Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
Will the Minister give way?
Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
That may be very helpful, and I am genuinely grateful to the Minister, because I know he is doing his best to provide clarity. I know he would accept that the starting point for all these decisions will be the NPPF definition. I accept his point about guidance and the other qualifying criteria; we have spoken a little about the limitations that there might be on those qualifying criteria. The substantial point remains, does it not, that the definition in the NPPF of grey-belt land overwhelmingly—perhaps not in every instance, but overwhelmingly—will be met by fields, farms and greenfield sites that are not near to urban settlements. A, B and D in the list clearly each relate to the fringes of urban settlements, and the Minister knows that the green belt encompasses more than just such sites. It is inevitable, is it not, that the starting point will be that grey-belt land will be those sites that are not on the fringes of urban settlements, which is of course the direct antithesis of how the Government originally described the concept.
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
Will the Minister give way again on that specific point?
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
I am sure the Chair will remind the Minister that we have plenty of time left in this debate. On the specifics of the local plan, the Minister is right, of course, to point me to the specific statistics in relation to my local plan area. But he will recognise that, as was said earlier, there is a difference between decisions that a local authority makes about what to seek to extract from the green belt, and subsequent decisions about whether part of the green belt is in fact grey belt. The Minister has referred me to statistics relating to the former, not the latter.
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Grey Belt Land: Definition and Application
I thank everyone who participated in the debate, from the Back Benches and the Front Benches. I particularly thank the Minister, who—there will be general agreement on this—is an excellent Minister. He tried to engage properly with the issues in the debate and to give us the clarity that we asked for. He is a perceptive man, and he is right when he says that he has not quite persuaded all of us of everything, but I am grateful to him for what he said last, which is that he will reflect on what has been said here and consider whether further clarity needs to be provided. Ultimately, the evidence as to which of us is right about what the grey belt turns out to be will become apparent over the years during which the policy is used. If I can ask the Minister to reflect on one other thing, it would be that the Government keep under review—as I am sure they will—what the impact of the policy change ends up being. If we see a great deal of new development in open countryside within green-belt areas, rather than in the type of land that he and his Secretary of State have previously described as wanting the grey belt to be, I hope the Government will reconsider the policy and look again at whether it is doing the damage to the countryside that many of us fear it will. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the definition and application of grey belt land.
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Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) is a lovely man, but I just cannot follow his logic. He says that the solution is to pursue green energy, which is fair enough in the long term, and in the same breath—in the very next sentence—he asks what oil reserves we have. Surely it is not a zero sum game. It will be decades before we rely entirely on green energy. I am not asking the Minister to comment on Jackdaw and Rosebank and all that, but does he accept that we must pursue oil drilling in the North sea to become self-reliant, and to get ourselves out of this crisis?
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
If the hoteliers of Bournemouth are gagging to pay this tax, I can assure the Minister that those in hospitality in the New Forest are not. The Minister said that everybody will be a winner, but how can he possibly know when he cannot tell us how much the tax will be or where it will be levied?
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Probation Service: Recruitment and Retention
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Minister knows that there has been a decrease in probation officers in the past year, yet at the same time the Government have released thousands of dangerous criminals on to our streets. The Government’s answer is electronic tagging, but the National Audit Office has highlighted problems. First, staff have to review tag alerts. Only 10% to 50% of alerts result in breach notifications, and where outcomes are even recorded, nearly half result in no further action. Can she guarantee that in the next year, every tagging breach will come with consequences?
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Rapid Deployment Cells Programme
Rapid deployment cells are one option, but the question remains of why the Government are not making use of fully certified cells. HMP Millsike has an operational capacity of up to 1,500, but it has only 1,100 prisoners, due to staffing issues. Can the Minister guarantee that she will replace the 1,600 prison officers lost under Labour by next year?
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on the impact of the Government’s proposed overnight visitor levy on the tourism and hospitality sectors in England.
