Caroline Nokes
MP for Romsey and Southampton North · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He will be conscious that there are in the region of 15 more Members wishing to speak in this debate, and we have not yet heard from the Minister, so I am not minded to accept a closure motion at this point.”
“(3) For paragraph (3A) substitute— “(3A) The returning officer shall also provide each polling station with such equipment as is necessary to ensure that relevant persons are able to vote independently and in secret, including— (a) tactile equipment that enables the voter to navigate the ballot paper and accurately mark their chosen candi…”
“(2) During the period commencing 30 minutes before the time appointed for the taking of a poll at an election, and ending 30 minutes after the close of the said poll, a person shall not, in or in the curtilage of a polling station or in any place within 50 metres of such station, for the purpose of promoting the interest of a political pa…”
“New clause 97— Power of Electoral Commission to require disclosure from financial institutions — “In Schedule 19B of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (investigatory powers of Commission), after paragraph 1 insert— “Power to require disclosure from financial institutions 1A(1) The Commission may give a disclosure n…”
“() In paragraph 6 of schedule 6 (Donations from impermissible donors), after “section 54(1)(a)” insert— “or section 55B.” (8) In Schedule 20, in Table after Section 56(3) or (4) (failure to return donations) On summary conviction: statutory maximum or 6 months On indictment: fine or 1 year” Insert— Section 55A(8) (cap on donations) On sum…”
“(2) The specified elections for the purposes of subsection (1) are— (a) UK parliamentary elections, and (b) local government elections in England and Wales.”
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“What other steps are the Government taking alongside this legislative clarity—which I welcome—to ensure that those people who still think it is okay to humiliate, embarrass and assault women get a clear message that it is culturally unacceptable?”
“My hon. Friend will know that last week there was a debate in Westminster Hall on this subject. Afterwards, I spoke to Dawn Dines at Stamp Out Spiking and had an email from Colin Mackie of Spike Aware, who made the point that none of us had mentioned vape spiking. That was our omission, and I am pleased that this afternoon it has not been the Minister’s, as she included it. We need a 21st century solution to 21st century crime. Could the Minister expand a little about perpetrators? We know that spiking is done for a variety of reasons: perhaps to effect a sexual assault, physical assault or robbery; or just for entertainment, particularly to humiliate individuals.”
“We had not heard of nightclubs at that point; the steam-powered carousel had just been invented; young people were certainly not going anywhere near bars and nightclubs, and they were not being forced to put plastic stoppers in the top of their bottles or covers on their glasses.”
“I want to highlight why that is important, and why it is a great pity that the Home Affairs Committee is still waiting and police forces, police and crime commissioners and, indeed, victims and potential victims, are still waiting. It is because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) highlighted, the legislation to which we tend to revert when talking about spiking is from 1861. That is not even the last century: it is the one before that. It is really remiss of the Government. In many instances, we can rely on very old legislation for good purpose, but the offence of spiking had not been dreamt up in 1861. I did a bit of research on how one might spend one’s leisure time in 1861.”
“This was a departure from normal behaviour for me, but I spent an entire day with the Avon and Somerset Police and with some of the stewards at that festival. What I saw was really heartening and encouraging. I saw stewards going out of their way to ask festival-goers whether they were okay. I vividly remember seeing a young girl huddled almost in a foetal position on the floor—it was bitterly cold—and a steward stopping, checking that she was okay and putting his hi-viz jacket around her. It was really encouraging to hear at first hand from the police about the efforts that they were making. However, moving on from the 2022 report, the assurances given to the Home Affairs Select Committee and the welcoming of its recommendations by Government, we still do not have specific legislation on spiking.”
“I think it is fair to say that this debate has fewer contributions, but obviously of an exceptionally high quality. It shows that we still care and are still concerned about the numerous stories that our constituents bring to us. I am still shocked by the incidents that are highlighted to me in my role as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Just over 11 months ago, we were calling for specific legislation to address this issue. My right hon. Friend the Minister will know that the Home Affairs Committee has done a great deal of excellent work on spiking. Its report of April 2022 is tagged to this debate, and the hon. Member for Bradford South gave evidence to that Committee on the very specific issue of spiking at festivals. I wish to touch on that issue briefly, because I went to Glastonbury—I think it was 18 months ago.”
