Andrew George
MP for St Ives · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“After all, the current situation regarding coercion and safeguarding is certainly not satisfactory. The Bill provides safeguards where presently there are none.”
“I am sorry to be stirring up Members at this stage of the debate, particularly as time is very short. Another theme is that people somehow believe that there is a binary choice available to us on palliative care: that we should either have 100% palliative care, or can go down the route of backing the Bill—or rather, that we should not sup…”
“It is an honour to be called to speak in this debate. Indeed, it is the first time that I have. I am a sponsor of the Bill and a member of the Health and Social Care Committee. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards) on how she introduced this debate, and the hon.”
“Defeating the Bill would also reward the worst of the reprehensible behaviour of those in the other place who blocked this legislation last time.”
“I am sorry, but because of time, I will not. If the hon. Member wants, he can send me a postcard with the answer to my question: when have we ever had a perfect piece of legislation?”
“I cannot give way, because of the time constraints. All Bills are necessarily a compromise. That does not mean that we simply have to make do with bad legislation, but the Bill that was sent down to the other place was in fact an excellent compromise that actually achieved all of the matters—”
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“The hon. Member makes a powerful point about the impact of the way in which the covid loans were provided to championship clubs. He will be aware that many of those clubs are calling on Ministers to intervene on Sport England to ensure that the repayment schedule for the loans is rescheduled to enable those clubs to achieve viability in the years ahead. Without that, many of them are on the precipice of bankruptcy.”
“I wrote to the Secretary of State about that—the Minister very kindly responded to me—because the impact of the covid debt is very significant indeed, and I hope the Minister will reconsider the Government’s approach to it, or intervene with Sport England to look at ways to reprofile those loans. If the Cornish Pirates were to fold tomorrow, the club has no significant assets of its own and does not own its own ground, even though it does not have many debts. I fear there could be significant consequences if it falls into significant debt now as a result of the covid loan. Reprofiling that loan would be a win-win for everybody: not only would that great club continue, but the debt would in time be repaid. I hope Ministers look at this issue much more closely.”
“Sir Dicky Evans has been a benefactor and supporter of the club for many years. He is not able to do that now, but certainly for two decades has provided enormous support for the club. I want to bring the debate back to the risk posed to a large number of clubs, including the Cornish Pirates, by the way in which too much resource is being siphoned into premiership rugby, as the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth described, with the result that all other tiers of rugby are suffering. The precipitous way in which decisions have been made in recent years about the covid loan, which the hon. Gentleman referred to, has created an unexpected debt for many clubs, and the Cornish Pirates is certainly not immune from that.”
“For the last couple of decades, the Cornish Pirates has been a predominant club in championship rugby, competing for promotion on many occasions in recent years, and certainly in the top half of the table of championship rugby. It has set standards of which we feel enormously proud. It has also been the nursery ground for many players who have gone on to great things in English and, indeed, international rugby. The Cornish Pirates is an important case in point in presenting the kind of solutions to local community issues that sports clubs very often do by providing inspiration to young people and something for local people to be encouraged by and to look up to. The club has had not only strong local backing, but a benefactor, who used to play in his younger days for Penzance and Newlyn.”
“Member who represents Camborne, Redruth and Hayle knows very well—we have an uneasy relationship, in terms of our identity, with English rugby. Certainly some Cornish players have preferred to play for fellow Celtic nations—examples are Andy Reed for Scotland and Colin Laity for Wales— rather than for England. The English connection has sometimes been uneasy, but that is not an issue in itself, or one that I wish to pursue today. In my constituency, we are very proud to have excellent local clubs: St Ives, St Just and Helston. Many of our players go to play for Hayle, Redruth and Camborne as well. Perhaps pre-eminent among all the clubs in Cornwall is what used to be known as Penzance and Newlyn and is now renowned as the Cornish Pirates.”
