Kit Malthouse
MP for North West Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“We have heard time and time again that the situation that thousands of our constituents live with every single day is so horrific and appalling that even the best palliative care cannot alleviate their pain. I urge colleagues to consider what their vote may mean today.”
“I will not. Some of those Members had just a few months before been specifically rejected by the electorate and replaced in this House by others, and I am afraid that they cannot be trusted not to do the same thing again. I grant my right hon.”
“The Health and Social Care Committee of the House of Lords found that in territories that have assisted dying, palliative care generally improves, because people become less afraid of talking about death.”
“One of the most affecting people I have met over the last 11 years of campaigning on this issue is Warwick Jackson, who came to our party conference a couple of years ago. Warwick’s wife, Ann, was diagnosed with terminal peritoneal cancer. She basically knew that she was going to die a slow, suffocating death at the end.”
“I respect my right hon. and learned Friend’s expertise in this matter, but, as he has already heard on the Floor of the House, it is perfectly possible for this House to suggest amendments, negotiate them with the promoters of the Bill, place them against the legislation in the House of Lords and then have them come back to this House for…”
“As co-sponsor of the Bill once again, I am acutely conscious that there is more at stake today than merely the fate of those who are facing their end, because the conduct of the other place means that our democracy is also on trial today.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,811 lines we hold for Kit Malthouse, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 78 of 97.
“It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) for securing the debate. It is obvious that he and many Members have strong constituency interests in the topic and want to ensure, as I do, that local voices are heard as we consider the development of the shale gas industry in the UK.”
“Members will know that the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, so they will understand that it would not be appropriate for me to comment today on the detail of individual planning applications, on decisions on those applications, or on local plans. Hon. Members will also know that my remit as Housing Minister in relation to shale gas development is focused on planning policy and on delivering related manifesto commitments. However, given that many matters have been raised that are beyond my remit, I undertake to refer them to the appropriate Ministers, not least the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth.”
“No, because I want to leave time at the end for my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde. It is clear from my hon. Friend’s speech that the recent consultations are important and have excited a strong reaction from his constituents, from him and from other hon. Members. I emphasise that no decision has been made whether to bring the proposals forward. The consultations have now closed: the Government are considering the representations made and will issue a response in due course. The consultations are part of a range of measures to make planning decisions faster and fairer for all those affected by new shale gas development and ensure that local communities are fully involved in the planning decisions that affect them. Hon.”
“As part of that, as I said, we have launched a further consultation today on whether applicants should be required to conduct pre-application consultation with the local community. We have also delivered on our manifesto promises to consult on how best to develop our planning processes for exploration and production of shale gas development while ensuring that communities remain fully involved. We are considering the responses from the consultations and will respond in due course.”
“Local authorities and communities also have the right to be involved during the examination of a project; they can set out their views in written representations, which will then be taken into account in decision making. Both consultations ran for 14 weeks and closed on 25 October. The Government are analysing the representations made and will publish a response in due course. Should we take forward the proposals, we have committed to conducting further consultations on the detail of the proposed changes. No doubt this debate will provide valuable feedback into that process. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde again for securing this valuable debate. We remain fully committed to ensuring that local communities are properly involved in planning decisions that affect them, and to making planning decisions faster and fairer.”
“We therefore also consulted over the summer on whether the production phase of shale gas developments should be brought within the nationally significant infrastructure projects, which many hon. Members have referred to. The consultation particularly sought to understand what the appropriate triggers and criteria could be for including production projects in the NSIP regime. I emphasise that community engagement is fundamental to the NSIP regime’s operation. Pre-application consultation with the local community and with local authorities is a statutory requirement. Developers are required to consult extensively before an application is submitted and considered, and where the consultation has not been carried out in line with the statutory requirements, the Planning Inspectorate can refuse to accept an application.”
“In relation to the role that local communities and mineral planning authorities can play within the permitted development rights regime, our consultation also sought views on whether MPAs should be able to conduct a prior approval process to consider specific elements of a development before works can proceed. Such a process can include a requirement for public consultation. It would also enable local consideration of key matters. There is currently no commercial production from any hydraulically fractured shale gas resources in the UK. However, we believe that it is vital to look ahead and understand how best to manage planning permissions for a future state in which shale gas is produced.”
