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Tag: 2022

  • James Cleverly – 2022 Statement on Chinese Consulate General Staff in Manchester

    James Cleverly – 2022 Statement on Chinese Consulate General Staff in Manchester

    The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 14 December 2022.

    In October, I summoned China’s acting ambassador to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to demand an explanation for an incident that had occurred outside the Chinese consulate general in Manchester. Soon afterwards, His Majesty’s ambassador in Beijing also sought an explanation from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    Images carried on social media showed what appeared to be completely unacceptable behaviour by a number of individuals near the entrance to the consular premises. The right of free expression—including the right to protest and to speak one’s mind—is absolutely essential to our democratic life.

    Given the seriousness of this matter, it was correct and appropriate for Greater Manchester police to take the decision to begin an investigation. Earlier this month, the police informed the FCDO that they wished to interview the Chinese consul general and five of his staff. They asked the FCDO to request the Chinese Government to waive the immunity of those individuals to enable the interviews to take place.

    The FCDO made this request and gave the Chinese Government one week to comply. In response, the Chinese embassy, acting on instructions from Beijing, notified His Majesty’s Government that the functions of the consul general in Manchester have come to an end and he has returned to China. The embassy has further notified us that the other staff involved in the incident who the police wish to interview have either left the United Kingdom or will shortly do so.

    Throughout this episode, I have sought to emphasise that we in the UK abide by the rule of law, follow due process and respect the operational independence of our police. It was right to allow their investigation to proceed so that we could respond on the basis of evidence and facts, rather than images on social media. I am grateful for the professionalism shown by the Greater Manchester police, particularly given the complexities involved due to the immunities held by the staff.

    We have been clear with China from the outset that we were prepared to take firm action should the police determine that there was a case to charge officials for their involvement in the incident. We expect a certain standard of behaviour from all foreign diplomats and consular staff in the UK regardless of their privileges and immunities.

    The Vienna convention on consular relations allows states to withdraw members of a consular post at any point, as has happened here. However, I am disappointed that these individuals will not be interviewed or face justice. Nonetheless, it is right that those responsible for the disgraceful scenes in Manchester are no longer—or will shortly cease to be—consular staff accredited to the UK.

  • Andrew Griffith – 2022 Statement on UK Green Taxonomy

    Andrew Griffith – 2022 Statement on UK Green Taxonomy

    The statement made by Andrew Griffith, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 14 December 2022.

    My noble Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, Baroness Penn, has today made the following written ministerial statement.

    The development of a UK green taxonomy is a complex, technical exercise which is linked to multiple sectors of the economy and various legislative and regulatory frameworks. This complexity is also becoming apparent in the European Union (EU), where challenges have arisen during the implementation of the EU’s taxonomy.

    The Government are clear that the value of a taxonomy rests on its credibility as a practical and useful tool for investors, companies, consumers and regulators in supporting access to sustainable finance. These are long-term matters and it is important to proceed carefully. Having received advice from the Green Technical Advisory Group, and following stakeholder engagement, the Government believe that there is benefit in reviewing its approach to taxonomy development to maximise the effectiveness of our sustainable finance agenda.

    Therefore, the Government will not make secondary legislation under the taxonomy regulations this year. The Financial Services and Markets Bill is currently before Parliament. Subject to parliamentary approval, the Bill will repeal retained EU law relating to financial services—including the taxonomy regulations. Using the powers in the Bill, HM Treasury intends to first commence the repeal of the statutory requirement to make technical screening criteria regulations by 1 January 2023, so that the obligation no longer applies. Then it will consider how to use the powers in the Bill to restate and modify retained EU law, and decide whether to change the UK’s approach. This is consistent with the Government’s general approach to retained EU law for financial services.

    The Government will provide a further update as part of its publication of the green finance strategy in early 2023.

  • Maria Caulfield – 2022 Speech on the Potential Harms of Vaccines

    Maria Caulfield – 2022 Speech on the Potential Harms of Vaccines

    The speech made by Maria Caulfield, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing the debate. It is important that all Members get to discuss and debate such issues, and they are entitled to their opinion.

    I have to say that I strongly disagree with my hon. Friend, not only in the content of his speech, but in the way he derided doctors, scientists and nurses. Many of us worked through the pandemic and saw at first hand the devastation that covid caused. There is no doubt in my mind that, despite the personal protective equipment, social distancing and infection control, the thing that made the biggest difference in combating covid was the introduction of the vaccine.

