Miners and Mining Communities

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I was waiting for the hon. Gentleman to get to the key moment when he would mention the Leamside line, and I was not disappointed. As he knows, there is a connection between our constituencies, and they could be made even more connected if we got the Leamside line reopened. He mentions that the newly elected Mayor may get cold feet on it. If she does, I have a bucket of hot water ready and waiting for her feet. I have every faith that it will still be high on her agenda, and I look forward to being able to get on a train from my constituency to the hon. Gentleman’s very soon.

[John Howell]

I look forward to that opportunity. I have written to the North East Mayor asking for engagement on that, and I would be delighted if the hon. Lady joined me for such a meeting, should it arise.

Ferryhill station is not just about travel; it is also about economic regeneration. The station closed as part of the Beeching cuts in 1967, the same year that the Ferryhill mines closed—and the same year, as it happens, that I moved out of Ferryhill to Newton Aycliffe, about six miles away. It meant that residents lost not just a source of local jobs, but a means of travelling to new jobs. It is therefore an imperative that the project, which was recently confirmed again by the Prime Minister, now makes urgent progress. Like any investment, it will show the communities at or near the station—Ferryhill, Chilton, Mainsforth, Dean Bank, Cornforth and Bishop Middleham—that they are valued, while also presenting increased opportunities for those that are slightly further away, such as Spennymoor and Tudhoe.

One of the tenets of my election in 2019 was the desire to improve access to opportunities for all, and no one is more needing or deserving of opportunity than the residents of what were, and still are, described as mining villages. One cause of mine has been to encourage aspiration, particularly for the young people of Sedgefield, and that flows from sessions with the ambassadors of Ferryhill primary schools, led by Glenys Newby, as well as visits to schools in Hurworth, Wheatley Hill and everywhere in between.

To enable and encourage aspiration, it is critical that we create opportunity. Opportunity comes from jobs and careers, which is why I am so pleased about the growth of NETPark, a science community within two miles of Fishburn, a former mining village. Close to my mining communities is the new town of Newton Aycliffe, which offers 10,000 jobs, including at Hitachi. It is fundamental for the recovery of the mining communities that industries of the future can be sustained, including at Hitachi. I am working with everyone from unions to the Secretary of State, to find a way for those industries to continue admirably inspiring their workforce in the future. However, they will help the communities most in need only if my mining villages can reach them via the bus connection that I mentioned.

If we wish to secure future growth, we must develop new skills. I am enormously encouraged by the growth in apprenticeships in the area, where 13,490 have started since 2010, and by the increasing quality of our schools, which is helping to deliver better educational outcomes. Over the past 14 years, we have gone from 67% of our schools being rated good or outstanding to 91% today. Opportunity is supported by education, and I have been delighted to engage not only with schools but with the amazing universities that support my constituency—most notably Durham University. I commend the work being done to reach out to communities.

I am delighted that Fiona Hill, the recently appointed chancellor of Durham University, hails from Bishop Auckland, a place with challenges similar to those in my communities, so she gets it. Fiona Hill hails from a disadvantaged background but managed to rise to work on the international stage, and has now returned to become chancellor of Durham University. I support the university’s “Shy bairns get nowt” project, which is an attempt to instil more confidence in our young people so that they speak up and are not only heard but listened to.

I have such hope for the former mining communities in my area. We need to continue efforts to support education and aspiration, and to deliver better transport for those communities. Despite their challenges, I can see the potential they have to reinvent themselves. However, I cannot stress enough just how crucial bus and train services are to that process. I look forward to seeing the services improve and those amazing communities become the places that they deserve to be.

Budget Resolutions

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for an excellent speech. I make no apology for raising what I consider—he might agree—to be several points of minutiae in respect of the levelling-up agenda.

