Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,779 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the location of many of these sites are in rural areas, which are often served primarily by retained firefighters? They are a long way from where specialist firefighting resources would come from, and that does not seem to be taken into account fully in the planning process.
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. When the last bank in town closes in communities such as Tenbury Wells and Pershore, it is a cumbersome process for them to qualify for a banking hub. He mentioned the role of the regulator. Does he agree that when the last bank in town closes, a banking hub ought to be provided automatically?
I call Ian Lavery to wind up very briefly.
This is a subject in which I might have more than a passing interest.
Members will be able to see how many are standing. I do not intend to put a formal time limit on, but if Members can keep their contributions below five minutes, everybody will just about squeeze in.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I call the shadow Minister.
Order. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) might like to read the handbook on how Parliamentary Private Secretaries should behave. It is not their job to be heard. If he wishes to contribute to a debate on a policy area, perhaps he should resign his position and return to the Back Benches.
Order. The right hon. Gentleman will know that he cannot intervene from the Front Bench in an Adjournment debate.
Economic resilience is a key part of our national resilience. One of the strongest ways in which the Government can have it is to support the delivery of goods and services via British companies in the first instance. Does the Minister agree? Can he update the House on what steps the Government are taking to bolster procurement policies so that they put British supply chains first?
Mobile phone signal across Bromsgrove and the villages is wholly inadequate. It regularly drops out, and that is if we are lucky enough to get a signal. Things are getting worse, particularly following the rolling switch-off of 3G signals across the country. A recent real-world study in Worcestershire demonstrated that signal is actually 1,000 times worse than operators claim it to be. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is unacceptable and that my constituents deserve better? Will she support my efforts to secure a debate on the Floor of the House and a meeting with the Minister to discuss improvements?[Official Report, 9 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 8WC.] (Correction)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) on securing this important debate. In a world dominated by contactless payments and banking apps, it is very easy for some people to live cash-free and seldom visit a bank, but we must not overlook the 3 million to 5 million people who still rely on cash on a daily basis. These consumers are far more likely to be digitally excluded and financially vulnerable. I recently conducted a cash access survey in my constituency. Some 55% of respondents said that they use cash on a daily basis, and 91% believe the Government should safeguard the acceptance of cash as a valid form of payment. It is vital that access to cash and banking services is protected. It is important for those who use cash, but we must consider the resilience of the wider banking and financial system too. We have recently witnessed a major power outage at Heathrow, as well as large-scale power cuts in Iberia. We are increasingly aware of threats posed by hostile states that want to conduct cyber-attacks to disrupt our national infrastructure, so cash and local banking services must remain accessible to allow society to function in the event of any major disruption. This is a matter of national security. In Bromsgrove and the villages, we are experiencing the effects of changes in the way that people bank. With the closure of Lloyds and Halifax, Bromsgrove high street will have lost four banks in just three years. Such banks are a lifeline for so many small businesses—particularly those run by independent entrepreneurs—as well as for local residents, who rely on banking services every single day. If we are not careful, Bromsgrove risks becoming a banking desert with an increasingly empty high street. I know that Bromsgrove is not eligible for a formal banking hub, so I call on the Minister to review the true impact of the closure of banks across the country, and to review the criteria that a community has to meet in order for a banking hub to be provided. In the limited time I have left I want to draw attention to the further decline of high streets and the important role that banks provide in drawing people into their communities. Banks often occupy some of the most prominent, most beautiful and most significant historic buildings. Once they are vacant, they are often left empty, and they become eyesores and further symbols of the deterioration of high streets, which affects so many of the communities that we represent. I ask the Government to review the criteria for banking hubs, and to focus on serious, long-term business rates reform that will enable high streets to thrive into the future. Collectively, as a House of Commons, we must put pressure on the banking system to ensure that cash access remains a part of our functioning economy, and that as many of our constituents as possible have access to day-to-day retail banking services.
In a society where collective trust is depleting, does my hon. Friend agree that the presence of face-to-face banking services and banking customers being able to have a direct in-person relationship with real people is one step that we can all take to help rebuild collective trust in the institutions that underpin society?