“I also emphasise that any permitted development right covers only the planning aspects of the development; it does not remove requirements under the regulatory regimes of the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the Oil and Gas Authority. It is important to note that all permitted development rights contain specific exemptions, conditions and restrictions to control and mitigate the impact of the development and protect local amenity. Any potential permitted development right for shale gas exploration would be no exception; for example, it could specify limits on the height of any structure, areas where a permitted development right would not apply, or noise and operation controls. The consultation has sought views on that issue.”
“The consultation also seeks views on the process of community consultation that should be required and on the stages of shale gas development that should be covered. It closes on 7 January, and I urge everybody to contribute to it. Let me move on to the potential changes to permitted development rights. Over the summer, we consulted on whether permitted development rights should be expanded to include shale gas exploration development, and on the circumstances in which those proposals might be appropriate. I make it clear that any potential permitted development right granted for shale gas exploration would not apply to hydraulic fracturing operations or to the production stage of shale gas extraction.”
“Engagement with communities at the pre-application stage gives local people a say earlier in the planning process and makes developers aware of issues of importance to the community that may need to be resolved. The planning system in the UK already provides an extensive legislative framework for community involvement, but I believe there is scope to do more. We have therefore published a consultation on whether applicants should be required to conduct a pre-application consultation with the local community prior to submitting a planning application for shale gas development. We believe that that could further strengthen the role that local people play in the process, and we are keen to hear the voices of industry and of communities.”
“I am afraid that I do not have time. My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde highlighted the importance of community engagement in the planning process. I reassure him that we remain fully committed to ensuring that local communities are fully involved in planning decisions that affect them, and to making planning decisions faster and fairer. Those are long-standing principles and I am adamant that we should stick to them. However, we understand that communities feel that they are often not consulted closely enough before planning applications are submitted to the local planning authority by developers. As my hon. Friend highlighted, that can lead to opposition to developments and a longer application process.”
“It states that “permission should be refused for poor design” especially when it “fails to take opportunities to improve the character and quality of an area.” In decades to come, we want to look back on this golden age of housebuilding not through the windscreen of a bulldozer, but with a view to treasure, preserve and invest in what lies before us. We must learn the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s. My right hon. Friend referred to the Birmingham central library, which has now been demolished. The same is true of Robin Hood Gardens, as well as Pimlico school—a brutalist concrete school in a ward where I served as a councillor—which I played a part in having demolished. They are temporary buildings.”
“No matter where one stands on design, our first obligation is to ensure that communities get what they need in a form that they appreciate. The Government are leading on that by putting beauty at the heart of our housing and communities policy. In both the housing White Paper and the social housing Green Paper, we are focused on creating great places and on design quality. Homes England, our new and more assertive national housing agency—I launched its strategic plan this morning with an exhortation to beauty in all that it does—is promoting design quality through its programmes. In July, our revised national planning policy framework put another stake in the ground.”
“While I accept his challenge that beauty is not a relative term, when it comes to our built environment it is often in the eye of the beholder, so no matter what we do, some people will be unhappy. We all know what beauty should feel like. Beautiful places not only make us happy but keep us well, and move us from fear and anxiety to hope and happiness. They welcome us, inspire us and elevate the mundanity of human existence. Great housing developments do not have to be billion-pound projects—the overall winner of last year’s Housing Design Award was a mixed-tenure regeneration scheme in Camden—and critically, beautiful places to live and work should not be the preserve of the wealthy, as my right hon. Friend also pointed out.”
“We are talking in particular today about the “better” bit; building more beautifully, because in the words of the architect Frank Lloyd-Wright: “If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.” Back in 2010, just 134,000 net additional homes were added to the country’s housing stock, but today, the Government are in delivery mode. The number of additional homes is up 55% to 217,000 per annum, and we are well on our way to reaching our target of 300,000 per year. We have always been clear that building more does not mean that we cannot build better. As my right hon. Friend said, we have to quash the myth that quality and quantity cannot go together. In fact, the more we build, the more important it is that we get it right.”
