this infrastructure and build wind turbines, including in places where we can see them. As responsible politicians, it is up to us to make the case for that. We have no time to waste: it is a race to net zero, and it is difficult. Yes, some people do not like to look at wind farms.

[Sir John Hayes]

So much for local decision making!

[Wera Hobhouse]

But this is something of which we can persuade people, and I believe in persuading local people. Yes, that sometimes takes time, but it is for us to do, because we have that persuading power and are in the position of influencing people. That is where we should be, rather than always being on the side of the nay-sayers. That is my honest position. I know that it is not easy; I have been there, too, in my time.

I commend the Liberal Democrats on Bath and North East Somerset Council, which has become the first council in England to adopt an energy-based net zero housing policy. That requires that all new major non-residential buildings must achieve net zero in operational energy. Research from the University of Bath indicates that the policy is likely to establish significant carbon savings in new buildings and reduce energy bills for occupants. Again, did my local council sometimes have difficulty persuading people? Yes, it did, but our local election results show persuasively that where we go out and make the case, we win—even as local councillors. Let us ensure that we persuade people and take them with us. I absolutely believe in that, but I also passionately believe that it is possible to take people with us if we confront people with the alternatives.

Unfortunately, Government funding cuts have forced many local authorities to make sacrifices on climate change policy, as climate change does not come under their statutory duties. That must change. Planning legislation must be bound to our climate change legislation, so that climate change takes greater weight in planning decisions. A major reason why renewable projects are waiting up to 15 years to connect to the grid is that the planning approval process is not adequately focused on the urgency of delivering net zero. The Royal Town Planning Institute argues that nothing should be planned unless the idea has first been demonstrated to be fit for net zero. The Government should certainly consider the institute’s proposals further.

We cannot wait any longer. The UK needs to move further faster towards renewables. Improving the planning system to quicken the building process is an important place to start.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

When societies and civilisations lose their sense of the spiritual—their sight of God—the void is filled by causes, which, like the divine, are immense, inspire guilt and are pursued with intolerant zeal. Our cause, rather like the ancient people who danced for the rain or worshipped the sun, is the weather, which is now almost always described as “the climate”. All can be sacrificed, rather like religious fanaticism, in the name of the pursuit of our climate goals. Whether that is the wellbeing of people in London, who face ULEZ and not being able to get to hospital, school or work, or people across our constituencies who will have to replace their gas boilers with air pumps, costing thousands and thousands of pounds that they can ill afford, or whether it is eating up our most precious agricultural land with acres of onshore solar plants—they are not farms; they are industrial structures—all can be defended, as communities are ridden roughshod.

With his typical skill, my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) teased out of the remaining Liberal Democrat in the Chamber, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), the dilemma for those whose zeal is such that they want to impose these things on local communities but dare not say so. The truth is that communities are ridden roughshod because of that zeal. Across the country, a blight is coming. That blight will be pylons in Essex, trunking in Devon and the eating up of tens of thousands of acres of the most precious agricultural land in Lincolnshire. That is unacceptable, communities do not want it and their views should be respected.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but what are the alternatives? Does he not recognise that we need to get to net zero by 2050? We need to provide political leadership to take our communities along with us. We are making the case for community energy, for example, which is a wonderful way to take communities with us. Does he not believe that that is our job—that we take communities with us, rather than denying net zero?

[Sir John Hayes]

Denying “our goal”, “our God”—I believe it is the hon. Lady’s God, certainly. She is right that it is important that what we do in respect of energy, which I spend a great deal more time thinking about than she ever has, needs to reflect a balance. Everyone who understands energy provision knows that renewables can and should be an important part of an energy mix. Yet they are not nirvana for all kinds of reasons—we need the flexibility provided by the kinds of energy provision that can be switched on and off, in a way that solar and wind cannot—but it is vital that we invest in renewable technology.

That is why, for example, I have been a passionate supporter of offshore wind, which is a very effective way of generating energy in a way that does less harm to the environment than onshore wind, which the hon. Lady champions. That essentially means littering the countryside with small numbers of turbines, which are much less productive, much less concentrated and with countless connections to the grid. That greatly increases transmission and distribution costs, which already represent 15% of every energy bill. It is both economically foolish and environmentally damaging to site wind turbines in presumably thousands of locations across the country, when we can concentrate large numbers of much larger turbines offshore, producing much more energy, with a single point of connection to the grid.

There is a similar situation with solar. I imagine that the hon. Member for Bath will know, as others may, that in Germany a much higher proportion of solar power is located on buildings. In this country, our record is very poor, and I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I would be interested to know what further steps he intends to take to incentivise, indeed oblige, adding solar panels to buildings. Warehouses are springing up all over the country, but I do not see a solar panel on any of them. There are large numbers of industrial sites, commercial sites and all kinds of other places where we could have solar panels.

[Selaine Saxby]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As someone who represents a hugely rural community, I would like to ask this about solar panels. Does he agree that farmers need to be farming, that we face a food security crisis and that we need our land to be productive for food, and that rooftops are indeed the right place to put solar panels?

[Sir John Hayes]

Absolutely. That brings me to—I do not know whether my hon. Friend anticipated this by a kind of telepathy or just through her wisdom—the next point that I intended to make. Recent worldwide events have taught us of the need for national economic resilience. We are moving to a post-liberal age—thankfully—when we will no longer take the view that we can buy whatever we want from wherever we want and it does not matter how much is produced locally or how far supply lines are extended.

We know that domestic production and manufacture of goods and food is vital for our resilience and security; in order to have that, we need to preserve the best agricultural land to grow the crops that we need. If people were really worried about the environment, they would have thought these things through a little more fully and so understand that shortening supply lines reduces the number of air miles and, indeed, road miles between where food is made and where it is consumed—as we once did—rather than extending supply lines endlessly, with the immense cost to the environment and in every other way. We need more domestic production, but to have more domestic production we must recognise that there should be no industrial solar or wind developments on grade 1, 2 or 3 agricultural land, yet that is exactly what is proposed.

[Wera Hobhouse]

No one can deny that we need an explosion of rooftop solar panels; we Liberal Democrats absolutely agree. But can the right hon. Gentleman give me an example of where good agricultural land has been used for solar farms? I ask because outside Bath, my constituency, a good solar farm has been built on land that cannot be used for food growing.

