Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rosie Cooper and Brandon Lewis(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
There will be no new customs infrastructure in Northern Ireland, and we see no need to build any.
Rosie Cooper [V]
With just four months left until the protocol comes into force, the National Farmers Union has warned that a clear lack of guidance is threatening the trade in agrifood products—Northern Ireland’s largest import. So can the Secretary of State clear one thing up—will each agrifood product require an export licence certificate, costing up to £200, or not?
Brandon Lewis
As I have set out previously, the protocol obliges both the UK and the EU to seek to streamline trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and to avoid controls at Northern Ireland ports as far as possible. As the hon. Member may well know, discussions are ongoing about the process by which this is conducted and the frequency. We want to bring the level of checks down to a proportionate and pragmatic level, as we have outlined before, for agrifoods and live animals. At Larne and Belfast there have been checks of one form or another in place since, I think, about the 19th century, and that is what we are building on. But there will be no new infrastructure.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rosie Cooper and Brandon Lewis(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
Yes. My hon. Friend’s question backs up the earlier comment from our hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), because Essex police have done some phenomenally good work, as we can see in HMIC’s report. I congratulate everybody at Essex police on that. I will urge one note of caution, however, because there are still areas that need improvement, and I expect to see the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner focusing on those to deliver for the people of Essex in future. But it is good news, so well done to them.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
Brandon Lewis
I can assure the hon. Lady that there is a substantial piece of work going on, with academics, police chief constables and police and crime commissioners across the country working to feed in and ensure that the police funding formula review takes account of everything it needs to take account of. A lot of people in the sector are outlining to us how pleased they are with the process. We are determined to see that through. We will see where it goes for all forces in order to get a fair formula in future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rosie Cooper and Brandon Lewis
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
11. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that localism is prioritised in the decision-making process for nationally significant infrastructure projects.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
The nationally significant infrastructure planning system strikes a fair and effective balance between two important needs: the national need for infrastructure to underpin growth and sustainability, and the need to address community concerns and maximise local benefits from investment.
Rosie Cooper
I thank the Minister for that non-answer. I would like him to explain to the residents of West Lancashire why, despite the Government’s claim to support localism in the planning process, permission was granted to dump hazardous waste for 20 more years at Whitemoss landfill, for which there was no demonstrable need, either local or regional, and which was opposed by thousands of local residents, the borough council, the county council and me as the local MP. Surely this means—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rosie Cooper and Brandon Lewis
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend will appreciate that I cannot comment on a particular planning application, but any such request will be given full consideration. I know that she has campaigned very hard with local residents to protect what they perceive as an important piece of local infrastructure. I will obviously look at all the details that come in.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
T2. Having concluded the examination stage of the Whitemoss landfill extension as a nationally significant infrastructure application, will the Secretary of State assure Skelmersdale residents, despite eight broken promises that the site would be closed, that their voices will be given equal consideration to that of the company as he considers the decision on the application, and will he say when he will announce his decision?
Brandon Lewis
As a planning case, that matter is quasi-judicial. Again, I cannot comment on a particular planning application. However, over the next couple of days, I will write to the hon. Lady with some idea of the timeline.
Local Government Spending (Floods)
Debate between Rosie Cooper and Brandon LewisWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Brandon Lewis
I said that I was sure that local authorities will look sympathetically at requests for hardship relief from business rates for businesses affected by flooding. They were urged to do that immediately after the event. If they grant such relief, Government will fund 75% of the cost.
Aside from hardship relief, I am sure that local authorities will have taken advantage of the changes introduced by the Local Government Finance Bill to fund discounts for ratepayers as they see fit. Flooding would seem to be one of the circumstances for which the new power was designed.
Let me deal with transport. My ministerial colleagues at the Department for Transport recognise that many parts of the country have seen high levels of rainfall and significant local flooding incidents, which have impacted on residents, businesses and transport infrastructure. Like me, they pay tribute to the excellent multi-agency response and the ongoing work by local highway authorities to help those who have been affected.
However, local authorities have responsibility for the local roads in their areas and are best placed to determine their own priorities for funding, which include putting in place reasonable resilience measures and contingencies to deal with any incidents, such as flooding, that may occur from time to time.
The Department for Transport is providing more than £91.7 million to North Yorkshire for highways maintenance funding over the spending review period. For this financial year, we are providing more than £24 million. The Department allocated North Yorkshire a further £6.6 million in March 2011 for damage to its highways network caused by the severe winter of 2010.
Despite the current economic situation that we inherited, the Government will continue to provide £3 billion to councils for road maintenance over the next four years to 2015. The Department for Transport also provided a further £200 million in March last year as an exceptional payment to help with much-needed road repairs following the severe weather at the end of 2010.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton commented on the Emergency Planning College. The college is a Cabinet Office-sponsored facility. Given my responsibility for the Fire Service College, I warmly welcome it and look forward to paying a visit in due course. A great deal of work on interoperability is going on across Government at the moment, to which both colleges are contributing. The joint emergency services interoperability programme aims to deliver significant benefits in future emergency responses. My hon. Friend makes a good point. Over the past few weeks, I, too, have been talking about the facilities at the Fire Service College. The more that we can get our emergency services working and training together in such environments, the better it will be for everybody on the ground.
On the planning case in Filey, I hope that my hon. Friend will appreciate that I cannot comment on individual cases. None the less, the Government have ensured, through the national planning policy framework, that new homes and other buildings will not be built in areas of high flood risk.
As for the comments made by the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), the climate change risk assessment identifies increased risk of flooding for the years ahead and informs flood defence investment. We cannot prevent all flooding, so the need to plan well locally is important. The hon. Lady’s constituents who may feel abandoned need to make their councillors aware of their feelings and to demand improvements.
Rosie Cooper
Will the Minister comment on grants for individual prevention schemes, such as air brick blocking and the various other aids that can enable householders to prevent their homes from being flooded? Will he also give us some detail on how people can apply for such grants? The truth is that, after three weeks’ work, including with the Environment Agency and the local authority, I still do not have a plan for how to apply for such grants that I can show my local residents. If the Minister does not have those details, will he write to me, setting out the steps, so that we can make some progress? Householders do not want to have to face the misery of their homes being flooded over and over again, especially if there are grants available.
Brandon Lewis
Either I or my colleagues at DEFRA will write to the hon. Lady with those details. If it is a local scheme through the local authority or Environment Agency, it will be a matter for them, but we will certainly have a look at the matter and give her some feedback.
As I said at the outset, flooding is devastating for those whom it affects. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to set out what the Government are doing.