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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Surely, the answer is relatively simple: if a scooter or bike operates purely through an electronic motor and not human propulsion, it should be taxed, insured and subject to an MOT like any other motorbike.
I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for housing costs. I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise the issue of Government support for housing costs—in other words, local housing allowance and the way that it is part of universal credit and the calculations made therein. The hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) has let me and the Minister know that he would like to make a short speech, and I understand that others wish to make interventions. This is not the first time that I have raised this issue. I was looking back at the records, and I even had a debate in this Chamber on a related matter on 9 November 2010—if anyone wishes to check the records. I will start on a sombre note and give a couple of examples from my constituency of recent casework where I have met constituents who have had difficulties with their benefits. One constituent has a history of undiagnosed neurodiversity and mental health problems and struggles to hold down regular employment, although he is quite capable. He has been rejected for personal independence payment and receives approximately £900 a month in universal credit, but must pay what is pretty much the average for his private rent in the constituency, which is £850 a month. That leaves him with £50 to live on for the whole month—to cover all his bills, feed himself, travel and do everything else. That makes the point about the difficulties and the poverty trap in which people find themselves. A mother and three children have been benefit-capped, despite the mother paying almost £1,200 a month in rent out of the approximately £1,500 a month she receives in universal credit. She is in debt to her utility providers and cannot afford to work because of the high cost of childcare. Those are just two examples of what it means to families to have to live on the current rates of local housing allowance.
Indeed. I thank the hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, for those remarks. Certainly, the Minister will be aware, because he understands these matters very well, that in places of particularly high housing costs—places such as Cornwall, but not just Cornwall—where scarcity of private rented accommodation makes it difficult for local families to find anything affordable, the gap between local housing allowance and the actual rent levels is particularly stark.
My hon. Friend anticipates what I shall go on to say. One of my main messages concerns the impact of the 2024 housing allowance freeze; the Government will not be surprised by that—I gave the Minister advance notice of my questions. The allowance is supposed to be set at the 30th percentile—in other words, 30% of properties available on the market should be below the housing allowance. However, certainly in places like Cornwall, we are talking about it being the minus-30th percentile, effectively, because in areas like mine the local housing allowance is 30% below the lowest-cost available rental property in the marketplace. The 30% is relevant, but sadly not in the way that is required.
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I will come to the extremely difficult decisions that any Government need to make about how this policy adds up with the available resource. Certainly, if one wants to avoid driving private landlords out of the market altogether, one has to form an understanding of how the market works. I entirely agree with the principle of what the hon. Lady is saying, and I will come to how we can how we can pay for these things. That is a very difficult question, which Opposition politicians generally avoid, instead asking for more money, while not necessarily explaining where they will get it from. My primary message is that current Government policy is not working. It is driving the poorest into debt, food banks, homelessness and, in many cases, sadly, destitution. I have a number of questions for the Minister, which I sent to him in advance. If the Government know that a person’s private rental is bound to be at least x, why in my area of Kernow West, when the Valuation Office Agency assesses these factors, is the benefit level set at x minus 30% to 40%? That leaves people in the kind of poverty I described in the two cases I mentioned earlier. Have the Government reviewed the adequacy of the present methodology for LHA calculations, and are Ministers confident that the present arrangements do not risk tipping families and individuals in areas of high-priced private rental accommodation into rent arrears and potential destitution? I understand that the Valuation Office Agency collects the rental data from landlords to determine the LHA, but how accurate and up to date is that data? Is the VOA using historical cases, where people have been living in accommodation for a very long time, and where the data would not reflect the price of that accommodation were it to come back on to the market? The Government need to answer many questions about this issue. I know the Minister is sympathetic. One example was raised with me by Citizens Advice Cornwall. A family in Penzance consisting of either a couple or a single parent with two children of different sexes, one of whom is 10, meaning the children need separate bedrooms, would technically require a three-bedroomed house. Local housing allowance states that they can have a maximum of £812.76 per month. According to Rightmove last night, the lowest price for a privately rented three-bedroomed house in the Penzance area, a few miles away in Marazion, is £1,800, making a gap of £987.24 per month for that family. I could go through a large number of cases, but I do not have time now.