[Sir John Hayes]

Let me give the hon. Lady a precise example. In Lincolnshire, there are currently applications for large-scale solar developments equivalent to 62 Hyde Parks, totalling 9,109 hectares or 1.3% of the total land across the county. She may know that Lincolnshire boasts the highest proportion of grade 1, 2 and 3 agricultural land of any county. These solar plants are proposed on the best growing land in the country. Once that land is lost, it will never be regained. There is this nonsense that the solar panels will be there for only 20 or 30 years. What about the 20 or 30 years while they are, when we cannot grow the crops that we need to survive? This is a preposterous circumstance.

I had a meeting this morning with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), and I met at the weekend a Minister of State in the same Department. Those Ministers responsible for the environment and agriculture recognise that it is unacceptable to lose this scale of land—the best growing land in the country—because of these developments, largely by businesses that have no connection with the locality whatever and are entirely careless of the impact that this will have on food production and local communities. This rides roughshod over the wishes of local people and local councillors. It is frankly a scandal that we should do that while simultaneously claiming that we want to build more national resilience through food security. Let us make more of what we consume in this country, here in this country; let us reduce our dependence on places far-off of which we know little—and in many cases wish we knew less; and let us have a Government who respect the interests of local communities and defend our land from this blight.

Finally, there is also the sensitive matter of aesthetics. Do we really value the English landscape, or do we not? Is this going to be a green and pleasant for the generations to come, or is it going to be a place full of industrial wind turbines and large-scale solar developments? I know which of those futures I want for my children and grandchildren. Because I know that the Minister is a fine man with a strong sense of the aesthetic, I rather suspect that he sees that future too, but we need urgent policy to make clear to planners and others that we will not simply allow communities to be beleaguered by blight.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for securing the debate. I am short of time, so although I hope to answer most of the points that she raised, I am happy to get back to her at a later stage if I have not done so. I also thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Witham (Priti Patel) and for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for their contributions.

I want to assure everyone that sustainability remains at the heart of this Government’s ambition for development, and that that includes the protection of the environment and local communities. Energy security and protecting our environment are just some of the key challenges we face in the UK. Meeting those goals is urgent and of critical importance to the country, and we believe that they can be achieved together for the UK.

We believe that renewable energy will play a key role in helping to secure greater energy independence while building a more sustainable and greener future for generations to come. However, the Government recognise that, as with any new infrastructure, there will be local impacts. It is therefore essential that we have a robust planning system that not only helps to deliver energy security, but protects the environment and local communities and supports the Government’s wider ambitions on net zero.

The dramatic rise in global energy prices following the covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has emphasised the urgency of the need to build a strong home-grown renewable sector. Energy security is therefore one of the Government’s greatest priorities. As the British energy security strategy sets out, there is a growing need to diversify our energy sector by growing our nuclear sector, increasing our capacity for renewables across solar, onshore wind and offshore wind, and exploring how hydrogen can be incorporated into the domestic energy supply mix.

Our “Powering Up Britain” policy paper, which was launched in March this year, made clear how important the planning system is to delivering the Government’s commitments on energy security, net zero and energy prices. We need lots of new low-carbon infrastructure, including generation, network connections and storage, as we have heard today. Our national planning policy framework makes it clear that local planning authorities should have a positive strategy in place to promote energy from renewable and low-carbon sources. Last month, we updated the framework in relation to onshore wind. These changes are designed to make it easier and quicker for local planning authorities to consider and, where appropriate, to approve onshore wind projects where there is local support.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jacob Young]

I will come to the points that my right hon. Friend made in just a moment.

For nationally significant infrastructure projects, the average time for development consent order applications to be decided increased by 65% between 2012 and 2021, and demand on the system is only increasing. We are therefore bringing forward reforms, as set out in the NSIP action plan, to speed up the process for users of the NSIP planning system, to grow our economy, achieve our environmental and net zero goals and level up jobs and opportunities for local communities.

[Jacob Young]

I am sorry, but I am very tight for time and I want to come to some of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned.

I turn to community engagement. Early engagement between developers and communities is essential to understanding the impacts of energy development in local areas and to securing appropriate mitigation where impacts cannot be avoided. It is key to securing benefits from projects.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned solar farms. The Government recognise the need to preserve our most productive farmland, as far as possible. The Government seek large-scale ground-mounted solar deployment across mainly brownfield, industrial and low and medium-grade agricultural land. Where significant development on agricultural land is shown to be necessary, the NPPF sets out that areas of poor land quality should be used in preference to those of higher quality. It is proposed that any use of land that falls under Natural England’s BMV—best and most versatile—agricultural land classification will need to be justified during the consideration of a planning application.

[Sir John Hayes]

Can the Minister say that grade 1, 2 and 3 agricultural land will not be appropriate, and that that will be in the policy? Furthermore, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) gave me a commitment on wind that topography will be a factor and that wind cannot be sited in areas that will have a disproportionate impact on the landscape.

[Jacob Young]

I hope to come on to my right hon. Friend’s second point. On agricultural land, the BMV classification covers land in grades 1, 2 and 3a, but not 3b.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham for her comments on the plans between Norwich and Tilbury. I am unable to comment on the case directly, but I know that she has met numerous Ministers. She is a brilliant campaigner and champion for her constituents in Essex. If she is struggling to get further meetings, I will help to arrange them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned rooftop solar. We have recently consulted on changes to permitted development rights for both domestic and non-domestic ground and rooftop solar; further details will be announced in due course. I note her questions and points about solar tracking, and the clarity that she has provided. She is well informed—I certainly was not aware of some of the challenges. At this stage, I am not aware of planned changes to solar tracking, but I will ask the planning Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and to hear the case in respect of companies such Bee Solar and how the rules could evolve with the technology.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon for her work in establishing the all-party parliamentary group for the Celtic sea. I cannot give her the assurance that she seeks today, but I will ask my officials to meet her and her councillors to discuss what she has mentioned and help them to assess the energy system in local plans.

On the points made about planning resourcing, the reason why the planning Minister is not here today is that she is upstairs in a Committee on a statutory instrument that will increase planning fees by 35% for major applications and 25% in other cases. I hope that that goes some way to addressing the points made by the hon. Member for Bath.