The first such point is the line in the Budget papers about the delivery of £750 million over the spending review period to carry through devolution. We have all become familiar with the county deals and the appearance of mayors, but beyond all that I recommend an aspect of devolution at a much lower level: neighbourhood plans, which have proved to be an enormous success. They have transformed how villages and rural parishes look at themselves and plan for the future and, of course, they have delivered more housing than the targets set by district councils in the first place. Neighbourhood plans have been a great success in rural areas, but I anticipate that we will need to work to make sure that cities, and areas within them, accept neighbourhood plans as a way forward to see for themselves how their neighbourhood can be changed for the better.

Secondly, the community ownership fund is incredibly important for rural areas such as my own. We have lost a tremendous amount over the years, including many pubs, as has been pointed out, and many villages have lost sports facilities. The community ownership fund can be used to try to put some of those things back, because where there have been developments, the developers have not seen fit to work with communities to put many of those things back into communities.

Thirdly, I encourage people to look at the permitted development rights in respect of towns and cities to make sure that they are genuinely applicable to rural areas. Many of them, particularly those that deal with high streets, are not applicable in rural areas. It would be useful to have a distinction between the two.

Lastly, I welcome the £1.8 billion that is to be spent on housing, particularly on brownfield sites. The national planning policy framework clearly set out a brownfield-first presumption in the planning system—we have said that on many occasions—and I know because I helped to write it into the national planning policy framework. The £1.8 billion shows that we are prepared to put money where our mouth is and will deliver a lot of affordable houses on brownfield sites, which I fully support and recommend.

Oxford-Cambridge Arc

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the Liberal Democrats are up to their necks in the arc? They have people on standing committees, they have England’s Economic Heartland and they have the control of this process, and they have nothing more to offer than anyone else.

[Mr Baker]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Although he tempts me to elaborate on the points he makes, I hope that he will forgive me if I do not especially attack the Liberal Democrats in the absence of anyone to reply on their behalf—but I note their absence from this debate. Two months ago, communities in Chesham and Amersham notably sent this message in a startling by-election result. The point is that the Government are taking a top-down approach in imposing the arc, and they seem to be doing so without the effective engagement of the people in the area. Those people are pushing back, and quite right, too. I recall that in 2010, when some of us were elected and the Conservatives came to power, we abolished regional government. This is perhaps a point I will return to: having abolished regional government, we now seem to be, in a sense, reinstituting it through the arc.

Secondly, there are profound issues with local democratic accountability. Our council could find other local authorities and partners taking important planning decisions that are of the most acute interest to our residents, and imposing them on Buckinghamshire. Those decisions have the potential to be significant, generational and, crucially, permanent ones, such as on the suggested new settlements in Bucks, on the imposition of local development corporations and on the imposition of major new and unwanted infrastructure, such as the recently withdrawn expressway. That is the second key point—local accountability.

Thirdly, there are top-down housing targets. I have perhaps said enough about the idea of 1 million houses, but it seems to us that there is now is pressure for overflow from London. What is to become of our area and our beautiful region? My constituency consists of areas of outstanding natural beauty where it is not built on, plus the airfield. These are beautiful parts of our country. Enormous amounts of housing being put in there as overflow from London will cause major protests from the public, and quite right, too.

Fourthly, the spatial strategy for the arc appears to sit above local plans developed by the local planning authority. The interrelationship of the spatial frameworks with existing planning responsibilities is unclear, but it appears to insert this additional and more regional layer of government over what local authorities are doing. Framework proposals would need to be incorporated into new local plans or the plans could risk being found to be unsound, which would have real meaning for the ability to carry forward plans that met with democratic consent.

Those are my four key points. Colleagues have said to me in passing—perhaps some will say this in detail today —that there is a real problem of co-ordination. Before I come on to my colleagues’ statements, I say in passing that of course there is a problem with co-ordination. With great respect to the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), whom I will call my hon. Friend as he is sitting on my side of the House today, whenever big Government choose to plan society and the economy and to impose conditions and development top down, there is always a co-ordination problem. That is why some of us believe in the spontaneous order of the market, but that is not the fundamental point of today’s debate.