“Thank you, Mr Efford, not just for calling me to speak but for stepping in after I stepped in earlier. This debate is an object lesson in multitasking. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and, of course, my co-sponsor, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). It is always a privilege, particularly on this issue, to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who has campaigned tirelessly for two long years, as he so ably highlighted. It does not seem nearly a year since we were last in this place discussing this issue, but I like to think that we are on the edge of a breakthrough. I look to my right hon. Friend the Minister for support, encouragement and enthusiasm on the issue. The last debate was well attended.”
“I let Emily loose on him, because her instant response was, “Why should I have to? Why should I have to have a 20-point checklist to keep myself safe when I go out at night?” Emily is right: we should not have to. But in the current climate, tragically, we do.”
“I have never forgotten the experience of Emily, a young girl from Southampton who was a student at the University of Southampton when she was spiked. As a result of that, she came to my office, and her father told me her story very eloquently. She came and did a period of work experience in my office. While she was there, there were two other teenage girls doing work experience, and we had someone from a company come to us with female protection kits, as I will call them loosely. He had a range of kits. There was a kit for dogwalkers, to protect them from being attacked while out walking the dog. There was a kit for students specifically, which contained plastic stoppers for bottles, lids for glasses, their own straw, and so on. It had some of the tests for testing drinks.”
“We are hearing of cases of people being frogmarched to cashpoints and forced to withdraw cash while they are incapable of making rational, sensible decisions about what they are doing because of the substances they have been given. However, as Spike Aware UK would point out, it is not good enough for us to have legislation in this place and it is not good enough for us to be aware: we all have to be actively anti-spiking. The Home Office has done some work in recent years on being an active bystander—the British Transport Police also does that brilliantly. It is about looking out for other people’s drinks and observing the behaviours of others in nightclubs and bars. I absolutely endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford however: why should we have to do that?”
“We need evidence to drive good law, and I have no doubt that the Home Office is going to drive good law. I have mentioned Spike Aware UK, but I also wish to pay tribute to Dawn Dines, of Stamp Out Spiking, whom I have spoken to as part of the work that my Select Committee has done. I want to touch briefly on why people might seek to spike other individuals, which others have referenced. I believe that it is by and large a gendered crime, but it can happen to men; it can happen to boys. We think of it as being driven by sexual gratification, but it can be driven merely by wanting to be entertained by watching someone’s reaction. More and more cases are now being driven by a desire to perpetrate robberies.”
“His parents Colin and Mandy—Colin has been in touch me with ahead of this debate—have done great work since 2017, highlighting the scale of the problem, the importance of educating young people, and the importance of educating venues and making sure that they are putting protections in place. But we do need to better understand the scale of the problem; we need better data. With spiking crimes being recorded more often alongside rapes, sexual assaults and robberies, we need to have data that shows us exactly how many people are being spiked. We also need better reactions to this; we need blood tests and tests in hospitals quickly to identify the victims, because the challenge is that many of these substances are processed in the body very quickly.”
“She and her friends regard this as commonplace—that is the horror here. They do not report spiking to the police or to any authorities; they just accept that this is a risk they will run in order to go out and have a good time. That is absolutely horrific. I always point out that my daughter is a lot smaller than me, and I questioned whether this was something that happened only to petite people. A constituent of mine told me about the case of his wife who had been spiked in a nightclub, and she is tiny. I thought, “Is this happening only to small people? Am I therefore safe?”. No, apparently, I am not. I wish to mention, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester did, the work done by Spike Aware UK, because we regard spiking very much as a gendered crime, but Greg Mackie died because he was spiked.”
“I do not think I have ever mentioned this explicitly in this Chamber, but I asked my daughter whether she had ever been spiked. She highlighted two occasions, one when she was collapsed in a toilet of a nightclub and was picked up by the security staff from the floor, carted through the entire nightclub and dumped on the pavement. That is what happens to teenage girls: they get ejected from nightclubs because the assumption is that they are drunk—she was not drunk. She may well have been drinking, but she assured her mother that she had had only one drink. It was only because her friends saw her being carted out through the nightclub and went to the rescue that she was safe. She told me of another occasion when she had had only one drink and firmly believed that she had been spiked.”
