Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and John Penrose

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

4. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of the two-child limit in universal credit on families in Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (John Penrose)]

Both the Secretary of State and I were delighted by the recent announcement by the Work and Pensions Secretary that parents who had their third child before the two-child limit was introduced in April 2017 would not face the cap. This will help thousands of families across the UK, including Northern Ireland. The administration and implementation of universal credit is a devolved matter, but Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities knows of no complaints, issues or problems experienced by claimants in the operation of the two-child policy.

[Dr Huq]

The cruelty of this policy, as was confirmed by the UN rapporteur, is most acute in Northern Ireland, where families are bigger and abortion is illegal, which has been condemned by the Supreme Court. Surely in the case of non-consensual conception, women who seek to exercise the already humiliating rape clause will risk the prosecution of professionals who assist under section 5 of the Criminal Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1967. Can we have some clarity on this human rights double whammy?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that concern, which has been raised on previous occasions because of the depth of worry. I would just reassure her that in the 52 years since section 5 was passed, there have been no prosecutions for failure to report a rape in Northern Ireland. I would add that an outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland said that it is very unlikely that anyone will face prosecution in future.

Anti-Corruption Strategy: Illegal Wildlife Trade

Debate between Rupa Huq and John Penrose

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the anti-corruption strategy and the illegal wildlife trade.

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairship—not chairmanship—Mrs Moon. Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber know that we are all lobbied on animal issues: bees, foxhunting, which thankfully is not making a comeback, puppy smuggling and so on. Those issues are close to my heart, and as I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption—I see that my trusty co-chair, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), is in his place—combating illegal rackets is never far from my mind, either. I see that the anti-corruption chair is also with us—sorry, champion, or is it tsar?

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

Tsar.

[Dr Huq]

I would have liked to see a tsarina, but we have a tsar and he is in his place.

In this debate, we are considering both the illegal wildlife trade and anti-corruption. The two are not as decoupled as one might think; the phenomena overlap more than one might imagine. We all remember the heart breaking case of Cecil the lion. He was lured out of a protected reserve to be killed and dismembered as a trophy—that is vile and revolting—as was his son. That highlights how trading in wildlife occurs worldwide. That is the case in fact, and in fiction recently. We have had the Panama papers, the Paradise papers, and “McMafia” on television on Sunday nights. That has reminded us of anti-corruption, corrupt practices—all those sorts of thing. This debate brings the two together; there is a nexus between anti-corruption strategy and the illegal wildlife trade. Drugs, human trafficking and the illegal arms trade might be the more obvious associations with the word “corruption”, and they hit the headlines more, but the illegal wildlife trade is ranked fourth globally, in terms of transnational crime networks, after those three things. It is worth more than £17 billion a year. That is the Government’s estimate. We do not know, because the trade is illegal, but it could be worth more.

This debate therefore goes further than conservation matters. One often thinks that animal issues are for the big-hearted people who are concerned about furry and cute species. That is important, but issues of sustainability, endangered species, the damage to our ecosystems and biodiversity are all implicated in animal issues. Another issue is trafficked animals. As I said, the debate goes further. For a start, the trafficked animals that we are talking about include lizards such as chameleons, rhinos for their horns, elephants for their tusks, and pangolins, which were celebrated recently on World Pangolin Day—the Foreign Secretary feted that day of the year. Pangolins are hunted for their scales. None of those animals are furry at all; they are desired for their high-value body parts. All this stuff raises questions of transnational crime and corruption.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree. Both flora and fauna are handled by the EU body that deals with these things, and there is a worry about whether, when we leave the EU, we will still be covered. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the issue is not just cute, furry animals, scaly animals or whatever. Both fauna and flora are implicated in this vile trade.

The supply chains are complex. There are both poachers and traffickers. The ivory trade alone is estimated by the UN to be worth $62 million in east Asia, with approximately 75 tonnes of elephant ivory exported. It is not just, as one might imagine, one or two elephants being killed by rogue poachers. There is an industrial element to this organised crime—huge-scale shipments to foreign buyers at the other end. People get away with it because, in the words of Tom Cardamone in written testimony to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, this is “Low Risks, High Profits”.

