Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and John Bercow(5 years, 2 months ago)
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John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
One year on from the Salisbury poisoning, we stand with the people and the city, and we applaud their resilience. The other message from Labour is also clear: such foreign aggression on our soil will never be tolerated.
Four weeks to Brexit, yet the Secretary of State is part of a Government who still threaten the country with a final collapse in negotiations and a crash-out exit. He may say that a no-deal Brexit is not his preference, but he supports this remaining an option and he is part of a Cabinet preparing for it. How many fewer homes will be built each year in the event of a no-deal Brexit?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and John Bercow(5 years, 5 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
It is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman to talk about policy, given that his own side has very little policy to show at all on a range of issues. He asks a fair question about building the homes that our country needs, which is why it is right to highlight to the House the 222,000 additional dwellings in the past year. That is profoundly about not only building the homes our country needs, but about ensuring that we are looking at viability and getting these issues of land value capture addressed—
Mr Speaker
Order. It is impossible to describe the extent of my gratitude to the Secretary of State, who is among the most courteous Members of the House, but I say very gently to colleagues that we have a lot of questions to get through. We therefore need short questions and short answers so that we can reach people lower down the Order Paper, because I am more bothered about the Back Benches than I am about the Front Benches.
John Healey
The Secretary of State tells us to wait till next year, but he may not be in government next year. In truth, this is a Government who delay and duck the big decisions on housing because they are too dysfunctional and too divided, just as they are on Brexit. His own Members know that their policy is failing and want action taken on land costs, so will he change the law so that the Government can work with councils to compulsorily purchase land without paying for landowner speculation, then use the savings to cut the costs for first-time buyers and renters? Even if the Secretary of State cannot get the backing of the House for his Brexit deal, he would get it for a radical plan to make the land market work for the benefit of the many, and not the few.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and John Bercow(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I know that the shadow Secretary of State wanted to raise a point of order, which he has promised to do with commendable brevity.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have just had over an hour of oral questions on the day before the long summer recess, yet we have had no update from the Secretary of State on a number of promises he made about when important policy announcements would be made. On 9 May, he said:
“The Government will bring forward a Rough Sleeping Strategy in July”.
It has not been published. On 11 June, he said:
“we’ll be publishing a Social Housing Green Paper by recess.”
It has not been published. On 9 July, he said that he would come forward with the finalised national planning policy framework before the summer recess. It has not been published. What assistance can you give me and the House to make sure that, when promises are made by Ministers, they are honoured, and that important policy announcements are not dribbled out over the recess when this House is not sitting and cannot scrutinise them?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his attempted point of order. I do not wish to treat it with levity because it is a matter of the utmost importance. He seeks assistance from me and asks what I can do. I suppose I ought to begin by saying what I cannot do. I cannot delay the summer recess; the summer recess will be a fact. It is not entirely without precedent for Ministers to issue policy announcements during periods of recess. The Secretary of State is in his place and will have heard with crystal clarity what the right hon. Gentleman said. If the Secretary of State wants to give any earnest of his good intentions in this matter, he can do so, but alternatively he can remain—and apparently is remaining—glued to his seat, from which the right hon. Gentleman, Sherlock Holmes-style, must make his own deductions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Healey and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
Before we move on, I have been notified of a number of intended points of order springing directly out of Question Time. I say for the record that, on this occasion, I will take Members on trust and take those points of order now. However, if it becomes apparent to me that they are really just a way of trying to continue Question Time or if they are too long, when I have specifically said that they must be short, I will cut them off and the process of taking any—[Interruption.] Order. If that happens, the process of taking points of order at this time will be discontinued and those Members will be responsible.
I look to the shadow Secretary of State to set a good example, with a proper point of order done briefly—for which read “a sentence”.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you offer any guidance to the House on your expectations and on the conventions? We just heard the Secretary of State, after an hour of Question Time, say in an offhand way, in answer to the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who has now left the Chamber, that later this afternoon he will make a statement about the backing the Government will give to garden villages and urban extensions. Surely we should have expected that either in a written statement this morning or certainly through a reference in the body of questions this afternoon, so that the House had a chance to ask him about it.
Mr Speaker
My understanding is that a written ministerial statement is expected. Whether that WMS is the WMS concerned, I do not know.