New Southgate Cemetery Bill [Lords]

Debate between Phillip Lee and Lindsay Hoyle

3rd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Dr Phillip Lee)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) on moving the Third Reading of this private Bill. I associate myself with her comments and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) with regard to the former Member for Enfield Southgate. In addition to all those comments, which I support, I would say that if there is one thing I remember about him, it is his core decency. As a consequence, he really is a loss to the House.

As I said on an earlier occasion, we are participating in one of Parliament’s less used procedures. It is nevertheless significant, in that it enables organisations to seek to disapply or modify the general law in relation to their own powers. Our debate here today, like earlier discussions on this Bill, has been aimed at ensuring that the promoters have put in place, or have agreed to observe, appropriate measures to ensure the proper exercise of the modifications to the law that they seek. I am grateful to all hon. Members both here and in another place who have contributed to this important process during the Bill’s passage. The result is a comprehensive and robust set of provisions that will enable New Southgate cemetery to continue to serve its communities into the future while ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place.

As I have said before, the Bill addresses the needs of New Southgate cemetery, and the Government do not wish to prevent the cemetery from remaining viable in this way. On Second Reading, I confirmed that I was satisfied with the engagement that the promoters had undertaken with faith groups using the cemetery. In a subsequent letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I expressed my expectation that in exercising the powers conferred by this Bill, the New Southgate cemetery burial authorities would continue to ensure that relevant faith and cultural sensitivities are taken into account and would continue to have due regard to available guidance and best practice. This issue was explored further in some detail in Committee. As a result, the promoters have given a written undertaking that before exercising any powers under clause 4, they will carry out a survey of the faith groups affected to ensure compliance with my expectations, and will publish their findings and proposed best practice. I am grateful to the Committee for securing this undertaking and to the promoters for agreeing to it.

Also as a result of discussion in Committee, the promoters have given an undertaking to publicise in a Greater London newspaper, within three months of Royal Assent, the power to extinguish burial rights in the cemetery. They have also given an undertaking that before exercising any powers under clause 4, they will carry out a nature conservation assessment of the cemetery grounds in accordance with the technical guidance current at the time. Again, I am grateful to those who have proposed and agreed to these undertakings.

Of course, giving undertakings is one thing and carrying them out is another. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is rightly concerned to ensure that the promoters’ compliance with these conditions is demonstrated to Parliament. In answer to the question on tree protection, this particular cemetery will, in any event, be obliged to comply with any tree preservation orders that are in place. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet indicated, the promoters have agreed to provide to the Ministry of Justice copies of the documentation arising from the three undertakings on the newspaper advertisement, the findings of the faith groups survey and best practice, and the nature conservation assessment. They will also be publishing the documents on their website. I give an undertaking of my own to the House today that on receipt of those documents, I will place them in the House Libraries, where they will be available for scrutiny by Members. I hope that that mechanism will satisfy the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

The promoters have given a fourth undertaking to the House—not to sell for commercial gain any memorial removed under sections 3 or 4 of the Act without the consent of the registered owner. Compliance with this condition will be monitored by means of the requirement for the burial authority to keep a record of each memorial that is removed and to deposit a copy of that record with the Registrar General. It would also be possible to scrutinise the burial authority’s accounts, which, as it is a registered company, are published.

In conclusion, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for securing this debate and for his diligence in seeking to put on record the means by which the promoters will demonstrate compliance with their undertakings to this House. I trust that the explanations provided have allayed his concerns, and I am grateful to all who have contributed to today’s proceedings.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With the leave of the House, I would like to bring in Theresa Villiers.

Health and Care Services

Debate between Phillip Lee and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

My hon. Friend is right: in a rural location the distances become further. I do not know the particular situation in his region, but I would suggest that there are probably location issues with regard to existing hospitals.

Moving neatly on, that is why—yes, you heard it here first: a Conservative calling for a Soviet-style central plan—I have called for a national plan for acute and emergency care. By definition, we cannot have a market interfering in that; we need to look at it in the round and say, “Where would we put these hospitals? Where are the motorways? What is the population density? Where is the rural location? Where is the urban location?” The problem is that if we reconfigure in isolation—I have seen this locally—it has a knock-on effect on other hospital services which then say, “Where are we getting our patients from?”

We should have a national plan that everyone from both parties has bought into. We should have—dare I say it?—a cross-party party committee looking into this. We should take it out of the political exchanges that we all engage in. We know what is going to happen in certain quarters in 2015—it will become a political football. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is very aware of this. That is dreadful when we are talking about saving lives. Let us try to take this out of party politics. We can have robust exchanges, on principle, about payment, about how services are commissioned or not commissioned, and about whether there should be top-down reorganisation, but the fundamental question of where hospitals—acute and community hospitals—are located should be decided nationally; otherwise we could have perverse decisions whereby some services wither on the vine and we end up with gaps in emergency and acute care across the country. I make a plea for some cross-party activity on this.

Let us put the national health service’s budget into context. This country has debts and liabilities in excess of five times the size of our economy, and the situation is getting worse. Almost 40% of spending is on health and welfare, and it is growing. We know that that will happen; we have heard it this afternoon. Let us be realistic: there is only so much we can afford. I genuinely want a service that is based on clinical need. I genuinely want somebody to arrive at the appropriate location and get the very best care available. I fear that if we continue along this path of denial as regards how the service is paid for and, more important, structured, we will end up with more and more scandals. There are more in the pipeline. The chief executive of Tameside hospital has just resigned.

The public out there want more from us. They want us to make some difficult decisions, for sure, but using evidence, not party politics. I make that plea to everybody. If we can do that, we can structure a service that becomes the envy of the world; it is not that at the moment. However long I end up staying in this House, if that is achieved in the time I have been here, I will retire a happy man.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Before I call the Front Benchers, may I remind Members that if they are going to bring mobile phones into the Chamber they must be on silent and that they should not wait for them to ring? This is not the first time I have said that, but I certainly want it to be the last. Has the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) taken that on board? Excellent.