“The only reason she is not here today is because she is doing great work in the Criminal Justice Bill Committee. I gently point out to my good friend the Minister—I believe he is a good Minister—that he is the Security Minister and we are talking about the security and safety of our young people. I promise him that I am not going to get shouty with him, but I gently ask: the Home Office’s Sir Matthew Rycroft said in his response only two days ago to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee that news would be forthcoming “shortly, so how short is “shortly”? I ask because the epidemic of spiking does not abate. Last time we were here, we all raised the horrendous case of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), who has experienced spiking. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester also alluded to an experience.”
“That is exactly the point. The Act talks about chloroform and laudanum, not Rohypnol, GHB or the various other date-rape drugs that are either dropped into glasses or injected into people’s arms or legs—other body parts are available. That is the stark reality and why the legislation has to be modernised. We have a 21st century problem and we need a 21st century solution to it. We know that the Government are committed to producing and publishing a report on this issue. I believe it was the hon. Member for Bradford South who highlighted how long we have been waiting for that. I spoke earlier this week to the safeguarding Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), and asked her to continue to think positively, but speedily. What matters is that we need a solution.”
“Sadly, the truth is that young people under the age of 18 will attend house parties and young people under the age of 18 will be spiked at house parties. They are vulnerable when they are at school and college.”
“Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. That brings me to the Home Office’s own campaign, Enough, which, people will be relieved to hear, is my closing point. A message I would like to give the Minister very clearly, which is driven by the comments I have gleaned from Spike Aware UK, is that it is not enough for the Enough campaign to focus its activities around universities. By the time a young person has reached the grand old age of 18, that horse may already have bolted. We know from the excellent work of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and her Select Committee, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester rightly paid tribute, that many spiking incidents happen at house parties. We like to think that when we are surrounded by our friends, we will be okay.”
“I know that the Minister will pass on this message to the safeguarding Minister: please play an active role, by working with the Department for Education and the myriad other Departments that touch the lives of young people, in ensuring that the RSHE review is fit for the 21st century, in the same way that we should have a piece of legislation on spiking that is fit for the 21st century.”
“The stark reality is that we have to ensure that we are taking the lead of brilliant organisations such as Stamp Out Spiking and Spike Aware UK, so that young people have all the tools in their armoury to be protected as they move into adulthood. I have a final message for the Minister. I have absolutely no doubt that he will be encouraging and positive about this issue, because he is a good Minister and understands how important it is. He will have heard the strength of feeling across the Chamber on the need for specific legislation. I look forward, with my fingers crossed and my hopes high, to exactly that. My final plea, which I have made to a number of Home Office Ministers over many years, is that we must look at RSHE as an opportunity to equip young people with better skills to lead their adult lives.”
“The RSHE review needs to focus not on gender issues, but on the everyday problems that our young people face on their journey to adulthood, which include drugs, spiking, normal adult sexual relationships and trying not to learn about them from pornography. We have to be bolder when we are talking about what is and is not age appropriate. We have to equip young people to be cognisant of the risks, challenges and difficulties they will face, whether financial or anything else, through a programme of RSHE that is effective and preferably taught by experts, rather than the maths teacher on a Friday afternoon. I commend the Enough programme. I celebrate it: I have a sticker on my office door—what a shame that I feel the need to say “Enough” here.”
“My right hon. Friend anticipates where my speech was going. On the Enough campaign, I think it is right to focus on freshers’ week, which is a particular area of vulnerability, but by the time young people are 18 it is too late in some instances. Many will turn 18 while they are still at school and college. The Government’s statutory requirement for relationships, sex and health education finishes at 16, so when someone becomes a practitioner between the ages of 16 and 18, they are not supported. I gently say to the Security Minister—in the same way that I would have said and, indeed, have said to the current safeguarding Minister, the previous safeguarding Minister and the one before—that RSHE needs to be inclusive up to the age of 18. My Select Committee has called for that in one of our reports, and it is crucial.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way on that specific point. Music festivals—great. University freshers week—great. Will he work with his wonderful colleague at the Home Office to see whether we can have a roll-out to younger age groups, too?”
