Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. She is right to focus on some of the very good work that is already taking place through some individual projects I am aware are being brought forward. She is also right to highlight the role that sustainable drainage can take and we have committed to looking at that more broadly to see what more can be done with that particular policy. Planning law is very clear. It has to leave the environment in a better state than it finds it, not only in her area but across the country.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Of course we need more housing, but in my constituency the sewers are over capacity, Victorian and clapped out. I invite the Minister to meet some of the households where in times of heavy rain raw sewage not only pollutes the environment but floats around the streets, the gardens and even the kitchens. It is simply not acceptable to imagine we can somehow wave a wand to solve the housing problem. Finally, may I draw the attention of the House to an excellent website called “Top of the Poops”, which states that in my constituency there were 4,468 hours of sewage last year alone? That is completely unacceptable.

[Rachel Maclean]

DEFRA Ministers have been at this Dispatch Box multiple times to update colleagues on the work that the Government are proud to do as part of the plan for water. This is the most ambitious and stringent package that has been brought forward to tackle this abhorrent issue. We agree with the hon. Gentleman that storm overflows and sewage overflows are wrong. That is why the £2.2 billion of new accelerated investment will be directed into vital infrastructure. We are clear that the volume of sewage discharge into our waters is unacceptable and that is why we have taken action in terms of stronger regulation, more fines and tougher enforcement across the board to tackle every source of river and sea pollution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a significant overlap between antisemitism and conspiracy theories, and many of the tropes that conspiracists use are drawn from the antisemitic library. However, with the Online Safety Bill it is important to balance the right to free speech with vigilance in dealing with hate, and this Government are absolutely committed to combating antisemitism wherever it rears its head.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

2. What steps he is taking to level up all parts of the UK.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

22. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of increases in the cost of living on his Department’s levelling-up agenda.

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

Levelling up is not just a slogan—it is an imperative, and that is why it is a driving mission of this Government. I fear that if I outlined every step we are taking to level up, my extensive answer would take us beyond time, Mr Speaker, but to name a few highlights, we are establishing investment zones and freeports to create high-quality local jobs, delivering billions of pounds of investment into vital local projects and empowering local leaders through devolution deals, putting power and funding back into local hands. That is levelling up in action, and there is more to come.

[Jon Trickett]

All those words are just empty rhetoric. It is a con trick. The truth is that in a single decade the Government cut £540 billion from public services, and by March they will only have put about £500 million—one tenth of that—back in through levelling up. Is it not clear that to level up properly, we need an end both to this Government and to the economic system they have established?

[Dehenna Davison]

Absolutely not. This is a Government that have put levelling up at the core of every single thing we do. That is not going to change. The only way to ensure levelling up remains at the heart of Government is by voting Conservative at the next election.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My hon. Friend has absolutely made this case on multiple occasions, both to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to myself. He is a champion for West Dorset and for rural communities in general. We will continue to work with local MPs who are concerned about this, but I would just gently point out that the primacy and the desire of the local government sector in this financial year has been for clarity and consistency, which is what we have provided to them through the local government financial settlement this year.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

T6. While the Government drag their heels on section 21, thousands of families are being evicted through no fault of their own by rapacious landlords—let’s be honest about it—with 2,000 families in May alone this year. That is not acceptable. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State has been having cosy meetings with private landlords’ associations, which gives the impression he is on the side of the landlords and not the renters. Will he at least say now that the Bill will come back in September?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch heard the careful case he prosecuted when he said I was on the side of the landlords. In fact, I am on the side of a healthy private rented sector. The overwhelming majority of landlords do a brilliant job and I want to pay tribute to the National Residential Landlords Associations and Ben Beadle for their effective work in this area.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

After 27 years in this place, I suppose I should never be surprised about the direction in which debates go, but it is slightly unseemly that we are spending so much time talking about such an emotive matter, down to the location of a particular monument. I understand entirely the views of local people, but this is a national—indeed, international—centre of democracy, which has world importance. Of course local residents matter, but so does the site itself, which has been here for centuries.

I will make a case for the location that the Government propose, but first let me reflect that today’s debate takes place in the shadow of the most vile and appalling event: the unspeakable capacity of human beings to inflict the kinds of activities carried out by the Nazis against the Jews. Part of our debate needs to reflect upon that, as well as looking at local issues.

