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Tag: 2023

  • PRESS RELEASE : New law gives tens of millions more say over their working hours [February 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : New law gives tens of millions more say over their working hours [February 2023]

    The press release issued by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 3 February 2023.

    The government backs law that gives all workers the legal right to request a predictable working pattern

    • Law will combat ‘one-sided flexibility’, where workers are often on standby for work that never comes

    Today (Friday 3 February), the government supported Blackpool South MP Scott Benton’s Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill, which will bring forward huge changes for tens of millions of workers across the UK.

    The move, which would apply to all workers and employees including agency workers, comes after a review found many workers on zero hours contracts experience ‘one-sided flexibility’.

    This means people across the country are currently left waiting, unable to get on with their lives in case of being called up at the last minute for a shift. With a more predictable working pattern, workers will have a guarantee of when they are required to work, with hours that work for them.

    If a worker’s existing working pattern lacks certainty in terms of the hours they work, the times they work or if it is a fixed term contract for less than 12 months, they will be able to make a formal application to change their working pattern to make it more predictable.

    Labour Markets Minister Kevin Hollinrake said:

    Hard working staff on zero hours contracts across the country put their lives on hold to make themselves readily available for shifts that may never actually come.

    Employers having one-sided flexibility over their staff is unfair and unreasonable. This Bill will ensure workers can request more predictable working patterns where they want them, so they can get on with their daily lives.

    Blackpool South MP Scott Benton said:

    A significant number of my constituents experience unpredictable work. Being able to ask their employers to consider requests for a more predictable working pattern such as working on set days, or for a permanent contract, will help them to work more predictable hours and provide more reliably for their families in some cases, and help with their work-life balance in other situations.

    This Bill gives people a right to ask their employers to consider requests and will be welcomed by thousands of people.

    The move comes as part of a package of policies this government is supporting to further workers’ rights across the country, such as:

    • supporting parents of babies who need neonatal additional care with paid neonatal care leave
    • requiring employers to ensure that all tips, gratuities, and service charges received must be paid to workers in full
    • offering pregnant women and new parents greater protection against redundancy
    • entitling unpaid carers to a period of unpaid leave to support those most in need
    • providing millions of employees with a day one right to request flexible working, and a greater say over when, where, and how they work

    These policies will increase workforce participation, protect vulnerable workers, and level the playing field, ensuring unscrupulous businesses don’t have a competitive advantage.

    This package builds on the strengths of our flexible and dynamic labour market and gives businesses the confidence to create jobs and invest in their workforce, allowing them to generate long-term prosperity and economic growth.

  • Andrew Griffith – 2023 Speech to The City UK’s Annual Dinner

    Andrew Griffith – 2023 Speech to The City UK’s Annual Dinner

    The speech made by Andrew Griffith, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, to The City UK’s Annual Dinner on 2 February 2023.

    Good evening, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to speak to you. And thank you Miles for your kind introduction.

    Your contribution to the sector, to the economy, to people’s lives is well known.

    Along with related professional services, you contribute over 10% of the country’s GDP, 2.2 million jobs. The largest capital market in Europe and the second largest in the world. And that’s before we think about nearly

    £76 billion in total taxes which is enough to fund the entire police force and school system.

    The UK is fortunate to have such a strong sector. We know that you have a choice of where to locate and will never take you for granted.

    You are part of our history.

    London was one of the first ever stock exchanges to be founded.

    This year marks 250 years since a group of stockbrokers

    moved to Sweeting’s Alley to set up a formal club.

    Before then, for close to a century, they’d be working out of the City’s coffee houses because they were deemed too uncouth and rude to be allowed into the Royal Exchange, the City’s centre of commerce.

    Of course, I’m sure nobody at all would have that view today!

    But in all seriousness, from those humble coffee house roots – shared by insurers at Lloyds Coffee Shop – the entire financial services sector has become a data and markets giant.

    From early trading in precious metals, to the telegraph revolution, ticker tape and real time prices. And in between all of the innovation, supporting war efforts, funnelling money into infrastructure and tackling the issues of the day.

    We are at our best when we are contributing to solutions to national and global challenges.

    It was almost a year ago today that we received intelligence about tanks amassing on the Russian border with Ukraine.

    As Putin’s barbaric invasion got under way, you came together to help deliver the biggest economic sanctions in history.

    With the help of the UK insurance sector – really the world’s insurance sector – we followed this by implementing a price cap on Russian oil, further undermining Russia’s ability to profit from aggression.

    And finally, when people’s livelihoods were at risk from a global pandemic, you stepped in to help us support businesses and families with your payments capabilities. So for everything that everyone in this room has done and your individual leadership – thank you.

    As we emerge from a difficult few years for our country, we need to turn our attention to the long-term.

    We have five clear priorities.

    Halve inflation. Grow the economy. Reduce debt. Cut waiting lists. And stop the boats.

    Three of these priorities are about the economy. That’s because the prosperity that it’s our job to deliver can only come on the back of economic stability and growth.

    Yes there are economic headwinds, but we have the highest employment rate for half a century, inflation is lower than 14 other EU countries, and the private sector has grown by 7.5% in the last year.

    And last week a survey of business leaders by PWC said the UK was the third-most attractive country for CEOs expanding their businesses.

    As the Chancellor said last Friday, our vision for the UK is an enterprise culture built on low taxes, reward for risk, access to capital and smarter regulation.

    With volatile markets and high inflation, sound money must come first but our ambition is to have nothing less than the most competitive tax regime of any major country.

    Delivering stability means making sensible choices on spending to tame inflation: not exposing the most vulnerable, but also not believing we can simply spend our way to prosperity.

    As a former CFO myself, I know the importance of balancing the books and I recall graphicly what it was like trying to issue capital in the uncertain markets post 2008.

    But we are well placed. All of the natural advantages which have brought us here remain. Our language, culture, great cities and the rule of law.

    Our universities are ranked second globally for their quality and include three of the world’s top ten. In order to support the ground-breaking work they do, the government has protected our £20 bn research budget, now at the highest level in history.

    Your government has a mandate and a majority and only this week Parliament was passing important financial services legislation.

    The Prime Minister has set out five domains of outsize growth and potential where Britain is up with the very best in the world.

    Advanced manufacturing, the clean energy revolution, life sciences and digital technology. And of course, financial services.

    As your champion I make the case that we count twice. For without efficient and effective capital markets we cannot hope to exploit the potential of the others.