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady from the next neighbouring constituency for raising that issue. I was going to make the point that although there were over 1,700 Airbnbs available in my constituency last night—and that is just Airbnbs, not all holiday lets—there were zero private rental properties available within the LHA rates when we checked on how the market is operating. I will come on to how we will pay for any kind of increase, but the reason why I compare those properties with holiday lets is that for the last 10, 12 or 13 years, we have been paying out multibillions to second home owners through small business rate relief and other tax loopholes that are available to people with second properties. Local people do not get any small business rate relief. The people with second properties who do not let them to local people, and flip from paying council tax to business rates, are able to apply for small business rate relief and pay nothing at all. In Cornwall alone, that has cost over half a billion pounds in the last decade. If the Government want to invest in desperately needed homes for local people, they may well incentivise private landlords by providing tax concessions to those who provide decent homes with security and an agreed, negotiated rent cap to bring it within the scope of what is affordable. That would be a far better way of spending the Government’s resources. I urge the Minister to look carefully at the issues I have raised. I urge him to look at ending the freeze of local housing allowance rates, to restore and maintain the link between local housing allowance and the 30th percentile of the local market, to commit to an annual LHA uprating, to introduce measures to mitigate the impact of the benefit cap, and to continue wider housing reforms, such as, as the Government want to, delivering more social housing. I hope he will consider those matters, but now I want to give time for others to speak.
A moment ago, the Minister said that it is not intended that the LHA should cover all rents in all areas, and he encourages me to talk to the local valuation office about its methodology in setting the LHA for my area of Kernow West. I will happily do that, but looking at the marketplace last night, there was not a single property anywhere close to reaching the LHA level. Is it not the Minister who should be undertaking a review of whether the valuation office is up to the task of understanding how the market is working, rather than leaving it to local Members of Parliament?
The Minister mentioned earlier that we will await the Chancellor’s announcements in the Budget next week. It sounds as if the Minister himself is awaiting those announcements. I wonder to what extent he is putting pressure on the Chancellor to address these issues and ensure sufficient budget for his Department to address this issue. I am sure the Prime Minister sincerely wants to reduce and entirely remove homelessness from our streets, and I applaud him for that, but I am afraid that the way that the system is working will only add to the problem.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) on securing this debate today. A fridge dumped in a field, a car taking a bend too fast or an unauthorised development on a local farm—all cause harm, but together they wear down residents’ sense of safety and community. Those may seem like small countryside crimes, but they are often evidence of organised networks operating across our country. We know that organised groups dump waste where no one is watching, such as in rural Hampshire’s quiet fields, and that same isolation leaves villages vulnerable to illegal developments. In September, one was set up near South Warnborough, and although I visited the site and have been working with the council and the police ever since, it is clear that both organisations lack the enforcement powers to stop dumping, here or anywhere else. Police are facing severe resource pressures, and that results in particular damage from hare coursing. Hare coursing means chasing and killing hares for entertainment and betting, and that betting is linked to international crime networks. Farmers are left with torn-up land and violent threats, and officers often cannot reach the fields in time. Hare coursers often use stolen vehicles and drive recklessly down country lanes. Dangerous driving is a serious problem across North East Hampshire. Tragically, eight people have died on roads in my constituency this year so far—more than double the national average. This heartbreaking situation cannot continue. Unfortunately, Hampshire county council always responds to my letters to say, “This location is of low priority for investigation,” despite the fact that residents, councillors and I have raised the same issues again and again. The solution is clear: we need funds for road safety improvements, councils that will implement them and enough policing resource to prosecute dangerous drivers.