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) for securing it, and for his comprehensive introduction. I would like to talk about this issue in the context of rural constituencies such as mine, as many other hon. Members have this afternoon. First, farmland is not just another piece of land, but an irreplaceable national asset. The ability to produce food domestically is a fundamental pillar in our sovereignty and our national economic strength. In recent years, we have witnessed prime agricultural land being converted into sprawling arrays of energy installations with solar farms, and now we have the increasing prevalence of battery energy storage systems appearing in glorious countryside across the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is not present, has raised this point comprehensively in the past, as well as safety concerns around battery energy storage systems and the displacement of good agricultural land for energy production. We are at real risk of displacing this good agricultural land and of energy production facilities becoming, in effect, a new cash crop. These facilities area incredibly lucrative for farmers who feel stretched—it is very difficult for them to make a living in this challenging economic climate. I am pleased to be supporting the new clause to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to protect agricultural land in the long term. There is another point I would like to highlight beyond those that have been made by many other Members today. We face the exposure of our energy supply chains to foreign countries—countries that may not share our values—and the long-term depletion of our energy resilience if they manage to embed their infrastructure within our national energy infrastructure in the UK. In Weatheroak in my constituency, we have been battling an energy storage application bang in the heart of north Worcestershire’s green belt. This glorious countryside will be fundamentally changed forever should the application go ahead. I am grateful to Tony Williams, the chairman of Weatheroak residents association, for having written to me on numerous occasions. I have engaged with many local residents who share the concerns that have been raised today, namely around the proximity of such sites to villages and the potential danger should there be an accident or incident whereby one of these sites catches fire and the sparsely dispersed rural fire services are unable to get there. We also have the impact on roads, which has been picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). Rural communities across the country are facing a fundamental change in their identities, at the expense of industrial applications that are often granted at ease with little regard to the identity and character of those villages. I know that this is a concern that so many of my constituents share. If I had three asks of the Government, they would be: that they pause the granting of battery energy storage system applications in the first instance; that they consider a minimum radius for the proximity to settlements within which applications can be granted; and that they ensure that fire services across the country are statutory consultees in every case where there is an application for a battery energy storage system of any size.
I thank the Leader of the House for making time this week for the debate on dementia, which was well attended, with a time limit imposed on Back-Bench speeches. However, I think she owes an apology to the proposers of the debate on the Thursday before we rose for recess, when the debate was curtailed at the Government’s response so that they could make a statement, after which you, Mr Speaker, had to adjourn the House for an hour, after individuals who wanted to speak were unable to do so, before the Government finally made a statement. In addition to the business that the Leader of the House has announced, next Thursday there will be a statement from the Business and Trade Committee. I am glad that the right hon. Lady has continued the experiment of having Backbench Business debates after Government business, with the Windrush Day debate, which I am sure will be well attended, and indeed the estimates days that have been announced. Applications are now open, and we will consider them at our meeting on 17 June. We will give priority to the Departments that were not chosen for the estimate day debates earlier this year. In addition, the business in Westminster Hall next week is as follows: on Tuesday there will be the debate on the United States Agency for International Development’s pause on funding and its impact on UK international development; on Thursday there will be a debate on legal recognition of humanist marriages, followed by a debate on long-term conditions; on Tuesday 17 June there will be a debate on hydrogen-powered aviation; and on Thursday 19 June there will be a debate on the role of careers education in improving social mobility, followed by a debate on Down’s syndrome regression disorder. Over the weekend and earlier this week, we had our first cross-party delegation from India for many years. It included parliamentarians from all religions, and I know that many MPs and Members of the House of Lords had the opportunity to meet them. Two things came out of that delegation loudly and clearly: first, that the uneasy truce that exists between India and Pakistan could at any time be violated if further terrorist actions emanate from Pakistan; and secondly, that India is reaching out for support from the west on security and defence measures, and we must assist it. May we have a statement next week, probably from the Foreign Secretary, on what we in this Parliament will do to support India in its need to quash terrorism?