    Safe and effective vaccines have underpinned our strategy for living with covid. Covid has not gone away, but we are living with it in a way that was not possible this time last year. Vaccines have saved thousands of lives, reduced the pressure on the NHS, and allowed the economy and society to reopen, not just in this country but in countries across the world. In countries with lower vaccination rates, their ability to open up, move on and live with covid was reduced.

    Across the piece—not just for covid—vaccines remain our biggest line of defence, particularly during a challenging winter period. We see with our seasonal flu vaccine roll-out and our covid programme that getting the most vulnerable people vaccinated—

    Andrew Bridgen

    Will the Minister give way on that point?

    Maria Caulfield

    I will not. I have just three minutes to respond to the many points that my hon. Friend made.

    It is important to put on the record that all the vaccines used in the UK are safe, and we have some of the highest safety standards in the world, with the MHRA globally recognised for requiring high standards of safety. I have worked in clinical research, and I can say categorically that the data is not hidden from the public or the MHRA; it is inspected rigorously and can be reinspected at any time.

    Each of our covid vaccine candidates is assessed by a team of scientists and clinicians on a case-by-case basis, and it is only once a potential vaccine has met robust standards of effectiveness, safety and quality that it is approved for use. That is the case for all medicines, not just covid vaccines. Extensive data shows that the vaccine is safe and highly effective in reducing the deaths that we sadly saw during the pandemic. That does not end when the vaccine is approved; surveillance of vaccines continues, as it does with any medicine, and any adverse reaction is recorded on a regular basis. That does not stop following approval.

    My hon. Friend talked about the yellow card reports. Those have been in place for many years. Anyone who has a side effect from any medicine can make a yellow card report. When I was first starting out in nursing, that was a physical yellow card; it is now online. Anyone can submit any suspected adverse drug reaction. The MHRA will collate and review them, and it has in the past gone on to suspend the licence of a medicine if it has concerns. That is something that it can do for any vaccine, including any covid vaccine.

    The nature of the yellow card reporting system means that some reported events are not always proven side effects. A side effect can be reported; the MHRA will then go and look to see whether it is actually related to that medicine, and there is a list of probabilities of how likely it is that the side effect is related to that medicine. There is comprehensive surveillance to alert us to any unforeseen adverse reactions to vaccines and to enable us to act swiftly when required.

    We know that there are some circumstances where individuals have sadly experienced harm with a possible link to a vaccination. I recognise how difficult that is for those individuals and their families. We have put measures in place to monitor any possible side effects and to commission further research that will help us better understand how to diagnose and treat those who have suffered or continue to suffer any ill effects from a covid-19 vaccine. That is the case for any medicine—even with a simple medicine such as paracetamol, people can get side effects—and that is why every medicine that is prescribed and dispensed has a patient safety information sheet listing the most likely side effects and encouraging people to report any that may not be included.

    Danny Kruger

    Will the Minister give way?

    Maria Caulfield

    I will give way quickly, because I have only a couple of minutes.

    Danny Kruger

    I am grateful. The Minister’s predecessor had asked the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to review the evidence behind the decision to roll out the vaccine to children. Can she update the House or write to us to explain where that review has got to? Does she agree that the JCVI should be looking at the vaccination of children?

    Maria Caulfield

    I will write to my hon. Friend with an update on that report. It was touched on that the MHRA has licensed the vaccine for babies, but that has not yet been approved by the JCVI, so that is just a licence rather than a recommendation to roll out. However, I am happy to send him the details of that report.

    I want to put on the record that the covid vaccines have saved tens of thousands of lives and prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being hospitalised. I completely disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire that there is a whole conspiracy of doctors, nurses and scientists—they have done nothing but work hard to get us through the pandemic.

    Andrew Bridgen rose—

    Maria Caulfield

    I will give way for one brief point.

    Andrew Bridgen

    I thank the Minister for giving way on that important point. The claims about the number of lives saved worldwide by the vaccination are sponsored by vested interests. The modelling is the lowest form of scientific evidence—in fact, it is more science fiction than science fact.

    Maria Caulfield

    I completely disagree. I worked on the covid wards with patients who were dying from that virus. We had infection control measures, antibiotics, dexamethasone—a steroid—and every known facility available, and the only thing that made a difference was when those vaccines were introduced. They do not necessary stop people from getting the virus, but they certainly reduce its intensity and the likelihood of someone dying from it.

    I completely debunk the conspiracy theories about a whole group of people benefiting financially from the roll-out of the vaccine and would gently say to my hon. Friend that if he has evidence, there are mechanisms in place for raising concerns, as we have seen with other drugs. Only today, I was before the Health and Social Care Committee talking about sodium valproate—we also had an Adjournment debate on that last week—where there are genuine safety concerns. The MHRA is taking that extremely seriously. It is not worried about pharma concerns; its first priority is patients, and it is exactly the same with the covid vaccine. So if there is evidence—I am not saying that there is not—it absolutely must go through the proper channels so that it can be evaluated.