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this debate and for all the campaigning she has been doing on this important issue. Illegally modified e-bikes and e-scooters have become more and more of a problem in Yeovil. Peter lives on Sherborne Road, which is a very busy road out of Yeovil. He is always very careful when he crosses, and he always sticks to the pavement; but for Peter, pavements have become just as dangerous as roads. Not for the first time, he was left one step away from A&E after someone came crashing by on an e-scooter doing 30 mph. Sadly, Peter is not alone. The problem is not just one or two troublemakers in Yeovil; this is happening at scale across our communities, and it often comes with other forms of antisocial behaviour. Carol has been telling me how she keeps seeing people on modified e-bikes travelling at speed down Middle Street in the wrong direction, dodging pedestrians. Nicki told me it is unsafe to take her seven-year-old nephew to the park because kids are crashing up and down on e-scooters. Katriana has told me about the near-misses involving dogs, young children and the elderly. Just the other day, I was out canvassing, and three lads shot past me on e-scooters in balaclavas shouting abuse at other residents. It is just a matter of time before someone gets really badly hurt—including the people riding these vehicles, as we have heard today. It goes without saying that we need our police to carry out focused enforcement interventions. We need intervention from the Government in the form of training and funding. We also need proper education campaigns on this—and by that, I do not just mean giving schools more work to do; we need something on the scale of the THINK! campaign, particularly on social media. In Parliament, we need to push for clearer legislation, because the current legal framework for e-bikes is confusing, outdated and rarely enforced. Most importantly, Government need to crack down properly on the supply chain and unregulated online marketplaces that are flooding our streets with these illegal vehicles. To get anywhere in Somerset, you pretty much have to drive. That means road tax, insurance and sticking to the rules. People in Yeovil are rightly angry that these people on illegal e-bikes and e-scooters and those who sell them do none of those things, put people at risk and get away with it. That cannot be allowed to go on any more.
The hon. Member is giving a great speech. One of my constituents has not received post for an entire month, despite expecting time-sensitive correspondence relating to the death of her partner, who sadly passed away earlier this year. That is totally unacceptable. Does the hon. Member agree that Ofcom needs to be pushing Royal Mail to speed up improvements to regulated delivery? Our residents have waited long enough.
The absolute shambles that was window 2 of the SFI is just another example of farmers being let down by Government after Government. I have already mentioned this in the Chamber, but Tim, who farms near Yeovil, was locked out of the SFI window 2 on the same day that he was given the water quality farmer of the year award. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker. Tim, and many farmers like him in Yeovil, are now left in a financial hole. He said that the buffer strips around fields would now have to be cultivated in the hope of making some money, as long as the weather, markets and business costs all play ball. It is clear that he is gambling with terrible odds, but as Tim told me, what other choice does he have? That sums up the terrible situation that so many farmers in Yeovil and across the country are facing—extreme weather from heatwaves and flooding, the spiralling costs of fertiliser, fuel and equipment, and growing biosecurity threats from bluetongue and tuberculosis. When we throw in terrible Government policy, that is a perfect storm waiting to happen. In the time I have, I will touch on a few issues that have been raised a lot at my farming forum. First, on sustainable farming, while DEFRA is saying that it has learned lessons for next time, farmers including Tim, Chris, John and Ollie and many more want to know whether they are going to get recognised for implementing sustainable farming practices now.
Quickly, yes.
I totally agree with my hon. Friend—they cannot seem to get it right, and they are failing our farmers across the country. Lots of farmers are saying that their only option now is intensive farming. That is really worrying for us in south Somerset as winter comes around and it begins to flood, because our farmers are the frontline when it comes to preventing ever-worsening flooding. More broadly, as we have already heard, farmers need more clarity about how the SFI and other schemes are going to develop in the future, so that they can plan ahead. Secondly, farmers hit by bluetongue and TB want to know what more Government are doing to improve our readiness and communication systems for future outbreaks. I hope the Minister can set out when the Government will bring in the new TB strategy. Finally, farmers from Yeovil are really worried about the future of farming more broadly. We have an ageing workforce and a recruitment crisis, so what steps are the Government taking to promote pathways into farming for young people and reduce the financial and admin burdens that are currently stopping farmers being able to take on young people? If this new Government really are committed to problem solving, I can think of no better place to start than farming. We all know the problems; it is time to finally get on with the actual work and support our farmers.