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Let us call this what it is—Labour’s holiday tax. Although we knew it was coming, we never expected it to be uncapped. This Government have already hammered hospitality with higher employment costs and business rates. Almost 89,000 hospitality jobs have gone, and now what is Labour’s answer? Hit them again. If we tax something, we get less of it, so if we tax tourism, we will get less tourism—it is not complicated. Fewer tourists mean fewer jobs. UKHospitality estimates that up to 33,000 jobs will go, along with over £2 billion wiped from the economy. These job losses will hit young people hardest, when they are already struggling to secure those all-important first roles. We should not make the mistake of thinking that this is just a tax on foreign visitors. Tax Policy Associates estimates that trips by British tourists will generate 63% of the revenue from this levy. This is a tax on hard-working British families. A weekend away, a family holiday or a few nights by the seaside will all cost more. Every pound taken in this tax is a pound that families do not spend in the local pub, restaurant, café, shop or attraction. It is not just Brits on a staycation who will be impacted—it will be anyone staying overnight for any reason, such as visiting a sick relative, going away on business or travelling for medical treatment. Why on earth should those people be taxed simply for going about their daily lives? It is not fair. The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised to give breathing space to households struggling with the cost of living, yet this tax does the exact opposite. British hospitality does not need another tax. Hard-working families do not need another tax. Young people looking for work do not need another tax. The Government must scrap the holiday tax.
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Imprisonment for Public Protection Sentences
Earlier this month, John Dunne was convicted of trying to meet a 14-year-old boy at a train station in Suffolk. He received a two-year sentence, reduced from three after a guilty plea. This still seems lenient, considering that Mr Dunne has already served a life sentence for rape and murder. Our community and country will never be safe when we release people who are clearly not functioning in society. I have written to the Attorney General about this sentence, but if the Government are considering changes to IPP, what is their plan for keeping children safe in situations like this?
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Trial by Jury
Upon taking office, the Prime Minister promised to “find ways of not reducing access to jury trial.” He said that jury trials are a “linchpin of a fair society.” Now that we know the Courts and Tribunals Bill will return to the House on 13 October, immediately after the recess, can the Justice Secretary guarantee that the Bill will not reduce access to jury trials at all?
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Trial by Jury
I asked the Justice Secretary to rule out reducing access to jury trials, and the House will have noticed that he did not do that. We are not talking about something insignificant; we are talking about an ancient English right dating back to Magna Carta. As with Labour’s early release disaster, the new Prime Minister told everybody he did not like it and would not do it, but he never got round to working out what to do instead. Once again, the Justice Secretary has made much of his desire to work together constructively—although I have not seen much of it in our correspondence—so will he publish the full details of the new plan now, or does he still not know what it is?
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Trial by Jury
You’ve ignored letters all summer!
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Topical Questions
This summer, the Government held five different positions on early release in just six weeks. In seeking to exclude killers, rapists and paedophiles—something the Government previously claimed was impossible—the Justice Secretary has used secondary legislation. He says: “No further legislation is required in the short term…primary legislation will…be considered when Parliamentary time allows.” Will the Secretary of State guarantee that after relying on secondary legislation to change Labour’s early release scheme, no prisoner will successfully challenge their exclusion in the courts?
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Topical Questions
The Justice Secretary proposes to let another set of dangerous criminals out of prison as well. Every prisoner serving an imprisonment for public protection sentence has been assessed to be too dangerous for release or returned to prison because of their behaviour—last year, there were 426 of them. The Justice Secretary has reiterated his commitment today to ending IPP sentences by the end of this Parliament. Will he tell the House very clearly if he has decided that it is, indeed, safe to release every single one of them?
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Topical Questions
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In oral questions just now, the Justice Secretary stood there and said again that he wanted to work collaboratively, and he invited the House to scrutinise the Government’s proposals on juries, but those are just words. This summer, as the Government constantly changed policy on early release, I wrote to him and the Prime Minister three times in July and twice in August, and received no reply until I got a short, dismissive reply last Thursday, by which point—[Interruption.] What are your guidelines? By that point, the policy had changed several times. Just now, the Secretary of State dismissed my question sarcastically, saying that he was not the correspondence secretary. That is not only disrespectful to the House; it is disrespectful to his correspondence secretary and may explain the delays—
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
You are not in your usual place, Chris Vince, but I can still see you.
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Order. We have two further urgent questions, a statement and lots of business, so let us try to keep questions and answers short.
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Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
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Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline
I call the Father of the House.
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English Whisky: Single Malt Definition
I call the shadow Minister.
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English Whisky: Single Malt Definition
That is the end of the urgent question. I will suspend the sitting to allow proper notice of the statement. The sitting will resume at 2.32 pm; the bells will ring two minutes before.
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Thirlwall Inquiry: Final Report and Recommendations
Order. Because the ministerial statement ran over, the shadow Secretary of State has six minutes.
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Thirlwall Inquiry: Final Report and Recommendations
I call Samantha Dixon. I appreciate that this is particularly sensitive for you, so please take your time.
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Thirlwall Inquiry: Final Report and Recommendations
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
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Student Loans
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Treasury Committee. The Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which time no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement. These should be brief questions and not full speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair and not the relevant Government Minister. Those on the Front Bench may take part in questioning.