“Despite the deprivation that our constituents experience, the game has been able to flourish. Because of the market area that it covers, at the end of a long, thin peninsula, it has not been able to generate the crowd numbers that perhaps other areas and more populous places can generate. Nevertheless, it has an enormous following in terms of the proportion of the local population who follow the sport. It is vital to the spirit of the local communities and the pride of our local communities. It provides mentors for our young people to emulate and aspire to become themselves. So, it is an enormous source of inspiration in communities that otherwise do not have a great deal available to them, hence its real importance. The other thing about Cornish rugby is that of course in Cornwall—as the hon.”
“I kind of gave that up because I kept playing at weekends, and if you represent a constituency as far from London as mine it becomes a logistical challenge. During my playing days, being a back, I always found it very frustrating because I never quite understood what forwards were there for, other than to grab the ball, wallow around in the mud and grunt a lot, and we had to keep demanding the ball back. That became very frustrating for me. That is about as far as my playing ever got. As the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth said, rugby is in Cornwall a pre-eminent sport, in which we feel enormous pride. Indeed, the heritage of the game in Cornwall is one that we can look back on—we can also look forward, we hope—with an enormous amount of pride.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) on raising this issue. He also represents Hayle, where I live and which used to be in the St Ives constituency, where it should be, really. Nevertheless I congratulate him on securing this debate, and on the manner in which he presented the issues. I strongly endorse everything that he said, although I want to take a couple of the points that he made a little further. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I make no great play of my involvement in the game itself, although I have been a very keen sportsman and have played rugby in the past. I did turn out for the Commons and Lords rugby team.”
“Surely the Minister understands that if a club such as the Cornish Pirates were to fold, that responsibility to the taxpayer would not be served, because that debt would be unpaid, so it is far better for her to intervene and assist those clubs to overcome that problem.”
“The hon. Member is making a powerful case for reform and review. This morning, the Health and Social Care Committee was looking at the very issue of delayed discharge of medically fit patients. Does he not accept that we need more integration? If only a quarter of those delayed discharges are down to a lack of social care packages, that means many patients cannot be discharged because they have a primary healthcare condition that needs to be taken care of, so we need integration and not just social care reform.”
“Other than the Minister’s response to the excellent question from the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), I strongly welcome both the tone and content of the Minister’s answers. It is clear that there is no justification for the vindictive and counterproductive actions of the Israeli Government, but they are clearly emboldened by the US President. In seeking to build international alliances to put pressure on the Israeli Government to change their actions and stop that vindictive behaviour, what conversations are the Government having to ensure that their view is conveyed to the United States so they can adopt the same line as we are?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that response. He will be aware that since the Conservatives took control of Cornwall council four years ago, they have transformed that authority from being financially sound to staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Cornwall is a rural authority with urban levels of deprivation and a super-ageing population. What assurance can the Minister give that, through the funding formula and plans for local authorities, the Government will have due regard to the escalating costs for these local authorities, not least as a result of the national insurance contributions hike?”
“I warmly congratulate the Prime Minister on his actions and his leadership in recent days, and, indeed, on his stamina here this afternoon. Apart from Putin’s puppets who scarpered from the Chamber more than an hour ago, the House knows full well that support for Ukraine is essential to maintaining the rules-based world order; the question with which we are all wrestling politically is how we pay for it. The Prime Minister said in his statement that there was a “crossroads in our history” and that this was a “new era”. Surely, in these circumstances, it is a moment when the Prime Minister and the Chancellor may need to look again at the straitjacket of their fiscal rules, and start taxing the wealthiest in the country rather than building this essential investment in defence on the backs of the poorest.”
“It is not just the developments that are happening, but the extent of the flood risk areas, which will inevitably grow over time.”
