Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Kate Green and John Hayes

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I am sorry, but I do not think the Secretary of State has been able to answer my direct question about instances of Uyghur and Hong Kong students being deterred from speaking on our campuses. He talks in general terms about some groups being silenced—I agree with him that that is wrong, and I will come on to that point in a moment—but I have asked him to present specific instances to the House. If he cannot do that this afternoon, and I understand that he may not have that information in front of him, perhaps later he will put that evidence in the House of Commons Library so that we can all examine it before the Bill goes into Committee.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, for whom I have a great deal of respect—I would like to put that on the record—but she is wrong about that. There have been instances, and I am happy to give her detail of them, of groups of Hong Kong students in British universities being surrounded, physically intimidated and verbally intimidated by students from the Chinese mainland who are also students in this country. This is not isolated; unfortunately, there is a theme of this kind. I know that she would not want to associate herself with this kind of thing.

[Kate Green]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that information, which is clearly shocking. Of course, my question to the Secretary of State would be: if intimidation is involved, why are we not already using the criminal law to address it?

Short Prison Sentences

Debate between Kate Green and John Hayes

Thursday 7th March 2019 Westminster Hall

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

One of the greatest changes in my lifetime, and indeed my time in Parliament, has been the growing gulf between the preoccupations of the liberal establishment, and the hopes and fears of the people who have to live with the effects of their doubt-filled and guilt-fuelled erosion of the collective wisdom of ages.

That collective wisdom is given shape by institutions, small and large. There are large institutions, such as the law, Parliament, the Church and the monarchy, and small institutions, such as civil society, families and Burke’s “little platoons”. Sadly, what Burke said about order being the foundation of the good life and a working civil society—

“Good order is the foundation of all things.”—

is a far cry from where Britain is now, as a result of the work of that liberal establishment over the decades.

Too much of urban Britain, in particular, is either brutish or brutalised. When good order and the rule of law is eroded, it is the vulnerable who suffer most, for they, unlike those bourgeois liberals who live gated lives, survive on the frontline of crime. Those vulnerable people are suffering at the hands of violent criminals who are punishing them every day, through the fear they cause and the hurt they do.

Yet we are very sheepish now about punishing the culprits. We have learned so little from the time when I studied criminology, almost 40 years ago. We have continued down the road of seeing crime as an illness to be treated, rather than a malevolent choice to be dealt with.

[Kate Green]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will make this point, and then happily give way. The effect of that is to put great emphasis on the culprit and, by nature, less emphasis on the event and the victims of crime. That is precisely what has happened, and I know the hon. Lady could not possibly want to agree with that.

[Kate Green]

I do not disagree at all that people’s lives are made a misery by violent and persistent criminals in their community, but I cannot really agree that we have become less willing to take action against criminals, when the prison population has gone from between 42,000 and 43,000 in the mid-1990s to more than 80,000 today.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady is a very distinguished Member of this House, with whom I have worked in the past, so I do not want to suggest in any sense that I am patronising her. However, that could be a measure of either the scale of the problem or of our response to it, and I suggest that it is much more likely to be the former. I have to tell her that the view that is frequently expressed in this House—I put it this way only for the sake of brevity, because it is a little more complex—that we should place greater emphasis on the way we deal with criminals, rather than focusing on the way we support victims and protect those who are at risk of crime, is at odds with the sentiments of most of our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I mentioned recidivism a moment ago, but since the hon. Gentleman was clearly listening, I cannot have made myself clear. I did not say people who had been to prison once; I said repeat offenders. These may be people who have had other kinds of sentences and then gone to prison, because very often, for a first offence, people do not go to prison; they go to prison for a second or later offence. When I speak of repeat offenders, I do not necessarily mean people who are in and out of prison regularly. It is very important to be precise about these things.

The problem with that kind of policy is not only what it would do to public faith in criminal justice, on which it would have a devastating effect—in its response to the Government’s proposals, Civitas, the think-tank, says that it would unleash a crime wave on hundreds of thousands of citizens—but that it would reinforce the idea that prison cannot work. We have profound problems at present; the Minister is aware of that and has spoken very openly and straightforwardly about it. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate has just alluded to those problems—prisons becoming universities of crime, where people who go in are worsened by the experience, rather than rehabilitated.

