Sir Iain Duncan Smith
MP for Chingford and Woodford Green · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I raise the cases of Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai—both United Kingdom citizens—to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who I welcome to his position. Ryan Cornelius has been incarcerated for 19 years—trumped-up charges by a corrupt regime that is supporting a war in Sudan at the moment.”
“Has the Secretary of State been made aware of the case of Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong resident who is being prosecuted by the Administration in Hong Kong using the national security law?”
“A particular memory is that during the Maastricht debates, when, I have to confess, I and one or two others here were deeply rebellious, Ann lectured me from the Dispatch Box—she was in government—about how I should support the Maastricht treaty and the European Union, which rather worried me.”
“It was phenomenal, because she was so certain about the way that she was. Ann embodied something else: the passion that is necessary for us in this Chamber to make our arguments without the fear of any other person doing something to us.”
“We need to reiterate, and the Government and the Home Secretary need to specify, to all the social media companies that they must do something to close down the visceral, violent language that some people use in attacking others personally, as they did over Ann’s murder, which shocked me.”
“Friday was a funny day. I heard the news very early in the morning that Ann had died, and I was utterly surprised about that because she had seemed perfectly fit the last time I saw her, so I gave my condolences and spoke about it on the radio.”
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“Now is the time to act. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to relay that back to all the Government Departments. Let’s get on with this, do what is right and help our constituents.”
“We own it because we owe it to our constituents to save them from any further problems, any further violence, and any further threats and the theft of pets. I am a dog owner myself. Like many others, I would hate the idea of my wife or somebody else being smashed to the ground, beaten up and their pet stolen. My wife has just stepped down as chair of the trustees of the charity Medical Detection Dogs. The charity is currently working on detecting covid, with brilliant and immediate results, as high as any of the tests. These are very valuable animals that save our lives. They sniff aircraft to check there are no bombs or illegal currency, and they come to this place to run around the Benches and tell us that we are safe. They are not items; they are pets that are owned by people, but they are also incredibly powerful and save lives.”
“There are all these big things that we have to deal with.” I say there is no greater issue than the thing that affects our constituents’ lives and worries them and that leads to criminality, violence and the loss of the legitimate property of a pet—a dog, a cat or whatever. It is time to make this not a second-order issue, but a first-order issue. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that the issue has been kicked around the different Departments. I know that the Lord Chancellor is speaking to people in the next couple of days, so he takes an interest in it. The Home Secretary spoke to me and she took an interest in it, and I know that the Minister’s Department takes an interest in it. Can we please make sure that the Government recognise that whoever owns this problem, we all own it collectively as a Parliament—not even as a Government?”
“Sometimes knives are used. All sorts of stuff goes on, because pets now have a significant cash value. Cash is key here, which is why we want to ban the use of cash. It had a massive effect on the theft of lead from churches when we introduced a ban on cash for scrap metal. This is another angle of attack. I absolutely support what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said about microchipping. It is, however, only one element of what has to happen with regard to pets. We need to update the law. Far too many people out there are really worried. I know what goes on in Ministries. I had six years in a Department, so I know what civil servants say: “Oh, Minister, this is really a second-order issue. There are many more important things that we have to focus on.”
“But the gangs now see it as easier, cheaper and less of a problem to steal a pet such as a French bulldog and sell it on for cash rather than try to sell drugs on a street corner, because selling drugs gets them into much greater trouble. It leads to great violence to themselves and therefore becomes a bigger problem. Why would they not steal a valuable pet and sell it? They might get a £250 fine. They are just laughing their heads off. Dogs are now valuable merchandise. There is no real criminal penalty for stealing one, so why not do it? That is one reason why violent thefts have increased dramatically. What the hell do they care if they smash somebody to the ground, hurt them—normally an elderly person—and take their dog? We have heard stories of people being stamped on, their hands smashed and the dog taken off the lead.”
“A dog is a sentient being and therefore has greater value than just an object, and it is time we brought the law up to speed. The problem is that prices have rocketed. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North spoke about that earlier. The price has increased by 134% for chows, at £2,000 in October compared with £1,000 the previous March. Pets such as French bulldogs can be more than £5,000 each, and a litter can earn more than £30,000 for those who use them to breed. The problem is not just criminality. Violence is used by criminals to steal dogs to order, so we now have an increase in violent crime. Here is the problem; it has gone to the gangs. I live in an area of north-east London that has real problems with street gangs. The police work hard on it and so does the local authority. I make no criticism of them.”