“Secondly, what action can be taken when a planning application is made in a flood risk area where the Environment Agency has warned against development and the local authority grants planning permission in spite of that advice? In those circumstances, will properties be protected under the Flood Re scheme, or will they be penalised because the advice of the Environment Agency was ignored, including by the local authority that provided planning permission, placing a burden on the public purse? Finally, on my first point about the development that the Government are planning and the areas to which the Environment Agency is extending flood risk zones in its 30-year projections, to what extent is that burden taken into account in the calculations?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thoroughly endorse the remarks of the hon. Member for Epping Forest and the questions he raised. I will make three quick remarks, the first of which is to embellish his point about whether the figure in the regulations takes sufficient account of anticipated development. The Government have committed themselves to significant housing growth in the coming years. With the Environment Agency’s projections extending the area of flood risk to new locations—it is inevitable that they will extend further over time, as all Members of Parliament will be aware—to what extent does the figure in the regulations take fully into account projected development growth in flood risk areas?”
“We presented a range of evidence to the Competition Commission. That ultimately provoked an investigation in 2008, which resulted in the commission proposing the establishment of a groceries code to drive fair trade through the supply chain. The Groceries Code Adjudicator was created to enforce the code and ensure that it was applied by those supermarkets. In those days, only five had a turnover in excess of £1 billion, which was the recommendation of the Competition Commission at that stage. Having done that, and having worked for over a decade to get the legislation through, I obviously have some skin in the game, which I probably need to declare. I am not trying to claim the credit myself, because it was a cross-party effort.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) on an excellent and eloquent speech, which covered all the issues. I also thank the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) for contributing very tellingly. My background in this subject is that, from 2002, I chaired what was known as the Grocery Market Action Group, which had among its members the National Farmers Union, the Country Land and Business Association, ActionAid, Traidcraft, Friends of the Earth and others. It was amazing to have such a disparate group of organisations in the same room, actually working together and agreeing 100% about the injustices and dysfunctionality of the way in which the grocery supply chain was operating.”
“Fundamentally, we have a framework that can be developed and improved. It certainly should not depend on seconded staff. We do not get commitment to the cause if we depend entirely on seconded staff, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe said. I hope the Minister will look carefully at this. Thank you very much, Mr Twigg, for allowing me to speak.”
“It was never the intention of the Grocery Market Action Group that the adjudicator should look only at the final transaction between the ultimate supplier to the supermarket and the supermarket itself, because the impact of that contract could be fed right down through the supply chain. The second point concerned third-country suppliers. The reason why Traidcraft, the Fairtrade Foundation and so on were involved is because they were rightly hoping that third countries could be involved. Then, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe said, the adjudicator could launch its own investigation on the basis of market intelligence. Finally, it could work alongside the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, for example, to use its intelligence to take matters forward.”
“When the Groceries Code Adjudicator was established and the code was created, the intention then was only that it would create a framework in which future Governments would review its progress and then build on the framework by introducing or reducing regulations. Certainly the framework was to provide the skeleton on which further developments could happen; of course one cannot anticipate all circumstances. I want to follow up on the points made by the hon. Member for Salford and my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe. There are a number of improvements that I hope the Government will look at very closely. For example, the code should be applied throughout the supply chain, not just to the direct supplier to the supermarket.”
“At the end of the day, the justification for why the Groceries Code Adjudicator, or any kind of market intervention of that nature, was needed, was that, fundamentally, we had a dysfunctional supply chain operating largely to the benefit of the supermarkets. Not all of our agricultural sector was benefiting from European subsidies or any other public subsidies in those days, but it had become dependent on subsidies because the market was so dysfunctional that public money was needed to prop up the whole system. If we have a functioning market, one can enable the agricultural sector to free itself from dependence on public subsidy. That was largely what was behind what we were trying to do in those days.”
“Well, I suppose I should—no, I will not. One stands on the shoulders of giants, and Colin Breed did a tremendous amount of work from 1997 to 2001. He produced an excellent report called “Checking out the Supermarkets”, which laid a lot of the groundwork for the Grocery Market Action Group. Albert Owen, David Drew and other Labour Members were also very supportive and active throughout those years. There was not always cross-party agreement, or even agreement within my own party, that we should intervene in the market in the way that was proposed. We had to win that argument, and ultimately we did.”
