Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
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“Before calling the next speaker, I will just say that the wind-ups will start at half past 10. There are four more speakers, so if each of them speaks for a maximum of five minutes, we should cover everybody.”
“My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be familiar with the benefits, both environmental and economic, of warm mix asphalt. What are the Government doing to ensure that the use of such asphalt on our roads is the norm rather than the exception? It is the norm in north America and increasingly in parts of Europe, but not here. The reason it is not the norm here yet is bureaucratic red tape. Will he take action to cut that red tape?”
“Will my right hon. Friend congratulate St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Christchurch on being given an accolade by The Sunday Times for being one of the best primary schools in the country? Will he tell us what criteria will be available to enable the public to judge primary schools next year, if there are no tests at key stage 1 and very few at key stage 2, bearing in mind that the key stage 1 tests are the test against which future progress is gauged?”
“Never has parliamentary scrutiny of Government become more important than it is now. In the light of that, will my right hon. Friend agree to allow the House to sit until Christmas Eve so that we can discuss all these important issues, not least the tiering process, and to enable the House to have a chance to consider an issue dear to Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers—namely, whether or not we should introduce a change to the Standing Orders relating to the length of speeches?”
“Following the answer that my right hon. and learned Friend gave to our hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), will he tell us when he is going to respond? I have a private Member’s Bill down for 29 January and it would be useful to have a response from the Government, preferably before the end of this year, so that we can draft a Bill appropriately. May I also ask my right hon. and learned Friend about the attitude of the Bar? We have read reports that barristers are planning to go on strike, because they do not like the idea of having to work longer hours. Will he condemn any such behaviour?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will recall that on 19 November you were kind enough to grant me an urgent question on the performance of the Department of Health and Social Care in answering written questions. The Minister, in responding, said: “We have instituted a parliamentary questions performance recovery plan”. —[ Official Report , 19 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 461.] I then put down a question asking for that plan to be put in the House of Commons Library, so that we could all see it. Late last night, I received a reply saying that it was not possible to answer that question yet. Surely this now means that the whole issue of stonewalling has become farcical, particularly when we take it into account that a lot of the other outstanding questions are highly relevant to the debate we will be having this afternoon.”
“( Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on his Department’s performance in answering written questions from right hon. and hon. Members.”
“Friend accept that these questions and answers increase public trust in our democracy, and should be a catalyst for improving public policy? If his Department is in the lead in suppressing liberty in this country, is it surprising that there are more questions to his Department than to others? Because issues of liberty are at stake, surely it is all the more important that these questions are answered quickly.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, which was born of extreme exasperation. I thank my hon. Friend for his response, his contrition and his apology, and for his offer to do better in the future. If other Departments can answer 90% of named day questions on time, why cannot the Minister’s? Will he set a date for the clearance of the backlog to which he referred and guarantee future compliance with the rules and the spirit of the rules? This is not just about timeliness; it is about the quality of the answers. Since this is the week of resets, will the Minister now tell his ministerial colleagues and officials to abandon their tactic of, basically, dumb insolence towards those of us who ask challenging questions? Does my hon.”
“More than 1 million fellow citizens have recovered after testing positive for covid-19. On 2 November, The BMJ reported that all those people will have protection from their T cells, which will ensure that they cannot be reinfected for at least six months. In light of that, will my right hon. Friend follow the example of Sweden and exempt from all the covid regulations those who have tested positive within the past six months and thereby show that he is following the science and also common sense?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very disappointing that the European Union continues to engage in wrecking tactics, which are in breach of both its duty of good faith and its duty of sincere co-operation?”
“May I ask my right hon. Friend to comment on the element of the Public Accounts Committee report that says his Department misrepresented the National Audit Office by falsely asserting that it had concluded that the selection process had been robust? I ask that because it is important, surely, that the Government respect the work of the National Audit Office—now more than ever, when we are in an enormous public expenditure crisis. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he and other Ministers will respect the work of the National Audit Office?”