There is no doubt that a memorial is well overdue, but the Minister may well feel that some of the discussion about location and the nature of the monument is unseemly. I urge the Government to reflect carefully on the debate, and to try to get the discussion about where it is and how it is constructed out of here and into a place where a consensus can be arrived at.

In the explanatory notes to the Bill, the Government say the memorial

“will help people understand the way the lessons of the Holocaust apply more widely, including to other genocides.”

That makes me think of racism, which takes many different forms. For example, the slave trade is a great stain on our nation, and on other nations too. There are families and institutions that benefit from the wealth that originated from that horrible trade to this very day. Why do I mention that? I mention it because Members of the House, who may have stood in the very place where I am standing now, fought against slavery, and it was in this House that the anti-slavery legislation was passed. We built an anti-slavery monument. Where did we build it? We built it next to our Parliament, in the very location now proposed.

As other Members have said, the sculpture of the Burghers of Calais, an amazing monument to the human spirit, is in the same park, as well as a statue that is a tribute to the suffragettes. Where else would we put a memorial to what happened in the holocaust but alongside our Parliament, in the same place as those other sculptures?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s speech. The answer to his question is that the holocaust memorial, preferably without the basement box, could be put where the Buxton family memorial was put, which was in Parliament Square. It does not have to be in Victoria Tower gardens.

[Jon Trickett]

I thank the Father of the House, who I always listen to with respect. He is widely respected, but on this matter he may be wrong. I occasionally go to the anti-slavery monument and to look at the Burghers of Calais, which is an amazing sculpture. I then sometimes quietly go and sit on one of the benches, watch the river go by and think about the struggles for emancipation over the centuries, so many of which happened in this very building. I am not sure that putting a monument of the kind we are talking about in Parliament Square, surrounded as it is by traffic, is necessarily conducive to the quiet reflection that I and many others experience in the park.

I want to reflect on antisemitism, which was the root of the holocaust, and on my family’s history. I have never spoken about this before, either in public or in private, but it has been on my mind throughout my life and I want to go through some issues, because antisemitism is on the rise. It has long disfigured so many parts of our western European culture, as well as parts of our nation. It is a vile, centuries old, unforgiveable hatred that gave rise to the most appalling crime here in Europe in the last century. As I have said, we all still live in its shadows.

Fascism and the holocaust occurred in Germany, but we must never pretend that antisemitism is solely restricted to that nation. I wish to reflect on the lives of previous generations of my family and on what I have seen. My ancestors escaped antisemitic pogroms not in Germany, but in Tsarist Russia. They came to Britain on their way to the United States. They stopped off in London—the great port of London—first. In Victorian times, Britain welcomed asylum seekers—Jews escaping the tyranny of the time. It is hard to imagine whether that could happen today. Although that is not the point that I wish to make, it is important to reflect on that.

As I said, my family were on their way to America from what is now Poland. They were heading for Liverpool to get the boat across to New York and to freedom, as they saw it. They passed through Leeds. The older generation had by then become aged and infirm, so it was left to my grandmother, the youngest daughter, to stay and care for them—that was the tradition. The rest went on to Liverpool and then to Chicago. I have cousins who finally arrived in the west, in California. It is odd in a way to reflect that those cousins have almost circumnavigated the globe across four generations of my family.

Let me focus on the Leeds part of the family. They were hard-working cobblers—boot and shoe makers. They worked in a small place next to the synagogue on North Street, Leeds. There was a great Jewish community there. Although it was a tight-knit working class community, I heard many stories of harassment and racism, including violent attacks. The housing conditions were appalling—three generations living in slum housing, sharing one or, if they were lucky, two bedrooms. My grandparents had three children, one of whom was my mother. They lived in similar conditions. The house that I was brought up in was declared a slum and cleared. They were the generations of people who were building a life here.

My grandmother regularly told me that she lived in fear of the pogroms, from which she, her parents and grandparents had suffered in Russia. She said to me, “Here Jon, I need to tell you something. Whenever anyone unknown knocks on your door, you kid to be daft.” That might not mean much to Members in this place, but what she meant was to pretend to be stupid if somebody in a shirt and tie—a bit like I am dressed today—knocks on the door. In other words, do not comply with the wishes of strangers, especially those who look like they are in authority, because they may well be representatives of a hostile force. That was her experience. She had a lifelong fear of strangers and of authority. Perhaps it was just one of her foibles, I do not know. Equally, though, it might have reflected a part of the wider Jewish experience.