    We have launched a nationwide campaign to encourage people to come forward this winter to get their booster. I recommend that people do that safe in the knowledge that the vaccine is safe for people to have.

  • Andrew Bridgen – 2022 Speech on the Potential Harms of Vaccines

    Andrew Bridgen – 2022 Speech on the Potential Harms of Vaccines

    The speech made by Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    Three months ago, one of the most eminent and trusted cardiologists, a man with an international reputation, Dr Aseem Malhotra, published peer-reviewed research that concluded that there should be a complete cessation of the administration of the covid mRNA vaccines for everyone because of clear and robust data of significant harms and little ongoing benefit. He described the roll-out of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine as

    “perhaps the greatest miscarriage of medical science, attack on democracy, damage to population health, and erosion of trust in medicine that we will witness in our lifetime.”

    Interestingly, there has so far not been a single rebuttal of Dr Malhotra’s findings in the scientific literature, despite their widespread circulation and the fact that they made international news.

    Before I state the key evidence-based facts that make a clear case for complete suspension of these emergency use authorisation vaccines, it is important to appreciate the key psychological barrier that has prevented these facts from being acknowledged by policymakers and taken up by the UK mainstream media. That psychological phenomenon is wilful blindness. It is when human beings—including, in this case, institutions—turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, reduce anxiety, avoid conflict and protect their prestige and reputations. There are numerous examples of that in recent history, such as the BBC and Jimmy Savile, the Department of Health and Mid Staffs, Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, and the medical establishment and the OxyContin scandal, which was portrayed in the mini-series “Dopesick”. It is crucial to understand that the longer wilful blindless to the truth continues, the more unnecessary harm it creates.

    Here are the cold, hard facts about the mRNA vaccines and an explanation of the structural drivers that continue to be barriers to doctors and the public receiving independent information to make informed decisions about them. Since the roll-out in the UK of the BioNTech-Pfizer mRNA vaccine, we have had almost half a million yellow card reports of adverse effects from the public. That is unprecedented. It is more than all the yellow card reports of the past 40 years combined. An extraordinary rate of side effects that are beyond mild have been reported in many countries across the world that have used the Pfizer vaccine, including, of course, the United States.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

    I spoke to the hon. Gentleman beforehand and he knows my feelings about the vaccines. I am a supporter of the vaccines, as are many of my family, but I understand where he is coming from. In fact, I have had some constituents come to me about this. Does he agree that, in this House, we must acknowledge risks and not simply relegate them to fine print?

    Andrew Bridgen

    The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Those who feel that they have been damaged by the vaccine should of course have the full support of their elected Members of Parliament and the NHS. Only a couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by a journalist from a major news outlet who said that he was being bombarded by calls from people who said that they were vaccine-harmed but unable to get the support they wanted from the NHS. He also said that he thought this would be the biggest scandal in medical history in this country. Disturbingly, he also said that he feared that if he were to mention that in the newsroom in which he worked, he would lose his job. We need to break this conspiracy of silence.

    It is instructive to note that, according to pharmaco-vigilance analysis, the serious adverse effects reported by the public are thought to represent only 10% of the true rate of serious adverse events occurring within the population. The gold standard of understanding the benefit and harm of any drug is the randomised controlled trial. It was the randomised controlled trial conducted by Pfizer that led to UK and international regulators approving the BioNTech-Pfizer mRNA vaccine for administration in the first place.

    Contrary to popular belief, that original trial of approximately 40,000 participants did not show any statistically significant reduction in death as a result of vaccination, but it did show a 95% relative risk reduction in the development of infection against the ancestral, more lethal strain of the virus. However, the absolute risk reduction for an individual was only 0.84%. In other words, from its own data, Pfizer revealed that we needed to vaccinate 119 people to prevent one infection. The World Health Organisation and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges have previously stated and made it clear that it is an ethical responsibility that medical information is communicated to patients in absolute benefit and absolute risk terms, which is to protect the public from unnecessary anxiety and manipulation.

    Very quickly, through mutations of the original strain—indeed, within a few months—covid fortunately became far less lethal. It quickly became apparent that there was no protection against infection at all from the vaccine, and we were left with the hope that perhaps these vaccines would protect us from serious illness and death. So what does the most reliable data tell us about the best-case scenario of individual benefit from the vaccine against dying from covid-19? Real-world data from the UK during the three-month wave of omicron at the beginning of this year reveals that we would need to vaccinate 7,300 people over the age of 80 to prevent one death. The number needed to be vaccinated to prevent a death in any younger age group was absolutely enormous.

    Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)

    I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the House. It is a very important debate that we should be having. He is talking about the relative risks for different cohorts of the population. He will remember that, when the vaccine was first announced, the intention was that it would be used only for those who were vulnerable and the elderly because, as he says, the expectation was that the benefit to younger people was minor. Does he agree that it would be helpful for the Minister to explain to us why the original advice that the vaccines would be rolled out only for the older population, and would not be used for children in particular, was laid aside and we ended up with the roll-out for the entire population, including children?

    Andrew Bridgen

    I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and his support on this very important issue. Of course, it is important that the Government justify why they are rolling out a vaccine to any cohort of people, particularly our children. He will recall that, in the Westminster Hall debate, we questioned the validity of vaccinating children who have minimal risk, if a risk at all, from the virus when there is a clear risk from the vaccine. I will again report on evidence from America later in my speech about those risks, particularly to young children.

    In other words, the benefits of the vaccine are close to non-existent. Beyond the alarming yellow card reports, the strongest evidence of harm comes from the gold standard, highest possible quality level of data. A re-analysis of Pfizer and Moderna’s own randomised controlled trials using the mRNA technology, published in the peer-reviewed journal Vaccine, revealed a rate of serious adverse events of one in 800 individuals vaccinated. These are events that result in hospitalisation or disability, or that are life changing. Most disturbing of all, however, is that those original trials suggested someone was far more likely to suffer a serious side effect from the vaccine than to be hospitalised with the ancestral, more lethal strain of the virus. These findings are a smoking gun suggesting the vaccine should likely never have been approved in the first place.

    In the past, vaccines have been completely withdrawn from use for a much lower incidence of serious harm. For example, the swine flu vaccine was withdrawn in 1976 for causing Guillain-Barré syndrome in only one in 100,000 adults, and in 1999 the rotavirus vaccine was withdrawn for causing a form of bowel obstruction in children affecting one in 10,000. With the covid mRNA vaccine, we are talking of a serious adverse event rate of at least one in 800, because that was the rate determined in the two months when Pfizer actually followed the patients following their vaccination. Unfortunately, some of those serious events, such as heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism will result in death, which is devastating for individuals and the families they leave behind. Many of these events may take longer than eight weeks post vaccination to show themselves.

    An Israeli paper published in Nature’s scientific reports showed a 25% increase in heart attack and cardiac arrest in 16 to 39-year-olds in Israel. Another report from Israel looked at levels of myocarditis and pericarditis in people who had had covid and those who had not. It was a study of, I think, 1.2 million who had not had covid and 740,000 who had had it. The incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis was identical in both groups. This would tell the House that whatever is causing the increase in heart problems now, it is not due to having been infected with covid-19.

    It was accepted by a peer-reviewed medical journal that one of the country’s most respected and decorated general practitioners, the honorary vice-president of the British Medical Association and the Labour party’s doctor of the year, Dr Kailash Chand, likely suffered a cardiac arrest and was tragically killed by the Pfizer vaccine six months after his second dose, through a mechanism that rapidly accelerates heart disease. In fact, in the UK we have had an extra 14,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in 2021, compared with 2020, following the vaccine roll-out. Many of these will undoubtedly be because of the vaccine, and the consequences of this mRNA jab are clearly serious and common.

    Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)

    My hon. Friend is making an interesting and important speech. In particular, he is giving a lot of detail about the Pfizer vaccine. Does he have similar concerns about other vaccines, and if so, will he be talking about those later in his speech?

    Andrew Bridgen

    I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Clearly this is related to all mRNA vaccinations. He will be well aware that many of us have had the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has effectively been withdrawn because of health concerns. Indeed, I will declare to the House that I am double-vaccinated with AstraZeneca, which has now been withdrawn.

    Ministers may understandably wish to defer the responsibility for a decision such as withdrawing vaccines from the population to regulators such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or in America the Food and Drug Administration. Historically, when undertaking the approval of any drug, the regulators ultimately end up relying on the summary results from the drug companies in their sponsored trials, where the raw data is kept commercially confidential. Furthermore, the MHRA has a huge financial conflict of interest, receiving 86% of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry it is supposed to regulate. In effect, we have the poacher paying the gamekeeper.

    In a recent investigation by The BMJ into the financial conflicts of interest of the drug regulators, the sociologist Donald Light said:

    “It’s the opposite of having a trustworthy organisation independently and rigorously assessing medicines. They’re not rigorous, they’re not independent, they are selective, and they withhold data.”