“That is number enough to justify a continuation of lockdown—based on false tests. Surely that cannot be sensible policy for the Government.”
“In answer to a question I asked yesterday, I have been told by the Minister that in October alone there were 3,934 cases of people who went to hospital without covid but got covid while they were there, as a result of hospital transmission of infection. In October, in Poole hospital, which serves many of my constituents, 120 people were in hospital, and some 73 of them contracted covid as a result of infection within the hospital. The question I ask of the Minister, therefore, is: when we have the vaccine, will someone getting a vaccination automatically be exempt from the lockdown rules? If not, why not? Also, when we get into discussing criteria for moving out of the lockdown, what will we do about false positive tests? If there are 500,000 tests a day and 5% are false positives, we will have 25,000 false positives.”
“This is now being performed.” That answer came 10 days after it should have, but why was that work not done before? Why are we refusing to allow people to receive the sacrament in places of worship without any evidence in justification? Similarly, I asked about the difference between two people playing golf on a public golf course and two people walking a dog on a public footpath. There was no satisfactory response from the Government. On another issue, while the Government say that people are at great risk if they go to play golf together, the greatest risk, it seems, is to have the misfortune to go to hospital and then contract covid-19.”
“In the similar period in the United Kingdom, there have been 2,975 deaths. Taking into account the population difference, there are six times as many deaths per capita in this country as in Sweden, and that takes no account of all the collateral damage that we are causing to our people who cannot get access to healthcare, including 5,000 excess deaths from heart disease alone. The Minister was saying that we talk about evidence. In answer to written parliamentary question 111413, asking about the public health justification for refusing to allow the giving and receiving of the sacrament in places of worship, this is the answer I received: “Public Health England had not been requested to research and publish detailed specific data on the numbers of COVID-19 cases related to place of worship and allied settings on outbreak investigation.”
“That is the evidence provided by and published in The BMJ , and yet the Prime Minister seemed to cast doubt on it, despite the fact that that evidence was produced in collaboration with Public Health England and has won plaudits from the Medical Research Council. One of the advantages of providing such an exemption is that it would deal with the people who are suffering from long covid, to whom the Minister also referred. In Sweden, they apply such an exemption. I know that any references to Sweden are anathema to the Government. Last time I mentioned Sweden, the Minister tried to pour cold water on my statistics. She was wrong, and I questioned her and have not had an answer. Again, I make no apology for referring to the comparable statistics. In the past week, ending 17 November, there have been 85 deaths from covid-19 in Sweden.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), although I do not agree with her obsession with trying to restrict free speech and information for the general public. Surely it should be for the general public to discuss and determine these things themselves. The Minister referred to evidence, data and scientific advice as being the watchwords of the Government. Those words ring rather hollow with my constituents, because they regard that as spin rather than substance. Earlier today, I suggested to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions that the million-plus people who had tested positive for covid-19 and had recovered should be exempt from the regulations because their T cells would give them immunity for at least six months.”
“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it not correct that if the motion is carried over from tonight and is on tomorrow’s Order Paper, it can be amended, and provided the debate starts before five o’clock, we can then have a debate about it and a vote on it?”
“Before I call the next speaker, can I say that we will have the winding-up speeches at half-past 10? If each speaker takes four minutes, there will not be time for the last one.”
“Because I am keen that everybody on the list should be called, I will now impose a three-minute limit. I am afraid that the self-discipline I had hoped for has not materialised so far.”
“I have also raised one matter not just as a named day question, but twice during debates on the Floor of the House, when I have asked the Department, and the Secretary of State in particular, for the evidence in support of the assertion made to the House on 1 October that “hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow” if the Government “just let the virus rip”. —[ Official Report , 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.] Where is the answer to the very reasonable question that I submitted?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Following on from your reference to named day questions, may I ask what can be done to ensure that we get timely responses to those questions? I have 12 outstanding named day questions to the Department of Health and Social Care, one of which is over six months late. Others are over a month late, including questions the answers to which I think might be of interest to the Prime Minister—for example, about policy relating to those who are immune through antibodies.”
