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The Minister says that there will be no cut to capital budgets, but of course he is talking only about the public sector. Has he seen the CBI Economics research that suggests that there will be severe capital budget reductions in the private sector—the very sector that creates the wealth on which everything else depends?
The Minister is always both gracious and generous. Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) about the impact of BPR, imagine a company that is worth £11 million. It will have a £2 million BPR tax payment to make. The person who inherits the shares will not have that £2 million, so they will have to extract that money from the business. Am I right in thinking that that would require £3.3 million to be deducted and taken out of the company in order to pay that £2 million in tax? Is that in the right order?
Does my right hon. Friend worry, like me, about the background of those on the Government Front Bench? I do not want to disrespect either of the individuals sitting there now, because they are both fine people, but neither has ever, so far as I am aware, been involved in running a private business. They do not understand how private business works, and they equate the inheritance of money—for example, from a father to a daughter—with a family business. A family business needs to continue, because of all the employment that arises from it. Equating the two and saying that it is half the normal inheritance tax is to show a complete failure of understanding of the economy of this country and the economy of a family business.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and follow the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), who is rare, as a Member on the Labour Benches, in feeling such commitment to maintaining and fulfilling the promises he made, not least to his farmers. I will begin by focusing on the farming issue. Too often we look at it in an overall, structural way and make comparisons with other types of inheritance, rather than looking at the specifics of the farming industry. A third of farmers do not make any profit at all, and those who do make profit make very little. Although we do not have exact data, it would appear that well over half of farmers make a 1% return on capital employed or less. Even if Treasury Ministers do not have any business experience—sadly, Labour Treasury Ministers typically do not—they should at least practice numeracy. If they are numerate, they can work out that if someone makes just 1% return annually on the capital value of their business, it would take 20 years of earnings to pay a 20% tax—and a third of farmers do not make anything at all. How is someone who makes 1% profit going to pay a 20% tax? This is not some freak thing that has just happened; it is consistent. The Government, to be fair to them, seem to have woken up in one sense. They said, “We must have a new initiative”—I forget what it is called—“to increase the profitability of farmers”. Well, yippidy-doo, well done for that. But should they not increase the profitability of farmers before imposing a tax that, mathematically, arithmetically—whatever other word you want to use—they cannot pay? The truth is that farmers cannot pay it. More than half of farmers literally do not have the profits to allow them to pay that tax. That simple truth sits at the heart of this. These businesses are prepared to do it because of their lifestyle, personal commitment and love of farming. They do it in order to put food on our plates that is among the highest quality in the world and at costs that are among the lowest in Europe. The Government could think about this from a public policy point of view too. There are businesses that are prepared to do that—unlike any other business sector I can think of or have ever experienced, or would certainly ever have entertained being part of myself. There are businesses that would take such low returns, work all the hours God gives and bring brilliant food to the tables of people up and down this country at low cost. Why on earth would the Government want to drive the people running those businesses out so that the people they say they want to attack—namely, huge billionaires and vast trust-based businesses—can gobble up those very farms, which are currently run by decent people in our communities who do all that good and ask for very little in return?
Yes, indeed—and they did. We have seen it. All the evidence is there, and it is happening now, regardless of the argument from Ministers as to what percentage of farms will be affected. We can see it in all the stats. Those stats are available—particularly, I would have hoped, to Treasury Ministers to find out what the real-world impact of this policy is. The real-world impact is that we have seen a drop in investment in the farming industry. That is a disaster. It may be that the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway is standing alone, but let us look at the enthusiasm on the Labour Benches for the Second Reading of this major Finance Bill that is supposed to be doing such good for the country. There are more than 400 Labour Members, but they are not exactly here to cheer it on. I think they—and, I hope, the Minister—are realising just how counterproductive this is. The one thought I will try to implant above all is those numbers, which mean that it is absurd. Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine generally being a business owner today, and not necessarily in farming. You hike your way up the mountain to get to success, wading through an eternal shower of tax rises and hacking your way through a jungle of red tape. Then, on your death bed, you are met not first by the grim reaper but by the Chancellor, armed with one final sting: a double tax bill for your children. This is the reality facing family businesses: if the Government cut business property relief next year, that will lead to a double tax bill. I asked the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who opened the debate, to comment on how that double taxation works. He was unable to respond off the top of his head to my specific numbers, which is entirely understandable, but I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, armed and perhaps refreshed by the brilliant people in the Box behind her, will be able in summing up to address the specifics of the tax reality for a business faced by the double tax bill that thousands of sons and daughters will receive when their entrepreneurial mum or dad passes away. From April, the 100% inheritance tax relief that family businesses rely on will be capped at just £1 million; anything above that will be taxed at 20%. Take a small company worth £11 million: the inheritance tax bill alone will be £2 million. But as far as I am aware, the sons and daughters of most entrepreneurs in Beverley and Holderness do not have £2 million tucked away down the back of the sofa. To pay that bill, which is a tax not on the business but on the people who inherit the business, as they are outside the business—I am not sure whether people have focused on this enough—they will be forced to extract that money from the business itself, usually in the form of dividends, and those dividends are taxed at rates approaching 40%. So a £2 million inheritance tax bill becomes a £3.3 million hit on the business, with £2 million to pay the Chancellor and another £1.3 million to pay—oh yes—the Chancellor, simply because the money was invested in jobs, equipment or the business overall rather than left idle.
