Martin Wrigley
MP for Newton Abbot · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Q11. US big tech has exploited us for far too long, so I am delighted that the Met police followed my advice and pushed Apple and Google to implement the stolen handset blacklist, curbing resales and cutting mobile theft by almost half.”
“It sounds like the Secretary of State is hearing a fairly unanimous view from members of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which is good. Today’s ban is a welcome start, but it is only a start and is not sufficient.”
“Palantir appears to have a habit of avoiding competitive tender and scrutiny by using free trials and locking up the contract specifications after getting a foot in the door. I congratulate the London Mayor on stopping the recent potential contract offered by the Met police without a competitive tender process.”
“I was trying not to interrupt his flow— [Interruption.] Until I did. Throughout the files there are mentions of Palantir and Peter Mandelson, including a memo in which he tries to introduce Peter Thiel to No. 10 staff in June last year.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. We heard earlier how Kevin Dixon of Devon gives us excellent reports of what is happening with Healthwatch. The modern NHS must run on data, but critically, on data that carries the consent of patients.”
“The Government admit that but claim it is partial and fragmented. They also claim that the data will remain in the systems where it currently exists.”
The complete record
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“May I thank the Chief Secretary for his inclusion of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee in the work so far and for his removal of the mandatory nature of digital ID? That is what caused so many of my residents in Newton Abbot to write to me and complain about it. Will he commit to continue to involve the Committee as this situation evolves and as the system is implemented?”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this really important debate to the Chamber. Does she agree that the railway is a key part of the infrastructure and communications she is talking about, and we must focus on getting the final phase of the Dawlish rail resilience programme completed, along with the other measures? Dawlish and Teignmouth saw massive damage in these storms, with Teignmouth pier washing up on Dawlish beach and Dawlish beach itself being destroyed. Does she agree that the railway going down would be disastrous for Cornwall?”
“I welcome the removal of the abhorrent Iranian regime, having seen its beginnings 47 years ago, when my father was a serving officer in the British embassy. We knew the Americans who were taken hostage. I add my thanks to our serving personnel, who are putting their lives at risk. Since the pre-emptive strike, there has been a sad but inevitable escalation in hostilities, so what can the Prime Minister do to persuade Donald Trump to go to negotiations—that is where we have to be—given that he believes only in win-or-lose situations?”
“Not long ago, as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, some of us went down to the commando training centre at Lympstone to see the Royal Marines’ passing-out parade. One of the brave young people there was just 17, and at the end of the parade he was told, “Marine, go off and do your duty.” At 17, he should be allowed to vote. Does the shadow Secretary of State not agree with me?”
“Does my hon. Friend not agree that if the single transferable vote system is good enough for selecting Select Committee Chairs and the alternative vote system is good enough for mayors, they should be good enough in other elections, too?”
“Does the hon. Member agree that our joint hon. Friend from the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), was woefully let down by Meta when he attempted to get his own video taken down?”
“That would enable us to reach these overseas contingents, and we should be encouraging them to take part in our elections, as they are entitled to do. Something like 200,000 registered for the last election, but there are 3.4 million people whom we have disenfranchised. The other big question that we have agreed on and talked through is how we deal with misinformation and disinformation and modern technology, which are distorting our electoral position. We have to make more of that. On the whole, I would say that this is a reasonable start for a Bill. There is a lot more work to be done, but having heard Members on both sides of the House agreeing on the Bill, I think that together we can make it better, and fit for the 21st century.”
“However, the biggest thing I had complaints about after the last election was postal votes, whether it was postal votes too late in getting to people or postal votes being sent back and too late getting to the elections office. There is some movement in the Bill, but it is not enough. However, we are completely ignoring a whole section of voters: our overseas voters. We heard earlier how the overseas mandate had changed. Now, instead of some 1.4 million overseas voters, we have an estimated 3.4 million overseas voters, and we need to change how they can vote. They are asking for the ability to self-print ballots from the system—that is possible; they do it in the Netherlands—and return them through embassies and consulates.”
