Long-term Plan for Housing

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about the importance of older people’s housing. We are currently in the process of supporting an older people’s housing taskforce, and I look forward to its recommendations about how to improve it for the long run. The green belt protections remain today as they were yesterday. What we are putting around them is a clearer process about where the case for exceptional circumstances can be made. It will be down to individual councils, with their individual circumstances, individual beauty and individual environment, to make that case where they feel it is appropriate to do so.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Communities in South Ribble, including Eccleston, Mawdesley and Croston, are subject to Chorley Council. I understand that Chorley is one of only two councils designated for poor planning performance. Does the Minister believe that that poor performance is due to Chorley’s failure to produce a local plan to protect South Ribble residents from inappropriate planning applications?

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is a huge champion for her constituents in South Ribble. We need local plans in place. I saw when I first became an MP in North East Derbyshire, where the Labour council failed to put a local plan in place, the huge issues that causes for communities. I know there are other councils all around the country that fail to do that, and it causes so many issues. We have spoken about some of the challenges in South Ribble, and I am keen to work with my hon. Friend and to talk more about them over the weeks ahead. It is important that plans are put in place. Where councils are not performing—where they have not passed the threshold for the number of applications they need to pass or have lost too many on appeal—we will designate and we will be clear that changes are needed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

That question is best answered by the Department for Transport, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman when I have further details.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am absolutely delighted to hear that the Minister met the leaders of Lancashire County Council, and Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool councils this morning to discuss the enormous opportunity that devolving transport and skills responsibility to Lancashire presents. Will he and the whole of the Treasury Bench look favourably upon this? It is an opportunity that we are keen to take to deliver for people in Lancashire and South Ribble.

[Mr Speaker]

Maybe we could have a meeting with Lancashire MPs as well as district leaders.

Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As ever, my right hon. Friend makes his case very eloquently. He is quite right to point out that the inspector gives appropriate weight to the high-skill, high-quality jobs that will be created as a result of this development going ahead.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you know me to be a biologist and an environmentalist—I should confess to the House that I also get called a tree hugger by certain hon. Members of this House—but does my right hon. Friend agree that it is the “net” in net zero that is the crucial thing here? We have heard today from the Opposition that this development is not green, but they are wrong. It is better to do this mining on our shores and in a responsible way. Does he agree that the north-west of England has the pride, the heritage, the skills and the future to deliver not only this coking coalmine, but the future industries of 4.0?

Planning System Reforms: Wild Belt Designation

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho). Let me put my cards on the table: I wholeheartedly support an additional designation of wild belt within a formal legal framework. I want to focus my remarks on what is true for many things in this place. It is crucial not only to have a good idea but to define what it is, to ensure that it is effective and achieves the aims that it seeks. In doing that, I ask Members to bear with me, as I draw on past experiences to describe the wild belt today.

Trophic pyramids—my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey once misunderstood and thought that I had said “tropical pyramids”—are a fancy title for the web of life in an ecosystem. From the bottom to the top, any extensive study, or any child, will tell us that all elements of a trophic pyramid are required to be in place for an effective ecosystem, as the chain of energy flows up, from the soils and decomposers, the detritivores and fungi, primary producers, the plants, the chemivores, the primary consumers, the herbivores, caterpillars, grasshoppers and cute rabbits. There are the secondary consumers; omnivores and carnivores—hedgehogs and birds, in English. Then there are the tertiary consumers: carnivores—the wild cats. Any ecosystem requires all of those things.

The only way to return the UK to its natural state is for us to wind back the clock 15,000 years and for all human beings to clear off. That is not going to happen. At that point, we would see bears, wolves, giant elk, wild cats, beavers and a truly natural ecosystem. I hug trees, but we are not going to clear off deliberately. What can we do to manage responsibly a patchwork of natural state environments to a self-sustaining state? What does that mean for the legal framework and the law?

I have highlighted, as have colleagues, the importance of reservoir populations, on a scale that allows for a viable population of at least secondary consumers—the hedgehogs. That needs two things. First, that needs space, in the form of viable access habitat that we can measure in multiples of field. For that to be effective, the dots must be joined up by wildlife corridors. Secondly, the most important thing to make the effective ecosystem is something that no politician can produce or promise: time. To introduce another term, that is sere succession. They need to be left in place to occur—the bramble patch and the foxgloves that are slightly messy on the eye. This is as important as those wonderful mature forests or the wetlands in South Ribble, the salt marsh and peat bog.

What can we do as the House of Commons to highlight their importance? We need additional categorisation: growth renewal protect wild belt, and the space designation to allow it to happen, but also the acceptance that a wildlife corridor even 3 metres deep will allow it to happen. Create the space and time and do not let it swap in and out over five and 10-year periods.