As so often, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Again, the talk is of hitting the fat cats and big businesses, but it is the huge corporates that will benefit. They will snap up the farmland and the small business. This is not fair taxation; it is irrational double taxation. The consequences of this policy are real. If the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan)—I will call him my hon. Friend, if I may—is right about the Treasury being obsessed with the bottom right-hand corner, I hope that if no other argument weighs with the Minister, this might. A report by the CBI suggests that far from raising the welcome £1.4 billion forecast by the Treasury, the changes are likely to reduce tax revenues from family-owned businesses by £1.8 billion by 2030. That is yet another example of this innumerate Government having the exact opposite outcome from the one they wished, as investment falls, businesses restructure and growth is choked off. Instead of supporting the Government’s claim to be pro-business and pro-worker, this change could cost more than 200,000 jobs, on top of the 200,000 that the Chancellor has already cost the country. That is money sucked out of the economy and into Labour’s bottomless black hole. The impact will be felt directly in Beverley and Holderness, where it is expected to put 237 local jobs at risk, according to the CBI. Those are apprentices—
I had better not. That means apprentices not taken on, machinery not upgraded and businesses downsizing. The changes will leave us all poorer, so I ask the Minister and the Chancellor a simple and constructive question: if the Chancellor will not reverse these changes to business property relief, will she at least consider a targeted mechanism so that when these dividends are necessarily extracted, solely to pay the inheritance tax bill, those dividends are not taxed again?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way while he is on the subject of energy. Of course, what should have been in the Bill was an end to the additional tax levy, because there are no sky-high profits any more, there are no excess taxes that need to be paid, and 1,000 people a month are losing their job in the oil and gas industry.
I wonder when the people of this country will catch up with the hon. Gentleman and start to express the appropriate gratitude for all that has been bestowed on them by this Government.
I am reminded again of Shakespeare, who I believe said: “Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
If we look at employment over time, we see that employment was growing every month until a certain thing happened in July last year: Labour came to power. As of this morning, unemployment has officially gone up 5.1%. As it stands today, there is a 25% increase in the number of people who are not in employment. How can that possibly correspond with a mission for growth?
It is a pleasure, as always, to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition. I thank Members across the House for their contributions to the debate, in particular those on the Conservative Benches, and notably my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), who has been a ferocious champion of farmers not just in Yorkshire but across the country. He also spoke well about the family business tax and his business, Fibreline, which has been adversely impacted. My right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) sought to give those on the Labour Front Bench a maths lesson, although I am afraid it is a little late for that and entirely futile. I enjoyed very much the speech by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I enjoyed his A. A. Milne reference almost as much as I enjoyed the unexpected mention of Tinder. Of course, when it comes to politics, I encourage everybody to swipe right. [Laughter.] I thought I would give it a go. Let me highlight how prominent the family farm tax has been in this debate and acknowledge the contributions from the hon. Members for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) and for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), who spoke well, speaking out against their own party’s policy when it comes to farmers. That is not an easy thing to do, but it is the right thing to do, and we appreciate it. For my part, I am struck by a sense of déjà vu. Here we are again, with another Finance Bill that targets working people’s pockets while failing on the Government’s No. 1 mission of economic growth. This Finance Bill is actually double the length of Labour’s first Finance Bill, and I fear it will bring double the pain to the British public. Last year we had the now infamous Halloween Budget, which scared the living daylights out of business, and this year we have the nightmare-before-Christmas Budget, which is essentially finishing off the rest of the country. This Bill feels less like a carefully wrapped present and more like something hastily stuffed into a stocking at five minutes to midnight, with the receipt missing and the instructions written in a different language. We were promised a gift to working people, but what we have instead are higher burdens and lower incentives.
