Business of the House

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. Local planning authorities already have a wide range of enforcement powers, with strong penalties for non-compliance to tackle such situations. However, as set out in our recent planning White Paper, we intend to strengthen those powers and sanctions, including around intentional unauthorised development. Under planning law, national planning policies and local planning policies to guard against unsuitable development apply equally to all applicants who wish to develop. Planners may also take into account the specific needs of individual groups when making decisions on the development, and every case needs to be treated on its merit.

On the subject at hand, I hope that my hon. Friend is assured by the progress of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will give the police additional powers to remove unauthorised Traveller encampments. We must be careful of spurious human rights claims; otherwise, we will have people in the City of London saying that it is their human right to build 100-storey tower blocks, and that would be ridiculous.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Polls show that a large proportion of the public believes that the Government’s allocation of covid contracts is corrupt. Yesterday, the High Court found that the Minister for the Cabinet Office broke the law in the allocation of one covid contract to a firm run by his former adviser. Given all that, does the Leader of the House not agree that, to restore confidence in this House—confidence that is being undermined day after day by the allocation of covid contracts by his Government—the Minister for the Cabinet Office should be sacked, and the House should take tough action against such contracts?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

No, I do not agree with that awful nonsense, as I have set out very clearly before. There was a pandemic—the hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten this—and there was a need to crack on with things. He would have fiddled while Rome burned. It is nice to see him back, incidentally; it is good of him to come to the Chamber. He would have ignored the whole thing while some great bureaucratic process could wander through an endless discussion, and red tape would be tied into pretty little bows before things were done. We needed the vaccine. We needed Test and Trace. We needed to have a system that got messages out to people. The judgment yesterday found that there was no bias, and that it was reasonable to act swiftly. That is really important to understand, so no—I am with good sense and good government, not with the infamous fox killer.