Strategic Defence Review

Debate between Rachael Maskell and John Healey

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

We are proud of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. It increasingly does tough jobs that in the past we would have expected the Royal Navy to undertake. Its role and contribution is under-recognised, and I am keen to see its role reinforced and for it to have greater recognition. We will ensure that we do that as we pursue the SDR’s vision.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The 1st Division, which is headquartered in my constituency, impressed on me the importance of our diplomacy and soft power and the excellence of the training provided to our armed forces. We have heard a lot about hard power today, but will the Secretary of State ensure that we put serious resources into soft power—the diplomacy that is so important in de-escalating risk? Will he also ensure that we continue that training in my armed forces city of York?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend’s city of York has a proud military history, and she speaks strongly of that this afternoon. She is right to recognise the role of diplomacy alongside hard defence, but perhaps she could do more to recognise the fact that military and civilian defence personnel have an important diplomatic role to play alongside the Foreign Office. One of the things we are doing is working much more closely together in this Government compared with the way in which Foreign Secretaries and Defence Secretaries have been at loggerheads too often in the past, rather than working co-operatively.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Rachael Maskell and John Healey

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

No.

Clauses 56 to 72 require the forced sell-off of affordable council homes to fund an extension of the right to buy to housing association homes. It is a power for the Chancellor to impose an annual levy on councils. Honestly, this is like some pre-Magna Carta monarch running short of cash for his exploits. There is no prospect and no plan for the proper replacement of these homes. There is no one-for-one, like-for-like replacement with new homes, and certainly not in the area where they are lost. This is unworkable and wrong, and we will oppose it.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

In York, we have more than 3,000 people who have the aspiration to rent homes from the council, and yet a city such as York, which is a high-value area, will have to sell about 1,500 of those homes. Are there not perverse financial incentives in the Bill?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has just heard me describe these provisions as unworkable and wrong. She has just heard me say that we will oppose them in the Division tonight, and we will challenge them at each stage of this Bill through Parliament. I hope that she will help my colleagues and I on the Front Bench do just that. The truth is that, in many areas of the country—both rural and urban, especially in London—the council homes that are flogged off will not go to families who are struggling to buy for the first time; they will go to speculators and to buy-to-let landlords. The greater the demand for affordable housing in an area and the higher the value of the houses, the more the Chancellor will take in his annual levy.