The Energy Secretary herself has admitted that Jackdaw will not bring down bills and will create only 27 jobs. The 2024 Labour manifesto said that the climate crisis is the greatest global challenge we face, and the UN has warned today that we are breaching safe climate limits, meaning more of the heatwaves, wildfires and catastrophic floods that killed thousands this summer. Can the Prime Minister explain why he is pouring more fuel on the fire of climate breakdown? Does he disagree with the overwhelming scientific consensus that fossil fuels must stay in the ground, or was the oil and gas lobby simply too difficult to ignore?
I thank the hon. Member for his important speech. In my constituency, only 2.3% of rental homes are affordable with local housing allowance—a far cry from the 30% that it is meant to be. Of course, that means that many more families, including families with children, are forced into rent arrears, poverty and homelessness. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, introducing rent controls would reduce the cost of unfreezing local housing allowance by more than £1 billion by 2030. Does the hon. Member therefore agree that the Chancellor should introduce an emergency brake on rents as well as unfreeze local housing allowance at the Budget to address the gross distortion, inequality and unfairness in the housing market?
Drilling at Jackdaw is an act of climate vandalism. As we have heard, it will not bring down bills and it will create only 27 jobs. Today’s announcement also reiterated the Government’s support for so-called tiebacks, which are a dodge to allow yet more drilling without new licences. Does the Minister not recognise the UN’s countless warnings that we must leave all new fossil fuels in the ground? Will he admit that allowing both Jackdaw and new tiebacks is utterly at odds with the climate science?
I thank the hon. Lady for her speech, and I agree that it is absolutely crucial for farmers to have confidence in long-term policy support. My farmers in Waveney Valley tell me they want to invest in measures that support natural flood management, restore nature, such as new hedgerows, and improve soil health, which are critical for food security. Does she agree that the window 2 debacle shows the level of interest there is, and that far more funding is needed in the SFI funding pot?
I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I held a similar one earlier this year on 4 February, in which I raised issues regarding Royal Mail, particularly with respect to the WV15 and WV16 postcodes in my constituency, where people are waiting for two, three and sometimes four weeks to receive mail. Does she agree that that situation is completely unacceptable and must change, because my constituents, like many other people, feel that they really do not matter to Royal Mail?
The Minister said in reply to the shadow Secretary of State that the delay in the decision on Jackdaw was fiscally neutral because, in essence, the investment was made at risk.
The Minister shakes his head, but he said that there was no cost from the delay. Does he accept that the delay in a decision on Rosebank comes at a cost, both in terms of investment and in terms of taxpayer revenue? If so, will he set out what that cost is, in revenue, ahead of the Budget?
On the issue of postwomen and postmen, in areas such as mine, the most rural areas of our country, those people are a lifeline. They are often the only people whom older people meet in a day, but a postman in my constituency has been taken to an employment tribunal because he helped to deliver a local parish magazine in the middle of nowhere —just to be a help. Those are sometimes the only people my constituents meet, so as the hon. Lady campaigns on this issue, will she press for recognition of the social role that postwomen and postmen play throughout the country, on behalf of many of our constituents?
Do the Government now accept that the former Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero got this important policy seriously wrong, and if so, why was he promoted to become Foreign Secretary?