“He knows however that the issue of beauty in the built environment is close to my heart, so I shall continue. One of the advantages of having a poet on your speechwriting team in the Department is that they quite often recall to us some of the poetry of our youth. In preparing for this speech, we considered Larkin’s “An Arundel Tomb”—a wonderful poem—which reminds us, with his image of the earl and countess captured in stone, that the things we build today could last for centuries, and that we have a duty to future generations to ornament their lives as ours have been ornamented by the generations that preceded us. When the Prime Minister asked me to take this job, she was clear about my task: she wanted more, better, and faster homes. Those are the three indivisible words by which I live.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries. You and I were both brought up in a city punctuated by architectural superlatives, but also scarred by some of the worst examples of architectural vandalism over the last three or four decades, so this debate is of interest to us both. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) on his fantastic speech. It will sit in his canon, alongside his groundbreaking and remarkable speech, “The journey to beauty”, which I have read several times now. He gave it as Transport Minister and it caused quite a stir in the industry at the time. He is without doubt an aesthete and a patriot, and I salute his indefatigability in the face of the ugliness that he rightly calls out. I am tempted to say “I agree” and sit down.”
“The workshops will offer them the opportunity to discuss the challenges that they face and, importantly, to share their own experience of promoting design quality. We are bringing in people from across the sector—from local authorities to developers, housing associations and architects—to share their ideas about beauty and great design.”
“I hope that we might be able to rise to his challenge to produce 100 new parks, if each of those places has four. We are not only building homes; we recognise that we are building neighbourhoods. Developments of 500 units or more are bigger than most villages, so we have to think in terms of neighbourhoods that function, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. To achieve that, however, we know that local planning authorities need design capacity, so we have directed almost £5 million to 26 local authorities through our planning delivery fund, to support them in developing innovative ways to increase design skills throughout the country. We are also running workshops for councillors, to help them to understand and to support their role in ensuring beauty in the built environment.”
“That is something we have sought to achieve with our garden communities programme. More than a century ago, Sir Ebenezer Howard first outlined his idea of a garden city. He had a vision of places where people could work, raise families, travel easily and enjoy green spaces. We are renewing that idea for the 21st century, and we have set out clear expectations for high-quality place making across our country. That is a chance to aspire beyond identikit housing, which my right hon. Friend identified, and town centres that look like everywhere and nowhere. We are championing ambitious councils, which see garden communities as a central part of their plans for housing and growth. Our programme supports 23 places to deliver more than 200,000 new homes by the middle of the century.”
“That is a challenge I have put to the housing development community in a number of forums over the past three or four months that I have been in this job. That does not mean that all new homes and public buildings need to be a replica of the local style, but they do need to fit in, in the broadest sense of the term. We are therefore supporting high-quality, high-density housing such as mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets, typical of the English urban townscape and rural context with which we are all familiar. In particular, I am keen to see the re-emergence of that great British gift to the world of architecture, the garden square. It is possible for modern, efficient and technology-driven design to echo our history and to reflect the local area without becoming pastiche.”
“My right hon. Friend raises some interesting issues. As he knows, I am in the process of producing the guidance to the NPPF, and I shall certainly take his advice as I do so. He might be interested to know that when I was at City Hall, I suggested a competition for Londoners to vote each year for a building that should be demolished, and that we should provide grant support to assist in the demolition of that building, if required. However, let us see where we get to with the guidance. My right hon. Friend mentioned local materials and the vernacular, and we want to draw from the history of any area the use of materials that mature and age gracefully. Critically, we want to build the conservation areas of the future.”
“When I bring that message of “more, better, faster” to the sector, I always stress how design matters at every level, from planning to community acceptability: build beautifully and get permission, build beautifully and sell more houses, and build beautifully and communities will actually welcome developers, rather than drive them out of town at the tip of a pitchfork.”
“I am more than happy to meet. In the past, I have worked closely with the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community—I knew Hank Dittmar quite well before he sadly passed away—and I would be delighted to become reacquainted with the prince’s work, not least because earlier this year we held a design quality conference, the first of its kind, which was attended by 380 people from across the sector, and we want to do more of that kind of work, because the responsibility to build more beautifully rests with all of us. Where the Government are leading, I encourage the private sector to follow.”