Even from the rehabilitative perspective, therefore, prison is not doing what it could, but that is not a good enough reason to say to the public, “We are worried about sending people to prison, because they might get worse, so we will leave them on the streets.” That cannot be the signal that this place or this Government want to send. Let us get our prisons right, not be embarrassed or ashamed to send people there.

[Kate Green]

The point we are trying to make in this debate is that people are going to prison for short sentences. By definition, that is unlikely to be for the level of serious crimes that the right hon. Gentleman rightly says our constituents would be horrified if they thought people could commit and then run around at liberty. He is right that we are talking about, in some cases, persistent offenders. A written answer from the Minister, which I received on 5 November last year, said that in 2017, 6,793 people went to prison for less than six months, having never previously received a community penalty for offences that they had committed. I find that baffling. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that sometimes we are too ready to use custody?

[Sir John Hayes]

All I would say in response to that is that the hon. Lady will have seen the national newspaper this week that showed, shockingly, a picture on the front cover of a smirking criminal who, having committed an offence for the second time, took a selfie of himself outside the court. This was a person who was found in possession of both a knife and cocaine, and had been known to the police for a considerable time. Time permitting, I could give account of many similar stories, and particularly of the police’s frustration when we do not, in their judgment, provide the just deserts I mentioned earlier, which so undermines their confidence. As one policeman said of a similar case, “Why do we bother?”.

Prison is of course about trying to put people straight, but it is also about punishing people for the harm they have done. That is an entirely respectable part of criminal justice, and it is what our constituents expect of us and of the Government.

Biomass Power Generation

Debate between Kate Green and John Hayes

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Mr John Hayes)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) on securing this important debate on a topic that, as we move to a large proportion of our energy needs being met by renewables, is vital. John Ruskin said that it was always

“more difficult to be simple than to be complicated”.

An aim of the debate on energy strategy and policy is to make it more straightforward, for when we make it esoteric, we not only confuse most of the public, but I suspect we may confuse ourselves.

My mission is to bring a straightforwardness to energy policy, and at the heart of that straightforwardness, as the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said, is that there is no imperative more significant than that of energy security—ensuring that supply meets demand. All the other considerations may have value, and some may have great significance, but unless a Government, though Governments do not do it all themselves, of course, can bring about a set of conditions and establish a framework in which that can be assured, they are failing, which is why biomass, and particularly coal conversion, is so important. It is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) argued, a reliable, predictable and secure means of helping to ensure energy security. It is as plain—in Ruskin’s terms—and simple as that, but the debate deserves more than that, and I want to talk a bit more about the detail.

I recognise that there are many pros and cons involved, and to balance them the Department has set out four guiding principles for our biomass energy policy. They are that biomass must be sustainable, that it delivers genuine greenhouse gas savings, that it is cost-effective and that its unintended consequences on other industries are minimised. All those issues have been mentioned during the debate. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) talked about sustainability, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton raised the issue of greenhouse gas savings, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and others mentioned cost-effectiveness. I see my role as ensuring that the principles are applied pragmatically and consistently.

I would like to set out why I believe biomass is an important part of the energy mix.

[Kate Green]

Does the Minister agree that it is important that there is absolute transparency about whether the principles are being complied with, particularly when there are anxieties about the environmental impact of plants?

[Mr Hayes]

We should not underestimate that. It is important that it is properly considered. The hon. Lady will know that the Government are committed to sustainability in those terms. If I have time, I will say more about that, but if I do not, I would be more than happy to write to her with the detail.

The hon. Lady is right that it would be wrong to be cavalier about that, just as it would be wrong—and I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who is a great champion of the wood panel industry, and rightly so—for us not to take into account unintended consequences. The unintended consequence for farmers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) mentioned, can also be profound, and it is about straw too. Pigmeat farmers, for example, are concerned about the effect on straw prices of its use in biomass. My hon. Friend raised the issue of dairy farmers. I take that point, and we will consider the matters. It is important that there is no displacement effect. The unintended consequence is as significant as the virtue of what we are trying to achieve.

But the virtue is a profound one. We are talking about a proven source of energy. At the end of the third quarter of 2012, the total electricity generating capacity of biomass electricity generating stations was 3.5 GW, which was an increase of more than 900 MW over the previous year. It may not be known that landfill gas is 1 GW of that capacity. For many years it has been an important source of energy, predating some other technologies that get more airtime, perhaps because they are perceived to have greater glamour.