    He went on to say that doctors and patients

    “must appreciate how deeply and extensively drug regulators can’t be trusted so long as they are captured by industry funding.”

    Similarly, another investigation revealed that members of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation had huge financial links to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation running into billions of pounds. Ministers, the media and the public know that the foundation is heavily invested in pharmaceutical industry stocks.

    Unfortunately, the catastrophic mistake over the approval, and the coercion associated with this emergency-use authorisation medical intervention, are not an anomaly, and in many ways this could have been predicted by the structural failures that allowed it to occur in the first place. Those shortcomings are rooted in the increasingly unchecked visible and invisible power of multinational corporations—in this case, big pharma. We can start by acknowledging that the drug industry has a fiduciary obligation to produce profit for its shareholders, but it has no fiduciary obligation to provide the right medicines for patients.

    The real scandal is that those with a responsibility to patients and with scientific integrity—namely, doctors, academic institutions and medical journals—collude with the industry for financial gain. Big pharma exerts its power by capturing the political environment through lobbying and the knowledge environment through funding university research and influencing medical education, preference shaping through capture of the media, financing think-tanks and so on. In other words, the public relations machinery of big pharma excels in subterfuge and engages in smearing and de-platforming those who call out its manipulations. No doubt it will be very busy this evening.

    It is no surprise, when there is so much control by an entity that has been described as “psychopathic” for its profit-making conduct, that one analysis suggests that third most common cause of death globally after heart disease and cancer is the side effects of prescribed medications, which were mostly avoidable. Because of those systemic failures, doctors often receive biased information, deliberately manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry, which exaggerates the benefits and the safety of their drugs. Furthermore, the former editor of The BMJ, Richard Smith, claims that research misconduct is rife and is not effectively being tackled in the UK institutions, stating:

    “Something is rotten in…British medicine and has been for a long time”.

    It has also been brought to my attention by a whistleblower from a very reliable source that one of these institutions is covering up clear data that reveals that the mRNA vaccine increases inflammation of the heart arteries. It is covering this up for fear that it may lose funding from the pharmaceutical industry. The lead of that cardiology research department has a prominent leadership role with the British Heart Foundation, and I am disappointed to say that he has sent out non-disclosure agreements to his research team to ensure that this important data never sees the light of day. That is an absolute disgrace. Systemic failure in an over-medicated population also contributes to huge waste of British taxpayers’ money and increasing strain on the NHS.

    Danny Kruger

    My hon. Friend is being very good with his time. I just want to call his attention to some research, since I chair the all-party parliamentary group for prescribed drug dependence. He refers to the waste of money; there is £500 million being spent every year by the NHS on prescribed drugs for people who should not be on those habit-forming pills, causing enormous human misery as well as waste for the taxpayer.

    Andrew Bridgen

    I thank my hon. Friend for making a point that only reinforces the items in my speech that the public need to know. I thank him again for his support.

    We need an inquiry into the influence of big pharma on medications and our NHS. That is been called for many occasions and by some very influential people, including prominent physicians such as the former president of the Royal College of Physicians and personal doctor to our late Queen, Sir Richard Thompson. On separate occasions in the last few years those calls have been supported and covered in the Daily Mail, The Guardian and, most recently, The i newspaper.

    We are fighting not just for principles of ethical, evidence-based medical practices, but for our democracy. The future health of the British public depends on us tackling head-on the cause of this problem and finding meaningful solutions. In 2015 a commentary by Richard Houghton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, suggested that possibly half of the published medical literature “may simply be untrue”. He wrote that

    “science has taken a turn toward darkness”,

    and asked who is going to take the first step to clean up the system.

    That first step could start this evening with this debate. It starts here, with the vaccine Minister and the Government ensuring in the first instance an immediate and complete suspension of any more covid vaccines with their use of mRNA technology. Silence on this issue is more contagious than the virus itself, and now so should courage be. I would implore all the scientists, medics, nurses and those in the media who know the truth about the harm these vaccines are causing to our people to speak out.

    We have already sacrificed far too many of our citizens on the altar of ignorance and unfettered corporate greed. Last week the MHRA authorised those experimental vaccines for use in children as young as six months. In a Westminster Hall debate some weeks ago, I quoted a report by the Journal of the American Medical Association studying the effect of the covid-19 mRNA vaccination on children under five years of age. It showed that one in 200 had an adverse event that resulted in hospitalisation, and symptoms that lasted longer than 90 days.