    We are fortunate to be one of the world’s top two financial hubs and the world’s largest net exporter of financial services. Your capability to deploy capital behind innovation combined with our research strengths, makes our aspiration to be a technology superpower ambitious but highly achievable.

    One would think it was self-evident that growth is good.

    As Robert Colvile, Director of the Centre for Policy

    Studies, argues in his report “The Morality of Growth” that to some, growth has become the enemy.

    Obviously, I disagree. This entire Government does.

    That’s important because the private sector, we must never forget, is what drives growth and lets us invest in public services.

    And, as Colvile writes, “firms are most effective at doing good when they do well – when they are profitable and successful and attractive employers”.

    Let me speak personally for a moment. As we chart our course in a globally competitive marketplace, we have to be clear eyed about what it is that we want to be good at.

    My view is simple: if we can’t be globally effective in financial services, we should all go home now.

    It is my job to help you achieve that. To remove friction, to support and celebrate risk takers and to shape regulatory frameworks that are well regarded but agile.

    As I’ve said before, this sector has had more reviews than Netflix. Many of the authors and contributors are here tonight. We know what we want to do. Now is the moment to get on and deliver.

    We are taking this forward in a number of ways: through the Financial Services and Markets Bill, and through the Edinburgh Reforms.

    Unleashing the sector, realising potential, delivering for you and for UK plc.

    My ambition is for us to be the global financial hub – using our strengths to enhance strong relationships with jurisdictions all around the world, attracting investment and increasing opportunities for cross-border trade.

    I want to work hand-in-glove with you this year on the priorities I have agreed with the Chancellor.

    First, is to deliver the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

    To get that on the statute book by Easter so we can unlock the reforms it contains.

    Second, as I’ve alluded to, is boosting competitiveness by delivering the Edinburgh Reforms.

    Third, and related, is to unleash private capital to invest in all those growth sectors I mentioned earlier.

    And fourth, I want us to bolster financial inclusion and support retail savers and investors.

    Good regulation has the power to be a positive tool to enable you all to compete in a global world.

    I am grateful to TCUK for your work on how the regulators’ authorisation processes can be made more efficient.

    This is an important area, and one that I have raised with the leadership of the FCA and the PRA.

    I am pleased that they have committed to make improvements and I am grateful for their collaboration.

    In order to strike a better overall balance, the Financial Services and Markets Bill will introduce a new secondary objective in law for the PRA and the FCA on growth and international competitiveness.

    That’s important, and taken with a number of other measures, we do expect to see a real change.

    And I want to put to bed any idea that this is about a race to the bottom: the government’s vision is about making UK regulation more proportionate and simpler whilst retaining high regulatory standards.

    Nor do we seek to diverge for divergence’s sake. In running international businesses, no one wants to add extra complexity or difference. The ambition of a European MoU remains.

    Whether it’s implementing the outcomes of Lord Hill’s Listing Review or making regulation more tailored for the UK market, we’re ensuring we remain one of the best countries in the world to do business.

    As the Chancellor laid out just days ago, if we’re going to have successful Enterprises – growing companies need capital.

    That is why we have selectively used the regulatory flexibility we now have.

    One of the most tangible examples – one that will unlock over £100 billion of pounds for productive investment, creating jobs and prosperity – is reforming Solvency II.

    It is a change that will unleash capital into productive investments, such as offshore wind.

    It will allow the insurance sector to play an ever-greater role in providing opportunity to left behind communities and our transition to Net Zero, with the industry expecting to invest more than £100 billion over the next decade.

    Good for business: good for the country.

    And then there’s an issue close to my heart: financial inclusion.

    What does that mean?

    It means making sure all people, regardless of their background or income, have access to the useful products and services which help them succeed in life.

    And let me be clear: this isn’t woolly talk.

    We’re driving tangible measures.

    Take access to cash. You don’t need telling that one of the macro trends we’re likely to see continue this year is a move from cash to electronic payments.

    Yet cash is something that millions cannot currently live without.

    Those in rural communities, the elderly, those who use cash to manage personal finances.

    That is why, for the first time since the ancient Kelts began minting coins in the British Isles, this year will see communities’ benefit from new laws to protect access to cash.

    It is also a personal mission to foster an environment that supports individual savers and investors.

    This is a government that will always be on the side of those saving for the future or their retirement.

    It’s these steps – and more – that show we mean it when we say financial services need to deliver for everyone.

    Finally, one of the reasons this sector is so successful is innovation. We want to do everything we can to ensure that UK financial services are at the forefront of technological advancements.

    Just look at fintech – what an incredible UK success story.

    Despite a challenging economic backdrop, the sector attracted $12.5 bn of investment last year.

    That’s second only to the US globally. It’s more than the next 13 European countries put together.

    We are committed to turbocharging the growth of the UK fintech sector with the new Centre for Finance, Innovation, and Technology – CFIT.

    Indeed, today we’ve heard the exciting news that Ezechi Britton has been appointed as the CEO of CFIT.

    He brings extensive experience as a fintech entrepreneur and in venture capital investment.

    Building on our FinTech lead, we are going to go further, establishing a framework for regulating cryptoassets and stablecoins.

    Just yesterday we published a consultation setting out comprehensive proposals for regulating the sector. It’s a big potential opportunity – I want to get it right so am actively seeking your views.

    The golden thread here is innovation. Being at the forefront of change, is how we will make the UK the natural home of innovative financial services companies.

    Rather than looking enviously at our competitors, I want them to look to emulate us.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, Miles, I am excited.

    Excited to be in this job, and excited to be able to push ahead with a significant programme of work for the balance of this year.

    The opportunity we have is substantial and the moment to seize it is right now.

    Together we can continue to build the UK as one of the world’s most competitive locations for financial services.

    A financial services superpower that will help secure the long-term economic wellbeing of the country.

    Thank you again for your welcome, thank you for listening and thank you for everything you continue to do for this industry and this country.

  • Robbie Moore – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    Robbie Moore – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    The speech made by Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this important debate. It is important because planning policy impacts on everyone, and everyone has a view on it, whether that is negative or positive. Generally, it impacts on everyone’s life.

    I will pick up on some of the absolutely valid points made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) about the fact that a lot of planning policy has to be community-driven. Sometimes, it has to be generated at the grassroots level, rather than top-down. As has been said, it is incredibly important that planning policy is community-led. It has to consider the environment and relate to the needs of what is required within a specific community. It is important that we develop houses that meet and enhance the health and wellbeing of the communities we all represent.