“By having more players in the market, we shall get them to compete on innovation and quality. Ultimately, it comes down to delivering houses that people want to live in, buildings where people want to work and places that people want to call home. More than that, we must build things that elevate and entertain. That is what the Government are hoping to and will deliver in the future. I look forward to working with many hon. Members on that most important of missions. I close by—”
“I acknowledge what my right hon. Friend says, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, that is often an accident of ergonomics, form and beauty coming together, just as it did for the roof at the British Museum—an extraordinary structure in which, exactly right, ergonomics and form come together. Some of the best examples of beautiful buildings are delivered by small and medium-sized enterprises, from self-build to the refurbishment of historic buildings. Sadly, the 2007-08 economic crash killed a number of such growing developers, and we are yet to see a new talent pool emerge. I believe, however, that SMEs are part of the key to the challenge. That is why we are directing our home building fund towards SMEs—to give them the confidence to grow and build, and to raise the bar on design quality.”
“At the end of the poem he ends with that famous line: “What will survive of us is love.” In 200 or 300 years’ time, what will future generations see as a symbol of our love for them, projected forward in time? All that will survive of us is those things that we build today. We are joined in our ambition to ornament their lives and to create the beauty that will enhance their existence for centuries to come, as ours has been enhanced by the generations who came before us.”
“Sorry, yes. I asked my team to update me on the London views. Apparently, there is a campaign by London First and other developers to relax the protections, but so far they remain in the draft London plan. We shall see where that plan lands. I shall finish my speech by returning to that Larkin poem. Members may remember—I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings does—that the most affecting part of that poem is in the second stanza, when Larkin reveals that the couple he has been looking at are actually holding hands. They have been holding hands for the centuries for which they have been lying there.”
“They range in size from 1,500 to more than 40,000 new homes in one place. We have just launched a new garden communities prospectus, inviting ambitious proposals for new garden communities at scale. This is not just about getting the numbers up; it is about building quality, innovative places that people are happy to call home.”
“Where authorities have introduced CIL, 15% is specifically allocated to meet local priorities, and that is increased to 25% in areas with a neighbourhood plan in place. In an area that has a parish council, the money is passed directly to it. That neighbourhood allocation from CIL gives communities real power in deciding and delivering their infrastructure priorities for their area and will hopefully encourage the spread of neighbourhood planning. In his report, my hon. Friend also considered the creation of new communities. We believe strongly that the creation of new garden communities can play a vital role in helping to meet this country’s housing need well into the future. Our current programme supports 23 locally-led garden communities that have the potential to deliver more than 200,000 homes by 2050.”
“We are trying to give more clarity up front through the planning system, so that developers know what the requirements are going to be, whether that is infrastructure or affordable housing, and can factor that into the value that they pay for the land, so that fundamentally it is the land value that will get squeezed. We have consulted on further reforms to developer contributions, including removing existing restrictions in certain circumstances that prevent local planning authorities pooling more than five section 106 planning obligations towards a single piece of infrastructure. We will be responding to that consultation in the near future as well. Local authorities are also able to use the community infrastructure levy to help to fund the supporting infrastructure that is needed to address the cumulative impact of development.”
“It will also support local authorities to ensure that development meets the policy requirements set out in the local plan. Fundamentally, what we are trying to do in the NPPF is to give clarity up front to developers and local communities about what will be expected, which will allow them to factor that into land value over time. My hon. Friend quite rightly expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of value that is captured from land. He is correct that often in a viability assessment, it is the community infrastructure component—the section 106 component—that gets squeezed. That is largely because the negotiation takes place after planning permission has been granted.”
“Friend referred, encourages local authorities to make more proactive use of their extensive land assembly powers. We will keep the operation of the system under review. We also recognise that the availability of sustainable infrastructure is important to support new housing. That is why we have introduced changes to the NPPF that will ensure that developers know what contributions they are expected to make towards affordable housing and essential infrastructure, that local communities are clear about the infrastructure and affordable housing, and that local authorities can hold them to account. The revised NPPF requires local authorities to set clearer policy requirements for infrastructure and affordable housing through plans, informed by more transparent viability assessments.”