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Student Loans
Order. We have about 10 minutes for questions and answers, so they must be brief.
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Public Accounts Committee
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Public Accounts Committee. The hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of her statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement. These should be brief questions, not speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee member, not the Minister. Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
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Points of Order
I understand that this issue is important to the hon. Lady, but she also knows, because of her experience, that it is not a matter for the Chair. She has most definitely got her point on the record, and no doubt those on the Treasury Front Bench will have noted it and will ensure that the right Department hears of it.
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Points of Order
The hon. Lady has raised an important issue, but as she is far more experienced than even I am, she knows that this is not a matter for the Chair. If she wishes to pursue it, she can raise it with those in charge of the independent complaints and grievance scheme, but I do not wish to become involved in matters that do not involve the Chair.
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Probation Early Release: Residential Properties
17. What steps he has taken to ensure the equitable regional distribution of residential properties used by the Probation Service during the early release scheme.
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Probation Early Release: Residential Properties
Properties such as rundown B&Bs have long been used as houses in multiple occupation for services such as probation, and councils in large metropolitan areas use them for adult and children’s social services, effectively as a dumping ground. This is a cross-Government problem that has been going on over some time. Will the Minister assure me that through the early release scheme they will not add to problems such as those in Blackpool, where the concentration of HMOs used by multiple services creates transient populations?
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Topical Questions
I previously put it to the Prisons Minister in one of these sessions that anyone who fails a drug test on arrival in an open prison like Kirkham does not belong there and should be sent back to a more secure prison. The Minister said they were concerned but could not agree to that. Has the Department had any more thoughts on at least consequences for failing a drug test on arrival at an open prison?
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Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. First we had a jobs tax that reduced the number of jobs in the economy, then we had a schools tax that reduced the number of children in independent schools, and then we had a farm tax that reduced the number of family farms. Given that correlation, have the Minister and the Government learned anything from this socialist tax-addicted way in which they are governing the country, and will the tourism tax do anything other than reduce tourism?
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Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline
The Minister seems confused about why the word socialism would be used in a negative context. It has something to do with the fact that every country that socialism touches it destroys, and we have a prime example here. Perhaps the Minister will take his head out of the sand and look at my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Douglas Lumsden), who is sat on the Conservative Benches off the back of a stunning by-election win that was a referendum on the North sea oil and gas issue. That shows the complete lack of confidence the industry has in the SNP in Scotland and in Labour here. It is time to drill, baby, drill.
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Sepsis Awareness Month
I beg to move, That this House has considered World Sepsis Awareness Month. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on sepsis, I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate. To the best of my knowledge, this is the very first debate in the House of Commons Chamber dedicated to sepsis. In the past, this devastating condition has been discussed only in Westminster Hall debates or raised through brief interventions and questions. Having sepsis debated on the Floor of the main Chamber during Sepsis Awareness Month is a major milestone, not only for Parliament but for the clinicians, charities and bereaved families across the country who have campaigned tirelessly to bring this condition out of the shadows. I would also like to thank the co-sponsors of this debate: the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who cannot be here this afternoon but who led an important Westminster Hall debate on this subject two years ago, and the hon. Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson), vice-chair of the APPG. Sepsis strikes indiscriminately, ruthlessly and with terrifying speed, without regard for background, class or, indeed, political allegiance. It is vital that we all stand united in our determination to tackle this deadly condition. It is a challenge that completely transcends party politics. On Sunday, communities across the world marked World Sepsis Day. The international theme for this year could not be more apt: “Invest in Sepsis—Save Lives.” The World Health Organisation recognises sepsis as one of the leading causes of death and disability globally, estimating that sepsis-related illnesses account for one in every five deaths worldwide. In the United Kingdom, NHS England has made it clear that sepsis claims more lives each year than lung cancer and represents the second biggest killer in our hospitals after cardiovascular disease. Every single year, an estimated 245,000 people in the UK develop sepsis and, tragically, more than 48,000 lose their lives. That is a higher annual death toll than bowel, breast and prostate cancers combined. Behind every one of those figures is a family left grieving and asking the same agonising question: what if? What if the symptoms had been recognised an hour earlier? What if antibiotics had been administered sooner? What if someone had simply asked, “Could it be sepsis?”