I want to put on record a statement from my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham, who says:

“Buckingham is well-placed to benefit from the Arc’s potential. But we, like our neighbours, must first address the rapidly deteriorating state of our local infrastructure. We have been hit hard by the construction of HS2 and multiple housing developments. Central government must realise and compensate for the damage that HS2 and other high-volume construction projects are causing.

The success of the arc locally depends on the delivery of ongoing local infrastructure projects—above all the Aylesbury Spur of East West Rail. With continuing uncertainty surrounding the spur’s implementation, my constituents and local businesses are growing increasingly anxious. A fast and efficient connection to both the county town”—

I should just add that I have always felt that High Wycombe was the county town, but I am advised otherwise—

“and beyond, is pivotal for realising the economic growth inherent in the Arc’s strategy. The Aylesbury Spur of East West Rail must therefore be built.

It must also be said that we have taken our fair share of housing. Housebuilding targets must be spread fairly and must take into account the tremendous amount of available brownfield land.”

That is the statement from my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury has asked me to say:

“Buckinghamshire has withdrawn from the Oxford Cambridge arc and has presented to MHCLG an ambitious recovery deal based on local devolution, which I wholeheartedly support. The council in conjunction with the Bucks LEP believe this deal will achieve the benefits of the arc but with local decision making remaining in local hands.

The proposed spatial framework has caused considerable concern in Aylesbury for an area already saturated with strategic infrastructure projects and housing development. By retaining decision making in Buckinghamshire, the recovery deal would represent the strategic aims of MHCLG and ensure local democracy.”

Saving the contribution that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield will make in a moment, I come on to our ask as Buckinghamshire MPs and for the council. We are not anti-growth; of course we accept that housing growth will continue at already high rates, and I particularly want sympathetic development for people in my area who desperately need a home to own. However, it must have local consent, and the targets must be determined and led locally.

In conjunction with our partners, we have already put forward an ambitious recovery and growth proposal to the Government, as I have mentioned. We urge the Government to work with Buckinghamshire Council to progress this bottom-up, democratically driven approach to creating jobs and economic growth, rather than the top-down targets imposed within the structure of the arc and its strategic spatial strategy.

I conclude by saying how much I look forward to this debate, which is overwhelmingly among hon. Friends. I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister will not mind me saying that I look at the matter with a spirit of some disappointment. He and I were elected to this place in 2010 enthusiastically looking to reform the planning system and to abolish regional government, so I hope he will not mind me pointing out that we now seem to be reinstituting it by other means. I do not think this is going to meet local concerns at all.

As somebody who represents a constituency adjacent to Chesham and Amersham, I really do think this is a moment to think again; to respect the rights of property holders in our area and the needs of those who would like to buy a house; and to make sure that people have incentives to say yes to development, but also the opportunity to say no. I look forward to a think-tank paper, which I hope I have catalysed, which will set out those ideas in more detail, and I hope in due course my right hon. Friend will feel able to look at it.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

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

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

One of the things that I am most proud to have achieved in the past 13 years is the introduction of neighbourhood planning, which has been an enormous success for communities. I hope that the planning Bill will resolve the position of neighbourhood plans. I urge the Minister to do that; I know that he has been following the issue. Neighbourhood plans involve the whole community and allow people to participate in the development of their community for the future. They do not produce nimby charters; they produce plans that take a look at what is involved as a stake in the future and produce affordable housing. They produce more housing than the district councils had allocated to those communities. In every way, they achieve a win-win.

I am aware of the enormous time that it takes to produce neighbourhood plans. I have tried over the years to simplify the process, but in many cases it is district councils that make them more complex than they need to be. Many district councils simply do not want to give up power, but in my experience—my constituency has more neighbourhood plans that people might imagine—people have interest and experience that can be of great value in the production of a neighbourhood plan. One district council told me that it simply did not believe in them, and that it gave little encouragement to communities to produce them. Another said, “Well, if we produce another local plan, then all neighbourhood plans are null and void.” That is completely the opposite of what is the case, as neighbourhood plans need to agree only with the strategic aims of the district council plan. Also, neighbourhood plans must be upheld by the Planning Inspectorate; otherwise, there is no point in doing them and no point in putting in all the work involved. It is quite right, and very good, that the Government are strengthening the idea that they should focus on design. That is important, but they should also give back the allocation of sites, because that is crucial.