“The BBC reported a 250% increase in dog theft crime in Suffolk alone during the pandemic, comparing the year ending July 2019 and that ending July 2020. The Metropolitan police report the highest number of dog thefts in the country. The number of stolen dogs registered on the DogLost website increased by 170% from 2019 to 2020, and 2020 has been one of the worst years ever for dognapping. It is bad enough that there is theft, which is a crime, but dog theft is the theft of people’s pets, not just property, and that is where the law falls down again. Pets are more than just property. I might own this chair behind me, but the chair does not greet me in the evening when I come back. It does not console me when there is a problem. It just sits there.”
“Legitimate supply was unable to keep up for the simple reason that legitimate breeders were unable to put dogs and bitches together to produce legitimate litters, so we were left with the criminal fraternity, which did two things. First, there was the increase in puppy farms, which is a disgusting state of affairs. A bitch will be stolen from somebody, she will be used constantly to produce young puppies until she is worn out within about six months to a year, and then the criminals have her put down or abandon her on the streets. That is really important. For those who care about this, it is not just a political game; it is very serious, because it is about unnecessary pain and the terrible lives led by animals who are taken by criminals. Secondly, there has been an enormous increase in dog theft.”
“New clause 15 would make it compulsory for microchipped pets to be scanned by vets, who must check that the microchip number is registered on an approved database and confirm the correct registered keeper. New clause 16 would make the offence of pet theft a specific category of crime carrying a much more significant fine and/or incarceration. I want us to come back to the idea that microchipping is important because it is necessary to understand who the owner is. I say that because there has been a staggering increase in crime relating to pets, and dogs in particular. As has been said, during the lockdown, many people who had never had a pet suddenly realised that they had more time on their hands and wanted one, so demand went up.”
“What is the point of chipping animals if the honest people in society are the only ones who get them checked? We need that to be made obligatory. My hon. Friend is quite right that there are between 14 and 16 separate databases, and that we need to ensure that the data is centrally available and read, so that we know who the original owner is and the right people—the people who originally owned the dog—have the say so on the decision about whether a dog is to be put down or not, as my hon. Friend said. I draw the House’s attention to the Report stage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, for which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) have tabled three new clauses. New clause 14 would require the sale of pets by cheque or bank transfer, basically banning cash sales.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Pritchard. May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) on his success in bringing this important issue to the public gaze and to Parliament, where we are charged with setting the laws and ensuring that they are properly policed? I fully agree with the petitions and the sentiment behind them. They are focused on chipping dogs and reading the chips. Currently, it is compulsory to have one’s dog chipped, but it is not compulsory, as I discovered to my surprise during lockdown, to scan those chips. That discovery led me to ask further questions. Many of the people whom my hon. Friend mentioned, including Debbie and others, showed me that it is literally incoherent that we have an obligation on owners to chip but not on vets to scan.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s leadership of the G7 over the weekend and many of its successful outcomes. During the G7, the United States proposed that all the countries adopt a common strategy on China’s disgusting use of forced labour and confront it. I understand that some of the European countries dissented from that approach, so I ask my right hon. Friend: does he stand with President Biden on this issue, not with his dissenters? If so, will my right hon. Friend emphasise that by informing the House when the Government will bring forward their promised export controls to keep goods produced by Uyghur slave labour off our shelves and the promised changes to the Modern Slavery Act 2015? Those things are very important and the Prime Minister can re-emphasise his strong credentials.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Just in case there was any lack of clarity from your statement, may I ask whether it is at all feasible that, should the Government now have recognised the power and force of your statement and of the objections of the House, they could come to you and say that they are prepared to bring their statement forward to 6 o’clock? Would the House be able to find time for that?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if he will make a statement on the treatment by the Chinese Government of witnesses giving evidence to the Uyghur Tribunal in London.”
“Will the Government immediately commit to complaining formally and publicly to those countries, and tell them to stop that process at all costs?”