I thank hon. Members again; I hope I have left enough time for my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud to respond.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I was happy to discuss these very issues with my right hon. Friend, who has written on this issue and I know feels very deeply about it, especially the issue of brownfield land and development. We will ensure that people will build what their local community wants through, for example, not just their local plan, but the mandatory design code. Local areas will have a design code, so that, when a building comes through, it will be in the manner and design that local communities want.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend will know that, from the time I was the shadow Housing Minister 15 to 20 years ago, to the Building Beautiful, Building Better Commission and now the Office For Place, I have emphasised exactly what she has just described. Too often in the modern age, development has been out of scale and out of keeping with the existing built environment. Will she ensure that local authorities are fully informed of their ability to turn down an application for housing purely on design and scale terms?

[Lucy Frazer]

I know that my right hon. Friend is very interested in these issues and is conscious of beauty and the importance for us to maintain that. Of course local authorities will be able to take their local decisions on those matters that concern them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the new clauses and amendments in my name and those of my hon. Friends. It is two weeks and two significant concessions to large groups of disgruntled Government Back Benchers later, but it is a pleasure to finally be back in the Chamber to conclude the Report stage of this Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) made clear on day one of Report, in 27 sittings over a four-month period, the Bill was subject to exhaustive line-by-line consideration. Such was the appetite to participate in the Committee’s proceedings that not only was it formally adjourned to allow new members to take part, but we enjoyed appearances from seven different Ministers, some of whom even had more than a passing familiarity with the contents of the legislation.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for so ably scrutinising in Committee the many technical and complex provisions that the Bill contains. The new clauses and amendments that we have tabled for consideration today are almost identical to a number of those we discussed at length in Committee. That deliberate choice reflects not only the importance we place on the matters that they relate to, but the lack of anything resembling robust and convincing reassurances from Ministers in Committee in respect of the concerns that they seek to address. Indeed, if anything, the debates that took place and the responses provided by successive Ministers served only to harden our view that a number of the measures in the Bill relating to planning and the environment would almost certainly have adverse impacts.

Our hope, perhaps a forlorn one, Madam Deputy Speaker, is that the new ministerial team may have used the almost 50 days since their appointment to further interrogate the potential risks posed by those measures in the Bill that are controversial and to reflect on the wisdom of proceeding with them.

Part 3 of the Bill deals with a wide range of issues relating to both national planning policy and local and neighbourhood planning. Many of the clauses that this eclectic part contains are unproblematic, but others are contentious, and we raised detailed concerns in Committee about several of them. Amendments 78 and 79 seek to address arguably the most disquieting, namely clauses 83 and 84, concerning the future relationship between local development plans and national planning policy given statutory weight in the form of national development management policies. We welcome the fact that new section 38(5B) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 in clause 83 provides communities with greater confidence that finalised local plans will be adhered to and any safeguards they contain respected. However, we believe that new subsection 5C in clause 83, in providing that anything covered by an NDMP will not only have legal status but will take precedence over local development plans in any instance where there is found to be a conflict between the two, represents a radical centralisation of planning decision-making that will fundamentally alter the status and remit of local planning in a way that could have a number of potentially damaging consequences.

I must make it clear that our concern in relation to the effect of this subsection would exist even if the Government had published the national planning policy framework prospectus and provided hon. Members with an overview about what NDMPs are likely to cover. The fact that they have not and that we therefore still have no idea precisely what these new statutory national policies will eventually contain—coupled with the fact that clause 84 of the Bill makes it clear that NDMPs can cover any policy area relating to development or use of land in England and can be modified or revoked without any form of consultation if that is the wish of the Secretary of State of the day—merely heightens our concerns.

We know that there is significant anxiety across the House about the future implications of NDMPs, and rightly so, because legislating to ensure that they overrule local plans in the event of any conflict does represent a radical departure from the status quo. As we argued in Committee, what is proposed is a wholly different proposition from the current application of the NPPF, and our fear is that it will lead to the erosion of local control in a way that threatens to transform what is currently a local plan-led system into a national policy-led system.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman must recognise that the local plan process has been distorted by the imposition of housing targets driven from the centre. Indeed, individual planning applications have often been skewed because local authorities, even where they do not want to accept the application, feel they cannot reject it because they would lose on appeal if they are not meeting the national housing targets. Surely he would welcome the Government’s sharp turn in that direction.

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is slightly separate from my point about NDMPs, but the right hon. Gentleman gives me an opportunity to respond to the Government’s announcement on housing targets. The problem he identifies ultimately resides in the Government’s lack of strategic planning and effective subregional frameworks for housing growth. There is a case for reviewing how local housing targets operate, but to render them effectively unenforceable without a viable alternative, in the middle of a housing crisis, is the height of irresponsibility. We do not know the extent, but it will cause damage by reducing housing supply, with the economic growth impact that implies. We regret that the Government have backed down in the face of their Back Benchers on this point.

[Sir John Hayes]

I have not heard the hon. Gentleman perform at the Dispatch Box before, but he clearly knows his subject well and delivers his case effectively. There has long been a misunderstanding that housing is entirely about supply, as it is also about the fluidity of the housing market. He might want to add to his considerable stock of knowledge an understanding that, according to the Empty Homes Agency, there are 750,000 empty homes. That number is persistent, and no Government of any colour have managed to adopt policies to bring those homes into use.

[Matthew Pennycook]

There is a point to what the right hon. Gentleman says. It is partly about the distribution of who can buy the houses that come online, but it is also partly about supply. The Minister has confirmed that the 300,000 annual target remains Government policy. It remains an aspiration, yet the Government, by removing the enforceability of local housing targets, have made their job of boosting supply far harder, and they are not meeting the target as it stands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

There are a number of amendments in my name, but given the time we have I will focus on housing, including existing stock and new stock. Let me start by talking about new stock.