Before the second world war, a stereotypical English gentleman who had attended Winchester College, a public school, launched the British fascist party. He was supported by a section of the establishment as well as by people from all sectors of society. This was Oswald Mosley. He decided to lead his blackshirts through the Jewish quarters in Leeds, where my family lived. It was a naked attempt to mobilise antisemitic sentiments to distract residents from the post-1929 depression and the conditions that prevailed in Leeds at the time.

As a Leeds-born citizen who eventually become leader of that great city’s council, I am proud to tell the House that Mosley was refused permission to march through the Jewish areas. He did, however, rally his supporters on Holbeck Moor, in south Leeds, not far from where I came to live. Thirty thousand Jewish people turned out to resist the fascists. Jewish and gentile, socialists and communists, Liberals and Tories, trade unionists and fair-minded citizens, community groups and others rallied against Mosley. There was a battle and Mosley retired injured.

Members of my family were there. My mother and our family talked about that victory, but we did not fool ourselves that antisemitism had been quelled. Then came the second world war and the ghastly news of the concentration camps, which I imagine even today chills the bones of all of us in this House.

I do not want to exaggerate. Leeds is a tolerant place. Most people would say, “Live and let live”. That is the kind of people they are in West Yorkshire where I come from. When I was at school in the ‘50s and ‘60s, we lived on the edge of a large Jewish community. We got on pretty well, and I do not mean to say that the school was a bad place at all, but there were antisemitic actions, language and bullying in that school. I am not a violent man—my mother taught me to believe in non-violence—but I will not hide the fact that at times there were fights and there was resistance to the antisemites at the margins of the school, all motivated by anti-Jewish racism.

As I entered my teens, my mother began to say to me, “Let’s get out of here.” She wanted me to go to Israel to be on a kibbutz. The kibbutz seemed to offer a different way of living communally, inspired perhaps by some notions of common ownership, mutual endeavour, equality and peace. We decided that I would go to live on a kibbutz, but then the six-day war happened, and in any case we needed me to go out to work and earn a living at 16. Thinking about the six-day war, it is probably worth recording that our family knew that people could disagree with an elected Government and its actions, but that that is not the same as hating a whole nation or even a race. We can clearly see today that there are many Israelis who oppose their Government, and no one would suggest that they are being antisemitic in doing so.

I come now to a distasteful few sentences. When I joined the Labour party in 1969, there were many working-class Jewish socialists in our part of Leeds, and I never witnessed any antisemitism in any of those meetings. However, and I regret to have to record this, when I entered my constituency as the MP, only 12 miles away from Leeds, I was subjected to the most shocking antisemitic comment by a party member. It was vile. Equally, though, I am pleased to record that the individual concerned was confronted by fellow members for his outburst and was told he must never come back to another meeting.

Let me turn to one further final anecdote. I was out canvassing not so long ago in my constituency, which is in the wonderful area of Wakefield, when a man who I knew had a reputation for being a Nazi approached me. He was a man who could not control his emotions, a man with extreme anger, and he told me he was going to fill the streets with “patriots”, as he called them, and that they would eliminate people such as me from the area and from the country. It was a terrifying moment, but the police decided to record it as a hate crime and I am glad to say that he was charged and pled guilty to an antisemitic hate crime in Leeds Crown Court.

I hope that the House will understand that I have spoken in this way in order to condemn with every single fibre in my body all forms of racism and antisemitism. The holocaust is an appalling crime against our common humanity. It is right that we pledge today never to forgive or forget what happened, and never to let down our guard for a moment—because, while antiracism is a powerful force, antisemitism is still there and needs to be resisted.

[Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for sharing that very personal and compelling account. I agree with everything he said. I think he said it was his grandmother who talked about the living scars in his family. I can say the same from my own experience. My father fled the holocaust with his mother, father and uncle, who have passed away. My grandmother, who was the living testimony in our family, passed away in 2005. I understand all the planning and site discussions and deliberations, and I hope they can be resolved in Committee, but the longer we talk about the technicalities, important as they are, the more we risk losing that living testimony without having something powerful to replace it. When I think about instilling the ethos of antisemitism in my children, that is the part that concerns me most.