Towns Fund

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con) [V]]

Well done to my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) for securing this debate, and well done to him for his response to the initial intervention. We have heard much churlish moaning from Labour Members. Why did they not do something to help these towns when they were in government? It is this Conservative Government who are doing it.

I hugely support the town deal bid recently submitted by Leyland town board. Leyland is fabulous—it is where my parliamentary office is—but no one can say with a straight face that it has had its fair share of investment over the years. At the end of its main street, Hough Lane, stands the old Leyland works clock, which still says: “For all time”. Quite right. The trucks, fire engines and buses still grace the world—quality northern engineering—and we seek to build on that heritage.

Leyland town board was formed from local people, businesses, organisations and government officials, including—I declare an interest—me, and it is chaired by the fabulous businesswoman Jennifer Gadsdon, who deserves huge thanks and praise. We asked ourselves, “What does Leyland need to make a big positive change?” The answer forms part of the basis for our town deal bid to the Government.

We are competitively bidding for £21 million in Government grants to allow us, adding other funding in, to transform Hough Lane—outdoor space, streetscape and roadway—and create high-quality space for the community and businesses. We want to connect up bits of the town that have become separated, and create a market square and a green space. We want to regenerate our old market—refurbish, upgrade, expand—and we want to prime our natural commercial nous and skills with a dedicated base building for people to learn, work and grow.

It is three great connected ideas in one great bid. I look forward to the Government accepting our Leyland town deal bid and therefore investing in Leyland and building for our future.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con) [V]]

Happy birthday, Madam Deputy Speaker. Turning to more serious matters, let us be in no doubt that the issue of building safety is a vital one. It emerges from a tragedy that unfolded before horrified eyes just a few years ago. ACM cladding is dangerous, unsafe, and should never have been used. I understand that through the Government’s £600 million fund, work has at least started on all of the buildings whose owners have given the required information, as well as those in social housing, and interim safety measures such as waking watches are in place. All building owners should take responsibility and progress the work to put in their fund bids now.

In remediating this safety problem, knock-on issues arise, which many Members have articulately raised already. As the Minister said in his opening remarks, leaseholders should not bear the brunt of correcting these problems. I have heard from my constituents Sally Smith and Maureen Wareing, both of whom have relatives in London who are incredibly worried about facing big bills for remediating cladding in their flats. They are uncertain and worried. No one should be put in this position; I can only imagine the fear I would have felt in my 20s, or even my 30s, receiving a letter suggesting that I had a liability for tens of thousands of pounds that was not my fault. I call on owners to do the right thing, and I seek to amplify the comments my right hon. Friend the Minister made in his opening remarks.

Although this Government are putting in extraordinary efforts to make the biggest improvements in building safety in a generation, this is no quick fix, but a really integrated picture. It is technical and complex, and gets really messy quickly, with multiple types of cladding and lots of different people and organisations involved: residents, leaseholders, renters, building owners, building developers—some of which are not around or not in business any more—as well as mortgage providers and insurers. If, as a Government, we rush this, we risk not addressing the problems completely, so to my mind, the worst thing we could do is rush through a suite of measures that does not resolve the issues. What Sally and Maureen’s families need is certainty. Let us get this right first time, and make sure our mantra is “never again” so that we never have another tragedy, and we have a long-term fix for all our residents.

Ultimately, our measures need to give people surety about their safety, give value back to their homes and let people get on with their lives. There should be no mortgage prisoners and no sale prisoners. Let the Building Safety Bill later this year address these points and others. Let us do it once, and let us do it right.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to follow that thoughtful speech from the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I have a daughter who is younger than the Brexit negotiations, and I think she would probably concur with his son.

I have been around enough tortuous, protracted negotiations in Northern Ireland to know that when a U-turn is being executed, it is polite to let it be done, so I welcome the apparent acknowledgement that the clauses relating to the breach of the protocol will be removed, but it is fair to point out just how damaging their inclusion was in the first place. That proposal to breach international law has proven to be, as many of us said when we discussed this in September, cack-handed and a massive own goal. Threatening the operation of the protocol again through the Taxation (Post Transition Period) Bill would be equally wrong-headed, reckless and counterproductive, and I hope that that will be affirmed before legislation is taken forward. The Joint Committee is, as we all know, the place to resolve issues relating to the protocol. Far from showing that the UK is serious about a deal, as the Government tried to do with this Bill, they have shown that it is untrustworthy. That undermined the very UK negotiators who were trying, through the Joint Committee, to get resolution on some of these issues.

It is fair to say that nobody loves the protocol. It is not beloved in Northern Ireland, but it is a response to the challenges presented by Brexit—challenges that we and others have sounded the alarm on for years before and since 2016. It is a response to decisions made on the Government Benches. The irony is that that is the threat to the Union. I see that my colleagues from Northern Ireland are no longer here, but it is worth saying that those of us in the centre and nationalists in Northern Ireland were minding our own business in 2016 when this was thrust upon us. In fact, it is Brexit, laying out the imbalances in the United Kingdom, that is the threat to the Union. Those of us who got into politics not to bang on about constitutional change but to improve people’s lives can get on with doing that while others appear to make our case for us.