In another area that is linked to this, we must ensure that the planning system is speeded up, that the cost is driven down and that people have access to it. The way to do that—this could be a useful hint for something to give credibility to the planning Bill—is by recommending the use of mediation as a technique to use. I declare an interest as an associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. I am grateful for the discussion that I have already had with the Planning Inspectorate in which we have looked at some of these issues, and the issue of trying to find independent mediators to do this work has been solved. This is something for the future, where anyone can be involved in accessing this to get a good result for their community.

Antisemitic Attacks

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

We have only to look on social media today to see that a very large number of our fellow citizens do not understand what antisemitism is, or else they would not be liking and sharing some of the memes and graphics, which are antisemitic and deeply offensive and are helping to fan the flames of the kinds of incidents we have seen in recent days. The Government are taking action in a number of respects, through the Holocaust Educational Trust, which the hon. Gentleman rightly praises, and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, which is doing work online, and through other works with the Holocaust education centre which we hope will be built near the Palace of Westminster and holocaust museums across the country, such as the Beth Shalom museum in north Nottinghamshire, so that we can raise awareness of these issues and help to debunk some of the myths.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The antisemitism of the weekend has been inflamed by allegations originating with perhaps easily disproved campaigns concerning the al-Aqsa mosque, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims worship there during Ramadan and Eid. My right hon. Friend has described a lot of what he is going to do, but what more can he do to stop antisemitic mistruths being used to drive a wedge between communities here in the UK?

[Robert Jenrick]

That is an extremely important point. As I have said, there is work to be done online and in our schools, and there is also work we can do through the creation of new museums and educational institutions such as the memorial that we hope will be built. There is also work for all of us just as citizens of this country, to call out antisemitism wherever we find it and see it, and ensure that there is no immunity—there is no safe space for it in the way that I am afraid many people feel there is today.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I was delighted to receive Crewe’s town investment plan in January. Having visited my hon. Friend’s constituency many times over the years, I am excited to see the ambitious plans that have been developed for the town centre to welcome visitors and shoppers and creating an integrated High Speed 2 hub station. The plans are very well developed. My officials are currently conducting assessments and I look forward to making an announcement in due course.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to support local authorities during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

We have so far allocated over £9 billion directly to councils since the start of the pandemic and local authorities are expected to receive over £3 billion of additional support in 2021-22, responding both to expenditure pressures and loss of income. This takes the total support that we have committed to councils in England to tackle the impacts of covid-19 to over £12 billion.

Greensill Capital

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady talks about two different things. There is a review into supply chain finance and the request from Greensill Capital, but there is also the wider view of how taxpayers’ money was spent when the Government were working about as close to real time as they will ever get to do. Business owners will understand the huge difference between the speed at which business and Government work. We will review how taxpayers’ money has been spent, but we will also make sure that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) said, we chase people who have used Government grants and support inappropriately.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]]

Is it not true that the accreditation process that was used allowed a wide diversity of lenders to become accredited under the scheme in order to give more choice to borrowers, and that focus on the choices available to borrowers was crucial?

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Chancellor and a number of Ministers reflected the view of the House that we wanted to push to make sure we had that diversity of finance and capital available to businesses of all different types. We should be proud of the support that has been given out, which has allowed companies to get through this incredibly difficult time, and it remains a difficult time.

Liverpool City Council

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can. The commissioners will be appointed by me and will report to me. Their task is to support the city and its elected leadership to ensure that a good and credible improvement plan is brought forward and implemented as quickly as possible, and that the mistakes, errors and omissions of the past are put right, so that confidence can be restored to the city and the hon. Lady’s constituents can know and have confidence that they have a well-functioning city council and we can move forward as swiftly as possible.