“It is implicit in what my hon. Friend said in reference to that case that he believes that, instead of the suspended sentence, a sentence of immediate imprisonment should have been imposed. Yet the explanatory notes in relation to the financial implications of the Bill say: “The increase in maximum penalties will not result in an increase in the number of offenders being sent to prison”, which implies that it would not make a ha’p’orth of difference to that case.”
“In the correspondence we have received from the animal charities and in their campaigning, they are almost implying that there are people who are against this measure, but I have yet to find anybody who is against it. Those animal charities seem to be using this as a means to try to raise money for their own causes, and that is fine—they can raise money if they want to—but to raise expectations that this will somehow be a panacea for improving animal welfare is going slightly over the top. Indeed, half of my hon. Friend’s speech was about all the things that he could have put into his Bill, but it is implicit that he did not put them into his Bill because he was told by the Government that if he did so, his Bill would not get Government support, and I sympathise with him on that.”
“Friends think they are doing the Government’s bidding by speaking for unnecessarily long in this debate, all I can say is that I am not sure that is actually what they are doing, because the Government have assured me that they support the provisions of the second Bill, but leave that as it may. My daughter is a vet. I obviously take a lot of parental responsibility, and we must have been very good on animal welfare when we were bringing her up. As we have, she, with her husband, has rescue dogs. They are rescue Staffies, which seem to be among the worst breeds for the suffering they often undergo in their lives. It is important that we do not mislead the public and raise expectations beyond what is reasonable. That is why I made the intervention I did on my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset.”
“Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) thinks that the fact 32 Back Benchers are wishing to speak on this Bill has something to do with the Government not being too enthusiastic about some of the Bills later on the Order Paper in my name. I am assured by the Government Whips that that is not true at all. Indeed, if one looks at the Bill that is due to follow this one—the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment) Bill—it is actually four-square in line with Government policy. It would be very interesting if the Government actually oppose a Bill that they are already committed to introducing when there is parliamentary time. I mention that because if some of my hon.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on his success in his first ever private Members’ Bill ballot and on having chosen a subject that is obviously dear to the hearts of so many of our constituents and to those of so many hon. Members. Sometimes, Madam Deputy Speaker, people say that a Bill that has universal support and nobody opposed to it ought to be allowed to go through on Second Reading on the nod, but as you know, I have always been against that proposition. Today demonstrates why that is a bad proposition, because however good or popular a Bill is, it is always better for it to be properly debated and scrutinised on Second Reading, and that is what is happening today. The hon.”
“I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that fair and square on the record. So he exercised self-discipline, and I must congratulate him on that. We will live in hope, as the hon. Member for Bristol East said, about when, if ever, the Government bring forward some of the other measures that she and, indeed, my hon. Friend talked about. The Bill leads people to believe that our prisons will be filled up with a lot more people who are guilty of abusing animals. The explanatory notes are not just notes made up by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. They come with the authority of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which provided them. They explain what each part of the Bill will mean in practice and provide background information on the development of policy.”
“Absolutely. I agree that the deterrent effect of legislation is a very important aspect of it. However, there is nothing clear as to what the evidence is on that. One of the shortcomings of private Members’ Bills is that there are no procedures to enable us to have a regulatory impact assessment. We would not have known about the financial implications of the Bill unless they were set out in the explanatory notes.”
“That will be very welcome and the increase in the maximum penalties will be part of the deterrent process, but how many more people will be sent to prison? We know that they say the cost will be £500,000 per annum. As it costs about £45,000 a year to keep somebody in prison, we are talking about between 10 and 12 persons in prison per annum as a result of the Bill.”
“Obviously, I accept that raising the maximum penalty from six months to five years is quite a dramatic change, although it is significant, as is clear from the notes, that the Government could have doubled it from six months to one year if they had implemented section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. That could have been done years ago. It still has not been done and perhaps the Minister will address that issue in her remarks. I am not suggesting that the Bill is not better than nothing, but I am suggesting that it is being used to suggest that there will be a lot more people sent to prison as a result, and the reality of the policy is that there will not be any more people sent to prison, but that those who are sent to prison will be sent for longer periods. That is what it says here.”