Many of the schools in my constituency have been unable to take up the offer of breakfast clubs because, frankly, they do not have the facilities—either to provide breakfast in the first place or for the children to eat in, which is a real challenge. I want to ask the Minister about one specific issue, because I am concerned that it may create a cliff edge for parents. If the parents of a child attending school qualify for universal credit but then later get jobs, or better-paid jobs, and therefore no longer qualify for universal credit, would that child then lose their eligibility for free school meals? That could create a real problem for many parents and present us with a cliff edge. I am sure that is not the Government’s intention, but we need to make the position clear.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I have never seen so many police officers in Huntingdon high street as were on patrol the afternoon that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary came to my constituency to announce the neighbourhood policing plan. Due to the police allocation formula, Cambridgeshire’s entire allocation of the 13,000 officers is just 30 new warranted officers over the remaining four years of this Parliament. Across eight constituencies, that is fewer than four officers each—one officer per constituency per year. Presumably, the starting state for the 13,000 is the number of police officers in 2023, when the pledge was made. That was 141,760. In the year to March 2023, we recruited 16,300 officers; in the year to March 2024, we recruited 9,479 officers, a fluctuation of nearly 7,000. What are the intra-year recruitment figures, and how will recruitment targets fluctuate with natural churn? In March, the Home Secretary stated to me that the redeployment of 3,000 officers from other duties would involve “redeploying existing police officers and backfilling by recruiting other officers to take their posts.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 678.] The Home Secretary does not have operational control of police officers, so when will she outline how that will work in practice? Which police forces will be forced to redeploy officers, and how many will each need to redeploy? What other services will suffer while new officers are recruited to take the place of more experienced officers? In April, the Metropolitan police announced swingeing cuts as a result of pressures from the Chancellor’s Budget. The Royal Parks police is being disbanded, as are officers in schools; the dogs unit is being slashed by 7% and the mounted branch by 25%; the MO7 taskforce, which tackles moped and e-bike robbers as well as gang-related crime, is being reduced by 55%; and cold case investigations are to be cut by 11%. The Met is also cutting 20% of the flying squad and potentially removing its firearms capability. Even after a £1 billion cash injection by the Mayor of London, the Met still has a £260 million shortfall and will cut 1,700 officers, staff and police community support officers. In December, Sir Mark Rowley suggested that it might have to cut 2,300 officers. The Mayor claims that his cash injection has saved 935 of those roles, so presumably the remaining 1,350-odd are frontline officers. Last Friday, six police chiefs went over the head of the Home Secretary and appealed directly to the Prime Minister. They stated: “A settlement that fails to address our inflation and pay pressures flat would entail stark choices about which crimes we no longer prioritise. The policing and NCA workforce would also shrink each year.”
I absolutely welcome that additional funding, but the point that I would most like to make— I have made it previously—is that the police allocation formula, which determines how much funding each of our police forces receives, is grossly unfair. Constituencies like mine in Cambridgeshire do not receive a fair allocation of the overall pot. I will press the Policing Minister: as she well knows, because we have had a lot of conversations about this, I encourage her to revise that next year.
I believe that it is remunerated budgetarily in order to cover that.
But, I agree, not enough, and the police allocation formula would do well to look at policing as a whole so that every constituency gets its fair share of police funding. As we all know, the population has grown, and the police allocation formula is from 2014. I met the last Government when I was still a candidate to ask them to review the formula, and I press the new Government to do the same.
They did as much work on it as the hon. Gentleman’s Government have. That reduction in police strength comes before we consider the fact that the numbers that the Home Secretary based her calculations on were completely wrong in the first place, as the Government announced, very quietly, on 19 March. Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 29 advised that their published combined neighbourhood officer and PCSO numbers should be revised down. That resulted in an overall downwards revision of 2,611 compared with the figures published last year. In total, that, plus the 1,350 from the Met and the 7,000 annual fluctuation, means that the 13,000 figure looks a lot more like 24,000. Can the Minister outline why the baseline figure of 13,000 has not been revised since it was first announced in February 2023—even to account for the shortfall caused by miscounting? The general public deserve to have police that are resourced to protect the communities they serve. My constituents deserve to have their fair share of police officers, not a token amount based on a police allocation formula that is years out of date.