[Jon Trickett]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and I agree with him. With my kind of politics, it is very rare that I agree with anybody on the Conservative Benches, but it is good to recognise that these strong pulses of hatred towards racism are shared by all of us in the House.

Finally, let the memorial stand as a reminder of the need to fight injustice, just as our country did in the second world war. This is not a battle that can be finally won; it is a battle that we need to fight in each generation, and each one of us must stand in witness to what has happened. Let the monument stand as a reproach to humanity, that our species is capable of the most unspeakable crimes—but equally, as a sign that we are prepared to sacrifice ourselves, as so many people in our military did, to fight for a better world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I also pass on my condolences to Tyrone O’Sullivan’s family. The coalfield communities’ travails throughout the 1980s and ’90s weigh with us, and some of the investment made since then has seen many of those communities turn the corner, but there is more to be done. I look forward to talking to the hon. Lady about what more we can do.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

On any index we choose—social mobility, inequality, deprivation, the funding of public services and so on—our constituencies in the so-called red wall have been sinking throughout this Administration. A Minister recently told the House that we will get £20 million from the levelling-up fund, but it never came. In any case, £20 million would not transform our constituencies. What does the Secretary of State say to the old miner I met in the Co-op on Saturday afternoon in our village, who said, “Will you say to Mr Gove, ‘Levelling up, who does he think he’s kidding?’”?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman is a very effective and passionate advocate not just for his constituents but for coalfield communities more broadly, but recent work by the Onward think-tank has pointed out that, under this Government, coalfield regeneration—the establishment of new enterprises and the creation of fresh opportunities—has accelerated at a rate not seen under the last Labour Government. That is why so many coalfield communities, from Blyth to Derbyshire, voted for the Conservatives, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), in 2019.

Voter ID

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I firmly rebut that. I have made multiple comments answering the questions that Members have put to me. I also firmly rebut the accusations from Opposition Members suggesting that something is going on here other than protecting our electoral system in this great democracy, in which we are all proud to serve. [Interruption.]

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Let us try to calm things down. In my hand, I have a senior railcard, which allows me to enter a polling station and vote. A young person’s railcard, which is almost identical and carries a photograph, will not give them permission to vote. The Minister will be aware of allegations of vote rigging by this Government against younger people. What does she have against younger people? When a note is taken of who is turned away because they do not have identification, will the person’s demographic characteristics be identified so that we can see whether or not the vote rigging against young people and other groups that has been alleged has taken place?

[Rachel Maclean]

There is no vote rigging going on here. Under the process that has been set out through regulations, when people who are turned away later return to the polling station with accepted ID, which includes many forms of ID that young people are accustomed to carrying because they need to prove their ID on many occasions, such as when going into pubs and clubs and having an alcoholic drink, legally that can be recorded only by a poll clerk or a presiding officer at the issuing desk. If they go into the polling station, the data would be recorded at that point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I will be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss housing targets in Coventry. In the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill we have set out the measures under which local areas will have more power to ensure that the right housing is built in the right places. I am happy to discuss that with her.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

In Yorkshire, there are tens of thousands of families desperate for affordable housing. CPRE, The Countryside Charity, says that there are 115,000 potential brownfield sites in our county alone, and tens of thousands of more are land banked, with planning consent already given for housing. Yet there is executive housing popping up like mushrooms in a forcing shed all over my constituency on the green belt. Is the Minister happy that her legacy will be a Government that poured cement and tarmac all over Yorkshire’s green and pleasant land?

[Rachel Maclean]

I think that this Government will be extremely proud of our legacy of delivering affordable homes and homes for first-time buyers all over the country. We need a locally led planning system; that is why we are delivering measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to require more infrastructure and a brownfield-first approach, backed by billions of pounds-worth of funding.

Brownfield Development and Green Belt

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I think it is the second time this week that you have guided us through a Westminster Hall debate that I have attended, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate and on her comments, which resonated with some of the problems we face in my area.

Obviously the country has a housing problem as our population increases and household size falls, but it seems to me that, as the right hon. Lady just said, a large amount of brownfield land in the country remains undeveloped. There are also large numbers of planning consents in land banks held by developers that are sitting on their assets and allowing them to grow while seeking further planning consents, on which they will probably sit as well.

It is time to think carefully about our green belt. I represent a rural community of 23 separate villages. It is important for Members who represent urban communities to understand the importance of the independence of a local community, its local identity and local culture. Ribbon development, which gradually takes one field, then another and then another, results in the bringing together of communities that historically were often rivals, or certainly have different identities that they want to retain.