New clause 44 and amendment 22, in my name, would give local authorities, particularly in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty such as my own in Cumbria, the power to enforce 100% affordability in new developments. I am fed up of developments in my community where we have to build, say, 100 houses to get 30 affordables. That is 70 homes that are fundamentally a waste of bricks. We are building homes for demand, but not for need. We have thousands of people on the council house waiting list. Homes will, of course, fly off the shelves for handsome prices in a place like Cumbria, but they are houses we do not need. They do not add to our infrastructure and in many ways they undermine it by becoming more holiday lets or second homes. Give us that power, as local communities.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I want to be absolutely clear that home ownership does all kinds of things for building personal pride and communal satisfaction. I imagine he owns his own home. Does he want more people to own their own home, or does he want more people to rent?

[Tim Farron]

I want more people to be able to have a home in the first place. In defending people’s right to have a second home, which we will come on to in a moment, we must remember that people’s right to a first home is even more important. The millions of people who have no home at all to call their own, and are desperately waiting on long waiting lists, are up against many people who have more than one home. That is an injustice that needs to be addressed. This particular set of amendments would give local authorities in communities such as Cumbria the ability to say to developers, “You may build here, but what you build must be sustainable, affordable and available for local people so there is a workforce and a local community.”

I want to move on to existing stock, and in particular to the comments made by the Minister earlier. My new clause 121 would make sure there is a separate planning category for short-term lets. That matters: because of the Government’s failure to scrap section 21 evictions, as they promised to do, over the past two years the long-term rented sector has collapsed. That has led to the expulsion of thousands of people from my community. There has been a 32% rise in holiday lets in just one year, and that is in the Lake district where there were already a huge number of them. Those houses are coming from local people evicted so their landlord can go to a short-term let, normally Airbnb, and therefore cash in, and there are no other places for those people to go and live so their kids are uprooted from the local school, and they have to give up their jobs and move many miles away, robbing our communities of life and of a workforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There will be a four-minute time limit. I call Sir John Hayes.

[Sir John Hayes]

Alongside purpose, a sense of pride nourishes personal and communal togetherness; it builds social solidarity. Where we begin, live life and end it roots our days and shapes our dreams. Homes matter because having a place of one’s own to build a family’s future makes those dreams come true. Those who advocate housing targets clinically miss the point. Making homes of which people can feel proud is what public policy must make possible.

The Government’s decision to drop mandatory housing targets, under which local communities have been obliged to endure seemingly endless and unsustainable development, is therefore wise and welcome, if overdue. I have been pleased to play my part, alongside other sensible colleagues, in encouraging that sharp turn in thinking. I am delighted that local communities and the councils they elect will no longer have housing imposed upon them. They will be in sole charge of what is built and where. Never again will the imposition of top-down targets be a justification for developments that are out of scale or character with the prevailing built environment or the local landscape. We have bolted on to villages and towns throughout this kingdom unsuitable and unsustainable housing estates of catalogue-build, identikit houses that bear no relation to the local vernacular and are, frankly, a very poor legacy to pass on to generations to come.

All that we build should make us proud. Our inheritance is what our forefathers built for us, and our responsibility is just as great as theirs. Development should, wherever possible, be regenerative, and it should be incremental. Every hamlet could take a few extra houses; every village could take more; towns many more than that; and cities, of course, many thousands. When we understand that development can be incremental, people will cease to object to it in the way they do currently.

There are those who dismiss beauty—they are crass to do so, because people deserve the chance to live in lovely places, including less well-off people. Unfortunately, that is too often not the case. I welcome the Government’s decision to put beauty at the heart of the housing agenda by raising design standards and making sure that developers and local planners adhere to those standards. It is also important that communities have their say. When they are faced with a choice between the ubiquitous kind of bland, identikit housing that peppers too much of our country or well-designed homes, they will usually choose the latter.

There is, however, concern about the industrialisation of the countryside resulting from the Government’s relaxation of the moratorium on onshore wind. It is critical that topography, visual impact, the connection to sites of special historical interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest, and the connection of turbines to the grid, are all taken into account. Not only is this a dangerous energy policy—I do not have time to explore that—but it also risks spoiling much of the English landscape and ruining vistas that are cherished by local people. If we really believe in local consent for housing, we must follow through and believe in local consent for that kind of infrastructure development, too.

As I have said, all that we build should add to what is there. We will be judged as a Parliament, and indeed as a generation, by what we pass on to generations to come.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I will speak briefly to amendment 73 and new clause 83, which stand in my name.

As we all know, planning can be one of the most contentious issues in any community. Whether or not local communities are happy, there is nothing worse when permission has been granted than developers doing nothing at all with the site, only half completing it, or leaving it derelict for a number of years. The Government’s proposal in the Bill for completion notices is welcome, but it is still weighted in favour of faceless developers, not local communities, and gives developers too long to act. My amendment would ensure that planning permission can be withdrawn and building works removed, with the site being restored to its previous condition in a timely manner, shifting legislation in favour of local communities.

Despite levelling up being one of the Government’s flagship policies, they continue to struggle to define it and, consequently, how its success can be measured. The technical annex to the White Paper, which addresses how levelling up will be measured, says:

“Further work will be undertaken…to…refine these metrics.”

New clause 83 would help to do just that.

Holocaust Memorial Day

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), as it always is. I have followed her on two or three occasions now. I particularly enjoy following her for a number of reasons, but first because her contributions are always ones I can adhere to and support. Her contribution today was exactly along those lines.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for permitting me to speak on this subject, which is close to my heart. Today, it has been close to everybody’s heart. The contributions from right hon. and hon. Members, whether in speeches or interventions, have been incredibly important. The world is fast approaching the first 100 years since it all happened—that is how fast time is going. We in this Chamber must never take for granted the freedom to debate, disagree and legislate, so it is an honour to be here today to remember the millions of lives lost at a time when democracy for so many broke down. That is what happened: democracy broke down and evil took over.

The holocaust is the most abominable and systematic act of genocide in history and, for some, it happened in living memory. I want to speak today in remembrance of the 6 million Jews who lost their lives. Every single life has a name, and behind every one of those 6 million names is a story. Others have told those stories today, and we thank them for their personal contributions. The hon. Member for Putney and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) both mentioned Lord Dubs—I have written down here, “mention Lord Dubs”—who came to this country on a Kindertransport. We owe thanks to him for his contribution. Refugees from the Kindertransport came to a small refugee farm in Millisle in my constituency.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I am stimulated to intervene on the hon. Gentleman because this very morning I was listening to BBC radio. A holocaust survivor was taken to Belfast following the war—not, I think, in the period that he describes—and she described the welcome she received and the support she had. Holocaust survivors are becoming fewer. They visit as many schools and educate as many young people as they can. Their testimony can be made available to all schools. I wonder if we should all, as Members of Parliament, ask the schools in our localities to use that testimony as part of their curriculum work to remind people why this must never happen again.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The person that he referred to who came to Belfast then came to Millisle, which is where the Kindertransport children came who were fortunate enough to get out of Germany. It became home for many of them and that is important. Although Millisle is only on the edge of my constituency, the farm is in my constituency. It played an important role in the Kindertransport operation, giving refuge to Jewish children.