As a Bedfordshire MP, does the hon. Lady agree that the south-east allowance that both Bedfordshire police and Hertfordshire police receive should be extended to Cambridgeshire police as part of the tri-force area, so that all three branches are paid equally for their work in that area, given that my officers serve in Bedfordshire as well?
All of us in this House share the concern that the disabled and the vulnerable are losing access not just to cash, but to services. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is high time we asked the Government to ensure that the FCA reviews its guidelines on this?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery). It is an honour to speak about the impact of the decline of local bank branches, which is an issue of such importance to my constituents. The closure of the Santander in Rustington is just the latest blow. The need for a robust and fair system of banking hubs is urgent. High streets have changed beyond recognition. Once, we had Barclays, NatWest and Lloyds on every corner. Now, 6,300 branches have closed since 2015, which is a 64% fall. Cash use may have dropped to 14% of payments, but millions still depend on it, especially the elderly, the disabled and the vulnerable. In places like Rustington, entire communities have been left without local banking. Some are forced online against their wishes, even when they cannot afford the technology or cannot physically use it. At the same time, they are increasing their exposure to phishing attacks. My constituent Roger Mallock has lost a life-changing sum of money to cyber-scammers. Post offices cannot fill the gaps; the queues are longer, and they cannot handle complex banking needs or take large cash deposits. Despite my appeals to Link, Rustington was denied a banking hub. I raised the matter directly with the Prime Minister and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. As one constituent put it: “Banks are licensed by the Government. Those licences should come with a duty to maintain local branches.” Consider a Ukrainian couple who came to Bognor Regis under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Thanks to the Santander branch, they opened accounts, and they continue to rely on in-person support due to language barriers; without it, they would lose hours from work and face serious barriers to managing their finances. They are not alone: many elderly and less mobile customers depend on face-to-face services. Banking hubs offer a limited solution. Only 108 hubs are operational out of the 224 planned, and they can take up to 12 months to open. Worse, the FCA’s rules are too narrow, focused only on cash rather than on broader services. The last Government introduced the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, which was a start but does not go far enough. Banking is not a luxury; it is a lifeline. We must ensure that digital innovation does not leave millions behind.
The Government’s own cyber experts Innovate UK have warned the Government that the proposed Chinese embassy at the Royal Mint threatens to compromise the telephone and internet exchange that serves the financial City of London. The experts are now telling the Government what everyone else has known all along: the super-embassy poses a super-risk. Yet the Deputy Prime Minister’s office has said that any representations on the planning application have to be made available to the applicants. Perhaps the real Deputy Prime Minister can clear this up: are the Government seriously saying that if MI5 or GCHQ have concerns about security on this site, those concerns will have to be passed to the Chinese Communist party, or has the Deputy Prime Minister got it wrong?
The previous Government did not engage—sorry, they did not disengage. At the heart of this are two simple facts. First, the Government already know that this site is a security risk. It is a security risk to the City of London and, through it, our economy and the economies of all nations that trade in London. Secondly, the Government have the power to block it. Ireland and Australia have both already blocked similar embassy developments. Why are this Government too weak to act?
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has already told the House about plans for a reduction in civil service numbers. Since he came into office, how many civil service roles in the Cabinet Office and its agencies have been eliminated?
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster very skilfully talked about the future, rather than the past year. I will let him know that during the past year, the number of roles in his Department and its agencies has increased by 828. That cannot give the House a great deal of confidence that his future cuts will be effective. Will he guarantee that that is a one-off and that he will go back and ensure that the Cabinet Office is actually reduced in size?