“The Minister is certainly right, providing the investigation was on sound grounds. The worry was always that the investigation may identify a supplier simply by doing it, and that the anonymity intended when an intelligence-driven inquiry or investigation was generated may uncover that particular supplier. Therefore, a wider range of powers—not on the basis of being able to conduct fishing expeditions—to investigate on justifiable grounds is something that I hope the Minister will look at further.”
“I very warmly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement. Although he perhaps cannot use the language I am about to use, I hope that when the Prime Minister and he meet Putin’s appeaser in the White House later this week, he will remind him that if we have a special relationship—and the Foreign Secretary keeps referring to a special relationship—it has to be based on truth, respect for democracy, respect for justice and respect for international law.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful point, which I strongly endorse. Of course, he can go further, because we are well aware that the new US Administration are now recommending the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. On top of the UK Government making clear their abhorrence of all of the actions that the hon. Gentleman has just described, they should make it very clear that they strongly oppose the proposals coming from the US as well.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very thoughtful contribution. He is clearly looking at ways in which the policy can be amended to make it more palatable to the farming community. That may be the reality that we are looking at, rather than getting rid of it altogether. Does he therefore agree that we should look at changing the transitional arrangements so that succession planning can be properly undertaken, which at present it clearly cannot, or indeed that we should look at leaseback arrangements to enable viable farms to continue?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations on this planet. The “State of Nature Report 2023” indicated that up to one in six UK species faces the risk of extinction. The Minister’s reply is very encouraging, but just last week the Chancellor, promoting the Government’s growth agenda, urged us to “stop worrying about bats and newts.” If it really does come to that, who speaks for the Government, and whose side is the Minister on—the Chancellor or threatened wildlife?”
“The US has the most substantial interest in Diego Garcia, which is the fulcrum of what we are discussing today. Although I understand that the Minister cannot disclose the details of the compensatory package that is being negotiated, is it reasonable to assume that the US will be making a substantial contribution to that compensatory package?”
“Further to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and several other hon. Members, I, too, have picked up numerous cases in my constituency of Government-sponsored defective home insulation work and of extortionate, poor-quality and defective work of unscrupulous cowboy contractors who masquerade as operating under Government schemes. This includes Mrs King in Helston in my constituency who has paid out £19,000 to have insulation installed and then removed. I am pleased with the Minister’s response, but surely the Government need to do more to give householders confidence that these projects are both cost-effective and provide proper redress.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has not mentioned the rural exceptions policy. He is talking about rural housing, but to achieve the outcome he is describing, surely he should be advancing rural exception schemes. There is massive hope value on the edges of towns and villages if the targets are high, but rural exception schemes can keep the development land price down by ensuring that those developments meet local need.”
“In Cornwall, where the policy is well founded, much affordable housing development is delivered through rural exception sites. It is quite a powerful policy.”
“I know how one battles with landowners, who have massive hope value—expecting that they can get 100 times the agricultural land value on the edge of their town and village if they can get away with it. That is just human nature; it would apply to any of us. Nicholas Ridley, who was the Environment Secretary back in the early ’90s, introduced the rural exceptions policy, which was the first break from a planning policy that was based purely on use rather than the user. The policy meant that if a development met a local housing need in perpetuity, it would be allowed as an exception. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) mentioned that the policy needs to be expanded, and indeed it should.”
“Cornwall is one of the best examples of where that policy has fundamentally failed because it has almost trebled in size. Like Buckinghamshire, it is proportionately one of the fastest-growing places in the United Kingdom. It has almost trebled its housing stock in the last 60 years, yet the housing problems of local people have got worse. I am not saying that we should not build houses and therefore will meet need; I am simply saying that setting house building targets has created an environment in which the wrong type of housing has been developed. I have to declare an interest: during my nine-year sabbatical away from this place, I was a chief executive of a registered provider, a housing association. I therefore worked in the sector and know how the dynamics of the system work.”