    As the data clearly shows to anyone who wants to look at it, the mRNA vaccines are not safe, not effective and not necessary. I implore the Government to halt their use immediately. As I have demonstrated and as the data clearly shows, the Government’s current policy on the mRNA vaccines is on the wrong side of medical ethics, it is on the wrong side of scientific data, and ultimately it will be on the wrong side of history.

  • Munira Wilson – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Munira Wilson – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    I rise to speak to new clause 6, in my name, which seeks to ensure that publicly owned assets can be more easily retained for the public good when sold off. I thank the Minister for her time meeting me before today to discuss this. The new clause has been born out of a local campaign in my constituency but is of relevance to the whole country. Thousands of residents are calling for the former Teddington police station site to be sold to a local housing association and a GP surgery, which have put in a joint bid backed by the local council, The bid, if successful, would prioritise the needs of the local community by providing a much-needed new state-of-the-art facility for Park Road GP surgery and a number of social and affordable homes above it. Sadly, in this highly desirable location they cannot outbid private developers who will deliver yet more unneeded luxury flats with the bare minimum number of affordable units that they can get away with.

    Having lobbied the Mayor of London and his deputy for policing and crime, I was told that their hands are tied by statute whereby they have to secure best value, which is defined as the best price available on the open market. The new clause has a simple aim to make the law clear and unequivocal, with a single schedule covering all relevant public bodies, from the NHS to police and fire services on the same terms, granting them permission to sell publicly owned land and buildings for below market value, up to a certain level, to bids that put the environmental, economic or social infrastructure needs of the community first.

    Rachael Maskell

    Does the hon. Member recognise that Network Rail is trying to dispose of much of its estate and that the Department for Transport is saying that it must also get the highest level of capital receipt? That, too, could benefit from her proposal.

    Munira Wilson

    I could not agree more. I thank the hon. Lady for supporting my proposal today as well as in the Bill Committee.

    The new clause would also update existing provisions in line with recent and rising land values. In boroughs such as Richmond upon Thames, where we have more than 5,000 people on the social housing waiting list, sites to build new homes are vanishingly scarce. My constituency casework is dominated by families in desperately overcrowded and unsuitable housing. I therefore believe that whenever a suitable site becomes available, particularly if it is publicly owned, it should be considered for social or affordable housing.

    I am proud that Lib Dem-run Richmond Council is leading by example by ensuring that many of its own asset sales are prioritised for social housing, where appropriate. That comes at a cost for a cash-strapped council. Indeed, a concern has been raised with me, not least by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, about the impact that the new clause would have on its finances if it sold below market value. We could have a debate about whether it should be better funded in the first place so that it does not have to sell off sites at top dollar, because that is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

    Crucially, the amendment would allow, and not force, public bodies to put local communities at the heart of their estates strategy. Whether it is the Metropolitan police selling off sites in Notting Hill, Barnet or Teddington, or Surrey police, which has sold off 20 properties in the last five years, all those sites could potentially be used for better public infrastructure and affordable housing that would benefit key workers, such as police officers and nurses, and young people in our constituencies.

    Given that the Secretary of State said to me on Second Reading that we could have consensus on that policy point, I implore the Minister to work with me to take the amendment forward and get it on to the statute book, for the sake of communities across the country, such as Teddington, that desperately need new homes, GP surgeries and other community infrastructure.

  • Ben Everitt – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Ben Everitt – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Ben Everitt, the Conservative MP for Milton Keynes North, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    It is an honour to follow the cougher and splutterer from North Shropshire. She did it very well; I did not notice her coughing and spluttering.

    It is my pleasure to speak to amendment 3, which is in my name. The Bill is a landmark piece of legislation, which will go a long way to pushing the Government’s ambition to level up our country.

    One area of particular significance to Milton Keynes North is affordable housing. I have long campaigned and advocated for the need to build more affordable homes, as that is the best way to bring down house prices and to help families get on the housing ladder. As of now, developers are incentivised to build the highest-value properties they can when they get the chance, and this only serves to exacerbate the problem, as the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) illustrated in her speech just now. It is an issue in my constituency. Sprawling estates of executive homes have been built with no intention to meet the needs of my constituents. The housing crisis that we face in this country is unprecedented and requires vital intervention from the Government to address. Too few homes are being built, and the homes that are being built are becoming increasingly unaffordable. As a result, people never get on to the housing ladder. Affordable housing developers can provide beautiful homes for those who want to remain in their communities, and we need to work with them to ensure that they are supported in doing so.