    I take a keen interest in planning policy because I studied architecture at Newcastle University and, in my year in industry, worked for a great company up in Newcastle that was involved in master planning exercises for housing regeneration schemes. One of the schemes we got involved with was in a deprived area of Sunderland, Southwick, and looked at how we could enhance a community through the quality of build of houses being developed. Indeed, I remember when I was at university, I did my dissertation on Byker and how the built environment can support communities. That is absolutely what planning policy should be about.

    There are a few issues I want to cover in my contribution. I will consider local plans and how we can ensure that the infrastructure we all like to talk about—whether that is roads, GPs, schools or parks—is supported and there to enhance people’s quality of life with regard to housing. I will also touch on affordable housing and what an industrial strategy looks like when we are talking about employment use, and I will finish by talking about telecom masts.

    My constituency of Keighley and Ilkley is going through a review of its local plan. Our local planning authority, Bradford Council, is looking at the local plan and will be putting it out for its second consultation in the not-too-distant future—I have been informed that that will happen shortly. One of the inevitable challenges is the drive to increase housing numbers across the whole of the Bradford district, which contains many different settlements, including not only Bradford city itself, but Keighley and Ilkley, which as towns are very different from the city. The complexity lies in the different make-up of those settlements and where the need is in those settlement areas.

    Through the first consultation on the local plan, it became clear that the local authority seems to have an incredible will almost to offload some of those housing numbers to the easy wins—the easy wins being most of the outlying areas in the greenfield or in green-belt areas where it might be easier to get those planning applications through at a later date. The local plans are being developed at the moment that will create the next 15-year housing strategy, which will, we hope, be adopted later this year.

    The concerns I have raised constantly are that the plan does not focus enough on prioritising brownfield development. We must refocus on those brownfield sites. Yes, they are more complex to develop—they may have contamination issues, issues with highways, challenges from some of the old mill settlements and so on—when trying to create a clean slate to drive that private inward investment into some of those sites. However, that has to be looked at because, unless we actually have a brownfield-first priority, we run the risk of not only reducing the soul of a settlement where those brownfield site holes in a settlement have been identified, but not actually developing houses where that need is identified.

    My concern is that, in several of the towns I represent, the housing numbers that have been proposed are dramatic. They are way over and above the need identified for those settlements. In some of the discussions I have been having with the local authority, I hear that it has allocated the housing numbers to those settlements based on the deliverability factor—that is, it knows it can deliver x houses in those settlements because can build it on greenfield or take green-belt land out of the green belt for housing, rather than having a proper focus on brownfield first.

    I will give some examples. There is Silsden—I should declare an interest, because that is the town that I live in. It is in the middle of the constituency, and it has had a proposed increase in housing numbers of about 580. Silsden is a relatively small settlement that has grown and grown; as we speak, we have an application from Persimmon Homes for 140 houses, to which I have put in an objection. We have had a Barratt Homes development; we have had Countrywide looking at putting in a development; we have Linden Homes currently building on site; and Skipton Properties has recently built a housing development.

    Bob Seely

    My hon. Friend is making a great speech, and I thank him so much for being here. Is not one of the problems with these big property companies, apart from the fact that they land bank, that they are interested only in really big sites? Since the great crash 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of the medium-sized and smaller building companies have gone out of business. We need to motivate smaller companies, or find financial incentives for developing smaller sites in a way that is much more acceptable to smaller towns and villages. That is better than Persimmon Homes, which, apart from anything else, has a dreadful reputation for the quality of its build, just plonking down 100 homes here or 500 homes there, and almost taking over and swamping the village.

    Robbie Moore

    That is exactly the point that I want to come on to, because Silsden is being inundated with houses. A live application for 140 houses is being considered by Bradford Council. I am completely opposed to it, but it is one of about six planning applications made over a period of time, and some of those houses are still being built. The point is that there has not been a sensible conversation about the impact on infrastructure and, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the quality of the build.

    The road infrastructure going through Silsden is not great at all. I drive through Silsden weekly, and the roads are tight and narrow. The pavements are not wide enough, let alone the roads. There are no conversations about the school, the GP services and the other facilities that the town needs in order to stay vibrant. Settlements sometimes need to grow organically; growth must be driven by the requirements of individual settlements. There sometimes needs to be a focus on brownfield sites first, or on development of niche, smaller sites, which could be grown at an organic speed and delivered in line with settlements’ need.

    In Ilkley, the average house price is somewhere around £420,000. That is very high, but local plan proposals suggest that Ilkley needs to grow by another 314 houses. I am constantly pushing back, because the community and I need to see the requirement for Ilkley to grow by that number of houses over the next 14 years.

    Just down the road, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), Burley in Wharfedale has grown hugely recently—by about 700 houses. The implications for the GP service are huge. It has been a real challenge to unlock money, whether through section 106 or the community infrastructure levy, to improve the infrastructure. I have been helping out my hon. Friend with that.

    I will come on to the quality of the build, which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight made a really good point about. I have mentioned Harron Homes in this Chamber before; the quality of its build has been shocking, and it is not great to say that. I will give another example. About 50 houses were built—again, in Silsden. Other Members from across West Yorkshire have made this point in this Chamber before. The site was finished, in the developer’s eyes, yet there were huge snagging issues. The road was not even sorted out; in fact, sewage from the site had to be disposed of by a lorry that came in and emptied the tank, because the connection with Yorkshire Water were not sorted out. How can we ensure more enforcement against property developers when build is not of the quality that residents, and we representatives, expect? What can the Government do to put more pressure on developers to enhance the quality of houses, and of the master planning of the community that is being developed?

    That brings me to industrial strategy. Inevitably, when it comes to planning, everybody likes to talk about houses, because that is quite an emotive issue, but I agree with the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight made about the use of compulsory purchase powers. On North Street in Keighley, there are many empty buildings with fantastic architecture. How do we use compulsory purchase powers to unlock those sites, and force the owners to change them into housing, or get them into some sort of community use, so that they do not sit empty year after year? Those sites could be used by the town.

    Dalton Mills is a fantastic building. It is an old mill—one of the biggest in Keighley—that has been redundant for many a year, although “Peaky Blinders” was filmed there. The quality of the site has deteriorated over many years, and last year there was a big fire— 100 firefighters and 21 fire engines came. The building unfortunately suffered a huge amount of fire damage, although the façades seem to be structurally sound. It is a unique site just outside the centre of Keighley, but we are unable to unlock it because the landowner seems aloof—we cannot get in touch with him. We cannot get traction with some of these key sites. How can we unlock them, in planning policy terms, using compulsory purchase powers?

