Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Oliver Colvile

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

7. What assessment the Government have made of the contribution of nature improvement areas to habitat creation and wildlife conservation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

The nature improvement area report has been overwhelmingly positive, which is quite a rare feature of monitoring reports of this kind. I pay particular tribute to the Wild Purbeck nature improvement area, where there has been an extraordinary combination of activities: saving the ladybird spider, which has included 3,000 volunteer hours, and involving schools through the forest school learning initiative. These are great, great projects.

[Oliver Colvile]

I thank my hon. Friend for our hedgehog summit on Monday. What measures does he propose, along with our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to increase the number of hedgehogs, which, as he knows, has declined by between 30% and 50% over the last 15 years?

[Rory Stewart]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has become a doughty champion of the hedgehog. The most important thing for hedgehogs, which are a much-loved species, is their habitat, and we are dealing with that by means of our hedgerow schemes, as well as the woodland planting schemes that the Secretary of State is promoting, which include the planting of 11 million more trees over the next five years. The real challenge for all of us, however, is to see hedgehogs in a suburban context, and, in particular, to consider the possibility of providing them with access and corridors through garden fences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Oliver Colvile

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

1. What plans the Government have to protect hedgehogs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

The hedgehog is a priority species. As such, it is protected under the terrestrial biodiversity group, but fundamentally we rely on the countryside stewardship scheme to protect the habitat on which this iconic relative of the shrew depends.

[Oliver Colvile]

What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the damage that badgers do to hedgehogs? Will he join my campaign to try to protect the hedgehog?

[Rory Stewart]

Badgers have been identified as one of a range of factors that can have an impact on the hedgehog population which, as Members will know, has declined from about 30 million to about 1.5 million over the past 50 years. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work on hedgehogs and to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Rory Stewart and Oliver Colvile

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I wish to speak to new clauses 2 and 3. As the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) has just pointed out, the Secretary of State has asked me to lead a review of these matters. I would like to pay huge tribute to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for the work they have done on that. There has been a very good cross-party focus on the matter over the past few years, and I have a huge amount to learn.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee visited Washington last summer and saw at first hand some of the stuff we are talking about? Is he willing to take evidence from some of the Members who were on that trip to ensure that it is included as well?

[Rory Stewart]

I would be delighted to do that. My hon. Friend’s intervention reminds me just how much expertise there is in the House. I see that there is an enormous amount of expertise on the Opposition side of the House. He has a great deal of expertise on the matter, as do many other Members in the Chamber this afternoon.

We need to focus on this for three reasons: first, we have an obligation towards individuals in the criminal justice system as a whole; secondly, we have a huge obligation specifically to those who have served in the armed forces; and thirdly, we have an obligation to society as a whole. The US experience suggests that there is something we can do. It is unusual in such a situation to find that we have concrete levers that might be able to improve our relationship to reoffending.

There already exists enormous expertise, for example in the Howard League for Penal Reform, Combat Stress and the Royal British Legion, and in the work that has been done by all the forces charities—29 different forces charities are currently working on the issue. There is also deep expertise in our universities. For example, King’s College London has done an enormous amount of work on some of the trauma elements, and in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by seven doctoral students doing theses on these issues. I hope not to try to reinvent the wheel, but to learn an enormous amount, including from Opposition Members, to make this as much of a cross-party enterprise as possible and to bring in the expertise that is here.

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very important intervention. First, essentially we need to be looking at the base data. We need to understand what exactly is happening because, as hon. Members have pointed out, we do not yet have enough data on that. Secondly, we need to look at the causes of the incidence of offending and reoffending by people who have formerly been in the armed forces. Thirdly, we need to look at our response. In doing that, we need to be absolutely sure that we are not stigmatising. We must make it absolutely clear that we are not trying somehow to portray people who have been in the armed forces as more likely to offend. In fact, a lot of the data suggest that they might be less likely to offend than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds. We need to get that clear. It is important in terms of the recruitment and employability of people leaving the armed forces.

On the specific issue of causes, most of the research, according to my preliminary reading, suggests that the hon. Lady is absolutely right that there are different elements, one of which may be experiences before people join the military. For example, people who join the infantry tend, comparatively, to come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. A second element is experiences in the military, such as combat stress, and another is that raised by the hon. Lady, namely the question of what happens when individuals leave the military and go from what for many of them may be a very fulfilling institutional framework in which they feel a strong amount of team work and esprit de corps, to suddenly finding themselves in an environment in which perhaps less support exists.

That said, people coming out of the armed forces already benefit enormously from the forces charities and even from individual regimental associations, so we should not underestimate the amount of support that exists or try to reinvent the wheel.

[Oliver Colvile]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

I will give way for a final time.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will my hon. Friend also recognise that in the United States of America all veterans are given a mobile phone when they leave the military and receive a couple of telephone calls during the following six months to a year, which means that there is permanent contact?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a good point on which to conclude.

Military Covenant

Debate between Rory Stewart and Oliver Colvile

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile]

I suspect, if I may say so, that the programme is very good because the Royal Marines is a small unit able to deliver it, but there are many lessons to be learned.

Finally, the Royal Navy in Plymouth and Devonport, with the help of the Prime Minister, is doing an enormous amount of work on dementia, because it understands the impact on a family when personnel are abroad. We have a lot to do, and I would be interested to know when we are going to have the debate.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, especially when he is close to finishing his speech. The issue of the particular needs of servicemen also relates to the provision of sheltered housing for homeless ex-servicemen. Will my hon. Friend reflect on whether we should follow the model, already pioneered in Catterick, of specialist provision for homeless ex-servicemen so that they can relate to each other in a way that might not be possible in other forms of sheltered housing?

[Oliver Colvile]

My hon. Friend is quite right. One organisation he may wish to talk to is Alabaré, which does a lot of work on homes for ex-servicemen and is very well regarded by the Minister for the Armed Forces, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan). We have a lot of work to do, and I look forward to the report on the armed forces covenant.