Ukraine

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I agree with my hon. Friend. His has been a siren voice that has been warning this House and the public about Putin’s actions for a great many years, and we must ensure that those lessons are learned. Putin has been telling the international community what he wants to do for many years, and he has been engaging in economic warfare, cyber-warfare, disinformation and political interference for many years. We need to strengthen all our fronts if we are to deter that type of behaviour, not only from Russia but from other states that wish to do us harm in the future.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

To follow on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) was with me in Kosovo a couple of months ago where we heard about a Russian disinformation, misinformation, and hacking centre that employs thousands of personnel in Serbia. Do we also need to take this fight to third countries that are facilitating Russian misinformation, disinformation and hacking, including in Ukraine, the Balkans, the Baltic states and around the world?

Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to speak in support of this Bill. I will start by restating what my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) said on Second Reading—that Ministers can rest at ease, because the Opposition have no intention of dividing the House on this issue. Indeed, this is a Bill that we support and encourage the Government to get on with as fast as they can.

The Bill has been a long time in the making, with previous Bills started by the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) and Lord True. We are pleased that we have managed to come so far on this occasion, and we hope the Bill will pass all its remaining stages in the Commons today.

It is important to remember that the Bill goes back to the difficulties that Kew Gardens faced in 2014, when there was a potential funding crisis. The then director saw that Kew could lose up to 150 research staff, which would have been a tragedy given its international importance—not just for public access, but as the world’s most important research institution in the areas that Kew covers. The Select Committee on Science and Technology noted at the time that Kew had difficulties transitioning away from its pure state funding model to one where it is more self-sufficient.

Kew Gardens is not only an incredible tourist attraction but an international centre of expertise and something that this country should be very proud of. I remember my last visit to Kew Gardens; I was in awe of the natural diversity that thrives in that corner of green in this metropolis of hustle, bustle, concrete and steel. The seeds and samples at Kew are unique and preserve for the future a vital resource for scientists working on tracking biodiversity. The world’s largest herbaceous borders at Kew are also pretty incredible. I can only imagine the weeding and pruning that is required to keep Kew looking so inspirational and attractive. I sometimes struggle with my little garden in Plymouth, but this is on a very different scale indeed.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech, showing the many virtues of Kew Gardens. Something that he has not mentioned is Kew’s important work discovering and helping with the eradication of invasive species that could have a hugely detrimental effect on plants in the United Kingdom. Do he agree that that work within Kew Gardens is also worthy of support?

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is right. Invasive Species Week, which we marked only a few months ago, was an opportunity for us all to learn more about the species that have been introduced to the UK, either voluntarily or without our knowledge, and that are having a huge impact. Greater knowledge of global biodiversity is important in that respect.

Draft Common Fisheries Policy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Common Fisheries Policy and Aquaculture (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Common Fisheries Policy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

Monday 25th March 2019 General Committees

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the Environmental Audit Committee last week, the Secretary of State said that there would be interim arrangements in the event of a no deal, but there would not be an environmental agency until 2021. That creates a huge governance gap.

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend has highlighted my point better than I was doing in my speech. Creating governance gaps in our regulations is deeply worrying. We need certainty. With the absence of a Fisheries Bill—I will return to this time and again—the jigsaw piece of the fisheries regulation is incomplete. If we look at regulations in future, the omission of advisory councils and other types of governance oversight included in the SI is deeply worrying, because it does not provide the same type of oversight as we have currently.

There are concerns around enforcement in the first SI, which was also a weak area in the Fisheries Bill. Provisions remove the requirement to establish

“effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties”.

Why have those penalties not been replaced in this SI? Perhaps the Minister will set that out when he gets to his feet. Regulation 4(10)(c) removes the ability for a member state to share vessel monitoring system, or VMS, data of its flag vessels with another member state where its flag vessel is in that state’s waters. That presents a risk that the UK will not have access to other countries’ data, which risks overfishing. What is replacing that provision? We know that data sharing between the UK and the remainder of the European Union after Brexit has not yet been fully established.

Regulations 4(69), 4(74), 4(78) and 4(81) of this SI again remove the obligation on member states to carry out certain inspections and requirements on what actions should be taken for infringements. Again, what replaces those provisions? We are led to believe that all we are doing is simply swapping out European Commission functions for member state or UK functions, so it is worth asking whether we are removing functions as well as transferring them over. Where does all that sit? We saw tensions flare in last year’s scallops war, but there could be additional risks in future, and enforcement is an important part of ensuring that our fishing sector is able to succeed. We need more protection for our fisheries after we leave the EU, not less.

Finally, I turn to conservation. When it comes to sustainability, certain provisions of the CFP in relation to emergency measures have been removed entirely from this SI. Regulations 4(35), 4(53) and 4(54) remove the ability of the member state or the Commission to close fisheries or prohibit fishing where a stock has been exhausted. Stakeholders have raised concerns with us about the thoroughness of the provisions that replace the ability that is now being removed from this SI. Will the Minister address those concerns?