    On affordable housing, we could be doing much more right now to ensure that as many new homes are brought forward as possible. If we want to address the housing crisis directly, we must tackle the issue at source. That is why I tabled amendment 3, which would provide an exemption from the infrastructure levy for affordable housing as defined in annex 2 of the NPPF. We want to see more affordable housing built throughout the country, and I see the amendment as a simple, straightforward way of achieving that. It is a massive bit of legislation with a massive amendment paper, yet my amendment is just one and a half lines long, so I implore colleagues to add it to the Bill.

    The Bill currently has no automatic exemption for housing from the infrastructure levy. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has indicated that such an exemption will apply in the regulations, but I think that it really should be in the Bill. This small tweak to the levy would make a great difference in the short term and pay real dividends in the long term.

  • Helen Morgan – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Helen Morgan – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    I rise to speak to new clauses 20 and 40 and amendment 5, in my name. We all recognise that the UK has a housing crisis, with shortages of social, private rented and affordable housing, leaving many people in an insecure position. One problem is that that need often conflicts with concerns that local residents have about their own stretched public services. Amendment 5 would help to address local concerns by ensuring that the infrastructure levy is paid upfront before the point of occupation. Councils would be able to ensure that a local community could cope with the additional people moving in before they were there taking up school places and nursery places, rather than trying to solve the problem of service provision once it is too late.

    The amendment would also enable councils to require financial bonds from developers to complete the basic infrastructure—roads, street lights and drainage—that is meant to be adopted, but often seems to be left undone. North Shropshire is plagued with unfinished road developments, and the amendment would allow those financial bonds to be put in place, which would avoid such situations.

    I fear that the Bill misses the opportunity to ensure that, when we build new homes, we protect the environment. The Conservatives have allowed around 1 million new homes to be built since 2015, which are not as efficient as they would have been had the standards put in place under the coalition Government been retained. This is a missed environmental opportunity, and it means that homeowners are paying far more to heat their homes than they might otherwise have done. New clause 20 would bring forward the date of the future homes standard to January, which may be unrealistic in the circumstances, but I hope that the Minister will consider bringing it forward to save homebuyers money and to work towards our climate objectives.

    New clause 40 would create a requirement to hold local referendums on fracking applications—to be paid for by the applicant—to protect communities from unwanted fossil fuel extraction. My constituents are unconvinced by the current moratorium given the flip-flopping this summer and the disastrous decision to give the go-ahead to a new coalmine last week.

    Finally, I wish to mention the critical importance of the affordability of housing. We know, as many Members have discussed, that it is worse in some parts of the country than in others. The building of executive homes in the countryside will not help us deal with the problem of affordable housing. New clause 20 also enables local authorities to require new housing to be affordable and to define affordability in their area. It would also allow them to provide additional bus services so that people did not become reliant on cars.

    In summary, I am worried about the things that are missing in the Bill, which we have discussed today, and I hope that the Minister will consider them. In my final few seconds, I apologise to the House for coughing and spluttering all the way through the debate.

  • Derek Thomas – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Derek Thomas – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Derek Thomas, the Conservative MP for St Ives, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    I rise to speak in support of Government new clause 119. The lack of the housing that people need to live, work and play a full part in our local community is not a new problem for Cornwall and Scilly, but it has certainly become acute during and following the covid pandemic. The demand for staycations, fuelled by stringent rules and tax changes, has caused massive numbers of long-let properties to switch to short lets to meet the demand for short breaks at the expense of those who need the security of a permanent home. We have more homes approved for building than families on our waiting list.

    This Bill has a job of work to do, and I believe that, with this sensible new clause, which I and many others support, it can offer a framework that will see a shift for the better in how we deliver the homes our community needs. I am grateful for the way the Minister has engaged with us and listened to the concerns that I and colleagues have shared, including those who share the task of representing the Duchy of Cornwall.

    Very early on, my Cornish colleagues and I pressed for consideration to be given to how we ensure that houses built to meet local need can enjoy protection so they stay that way. The Bill establishes a registration scheme for holiday rentals and a consultation on whether planning permission is required for new holiday rentals, especially in tourist hotspots. I very much hope that is progressed as quickly as possible to reassure my constituents that the Government and the Bill work for them. That will address a difficulty that many families face by curtailing the opportunity for a landlord to switch the home to a holiday let. I ask the Minister to consider including second homes in the consultation. With that measure in place, Cornwall Council and other local authorities can assess the housing need and choose to decline a change of use application, protecting the home for permanent residents.