“I agree with many of the comments that Members have made, and it is nice to see such communality on idea that we need proportional representation, that we need to get rid of dirty money, and that we need to abolish the possibility of foreign people buying our elections. We see in too many countries across the world that if people have the money, they can buy the votes, and we must not fall into that trap. I welcome the introduction of votes for 16-year-olds. The children I meet at schools talking politics are engaged and understand what they are doing. I question whether we have sufficient digital voter IDs in the scheme for them to use. Personally, I would like to see voter ID abolished entirely, much as I would like to see the open register abolished entirely.”
“On the subject of Ukrainians living in the valleys, I was visiting some Ukrainians who are on the Homes for Ukraine scheme in Dawlish in my constituency, and I met a senior Ukrainian naval officer who was extremely grateful and very relieved that his family were safe and secure in Dawlish. I thank the Government for extending the Homes for Ukraine permission scheme by two years last summer, and I thank them again for this week enabling those on the scheme to apply for a visa extension within 90 days of the end of the visa, as opposed 28 days, as it was. That is a big relief to the Ukrainians in my constituency, and indeed to Ukrainian officers. What does the Minister think about the future for people from Ukraine who are in the UK?”
“T4. Roadworks in my constituency are causing traffic hell, and residents have had enough. With the two-year closure of the A382 for much-needed work, utilities companies are taking advantage by doing roadworks everywhere, and the county council is powerless to cause them to co-operate and co-ordinate. What does the Secretary of State suggest I say to my residents, whom I am meeting this evening?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for securing this essential debate. Her speaking of 2014 reminds me of the previous great storm, which took out the railway lines in Dawlish. This January, we had three storms in quick succession, as we did last January, so there appears to be more of a pattern now —it seems to be something we can expect every year. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need more Government funds to call upon to clear up areas after they have been hit so hard by these devastating storms, as Dawlish and Teignmouth were by the storms in January?”
“I deeply thank the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) for highlighting the dreadful things that have happened in Somerset, and I join them in thanking all those who have responded. I very much welcome what the Minister says about ensuring that the Environment Agency has the money to maintain assets and build new ones. My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of sustainable urban drainage systems, which we debated in Westminster Hall just last week. In that debate, the Minister talked about ways of maintaining SUDS. I asked for the maintenance of SUDS to be a statutory responsibility for the agencies set out in schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The Minister suggested that there was a route by which section 106 funding could be used to create permanent maintenance for SUDS.”
“The Select Committee said that DSIT was in the loop when it came to buying things, so I challenge the Minister’s statement that it was purely the Secretary of State who made the decision about the contract. This contract with Palantir is nearly three times the value of the previous contract with it. The MOD transparency notice sets out that “only Palantir” can run the service, and that there would be a “significant cost” to changing all the analytics services, so we are entirely locked into a contract with a company that is now hiking up the price. What is the exit strategy?”
“Residents are often unaware of the need for the maintenance of SuDS and of what maintenance companies do. Again, I can see that this whole set-up could very quickly fall into disrepair. Who will be there to pick up the pieces? The developer will have gone a long time before then. The residents have already paid for maintenance, because its cost is absorbed into the cost of building the site and of buying their homes in the first place: they will be double-paying for the maintenance of the site. Then, when things go wrong, they will be the ones footing the bill to put things right again.”
“Normally, that would not be a problem but the original site is finished and maintenance fees are being paid for it, whereas the adjoining site is not yet finished and is building SuDS in a space that the original developer is paying to have maintained. The original developer is up in arms. But even then, the maintenance contract would not actually look after the SuDS; it would just involve cutting the grass on a bank used to access the SuDS. The problem is: who maintains SuDS? I asked Redrow staff, “How are these SuDS going to be maintained on your site in Dawlish?” They said, “Ah, there’s a maintenance plan for all these.” They are right—there probably is, for the pumps, the tanks and the hard engineering. SuDS might be maintained by the maintenance company, but they might not be.”