Neither the EU nor the UK is happy about what the protocol means, so we have to think about how it feels to those of us in Northern Ireland, but it is a necessary protection from Brexit. Businesses do not want it to be repudiated and trashed. They want it to be implemented. Moves such as those we have seen leave Northern Ireland more exposed. They leave us looking vulnerable to those who want to invest and are trying to develop their businesses. The point of the protocol was to take Northern Ireland and its complexities and fragilities off the table and try to manage those, rather than undermine them. It remains a fact—one that is always worth repeating—that if people really want to minimise the friction between Britain and Northern Ireland, the way to do that is a closer EU-UK relationship, but somehow that argument never gets made.

I turn to the amendments. We welcome the clear message that the Lords sought to send about good faith, the rule of law and devolution, including the need to enhance the duty to consult and co-operate with devolved Administrations. I will not repeat the points that I made when we discussed this legislation in September, but it is important to say that devolution—local decisions in local hands—is a fundamental part of the Good Friday agreement. The proposals in the Bill offend devolution, which is supported by people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We agree with the Lords’ attempt to offer us protection against that direct overrule and trespass into that settlement.

All that is left to say is that it is time to get this done. I regret that in the biggest economic contraction in living memory, no deal is still somehow on the table, and I urge those who have this decision before them to make it and get this sorted.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) is a big act to follow. I rise to talk about the Lords amendments to part 5 of the Bill. Without this part of the Bill standing as it was originally intended, the United Kingdom risks being divided. We could get into a position where goods and services from Northern Ireland are treated differently from those in the rest of our Great Britain. That cannot happen. As Conservatives, we have a manifesto commitment, barely a year old, to give Northern Ireland unfettered access to Great Britain’s markets. Article 6 of the Northern Ireland protocol also states that. The Good Friday agreement states that Northern Ireland’s constitutional status cannot be changed without the consent of both communities. Even the Acts of Union 1800 stated it.

As an MP in the north-west of England, I know that the people of Northern Ireland are closely entwined with us, both geographically and culturally. It is a short ferry ride or a quick hop on a plane, and barely a street, let alone a community, does not have someone with an Irish accent. They are not separate; they are part of a wonderful whole, and for artificial lines to be drawn across our shared sea is unconscionable. For a business in Northern Ireland to have customs checks for its products, or to be treated differently, is not something I would propose, consider, or support.

Assisted Dying Law

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on what she said and the way in which she has framed the debate.

There is no doubt that opinion is moving. I myself have changed my mind completely since I arrived in this place 33 years ago. My wife is a senior an NHS GP of some 40 years standing and, after many years of opposition, she has also changed her mind. Public opinion is moving. We should put at least some of that down to the work that has been done in the House of Lords, in particular by Lord Falconer. He has deftly aired the legal, moral and emotional issues, which has led to a majority of the House of Lords being in favour of changing the law. This place has been 75% against changing the law, but there are signs of things moving, which is a good thing.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), I am new here. I paid my way through university by working in a care home for old people. Those people were my friends and I witnessed them screaming in pain and agony, asking for a death that nobody was able to give them. Unfortunately I have also witnessed family members trying, if I can put it in northern tones, to bump them off for the money. Does my right hon. Friend agree that any proposed legislation has to protect against that absolutely? That would be key to my decision.

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank my hon. Friend and I hope we will hear much more from her. She expresses the dilemma on both sides of the argument extremely well. For the first time in 33 years I have drawn a place in the private Members’ ballot, although somewhat low down, so I am unlikely to trouble the scorers much. I am considering, and am talking to constituents about, the possibility of promoting a Bill for assisted dying, but the balance of the argument is as the hon. Member for Edinburgh West set out and an inquiry would be the right approach.

Perhaps it is a factor of age, Sir Graham, that over recent years you and I have seen more of our friends, families and constituents facing the dilemmas that this debate is examining. It seems to me that it is not for lawyers and judges to make these decisions, which is a point that has been eloquently made this afternoon. It is for us to wrestle to with our consciences, as a number of colleagues have said. We should do that. I can think of constituents, friends and family who, at the end of their lives, I have watched with the deepest concern and misery, and have reflected that we would not allow a family dog or a wild animal to be treated in the way in which they inadvertently ended up being treated. With all the protections that must, of course, be required, we need to wrestle with this issue.

When I feel that it is the time to go, I want to be able to choose the manner in my own way. I want that decision to be available to my constituents as well and, above all, I want it to be their decision and not the decision of the state.