    Let me turn to the speed at which local authorities operate. In order to drive growth and job creation, we want light industrial units in appropriate places, but it takes too long to get the planning applications through the system and get those units built. I have been shown many examples in Keighley. About four years ago, a planning application was submitted to the local authority for eight or 10 light industrial units. It did not get any traction from the local authority until the early in the covid period. During the covid period, the units got built and occupied, and now those businesses are flourishing. The demand is there; we just need to increase the speed.

    Of course we want to drive better connectivity, but telecom masts have to be in locations where they do not have an adverse impact on the beauty of a village, and they must not be too close to residential units. There needs to be a mechanism for putting pressure on organisations such as Clarke Telecom that drive some of the applications. We must ensure that they look at where the best sites are. I will give three examples.

    Unfortunately, a telecoms mast was approved in Addingham. It has a huge impact; it does not look good on the drive into the village. There would most definitely have been a better site for it. Putting it elsewhere would not have affected connectivity. All the residents of Addingham are impacted when they drive into the village and see that ghastly telecoms mast. An applicant applied to put a telecom mast on a site in the middle of Ilkley that was not even part of the public highway; they just thought they could get away with it. They had to withdraw the scheme, which will now be reconsidered. I put a lot of pressure on them. There was an application for a mast on a roundabout in the heart of the beautiful village of East Morton. We want to drive connectivity, but we do not want random applications for masts all over the place, with applicants seeing what they can get away with. That is not acceptable.

    We have covered loads of points. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight for securing this debate, because planning policy without doubt impacts all our constituents. Everyone is incredibly passionate about it.

    The Government are absolutely going in the right direction, and I commend them for listening to the many concerns that I have raised about housing numbers. The key point that I want to reiterate before I close is that planning policy has to be driven by need. What we need, rather than local authorities aiming policy at quick wins, is to create housing where it is needed, and a “brownfield first” policy.

  • Gagan Mohindra – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    Gagan Mohindra – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    The speech made by Gagan Mohindra, the Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

    It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely)—my good friend—on bringing forward this really important debate. I commend him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for the excellent work that they have done on the issue for a significant time. Most of that work was done behind closed doors, as critical friends of the Government. It allowed me, as a Government loyalist, the space to contribute positively, in a small way, to making sure that the legislation was exactly as we wanted, without been seen as disruptive or disloyal.

    As I have said many times in this Chamber, I come from a local government background. I was a councillor for 17 years before being elected to this place. Actually, there was a bit of overlap because of the pandemic. In that time, I spent many years on planning committees. Most recently, I was chairman of a planning committee in Epping Forest. I was a dual-hatter: I was also a county councillor in Essex. During my tenure as county councillor, I was responsible for strategic planning. In all those years in local government, I thought that local plans were better than what preceded them: the regional development agencies, which were part of a clunky, top- down model imposed on our communities from Whitehall. Although the local plan process remains emotive and, I would argue, quite difficult, it is part of a journey, and part of the future legislation, which will improve the process.

    I commend the Government for listening to the constructive criticism and feedback that people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight have put forward. Top-down numbers are helpful, but they should not be a stick with which to beat local authorities. I am happy for provisions on the five-year land supply to be removed. I always thought that they were a tool that unscrupulous developers or applicants could use to put development in the wrong place. I think I speak on behalf of the whole House when I say that politicians are always conscious of unintended consequence. No politician, whatever their party, wants to put forward bad laws or policies. When it comes to encouraging councils to ensure a pipeline of future development, a hard five- year deadline would open up a massive can of worms; unscrupulous developers from around the country would get involved. Both my authorities’ planning departments were a bit under-resourced, through no fault of their own, which meant that they were in some ways swimming against the tide, and finding that increasingly difficult.

    My constituency of South West Hertfordshire is a beautiful part of the world. The Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty is to our west, and we have the border with London to the south. We have the best of all worlds: we have very good transport links with London, but we retain that village feel. We are about 80% green belt, so pretty much wherever we look, we see prime green belt, farmland and trees. Part of the joy of representing South West Hertfordshire is that, waking up in the morning, I am more likely to hear a bird than cars. That is not to say we do not need further investment in transport—and I will continue to bang on about the train network and the tube in the south—but it is a nice place to live. As a conservative with a small C, part of my role as the elected Member of Parliament is to retain what we love about the community. Pressures that we experience in the home counties and London, particularly pre pandemic because of the draw for better-paid jobs, mean that we will continue to have these debates on local planning issues.

    It is great to see the Minister in her place. My plea to her is to try to future-proof the local planning process. With the way people live their lives post pandemic, the south-east is less of a draw, because they can have a well-paid, good job with future career prospects without moving down to South West Hertfordshire or London. My generation, including a lot of my friends from the midlands, was drawn down to London. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for regeneration and development, I had a meeting with Birmingham City Council yesterday. After hearing about the exciting plans in that part of the world, I think that if I were an 18 or 20-year-old from there now, I would not necessarily see the bright lights of London as the real draw. People can still have a good quality of life, with reasonable house prices and a good work-life balance, and live in a vibrant community with lots of future plans.

    I represent half of the area covered by Dacorum Borough Council and most of the area covered by Three Rivers District Council. The two councils did a poll back in 2020, asking residents to name their favourite thing about living in South West Hertfordshire. Over three quarters of respondents across both council areas said it was the parks and open spaces. The silver lining of the pandemic is that people have really appreciated what is on their doorstep.

    As someone who still commutes into London every day, I may be a rare breed. A lot of people are still getting back to working full time in their office space, after being perfectly set up over the last couple of years to work from home. Avoiding a two-hour commute there and back, which I have to do most days, is a draw. However, as well as saving on the commute time and transport costs, the quality of life aspect is important. Planning, by its very nature, should be focused on the health and wellbeing of communities. As a Conservative councillor, my view was that when planning is done badly, not only does it create an eyesore, but the negative aspects of poor development lead to unhealthy outcomes, which mean an additional burden on the state in future years. As a Conservative, one of my values is offering value for money. Where we can reduce the cost burden for future generations, we should be proactively doing that. The way we do planning is very much part of that mix.

    Apparently, 1.2 million homes are lying dormant on brownfield sites. I referred earlier to the significant green-belt aspect of my community. Although there is always a draw to do what is easy—that is, if there is a piece of grassland, build on it—that does not mean it is the right thing to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight spoke about renewed emphasis on getting brownfield sites back into use. That is absolutely the right theme, which I hope my Government will continue to push.