? Madam Deputy Speaker, as you know, I do not approach this debate purely as a parliamentarian dispassionately analysing policy responses to one of the leading causes of avoidable death. I stand in this Chamber today because almost a decade ago, by the grace of God and the extraordinary skill and care of NHS staff, my life was saved. In January 2017, I was a relatively fit and active 40-year-old Member of Parliament. I had developed what I assumed was merely a winter infection. Like many people would, I assumed that I could push through it, take some paracetamol and carry on working. I travelled out to Strasbourg to take part in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Sunday evening, but within days my condition collapsed. An ordinary throat infection triggered a catastrophic immune response. My body, in attempting to fight the infection, began attacking its own tissues and organs. By Thursday, after seeing a French GP, I flew back to Britain. On Friday, I attended the official launch of the local enterprise zone that I had campaigned hard for in my constituency, but as soon as I arrived there I was so ill that I had to rest in the back room. On Saturday morning, I got out of bed, started putting my suit on over my pyjamas and told my wife Laura that I had to come down to Westminster to vote. Like many in politics, my behaviour can at times appear to some people to be a little idiosyncratic; fortunately, Laura realised that, even for a Member of Parliament, that was not entirely normal behaviour. Laura rushed me to Russells Hall hospital in Dudley, where my blood pressure plummeted into septic shock and my organs began shutting down. My life was hanging by a thread. The medical team had to place me in a medically induced coma. Doctors told my family that my chances of pulling through were no better than one in 10. For 11 days, I lay in intensive care on life support—or, as my family sometimes remind me, I slept through the difficult bits. When I did finally wake up, my muscles had wasted away—I could barely lift my arms, let alone stand or walk—but it could easily have been so much worse. What if Laura had left me to get some rest that Saturday morning while she took our daughter to her dance class? Above all, what if the nurse who examined me at the accident and emergency department had not had the insight to check whether the symptoms, which could easily have been mistaken for other illnesses such as flu or meningitis, might be sepsis? I owe a debt of gratitude to the doctors, intensive care nurses and other staff at Russells Hall hospital that I can never repay, but as long as I have the honour of serving in this House, I will use my voice to fight for sepsis patients and their families. There is a common misconception that sepsis is primarily the result of hospital-acquired infection, but the evidence demonstrates the exact opposite. A major 2024 population study led by Professor van Staa, analysing linked primary care and hospital data in England, showed that the vast majority of sepsis cases are community acquired, developing in homes, workplaces and local communities long before a patient reaches an acute hospital bed. That research also uncovered deep health inequalities in sepsis risk. The risk of developing sepsis is significantly heightened by socioeconomic deprivation, by frailty, by being housebound and by chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes and learning disabilities. Exposure to antibiotics in the previous two months was also identified as a strong risk factor. While ethnicity was not an independent biological factor, black and Asian individuals suffer from a higher prevalence of predisposing conditions including diabetes, chronic liver disease and severe anaemia, which puts them at a greater risk, so tackling sepsis is not merely a technical, clinical issue but a fundamental challenge of health inequality and community prevention. One of the most critical clinical lessons learned in recent years is the direct link between viral infections and sepsis. For decades, the public and the medical community viewed sepsis almost exclusively as a bacterial complication, but the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that viral infections can trigger the exact same catastrophic septic response. The overwhelming cytokine storms, microvascular clotting and rapid progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome and multi-organ failure seen in covid intensive care units are classic manifestations of viral sepsis. It is thought by many experts in the field that the vast majority of covid deaths were a direct result of septic reactions. Sepsis is not defined by the pathogen; it is defined by the body’s life-threatening immune reaction to any severe infection, whether bacterial, viral or fungal. That reality extends directly into long-term recovery: millions who had covid-19 are still living with long covid. Sepsis survivors have known that reality for generations under the name of post-sepsis syndrome. In my case, it is little more than some nerve damage and tiredness, even a decade later, but for many the symptoms are more severe. Up to 50% of sepsis survivors suffer prolonged physical, cognitive and psychological impairments from debilitating fatigue and cognitive brain fog to severe muscle weakness and post-traumatic stress disorder. The clinical insights gained from viral sepsis during the pandemic must now be used to build integrated recovery pathways for all sepsis survivors. To curb preventable deaths, a health system must act decisively in several areas; in the interests of time, I will go through just four. First, the system must ensure consistent rapid recognition. Time is the single most decisive factor in sepsis survival. Clinical research shows that administering appropriate antibiotics within the first hour of a patient presenting to an emergency department with sepsis reduces the risk of death by a full one third compared with delayed treatment. Secondly, the system must ensure that where sepsis is suspected, appropriate clinical escalation