“Do the Government support the involvement in the UK economy of firms that are complicit in the surveillance and monitoring of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including surveillance firms such as Hikvision and telecommunications firms such as Huawei? Why have the Government rejected the recommendation of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee to require companies operating in Beijing to provide convincing evidence that their supply chains are not tainted by forced labour? Where are the provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to give force to those concerns? As I said, China exerts pressure on foreign states to deport Uyghurs who have fled the country back to China—states including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”
“We know already that the Chinese Government monitor, intimidate and harass Uyghurs living abroad, including UK citizens. We have also seen attempts to intimidate Members of this House. An Amnesty International report collated evidence from more than 400 Uyghurs in 22 countries, including the UK, who live in daily fear of the Chinese authorities. The harassment included aggressive messages and threats. The first question is whether the Government will give evidence to the tribunal. If not, perhaps the Minister could explain why. Rodney Dixon, QC, has alleged that Uyghurs are deported from third countries to China, where they go on to face genocidal atrocities. What assessment have the Government made of the credibility of the harrowing evidence provided by the Uyghur tribunal, and how will they act on its findings?”
“The Uyghur tribunal is an independent investigation of alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice. It started its hearings between 4 and 7 June in London and will reconvene later in the year. It was set up because the Chinese Government have reservations on the genocide convention and a veto at the UN Security Council, which prevents investigation by the International Court of Justice, and China is not party to the International Criminal Court. It is a disgrace that, on Wednesday 9 June, the Government of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region held a press conference featuring relatives of Uyghur exiles abroad, who were coerced to give statements that claimed to falsify the testimony of those who had given evidence to the Uyghur tribunal.”
“The lessons of the 1930s tell us that if we assume that what Governments say is not what they mean, then we are destined to be trapped in the reality of what they do. That is where we are now. At the G7, which starts tomorrow, I would like my Government to insist that by the end of the meeting we make a clear, unequivocal, united statement that we will no longer put up with the abuses and the nature of the Chinese Government in their attacks on their neighbours and on their own people who live in China. If we do that, then just maybe we will have started the beginning of the change that will secure and rescue our own democracy and our own people’s freedom.”
“Ministers should ensure that Hong Kong is on the agenda at the G7—I started with that point and it is vital, so I want to come back to it at the end. I want the Government to review the rules around UK investment in companies that are complicit in human rights abuse and to be much more explicit about the supply chains, so that every single business or investor in the UK or abroad knows what the links are to the main companies all the way down the chain. That has not happened and it must happen. I believe that this is the single biggest threat facing liberal democracy that currently exists. We are being complacent. We have run to China to do business and, across the western world, we have therefore turned a blind eye to the abuses taking place for too long.”
“The idea that they depend on Chinese manufacturers for their own requirements and therefore do not want to upset the Government is one of the grave errors taught to us by history. Once started down that road, such a dependency leads further and further, so I hope they will review that. I want more Magnitsky sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials, and I would extend those further to those involved in the dreadful Uyghur massacres. We must also offer assistance to Hong Kong residents born after 1997. The BNO visa scheme currently does not cover Hongkongers born after 1997, including many young Hong Kong students who are now vulnerable to arrest. I say to my hon. Friend from the Foreign Office, the Minister for Asia, that we should work with like-minded partners to ensure that there are lifeboat schemes for these young Hongkongers.”
“Children as young as six are being taught to memorise the four crimes under the national security law that I have just mentioned. Schools are to inform police and parents about incidents involving political propaganda, and Hong Kong universities have now fired pro-democracy academics and cut ties with their student unions, following direction from Beijing. The real question is: what can we do? We have already done a lot, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling has mentioned. The BNO passports are key, although the Chinese are threatening not to recognise them, nor to allow people to leave the country on those BNO passports. I am saddened, but not astonished, by Germany’s response. I do not know if the German Government will one day wake up to the idea that no matter how much they appease the Chinese, it never works.”
“The Bar Council here should speak to those who are earning a living in Hong Kong and say, “It is time to draw stumps and come home.” I call on them to do that. The arrests and prosecutions are staggering: 10,000 people have been arrested and 2,300 charged since the anti-extradition protests started in 2019. Imprisonment for 10 years to life is now the norm, and subversion, secession, collusion with foreign political forces and terrorism are the new laws. They could have just put down terrorism because they are going to find them guilty anyway, so they might as well make it simple; I don’t know why they bothered with the others. However, they have gone through this prolonged process—no doubt they think it somehow persuades people. I am worried about the way this is going.”