    Some of the regeneration in our communities is to do with not necessarily new homes, but the quality of what people see outside their windows. For someone driving to the local shops, being next to a derelict site where nothing looks to have happened for five or 10 years has a subconscious bearing on how they feel for the day. Although new development is a pain in the short term, people feel the benefit of those brand new hospitals or schools, or additional classroom space. That is what the planning process is meant to do. It is meant to make the next generation living in that area have an easier life than the previous one.

    Strategic planning is absolutely required. We have had piecemeal planning, which we see occasionally from planning application appeals. Inevitably, those have led to a can of worms, with developments in the wrong place. They might make a lot of money for the developer at the time, but they have a significant impact on local authorities, especially when trying to offer a support network such as social services or NHS nurses, which have to go to out-of-the-way places that can be the wrong sites for such developments.

    From January last year to September, across all the Hertfordshire councils, about 12,000 applications were received, with about 11,500 decisions taken and, of those, 85% granted. The planning application process therefore does not seem to be the issue or a bottleneck. Planning remains complex, which it needs to be, with a lot of expertise required—I applaud the Government’s drive for digitisation, because more people will engage in the process—but there should be more motivation to do the right thing, although I do not yet know how to do that. Putting in an application just to increase the property value, without developing it—I know loved ones who have done the same—might be helpful in the short term, but it is a false economy as regards what is available or in the pipeline to be developed.

    In the south of my constituency, Three Rivers District Council is Liberal Democrat-controlled. For many years, since I was elected, I have pushed it to continue the momentum to get a local plan in place. As the constituency Member of Parliament, I would argue that the council is probably using the change in the forms in planning legislation that we are looking to make as an excuse not to get on and do it. In the north of my constituency, Dacorum District Council is Conservative-controlled, and it is just getting on with its plan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said at Prime Minister’s questions. While that is difficult, it is absolutely the right thing to do.

    My plea to the Minister is that where we think councils are using the situation to do the wrong thing, we need, whether by a quiet word, threats of sanctions or whatever—I do not know what tools she has in her armoury—to encourage such councils to get on and do their plan, because sitting one’s head in the sand is not the solution for planning. We need to have those mature, if typically emotive, conversations and for decisions to be made. Politicians are elected to make decisions, even when they are sometimes difficult to make.

    The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is in a good place. There is more to do, but I would not expect that to happen in this piece of legislation. I am sure future legislation will be coming down the pipeline through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

    The demand for housing in this country cannot and should not be ignored. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight spoke about start times, and that is a big issue in my part of the world. While people will remain emotive about new development, typically such new homes are for the local community. When people move out of mum and dad’s home, where will they live? In my part of the world, it means they have to move significant distances away.

    Brownfield land is very much there, and we need proactively to get it back into use, even more so than now. The counterpart to that is some green-belt land. The Government should encourage regular reviews of green belt, because it has various spectrums—if it is prime arable land, absolutely we should retain it in the green belt, but if a site is on the edge of settlement, has been dilapidated for 20 years and is of no help or environmental benefit, we should identify it and make better use of it. With the right plan and policies in place, we can maximise the benefits of planning and keep our green spaces safe.

  • Bob Seely – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    Bob Seely – 2023 Speech on Planning Policy

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the matter of planning policy.

    It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I will not talk for too long, but I want to raise some issues relating to planning policy, especially after the productive and fruitful discussions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and I had with the Government.

    For years, we have needed a planning system that is community-led and environment-led, and that drives regeneration. For years, we have not quite had the opposite, but we have certainly not had a policy that is as focused as it should have been on community, the environment or, frankly, levelling up and spreading wealth around our wonderful country. Indeed, in many ways the definition of “sustainability” has been the opposite of what it is in reality. Much development has been truly unsustainable, as many communities involved in bitter battles against distant developers know. There are residents’ groups on the Isle of Wight, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend and across Britain that have despaired at the top-down, developer-led process, which seems so often to have ridden roughshod over the wishes of local people and the genuine needs of communities.

    That is why last year we built an alliance of a hundred likeminded Conservative colleagues and tabled 21 amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, as well as negotiating with Ministers and officials over a one or two-week period to secure what I hope is a workable change, and indeed what I think will improve planning considerably in this country. These are some of the things that I would like to touch on for the Minister today.

    I will just say what we are against, because it seems to me that, unless people want a free market in housing, which in reality we have not had since world war two, they are described as nimbies. I find that level of argument pretty depressing, shallow and empty. I think what we were against—certainly, what I was against—was a couple of things.

    First, there is the planning or development industry’s addiction to greenfield, soulless, low-density, car-dependent, out-of-town development. Those sorts of developments —we see them a bit on the Island, but we see them especially in the home counties and counties such as Cambridgeshire—are socially bad, as they are not designed around communities. Effectively, they are soulless housing estates, plonked down in the middle of nowhere, or where the developers can get planning permission. They are also environmentally bad from a transport point of view, because they are almost entirely car-dependent. These isolated, car-dependent developments are truly unsustainable, because we know that detached houses are the most un-climate friendly form of housing. They are land-banked by large developers and are often built against the wishes of local communities.

    The second thing that we found really difficult was the structure of the industry. There is sometimes a more sustained approach in the industry towards keeping share prices high than there is towards actual development. That is one of the problems. Because we have become over-dependent on private developers, we have effectively become hostages to their agenda. Yes, they build houses—that is their business model—but it is also their business model to keep prices high, to keep the value of land high and to limit the supply of land, because that is how they keep their share prices high, their profits high and, frankly, their bonuses high.

    We have not had enough in the way of council-led affordable housing. I am a big fan of affordable housing and council housing, and I very much want the Isle of Wight Council to get on and develop its own council house company again. But because we have been dependent on private developers, we have something like 1 million outstanding planning permissions, including over 400,000 planning permissions on brownfield sites, which are just land-banked by the big companies, because then they can plan for profits for years to come. If we want to build more, we need a slightly different system from the one we had, or at least one where councils and housing associations can build more and have access to more land. I will come to that in relation to Camp Hill on my patch.

    As a result of so much of the pressure for housing moving down to the south-east—in places such as the Isle of Wight, but it is perhaps even worse in the home counties—we have skewed infrastructure spending away from the north and towards the south and the south-east. Again, because the infrastructure is there, that drives jobs and growth. We have a never-ending funnel—a never-ending hoover—of people from not only city centres to the suburbs but from north to south. That is bad for our country.