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) for calling this important debate and giving us a chance to raise issues on which we largely agree. Businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, the foundation of our communities and the building blocks of our country. I am proud to stand as a pro-business, pro-enterprise, pro-innovation Member of Parliament. The changes introduced by the Government, notably in the autumn Budget, to reduce the retail, hospitality and leisure relief introduced by the previous Conservative Administration from 75% to 40% will decimate the support available to independent small businesses, and will undoubtedly lead to closures, higher prices for consumers and less footfall across our vibrant high streets and shopping centres, particularly in my constituency. The examples that stand out for me in Fareham and Waterlooville include national retailers. Following the announcement in the Budget, Sainsbury’s in Waterlooville announced the closure of the café, as part of 3,000 job losses across the country. There is also the Canvas Printing Company, which stood proudly in Fareham high street for 16 years. It recently announced its closure, citing online shopping, reduced footfall and, particularly, business rates and staff costs as having contributed to that decision. Whether we are talking about a large business giving jobs and opportunities to local people to earn a living, or a small business where people have scrimped, saved and sacrificed for decades out of a passion to provide a service and generate revenue, those are devastating examples. However, I want to talk about a larger project in my constituency: the regeneration of Waterlooville shopping centre. I am sure everybody here knows about Waterlooville, but for those who do not, its history is so rich. British soldiers returning from Waterloo are said to have stopped at an inn called The Heroes to celebrate their victory at that famous battle. Legend has it that many of those soldiers later settled in the area; it was originally called Waterloo, but to avoid confusion, it changed its name to Waterlooville. That is why we have a fantastic local pub called The Heroes, which stands proudly in Waterlooville. However, I should say that whether it is The Red Lion in Fareham, The Chairmakers in Denmead or our cherished Heroes in Waterlooville, our pubs are struggling under this Government as a result of the national insurance rise and the punitive changes to business rates. We are working on the regeneration of Waterlooville shopping centre. The town has a proud history, and it is the largest town in the Havant borough council area, but it needs investment. There is a masterplan, and we are pleased to have welcomed new developers recently. On Wellington Way, for example, a company has refurbished the first floor for residential accommodation, and new commercial enterprises are going in on the ground floor. We have seen new companies, such as The Exchange, Babyccinos Play Café, Mini Town, Jolly Jellies and the dance school. I recently visited the Waterlooville Business Association, which is thriving and working hard to bring a more visible brand to the area. We are urging Lib Dem-controlled Havant borough council to proceed swiftly with adoption of the masterplan. Businesses are waiting for it to be adopted, so that they can have the requisite level of confidence to bring investment to Waterlooville. I am sorry about the Government’s changes, but I will continue to champion the regeneration of Waterlooville shopping centre.
The Minister says that he cannot afford the £2 billion price tag of maintaining the relief introduced by the last Conservative Government. How, then, is he paying for the £30 billion surrender deal in which this Government are giving up sovereign territory, the Chagos islands, to Mauritius?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) for securing this debate. It would be remiss of me not to mention my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman); as a rifleman, it is great to hear Waterlooville spoken about. The 95th Rifles fought there, and it was one of our battle honours. Every day is a training day. This hugely important debate is relevant to every constituency up and down the country. I firmly believe that small businesses are the backbone of the UK economy. We must do as much as we can to release them from red tape and to reduce taxes, in order to see the great growth that will support our high streets. After the autumn Budget, I set out across South Shropshire to speak to as many businesses as possible. I launched my small business campaign, which I was delighted to see Ludlow Nutrition win, and which showed me how much love there is for small businesses across the constituency. I recently held a roundtable with the chamber of commerce, which I thank for its work in bringing businesses together across the constituency to hear about the highs and lows and to hear what is working and what is not. I wanted to go further, so I partnered with Love Bridgnorth and launched a local high street campaign. When it is finished, I will be delighted to share the results with the Minister so that he can see what local residents have said about high streets. What encourages them to come to the high street? What are the problems? What would they like to see from the Government? I have put those questions to thousands of people, and I look forward to seeing the results. I want to talk about two core areas. One is retail shops on the high street, and the other is hospitality and local pubs, of which South Shropshire