“They have fired civil servants and the rest of the leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement; introduced national security education for children as young as six; amended Hong Kong’s electoral system to bar pro-democracy parties from running; and passed an immigration law that would allow officials to restrict freedom of movement into and out of the city. Arrests, prosecutions and jail sentences have been happening behind closed doors. I question why British judges are still earning a living in Hong Kong. I believe it is no longer possible for them to argue that they are modifying or ameliorating the situation. All they are doing is giving, in a sense, a bit of succour to a brutal, intolerant and debased regime.”
“On that basis, China can see no reason why it should continue with this troublesome area in Hong Kong, where people have been campaigning —we would say legitimately and freely—for the right to express their views, for a free press, and for democracy. For the Chinese Government, that is no longer necessary. The suppression that has followed has been swift, but in a way somewhat predictable; without the reason for Hong Kong to exist in this separate state, it must now be crushed. It is quite interesting to see what they have done in the past month.”
“It accepts no difference from its dictated opinions and views, and any attempt to question it is treated with brutality and incarceration, without any possibility of a free or serious trial. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling is quite right to have made the point that this regime has now trashed a particular international agreement. It has broken what it agreed to do regarding the rights, privileges and freedoms in Hong Kong under the “one state, two systems” model. I suspect that the real reason for that is that the Chinese Communist party signed the original Sino-British agreement only because it believed that it would act as a magnet for the reintroduction of Taiwan completely under the umbrella of its state authority. The problem is that the elected Government in Taiwan rejects that future.”
“Ms Ghani, it is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your stewardship. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) for securing this debate, on what is indeed the issue of the moment. It has not gone away; it will not go away. The debate is timely, because the G7 starts its meeting tomorrow and, frankly, if its major conclusion is not that China has become the greatest threat to liberal democracy here and around the world, it will have failed. It is as simple as that. Today, we are talking about Hong Kong, but we could just as easily be talking about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of the Uyghurs; or about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of Tibetans; or about the increasing pressure on the Inner Mongolians, the Falun Gong or Christians. This is a regime that is intolerant, dictatorial and brutal.”
“If organisations are to give Government advice on security risks, it must be completely separated on the basis that that is their advice; they must not temper it to suit the Government. We have seen that happen all the way through—it is not just this particular Government. They have made the right decision, and I will come back to that, but if we go back, this has happened also with Labour Governments and Conservative Governments of the past. Successive Governments have underestimated the growing risk that is coming particularly from China, but also from other countries. They were already aware of the risk from Russia.”
“It is always a pleasure to return to old arguments and ensure that they are still live, and I intend to do just that. From the beginning, I have supported the process and initiative taken by the Government; it was not without struggles early on. I do not intend to go into the details, but I will refer to them. Back in 2019 and early 2020, it became quite a battle over whose advice was better. It seemed to me at the time—and, in a way, I do not blame the Government for this—that the National Cyber Security Centre gave the Government poor advice about the security risk, which was tempered by the Government’s need to go ahead and get 5G moving. That is always the problem that we face.”
“We have a Committee that is cleared to the highest level of security in these areas, and it is important that we use that Committee. If the Government get private advice from the Committee about what it thinks is going wrong with their position, I think that will benefit and improve them. I therefore ask my hon. Friend to take my amendment into consideration and to answer that point, to think seriously about how we can strengthen the Bill further and, if he can, to make the reservations of this place felt to his colleagues in Government. We are deeply concerned about trying to ride two bicycles at the same time: recognising a deep and growing threat to democracy not just here but around the world from the Chinese Communist party, while trying to beg China to do trade deals with us, notwithstanding the fact that it behaves so badly.”
“I simply raise the question: if we think that this country and this Government —the Chinese Communist party, the Government of China—are such a potential threat, should we really be trying to reopen those doors, despite the sanctions that we have in place, the sanctions that they have put in place, and the very clear threat that they now pose to our security? I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I was going to move my amendment, which would have said that the Government should immediately declare many of these companies high-risk vendors by the very nature of the security law that exists in China. However, I would also say, in support of what has been said already, that the Government need to use the internal possibilities in our Parliament.”
“We sort of discovered that they had restarted, but there was no announcement from the Dispatch Box that we were restarting them. There are no dates involved, but the discussions are restarting, despite the sanctions against individuals and so on, and despite our sanctions against Chinese officials—although I still wish that we could do more. I note also that the European Union was heading in the same direction with its agreement, only now, because of the sanctions on its MEPs and so on, it has decided that it is not going to do that.”