“Consequently, it is really important that in this place the attenuation ponds do their job, which is to reduce the rate of water flowing off what used to be green fields. Planning permission is always granted on the basis that water does not come off the hard surfaces any faster than it would off green fields, but it is not actually stated where that water has to go or what has to be done with it. For years, planners have highlighted the need for drainage systems, which take the form of bungs, ditches or all sorts of other things such as swales and attenuation ponds. Those have been put into planning applications for developers, who then spend a lot of time and money creating drainage systems. In another development in my area, the developer is objecting because part of its site is being used to build the SuDS for an adjoining site.”
“But it’s falling apart—trees are growing through it, as nobody’s doing the maintenance. Nobody’s looking after it. It falls into the grounds maintenance contracts so they send somebody out with a lawnmower to look after a complicated, engineered set of flood prevention measures.” That does not happen only on that one estate of Hele Park; it is common across many estates. In my home town of Dawlish, in the Redrow estate the swale is currently filling up with trees. That issue is particularly important because the estate is in a critical drainage area, designated by the Environment Agency. All the water coming from the hills comes down into a single stream, which at high tide is tide-locked so there is nowhere for it to go.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered sustainable drainage systems. It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mrs Barker. Flooding is a topical issue. In Devon, it feels like it has been raining for about a year; in fact, it probably has been since the beginning of the year. Every day we see more and more floods, and more and more problems with water. Most people will probably never have heard of sustainable drainage systems, or SuDS; when I began my career in local government, I had no idea what people who mentioned them were talking about. They first came to my attention when I was knocking on doors on a new estate in Newton Abbot called Hele Park. A chap said, “They’ve spent all this money building these fantastic flood prevention channels; there’s a nice set of attenuation ponds with steps down and all the rest.”
“This is a great opportunity for the Government to show a desire to increase early intervention, to make things better for residents.”
“In my constituency, the village of Kenton—just by Powderham castle, which itself is not in my constituency—flooded because a drain got blocked. That flood ripped through the local primary school and through half a dozen houses, which are still empty and still being restored, and that primary school is being replaced. Flood prevention is much cheaper than recovery from floods. I urge the Minister to think about this as a necessary preventive measure. Too often over the last 60 years we have seen maintenance as the first thing people cut from budgets. Preventive maintenance is so important to keeping things working. If our drains were unblocked and small potholes fixed, and if our flooding systems worked, we would not be in some of the situations we are in now.”
“Those experts have been involved in putting these schemes together, pushing for them to happen. They are responsible for managing flooding, and have a real interest in doing so. Let us go back to the solution, rather than what the Government’s guidance suggested last year. Let schedule 3 be enacted and let us get SuDS certified and adopted by local authorities. I can see that the Government will say, “We cannot do that because it will cost money.” Yes, there will be an extra burden on local authorities that will need to be compensated. However, I put it to the Government that they are backing things like Flood Re, and this is actually a preventive measure. It costs a lot less to have the SuDS and drains built properly than for the Government to be asked for money to restore properties once they have been flooded.”
“The regulation says, “You could ask your local water company to adopt these drainage solutions”. People can, but there is absolutely no reason why any water company would want to do so, because there is no way that it fits into their business model. Most of these things run off natural rainwater into streams and rivers, and they are just not interested. They are finding it hard enough to maintain their existing structures for foul sewage processing. South West Water recently had three pumping stations break down in the middle of heavy rain in Kent and in Starcross in my constituency, and people were flooded with sewage. I would much rather it looked after that situation than SuDS. We already have experts in flooding in district and county councils, and soon in the unitary councils that will replace them.”
“The only flaw with the schedule is that no instigation date was specified; it is down to the Minister to say when that is to happen. Prior to the general election, the previous Government were in the process of having a plan to make it happen. There were big announcements and big expectations. Again, it is all written up in New Civil Engineer —a fascinating monthly read—about how great things were anticipated in 2024 and how we might see the implementation of schedule 3 in ’24 or ’25. Of course, we know what happened: the general election came along. Last July the Government issued a new set of standards for sustainable drainage, which are a big improvement. This talks about seven principles. It talks about how to make sure that we are reusing water and there is a lot of good work in it. However, one thing is missing.”