    I am glad that the Government have made the central plank of this legislation enabling the building of the right homes in the right places with the right infrastructure. Communities will heave a huge sigh of relief, as they have felt forced to accept housing that spoils the natural environment but that does little to meet the need in the area. It confirms the fact that when we empower a local community to fashion and design its own destiny, people step forward and give their time to meet the challenge and win the arguments. This will always be a more constructive method of addressing housing supply than the top-down, target-driven approach that we are subject to now. That approach has not worked, otherwise there would be no housing crisis in Cornwall and no need for much of this legislation.

    The top-down housing targets undermine confidence, sap the energy of local volunteers and do nothing to deliver the homes that local people need. With this Bill, brownfield sites will take precedence over greenfield sites and local communities’ needs over top-down diktats, and there will be confidence that priority will be given to those who live, work and are enabled to play a part in their community.

  • Jon Trickett – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Jon Trickett – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Jon Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    The Minister referred to environmental concerns relating to the planning process. It is remarkable, then, that there is no requirement to do an ecological survey of local wildlife—flora and fauna—before planning consent is considered, so I have proposed some amendments to new clause 5 to achieve that.

    I was concerned about a planning proposal in my constituency for 1,500 houses on greenfield land, when there are still brownfield possibilities elsewhere, so I commissioned an ecological survey because the council and the planning authorities were not required to do so. It turns out that in that area there are 16 bird species on the red list and 11 mammal species protected under schedule 5 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which prohibits damage to their environment. How can it be that the planning system does not require an advance ecological survey?

    I will not press my amendments to a vote. I simply want to raise the issue and give the Minister an opportunity to explain how she will enforce strict regulation of environmental protections, particularly in the light of the UN biodiversity conference in Canada, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations said that humanity is in danger of becoming a “weapon of mass extinction”. We have to protect species. I have 27 species on one site that is proposed to be destroyed.

    The Minister said that the Government are moving to a brownfield-first option. I asked Ministers twice last week what firm commitments council planning officers can rely on in the Government’s attitude towards green belt incursions. That seems to be a major issue affecting Members on both sides of the House, so we are looking for a firm and clear commitment on that.

    The Minister was asked earlier—although I am not sure the question was fully understood—what guidance she will give to planning inspectors who are currently considering local authority planning processes, given what she said in the House today and what is in the Bill. That is where we are with the application that I mentioned, which is so damaging. It is unwanted by any representative institution in the constituency and it is damaging to the environment. It is only for planners who like drawing clean lines on a map and greedy developers. It is not wanted, it will damage our environment and it should be stopped.

  • Andrew Lewer – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    Andrew Lewer – 2022 Speech on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

    The speech made by Andrew Lewer, the Conservative MP for Northampton South, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    It is a pleasure to speak to new clause 12, which is tabled in my name and which would introduce new requirements to encourage the development of small brownfield sites. I thank colleagues on both sides of the House who have supported it. I do not propose to put it to a vote, because the Housing and Planning Minister—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer)—has indicated her interest in it and given assurances that it will be part of the Government’s future thinking.

    We should all know the scale of the crisis that we are facing. In 2003, 59% of households led by someone aged between 25 and 34 owned their homes; by 2020, the figure had fallen to 47%. At this rate, we are destined to see the majority of people under 50 doomed to a life of permanent renting.

    Because of increasing wage-to-house-price ratios, we are witnessing a steady fall in home ownership. In 2019, 65% of households in England owned their homes, a fall from 71% in 2003. The decline in home ownership has been especially pronounced in younger age groups: the number of homeowners aged between 25 and 34 has fallen from 59% to 41%. That puts more and more pressure on the private rented sector. Rental demand is up 142% when compared with the five-year average, while supply is down by 46%. Rents are soaring as a result.

    We are having this debate later than was intended, largely owing to the issue of housing targets. They are not the preserve of the left or liberals; Sir Keith Joseph was attacking Labour for not having them in the early 1960s. And I take issue with the phrase “housing target”. This is not a target, but a minimum need. It is a gaping, strategic deficit, and a clear and present danger to economic growth.

    There is a need to make tough decisions. It is time to lead and not to follow. Abolishing housing targets is an example of failing by following, and opening ourselves up to the accusation of acting for perceived short- term political gain. The best time to build a house was 20 years ago; the second best time is now. As a Conservative, I believe that one of the Government’s best attributes is their ability to indicate and signal to the markets, and in this case we must do all we can to let the markets know that it is time to build—and yes, to build beautifully too.

    The national Government of this country nationalised land use via the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which is still in force. Since 2001, the population of this country has increased by 8 million. That is on the national Government as well. The national Government cannot have nationalised land use and restrictions, and be responsible for such a massive population increase, and then turn round and say, “It’s localism, isn’t it?” It is not localism, and the dropping of targets is a very unfortunate step.