has some of the best. Local businesses are facing uncertainty because of the impact of the national insurance rise and the change to business tax. They are tending to do one of a few things: stopping recruiting, not investing in expansion to go for growth, or putting up prices, which can be inflationary. Those are all things that they do not want to be doing. Earlier in the year, I got many of the local publicans together in Ludlow. The Minister has heard me talk about this before, but I really want to push Ludlow as the fine food capital of the country. The publicans told me what was working, what was not and what was hard. If Ludlow, with all its great pubs and its fine food festival, is struggling to make a profit, that is a concern. Some of those pubs have been trading for 20 years. They have the same footfall and the same turnover, or sometimes even more, but they cannot make a profit. It is not like covid or a financial crash; it is an ongoing situation that they are finding it exceptionally hard to deal with. They are not asking, “How do I survive?” They are saying, “I don’t know what the future looks like.” I have spoken openly about how I have been teetotal for 13 years, because I used to drink way too much and had a problem with alcohol. So why am I talking about pubs? In South Shropshire, a constituency of 700 square miles, they are a lifeline. They are community assets. People would otherwise be sitting at home on their own come to them, because that is where their friendship groups are. They are a hub for much of our constituency. The other day, I enjoyed going to the George and Dragon at Much Wenlock. There is also the Mill at Leighton and great food at the Mytton & Mermaid in Atcham, where I have taken my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge before now. I will not push my time limit, but I ask the Minister to look at reducing VAT to 12.5%, as we did through covid, to help out pubs and small businesses. I also ask the Government to reduce business rates back to 75% until we know what the new rates will look like.
I really like the idea of permanently lower tax rates. Can the Minister confirm that that is for all businesses, and that no businesses will receive tax rises?
I beg to move, That this House has considered the performance of the Environment Agency in the East of England. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I have secured this debate to highlight concerns about the operational performance of the Environment Agency in the east of England. This reflects both my time as the Secretary of State overseeing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the run-up to the general election and numerous interactions with it in my capacity as a constituency MP. As we are meeting the week before a comprehensive spending review, it is perhaps prudent to start with the usual excuse given by organisations for poor operational performance: a lack of people or funding. According to the Environment Agency’s own annual outcomes, its full-time equivalent staff increased in the last Parliament by 21% from 10,791 in 2019-2020, at the start of the Parliament, to more than 13,000 in 2023-24. Over the same period, its expenditure has gone up from £1.4 billion to £2.2 billion, so it has significantly more people and funding, while at the same time showing a remarkable lack of transparency or accountability to Ministers or Members of Parliament, and a remarkable lack of willingness to take enforcement action against those causing the worst levels of environmental damage.
The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point, and he is correct. It seems that the Environment Agency is very happy to go after what it may perceive to be easier and more law-abiding targets, but as the most serious environmental harm is caused by serious criminal gangs, there is often a reluctance to take on those organisations in the way that it does an individual farmer. That is why this also points to a need for a much more fundamental reform of the Department’s relationship with its arm’s length bodies, as well as its accountability to Ministers, regardless of which Government is in office. This debate is focused specifically on the east of England, and I want to give three examples of where that operational performance really illustrates concerns across the boards with environmental damage being caused. Before doing so, given that I have been the Secretary of State, I thought it relevant to touch on a national example to show that this is not simply a constituency or local issue. With that in mind, let me inform the House about Hoad’s wood, which is a site of special scientific interest and an area of outstanding natural beauty that has been covered—as you probably know, Sir Roger—in more than 35,000 tonnes of illegal waste. We might have thought that a SSSI would be a priority case for the Environment Agency, and one where it would be most certain to take action. However, so concerned was I as a Minister that I had to take the very unusual step of issuing a ministerial direction. No ministerial direction had been issued in the Department in the preceding seven years before I arrived as Secretary of State, so this was an unusual but necessary step to compel the EA to take action on a SSSI. Again, I think that speaks to some of the issues. Even so, the situation has dragged on, with contractors not appointed until November last year, work not beginning until March and completion not expected until at least 2026. That points to some of the issues with the most valuable sites, never mind more routine sites.