“The fundamental problem with setting house building targets is that house building is a means to an end. The end is meeting housing need. The targets could be to reduce housing need and planning applicants would have to demonstrate how their developments would address that need and reduce the need on an annual basis, rather than simply building to their commercial advantage. In places such as Cornwall, they build to meet the requirements of property investors, second home owners and holiday lets. We do not get the kind of developments that are there to meet local housing need. That is why house building targets are a means to an end, not the end. We see them as a proxy for what we are trying to fundamentally achieve. That is why they are both ill conceived and a naive delusion.”
“The Prime Minister has created a false dichotomy by saying that he is backing “the builders, not the blockers.” My fear is that it is putting greed before need, but by proxy, if it is handled wrongly. The fundamental failing of decades of setting housing targets in the ways that successive Governments have is that they are both wrongly conceived and based on the naive delusion that private developers would be willing to collude with the Government in driving down the price of their completed product. That is a naive delusion that, I am afraid, has adherents in all political parties. They have adopted the view for decades that if we build enough, the price will come down and the developers will co-operate with us in doing that. That has simply not happened.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate. It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). His constituency is a different environment, with a different set of conditions. It is interesting that he presented this as a question of fairness, in the sense that house building is an imposition rather than an opportunity for local communities. I will explain why I say that later. Planning should fundamentally be about meeting need, not greed, but it is too often driven by greed rather than need. That underlies the wrong dynamic, which is creating a lot of the ill feeling towards the kind of development that the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire and others have described.”
“It sounds counterintuitive, but the best way of meeting housing need in rural areas is to draw the development boundary tightly and not allow development around it, and to have a very strong rural exceptions policy. We also need to build in the ability to deliver an intermediate market, by which I mean part-sale or discounted-sale homes that are available in perpetuity for all subsequent local occupants who meet a local first-time buyer requirement. We need to control second homes in rural areas, as well as addressing all the other issues relating to affordable housing need.”
“I beg your pardon, Ms Jardine—I ran away with myself. As far as my hon. Friend’s question is concerned, a range of reasons make it extremely difficult to deliver on rural exception sites. One of the difficulties, which I have expressed to the Minister, is that the viability thresholds are quite difficult for housing associations to meet, particularly if the thresholds are based on a cost to value ratio. If the value of properties in a particular location is low, we get into the absurd situation in which the development cannot proceed under that formula. That has counterproductive consequences: the bigger the targets, the bigger the hope value on the edges of communities.”
“On greenfield development, whether it be in the green belt or outside it, rural housing developments often take place in green locations. In the light of that, will the Minister ensure that the Government strengthen local authorities’ ability to use the rural exception policy? We would rather pay 10 times agricultural value than 100 times agricultural value, because we cannot deliver affordable homes on land at that price.”
“It is a pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) and the excellent work she has been doing in advancing the Bill. Indeed, for many years I have supported it in its previous iterations in the local authority in Cornwall. I had a speech prepared to encourage the Government to support the Bill, and I have listened to what my hon. Friend said about the importance of advancing the essence of the Bill. Since then, we have heard from the Green party, and I worry that we are now at risk of playing politics with an important matter. I believe that what is most important now is that we bring parties together with a shared agenda, and find a way forward, rather than generate divisiveness at this stage.”
“I do not think that there is any malevolent intent on the part of walkers who take their dogs to the coast and disturb the wildlife in that manner, but we need to engage with the public. Legislation like this gives us the opportunity to engage and regulate in a manner that I hope will bring the public with us to protect wildlife. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will conclude in order to give others an opportunity to speak. I do hope that before Green party Members decide to press the matter to a vote, they will talk to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds a little more and ensure that we bring the House together today so that the purpose of this legislation can be advanced. That is the most important thing of all.”