Take the village that I live in, which is a Quaker village in a mining community. We are now two fields away from Pontefract. If we go back far enough—back to the civil war—we stood for Parliament and Pontefract stood for the Crown. That is some time in the past now, but we get the point. I can look from the top of our village down into Pontefract; it is creeping closer and closer, and there are plans to develop more of those fields. The village I live in is a rural community, with its own identity. We do not want to be part of Pontefract, and the same applies to all the other 22 villages that I represent.

At the present time, we have three developments, all in the green belt and all for housing. I want to say two things about that: first, it is lazy for planners to simply draw lines on maps that look tidy without first having thought about the social, economic and environmental consequences. Secondly, to some extent, it is greedy of developers to want green-belt land, which is often easier to develop than brownfield land, particularly in a mining community such as mine where much of the brownfield land has been polluted and needs to be cleaned up. There are three sites in my constituency, all in the green belt; a lot of people want to speak, so I am not going to go into detail, but Springvale Rise, Highfield Road and Huntwick Grange are all under threat of development at the moment.

The first thing to say about my constituency is that these villages were mining communities. The coal was taken out by rail, so roads that would carry large amounts of traffic were never built, because people lived in the village where they worked, and they went to the local pub, club, football club or whatever social activity, and to the local school. Our roads are not built to carry the amount of traffic that is being generated by increasing numbers of vehicles, particularly now that there is no work in our communities either, but the highways engineers seem prepared to approve almost anything as long as it is going to deliver housing targets that have been imposed from above.

I was so pleased to hear our leader, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), say that he is going to bring back control for local communities, and I think some rhetoric about the same principle has been heard from the Government as well. If we are going to develop villages that need development, that should be done from the bottom up, not from the top down—that is my central point. Green-belt incursions should be a last resort, not the easy resort. I am asking for a presumption against green-belt land and in favour of brownfield land, and I think the Government have said that there will be one.

Does the Minister have time to reply, or else to write to us, about the following point? The Government, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have made statements about preferring brownfield development, and a “Dear colleague” letter has come from the Secretary of State that indicates—it uses the present tense, rather than the future tense—that he has issued orders about preferring to move away from green-belt development. Now, an inspector is looking at our local authority’s plans, and I have spoken at those hearings. That inspector started her inspection prior to the new legislation that the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills has referred to, and prior to the issuing of that “Dear colleague” letter and, apparently, some changes to the way in which the planning frameworks operate. She is unclear whether she will be applying the new rules as they come into place, or whether she is now obliged to work according to rules that are no longer extant, or will no longer be very shortly. Some guidance on that question would be helpful.

The green belt is very important. I want to focus on one single aspect of it, or maybe two, because other Members will develop other arguments in favour of it. First, I represent many old miners. If a person lives in poverty and perhaps has a bad chest, as many of those old men do, they should not be deprived of access to the countryside, but the more we build up, the fewer amenities will be available. That is what is happening throughout all the villages I represent, every one of which was a mining village. The loss of amenities matters a lot: they should be not for just the middle classes, but for everybody, and yet we are seeing incursions that I think are a disgrace.

The main point that I want to finish on—it will take me one or two seconds—is that there is no obligation on planners, developers, councils or anybody else to do an analysis of the ecological impact of a development before it has been approved. In my view, that is completely wrong.

We have one development that could be 4,000 or 5,000 houses, if they get away with it. I commissioned, because nobody else did, an ecological survey by the reputable West Yorkshire Ecological Service. That survey discovered on the site to be developed 26 or 28 separate species of birds, mammals or other forms of life that are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, or birds that are on the Red List. Nobody had done that work, yet all of these species are protected, as far as I can see. There ought to be no development that destroys their habitats, yet that is what is being threatened.

It is a curious situation, because there is legal protection, but no attempt was made to identify which species were threatened by the development. It seems to me that the Minister could helpfully go away to the Department and discuss that point. Every time we build on green belt, rare species of flora and fauna are threatened. The land in our case has never been developed; it is ancient woodland that has never been touched, ever, but is is now under threat from the development at Huntwick Grange in Featherstone. Will the Minister reflect on the ecological impact?