The hon. Member absolutely catches the point raised earlier about the lack of accountability and transparency, and the highlights fact that, although the EA has had more money and resource, it is not targeting priority cases or long-standing issues, while often telling Members of Parliament that they are priorities. I will come on to that, because there is a wider issue of which the Minister needs to be aware: the slowness to act and lack of accountability. Turning to the east of England, and my own constituency in particular, let me give three examples that cover a range of scenarios. The first is the dumping of more than 122,000 tonnes of waste at Saxon Pit in Whittlesey between October 2017 and February 2018. The EA’s initial response was to say that it was totally unaware of 122,000 tonnes of waste being dumped—but, regardless of whether the EA had been asleep at the wheel, we would expect it to then act. In its initial response, the EA said that the operator must dispose of all the non-conforming waste by 10 October 2018; yet seven years on the waste remains in situ. The EA also promised prosecutions, because this was such a serious case. I will quote just one of many letters that I exchanged with the EA over this period. In 2021, the then-chief executive Sir James Bevan promised that “Saxon Pit is being treated as a priority”. The EA’s investigation took a further 14 months to complete, but in June 2022 it said that a “final set of interviews…will take place shortly”. In October 2022, the chief executive asked me to, “be assured that my teams are prioritising this work over other competing criminal inquiries”. Three years ago, the EA said it was prioritising this serious case, with more 122,000 tonnes of waste, over other cases. It was a priority case. Yet three years on, and seven years on from the incident, we still have no prosecutions. To go back to what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said a moment ago, what cases is the EA prosecuting with its additional resource, if it is not prosecuting at Saxon Pit? I thought that the Minister might reflect, “Perhaps that was simply an issue of the past Government. Perhaps things have changed—the Environment Agency has perhaps changed its approach.” I therefore thought it would be helpful to give a second example, from the last year: a very serious pollution incident at King’s dyke, in Whittlesey, the same town as Saxon Pit. I have seen internal papers from the Environment Agency that show that it described the problem, and reported it to the Department, as a category 1 pollution incident. For those not familiar with the term, a category 1 pollution incident is the most severe level, involving a “serious, persistent…or extensive impact…on the environment, people…or property”. The BBC reported that an estimated 900 fish were killed in close vicinity to an Anglian Water overflow pipe, and that the pipe had discharged for 23 hours due to a suspected pump failure. When I spoke to Anglian Water and the Environment Agency, no other credible reason was given for the serious incident. I was then told that water samples had been taken and would be quick to establish whether the overflow pipe was the cause of the category 1 incident. I was told on 10 October 2024 that the lab tests were under way, that it would take a week for them to determine the cause, and that an internal decision would be taken on enforcement in November. November then became December. December became January. We kept chasing, and we were told, “No, it’s no longer January; it’s May.” We chased again in May, and were told September. This is an issue that Ministers say—and I do not doubt for a minute their sincerity—is an absolute priority for the Government. We have the most serious level of pollution incident, a category 1, which happened in September, yet the Environment Agency says it will not tell the public of Whittlesey the cause of it for at least a year—even though I suspect that, internally and within the Department, it is already known whether Anglian Water was the cause and whether, therefore, a criminal investigation should follow. I do not believe that is a sufficient level of transparency or accountability. Let me give a third example. As a former Minister, I thought I would try to pitch these examples in a way that is constructive across the House. One debate that the Minister may recall was led by one of her parliamentary colleagues, the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker). In it, he raised cross-party concerns—indeed, there were a number of the Minister’s colleagues present, though it was one of her colleagues on the Front Bench—around the environmental damage of incinerators. That is something that many charities usually more closely aligned with the left of politics, such as Friends of the Earth, have raised concerns about, but it is also an issue that many on the Government Benches have highlighted, and one that I have consistently raised myself. We now know that DEFRA’s own analysis suggests that there is enough national capacity for incineration. As more waste is recycled, the requirements for incineration come down. A BBC report highlighted the serious damage caused by these incinerators and by waste being burned because of anaerobic digesters. Most of that is now plastic, and it is the dirtiest way to generate power. No one would have thought a Government committed to the environment would want to see more incinerators being built. Incineration is on a par with coal as the dirtiest form of energy generation, yet we still do not have clarity from the Government on whether environmental permits will remain in force for incinerators that have not yet been built. One of those is in Wisbech. To put this incinerator in context, it is so big that one half its size in the neighbouring constituency was turned down—so they doubled it in size to make it a national scheme and take it outside local planning. It is sited 700 metres from the largest school in the district, accessed solely by single carriageway roads, with a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the fens. The Environment Agency, in issuing a permit, says it does not consider any of the environmental harm of transporting waste from six different counties to this small market town, because the permit only applies to the curtilage of the site itself. I simply ask, given the cross-party support on this issue, whether that decision by the Environment Agency is fit for purpose. I will add one further point. Is it not very odd that the decision to grant an environmental permit was made during the general election purdah period, a time when organisations are not supposed to take controversial decisions? I hope the Minister will follow up on that, because I know that many of her own Government colleagues are concerned. Where incinerators have not yet been built, we should not be embedding the environmental damage that so many charities and environmental groups, and so many of our own colleagues have expressed concern about.