“The hon. Lady is highlighting a very important issue. She made a point about reporting, which is certainly an enormous challenge. The Women and Equalities Committee heard from Chelcie Jewitt of Surviving in Scrubs, who made the point that when doctors tried to report harassment, they were often told by the General Medical Council that it was a trust issue, yet the trust would say that it was a GMC issue. Does the hon. Lady think that goes some way to explaining why there is a lack of reporting and that, when there is reporting, it seems nothing gets done?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way, and welcome him to his new role, appreciating that he has only been in it a few weeks. I gently say to him that there is a real challenge in our NHS when 10% of women in one study reported unwanted sexual conduct in return for career opportunities. That is absolutely about power, and it is going to take a step change to break down those structures that enable such harassment to continue, behind a veil of silence, so that women are still afraid to speak out.”
“I reassure my hon. Friend that she is more than enough for me. There was a really worrying article in The Times a few days ago that talked about the invisibility of disabled people when making employment applications. We know that disabled people are less likely to be in work and to take up opportunities for entrepreneurship. Perhaps my hon. Friend could highlight the important work she is doing as the Minister for social mobility to make sure that across Government, there is a real drive to help disabled people get the best opportunities to work.”
“I welcome the opportunity that my constituent will now have to feed in how he has been impacted—how he has lived a life alone, because he has carried that shame for all these years. On behalf of my constituent and all the other LGBT servicemen and women who suffered in that way, I put it on the record that they want the opportunity to feed in their own stories so that the financial redress addresses the harm they suffered.”
“I welcome the Minister’s statement. Last week, I met Fighting With Pride and one of my constituents, who I will not name because he has not given me permission to do so. Three points came across in that meeting. The first was the importance of testimonies. He was a grown man who had been discharged in the 1980s and whose mother had received a letter from his commanding officer outing him as gay. He was still traumatised and crying in my office last week. This is about making sure that those testimonies are heard. The second point was about having the debate on the Floor of the House and not farming it out to Westminster Hall. Will the Minister make sure that the debate happens on the Floor of the House? The third point was about financial redress.”
“I know my right hon. Friend is as shocked as I am by some of the working practices of SSE in providing power to commercial premises. My constituent Philip Liddell of ACE Liftaway has paid £73,000 on deposit to SSE, but because of SSE’s delays with SSE’s solicitors, it has now asked him for an additional £50,000 to move an electricity substation on his commercial premises—an increase of 69%. Mr Liddell did not cause the delay, but he has no choice but to pay up. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate in this Chamber to discuss SSE’s working practices and how it is holding people to ransom?”
“Now, none of them is in full working order and none of them has the correct permits. As is tradition, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).”
“Like him, I recognise the huge importance of housing associations and the phenomenal work they do to support many of our constituents, especially the most vulnerable ones. To give a short history, in 2000 Test Valley Borough Council transferred ownership of its housing stock to Testway Housing, which was later bought out by Aster. By and large, that deal has worked well. There are always challenges, but nothing that even begins to compare with the current situation, which I first raised in the House several years ago, sadly to no avail. In 2000, when the sewage treatment plants were handed over from Test Valley Borough Council to Testway Housing as part of the large-scale voluntary transfer of housing stock, those sewage treatment plants were in full working order, with the requisite environmental permits.”
“Friend the Secretary of State dated 4 September and addressed to the chief executive of the Aster Group. He concludes it with the phrase: “I will be taking a personal interest in how your organisation continues to deliver its responsibilities”. I come here in the spirit of wishing to help my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in his mission to keep a very close eye on how Aster is delivering. I also, of course, welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), to his new role. He knows how pleased I am to see him on the Front Bench responding to this debate. I know that he is familiar with the Aster Group, which operates in his constituency as well as my own. I seem to recall an Adjournment debate in 2017 in this Chamber.”
“I very much appreciate having been granted this debate tonight. I reassure the Minister that I come here not in anger, not in sorrow, but with deep, deep concern at the charges being levied on my constituents, specifically by the Aster Group, which is the largest housing association operating in my constituency. I am not alone in my concern, and I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) is facing similar, although not identical, issues, as is my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who is here this evening. However, it does seem as though Romsey and Southampton North is particularly impacted, and I will go on to explain why and how. First, I draw the Minister’s attention to a salient piece of correspondence: a letter from my right hon.”