I congratulate the Secretary of State on what, in my opinion, is the best statement I have heard from any Government Minister on any subject since the last general election. It has rightly brought forth supportive comments from both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benchers and from Back Benchers. I have an interest in the question of impartiality in schools. It is rather disconcerting to realise that 40 years ago, in May 1986, I was working with a group of peers, led by Caroline Cox—Baroness Cox—and the late professor Lord Beloff, to amend the 1986 Education Bill. Two provisions put forward in that Bill were carried forward as sections 406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996. Section 406 bans political indoctrination in schools, and section 407 lays down that, when politically contentious subjects are discussed in schools, they must be presented in a balanced and appropriate way, with opposing views fairly discussed. May I suggest that the Secretary of State, when she writes to all schools, should include, as an annexe, a single page setting out the provisions of sections 406 and 407 of the 1996 Act, because they are as germane today as they were when first formulated for the previous Act 40 years ago?
Q13. Unlike the Government’s shameful attempts to hand over the sovereignty of the strategically important Chagos islands, will the Prime Minister confirm that this time the Government will strongly oppose the case being made by the Government of Argentina to the international tribunal to try to stop the exploitation of oil reserves around the Falkland Islands, which is authorised by the United Kingdom?
Q5. Last week, the Prime Minister was kind enough to pay me a compliment, so let me return the favour. When he was Mayor of Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester police had more police officers than before he was appointed. When I was Home Secretary, Essex police had more officers than at any point in its history. However, over the last 10 years, the Metropolitan police has failed to recruit, and police numbers have fallen. So what is it that he was able to get right and that I was able to get right, but that Sadiq Khan catastrophically has failed to get right?
I commend the right hon. Lady for her statement. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) that it is a remarkable statement and I commend Sir David Bell’s review. I also commend the response by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) from the Opposition Dispatch Box. In 2004, I was asked, with others, by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to carry out a review of antisemitism in the UK. What we discovered then was an appalling rise, even though it had not been figured out prior to that, and we made our recommendation. The problem is that each generation seems to have to keep on looking at this issue and making recommendations, yet it erupts again. The Green party’s terrible conference motion is a part of that problem: isolate them, blame them, attack them, ban them. I suggest that the Government put into every school, where teachers are reluctant to engage, Pastor Niemöller’s poem. The critical lines are: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew… Then they came for me”.
On a point of order, Ms Cummins. I have a question about the possible hybridity of this Bill. A hybrid Bill is when a Government Bill—a public Bill—is used to affect only one person. As we see in paragraph 13 of the explanatory notes, “The Prime Minister professes the Roman Catholic faith. He is therefore prevented from fulfilling his constitutional role”— exactly. The Bill is therefore specifically referring to one person. I know that in answer, Madam Deputy Speaker, you might say that this will also benefit Catholics and Jews in the future, but we have to deal with the situation as we find it now. We cannot deal with hypothetical issues. It is rather as if we had a Bill to address a condition that has affected only one person in the past 500 years. Of course, we have not had a Catholic Prime Minister for 500 years. Indeed, there was not a Prime Minister who was Catholic 500 years ago; there was not even a Prime Minister 500 years ago. The chance is therefore vanishingly small that in the immediate future, this Bill will be activated. Of course, I never try to cause trouble, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am not asking for an answer now, but I think it is a moot point that you might ask your Clerks to investigate.
Surely it will remain on the statute book that a member of the royal family cannot marry a Roman Catholic and inherit the Crown?