    To give a snapshot of the £866 million allocated by the housing infrastructure fund up to 2018, half of it was directed to London, the east and the south-east, while the combined authorities of Liverpool, Manchester, Tees Valley, the West Midlands and the West of England received only £124 million. That is about a quarter of what was given to London and the south-east. At that time, over three quarters of the £2 billion allocated went to projects in London and the south-east. Up to April 2020, it was estimated that the same fund spent up to £700 million on roads for garden communities.

    There is a problem in that, because so many of the planning permissions are given in the south-east on greenfield sites, that skews investment and the infrastructure spend. The reality is that that makes levelling up and investing in the great cities of the north and the midlands much more difficult. I will come on to that, because there are some fascinating pictures of declining populations.

    After intensive negotiation with the Secretary of State and the Minister—it is a pleasure to see her here—we now have a much better deal that puts planning in a much better place. Before I turn to the wider issues of what I think we achieved with that, I will raise three issues with the Minister in relation to the Island. First, we would love more compulsory purchase powers. I know that the Minister will tell us that there is a compulsory purchase review out with the Law Society, which is looking at how we can make compulsory purchase more efficient.

    In coastal communities, and maybe in levelling-up communities—if I dare describe them as such—we need that compulsory purchase power. It is way too difficult for us and our councillors, whether they are Conservative, Labour or independent, to do the right thing. There are too many buildings on the Isle of Wight that stand empty for years, especially those that have an impact on our communities, for example in Sandown—funnily enough, I was talking to the Mayor of Sandown less than an hour ago about post offices.

    The Grand Hotel in Sandown has been empty for years. It is a gorgeous art deco building next to what used to be Sandown zoo—it is opposite the beach and next to the dinosaur museum. It should be a really important site for us. That building has stood empty for years. The Royal York Hotel in Ryde is owned by the same guy. Those buildings stand empty, and there are many others. With the Ocean Hotel I will be careful what I say; I do not think there are proceedings live at the moment, but at the very least there has been extraordinarily unethical behaviour in relation to that building—it may indeed be criminal. It is empty and, because of the legal disputes surrounding it, it may well lie empty for years. It is slap-bang in the middle of what should be Sandown’s tourism high street.

    The more help that Government can give us, the better. They should give compulsory purchase powers to councils such as the Isle of Wight, so that it can force the sale of the Grand Hotel, the Royal York Hotel in Ryde or the Ocean Hotel—so that it can say to the owners of those hotels: “You have six months to a year maximum to develop, otherwise we force a sale.” We would use those powers to put those properties on the market, to be bought by people on the condition that they put forward planning within a specific timeframe and start realistically developing and completing within a specific amount of time. That problem is replicated across coastal communities and in some of our most deprived communities, up and down the country.

    Secondly, I know the Minister will say that this is not her responsibility anymore, but I plead for quicker decision-making powers by Government. I give the example of Camp Hill—the third of our prisons on the Isle of Wight. The Minister was formerly Justice Minister, so she is probably bored of hearing about Camp Hill. I am bored of raising it. It has been nine years without a decision. The Americans put a man on the moon in less time than it has taken the Government to decide what to do with Camp Hill. I was thinking, half in jest, that if I set up as a squatter in Camp Hill, I would probably have ownership rights before the Government decided what to do with it, and if I could claim ownership of it, I could give it to the council. Can we please have a decision on Camp Hill?

    We do not have many brownfield sites on the Isle of Wight—I think we have about half a dozen. Hopefully, the Minister will have some news about the greenfield funds, which I think she may have announced or will announce, but we will certainly be putting in for more money to clean up brownfield sites, because we have so few. Camp Hill is a really big potential brownfield site for us, and we would love to get access to it. I know the Minister is the Minister for housing and not a Justice Minister, but if the Government can sell that site to the Isle of Wight Council at a price that we can afford—in much the same way as they did for the Columbine Building, which is the hub of our shipbuilding industry in East Cowes—we can do good things with it. It is a brownfield site near Newport, and we can use the land to build decent, affordable housing for Islanders young and old, rather than having to rely on speculative greenfield sites outside our towns and villages. I urge the Government collectively to have better and quicker decision making.

    Thirdly, and specifically for the Island, the Secretary of State and his adviser kindly suggested that they would write to me to confirm two things as part of our negotiations last year. The first is that, from now on, there is an expectation that exceptional circumstance is assumed for islands. My understanding from the negotiations is that exceptional circumstance for islands would be specifically mentioned in the footnotes of the national planning policy framework, or NPPF, and that that would be almost the expectation. We do not have a bridge—we are not Anglesey; we are separated by sea—and it costs 30% more to build a home on the Isle of Wight than elsewhere, because of the cost of getting material over by ferry. We have a restricted industry on the Island that builds between 200 and 300 homes a year. A target of 500, 600, 700 or 800 would be crazy and unachievable, because we have only ever built that sort of number on two occasions in the last 50 years, so it would be incredibly helpful if we could see the letter on exceptional circumstance.

    That was my understanding—it was very accurate, I hasten to add—of the conversation that we had. The letter was also going set out what emergency powers the Government have to deal with unscrupulous caravan park owners and the planning lawyers who advise them, who game the system to build caravan parks and concrete over sites of special scientific interest on coastal islands, in very special areas of the Island or the country, and in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. I think there was going to be some suggestion about what the Government could do on that.

    Those are three very specific issues, which I hope the Government should feel positive about. First, we want the Government to be ambitious on compulsory purchase, because it is so important to so many parts of the country that when property developers do not do the right thing, we can force the sale of sites, especially high-value sites that have a significant impact on our communities and our economy. Secondly, can we please have quicker decision making, specifically on Camp Hill? The council and I really want to build affordable homes on that site for folks on the Isle of Wight. Thirdly, I remind the Government of the letter they promised me on exceptional circumstance and caravan parks.

    More generally, I thought we had some great discussions at the end of last year, and we still have targets. I am just so fed up of hearing that Back-Bench MPs are docile sheep who trot through and vote for anything, or that we are an ungovernable rabble. Actually, the planning debate that we had showed this place working at its best. We respected the Government’s agenda, the Government listened to Back Benchers, we had a negotiation, and we reached a better state afterwards than we had before. We were vocal about what we believed was right, the Government were vocal about what they believed was right, and we negotiated our way through. The Government avoided an unnecessary rebellion; we respected the Government’s position, and the Government listened to us. That is neither MPs being docile sheep nor MPs behaving like some rebellious rabble; it is Back-Bench MPs, especially, doing their job, and Government Ministers doing theirs. I actually thought it was a pretty good process.