“If this House decides, as it wants to do today, to impose a maximum sentence of five years, is it reasonable for the unaccounted people who deal with the sentencing guidelines to bring in guidelines that suggest that there should not be many penalties of five years imposed by the Crown courts? So we have a real problem: the legislature has ceded control, or a significant part of control, over sentencing to the Sentencing Council.”
“Well, that is another one on the agenda for the next Session of Parliament, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will just conclude by saying that there is another element to this: the Sentencing Council guidelines for dealing with animal welfare offences. They say that a period of imprisonment should be merited only in the most serious offences. My concern about the Sentencing Council guidelines—perhaps the Minister could address this, too—is that they constrain the ability of magistrates in particular to impose the penalty that they think is appropriate, having regard to all the circumstances.”
“Let us hope that the Bill does deter some of the most heinous offences, but let us not think that it is the full answer to all the problems.”
“I am not expecting them at all. I am criticising the fact that they are no longer just regarded as guidelines, but accepted by many magistrates and judges as tantamount to instructions. If my hon. Friend looks at the sentencing guidelines for animal welfare, which I commend to him, he will see that they are not that specific, but they do give some general parameters that place constraints on the discretion of magistrates. The current guidelines impose severe constraints on the magistrates’ ability to impose an immediate custodial sentence for any offence of breach of animal welfare. That is another issue that needs to be raised. We need to work with public opinion on that and not allow the public to be disappointed. They should not think that we are offering a panacea for improving animal welfare and reducing animal cruelty.”
“On page 6 of the response, which was published on 2018, it says at paragraph 12: “Some site owners pass on their repair, maintenance and other ad hoc costs to residents by requiring them to pay variable service charges in addition to the pitch fee.” The Government response goes on to say, in a subsequent paragraph, that the “Government wants to ensure that residents only pay for services that they are required to pay for through the pitch fee and will introduce legislation in due course to amend and clarify the definition of a pitch fee and prevent the use of variable service charges in written agreements, when parliamentary time allows.” Well, parliamentary time does allow; it needs the will of Government. I hope we will hear from the Minister that the Government do have the will to implement what they said they wanted to do.”
“Some rogue firms out there are marketing new park homes as bungalows. I have written to the Advertising Standards Authority on the subject but have yet to receive a satisfactory response. The Bill will make two changes to the Mobile Homes Act 1983 that will help all residents. The changes were set out by the Government in their response to their own call for evidence in their 2017 review of park homes legislation.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. It is a pleasure to introduce this Bill. It is a two-clause Bill, but the second clause covers only the Bill’s extent, commencement and short title, so it essentially has only two provisions. It arises directly from my long-standing interest in the welfare of park home residents. I have been privileged to be the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on park homes for more years than I can recall. Mobile and park homes provide residential accommodation for about 85,000 households on some 2,000 sites in England. Most of those residents are of pensionable age. They normally own their own home, and they pay rent to the site owner for the land on which the home is stationed. Let me put it on the record that they are not bungalows.”
“The tenor of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention is that there are a heck of a lot of rogues out there and they are up to no good, and he is absolutely right. There are, however, quite a lot of good park home owners, and it is important that we try to support them and to prevent the rogues from taking over the whole industry. That is why it is so important that the Government take seriously the changes—albeit quite modest—in the Bill to try to improve the lot of residents on park homes sites.”
“On the pitch fee review, the Government concluded, in their 2018 response, that they had “considered all the arguments put forward including concerns about affordability for both residents and site owners. We also considered the merits of using CPI or RPI as the pitch fee review inflationary index and have concluded that CPI is the most appropriate inflationary index…The Government will introduce legislation in due course to change the pitch fee review inflationary index from RPI to CPI, when parliamentary time allows.” That is exactly what the Bill does: it enables the parliamentary time to be found to make that change.”