With the right criteria in place, by 2020 as much as 11% of the UK’s total primary energy demand—for heat, transport and electricity—could be met from sustainably sourced, biologically derived biomass. Most of it would be from wood, and our analysis indicates that that can be done without significant effects on food production or the environment. Biomass can, therefore, play a greater role, but I am mindful of displacement and sustainability. Biomass also offers controllability and predictability, as I suggested earlier, so it can provide both base-load generating resource and peak power energy as required.

It is important to recognise that biomass conversion is a cost-effective and quick means of decarbonising our electricity supply. In July last year we announced our revised levels of support for biomass under the renewables obligation and set out new bands to support the conversion of coal-powered stations, as we have heard. I recognise the challenge of Tilbury and I am happy to work, along with my officials, with my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock to ensure that we do what we can to facilitate the process. There is, of course, a commercial decision at the heart of that, as my hon. Friend well knows, but the Government will do what they can to ensure that the process is as equitable as possible. I appreciate that my hon. Friend has been a great champion of Tilbury because she knows that the issue is not only about energy; as so many hon. Members have reported, it is about jobs and skills too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty made that perfectly clear in respect of his constituency. My goodness, I have met him a number of times to talk about this subject, including about Eggborough and Drax. I am pleased to say that my Department has recently written to Eggborough power station, as he knows, and set out the process by which it can take its ambitions further forward. I hope that that has been helpful; it has certainly added clarity to the circumstances the station is in. There are further steps to be made, and I assure my hon. Friend that they will not be unduly lengthy and that they will be clear to Eggborough. We will advise and support the process that he is so passionate about ensuring comes to a happy outcome. I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to put all that on the record.

I am also grateful to other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), for allowing me to say a brief word about carbon capture and storage. I want to affirm what I said in an intervention, which is that taking forward the CCS projects, with the £1 billion competition, will do so much to change our assumptions about future energy—CCS can give a long-term future to gas, of course, and to coal I hasten to add. I want to make it clear that the projects that have not made the final two are of considerable interest to us and that we will maintain a dialogue. I will speak to my hon. Friend personally about some of the details later today.

Sustainability matters too though, and we have put in place demanding criteria for the supply of fuel. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston has emphasised sustainability a number of times and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), was right to draw it to our attention in reference to the renewables obligation statutory instrument that we debated a week or two ago. It is right that we look at the supply of wood and that we take account of the definitions of what waste wood really is. I have already said that that work is ongoing, but I am very happy to share it with the House at all opportunities and to continue to an outcome with which the wood panel industry, in particular, is happy.

The work we are doing on sustainability requires ongoing consultation. The sustainability controls that we have put in place are still the subject of further discussion. Many hon. Members have raised that matter with me when we have debated such things in the House, and I can confirm that we are tightening our thinking in this area. We intend to ensure that we can move ahead with confidence, because we think that biomass is so important.

Biomass must, however, also be cost-effective. We make no apologies for insisting that we must deliver value for money for the energy bill payer, maximising the amount of renewable energy and carbon reduction we receive for our investment. Coal conversions offer, perhaps, the best means of ensuring that value for money, and using waste to generate electricity also provides a cost-effective route, as long as we can accurately define what waste is. Let me just say this on waste: it seems that the location of this kind of biomass plant should be close to the source of supply, and ideally close to the source of demand, too. They are industrial plants with an industrial purpose, and I want to emphasise that.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty again for drawing this matter to the House’s attention. I confirm that the Government are entirely committed to biomass and to its role in our energy mix. I am glad that we have had the opportunity to talk about this, and while I am the Minister, and while I am driving the policy, Ruskin’s advice, about being straightforward about our objectives, will be not only my view, but the Government’s view.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and John Hayes

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady highlighted these matters in an Adjournment debate, as the whole House will know, and she has made a consistent case on the subject. I did indeed ask for a further impact assessment, because I want to be sure that what we are doing is fair as well as cost-effective. We will bring the results of that assessment to the House before the summer.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

19. By how much on average he expects fees for part-time university courses to change between 2011-12 and 2012-13.