“At every turn we have been stumped, which is what brings me here to ask the Secretary of State, via tonight’s Minister, whether he can please use his existing concern about Aster and help us to find a solution.”
“Aster is charging her an amount for sewerage that is equivalent to two thirds of her pension, leaving her just one third of her monthly income for all her other bills, food and day-to-day living costs. I have some questions for the Minister, as you might expect, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want his advice on how we can best hold Aster to account. The housing ombudsman cannot help because these are no longer Aster tenants; they are now homeowners. Ofwat is not interested because Aster is not a registered search provider. I wonder whether that should be part of the picture going forward. The Consumer Council for Water says that, because it is a contractual relationship, it cannot become involved.”
“The only comfort that Aster is prepared to give is that it will not pursue people immediately for those charges; it will simply levy a charge on the house to recover the money when they die. There are two case studies that I will specifically highlight. Brent lives in East Dean. He bought his house in 2020 with his wife, and they now have two small children. They were told by Aster when they bought the house relatively recently that the sewage treatment plant was in working order and that their estimated cost per year would not exceed £80. He is now faced with charges of £480 per month. That is more than his mortgage. He is trapped in a home that he cannot sell, because who would buy a house with that sort of sewerage charge? Elizabeth is a pensioner from Cowleas Cottages in Awbridge.”
“That gives an idea of the scale of the waste, when we know that these tankers are operating many times a day at different locations. Local waste management companies are simply aghast at the sums being charged and the distances being travelled, when smaller companies could have dealt with a short-term crisis much more cost effectively. That is the real crux of this: it is not a short-term crisis; it is a long-term pattern of a company that has historically made huge profits simply by not reinvesting in maintenance and upgrading systems to meet 21st-century requirements. When the crisis hits, it is forced to adopt expensive short-term solutions and then longer-term upgrades, the burden of which is passed on to those who have bought their own homes and are therefore deemed by Aster to be wealthy enough to afford it.”
“Since the housing stock was transferred there, homeowners had only ever been charged for the service that they used, but are now being asked for an additional sum, running into thousands and thousands of pounds for replacement and upgraded infrastructure. There they can point to the poor value Aster appears to be receiving as part of its maintenance work, with one provider charging it £18,000 for the installation of a handrail and the cleaning of a single tank. That is a very similar picture to the massive price of the tankering contract in Hampshire, where tankers are coming in from Kent to pump away waste from facilities—often several times a day. There is one example of a £1,250 charge to Aster to empty 4,000 litres from a sewage treatment plant that is not working, when a local supplier had quoted £175.”
“Although it was expensive in capital costs for installation, over the past 10 years those residents will have been paying only a fraction of the cost of what an ongoing relationship with Aster would have cost them. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for the information that he has provided from his constituency. In Dorset, we see a very similar picture to Hampshire, with Aster interpreting deeds to mean that homeowners must pay for the maintenance of Aster infrastructure, whereas homeowners had understood that sewerage charges would be levied in line with those charged by Wessex Water for a similar service.”
“Aster itself has had no dilapidation or sinking fund, so it has made no provision to replace these plants, which might reasonably have been expected after some 40-odd years of service to be coming to the end of their lives. Aster had not planned and it had not prepared. I know that because, back in 2011, this issue was first highlighted to me by the residents of Strawberry Lane in Up Somborne, who came to me at that time complaining of sewerage bills in the region of £100 per month levied by Aster. Little did we know at the time that Strawberry Lane would be just the first in a long list. I also wish to pay tribute to the former borough councillor, Tony Ward, who negotiated a solution in Up Somborne for each property to have an individual septic tank installed.”
“We have seen not a programme of repairs and replacement, but a programme of tankering, recharged to the residents who had bought their former council houses, and with remaining Aster tenants having their “share” of this cost capped. As Aster told both me and Councillor Nick Adams-King, who has been tireless in his pursuit of this issue, it recognised that the charges were unaffordable. Aster’s response when challenged on this is that it is entitled to do this. This has not yet been tested in law, but I fear that it may come to that point—if only there were a resident who had not had to spend all their cash on Aster’s ever spiralling demands.”