“In its recent report on land value capture, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee made several recommendations for reform of compulsory purchase compensation. Its recommendations included restricting compensation by removing hope value from the assessment of the market value of land. The Government will publish their response to the Committee’s report shortly. As I explained when I gave evidence to the Committee, we have very recently introduced wide-ranging reforms to make the compulsory purchase process clearer, fairer and faster for all. That includes changes to the Land Compensation Act 1961. We are keen to let those important reforms bed in. The revised national planning policy framework, to which my hon.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your guiding hand, Mr Pritchard. It is a great pleasure to respond to this very important debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). In his report, “Green, pleasant and affordable,” he has presented a smorgasbord—a veritable cornucopia—of radical and interesting ideas. In the time I have available, I want to go through a number of the areas that the report covers, in particular supply and home ownership. The first issue he quite rightly raises is that of getting the most out of land. In order to increase housing supply, we understand that local authorities need to be empowered to make the most effective use of the land that is present across all our towns and cities.”
“We have already put in place a number of initiatives to help SME house builders to grow and develop, including the home building fund, the housing growth fund and the housing delivery fund, as well as proposals to make it easier for SMEs to identify land. We believe that that is a critical way to encourage innovation. The market has agglomerated into a small number of large players, which are perhaps not as innovative as they could be. If we can create a more vigorous market of people competing to build houses and competing for our custom, they are likely to be much more innovative in their method, supply and typography of housing, and they may well cater to different parts of the market and look at sites that larger builders might not.”
“We recognise that there is more to be done, and that is why we have just announced that we will publish proposals for a national permitted development right to permit people to build upwards on existing buildings rather than just to build out. Important in all of this is the need to diversify the market. We believe that to increase our housing supply we have to be innovative and boost the development sector to allow both large and small builders to flourish and to build the homes that our communities need. The Government fully recognise the important role that small and medium-sized house builders play in delivering much-needed housing in this country, and we are committed to ensuring that this support is in the right place.”
“Friend the Member for Harborough about the requirement to build towers to achieve density. In central London—a place that I know very well, having served there as a London Assembly member and councillor—some of the densest areas are in fact some of the most desirable, and they are low-rise. It is probably still the case that the densest part of central London is Cadogan Square. Towers do not necessarily deliver density, and they can often be intrusive. Our framework goes further by stating that local authorities should support the use of airspace above existing residential and commercial buildings to provide new homes, as my hon. Friend said.”
“Another issue that has been raised is increasing density, which we believe is also important. We need to make sure that we make the most effective use of underutilised land. That is a crucial part of our focus. Higher density development and the development of brownfield land can play a significant role in increasing housing supply in urban locations, especially in areas that are well served by public transport and in town and city centre locations. The revised NPPF requires local planning authorities to be more proactive in identifying opportunities to make more effective use of land. That includes planning for higher densities in locations that are well served by public transport, and reallocating underutilised land to serve local development needs better. I disagree slightly with my hon.”
“The primary requirement we have for garden communities is that they have strong local support and are supported by local democratically elected politicians. We would, for example, not countenance a proposal for a garden community that came forward against the wishes of the local authority or local authorities concerned. My right hon. Friend may have noticed—this points to an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough raised about capacity and capability—that we recently changed the regulations so that we can have locally-led development corporations. They are brought together and approved by the Secretary of State, but under local initiatives and with local control, to try to deliver some of those communities more effectively. Local control, consent and engagement are key, in terms of both acceptability and development.”