    Anyway, the housing targets remain, but they will be advisory, which I think is where they should be. We need to take a pragmatic, reasonable approach to examining the true housing numbers, and where there are genuine environmental constraints, councils will be able to propose a reduced housing number. Again, I point to the Isle of Wight as a really good example of that, because we have finite space. By way of example, I remind the Minister that in many areas of the south and south-east, the population has increased dramatically—I know that is happening in her patch. Over the past 60 years on the Island, we have increased our population by nearly 50%; it is about 50% in 50 years.

    At the same time, there has been a decline—not a relative decline, but an absolute decline—in the populations of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Stoke. We have had two great trends over the past 50 years: a move from city centres to suburbs, and a move from north to south. A lot of the pressure in constituencies such as mine is due to the decades-long lack of investment, or lack of an attempt to drive prosperity, in many of those great cities. Newcastle is a fantastic and exciting city, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool likewise, yet they have all had declining populations since the late 1950s and 1960s. If we could reverse that trend and make those cities hubs that people will want to go to, because that is where the jobs and prosperity are, that would take pressure off communities such as ours, as the Minister knows.

    The more we can get levelling up right, the better it will be for all of us, and the less pressure it will put on our communities. That means that more infrastructure money then goes back to northern communities and midlands city centres, which is where it should be in the first place. It seems entirely obvious to me that if one is developing a brownfield site in an existing community, the infrastructure spend is probably going to be lower. Widening single-track Victorian lanes in the east and north-east of the Isle of Wight—which is what is having to be done in my patch—costs a lot more than if it were happening in Liverpool and Manchester, because the infrastructure is there already. The more we invest in inner-city centres that have high-density populations, the better it is for those city centres, for Government services, and for communities such as mine.

    The Government are also going to modify the existing five-year land supply rule to pretty much get rid of it. They are going to kill off the tilted balance, thank God—I think that is an incredibly pernicious thing. Again, rebalancing the economies of greenfield and brownfield use to regenerate empty buildings, disused sites and town centres seems to me economically, socially and environmentally important; it just seems to be an incredibly sensible thing to do. If there is more money for brownfield site clean-up, Isle of Wight Council will be very excited to hear it, so if the Minister has anything to say about that today, she is very welcome to say it.

    I have gone on for a little bit longer than I thought I would, so I will wrap up.

    Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)

    More!

    Bob Seely

    More or less?

    Mr Mohindra

    More.

    Bob Seely

    I think we are in a good place regarding all the things that we negotiated. Obviously, we need to see them in the national planning policy framework, so I just want to check—I am sorry; I have been doing so much in the past week or so—is the new NPPF out now, or is it going to be out? We were promised that those changes would kick in come the new year. Have the changes in the NPPF happened yet, or is there going to be a date by which they will happen? Clearly, the Isle of Wight is now making its Island plan, and wants to use the exceptional circumstance assumptions that have been confirmed to it by Government, for which it is grateful.

    We look forward to supporting the levelling-up agenda and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, so that we make sure that we get housing where we need it in the United Kingdom while respecting communities such as mine. We need housing for local youngsters and other local people. On the Isle of Wight, that means housing for Islanders of all ages. Some people are downsizing, and a lot of people are first-time buyers who are looking for affordability criteria of 60% of local rates, rather than 80%.

    As much as is possible, we need to get housing associations on the Island building. I would pretty much rule out private sector housing estates. If we are to build housing on the Isle of Wight, it needs to be affordable, and for Islanders. If people want to move to the Island, they are very welcome to; that is what the back of the Isle Of Wight County Press is for, where there are all the ads for property. There is lots of property for them to buy on the Island. We do not need to build for people moving to the Island; we need to build to make sure that there are homes for young people. We need to engage housing associations. The more support there is for housing associations, and for building in existing communities, on brownfield sites, the more we can keep everybody happy. We can then build for our young people while respecting communities, who will not feel under attack from the threat of settlements being built on the greenfield around them.

    The deal that we struck with the Minister and the Government is not perfect, but it is much better than what came before. I look forward to working with the Government on making a success of it.

  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2023 Speech on the International Day of Education

    Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2023 Speech on the International Day of Education

    The speech made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

    I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) for securing this debate to mark International Day of Education. I pay tribute to her work to drive progress on education around the world, both in her previous ministerial role and through her continued efforts as the new co-chair of the APPG on global education.

    My colleague, the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), would have been delighted to take part in this debate, but he is travelling on ministerial duties. However, it is a pleasure to be able to respond on behalf on the Government. I am grateful to all hon. Members for their contributions. The strength of feeling about the importance of global education is clear and unequivocal, as it should be. Colleagues will be aware of my commitment to this cause, as the former Secretary of State in the Department for International Development who published our first strategy on 12 years of girls’ education back in 2020.

    Education, especially for girls, is a top priority for this Government. Over five years from 2015, UK aid supported more than 15 million children, including 8 million girls, to benefit from a decent education. We continue to stand up for the right of every girl, everywhere, to access 12 years of quality learning. We know that that is the key to unlocking individual potential, as well as advancing prosperous, thriving societies and economies. In short, and as all hon. Members have said, it is one of the very best investments we can make. That is because not only do educated girls’ earnings increase significantly, but they are less likely to be subjected to child marriage and domestic violence, and more likely to have smaller, healthier and better educated families.

    Too many children around the world lack these opportunities and face many barriers: poverty; a lack of safe and accessible schools; and the twin threats of conflict and climate change. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) has said, this is seen most shockingly right now for girls in Afghanistan. I reiterate the Government’s condemnation of the Taliban’s decision to prevent girls from returning to secondary school and women to universities. Through our joint G7 Foreign Ministers’ statement and the UK national statement, we have repeatedly made that clear, and we continue to lobby the Taliban to reverse those destructive decrees.

    As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has set out, about 244 million children are out of school around the world and more than half are girls. About seven in 10 children in low and middle-income countries are unable to read by the age of 10, and that generation could lose $21 trillion in earnings over their lifetimes as a result. Put simply, we face the real risk of a lost generation, and we cannot let that happen. That is why the UK is driving international action to tackle the education crisis.

    In 2021, we hosted in London the global education summit, which raised an unprecedented $4 billion for the Global Partnership for Education. We put girls’ education at the centre of our G7 presidency that year and secured G7 endorsement of the two global objectives mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant): to get 40 million more girls into school and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 by 2026.