I do share them. Just for the Minister’s benefit, the hon. Gentleman’s constituency will be materially affected by the Wisbech incinerator in terms of transport; when the developers doubled its size in order to take it out of the local planning process, they created a different problem of how to get sufficient waste to run it. Therefore, it has to take in waste from further and further afield. As Wisbech is a market town, accessed by single carriageway roads—the A47 is single carriageway into Wisbech—bringing waste through my neighbour’s constituency will cause huge traffic there, as it will in many other constituencies across the eastern region. A BBC report highlights the severe environmental damage that would be caused by the proposed incinerator, but the hon. Gentleman also highlights a wider point about lack of transparency. As in the King’s dyke fishing example, as a constituency MP one chases on behalf of constituents to get them some answers, yet organisations feel they are unaccountable. That brings me to my final point. It will not surprise the Minister that, as a member of the last Government, I quite frequently raised my constituency concerns—before I was in the Department—with relevant Secretaries of State, and I know that they raised those with the EA; yet, as we see with Saxon Pit, it still failed to take prosecution action over seven years while saying to people locally, “It is a priority case.” As Secretary of State myself, I found the organisation so unresponsive that I had to take the unusual step of issuing a ministerial direction. In fact, I issued two in my six months in the Department, where none had been issued in the seven years before. I fear that Ministers now need to look at the accountability to democratic control of not just the Environment Agency, but Natural England—not least given the three interventions we have heard from colleagues across the House.
It does need fundamental reform. I became Secretary of State very close to the general election, but one of my first acts was to issue an instruction to take more rigorous enforcement action more generally on water pollution. I know that current Ministers want to see a more robust set of actions. I come to my final point. Not least given the Government’s majority and where we are in the parliamentary cycle, there is an opportunity to look at the Department’s relationship with its arm’s length bodies. The Department of Health and Social Care is going through that exact process with NHS England. I encourage the ministerial team to reflect on that, not least for when in some years’ time they are explaining how, if there is lack of action, that sits with some of their priorities. Irrespective of that, as we heard in interventions from across the House, the EA’s lack of transparency and accountability on its operational performance needs to be addressed. I encourage the Minister to focus some time in her busy schedule on doing that.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Colleagues can look around the room and see how many people are seeking to participate in this debate. I am giving you warning that after the opening speech, there will be a time limit of two minutes. I am sorry that it is so short, but we have the alternative of not accommodating everybody, and Mr Speaker likes everybody to be accommodated.
Order. The hon. Lady is quite entitled to give way, but where Members choose to intervene, it will affect my judgment on where in the batting order they are called.
Order. If hon. Members intervene, injury time is added, which means that not all Members will get called. If you look at the clock and the number of Members who want to intervene, you can do the sums for yourselves. It is up to you whether everybody gets called or not. If we stick to two minutes, we should be able to get everybody in. I hope that is clear.