As always, my hon. Friend points out something that is important for the whole House to consider. I will come on later to the broader assessment of the OBR, which does not make for pleasant reading for Labour Members. Tonight, Labour Members must decide whether they are content to vote for a Bill that makes their working constituents poorer, punishes family farmers and family businesses, and breaks promise after promise that they made to secure their seats. For all the bravado that we may hear later from the Minister, there is now a growing gap between what Ministers are saying, and what families and businesses are living. That gap has now become so visible that it has followed Labour Members out of the Chamber and into the real world. At this time of year, pubs should be putting up mistletoe; instead they are hanging up signs saying, “No Labour MPs welcome.” This is a Christmas tradition that this Government have invented all on their own. When a Government cannot get a warm welcome or a pint in the local pub that so badly needs the trade, it might be a good idea to reflect on why. There is another growing gap between what Labour Members told the public before the election, what they repeated after it, and what is in the Bill. First, the Bill is anti-working people. Only last year, Ministers stood up and promised the House that this Government would not freeze income tax thresholds. They could have stopped there, but they did not. They went further and said that to do so would amount to a tax rise on working people’s payslips. Yet here we are today, with this Bill that freezes income tax thresholds to 2030-31. The message to working families could not be clearer: if someone gets up early, goes to work, does the right thing and provides for their family, Labour will not back them; it will tax them. What will the Labour Government do with all the money they are raising? They will not pay down the national debt—debt is going up. They will not employ more teachers; there are fewer of them now. They will not employ more police officers, either; there are fewer of those, too. In fact, they will fail to deliver on almost everything they promised while in opposition. Instead, they will turn hard-working taxpayers’ money into handouts to appease their left-wing Back Benchers. This Bill is anti-aspirational and anti-business. If someone decides to start their own business, or wants to take over a business or a farm from their family, what does this Labour Government think of them? As we have heard extensively today, this Budget takes further what they introduced at the last Budget: the family farm tax, as spoken about by so many colleagues, and a family business tax that will destroy aspiration and entrepreneurialism. Time after time, the Chancellor has been warned of the impact of these changes to inheritance tax. She has repeatedly dodged questions in the House, as she is doing this very moment. She has ignored concerns from the business community, and run scared of meeting the National Farmers’ Union. That is not leadership; that is not owning one’s decisions. Finally, we were promised economic stability and management, yet the OBR’s own assessment of the Bill tells a very different story. Growth will be slower over the forecast; inflation will be higher. Debt will rise every single year of the forecast, and taxes will rise to their highest level on record. Just this morning, we learned that unemployment continues to spiral to levels that we have not seen in years. This was not a Budget for the wellbeing of the country; this was a Budget to try to preserve the careers of the embattled Prime Minister and the embattled Chancellor. As we approach Christmas, it is traditional to reflect on who has been naughty and who has been nice. We are told that Father Christmas checks his list twice, but the British public need only glance once at this Finance Bill to know that they have been seriously let down. They know exactly which list the Chancellor belongs on. It does not matter if they work hard, run a family business or farm, and have saved responsibly for their retirement; even in death, through the Bill, the taxman still comes a-calling. Under the Bill, there is simply no way that hard-working British families do not end up poorer. Nobody voted for that, and we will certainly not be voting for it tonight, either.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and to take part in this debate about planning policy for quarries. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for securing the debate. I appreciate that many hon. Members on both sides of the House have local examples and experience of this issue, and I thank those who spoke before me for sharing their experiences and those of their constituents. Our quarries and mineral extraction sites are of great economic importance to the UK. Nationally, we are rich in key mineable materials such as lithium, nickel, tungsten and rare earth alloys. Furthermore, we are a nation in need of more homes to help make the dream of home ownership a reality for people up and down the country; we are in need of more buildings; and we are in need of more infrastructure. Quarries are a key factor in providing many of the materials that our nation needs to build more of those