A local businessman, Lawrence Gorman, leased his derelict farmhouse to the Belfast Refugee Aid, which is the point that the right hon. Gentleman made. Ballyrolly House, where the children were, has grown greatly. There is now a housing estate there with private housing, as well as Ballyrolly. This small village in County Down became known as a haven from Nazi terror. Years later, many of those children returned as adults to Millisle to thank the people who helped them, including Lawrence Gorman and the residents and people of Millisle who saved lives.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

John Hayes Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

These were the words of Dickens:

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”

I want to speak briefly about demand, supply and ownership.

Homes form the heart of a property-owning democracy, one that Britons want and deserve. Ownership kindles individual fulfilment and communal wellbeing, as it fosters feelings of responsible pride. Through beautiful building, desired homes can allow people’s dreams to come true. Yet fewer people own homes now as a proportion of the total than did 20 years ago. That is not acceptable, because we know that most people do not want it that way. Every poll taken, as the Minister said, suggests that people want to become homeowners. Our job is to help to make that dream come true. Owning capital is the heart of capitalism and homeownership is a vital milestone to communal enfranchisement, but they must be beautiful homes.

I want to talk about supply, because the supply of housing is not the same as building homes in which people want to live. It is right and proper that we should be inspired by the best of what has been. We should be no less ambitious for the next generation than Wren was when London was rebuilt after the great fire, or Pugin was when he designed the very place in which we sit. Let us be imaginative. Let us accept that all we build should inspire, should enthral. That is what the planning system needs to deliver: no more identikit soulless housing estates bolted on to the edge of settlements, but better, beautiful homes—homes of which we can be proud.

Let me say a word about demand. The problem is that we simply do not have enough houses to meet demand. That demand grows largely because of population change. The population is growing at an astonishing pace: it has increased by 6.6 million since 2001 and is expected to grow by a further 5.6 million by 2041. The problem of population growth is at the heart of this debate. Concerns about density, housing numbers and ecology can all be traced back to the fact that to house the expected 2041 increase in population, we will probably have to build a settlement greater than the size of Bedfordshire. That really cannot be reconciled with the current planning system. We need to control population by looking at the biggest single driver, which is net migration—it is not the time or place to discuss that here, because I have only 11 seconds left—so let me end by saying this. This planning reform can be regenerative and groundbreaking, but it will only be so if it has communities at its heart and beauty as its ambition.

--- Later in debate ---

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

The Opposition called this debate today to divide us, but I do not think they have succeeded. What we have heard, time and again, across the House is a very high degree of consensus. Member after Member, from either side of the House, queued up to say that this country needs to build more houses. Some said we have a housing crisis. Some said we have a generational duty to help young people and those on low incomes to enjoy the dream of home ownership, which so many of us—the vast majority of people in this House—have already achieved and are enjoying. Member after Member, including almost every contribution from the Labour party, queued up to say that the current planning system does not work. Some made extremely good and important points. The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) said that the single biggest issue she hears from her constituents on is the planning system and how it is failing to address the needs of her constituents. Yet we also heard from the Labour Front-Bench team an argument that we should do absolutely nothing—that we should not take forward any ambitious plans to reform the planning system at all.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke for nine minutes but said absolutely nothing. All he has managed to achieve with this debate has been to shine a light on the Labour party’s own derisory record on housing. Let us not forget that this Government, back in 2010, inherited levels of house building at the lowest they had been since the 1920s. Those of us who are just about old enough to remember that time recall when John Prescott was Secretary of State in my Department and they recall his flagrant disregard for the green belt, the needs of local communities and local democracy, with his failed approach to regional planning, which we scrapped when we came to power.

Those of us who see what Labour is doing today see how damaging and feeble their policies are. If we look at Wales, we see that, despite the rhetoric we heard today, the Labour party is developing 12 council houses—for the whole of Wales. In Croydon, the Labour borough represented by the shadow Housing Secretary and run by his closest friends and cronies, the local council has gone bankrupt and its housing company, Brick by Brick, has taken tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and has failed to deliver a single home. Its social housing stock is so disgracefully Dickensian that the housing regulator has in recent weeks condemned it. What has the hon. Gentleman said? He has said nothing at all. His Twitter account, which he loves to use to criticise the Conservative party, has fallen as silent as that of Donald Trump—he has said absolutely nothing. So we will take no lectures from the Labour party.

We also heard from the Lib Dems, who have mysteriously gone AWOL now, at the end of the debate. Days after winning a by-election, saying that they would campaign to ditch the planning Bill, they could not even be bothered to turn up to the end of the debate. We have heard the appalling, rank hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats throughout this debate. Their leader went on TV at the weekend to declare himself a “yimby”, but that is very different from what he was saying to people on the doorsteps of Buckinghamshire in recent weeks. It is better to describe him and his party, in the term of my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), as a “banana”—build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

Except in practice that is not what some Liberal Democrat councils do. The two Lib Dem Members who did turn up to speak in this debate, the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), both represent areas with Liberal Democrat councils that are building twice the number of homes that the Government are asking them to build. I do not criticise those Liberal Democrat councils for trying to build homes, but if anyone is objectively concreting over the green belt or greenfield land, it is those councils that are choosing to build twice the number of homes that the Conservative Government are asking them to build.