“It is a state that is intolerant, that is suppressing democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, that is threatening Taiwan and India, and that has said that it is in possession of the South China sea. I could go on with that list. We can recognise the compilation of all those things and that there is a security risk, and yet at the same time in the other place we are told, “Don’t worry. We are still trying to do trade deals.” It is quite interesting that we have reopened an economic and financial dialogue under a JETCO—a joint economic and trade committee—which was originally paused because of the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. The discussions have now restarted, although we did not hear much fanfare.”
“I am getting so used to just doing what I am told by my hon. Friend when it is necessary that she only has to look in this direction and I give way to her—my apologies. What I was really trying to get to the bottom of is that I do not think that this is feasible any longer. The Bill illustrates the dichotomy that lies at the heart of the Government’s position. We are trying constantly to talk about these trade relationships, but at the same time we recognise that the country that we are discussing them with is a totalitarian state that is guilty of what many, including myself, believe is a genocide of a whole ethnic group—more than one ethnic group.”
“May I take my right hon. Friend back to the one bit of the Dyson report that has left us with a serious question? It relates to the behaviour of the then chairman and of Mr Bashir. Fraud is defined as a deception intended to result in financial or personal gain by false representation. There is no question from the report but that Mr Bashir made false representation to prey on a vulnerable woman to get her to do something that she would otherwise not have done. Furthermore, it refers to the fact, but does not conclude anything from it, that Mr Hall and others therefore covered up that process; again, I think that opens them up to the idea of fraud. Has my right hon. Friend decided to refer those people to the Director of Public Prosecutions?”
“We are also seeing mini umbrella companies, which some contractors sign up to, believing them to be compliant, only to then discover that they are employed by a company with a different name and owned by a director in, say, the Philippines—my right hon. Friend mentioned “File on 4”, which has raised this issue. The problem is that the worse the level of malpractice, the greater the rewards and kickbacks for the agencies, reducing the revenue for the Treasury. I have huge respect for my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, who is on the Treasury Bench and who will respond to all of this, and I am sure he and his colleagues in the Treasury are alert to this issue and understand that it is a major problem, but I cannot quite understand why we are not using this Finance Bill to start putting some of this right.”
“I rise to support the amendments standing in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), myself and my colleagues. Let me start by making it very clear, as my right hon. Friend—wherever he is—did so well earlier, that we have a problem here, and I am surprised that the Government do not really want to recognise it and are avoiding it. The unacceptable practices of umbrella companies have now become very clear. Contractors are being forced into schemes and are being forced by recruitment agencies to use umbrella companies, which they may not wish to do and may be concerned about. Opting out of the conduct of employment regulations is often mandatory, which removes the rights contractors had as agency workers. We are seeing kickbacks, problems over holiday pay and the skimming of the assignment rate.”
“I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The point I am trying to make to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary and others on the Treasury Bench is a fairly gentle one: this is something that we can rectify, and we have the capacity to rectify it. We should think of what will happen if it goes much further. We should think of the loan charge and the huge human problems that were caused by that and the attempt by the Treasury to use retrospective legislation to grab money back. Who got hammered in all that? Not the organisations that were doing these things, but the individuals who were led to believe they were in the right set-up. It is always going to be them who get hammered. I thought the purpose of Government was to protect the vulnerable and deal with those who are abusing them.”
“I know exactly where this is going because in 29 years I have seen this time and again—do not move; later on, blame somebody else; and back comes the Treasury to say, “We’ll now get that money back”. I think the loan charge—I come back to this—is the biggest example of where, when things goes wrong, it is those who have suffered who end up paying the penalty, not those who skimmed off the top and are now living somewhere outside the reach of Her Majesty’s Treasury. I simply say to the Financial Secretary, with all due deference: please, please give consideration to this and at least have a proper review so that we may engage with this in due course and settle it.”
“There are five points here that are critical: the whole purpose is to stop overnight aggressive tax avoidance schemes introduced and encouraged by some unscrupulous agencies; stop overnight the exploitation of contractors, forced into schemes that adopt malpractice to skim moneys from contractors; stop overnight the kickbacks being used that encourage malpractice; provide sunset clauses to ensure that the sector has until 6 April 2022 to prepare for the changes; and make agencies and clients liable for any malpractice, thereby removing the incentives to encourage it. These are very simple, basic points. We are not asking for a revolution; we are asking for sense.”