things. Having said that, the Government already have 2,000 active quarries at their disposal, and I am not sure what number the Minister would need to get close to the Government’s increasingly distant target of 1.5 million new homes. Despite that, it is important to recognise that no two quarries are the same, and that their context—be that their economic value, social impact or environmental footprint—is always of great importance when considering planning permission. That is why the national planning policy framework has long made it clear that those factors are critical to assessments of the planning conditions for quarries. The current draft says that, in areas of mineral extraction including quarries, minerals planning authorities must always keep the health of local communities and people in mind, alongside the potential impact on “the natural and historic environment”. That includes making sure that “unavoidable noise, dust and particle emissions and any blasting vibrations” are accounted for, ensuring that their impacts are mitigated and controlled. It is always important that such safeguards are in place when a new quarry is proposed or when opportunities for expansion are explored. The application of these safeguards, namely the health and safety aspect, is currently governed by the Quarries Regulations 1999, which include an approved code of practice. The regulations define our quarries as “an excavation or system of excavations made for the purpose of, or in connection with, the extraction of minerals or products of minerals, being neither a mine nor merely a well or borehole or a well and borehole combined”. We are, therefore, talking not just about small sites or eyesores, but about vast landscapes of machinery, dust, industry, and health and safety risks. In 2024-25, falling from a height, being trapped by something collapsing or overturning, and contact with moving machinery accounted for 65 fatal accidents at work in the UK, or 67% of the top five most common fatal accidents. All those kinds of accidents have been recognisable health and safety concerns in quarries, and the 1999 regulations sought to prevent their number from being higher. There must be safeguards to protect the local people and local communities who suffer health and safety risks from quarries without ever even working in them. For example, it is important that proper safety procedures are discharged when planning permission is granted for quarries. That includes proper adherence to paragraphs 135 and 137 of the approved code of practice on the 1999 regulations. The code states in respect of regulation 16: “Barriers are appropriate where it is reasonably foreseeable that members of the public, including children, are likely to trespass on the site and could suffer injury if they did so… where there is evidence of persistent trespass by children which places them at significant risk, sophisticated metal paling fences may be required.” It is not just the quarry site itself that should be considered when a quarry is proposed; consideration of the impacts on local people and their local area must extend to transport concerns. The approved code of practice makes it clear that “Where site vehicles cross a footpath or turn onto a public highway, particular consideration needs to be given to safeguarding the public. This may involve discussions with the planning, highway or police authority.” My hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) presented a Bill on this very topic in 2023. I recall his concerns about small rural roads—rural infrastructure that is completely unsuited to the task—facing 100 or more lorries a day. I know that many hon. Members from across the House have shared or could share examples and figures to much the same effect, and I hope the Minister is listening to those examples closely. In assessments of planning applications for quarries or anything else, the views of local people are not a burden; they are among the most important factors. Putting local people and local concerns high up the agenda is a long established and democratic precedent that successive Governments have followed. However, I fear for local voices under the current Administration. As the Government railroad their Planning and Infrastructure Bill through Parliament, it is increasingly clear that the planning system that they are not just envisaging and planning for but actively creating is one in which it is much harder to raise local concerns. As I mentioned at the start of my speech, it is vital that the economic benefits of quarries are properly realised. That is especially the case when more homes are needed right across the country in the light of the Government’s failure to build anything close to the target for their first year in office. However, His Majesty’s Opposition do not believe that local people and local democracy should suffer for that. The Government are eroding trust in the planning system and widening the gulf between themselves and local people. That is why we are clear that local voices, and not just those in Whitehall, must play a key role in any planning decisions. Having heard the important testimonies of Members from both sides of this House, I believe that is especially the case for developments such as quarries.