Only a couple of weeks ago, when the United Nations discussed biodiversity, the Secretary-General, in a very striking phase, said that humanity is in danger of becoming

“a weapon of mass extinction.”

What are we doing? We are building on sites where there are species that are under threat, and that may well become extinct in due course. Some species now have a very fragile hold on existence. Can we really say that our planning policies should just ignore threats to our biodiversity? I think not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing this important debate.

It is vital that we protect the green belt because it brings huge benefits to people’s health and wellbeing, and has a major role in supporting wildlife habitats, allowing nature to flourish and mitigating the effects of climate change. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) in pointing out that that is important for everybody, regardless of how much wealth they enjoy.

It is vital that we build the houses that people so desperately need on brownfield sites. We need to build truly affordable homes on brownfield sites that have high insulation values, and heat pumps and solar panels as standard, so that people can enjoy the benefits of moving into a high-quality home that is cheap to heat. Who would not want to do that?

The last “State of brownfield” report by CPRE, the countryside charity, published in November last year, found that the number of new homes that could be built on brownfield land has reached record levels, with more than half a million homes with planning permission waiting to be built. It revealed that

“over 1.2 million homes could be built on 23,000 sites covering more than 27,000 hectares of previously developed land.”

However, it also highlighted that despite that,

“development of the highest quality farmland has soared 1,000-fold in 10 years”.

As Tom Fyans, the interim chief executive of CPRE, said:

“You know the system is broken when hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people and families are on social housing waiting lists, many in rural areas. Meanwhile, across the country, tens of thousands of hectares of prime brownfield sites are sitting there waiting to be redeveloped.”

There is work to be done to ensure that the development that can take place on brownfield sites does indeed take place there.

The Secretary of State has said that as part of a “brownfield first” approach, Homes England, the Government’s housing and delivery arm, is spending millions on acquiring sites in urban areas to regenerate new housing, but it is no good acquiring the land if it then sits unused. It has been noted that there are often barriers to developing brownfield sites, one of which is the need for remediating works. Will the Minister outline whether she thinks the Government are doing enough to help local authorities to ensure that brownfield sites in their areas are viable for homes to be built on? Have the Government made any assessment of the amount of brownfield sites in the country that could be suitable for housing, but where significant remediation is necessary before development can take place?

Another CPRE report from 2021 pointed out that 793 applications were submitted for building on green belt land between 2009-10 and 2019-20, of which 337—just over 42%—were approved. That resulted in the building of more than 50,000 housing units on the green belt in that time, so for all the Government’s talk about protecting the green belt, it is clear much stronger protections are needed. The Government know that people care passionately about this. We need action now to make it easier for development to take place on brownfield sites and we need much stronger protection for the green belt. Without that, developers will simply carry on pushing to build on green belt sites.

With the absence of such protections, it is perhaps no wonder that developers feel emboldened when it comes to submitting applications for housing on green belt land. In my constituency, Wirral West, 61.9% of the land is green belt. It is a very beautiful part of the world and is clearly attractive to developers, given that in recent months we have seen four planning applications from Leverhulme Estates for homes on land in Barnston, Irby and Pensby. All were refused by Wirral Council last autumn, following a determined campaign against the proposals by local residents. I attended and addressed two public meetings—one at Greasby Community Centre and one outdoors in the village—in support of the many people in my constituency who oppose the destruction of the green belt. People will not forgive politicians who destroy the things that they love.

People in Wirral West value the green belt extremely highly, and they have made it very clear that they do not want to see it built on. I fully support them in this. Leverhulme Estates has appealed against Wirral Council’s decision to refuse these applications, and the appeals are now in progress. There is to be a public inquiry, which is distressing for local people, who want the local green belt to be preserved. A further application from Leverhulme Estates, for up to 240 homes in Greasby, is due to be decided by Wirral Council this evening, and the officer recommendation is to refuse that application as well. It was reported in the Wirral Globe last week that 6,000 people have signed petitions against the application, further demonstrating the strength of feeling in Wirral West, and wider Wirral, against development on the green belt. I have previously called on Leverhulme Estates to abandon its plans to build homes on the green belt in Wirral West, and I do so again.

Wirral’s local plan is currently going through its inspection process, but the plan, which was submitted to the Secretary of State in October last year, states:

“Sufficient brownfield land and opportunities exist within the urban areas of the Borough to ensure that objectively assessed housing and employment needs can be met over the plan period. The Council has therefore concluded that the exceptional circumstances to justify alterations to the Green Belt boundaries...do not exist in Wirral.”