The Opposition have concerns about these statutory instruments, many of which are comprehensive and detailed and require good legal knowledge if their full implications are to be understood. I am aware that the Minister has opened a DEFRA reading room for some stakeholders, but not all. Indeed, parliamentarians have been explicitly excluded, which means that the time available for scrutiny has been limited.

If we were dealing with only one SI at a time, the issues might be understood, but we are dealing with dozens at the same time. That means that many of the concerns could have been raised at a pre-legislative stage rather than their having to be dealt with as a simple binary yes/no approval in relation to this SI, for example. Will the Minister address those concerns? I am concerned that this first SI fails to deliver the comprehensive governance arrangements that we need for fishing in future. Will the Minister set out a detailed response to those points?

Insect Population

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The debate is incredibly timely. In Plymouth we have planted wildflower meadows and bee corridors across the city. They save money, because there is no need to cut back grass, and provide an essential habitat for pollinators, spiders and ground-based insects. Does my hon. Friend support that model being rolled out across the country?

[Alex Sobel]

Absolutely, and that is a brilliant segue into my next point about ecosystem services.

Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is right and pre-empts one of my questions for the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome about how the provisions will work in coastal communities. From my reading of the provisions, it seems that many of them work for inland communities and river flooding in particular. I would be grateful if he set out how he envisages the provisions working in an environment where there is the risk of both river and coastal flooding, especially with regard to the cost implications that he just spoke about. Clearly, the responsibility for coastal flooding is much more expensive and, with the risk of climate change, can have much bigger impacts.

As I said, the Opposition welcome the Bill. Although we have no problem with the clauses, I have a few questions that I hope will provide some clarity about how the provisions will be implemented. As is outlined in clause 1, a rivers authority established under the Bill will be a locally accountable body with the powers to issue precepts to billing authorities that will collect money from council tax payers for additional local flood management work.

I understand from the Association of Drainage Authorities that the Department is not expecting a flurry of requests for the establishment of rivers authorities. The Bill does not impose rivers authorities on local councils, so it is for those that want them to be proactive. How will that work for councils that have suffered huge cuts and might not have the in-house resource to do that? How does the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome envisage rivers authorities being rolled out? Will there be additional support for the pilot rivers authorities to effectively overcome the early administrative obstacles that will inevitably come with the formation of a new rivers authority, so that pioneer projects can share best practice with the ones that follow?

How will local communities challenge and hold accountable local river and drainage authorities for their actions? It is good to hear that the majority of members of those committees will be from local councils, and so will be elected; that flow through of democratic accountability is important. On Second Reading in the main Chamber, I asked whether the Department would publish guidance on the composition of those boards, particularly on their gender balance. Having observed several such committees, they can be quite bloke-heavy—and, indeed, retired bloke-heavy—which, as a general rule, we should try to avoid when creating new public bodies. I will be grateful if the Minister or the Member in charge sets out whether there will be any guidance to that effect.

Will there be guidance on whether the heads of those authorities should serve for a fixed period, or will that period run and run? In some communities, the people who will be in charge of such bodies have also been in charge of everything else that came before. I just want to understand whether there will be accountability and a rotation of those roles. I assume that there will be the usual registers of interest to avoid any conflicts of interest, especially because these authorities will be dealing with small communities, where expertise is essential. There is a risk of a conflict of interest, so will the Minister set out how we will engineer out any of those risks at an early stage?

It seems that many of the provisions regarding rivers authorities’ proceedings in proposed new section 21D apply to local government, such as access to agendas, inspection of papers and inspection of minutes. Will there be guidance that such meetings should be open to the public to ensure full accountability, and that any private proceedings should be limited and face proper scrutiny? What input will members of the public have into the exercise of the duties of a rivers authority, especially in how the provisions in new section 21D will be implemented?

We know that there is an awful lot of experience in how to deal with flooding in our local communities, especially among farmers who have farmed land affected by flooding for many generations. A yearly flood risk management plan seems like a good option. I will be interested to see how the new bodies interact with water companies, particularly with the upstream thinking pioneered by many water companies that cover water catchment areas. A few of us in the Committee are covered by South West Water, which has pioneered upstream thinking for some time. We need to make sure that we are not setting up two bodies with slightly different agendas. That interaction needs to be there.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am a representative of Leeds, which has had significant flooding. Some of the solutions that local communities want involve upland management, which provides better long-term solutions in terms of the risks of climate change than large, built flood management schemes. However, those upland areas are in a different local authority. Rivers authorities only operate in one local authority, so I am interested in my hon. Friend’s and the Minister’s opinion on how it will work across authorities.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. It is worth saying that, even though the Committee has a south-west majority, those people with a south-west link, even if they represent a different part of the country, are very welcome as well.