[John Penrose]

As one of the chairs of the anti-corruption APPG, the hon. Lady is doing an excellent job in raising the very important nexus between illegal wildlife trading and the fight against corruption. Does she agree that perhaps the simplest way to look at the question of animal trafficking and poaching is to think of it rather like an extractive industry? Many of the risks that apply to mining or illegal logging and those sorts of thing also apply to the illegal traffic in both flora and fauna. If we think about it in that way, many of the same public policy responses, both in this country and in the countries of origin, will be effective if we can put them in place.

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Criminal intelligence gets more and more complex as criminals find different ways to convert their ill-gotten gains. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the risks are the same, as are the effects of this crime on communities at the other end, which are often in the developed world, so he makes an excellent point.

This trade, if we can call it such, is popular with terrorist groups and militias. That relates to what the Government’s anti-corruption champion just said. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army in South Sudan, which was a rebel group but has now overthrown the person who was in power, has been partial to elephant poaching by grenade; and ivory poaching is a means by which the Janjaweed militia funds its activities in the same region.

The illegal wildlife trade goes much wider than being simply a peripheral concern of well-meaning people concerned with the world that we will leave to the next generation. The damage done is manifold, as the anti-corruption champion just told us. The corruption that supports illegal trading in wildlife poses threats to national security, as we have seen from the terror threat. It is seen by those who deal in it, like guns and drugs, as just another commodity and part and parcel of these organised crime networks. Bribery and corruption obscure the enforcement of existing laws—if there are bendable officials, that also mucks things up—and diminish efforts to strengthen them. Not everyone has an anti-corruption champion in the same way as we do, although the post was vacant for a while; I am very glad that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) is occupying it now.

Credit where credit is due: the UK has not completely sat on its hands when it comes to anti-corruption efforts. We all remember David Cameron’s anti-corruption summit in May 2016—the whole world came to London. The strategy he promised at the time finally saw the light of day at the end of last year, as did the long awaited champion. It was almost smuggled out in the dead of night and not everyone seems to have noticed. Ultimately, we must do more.

One of my main concerns with the anti-corruption strategy is the lack of strong action on open registers of beneficial ownership in our overseas territories. We have said that before. The criminal gangs do not simply traffic in animal parts, but in drugs and arms. They launder their money through shell corporations. Again, we are dealing with these secrecy jurisdictions and mysterious properties with questionable ownership. I think there are whole streets in London where we do not know who owns them and dirty money is parked there.

Low-Cost housing

Debate between Rupa Huq and John Penrose

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

That is absolutely right. There are some people who, from a purely aesthetic point of view, love brutalist concrete architecture and rather more who dislike it a lot. For most of the rest of us, one of the crucial tests is not merely the aesthetics but whether this stuff remains liveable, not only in the first few years after it is built but over many generations. Another is whether it is therefore acceptable to the rest of the community. It is not just a question of what somewhere is like to live in as a location; it also has an impact on other people as they walk past.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it depends on how the design stands the test of time. There are places such as four or five-storey Regency terraces and Victorian town houses, which people still want to live in and walk past a century or two after they were built, or their slightly taller and more modern equivalents, which provide trendy new city centre living space for young professionals or well-designed retirement homes for older folk. We do not need to be scared of these buildings. One of the densest urban areas in Britain is Kensington and Chelsea, which is hardly a byword for inner-city decay. Elegant continental cities such as Paris and Madrid are far denser than almost anywhere in Britain too.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is giving a very powerful speech so I am loth to interrupt him. He mentioned the international comparisons and Kensington and Chelsea, but I think he is missing the suburbs. I represent a suburban seat. He said that housing is the single biggest bill, but it is also the single biggest issue in surgeries. I had a candidate stand against me as a “no to tall buildings” person. His slogan was, “We want to be living in Acton, not in Manhattan.” Has the hon. Gentleman had similar experiences as a constituency MP? People just do not like these buildings; they crowd out light and are not in keeping with the suburban landscape.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I absolutely agree. One advantage of building up rather than out in existing urban environments is that an awful lot of infrastructure is in place anyway. Less brand-new infrastructure needs to be constructed as a result. Other problems come from building in urban environments—for example, existing infrastructure may be put under strain and need to be expanded in some way—but flood defences are a good example of where the effects are perfectly scalable. When a flood defence wall has been built, an awful lot more can be built behind it. The flood defence wall does not need to be upgraded just because more has been built behind it, even though it may need to be upgraded when it wears out in 50 years’ time. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very good example.