Of course, it was the Liberal Democrat leader who voted consistently for HS2 and, when we were in coalition, voted for every one of this Conservative Government’s planning Bills from 2010 until he lost his seat in 2015, so the speeches from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrats were, I am afraid, just embarrassing. Nothing was more emblematic of that than the graphic put out by the Labour party this afternoon, which showed some properties in the Cotswolds that Labour had taken from an article in a newspaper with the headline “Why £10 million country estates are the new £5 million estates”. How out of touch is that? We on this side of the House do want to build homes. We do want to help young people on to the housing ladder, and we do care about homelessness and rough sleeping, and tackling intergenerational unfairness.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, a great deal united the House in this debate, and six themes emerged, all of which are fortunately the chapters—the pillars—of the planning reform Bill. First is our united desire to see greater environmental protection—our categoric insistence that the green belt must be protected, in a way that the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is doing more than any other person in this country to build upon the green belt, does not seem to understand. We will enshrine those principles in the Bill.

Secondly, we will ensure that the Bill means a massive improvement in the quality and design of properties. We will bring forward the ideas of Sir Roger Scruton’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, so that new homes in this country are built to a dramatically higher standard.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot, as I have only a few minutes left, but I appreciate that my right hon. Friend is at the vanguard of this issue.

Thirdly, everyone in this country wants to see more infrastructure built alongside the homes—the GP surgeries, the hospitals, the roads, the parks, the playgrounds. We will bring forward an infrastructure levy that gets more of the land value out of the landowners and the big developers and puts it at the service of local people. That will mean more affordable homes being built in this country than ever before.

We will also ensure that we tip the balance away from the big-volume house builders and towards the small builders, so that local entrepreneurs—the brickies, the plumbers and the builders in our constituencies—get a fair shot at the system.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker,

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose”,

according to the American author Robert Byrne; and so it goes with Governments. Governments are edified and enlivened by their driving purpose, which brings the practicalities of a defined philosophy to life. As ever, priorities are pressing, but I have no doubt that, with the support of experienced Back Benchers and the sage advice of former Ministers, my friends in Government will succeed.

Home-making matters, for home is where the heart is. Attachment to somewhere, security for oneself and one’s family, and a sense of pride in place, are essential links in the great chain of being. Personal places are at a premium, and the Secretary of State is right that more Britons deserve the chance to fulfil their dream of home ownership. However, for the public to support house building, what is built must be better. With at least 750,000 empty homes, and countless sites with planning permission undeveloped while the highest grade agricultural land is concreted over, it is clear that the current planning system is not working, so reform is welcome.

Such reform should certainly involve a streamlined system, but with much more demanding standards. As we build, we must build beautifully. I was proud to give advice to the Scruton commission and the work that is being done following it. We should only ever make places that our generation can be proud of, and that those who come later will revere.

In essence, the focus on housing policy has for too long been on quantity and housing targets at the expense of quality. How very sad that the horrors brought by volume house builders have left communities filled with fear at the mere rumour of a planning application. A home is not “a machine for living” as Le Corbusier believed it was. Rather homes are a reflection of our humanity. Beautiful buildings have extraordinary power to excite and enthral, both on their own and as components of lovely places.

The work of craftsmen shaping buildings as an ode to what is already known and loved rathe—than as monuments to garish, modish vanity—is what most people say that they admire, yet seemingly we have become incapable of building much of worth. It is time that that changed. Yes, the Bill will make land designated under “growth” or “renewal” easier to build on, at least in theory, but with communities dr”iving and defining the system, improvement is within reach. Developers must be told that if what they intend is more hideous identikit volume housing, it simply will not get planning permission.

Once areas have been identified for development, there must be a master plan for the locality, and every component and space must be designed to excite and inspire. People are not opposed to development that enhances their community, but developers must raise their game, and local planning authorities have the right to expect the Government—and their agent the Planning Inspectorate—to give them the confidence to say no to poor design, no to endless out-of-town commercial developments, and no to the consumption of greenfield land when brownfield sites go unused.

No more good-grade agricultural land should be lost, there should be no building on the floodplain, and no more ugly housing estates bolted on to small towns. Developers must be allowed to build, but only when they adhere to rigorous standards.

With the revitalised sense of pride in place born of community involvement in the evolution of settlements, a Government-led planning renaissance could give birth to something truly wonderful, leaving a legacy not of obnoxious building imposed on unwilling residents but of happy childhood memories of special places, communal fraternity, and villages, towns and cities full of character, particularity and charm. Such should be the scale of ambition for this Government and this House—a future for Britain even more glorious than the best of what has been.

National Security and Investment Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

On those amendments, my hon. Friend will know that there are profound and continuing concerns about scrutiny associated with the provisions and powers that the Bill provides. He will furthermore know that the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I am a member, performs an important role in scrutinising all such security matters. He will know that there is a memorandum of understanding that underpins that between the Government and the ISC. Will he be quite clear that there is no attempt to dilute, to obscure or to escape from the provisions of that memorandum, which says that the ISC can inquire into security matters across the whole of Government?

[Paul Scully]

I always value the contribution from my right hon. Friend who, as a former Security Minister and a member of the ISC, is very wise and experienced in these matters. I can confirm that the memorandum of understanding absolutely pertains and that the ISC can continue its great work to scrutinise the work of the security services, which will include where the security services’ work supports the work of the Investment Security Unit. It is also important to remember, as we consider these amendments, that we value the work of the ISC, and of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, which I will speak about as well.

[Sir John Hayes]

To be absolutely clear, that memorandum is, by definition, flexible. The Government have acknowledged that by history, by example and so on. That flexibility should allow the ISC to scrutinise the additional powers in this Bill, and I gather from what the Minister says that he is comfortable with that principle and that the ISC will continue to perform its role in that way. On that basis, I will support the Government tonight in any Division that might ensue.

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s enlightening words about his intention. I can indeed confirm that the memorandum of understanding is flexible. The ISC does good work and continues to do so, and I look forward to working with him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The Intelligence and Security Committee greatly appreciates the work of the Minister and of his predecessor on this important legislation. I was on the Committee in June 2013 when we identified the risks posed by foreign investment and takeovers to the United Kingdom’s critical national infrastructure, citing Huawei as a case study—and we know what happened after that. We strongly support the Government’s decision to address those risks and we welcome their assurances that national security concerns sit at the very heart of the Bill. That is exactly as it should be.