“The existence of legislation that would automatically do what we need was brought to my attention when, as a county councillor, I served on the South West Regional Flood and Coastal Committee—yes, I get all the good jobs. It is about how we do flood defences in the south-west. As I come from Dawlish, that is particularly close to my heart—as people can imagine, given what happened with the railway line. There absolutely needs to be a statutory obligation to put SuDS in, a statutory means of certifying that those SuDS have been built to a level that will work and a statutory responsibility to maintain them. Happily, there is legislation: the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, from 16 years ago, and it has a schedule 3 to it.”
“It is not just a problem with one or two estates; it is endemic. We have seen articles in New Civil Engineer saying that we desperately need a statutory obligation to look after SuDS. The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management says exactly the same. We need a solution to the problem of how SuDS are maintained, inspected and handed over—indeed, adopted—when the building site is finished, as the roads or drains would be. That is what residents want. It is what developers want, because they put a lot of time and effort into building these things and then see them going to rack and ruin. It is what the local authorities, the water companies and the Environment Agency want.”
“The areas around it dry out, but this particular bit does not, and people have worked out that that is because the SuDS has not been built properly and the pipes have not been connected. The local planning authority says it looks fine on the plans, and from what we have seen it is okay. The builders are doing an investigation for me, because I have been jumping up and down and shouting, but the MP should not have to get involved for areas to have proper draining. The area is critical in drainage. It is not far above sea level. We have massive floods in the roads outside; indeed, they are ongoing. The last thing we want is the water from this estate going in and making all that worse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) says, this is not just a problem in my Newton Abbot constituency.”
“I absolutely agree and will go on to quote the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, New Civil Engineer and a body that I discovered only recently: the Association of SuDS Authorities. I did not even know that it existed, but there we go. We have one more estate, in Kingsteignton, where I was recently called because people were complaining. There is a lovely circular area; there is a circle of houses at the end of a cul-de-sac. It is a nice place. It was built on an old clay mine, so there are problems because of the fact that it is on a fairly difficult site, but it is a lovely situation, except that this circular area, which has a children’s playground in the middle, is always completely and utterly sodden. It never dries out.”
“I urge the Minister to take that on board as a real, positive thing, at a minuscule cost to the Government, that will make a massive difference to people’s lives.”
“I would entirely. That is another reason why it is vital that local authorities, as the flood responsible authorities, are actually involved in certifying SuDS as they are built and take them on afterwards. Let me quote from the Chartered Institution of Water Environmental Managers: “Despite promises to enforce the mandatory adoption of sustainable drainage schemes (SuDS) by 2024 through Schedule 3, regulations remain stalled, raising concerns among environmental groups and industry stakeholders about the government’s commitment to sustainable water management.” The time is now. The Minister has it within her power —even if it is not necessarily exactly her Department—to push forward, through statutory instrument or whatever is required, the enactment of schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.”
“I am delighted that the Minister is talking about water companies splitting surface water from foul water. That is exactly what they are doing in the middle of Dawlish: creating massive new tanks for that purpose. The programme has been going on for about two years; most of Dawlish has been dug up and its town centre has been in disarray because of it. Throughout the last 10 years, South West Water has been talking about the separation of surface water and foul sewage, and insisting that it happens higher upstream. That is fine and proper—and, yes, it is agreed on that. However, South West Water is not interested in what happens to the surface water off estates that are already separating it out. That is not a problem that the company is addressing; it already has big enough issues elsewhere, where it is fixing past problems.”