“The key thing is that this would give the sector a year to re-gear and provide its service as agencies in a payroll payment bureau-type manner, instead of the Government taking other decisive action, including banning certain practices and statutory regulation. I am trying to be reasonable about this to the Government. I do think that this is really important. I am going to conclude on this. Overall, if we look at the purpose of the amendments and new clauses in this area, I think they set out what the problem is. The people who will get hurt by all of this in the end, when the Treasury finally decides to do something about it, will be the people who were the victims of this, not those who set these schemes up.”
“Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden laid out those five conditions, which are critical. I recommend those to the Financial Secretary; I am not going to repeat them, because we would just go on doing that all night. I want to deal with amendment 34 in a bit more detail. The important thing about amendment 34 is that, in reality, all inside-IR35 workers could easily be paid via a recruitment agency payroll—that is the key bit here—and umbrella companies are of benefit to recruiters, not to workers. Under the original drafting of the off-payroll rules, an umbrella company could classify as a payment intermediary, so payment would have to be made to the umbrella net of tax, reducing an incentive to exist. The behavioural effect will mean agencies will put workers on payroll if they are not outside IR35.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I will not risk repeating what he has said, but it is the reality. I was one of those who gave evidence to the review of the loan charge set-up because it was quite clear that it was causing huge problems for many decent people in my constituency. I am sure it was the same for Members on all sides of the House; I do not for one moment pretend that it was a problem for my constituents alone. I recommend to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary some of the amendments and new clauses that we have been speaking about. I will not go through all of them, but I do want to make this point. Amendment 33, which allows an umbrella not to be an intermediary and still operate, provides strict conditions. My right hon.”
“The Minister accepts that there are now some significant abuses in the way that many—not all—umbrella companies operate. Do we need action by the Treasury to deal with this issue, or is he content that it will just resolve itself as things stand?”
“While my right hon. Friend is on sentencing and what is not in the Bill, I wonder whether she, with the Lord Chancellor sitting next to her, will give me this undertaking. Could we find a mechanism, through the Bill, to address the theft of pets, which has turned violent in many communities, including mine? It is not a joke—it is a serious set of offences and it is ill dealt with by the sentencing process and in law. Will she give that undertaking?”
“She will receive my support throughout all that, but I do urge the Government to deal with the problems on planning and to deal with developers over cladding.”
“Finally, I hope that during this Session, the Government will address the issue of those poor leaseholders who live in flats that had cladding installed—cladding that was illegal at the time it was installed—that they now have to pay to get rid of. We need to resolve this. There are many poor leaseholders who are going to suffer huge bills for cladding that—little did they know when they bought or became leaseholders of those flats—was actually the wrong cladding from the word go. Developers need to ante up and pay for that, and the Government need to drive that forward. However, I do welcome the Queen’s Speech overall. I welcome the Home Secretary’s excellent speech and her excellent promotion of her legislation.”
“Overriding residents in these new designated growth zones will be a real problem. Even now, in many places, the idea of building these out-of-keeping tower blocks is a major problem, but it is one that will grow even more because we will simply allow local authorities to do it. The extended personal development rights are also a problem, because they will not only allow businesses to be turned into flats, but allow developers to build upwards —that is my understanding—without any commitment to local facilities such as schools and roads. That goes against the purpose of planning in the first place. I raise that point with my hon. Friends, and I hope that that will not be the case.”
“I am worried about the ability of the Government, which they will preserve for themselves in the new legislation, to override local plans or growth plans, and about the fact that we may lose any planning application in the process, which people will not, therefore, be able to oppose. That will take away powers—what are very small powers, in a way—from local communities. I want the Government to think again about that. I also want the Government to think again about the general development management policies, which I think will draw an unprecedented amount of power to central Government, with their ability to dictate the areas that will see growth and the type of growth they will see. That will not be too welcome among our constituents, and I want my hon. Friends to think carefully about it.”
“I am going to make a point that I dare say one or two of my colleagues may make too, which is that I have deep concerns about some of the Government’s proposed planning changes. I will mention some of the key issues. We all know that we need more homes, but it is important to understand what type of homes and to think about how we treat some of our communities. It is the propensity of many local authorities in far too many areas to just dump down large tower blocks to meet their numbers, but those blocks are completely out of keeping with areas made up of family homes in which many people live. We need to think about that very carefully.”