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. This Labour Government’s last planning framework began pushing development on to rural areas, prioritising concreting over the green belt and green fields rather than focusing on supporting building in urban areas, which is where we need to build most. From what the Minister has just said, it sounds as though the Government are going to double down on this approach with an all-out assault on the green belt. Over the past decade in London, under its abysmal mayor, Labour has conspicuously failed to build the right amount of housing, and now it is going to fail to build the right kind of housing in the right places in the rest of England. It clearly prefers to target building in rural areas, while not building in the cities and urban areas where demand is highest and much of the necessary infrastructure already exists. At the current rate of house building under Labour, which is at a dismal low, the Government will fail by some distance to meet their target of 1.5 million homes. House building is falling under Labour, with the number of additional dwellings delivered in 2024-25 falling by 12,810. If the delivery of net additional dwellings continues at this rate, Labour will deliver its target not by the end of this Parliament but in seven years’ time. This Labour Government’s record on house building is dreadful—they delivered fewer homes in their first year in office than we delivered during a global pandemic. This is not a good sign for Labour’s first year in office, and now this Labour Government are intent on ignoring the voices of local people up and down the country while imposing top-down housing targets, disproportionately in rural areas, and tightening their grip through Whitehall-imposed targets. The reality is that Labour is prioritising building on rural areas while claiming that it is grey-belt land. It is now returning to something that the previous Labour Government did, namely garden grabbing. The previous Conservative Government removed the top-down diktats that forced councils to demolish gardens, but the Minister has just promised “the redevelopment of low-density” residential plots, introducing higher buildings at street corners and “infill development” within “residential curtilages”. It is clear that, because of Labour’s failure to build homes on brownfield land, it now has residential gardens in its sights. The Government should be prioritising and incentivising brownfield development first, and making it easier to build on brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, but they are not—they are only paying it lip service. If Labour really wants homes to be built where they are needed, it should think again about how its planning framework will actually deliver. There are many questions about the Government’s approach, but time is short, so I will restrict myself to four. The Minister states that there should be “a default yes for suitable proposals for development of land around rail stations within existing settlements and around well-connected stations outside settlements, including on green-belt land”. In that context, what is a “well-connected station”? The Minister proposes “action to secure a diverse mix of homes” and “stronger support for rural social and affordable housing”. What form will the support take? What regulations will the Government relax or scrap to support housing delivery? What incentives will they offer to get brownfield development actually to happen? Finally, the views of local people are not a burden in assessing planning applications; they are among the most important factors. Putting local people and local concerns high up the agenda is a long-established and democratic precedent that successive Governments have followed. However, I fear for their voices under the current Administration. The Government railroaded their Planning and Infrastructure Bill through Parliament and are now following up with this statement. It is increasingly clear that the planning system that this Government are not just envisaging and planning for, but actively creating, is one in which such local concerns are much harder to raise. His Majesty’s Opposition do not believe that local people and local democracy should suffer for that. The Government are eroding trust in the planning system and widening the gulf between the Government and local people. That is why we are clear that local voices, not just Whitehall’s, must play a key part in any planning decisions. We will continue to scrutinise the framework as the Labour Government implement it, and we will hold them accountable as it begins to negatively impact local communities.
One of the contributing factors to the court backlog is the state of disrepair of our court infrastructure. Will the Minister set out how many of the more than 500 Crown court rooms are currently unusable because of their state of disrepair?
It was a great privilege to serve under the captaincy of the hon. Member this summer for the Lords and Commons cricket team, in our valiant defeat against Marylebone cricket club. I note that, despite that valiant defeat, neither I nor he has received a call-up from Brendon McCullum or Ben Stokes in Adelaide. My constituency is home to some wonderful clubs: Epping, Theydon Bois, Loughton, Buckhurst Hill, Roding Valley and High Beach. Such clubs are the beating heart of our communities. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government should do all they can to support those fantastic institutions, which offer so many opportunities to people young and old?
The hon. Member is talking about sporting and cricketing heroes. Kids need to be able to look up to those role models and heroes. There is no doubt that broadcasting deals have ploughed money into grassroots cricket. Does he agree that the ECB should look at enabling more access to international cricket on terrestrial TV, so that children watching the Ashes or the England-India series can see these heroes and aspire to be like them?
My constituents would have much more sympathy with the Minister if he could explain why, when it comes to house building, Leicester city’s target will go down by 31%, whereas Hinckley and Bosworth’s and north-west Leicestershire’s targets will go up by 59% and 74% respectively. It means that we have 10,000 houses proposed near Twycross, and thousands near Burbage and Barwell. What would he say to my constituents about the unfairness of the discrepancies between targets for city and brownfield sites, and targets for green-belt sites and agricultural land?