“I do not think the good park home owners have any problem about trying to make ends meet. It would be much more difficult for them were we to, for example, change the 10% commission that is payable on the sale of any park home. My right hon. Friend refers to the matter going into Committee; let us hope that in due course that will be possible. I have made the point about the service charges sometimes including repairs and maintenance that should already have been paid for in the pitch fees, and that is dealt with in clause 1(2)(a). The second issue—the change to CPI indexing to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred—is dealt with in clause 1(2)(b).”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is a long-term champion of park home residents and I hope that, with her encouragement, the Government will give the Bill their support. They are not going to allow the Bill to go through today, but they have said to me that there will be a write-around because they are supportive of its principles. I hope the Opposition are supportive, too— [ Interruption. ] I am grateful to see that they are nodding. If that is the situation, there is no reason why, if the debate is carried over to another day after this short debate, the Bill may not then get its Second Reading. I am grateful to the House for its indulgence and look forward to having the opportunity to hear briefly from the Opposition spokesman and our Minister.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for her kind offer to work with me to try to make the Bill into workable legislation. Does she mean by that that, if the Bill does not progress to Second Reading today, we can hold discussions and perhaps have a write-round to see whether it could get a Second Reading on the basis that, when it gets to Committee, various things will or will not be done?”
“The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said on 1 October that “hundreds of thousands of deaths…would follow” if the Government “just let the virus rip”. —[ Official Report , 1 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 503.] I asked if he would publish the evidence in support of that statement. He has failed to do so—because, I suspect, there is no evidence in support of that statement. That was gross scaremongering. Instead of trying to build people’s confidence to engage in economic and social activity, the Government are actively frightening them. All this talk about long covid is also designed to try to frighten people, rather than addressing the collateral damage that the Government’s oppressive measures are causing.”
“I asked the Secretary of State about that in a written question, but I have not had a reply, even though I referred in the debate on 13 October to that failure to respond. I am afraid that that is indicative of the Government’s arrogance in this respect. In that debate, I also mentioned the number of deaths in Sweden. I have looked up the latest figures, and there have been two deaths in Sweden from covid-19 in the last five days. Sweden allows much more social activity than we in this country have done, and its Government rely on individual citizens to trust each other. Sweden’s citizens trust the Government, because the Government trust them. Why can we not do something similar? We have heard the scaremongering, and the Department refuses to justify some of its most alarmist rhetoric.”
“In my constituency, people who work on cruise ships, people who work in the events industry and people who run luxury coaches are but three examples of the terrible cases that have come to my notice in recent days. In their actions, the Government are treating citizens not as individuals but as part of a collective, and that is depersonalising. It is most obvious in the Government’s refusal to differentiate between those who have had covid-19 and are therefore immune, whether in the short or long term, and those who have not. If the state wanted to maximise liberty, it would remove the restrictions on freedom wherever it was possible so to do. What threat is there to public health from allowing those who are immune to covid-19 to go about their normal business? That is what happens in Sweden.”
“I have said it before and I say it again: lockdowns, whether they are partial or total, are the wrong strategy. They are oppressive and profoundly un-Conservative. As a Conservative, I have always believed that the role of the state is to provide a safety net for those who cannot help themselves. Now we have a Conservative Government who are preventing people from helping themselves by engaging in economic activity, and, having prevented those people from engaging in economic activity, the Government are not providing a safety net for all of them. As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) has just said, people are missing out because they are not allowed to engage in economic activity.”
“I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for their patience during the security scare, but all has now been satisfactorily resolved. This is a one and a half hour debate; it will start now and finish at 25 minutes past 11. One Member has chosen to withdraw from the list as he will not be able to be here between 11 am and 11.25 am. If there are others in a similar position, they can notify the Chair accordingly.”
“Before calling the next speaker, I will say that 13 other Members wish to be called and there are 52 minutes left. By my calculations, self-discipline of about four minutes per speech should enable everybody to get a hearing.”