pathways are in place. Where sepsis is suspected, early warning systems such as the national early warning score 2, or NEWS2, have saved countless lives, and the ongoing roll-out of Martha’s rule across NHS trusts, which has already saved thousands of lives, is vital in ensuring that patients and loved ones can trigger an immediate independent critical review when they sense deterioration. Thirdly, we must take advantage of innovation in rapid diagnostics. We know that administering broad-spectrum antibiotics within the golden hour that I spoke of massively increases survival rates, but clinicians often face the dilemma of judging whether that is compatible with responsible antimicrobial stewardship. Deploying rapid molecular diagnostics, bedside biomarker technologies and wearable continuous physiological monitors can remove that guesswork, and provide targeted care before septic shock takes hold and it can be too late. Fourthly, although Britain has in many ways led the way in developing and enhancing sepsis care and treatment, we must be open to learning from established international models and practices. Sweden utilises standard sepsis alerts to prioritise patients at triage, and implements mandatory post-discharge telephone follow-ups. France, where I was when I was taken ill, has since introduced an integrated national sepsis plan spanning pre-hospital recognition, emergency pathways and structured rehabilitation to help patients return to employment. Australia established a national sepsis clinical care standard built around seven quality statements, ensuring end-to-end consistency from triage through to survivorship. The publication in July of the sepsis modern service framework by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care is an important step towards doing that and learning the lessons from around the world; I warmly welcome it. The framework is one of the first to be published under the 10-year health plan. Its headline goal, “to reduce deaths, severe complications and long-term harm from sepsis…by at least 25% by 2035” is a target that every member of this House can endorse.
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Sepsis Awareness Month
The hon. Lady makes a really important point. We know how these conditions can come round in a cycle. In order to break that cycle, we will need multiple years of vaccination. The modern service framework contains a number of vital commitments, but I particularly welcome: action 4 on improving the audit and feedback of sepsis-related clinical data across trusts; action 5 on updating training for NHS staff, social care workers and unpaid carers; action 9 on optimising care pathways and expanding access to rapid diagnostics and specialist advice; action 11 on standardising digital specifications for early warning systems such as NEWS2; and action 12 on reviewing and addressing capacity gaps in critical and enhanced care. A strategy on paper will not be enough to save a deteriorating patient on a cold winter weekend in an overcrowded emergency department. In the other place, my noble friend and our former colleague Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, who has spoken with enormous courage about his own life-altering encounter with sepsis, has repeatedly tabled written questions seeking clarity on how this framework will be delivered. Regrettably, the answers provided by Ministers in the Lords to date have been rather generic and vague, and lacking in operational detail. We cannot accept boilerplate responses on a condition that kills 48,000 people each year, so I have two direct questions that I hope the Minister will answer in her response to today’s debate. First, what are the specific milestone-driven timelines for the delivery of each of the actions set out in the modern service framework, and when will trusts and integrated care boards be expected to have these standardised pathways fully operational? Secondly, can the Minister assure the House that the Department of Health and Social Care is prepared to commit the dedicated investment required to make this framework work? When we call for investment, we must be clear that funding sepsis care is not an open-ended cost. It is one of the most cost-effective investments that the Department can make. Sepsis currently places an enormous financial burden on the national health service and the wider economy. Too often, cases of missed or delayed diagnosis and treatment result in weeks of high-cost intensive care unit admissions, in emergency readmissions due to incomplete recovery, in complex surgical interventions including amputations requiring lifelong prosthetic and social care support, or in the permanent loss of working-age adults from the workforce. Investing in rapid bedside diagnostics, digital early warning systems, specialist outreach teams and structured post-sepsis rehabilitation can dramatically reduce the lengths of stay in intensive care, lower readmission rates and keep people in work. Early intervention is not only clinically imperative; it is economically sound, and the theme “Invest in sepsis—save lives” is a call for smart preventive healthcare investment.
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Sepsis Awareness Month
Absolutely. Of course, some infections are almost unavoidable, but where infections such as UTIs can clearly be reduced with the right care and precautions, we must do everything we can to reduce those risks. Every Member in this Chamber has constituents whose lives have been permanently transformed by sepsis. Some Members have been directly impacted or have watched as close family and friends have encountered sepsis. We know the speed with which it strikes, but we also know that with early detection, immediate treatment and high quality critical care, thousands of lives can be saved. We have the clinical evidence and we have the modern service framework. What we now need is clear delivery timelines, rigorous parliamentary accountability and the necessary financial backing to make this ambition a reality. If the Minister can deliver this and provide the resources and tools that the NHS needs to implement it, the modern service framework truly can be a turning point in the fight against this silent killer and the battle to save thousands of lives.