“I wholeheartedly agree on self-build, which I am very keen to encourage. Something like three out of every four houses in Austria are self-built or custom-built. It holds enormous capacity for the future. I recommend that my hon. Friend go and visit a site called Graven Hill just outside Bicester, which is the largest self-build site in Europe and which will deliver about 1,400 self-build homes. It is quite something to see—an amazing array of different houses. There is a house that looks like a stealth bomber sitting next to a Swiss chalet, a Cotswold cottage and a flat-pack house from Poland. As I said on the fringes of conference, I think the site will be a conservation area in the future because of the effervescence of design that is taking place there. We are very keen to encourage self-build. Finally, one of the big issues—”
“By sheer coincidence, on my accession to the chrysanthemum throne in housing, I raised a similar possibility, should we look at some way of transferring from landlord to tenant in the future. Those issues of tax, stamp duty and ownership are way above my pay grade, but I have no doubt that the report will have winged its way to the Treasury, where our colleagues will be considering its efficacy. I can see why it might be attractive from a landlord transfer to ownership point of view, although we would have to study its fiscal effects to see what the cost might be.”
“I will be studying the paper in some detail and I hope to weave some of his thinking into our policies in the future. Question put and agreed to.”
“We must revive that dream for ordinary people—for those striving on low and middle incomes, who find the first rung of the housing ladder beyond their reach. The Government are committed to tackling this challenge to make the housing market work. By the mid-2020s, we aim to have increased house building to an average of 300,000 net new homes a year. On planning permissions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned, we are now granting more than 350,000 permissions a year against a building target of 300,000 houses. That is another challenge that I face. In the time that I have in this job, I am always open to ideas. I certainly welcome the radical thinking that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough and his collaborators on the paper have injected into the debate.”
“Since 2010, we have delivered more than 60,000 shared ownership properties, helping people to take their first steps into home ownership. Our recent Green Paper, “A new deal for social housing”, announced that we would be exploring innovative, affordable home ownership models to support those who are struggling to raise a deposit. The Prime Minister has made it clear that this should be a country that works for everyone. That means building more of the right homes in the right places and ensuring that the housing market works for all parts of our community. It is this Government’s mission to reverse the decline in home ownership and to revive the dream of Britain as a property-owning democracy.”
“More details will be brought forward through that consultation in due course, following the normal tax policy-making process set out by the Government—the legislation will be in a future Finance Bill. We must also support our younger generation, who find it increasingly hard to get on to the property ladder. We are supporting people’s aspirations to buy through a range of initiatives, including Help to Buy, right to buy, greater funding for shared ownership, and rent to buy. Since the spring of 2010, Government-backed schemes have helped more than 481,000 households to buy a home. Younger people are also helped directly by our investment in affordable housing. The Government are investing more than £9 billion in the affordable homes programme to deliver a wide range of affordable homes, including shared ownership homes, by 2022.”
“Since the council tax empty homes premium was introduced in April 2013, the number of long-term empty residential properties has fallen. When it is in force, the Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill will allow councils to go further, increasing the premium by up to 300% in some cases. That will allow authorities to encourage better use of the existing housing stock in their area. As the Prime Minister announced, the Government are also taking action on non-resident purchases of residential property, which can make it more difficult for UK residents to purchase a home of their own. The Government will publish a consultation on introducing an increased stamp duty land tax charge on non-residents buying property in England and Northern Ireland.”
“I will make a bit of progress. I want to address the issue of home ownership, because it is fundamental to the report and it is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough quite rightly said, one of the most important challenges of our time. As he mentioned, we must find ways to improve home ownership. Rising demand for housing has increased prices and in many cases pushed down home ownership. The Government believe that people should be free to purchase a second home or invest in a buy-to-let property. However, we are aware that that can make it difficult for other people, particularly first-time buyers, to get on the property ladder. That is why in April 2016 the Government introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax on purchases of additional properties.”
“Friend the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary recently met the Irish Government to discuss their approach to trespass and unauthorised encampments. We will provide a formal response to the consultation in due course.”
“The consultation, which closed on 15 June, allowed the Government to hear views from everyone with an interest—settled and nomadic communities, organisations and individuals, and public authorities—on how best to address unauthorised encampments. We have received a substantial response, with over 2,000 representations, which signals how strongly people feel about this issue. We are grateful for the time that people have taken to engage with us, and we remain committed to working with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to consider all representations before deciding on the way forward. Several Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, raised the Irish model. It may be of interest to Members that my right hon.”