“Remarkably, Arctic terns migrate—one would advise them not to—25,000 miles from the south pole to the north pole, or from the Antarctic to the Arctic. They stop over on our shores, and it is such an enormous privilege to have such remarkable creatures stopping by. As they arrive, a bit like my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds after she has rowed across the ocean, they are met with dog walkers who—this is not through ignorance or malevolence; well, it is not through malevolence—disturb them and make them unable to feed and rest, at the very time when they most need to. We need to address that through legislation, as well as education, which is vital.”
“Members to undertake similar volunteer work in their constituencies to track and monitor what is going on with our wildlife. The locality where the transect takes place is a particular hotspot for the silver-studded blue, and we are tracking its decline there. However, nationwide, in the last 14 years, the common blue has seen a 51% decline, and there has been a 65% decline in the green-veined white. The small tortoiseshell has seen a 59% decline, and the painted lady an 81% decline. There have been significant declines across all species within that period, and that needs to be looked at. At the same locality, we have also observed migratory birds coming to the coast and the shorelines of west Cornwall. One that I track and that I have a particular interest in is the Arctic tern.”
“On nature, we face a significant crisis. I do not claim to be an expert, although I have been a lifelong member of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and I support all its work. I have also supported a number of projects in my constituency—for example, during the summer months, I volunteer on a butterfly transect in my locality to track the decline of butterflies. Some might ask, “Well, what is the relevance of that?” but butterflies are the model organism through which to study habitat fragmentation, habitat loss and climate change in this country, and the weather vane for how we as a nation are doing. I have to say that the results of the transect are extremely worrying, and although I am more of a bag carrier and scribe for my wife, it is certainly an educative and helpful process—I would encourage all hon.”
“Yes, of course I agree. I am a strong supporter of the Bill and want it—certainly its intent—to proceed as rapidly as possible, and for us to make progress in all the areas that have been advanced. We must challenge and ensure that we not only meet the commitments that successive Governments have made in relation to our climate targets, but that that that is achieved and reviewed on a regular basis. To be fair, as the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made clear, successive Conservative Governments have made important advances on nature conservation—from the Wildlife and Countryside 1981 onwards. It is not right or proper to besmirch any particular party for having failed in this area; we may well have arguments, but what we want is to bring together a political consensus to ensure that we can take these matters forward.”
“I must congratulate my hon. Friend on her preparation for this debate, which has attracted so many people to Westminster Hall today—except, of course, from the party that created a lot of the problems we now face. On her point about mainstreaming and special school education, does she agree not only that many rural areas are underfunded but that people in those areas face the additional challenge of expensive home-to-school transport to access specialist provision, because there is insufficient budget for that transport? That issue needs to be addressed if we are to have an even playing field across the country.”
“I sympathise with the Secretary of State for having to pull these projects out of the fire of non-funding, and I thank him for the announcement on the women and children’s hospital in Cornwall. I know that all my parliamentary colleagues in Cornwall will be delighted at today’s news. I sympathise with colleagues who find themselves in waves 2 and 3. What can the Secretary of State do to crack on with the enabling work to ensure that this project is delivered in double-quick time? It is desperately needed, and a 2030 finish date will be challenging for Cornwall. It would be much appreciated if it could be brought forward.”
“I accept that the Government are clearly not the architect of the current unacceptable state of affairs. However, may I encourage the Secretary of State to reflect again on our exchange at the Health and Social Care Committee just a month ago, when he resisted the recommendation of the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that we invest in more beds to accommodate additional admissions to hospital? That would ease a return to normality, reduce the need for corridor care, and ease the pressures in emergency departments.”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Penzance, west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are all in my constituency, so I know that if there are problems on the link at Dawlish, that can multiply the impact of those disruptions for people in the far west of Cornwall. Does he share my concern that it seems that with this multi-billion pound HS2 project, people in Penzance, in west Cornwall, and no doubt in his constituency as well, will experience all the pain but none of the gain? If it is two hours to Exeter, it is another three hours down to Penzance. It needs to be considered that we want to avoid the unnecessary disruption to people’s lives for the next seven years.”