Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Matt Rodda and Lisa Nandy

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could ask the Secretary of State that question, because it was his then policy adviser who led the campaign against it.

In all fairness to the Secretary of State, we were relieved to see the back of a planning framework that seemed to be based on a traffic light system. Our communities deserved far better than that. However, this Bill, as he has heard from colleagues on both sides of the House, allows neighbourhood plans to be overridden when they conflict with a national development management plan. The Secretary of State can make one of those plans at any time—without consultation if he chooses, and without any approval from a single Member of this House—and he can override people in any one of our communities if their plan conflicts with his to any extent. That is not being serious about handing power to local communities, is it?

The press release that accompanied the Bill said that the big idea behind handing power to local communities—notwithstanding that the Bill includes measures that allow Whitehall to override them—is something that the Secretary of State calls “street votes”. Will he explain exactly what those street votes will do to put power in people’s hands and put them in the driving seat of their own communities? The reason I ask is that, if he has a plan, it is not, unfortunately, in the Bill. How is it possible that that flagship idea, which headlined the press release, has not yet been written? Does he not accept that we are entitled to better than plans drawn up on the back of an envelope after horse-trading has taken place, usually to his detriment, behind closed doors in Whitehall?

The Secretary of State says that he wants beautiful communities that work for people, and I agree with him, but that means that we have to put power back into people’s hands, because people who have a stake in their own communities and who have skin in the game will do more, try harder, work for longer and be more creative in order to build thriving communities. It also means that we have to end the system where people can come to our communities and extract from them, taking our wealth, running down our housing and sitting on our land.

Surely the most basic plank of all this is that people have the right to know who owns their town, village or city. However, the measures in the Bill that try to ensure that more information is collected about land ownership also allow the Secretary of State to withhold that information from communities. Why on earth would a Secretary of State want to deny people in our villages, towns and cities the right to know who owns the housing, land, shopping centres and town centres that make up those beautiful places that we call home? I remind him that it was that great Conservative—also a great radical—John Ruskin who said:

“Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

The commitment to beauty in this Bill is not true.

We need a serious plan to tilt the balance of power back in favour of the people who built this country and will do so again, who have stake in the outcome and skin in the game. We have debated the problems they face many times in this Chamber—

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Lisa Nandy]

If I am not mistaken, my hon. Friend is about to raise one of them, so I give way to him.

[Matt Rodda]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. She is absolutely right to highlight the very poorly designed planning system and the failure of the current proposals to change anything. In my area, there are enormous pressures on land and terrible pressures on green spaces, yet brownfield land in the south of England is not being redeveloped as it should be. When it is redeveloped, it is not done appropriately, and local needs and local authorities are not listened to as much as they should be. Does she agree that there needs to be a complete rethink of that imbalance?

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who reminds us that we have had 12 long years without real action to put power back in people’s hands. He raises a really important point—I think all Members have raised it: that, as long as there are centralising tendencies in Government, and as long as they find their way into Bills such as this, we will continue to undermine the situation. If the Secretary of State does not want to listen to Opposition Members, I urge him to listen to Members on his own side; looking at their faces, I do not believe they will allow this to drop.

We have debated the problems that people face in this House many times. There are simple changes that the Secretary of State could make in order to stop people coming into our communities and extracting from them.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee

Debate between Matt Rodda and Lisa Nandy

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

A number of Select Committees—I pay tribute to their Chairs and members—have announced their own inquiries, but the failings we have seen most pressingly in recent months have been the failures of co-ordination between different Government Departments, and it would be a serious mistake to replicate the siloed approach that has failed so badly in the work this House does to ensure that lessons are learned and mistakes are put right.

If the Government do not learn from these mistakes, they will repeat them. The problem is that the failures over Afghanistan are indicative of a wider pattern—a foreign policy that is reactive rather than strategic, and improvised, not planned. Setting up a crisis centre after Kabul had fallen, ignoring phone calls in the build-up to the crisis and then rushing on a hastily organised regional tour, and cutting aid to Afghanistan only to have to restore it—this is a foreign policy of negligence that is careless about the consequences for people’s lives. It is disjointed and incoherent when we need principled and consistent leadership. We need a Government who can build consensus with international partners and who are trusted and credible on the world stage.

We must look forward as well as back to understand not just where Government policy has gone wrong, but to confront the reality of Taliban rule. This requires action on several fronts, starting with those left behind. We are so grateful to the soldiers, diplomats and civil servants who flew into danger to evacuate thousands as part of Operation Pitting—they remind us what courage looks like—but they are heartbroken at how many people were left behind. MPs and staff from across this House have been working around the clock to escalate the cases of British nationals and Afghans who were left behind. Many of them are still being hunted from door to door because of their connection to Britain and their support for our efforts. How on earth could it be that, when I asked the Foreign Secretary how many British nationals are in contact with his Department seeking help with evacuation, he did not know? Can the Minister tell us how many people that is today?

It is not just about the numbers; it is about the complexity of the cases. We are in touch with British nationals who are wheelchair-bound, while babies and one-year-olds have been left by themselves. One man is on dialysis, and he cannot follow the Defence Secretary’s advice to try to get to a border. Every Government have a duty above all to protect their own citizens. That there is still no advice for them is a first-order failure of Government, and it must be resolved.

We were infuriated and dispirited to learn that thousands of our emails had not even been opened by the Department. The Minister told MPs they would get a reply by tomorrow about British nationals stranded in Afghanistan. Will he respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and make sure that those replies are forthcoming? I did a ring around before I left the office, and I could not find a single MP who has had a substantive reply to those emails from the Foreign Office yet.

Is the Minister going to do that, or is he going to follow the appalling example of the Home Office? In a letter to MPs this week, it told us that we must

“deal with the circumstances as they are, not how we wish them to be”.

The letter confirmed that it is just

“logging the cases we have and considering how this data will be used in the future”,

and it asked MPs not to “pursue cases” any more. This is utterly shameful. For the Prime Minister to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that he is moving heaven and earth to sort this out, promising responses by close of play over a week ago, and then leave it to a junior Minister to tell us that the Afghans who supported and helped us—they went into the crowds and pulled people into the airport in the face of gunfire—are on their own is an absolute disgrace, and the Minister has to set it right today.

I know the Minister has made some limited progress with keeping the borders open, but there are immediate practical steps he must take now. Countries in the region tell me they need far more support with covid testing facilities for new arrivals and a greater UK presence at the borders. Because many of those travelling are considered special cases under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, there is no guarantee of onward travel to the UK, so they are not being admitted.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

There are 100 people with a connection to my seat in Reading who are still stuck in Afghanistan. My hon. Friend has spoken eloquently about the plight of these people, who urgently need our help. Does she agree that the Government should have taken much earlier action to secure access at land borders to get these people out?

[Lisa Nandy]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I want to pay tribute to Lord Ahmad for having, belatedly, rolled into action to try to overcome some of those difficulties, but I say to those on the Treasury Bench that far more can be done. I have a list of Afghan women MPs who need paperwork to cross the border to neighbouring states and onward travel to the UK. I know Lord Ahmad, the Minister for South Asia, has this list too; can the Minister replying to this debate assure me he will work with me so this can be resolved in the next 24 hours?