Before I begin my speech, I had better declare an interest, because I know it is not widely known that I am a Roman Catholic. I do not oppose the Bill. The discrimination that we suffered for centuries was absolutely horrible. It was not discrimination as we understand it in the modern world—my direct ancestor, the blessed Richard Leigh, was hung, drawn and quartered simply for denying that Elizabeth I should be the head of the Church in England. Obviously, I welcome anything that ends discrimination. However, I hope the Minister will forgive me if I make a few points to try to find out why he is moving this Bill now. Obviously, it is because we have a Catholic Prime Minister, but as the Opposition spokesman said, there has been little enthusiasm for such legislation until now. If we are to have such a Bill, particularly when there are many other pressing matters, it should achieve something, but this Bill will change absolutely nothing. Although in theory one name is pushed across the Prime Minister’s desk, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister he effectively ended the veto. The last time the veto was exercised was by Tony Blair, shortly after the 1997 election when he objected to two candidates to be Bishop of Liverpool. John Major exercised his power on one occasion, I think. As hon. Members might expect, Mrs Thatcher viewed the process with immense enthusiasm and exercised her power rather more regularly. If we are to have a Bill, it has to achieve something, but frankly this power of the Prime Minister has fallen into abeyance. That did not occur in the past. As we have heard, in the 19th century Prime Ministers viewed this part of their job as having great importance—we have heard about Gladstone—but it was worse than that. It was not that they were simply trying to appoint the best people to the job; they viewed their role as entirely political. Those of us who love Trollope will know the novel “Barchester Towers”. The central plot is that the Government change and the candidate—I forget now whether he was a Whig or a Tory—is promptly prevented from taking up a bishopric. Viscount Palmerston packed the bishops’ Bench with low-church evangelicals. Given that there were 26 bishops in the House of Lords and therefore they had important political power, successive Prime Ministers deliberately packed the episcopal Bench with their appointments, which caused some upset. To heed the lessons of 19th century history—a fascinating subject—[Interruption.] Ah, I see the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) wishes to intervene.
That is a very interesting point of view from our Reform colleague. It is interesting to think that at some future date the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) might appoint bishops, but we will see—it may or may not happen.
My wife is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. [Laughter.] The Oxford movement of the 1830s was established precisely because faithful Anglicans grew disturbed that a secularised, reformed Parliament that included non-Anglicans held absolute power over the doctrine and leadership of the Church of England. Indeed, the House of Commons historically had an enormous interest in the matter—there were huge debates in the 1920s over the nature of the prayer book, and these Benches were packed with people who were interested. What a pity that these wonderful debates do not attract similar attention. In his many reflections on the relationship between Church and state, Cardinal Newman, who was central to the Oxford movement during his time as an Anglican earlier in life, feared that the state would reduce the Church to nothing more than a Department of Government.
We of course have to reflect changes in society. I have made the point that this measure will make no practical difference, so I wonder why it is really necessary. My other point is that it would be extremely unwise and would dig up past controversies if any Catholic Prime Minister were to appoint an Anglican bishop. I hear what the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) says, but I do not think it makes sense for somebody who is an atheist, like Keir Starmer, or a Hindu or a Catholic to appoint an Anglican bishop. I just cannot see the logic in that. Frankly, the practice has been discontinued, and it will not happen again.
By the way, I just want to make the point that I love the Anglican Church. I love the fact that we have an established Church. I think it is wonderful that in our country we proclaim the value of religion and that bishops sit in the House of Lords—although I have to say to most of them seem to spout rather woke rubbish most of the time.
I think that—
Of course.
I am very grateful to my good friend, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for that intervention. Actually, I see him on my fridge every night, from when we were introduced to Benedict XVI—there we were in the row. Every time I open my fridge, I see the hon. Gentleman. He is an ornament of this House. I am coming to the end of my speech, but I want to make one final point. I have asked whether it is actually wise for a Catholic, a Jew or a Hindu to appoint an Anglican bishop, or to have any say, but there is a wider debate about whether—although we believe in the established Church, and the Prime Minister in effect is not involved—there is any reason why the Prime Minister should be involved. I am afraid I have to tell the hon. Member for East Wiltshire that although I agree that in any other organisation, people rise through committees, it is all quite dull and there are safe options, the intrusion or lack of intrusion of the Prime Minister makes no difference. If we were going to have an entirely logical Bill, surely we would remove this power of the Prime Minister altogether—although it is never exercised, so the Bill is not going to achieve anything—and pass the role of final arbiter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance. The hon. Member for East Wiltshire will not agree with me, but that would be entirely logical. I just do not see the logic in having a politician appoint the head of a Church nowadays, not that they ever do it. I apologise for my comments, but I hope that they give a different perspective on this Bill.
Will the Minister give way?
Will the Minister give way?
Will the Minister give way?