Local people are extremely concerned about the actions of Leverhulme Estates and a series of other developers that are actively challenging that position.

[Jon Trickett]

Has my hon. Friend had a similar experience to ours, where the houses built on the green belt are often not accessible financially to local people? It adds insult to the injury of losing green belt land when their children or grandchildren cannot afford to live in the houses that are being built.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend points to a serious problem that we see in constituencies up and down the country. Developers want to build homes on Wirral West’s precious green belt, while local residents want to preserve it for the benefits its brings to health and wellbeing, as well as for environmental reasons. I stand with local residents in their fight to protect the green belt.

Brownfield land is not a static resource. Over time, some brownfield land leaves local authority registers as it is reused and new brownfield land enters the register as it becomes available. It continues to be a renewable resource, and every effort should be made to ensure that it is used to the greatest possible effect.

The Government should bring forward much stronger protection for the green belt as a matter of urgency. We need to see policy that drives the development of brownfield sites to build the truly affordable, zero-carbon homes the country so desperately needs.

Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee, my constituency neighbour in South Yorkshire and north Derbyshire, for his comments. We had a similar exchange yesterday on the local government finance settlement. I have already outlined what the change is and I understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making, but I have to reiterate that there has been no change to budget or to policy objectives. We continue to look forward to working with the Treasury, and with all other Government Departments, to achieve the outcomes we all want in this House, whichever Bench we sit on.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Given the social and economic division created by the Government over 13 years, the announcement of levelling up led to a reasonable expectation that money would be directed to the areas of greatest deprivation. Having listened to several debates on the subject this week, I now have doubts that that is the case. Will the Minister confirm that the single criterion for the direction of funds will be based on deprivation? Will he publish the details?

[Lee Rowley]

The information about the distribution of levelling-up funds has been published. I have seen, across Yorkshire and north Derbyshire in the coalfields that the hon. Gentleman and I both represent, a significant transformative opportunity through the towns fund and the levelling-up fund, which will make a huge difference to those places that traditionally have been left behind and which this Government, and this Government only, have responded to in our policy agenda.

Levelling-up Fund Round 2: Bidding Process

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Thank you for your guidance, Sir Christopher, and for your generosity in giving us an extra seven minutes. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for initiating this important debate.

I object to the whole process: the Government created the divisions in our society that the levelling-up programme is meant to repair. Those divisions are so deep, and the cuts so vast, particularly in more deprived areas, that the proposed programme is simply a competition among areas of deprivation for crumbs off the Government’s table. It is not acceptable that the Government have set out the programme as they have. If they really want to deal with levelling up—clearly, they do not—they need to change the entire market-led, “Government stand back” approach and make serious interventions.

I represent a community that is among the most deprived—if we are not careful, we will be into a “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch, as we share details of deprivation. We do not want to get into that, and it is not right that that is how the Government have structured the competition for funding. The average weekly wage in my area is £495; in London it is £728—each worker on average pay earns £12,0000 a year more in London. In terms of NVQ level 4, we are at 22%, whereas in the Prime Minister’s constituency it is twice as many people. In terms of professional and managerial jobs, we have half as many as in London, and since 2010, weekly earnings have increased by only 6% in my area, as opposed to 22% in London. Areas such as mine have been devastated by successive Tory Governments, starting with the closure of the collieries without a proper industrial strategy. So by any criteria those areas should be gaining access to additional funding if the Government are serious about dealing with deprivation.

Notwithstanding my objections, we put together a bid for South Kirkby, one of the poorest areas of my constituency. It was put together with a private sector firm that is quite the most remarkable company I have seen. It was built from nothing. Adrian and Lee are behind it, and they realised that there is big money in the industry of rock and roll. They are producing a series of activities, and the company is unique in Europe—there are only two such companies in the world. We put a bid together with them. The average pay on the campus they have set up is more than £40,000, whereas average pay in the village is £18,000.