“However, all that work will be for nothing if the 2,000 houses being built in that critical drainage area right now do not have SuDS that are certified, adopted and maintained in the long term. That flooding will return. The local authority thinks it might need pumps to empty the river into the estuary when the tide is in. That is not a good situation—that is not sustainable. We need to ensure that the SuDS upstream are done, and South West Water is not in a position to take that on. My work in the south west regional flood and coastal committee shows a universal feeling among all the people working in the area that we need schedule 3. I thank the Minister for her attention and her words today, but I ask her to look again at schedule 3. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered sustainable drainage systems.”
“I really appreciate the amount of work that she is putting in. A lot of good things have been described, and the Act is good—it is a great Act. I like to call out good things that have been delivered, no matter the colour of the party that delivered them. I am not here to bash colour against colour; I am here to get results for local residents. Water requires an holistic solution. In the year 2000 in Dawlish Warren—the place that was tide-locked—we had floods that were 6 feet deep. People were evacuated from their park homes by helicopter because of upstream problems, with too much water being released into Shutterton brook. Devon county council put in flood mitigation schemes, and flooding has been prevented.”
“The Association of SuDS Authorities supports the enaction of schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to create SuDS approving bodies. Of course, it goes on to say that it needs the appropriate funding to do that: “Whichever mechanism is chosen to provide inspection, maintenance and enforcement of surface water drainage systems our Local Government members stand ready to ensure SuDS are considered the primary solution for dealing with surface water issues in a multi-beneficial way. By learning from the experience of the Welsh Government SAB implementation in 2019 and through consistent delivery of policy and process we support the role of SuDS in delivering greener, safer, high-quality communities.” All that, and everything that the Minister talked about, is great.”
“I thank everybody for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) accurately pointed out that SuDS, although solving local problems, need to be balanced in the wider are. SuDS is not something that can be fixed or managed on a site-by-site basis; it requires an overall view, such as one from the local authority. I also thank her for noting that Wales has implemented schedule 3 and has lessons from working with it. Although I am sure the Minister has seen that, I draw those lessons to her attention as a way that that can be made to work. I thank the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) for supporting the need to maintain SuDS, and for showing that this is not just a west country issue, but a national one.”
“Will the Leader of the House please allow Government time for a debate on the suitability of Palantir as such a critical aspect of our national infrastructure?”
“In yesterday’s debate about Lord Mandelson, we heard a lot about the despicable crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. We also heard about Mandelson’s lobbying through his Global Counsel organisation, through which he introduced the Prime Minister to the chair of the company Palantir. Yesterday the Cabinet Office denied me permission to even see the background papers on an hour-long meeting that took place between Palantir, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Dominic Cummings in 10 Downing Street. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is concerned about the use of Palantir in the NHS, where we have a £330 million contract with Palantir. We also have a £250 million defence contract with the company and a potential contract for the new national police service.”
“Vaping is a difficult issue, particularly when it comes to recycling. I understand that vape shops are expected to take them back, but local authorities have real problems with the disposal of used vape canister things—I do not know what they are called—with batteries in them. Will the Minister consider helping local authorities with vape recycling, and providing funds to give them more facilities and a way to dispose of them?”
“I am afraid that my training was as an engineer, rather than as a lawyer, so I apologise if I get points of standard law wrong. However, it is fascinating to read the Bill in such detail. In clause 126(3), it says, “It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that they did not know” I am interested to hear how the Minister thinks that somebody might prove that they did not know something. It strikes me that it is something that a person cannot actually prove. Secondly, in relation to clause 128, when a premises has been banned for 12 months, is there anything that prevents someone opening up the next-door premises and continuing exactly as before?”
“I fully appreciate taking action against those who promote such schemes, but there is an inherent approach here that may be new. By prosecuting the person who promotes the scheme, are we turning those people who have taken advantage of the scheme into tax avoiders, or victims, or somewhere in between? Some of them may have been innocent recipients of the unlawful activity that we have identified.”
“I take the Minister’s point that HMRC is not a regulator that looks at the quality of tax advice; however, it has every other aspect of a regulator that one might find. I used to work for a regulator in telecoms, and some of the powers in these measures are exactly what we had in that regulator. It is a regulator; although it does not regulate the quality of the advice, it still penalises. However, it has none of the mitigation factors that come with a regulator—the ability to appeal and to ensure that decisions that are being made are reasonable.”