This week, the Government pledged action on violence against women and girls—an issue that I know many Members across this House care deeply about, including many Labour Members—but this so-called earned progression model will see thousands of rapists, child groomers and paedophiles let out of prison earlier. Shockingly, last week a Government Minister said that the reason why they could not be excluded from the model was that it would increase the risk of inaccuracies in release calculations. Does the Minister think that a single victim of rape should expect the offender to be let out of prison earlier because the Government cannot calculate the release date properly?
The House will have heard that the Government are refusing to exclude those types of offenders. I am pleased to say that a number of Labour Members share my discomfort about the measures that the Government are taking; in fact, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) tabled an amendment to exclude existing offenders from the measures. Why does the Minister think that she did that?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) on securing this important debate. I declare an interest: I am an NHS consultant paediatrician and I have cared for those with gender dysphoria in the past, and am likely to do so in the future. As we discuss a fairly heated topic, we need to remember that there are people experiencing significant challenges, and they deserve the very best healthcare based on need and the best evidence. One challenge is that name and sex records are sometimes different from how people are referred to in a ward. The previous Conservative Government launched the Sullivan review, which found that a failure of NHS bodies to record biological sex meant that some people were not invited to sex-specific screening. It recommended that we should not combine questions on sex and gender, and that putting politics before patients threatens clinical care. When will the Government formally respond to the Sullivan report? When does the Minister expect to implement its important recommendations? How will the Government ensure that intimate care is provided by someone of the same biological sex where possible? I would also like to raise the issue of phalloplasty, which is a major surgery on healthy bodies, creating a penis. According to the NHS website, it causes urinary incontinence, loss of sexual function, and in 3% of cases, necrosis and loss of the penis. Is the Minister confident that the NHS is doing the right thing with this surgery? I want to move on to talk about children with trans identity. We have been talking about the puberty blockers trial. Why is that trial occurring? Drugs are, unusually, being given to children with physically healthy bodies. Despite telling Members of this House that he was comfortable with the trial, the Secretary of State said on Friday to the media that he was “uncomfortable”. Why is it being considered before the completion of the data linkage study recommended in the Cass report? Some 9,000 children went through the Tavistock gender identity and development services. Many regretted irreversible damage to their bodies. Why have the Government chosen to experiment on a new batch of children before the data linkage study recommended by the Cass report is complete? What steps is the Minister taking to secure that data? What steps is she taking to hold to account the people who are obstructing the data linkage study? What assessment has she made of the motivation of those obstructing a study that, at its heart, is designed to protect children? What of the trial itself? Some 226 children will receive puberty blockers—is that a limit? Will there be no more by law? They will be randomised into treatment now or treatment after 12 months, and analysed after just two years. When someone receives the drug for only a year, they will still be a child. What meaningful results can be obtained over that period? The true control group of those not receiving the drugs is not randomised, but chosen or matched from a different trial—the Horizon Intensive trial. Is the Minister concerned that that may introduce a bias? The criteria for getting puberty blockers under the trial require that one parent consents, not necessarily both—one might disagree—and the clinician must think it will benefit the child, but on what specific criteria will the clinician make that decision? Is the Minister concerned to ensure that ideology does not affect judgment? The Cass review said that the majority of children with gender dysphoria will recover from their distress without any medication, and that it is not currently possible to predict which children they would be. Does the Minister accept that the vast majority of children in this, the Streeting trial, are physically healthy children whose distress would get better without puberty blockers, and that this Labour Government are choosing to give potentially dangerous drugs to children, most of whom will not need them?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for his highly technical and broad speech, and particularly for his points about the environmental concerns about quarries. I want to talk about Whitehall farm and the surrounding area, in which there have been several applications for gravel extraction by Cemex. That part of my patch used to be entirely in the Runnymede and Weybridge constituency but, as a consequence of the boundary review, is now on the border between it and Windsor. The area is a wholly inappropriate place to build a gravel pit for a whole range of reasons. The need for gravel extraction at the site remains to be seen, bearing in mind that we are expecting the River Thames scheme, which will produce a lot of aggregate as part of the construction process. The traffic in the area is highly stretched, to say the least. Inappropriate HGVs going down small roads in Egham with level crossings are already causing traffic carnage.