“If my maths is correct, I can identify one household where the bill will be £5,760 this year, and that is before they are further billed for the maintenance of the plant. I am very specifically not asking the Minister to step in to pay those bills, but I am asking for his advice as to how hon. and right hon. Members can best hold Aster to account, bring the weight of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to bear, and highlight to the Secretary of State that a company in which he is already taking a close personal interest, is now seeking to rinse my constituents for Aster’s failures to maintain its own facilities. I have in my possession a report dating back some eight years plus, which identified all the maintenance and dilapidation issues of these small sewage treatment plants. And what have we seen since 2015?”
“That has resulted in long-standing and expensive tankering operations and poorly maintained plants, at the very end of their life, that in some instances discharge foul drainage into ditches, causing Aster to come to the attention—not in a good way—of not just the Secretary of State, but also the Environment Agency. That brings us to the cost. Some residents have been receiving bills of over £400 a month and are now being invoiced £3,500 as their “share” of a replacement plant. I invite the Minister to cast his mind back just 12 months, when the Government quite rightly recognised that average energy bills of £2,500 per year were unaffordable, and stepped in to help. Some of my constituents have been receiving sewerage charges that are twice that.”
“That figure is not means-tested in any way. Aster has accepted that their tenants cannot begin to afford charges of many hundreds of pounds a month, but it does not accept that just because someone has been able to buy their former council house, they may not be wealthy. It does not recognise that many will be pensioners, single people with only one household income or in low paid work, particularly in very rural areas, where much of the economy still revolves around agriculture. In East and West Tytherley, Awbridge, Ampfield, East Dean and Nether Wallop—I will not reel off every single village that is affected—the sewage treatment plants, owned and maintained by Aster, simply have not been maintained.”
“We all know that 95% of properties in the UK are connected to mains drainage, but my plea is on behalf of the people who live in the 5% of properties that are not, some of whom in my constituency are seriously financially challenged and plunged into enormous debt, just because they cannot be connected to the mains. I know that some in the Department were concerned that the debate would be about sewage, and therefore required a response from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but I reassure the Minister that the debate is not about the sewage itself, but the principle of whether it is okay to charge some residents as much as £480 per month for their waste water disposal. Aster recognises that those charges are unaffordable, because their own tenants pay about £600 a year for their sewage disposal.”
“I do not begrudge people making a profit, but I resent it when it comes at the cost of decent relationships between Aster, as the provider of local sewage treatment plants, and residents who have worked hard and saved to be able to purchase their former housing association home. In my constituency and others, they are now living under the tyranny of a housing association that seeks to recoup the costs of the housing association’s failure to maintain and repair sewage treatment plants in the villages across Test Valley that do not benefit from mains drainage.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. He is right to highlight how some housing associations have grown and grown. Somebody came to my constituency surgery last week to raise an issue about a different housing association, Adbury, whose ambition is to become one of the largest housing associations in the country. There is a problem with scale, because as these organisations become more remote from the residents they seek to serve and cover an ever wider geography, the individual contact and understanding of the needs of individuals can sometimes be lost. Aster is a large housing association, with many thousands of properties and customers, and an annual profit in excess of £50 million.”
“My hon. Friend will be aware that funds are made available to get disabled people into employment via Access to Work. However, there are significant delays in those funds being made available, once granted. Additional costs to disabled people—for example, their paying £6,000 for powered wheels—come at more of a cost when they are obliged to pay for them on their credit card because they cannot access the funds in time. Will she please work with colleagues across the DWP to ensure that there are no delays in getting access to the funds that will help disabled people into work?”
“My hon. Friend makes a very important argument about the centres being lost forever. When I visited the fifth Romsey girl guides over the summer, the girls there made the point that they had all enjoyed Foxlease in the constituency of my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), but they were concerned that future generations of brownies, rainbows and guides would not have the same opportunities that they had had, so it is the girls themselves who are concerned about future generations. They feel that they have missed out on an opportunity to be consulted and listened to, and to perhaps change the decision.”
“There is a real fear that properties in those sites will end up as luxury holiday lodges, thus restricting the ability of young people from disadvantaged communities to get out into our national parks. Has there been any discussion or consultation on issues such as the Caravan Sites Act 1968, which is of particular concern to the New Forest National Park Authority? Is the Minister prepared to discuss with colleagues across Government what can be done specifically to protect those sites from that sort of unwanted development in our national parks?”