Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mark Garnier and Philip Hollobone(7 years ago)
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Mark Garnier
It is perfectly reasonable that the whole Government adhere to the objectives of all the agreements we have undertaken, so no Department would go against any of that. However, I would also point out that we are undertaking financing for offshore wind farms, so we are actually helping to build more carbon-neutral capacity.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mark Garnier and Philip Hollobone(7 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Garnier
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One of the characteristics of the UK car industry over the last few years is the fact that UK components of the supply chain now represent 42%, up from 38%. We have a great opportunity in the whole European Union automotive sector, and our Department is working incredibly hard to ensure that we take advantage of it.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Given that this country voted to leave the European Union, is it not the duty of every Member to talk up the British economy and the chances that are available to British manufacturing to exploit the new opportunities that will be presented to it around the world?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mark Garnier and Philip Hollobone(8 years ago)
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Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Mark Garnier
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. The British Government absolutely support a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestine state. We should continue to engage with those countries. I was in Israel not so long ago, but I also visited Ministers in Palestine. We are very keen to engage with both Israel and Palestine.
Social Mobility
Debate between Mark Garnier and Philip Hollobone(12 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Mark Garnier
Absolutely. On the qualitative side, the question, “If I spend £125 on a pair of football boots, will I be able to play like David Beckham?” needs to be taught elsewhere, in personal, social, health and economic education, and in the wider curriculum. I discovered, to my cost, that the answer is no.
As time progresses, and we talk more about the subject, I am increasingly convinced that financial education needs to be not only included in the curriculum, but tested. Teachers who have huge pressures on their time naturally tend towards subjects in which there is testing, so if we do not test financial literacy there is a fear that it will not be put into the curriculum.
What we are trying to achieve is not just people being able to work out their bank and credit card balances. I want my constituents and all the people of this country to be able to work out problems such as that of a hypothetical individual who loses their job and lives in a rural community with £5,000 redundancy money to their name. I want people to be able to make the crucial decision about that individual’s future. Should they blow the money on a cheer-me-up holiday of a lifetime, or should they buy a car to seek work further afield? Should they use the money to retrain for something different, or should they invest it in a new business that they own and can drive forward, thus taking control of their own life?
The absolutely crucial engine to social mobility has to lie in financial literacy. That is why I will continue to urge the Government to put financial education on to the curriculum, and to test it.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
There has been a change to the running order, due to a late entry. It will now be: Meg Hillier, Mark Pawsey, Virendra Sharma, Mike Crockart, Jackie Doyle-Price, Kelvin Hopkins and Martin Vickers. But do not worry; you have an average of 11 minutes each.
Gypsy and Traveller Planning
Debate between Mark Garnier and Philip Hollobone(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hollobone
I just do not get this point. In the borough of Kettering, lots of people do not have access to the accommodation and housing they need, and thousands of people are on the local authority housing waiting list. It would clearly be wrong to say that, because somebody cannot find the house they need, they can go into the countryside and start building a home of their own. The law would rightly come down on those individuals. Yet members of the Travelling community seem to be able to do exactly that, and they are using the Human Rights Act to get away with it. That is wrong.
My constituents’ fears are being heightened by the latest development around the village of Braybrooke: a site called Greenfields, which is a 37 acre plot. According to the map that has been given to me, the site seems to have been divided up into some 60 plots. It was acquired in the 1990s by a property speculator and the plots are being sold off individually, largely to members of the Travelling community. Buildings—dwellings—are already on some of those plots. The worry is that retrospective planning applications are being made in respect of those dwellings. Given the very poor decisions that are being made by the Planning Inspectorate, the applicants are pretty confident that they will be given retrospective permission to remain there.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that one of the ways to deal with the matter is simply not to allow—
Mark Garnier
I think it has been one of the longest interventions in the history of Westminster Hall. My hon. Friend mentioned the planning rules in relation to illegal sites. Does he agree with residents of the village of Churchill in my constituency—an illegal Traveller site has been set up there in the way he has described—that one answer would be to get rid of the rule that allows retrospective planning permission? Planning permission would therefore have to be sought before sites were set up, rather than retrospectively, with all the nonsense about human rights and the rest of it that goes with that.
Mr Hollobone
I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention, and I agree with him. The Government need to be far more proactive in tackling the problem of retrospective planning applications, particularly where it applies to the countryside.
There is another issue, which probably affects Wyre Forest as much as Kettering. Those of us with rural or semi-rural constituencies hear all the time about the protections against development in the green belt, but the open countryside in our constituencies seems to have less protection than the green belt. That is sad and regrettable, and it is enhancing the problem of unauthorised development by Gypsy and Traveller groups.
Before the break, I was talking about the new Greenfields site in Braybrooke, which has 60 plots on 37 acres. If it were developed in full, it would be bigger than the village of Braybrooke, near which it is situated, and the local demographics would be changed even more. The difficulty the local council has lies in enforcing the existing planning regulations.
Let me give Members a brief potted history of the site. The land was first acquired in the 1990s by a business that subdivides fields and then sells small parcels of the land via the internet as what it calls leisure plots, or simply as land investments. Early sales resulted in some plots being fenced off, and physical works were undertaken, which were unrelated to agriculture. Caravans were brought on to some plots and used for residential purposes. Wooden buildings were built, and the land was used for keeping horses.
Enforcement notices against such development were issued and served on two specific plots and on the site as a whole. None of the owners appealed the enforcement notices, and those requiring the removal of caravans and associated development are still in force, placing a continuing liability on the landowners. Since the early 1990s, a series of other enforcement notices and stop notices has been served, but the council’s hands are increasingly tied by the guidance on enforcing enforcement notices, which imposes on it the duty to weigh up the likelihood of success, the costs and the proportionality of different courses of action. The end result is that nothing is done.