As I was saying, prices will never stabilise, still less fall, unless the supply of housing increases dramatically. Cheaper homes are one of the cheapest, simplest, most effective ways of raising living standards for everyone and, by making our available cash go further, of improving the country’s economic productivity.

In the 1970s and ’80s, our towns and cities were places without an economic purpose. Their industrial manufacturing centres were dead, social problems multiplied as jobs dried up and people left in droves. But now, urban living in towns and cities is fashionable again, because, even in our highly connected, distance-defying online world, it turns out that there is huge value in people clustering together. Ideas flow more freely; skills and knowledge too. Firms in similar sectors create clusters that feed off their neighbours’ energy, hire each other’s staff and drive each other on. Building up, not out helps those things to happen more easily, so more wealth can be created. It is greener and cheaper, and it makes us richer and improves our quality of life, so clearly, the idea’s time has come.

To their eternal credit, I think the Government get that. The new White Paper has much to say about developing smaller sites of half a hectare or less, and subdividing large sites so that smaller developers can get in on the act as well. Local development orders and area-wide design codes, which streamline planning permission if people want to build particular pre-approved types or styles of property in a specified area, make a strong showing too. There is a range of new permitted development rights, which allow everyone from hospitals to brownfield site owners to build without all the red tape, heartache and uncertainty of getting planning permission.

[Dr Huq]

From a design point of view, I completely get the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but how would he inject affordability? The rate in London has been at up to 80% of market rates, and units in high-rise buildings in my constituency seem to be bought off-plan by people at property fairs in Singapore and by Russian oligarchs—the lights are always off—so how would he make that link and build affordability in?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady tempts me into a slightly wider area of discussion than the one I was focusing on. However, my broad point at least is that we will not be able to make all housing more affordable, whether that is for those on lower or middle incomes, unless we dramatically increase the supply of new homes of whatever tenure—whether we are talking about homes for rent or for buying. Only by doing that over the longer term will we manage to reduce the cost of housing for everybody at all income levels. The hon. Lady might like to propose some additional measures and, if so, I am sure that she will make some remarks later to turbo-charge some other opportunities for those on lower incomes as well. However, as a starting point and a fundamental, we are kidding ourselves if we think we can get away without increasing the overall level of new homes that are being created in the first place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and John Penrose

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

This is an important issue. We have made up to £3 million available to local authorities to pursue the remaining four in every 100. By the end of this year, all those people will have been contacted up to nine times, either by phone, email or letter, or by someone knocking on their door, in order to confirm that they are genuine voters with a pulse, in which case they will have been confirmed on the register. We want to ensure that we do not inadvertently disfranchise them. Anyone who is left over will almost certainly be a ghost voter—a ghost in the machine; a data error—and can therefore be safely removed.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

13. Would the Minister acknowledge that a disproportionately high number of those falling off the electoral roll are young people such as the students attending the Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and the University of West London in my constituency? Can he not see that this is the biggest electoral disfranchisement in our history?

[John Penrose]

No, I would not acknowledge that, because if they are genuine people on the register, we will find them and confirm them as genuine. No genuine voters will be disfranchised by this move. The hon. Lady is absolutely right, however, to say that there are significant groups of under-represented people who are not on the register at all and therefore cannot be disfranchised by being removed from it. This is a fundamental issue for the health of our democracy, and we must go out and find those people. We need to have proper registration drives to get them on to the register in the first place.