However, what was not as it should be, with the Bill as originally drafted, was the lack of adequate oversight arrangements for those security concerns and for the process when they are weighed against business and other commercial concerns by the new Investment Security Unit. The Government ought to accept amendments 11 and 15 from the other place, introduced on a cross-party basis by former Security Minister and current ISC member Lord West, former Cabinet Secretary and former ISC member Lord Butler, former party leader and former ISC member Lord Campbell, and former Defence Secretary Lord King—who was of course the first Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee when it was established. Their amendments make provision for that previous lack of oversight. They would require the annual report produced by the new Investment Security Unit in BEIS to include, for each final order and notification made, the Secretary of State’s decision, along with the security services’ assessment of the national security risks uncovered. They would allow the Secretary of State to move any classified information into an annex and to provide that classified annex to the ISC. With the amendments in place as they currently are, we could be confident that the Bill will create the robust regime needed to protect the United Kingdom.

Given the powerful speeches from all quarters and the size of the majority in the other place in support of the amendments, it is surprising and disappointing that the Government remain opposed to them and are seeking to overturn what is clearly common sense. The amendments provide for the ISC to scrutinise the highly classified national security elements and the weighing of those classified elements against commercial concerns.

There appear to be three arguments employed by the Government against the amendments. The first claims that because BEIS is not listed in the Justice and Security Act 2013 or in the associated memorandum of understanding on the scope of our work, the ISC cannot look at decisions taken by the new unit in BEIS. That is based on a false premise.

During the passage of the 2013 Act, the Government explicitly and repeatedly told Parliament that the Act and the MOU would provide the ISC with oversight of all security matters across Government. The MOU mechanism, again, in the Government’s own words, was a “flexible” way to ensure that the list of organisations working on security matters and therefore subject to ISC oversight would be kept up to date.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I will give way in a moment, because I would like my right hon. Friend to hear this next bit, as I think there was a bit he was missing in his earlier intervention.

These words were used in Committee in my presence by the then Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), when introducing the 2013 Act. He said:

“I want to be clear that the Government intend that, through the provisions of the MOU, substantively all of central Government’s intelligence and security activities will be subject to ISC oversight.”––[Official Report, Justice and Security Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2013; c. 97.]

As if that were not clear enough, he went on to say, and this is the bit that matters:

“Things change over time. Departments reorganise. The functions undertaken by a Department one year may be undertaken by another the following year… An MOU is flexible: it can be changed much more easily than primary legislation. It will enable the intention of the Government that the ISC should have oversight of substantively all of central Government’s intelligence and security activities to be realised now and in the future.” ––[Official Report, Justice and Security Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2013; c. 98.]

The setting up of the new Investment Security Unit in BEIS is therefore precisely the situation that the Government assured the House that the MOU was designed to address, and the unit can easily be added to the MOU by a simple exchange of letters. Indeed, if the Government were willing to give an undertaking here and now to add the new unit to those listed in the MOU, the need for these amendments would disappear.

[Sir John Hayes]

That is precisely why I drew the Minister’s attention to the flexibility of the memorandum of understanding and asked him whether the Government stood by the terms of that memorandum. The Minister was as clear as crystal. He said that he believed in that memorandum, and he saw no attempt in what the Government were doing to dilute the powers of the ISC or its ability, of the kind that my right hon. Friend set out, to range across government, if I can put it that way, where security is concerned. I think we have had reassurance from the Minister sufficient to support the Government.

Public Landmarks Review

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Politics is about values. Gone are the days when half-hearted political careerists could retreat to the safe ground of mechanistic economic minutiae, for the new battle of Britain has begun. Islamic extremists, Black Lives Matter radicals and Extinction Rebellion rioters despise our way of life, and British patriots expect resistance, not retreat, and from resistance we will advance. In years gone by, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) said, children were taught about the exploits of our nation’s heroes. Now, left-wing zealots and their ill-educated acolytes are determined, by cancelling the past, to dictate the future. For them, heroes must be cancelled too. Yet in the struggle to counter the brave new world of moral relativism and meaningless mundanity heroes remain vital, as he said, for our shared sense of identity. By embodying the spirit of their times, they bring historical truth to life, so building our collective understanding of how our nation was forged.

In essence, heroes bring us together, just as the identity politics of the left seeks to tear us apart. By dividing us into exclusionary social tribes, the socioeconomic elite distract to disarm us, so perpetuating their heartless rule over working-class patriots. Make no mistake, this political struggle of our time is for all time.

In Marxist cultural dogma, identity must always be defined by a sense of grievance. Rather than fostering harmonious patriotic pride, they deride our colonial history, ignorantly dismissing our time-honoured worldwide contribution to civilisation. Nowhere is heroism more potent than when soldiers, sailors and airmen leave their homes, families and friends to protect British interests in storms of all kinds across vast oceans and distant landscapes.

Mindful of exceptional service, it is our patriotic duty to commemorate those who have been awarded our nation’s highest honours. A total of 1,300 individuals have been awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the presence of the enemy; 408 men and women have received the George Cross after displaying conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger. Too many who have given so much have been all but forgotten. In some places, locals may be unaware that they tread in the footsteps of local heroes, who made a difference to their whole nation.

The Members of Parliament associated with the Common Sense Group seek to commemorate VC and GC recipients by naming roads, parks and public buildings in their honour, reigniting their memory and refreshing their legacy. Let us have more plaques, more memorials, more statues, not merely retaining and explaining, but retaining, explaining and acclaiming the heroism of those who helped to build Britain.

In the same spirit, as our eyes are lifted to public buildings, all should fly the Union flag—the flag of our United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will confirm that, immediately following this Adjournment debate, he will take measures to put such an instruction in place.

The story of our heroes teaches us that, through service and sacrifice, men and women reach the apex of human endeavour. For our generation and those born later, let us glory in this, our land of hope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who of course has a statue to the Earl of Dudley looking over his town in the west midlands. The Leader of the Opposition should take his Mayor in hand, but I am afraid that I must borrow from Euripides, who famously said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. If Euripides were with us today, he would probably say that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make members and leaders of the Labour party, because the leader of the Labour party has gone mad. He has been captured. He is a POW—a prisoner of woke. I trust that he will be released so that he can direct his friend the Mayor of London to pay greater attention to Londoners, because it will be for them, ultimately, to judge whether that £1.1 million of public expenditure is spent on statue destruction, or whether the Mayor might better spend his time and the public’s money trying to put up more homes for Londoners rather than pull down their statues in public parks.

