Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill  

Debate between Matt Rodda and Mike Penning

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning]

This House thinks the practice is cruel, and that is why we are changing things with this legislation today. Frankly, what our European friends do, now that we are out of there, is down to them. We can talk to them, be friends with them and do lots of things with them, but we do not have to do what they tell us to do anymore. That is crucial.

There is one amendment that I would have been the first to support, had the Opposition or the Government wanted to table it, and that is on foie gras. I cannot understand why they have not. I spoke on Second Reading about amendments that should have been tabled. Why on earth is something whose production is banned in this country, because it is cruel, allowed to be imported and sold in this country? That is a mistake in the Bill. I am sure that amendments might be tabled in the other House. If they were tabled in this House, they would be agreed. Those amendments should be made to the Bill, but perhaps I will speak a bit more on that on Third Reading.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak tonight in favour of the Labour amendments and to briefly pay tribute to constituents who have raised these important matters with me and other colleagues. I stress the significant public interest in this issue. Like other colleagues, I have had a large amount of correspondence. We all want to see this change. We do not want to see live animal exports in any shape or form, and I appreciate the effort my colleagues have gone to in identifying future risks, which should be taken seriously.

I welcome the legislation, but I regret the delays in it coming to the House. I also ask the Government again to support wider measures to improve animal welfare. I commend the work of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) who just spoke about the possibility of tackling foie gras. Those are serious points, and the hon. Member for Crawley has done excellent work on trophy hunting. I was proud to be able to support that work.

I will turn to the Labour amendments, which are in the name of the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). As she said, the Bill leaves open the possibility of other animals being exploited. She is right to point that out, because some of the species mentioned in the Labour amendments are farmed in the UK. There is deer farming and the hunting of deer in woodland. I have seen llamas being farmed in the Thames valley. I understand there is a possibility that these species could be traded. I am concerned by that, and we are right to raise these points from the Opposition Benches.

The point that my hon. Friend made about the way that the live animal export trade developed rapidly and expanded between 10 and 20 times in scale over a 10-year period is a salutary reminder of what some unscrupulous business people are willing to do in this industry. I urge the Government to think again about these probing amendments, which are wise and sensible and highlight some serious future risks as agriculture changes and develops. We would be wise to address that by looking at the species in the amendments and adding them to the Bill to ensure that those animals are protected in the same way as other animals. I urge Ministers to consider the thoughtful amendments tabled by Labour Front-Bench Members.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Matt Rodda and Mike Penning

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. On new clause 1, I do not think there is any argument that we need to look at historical leaseholds. However, my constituency has lots of new build and regeneration going on, and a lot of leasehold properties being built, and I am not convinced that that investment would come forward if the developers did not see where that income stream would come from, including pensions and so on. A lot of evidence is going back and forth, but I disagree just on that point.

I completely agree on the historical leasehold issue. The real problem is in the myriad different leases that are out there and have been for many years. I read the Select Committee report referred to by its Chair, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), a moment ago, and I found some of the things that lawyers were doing astonishing. It fascinates me how they ever got insured and how they have not been struck off—I know that other investigations are going on. This is about not just ground rent but service charges and buildings insurance, which is an issue we must address, whether in this Bill or another measure.

I own a freehold property with a mortgage, and I have contents and buildings insurance. In my buildings insurance, I have legal protection of the sort that we would expect our constituents to benefit from when they pay for buildings insurance. However, those in leasehold properties must pay buildings insurance to the freeholder or their management company and have no choice whatsoever about the company, what the premium is or what the coverage is. I use an example from my own constituency of what happens when a claim is made. We had a large sinkhole in a housing development where there were leaseholders: I sat in a meeting with the insurance representative, the freeholder and my leaseholder constituents, and the insurance company said straight to me, absolutely deadpan, “Your constituents may well have paid the premium, but the policy is not theirs. They have no cover whatsoever—the cover is for the freeholder.”

There has to be something morally wrong about that. Insurance has developed over the years; it used to cover very few things, but these days nearly all buildings insurance worth its salt has legal protection. That is what it says on the tin. The Bill does not cover that in the way I think it should. Sometimes it is wrapped into the service charges and everything else, and the ground rent is part of that package, but at the same time we have houses with historical freeholds, some of them from the old military estates where people have bought properties on what used to be Ministry of Defence property, and they are paying leasehold rents on what everybody assumed was a freehold property. Something is structurally wrong.

There was an allusion earlier to looking forward rather than back. I say to the Minister that looking forward is fantastic—we need some dates and some targets that our constituents can look forward to—but we should not rule out looking back just because it is difficult. As I said on the Building Safety Bill in this House only last week, looking back because it is difficult is what this House is supposed to do. It will be more difficult to look back and bring in those leaseholders, our constituents, who feel left out of this legislation and still very vulnerable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) said, but it can be done.

This is not a case of, “It’s impossible”, because we are doing it retrospectively in the Building Safety Bill. We are going back 30-odd years retrospectively on that Bill. Can the Minister explain, when he sums up on new clause 1, why the Government feel that that is so difficult, when we are doing it on a separate piece of legislation that is going through the House today?

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I express my support for new clause 1; I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), and to others across the House, for their words tonight and for pointing out the enormous imbalance between powerful developers on the one hand and people buying a property for themselves, who possibly do not have all the information before them that ideally they should, on the other.

I refer to an issue in my own constituency, an attractive modern development on the edge of the town of Woodley, which is part of my Reading East constituency. The Loddon Park development is relatively recent, but there is a clear need for action to be taken. This development is in the south-east of England, a different part of the country from many of the developments mentioned tonight, and while there are some similarities there are also some differences.

Loddon Park is an attractive new estate, built in the past few years in parkland on the edge of Woodley. There are several hundred properties, a mixture of owner-occupied and some social housing. There are many attractive ponds and features, including meadowland, in the development. Unfortunately, when the whole development was given planning permission, the local authority—mistakenly, I believe—allowed the site developer to charge upkeep for those common areas in perpetuity. There is no limit, as I understand it, to the charge that can be made. It is deeply unfair for normal householders—many of them have young families, are commuters who work locally and are facing, like many people across the country, significant rises in the cost of living—to face in addition ongoing costs for maintaining the landscape around their homes. Frankly, that is wrong.

I hope the Minister will consider new clause 1. We have heard arguments from many MPs across the House and from different places around the country, whether in the south or the north of England; we have heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who set out some powerful legal arguments for why this action should be considered. I hope the Minister will look at it again, even at this stage, and will consider further action by the Government and our new clause.