“From reading schedule 20, about the tribunal, it is unclear to me—it may be my ignorance, in which case I apologise—whether this is an existing tribunal or a new tribunal and whether it is an independent tribunal.”
“As a councillor, I have had many differences of opinion with officers. From their point of view, they have been right, but I know, from my point of view, that they have been absolutely wrong. There are different ways of looking at a case, so it needs to be an independent tribunal.”
“If the tax advisers are put out of business, firms will not be able to continue their work, because they will themselves be struggling with the however many millions of pages of tax law there are. Worse than that, if firms see this as an existential threat, we will get offshore lawyers coming in to do the tax adviser work. Will the Minister look again at the composition of the tribunal to ensure that it is not equivalent officers, but truly independent persons, preferably from outside HMRC, who are making decisions on that tribunal? They could look at the evidence fairly and assess it to determine whether the tax advisers have done the heinous things that they are accused of—and in which case deserve their suspension—whether they are in fact making honest mistakes, or whether there is a difference of opinion between them and the officers.”
“I am particularly concerned about the tribunal. I served for nigh-on 10 years on a tribunal for the Phone-paid Services Authority, which has now been absorbed as part of Ofcom. We were endorsing or not endorsing the decisions of the executive, which was charging phone services companies up to £250 million per breach of the code that they had signed up to. That tribunal was headed by a senior barrister, with two lay members who did not work for the executive and were fully independent. We considered all the breaches that people were making in terms of the code, in terms of proportionality and in terms of the evidence that was put in front of us by the executive. I do not see something similar in schedule 20, and this is a considerably more important piece of work.”
“I can’t give you the full information so that you can do a proper tax assessment, because anything I give you will be available to HMRC when it says, ‘Give us everything.’” That is truly draconian.”
“There is no provision for someone to appeal and say, “Why are you asking for all the data of all my clients?” No reason—HMRC just wants it. That does not comply with the General Data Protection Regulation. There is no legitimate interest there. There is no reason for holding that data. In fact, if HMRC is asking for all the data, it is actually going against GDPR. I do not fully understand how what the Minister has just said, which sounds eminently reasonable, relates to what is written in the schedule. Clarification would be much appreciated, because as it stands this is a real problem. I hope I have misread or misinterpreted it, because otherwise it really is not very good at all. This will cause people problems when interacting with their tax adviser. They will say, “I can only give you a minimum amount of information.”
“I am slightly perplexed, because what the Minister has just said does not relate in many ways at all to the words in my copy of the Bill. Maybe I have the wrong copy. It does not talk about IT systems, forms or any of those things. What it says, quite clearly, is: “The Treasury may by regulations make provision requiring a relevant data-holder to provide to HMRC on an ongoing basis any data specified for that type of relevant data-holder.” It does not say that it can do so because it suspects wrongdoing or to look at risk assessment. It simply says that HMRC can demand any data from any of its customers at any time, on an ongoing basis. Unless I have completely misunderstood, which I entirely accept may be the case, that is not only draconian and arbitrary, but disproportionate.”
“The Minister mentions that our suggestion would add complexity to the system, but the system, in and of itself, is becoming overly complex. It started very simply: “Here is a winter fuel allowance for a harsh winter.” Every winter is harsh. Would it not be much simpler and more efficient to wind this into the main pension in future years? Will the Government consider that?”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for initiating this important debate and laying before us the scope and scale of the atrocities going on specifically in the occupied areas, as well as in the whole of Ukraine. We have to remember that when—on the blessed day—peace arrives, it will take some time before Ukraine becomes safe. Given the amount of unexploded ordnance, the number of atrocities and the recovery that is required, does he agree that we need to consider options and futures for those Ukrainians to whom we have given shelter in the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, to give them an option for when they return, rather than assuming that peace is the point at which they must return?”