I share the hon. Lady’s support for the city. It is a great city, and it deserves a good, functioning city council, which is exactly what we want to achieve.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]]

Does this sad but very welcome action not send a firm indication to all councils that we will step in where irregularities over best value, particularly in planning, occur? Will my right hon. Friend comment on his remarks about the need for whole-council elections, and does that mark a change across the whole country, in trying to rid ourselves of those councils that go for elections every year?

[Robert Jenrick]

The report that we have laid today makes two specific recommendations with regard to Liverpool City Council, as I outlined earlier, first recommending that we move as swiftly as possible to whole-council elections, and secondly recommending single-member wards. That recommendation will, subject to the views of those who come forward over the coming weeks, be implemented, but I agree that it has wider application. A thread that we have seen in a number of failed councils has been a lack of scrutiny and accountability for members where they have been in multi-member wards and where having elections time and again in thirds has led to a lack of scrutiny and a lack of focus in the council. I would like to see more councils take note of these recommendations and implement them.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

John Howell Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]]

Like the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), I am a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which, as we have heard, is responsible for putting together Holocaust Memorial Day. I hope that Members logged on for last night’s ceremony and the national moment. If they did not, they are in a minority, because people logged on in their tens of thousands. I hope that, like me, they found it a very moving and emotional experience.

Last year, which marked 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, I was asked to remember one person in particular who was a victim of Nazi persecution. I decided not to do that. Putting on a yarmulke, I decided to remember all 6 million victims of Nazi persecution, and I remember them all today.

The horror of this genocide has been repeated subsequently. What brought it home to me was when I visited the concentration camp just outside the Polish town of Lublin, and saw an enormous number of plants and flowers growing. They grow so magnificently there because they are all growing on the ashes of human burials. Just think about that: all that beauty coming out of such a tragic and momentously horrific situation.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn and I wrote an article for the Daily Mirror online yesterday, in which we said:

“Speaking as a Christian and a Muslim, respectively, we both know that marking Holocaust Memorial Day is more important than ever. Commemorating the millions of people who were murdered in the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution and in the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur is vital for us to learn where persecution based on faith and identity can lead.”

As the Chief Rabbi said last night:

“If we are all the light in the darkness, think of what a wonderful world we can achieve.”

Let us, in participating in this debate, aim to be that light in the darkness.

Covid-19: Maternity and Parental Leave

John Howell Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that nobody will take that advice as a reason to have a go at me—but if they do, they do.

I am delighted to participate in this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for initiating it. I want to raise just three points, and I do so in the spirit of asking the Minister to look again to make sure that we are doing everything possible to ensure that everything works extremely well.

The first point relates to childcare. I fully accept that childcare is desperately important to ensure that there is the opportunity for people on maternity or paternity leave to go back to work. I fully accept that, but I pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) and by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton): it is very important for the children themselves. I, too, have come across children who were born during or just before the lockdown period, but who have been immersed in lockdown, who find it really difficult to engage not just with other children, but with anyone outside their immediate family. That is such a sad thing to experience. I am not quite sure what the answer is, except to build in flexibility and make sure that we have the right sort of understanding people running nurseries.

The second group of people that I ask the Minister to look at, to see whether we are doing the right thing for them, is the self-employed. There are a large number of self-employed people here in the UK, but we know that there are certain things that we have not done right. Can it be right that just under half of self-employed people have had to give up a place at nursery in order to carry on making a living? Can it be right that we ask the self-employed to take into account things that other people, particularly those who are employed, do not have to take into account?

My final point is about those people who are employed. I know that the Minister or one of his associates has raised the question of how companies deal with people who are on maternity or paternity leave. However, as many speakers have suggested, it is still an area that is open to abuse. For example, we still see a large number of suspensions being done on incorrect terms. We also still see a large number of people who are employed in unsafe conditions. I wonder whether it is worth our getting together a group of leaders in this field to make sure that the key messages that we want to get across are really understood and communicated across companies, so that they do things in the right way. We are not asking for anything special, but we are asking that things be done in the right way.