That is a very good point. Of course we need aggregates to be produced, particularly for the construction sector. I find it confusing that there has been such a push for the site at Whitehall farm. Industry and the residential sector need to work with each other. We need industry because people want jobs, but there are egregious examples, such as the one I mentioned in my constituency, that just do not make sense. I will expand on that point later. To go back to the issues with Whitehall farm, the broader traffic impact would be highly problematic, as would the pollution impact, particularly for a local school that is downstream. There would also be a flooding risk if gravel extraction goes ahead. Aside from all the problems with the site, which I have been campaigning against, it is a really good example of the importance of community and elected representatives working together to stop something that does not work. Over the years, several applications have been made for the site, and I have worked closely with other elected representatives and the community group to oppose them. I pay particular tribute to Residents Against Gravel Extraction and Professor Moreton Moore, who has done a huge amount of technical work to fight against the site, and local councillors, particularly Councillor Jonathan Hulley, who has worked to oppose the developments. I am pleased that, as a consequence of the boundary review, my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) will join us. I know that he will also work to prevent the site. It is clear from the intervention from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and from what my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire said that this issue affects a lot of constituencies. The best defence against inappropriate development is close working among community groups and elected representatives. Will the Minister comment on how Labour changes to planning infrastructure will hamstring our ability to stand up for our local residents?
Brilliant. I am so grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I am glad that she has reflected on the importance in our democracy of Members being able to raise points with Ministers—something that I mentioned in my speech in terms of local representation. Given that she is explaining, in effect, that the system is perfect and there is nothing to see here, could she comment on why so many Members decided to participate in the debate?
I intend to start calling Front Benchers at 10.28 am, which means we are oversubscribed, so I will impose an indicative limit on speeches of four minutes, an exemplar for which will be Adam Jogee.
Whether the Minister gives way is not a matter for the Chair; it is a matter for the Minister.
After a string of high profile corruption cases across Mauritius, what confidence does the Minister have that the bounty he is about to bestow on the Mauritian Government, including on the Chagossian trust fund, will be spent appropriately and will not end up in the pockets of corrupt officials and politicians?
Since it is nearly Christmas, and in the spirit of goodwill, may I congratulate the Government on changing and updating the UK language on the Western Sahara? What will the Government now do to ensure that the good progress we have made since the 2019 association agreement with Morocco is sustained and improves further both our bilateral trade and our mutual security?
The Justice Secretary quite rightly says that justice delayed is justice denied, but summary justice is no justice at all. He based much of his argument on the views of the eminent Lord Leveson, but has he read the analysis of that review by Geoffrey Rivlin KC, who went through the report in expert detail and described much of it as unfounded and misguided because it was based on poor data. If the Justice Secretary has not read it, will he please do so before he comes back to the House?
As with business rates and the Budget, it might take a few days for it to be absolutely clear what is in today’s announcement, although I hope that it will not take quite as long as it did with the Budget. I think it possible that some things will be welcome, given what the Minister said about densification and brownfield, if that is accompanied—this would be consistent—by a rebalancing of the housing target formula, which resulted in a doubling of targets in places such as East Hampshire and many places in the far north-west and far north-east, and a reduction in parts of London and Birmingham. Will the Minister now revisit that formula?
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech, with some very colourful analogies, but if I may be prosaic, is it not the case that the Office for Budget Responsibility has not scored a single impact on growth in the overall Budget?
The Minister will be aware that in certain parts of the country the agricultural planning system has ground to a halt, preventing modernisation on farms, stifling investment and damaging British food security. I welcome today’s measures on biodiversity net gain, but may I ask him to go further by tackling Natural England’s barmy guidance on nutrient neutrality and preventing vexatious judicial reviews against planning applications, to free up the hundreds of millions of pounds in the system?
I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
Order. Before I call the next Member, I remind Members that if they are going to seek to make a complaint about the non-declaration of interests or the breaking of rules of conduct by another Member, that would be an issue better raised with the Standards Commissioner than with the Secretary of State today. Equally, if they are going to refer to another Member, they should have informed them in advance.
Order. The hon. Lady will know that we do not refer to other hon. Members by name but by their constituency.
Before I call the Secretary of State, may I entreat the hon. Member? I am sure he will have mentioned to the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) that he was going to reference him in the House.
I think you will find that you used the term “the hon. Member for Clacton”, if you wish to argue back with the Chair.
May I confirm with the hon. Member that he has informed the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)?
I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.