That question relates to the patchwork quilt of responsibilities that is the underlying context for rivers authorities. How will these new authorities work with different local authorities? My hon. Friend is entirely right that we are moving to an era where we want fewer carbon-intensive end-of-pipe solutions, which are both expensive for those who pay for them and have a large carbon impact in their construction. Lower-carbon interventions, such as the re-wetting of peat bogs or the planting of more trees, are frequently required in an area other than where flooding takes place. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed that.

Proposed new section 21F provides powers to acquire and dispose of property. I am working on the assumption that those powers will be deployed in the same way as local councils deploy them at the moment, with authority and judgment. I would be grateful if the Minister set that out for the record. I am interested to know whether the Minister is confident that the Secretary of State’s framework under proposed new section 21G will not inhibit the autonomy of rivers authorities in relation to how those powers are implemented.

On proposed new sections 21H and 21A, we hope that rivers authorities will be a success and that there will be no need to abolish them, but it is useful to look ahead at all scenarios when creating them in the first place, so what criteria will there be for abolishing a rivers authority? Will there be any scrutiny or appeals in relation to that? A concern from time spent observing the coalition Government is that many bodies were swept away and some of the people who relied on those bodies did not have a say in the process, so I would like to understand how that might work.

It is important, when we talk about flooding, to recognise that with the advent of additional flood planning when new developments come through, those new developments are well protected, but bringing forward flood defences for new developments sometimes means that communities that were not previously affected by flooding now will be. It would be useful to get a sense of how rivers authorities, which will look at flooding in the wider sense, will have an eye on not only the area that they cover, but the impact of their work on other areas.

We have no opposition to the clause, but I would be grateful if those questions could be clarified.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Luke Pollard and Alex Sobel

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for bringing the debate to the House. I also thank hon. Members for their contributions so far today. As we have heard, the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is the power of words, and it is important to remember the context in which Nazism arose after the treaty of Versailles and the 1929 crash. A murderous regime was able to take hold of Germany during terrible economic conditions, and it then drove its ideology through Europe and tried to undertake the genocide of my people—the Jewish people.

Last autumn, I met Martin Kapel, who lives in Headingley in my constituency, at a Woodcraft Folk event. He was talking to boys and girls who were the same age as him when he was expelled from Germany by the Nazis. My boys, who are also Woodcraft Folkers, were the age he was when he was taken from his family. The realisation hit me hard when I saw my own boys with Martin and I had to think of him enduring the grim reality of the loss of his family.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that holocaust survivors such as Solly Irving are remembered, with their stories living on after they pass, so that we do not repeat the mistakes that have been made and instead create a better world for everyone?

[Alex Sobel]

That is one of the most important lessons of Holocaust Memorial Day and of our memories of the holocaust.

Many people’s only real insight into what the camps or the ghettos were like is through film. I have watched many of these films, including “Jakob the Liar”, “Schindler’s List” and “Sophie’s Choice”, but the most poignant for me is “Life Is Beautiful”, directed by the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni. The first half of the film is a romantic comedy about how Benigni’s character, a Jewish bookkeeper, falls in love with and marries an Italian woman in the 1930s. They then have a son, and Benigni’s character and his son get sent to a concentration camp. To protect his son, he pretends that the camp is a game and that the prize is winning a tank. I am unsure whether my children are quite ready to watch the film, but I would use it to introduce to them what the horror of the holocaust means, because it is the most human and poignant telling of the holocaust that I have seen.

The holocaust has deeply affected my family. My parents were born in 1946, and I remember sitting in my great-aunt’s kitchen in Tel Aviv as a young child, seeing the numbers tattooed on her arm and asking my father, “Why?” She was in the camps. She did not have her own children or grandchildren. I had no aunts or uncles or cousins to play with, because the Nazis experimented on her and she could not have children. This hollow shell cast a dark spectre over my family—all the relatives I never met or who never survived, and the children they never had.

That is my living memory of what happened, and it is seared into me when I make my own political judgments or when I make decisions about the genocide happening now to the Rohingya or the Yazidis, or elsewhere around the world. It also happens when I think about decisions more locally. We sit in a place of tolerance and pluralism. We call those on the other side of the House “hon. Members”, and they are our opponents, not our enemies. We should be grateful for our democracy and for how this place operates. We need that same political culture everywhere: in our parties, on the streets, in our schools, and in our workplaces.

Every day, I try to work with that memory of my family and the dark spectre of the holocaust. I try to take that into all my experiences and all my dealings with people. I try to be tolerant towards them, but when intolerance comes and they have a message of hate, I try to face it down and stand up to it by saying, “I do not accept what you have to say. You are wrong.” I first try to educate, but then I try to use the power of the state and the power we have to ensure that those people do not come forward. We sit beneath the plaque to Jo Cox and remember that she was struck down by these same people on the far right. It is our duty here in this place, and the duty of everyone in this country, to stand up for tolerance and pluralism and to act against intolerance and extremism.