We all recognised that we needed to build a bridge between the deprivation in South Kirkby and the immensely successful private sector development at the top of the hill. They have raised £50 million of investment. We then put in a bid for £20 million, which would have levered in a further £30 million—that could have had a dramatic effect, and it was private-sector led. Apart from the whole process being a disgrace, I feel so annoyed because a Government Minister—of course under a previous Prime Minister, if Members can remember back to last June—told the House that we were getting our £20 million. Work had been done, and further work had been carried out not simply by the council but by other officers and by the firm I referred to—it is called Backstage Academy—on the basis of a promise made to this House. What happened, Minister?

People in our area know that I am not allowed to say that the Ministers were liars, and I would not dream of saying that, but they are saying that I should say that we were cheated of that money and the opportunities and life chances that we might have had. Those people have grown up in villages that were left devastated all that time ago with the closure of the pits.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Does the hon. Member agree that it is not the individual who makes the promise who is supposed to keep it, but whoever inherits that position? They are not speaking in a personal capacity; they are speaking in a ministerial capacity.

[Jon Trickett]

I totally agree. The Prime Minister changed and the politics of the country changed, and they suddenly saw an opportunity to dip their hands into a bag of funds that a previous Prime Minister had created and to use those for their own political purposes. It is a disgrace.

We are dealing with the poorest people in the country. Is the Minister aware that women in my constituency are now dying younger than ever before? I think the average is 66 years of healthy life. They are dying before men, which is very unusual, and that number is declining. We need something to be done as a matter of urgency. Will the Minister at least send us a courtesy letter—we have not had one—as to why we were betrayed in the way we were?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

rose—

[Jon Trickett]

rose—

[Alun Cairns]

I will give way in a moment.

That does not stack up credibly, because my seat, and others I can point to, would have been successful on those grounds, and that would also give rise to a judicial review. So it is obvious that these applications would have been scored according to the policy’s objectives, and officials would have dealt with them individually, rather than according to the party political motive that has been suggested.

The question I will pursue in my contribution is how we can learn the lessons from not having been successful in this round—like the schemes that were unsuccessful in round 1 but successful in round 2. My authority did not bid in round 1 and was unsuccessful in round 2, but it certainly plans to submit an amended scheme in round 3. I want to develop this argument a little further, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) , as she was very kind and generous in giving way to me.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak to new clause 12, which is tabled in my name and which would introduce new requirements to encourage the development of small brownfield sites. I thank colleagues on both sides of the House who have supported it. I do not propose to put it to a vote, because the Housing and Planning Minister—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer)—has indicated her interest in it and given assurances that it will be part of the Government’s future thinking.

We should all know the scale of the crisis that we are facing. In 2003, 59% of households led by someone aged between 25 and 34 owned their homes; by 2020, the figure had fallen to 47%. At this rate, we are destined to see the majority of people under 50 doomed to a life of permanent renting.

Because of increasing wage-to-house-price ratios, we are witnessing a steady fall in home ownership. In 2019, 65% of households in England owned their homes, a fall from 71% in 2003. The decline in home ownership has been especially pronounced in younger age groups: the number of homeowners aged between 25 and 34 has fallen from 59% to 41%. That puts more and more pressure on the private rented sector. Rental demand is up 142% when compared with the five-year average, while supply is down by 46%. Rents are soaring as a result.

We are having this debate later than was intended, largely owing to the issue of housing targets. They are not the preserve of the left or liberals; Sir Keith Joseph was attacking Labour for not having them in the early 1960s. And I take issue with the phrase “housing target”. This is not a target, but a minimum need. It is a gaping, strategic deficit, and a clear and present danger to economic growth.

There is a need to make tough decisions. It is time to lead and not to follow. Abolishing housing targets is an example of failing by following, and opening ourselves up to the accusation of acting for perceived short- term political gain. The best time to build a house was 20 years ago; the second best time is now. As a Conservative, I believe that one of the Government’s best attributes is their ability to indicate and signal to the markets, and in this case we must do all we can to let the markets know that it is time to build—and yes, to build beautifully too.

The national Government of this country nationalised land use via the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which is still in force. Since 2001, the population of this country has increased by 8 million. That is on the national Government as well. The national Government cannot have nationalised land use and restrictions, and be responsible for such a massive population increase, and then turn round and say, “It’s localism, isn’t it?” It is not localism, and the dropping of targets is a very unfortunate step.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The Minister referred to environmental concerns relating to the planning process. It is remarkable, then, that there is no requirement to do an ecological survey of local wildlife—flora and fauna—before planning consent is considered, so I have proposed some amendments to new clause 5 to achieve that.