I suspect that the Mayor’s real interest is to distract us and draw our attention away from his lamentable failure to build a better future for Londoners. To borrow from Churchill—by the way, his statues are going nowhere—Sadiq Khan is a very modest Mayor with much to be modest about. Let me be quite clear: his lopsided commission has no mandate to advocate for the removal of existing statues. The Government’s policy is that historic statues should be retained and explained rather than removed, and any such proposed removal of an historic statue should rightly be, and will be, subject to planning permission or listed building consent.

[Sir John Hayes]

And, I hope, to acclaim. In congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) on securing the debate, may I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to support the idea that I advanced of more plaques and statues, particularly for winners of the VC and GC, who, by the way, are drawn from all ethnicities?

Bereavement

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

I completely agree with that, and I want to develop those arguments.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[Grahame Morris]

I am willing to take one more intervention, but I want the Minister to have time to respond. I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Sir John Hayes]

I wanted the hon. Gentleman to get all his interventions in at once, so his flow can continue. He will know that I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for funerals and bereavement. I wonder if he could add to his list of demands for the Minister the provision of vaccinations and personal protective equipment for frontline funeral staff, and a clearer line about the policing of funerals. There are some suggestions that funeral directors are being held liable for enforcing sensible rules on funerals. We need greater clarity on that, too, and I am very grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to make those points.

[Grahame Morris]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman makes eminently sensible points born out of his experience with the all-party group. The three suggestions or demands that I have put forward are those that are identified by the three charities I mentioned earlier, but certainly personally I do agree with him on vaccination, funeral arrangements and so on.

I would like to ask the Minister to look at the issue of cross-governmental co-ordination and improved focus on these issues. I understand that the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) is often identified as the Minister for bereavement. I am delighted that we have the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) as the Minister today, but we certainly need a clear ministerial lead on bereavement to ensure there is proper co-ordination on the issues raised by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and others. Otherwise, bereaved families will continue to slip through the net and be passed from pillar to post, which is distressing and frustrating.

A bereavement standard would benefit business and the bereaved by providing a clear, concise and consistent process to close accounts when a loved one dies. A bereavement standard would establish, first, an agreed timeframe for companies to respond to bereavement enquiries and settle outstanding customer balances. Members will be aware that the existing arrangements, the Tell Us Once service to which the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) referred, applies only to the public sector, and not to private companies, utilities and banks. Secondly, a bereavement standard would establish a dedicated bereavement customer care direct email channel for each company to handle such cases and avoid customers waiting on calls. Thirdly, it would establish the standardisation of paperwork needed to close an account, with a view to accepting—this is a really important point in the age we live in—digital documents wherever possible.

I anticipate that the Minister will, in his reply, refer to the excellent bereavement standard that already exists in the public sector. The Tell Us Once service is working well, ensuring that bereaved people do not have to go through the trauma of telling every single Government Department that they have lost a loved one, but we need exactly the same in the private sector to cover banks, utilities, insurance companies and more: a standard process across all organisations and companies, with specifically trained staff dealing with bereavement and an agreed timescale to close accounts and resolve issues. There is nothing more distressing than when such inquiries drag on for months and months.

At one of the most challenging times in life, I hope we all agree—this is a cross-party issue; I am not seeking to make a party political point here—that families should not have to spend hours going back and forth with companies, waiting months to close an account. Research from Settld and Cruse Bereavement Care shows that the vast majority of bereaved people described the administration processes as time-consuming and stressful. A quarter found it traumatic, especially having to phone so many individual companies and repeat time and again, “My husband/wife/father/mother has died.”

The single most important action the Government can take to support families would be to introduce a digital death certificate. This would enable families to close accounts quickly, initiate probate and engage specialist services such as Settld to deal with the administration following a death. When asked to introduce digital death certificates, in a written response, a Home Office Minister responded:

“There is currently no provision in law to issue a death certificate other than in a paper format.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Part of the issue is that too many services have gone online, which is to some degree a consequence of the current crisis. We need to encourage such businesses and agencies, particularly when they are dealing with older people, to have face-to-face or phone-to-phone contact. As far as e-government is concerned, we want more p-government, where p stands for people.

[Paul Scully]

My right hon. Friend talks about people, and people are at the heart of any business, service or organisation. Whether it is e or p, we cannot lose the personal.

This is exactly the kind of work that I want to continue with our regulators and sponsor Departments, to make sure that we can raise these issues, develop our understanding and put in any necessary action to support businesses in delivering the caring, simple processes that bereaved people need. I assure the hon. Member for Easington that improving outcomes for bereaved consumers remains a priority for Government.

As well as talking about the standard, the hon. Gentleman spoke about digital copies of death certification, and clarity for business and consumers to allow the markets to function more effectively. The Government are working with regulators to understand what we can do to provide more clarity and confidence for firms on the use of digital copies of death certificates. For the record, and to avoid conflating concepts, it should be noted that digital death certificates do not exist; digital copies of death certification refer to the scanned copies of documents.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about bereavement leave. I hope that with me, he will welcome Jack’s law, which came into force last year, on parental bereavement leave and pay. It is a good start. I know that he wants to go further, but we should bear in mind that this is a statutory minimum. When we look at workers’ protections and workers’ rights, which have been the subject of debate over the last few weeks, we see that all these things are statutory minimums. As a former employer who has run businesses, I know that doing the bare minimum is not good business practice; we invest in our people. We will always ask employers to go further.

The Government are working to better understand what issues and problems bereaved consumers persistently face in the essential service sectors. We support and value the good work that the regulators in those sectors have done and are doing on these issues, and we know that many businesses already offer bereaved customers both compassion and efficient service.

We remain committed to improving outcomes for all consumers experiencing vulnerability, including those facing bereavement, and we will continue to work through the issues that the hon. Member has raised and carefully consider his suggestions. We encourage all businesses to treat all consumers with compassion and understanding, particularly when those consumers are faced with emotional hardship, and we thank those that are already doing exactly that.

I thank the hon. Member once again for his contribution to the debate. I also thank the other hon. and right hon. Members who intervened and contributed, and everyone who continues to work hard to raise awareness of issues facing consumers dealing with bereavement and loss.

Question put and agreed to.