    We support developing countries to help children to learn in a safe, inclusive and sustainable way. Of course, that begins, just as it does in every school in all our constituencies, with strong foundations: basic reading, maths and social skills—the building blocks on which all children everywhere can make progress in school and reach their potential so that they have choices later in life. That is why the UK launched a commitment to action on foundational learning last year at the UN summit on transforming education. We are calling on all Governments around the world to prioritise those basics, especially for the most marginalised girls.

    We also support girls and young women to make their way into higher education and training, to boost their employment prospects. As part of that, we launched the girls’ education and skills programme on International Women’s Day last year. That innovative partnership between Government and major global businesses was initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald in her role as special envoy on girls’ education. I thank her for her relentless advocacy, her enthusiasm and the globetrotting that she does on behalf of the Prime Minister to bring these issues to light across the globe.

    We want to continue to prioritise reaching the poorest and most marginalised girls, with a particular focus on reaching children affected by emergencies and protracted crises. On climate change in particular, the figures are bleak: 40 million children each year have their schooling disrupted by its impacts. For example, I met some children in the village of Mele in Vanuatu—a Pacific island literally the other side of the planet from here. I met them in December, and their school had been battered by sea storms unprecedented in the island’s history. That was a real, practical and destructive event for those small children, who had not experienced that in their lives before.

    Those climate threats are creating the sort of disruptions that are absolutely destructive and will cause damage for so many more children, so our focus on helping developing countries to adapt and become more resilient to the climate shocks we know they will have to face will be critical to protecting those children who are in education and enabling them to continue their education. We are supporting education for the poorest through UK-led programmes in 19 countries. That is complemented by our significant investments through the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait, which supports children through emergencies.

    It is of course important to leverage financing. That is why we are a leading partner in developing the new international finance facility for education, which is focused on lower middle income countries to help girls into learning. Meanwhile, the UK Girls’ Education Challenge is the largest programme of its kind in the world. More than 1 million girls who were most at risk of dropping out are now staying in school and making progress, and over 150,000 with disabilities are able to attend school.

    Our new position paper, which we published last month, is our road map towards addressing the climate, environment and biodiversity crises in and through girls’ education. I reassure colleagues that we will be publishing the new international women and girls strategy in the coming months, which will be framed around the three E’s of educating girls, empowering and championing the health and rights of women and girls, and ending violence.

    Members have raised concerns about the reduction in the aid budget and its impact on education programmes. Colleagues are all aware that difficult decisions have been made to meet the 0.5% commitment, and to support those fleeing the war in Ukraine and insecurity in Afghanistan.

    Harriett Baldwin

    Will my right hon. Friend commit to writing to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make the point that the money for Ukrainian refugee children in the UK, which I believe comes from the official development assistance budget, is not necessarily following that child if they move to a new school?

    Anne-Marie Trevelyan

    My hon. Friend raises an important point, of which I was not aware; it has not been brought to me in my constituency. I will take it up with the Secretary of State and ensure that we understand where those issues are, the size of the problem, and how we can ensure that, whichever schools are looking after those young people who are here from Ukraine, they can have the support they need.

    We are prioritising our 0.5% aid spending in line with the priorities that we set out in our international development strategy, which, of course, includes girls’ education. The UK remains one of the most generous global donors, spending £11 billion in aid in 2021.

    I reassure colleagues that, in relation to the Afghanistan crisis, FCDO officials are in regular contact with the NGO community to understand the impact of the Taliban ban on female workers. Where NGO partners have had to suspend activity, the FCDO is continuing to cover staff salaries and other critical associated operational costs, and we are encouraging UN agencies to do the same with their NGO counterparts.

    As Members know, development is not just about aid packages. UK support to global education includes our valuable country partnerships, expertise, and power to convene others, such as through the global summit.

    As colleagues have already said, and championed, we are proud to be a co-founder of, and leading donor to, Education Cannot Wait. Members have asked for details on the UK’s future commitment to ECW. The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield, will announce the UK’s future contributions— I am afraid that I cannot steal his thunder—at the high- level financing conference in February.

    I will end by reaffirming the UK’s unwavering commitment to global education, which remains at the heart of our work towards a more prosperous, stable and equal world. I know that all colleagues here today will continue to champion education as the most effective investment every nation can make.

  • PRESS RELEASE : Commander Strategic Command meets senior personnel in Finland [February 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : Commander Strategic Command meets senior personnel in Finland [February 2023]

    The press release issued by the Ministry of Defence on 3 February 2023.

    General Jim Hockenhull has travelled to Finland to meet counterparts from the Finnish Defence Forces.

    As part of the visit various discussions were held relating to Strategic Command’s priorities of leading cyber, driving integration and supporting campaigning.

    Developing the bilateral relationship between Finland and the UK is a key priority, alongside the work of the Joint Expeditionary Force, and the benefits of closer collaboration as NATO members.

    General Hockenhull met with General Timo Kivinen, Commander of the Finnish Defence Forces, to brief on the work of Strategic Command sharing more about current activity within the cyber and electromagnetic domain and the importance of identifying talent and developing our personnel’s skills.

    The role of multi-domain integration across Defence was also discussed, focusing on the benefits it offers in improving efficiency and effectiveness of active operations.

    Speaking on the visit General Hockenhull said:

    It was a pleasure to meet and share ideas with the Finnish defence leaders in their home country.

    At Strategic Command we know how important relationships with ally nations are. The strength of these partnerships directly reflects the strength of our response to threats from malicious actors.

  • PRESS RELEASE : Health and Social Care Secretary meets MND researchers to accelerate search for cure [February 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : Health and Social Care Secretary meets MND researchers to accelerate search for cure [February 2023]

    The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 3 February 2023.

    Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay met with researchers, charities and patients to discuss finding a cure for motor neurone disease following £50 million funding.

    On the back of accelerating access to £50 million for motor neurone disease (MND) research, Health and Social Care Secretary hosts roundtable with researchers, charities and patients to speed up progress in developing treatments

    The roundtable identified how leading researchers, scientists and the government can work better together to fast-track finding a cure

    Everyone in England can now sign up to research into MND and other conditions via the NHS App.

    People with motor neurone disease (MND) are set to benefit from improved collaboration between the government, researchers and charities, on top of accelerated access to funding, to speed up progress into developing treatments and finding a cure.

    The Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay met with leading representatives from across the MND research community yesterday, including medical research charity LifeArc’s Dr Catriona Crombie, MND charities Name’5 Doddie Foundation, MND Association, and MND Scotland, and patients, to discuss ways to fast-track research into the disease and look at how the government and sector can work better together to benefit patients.

    MND continues to have a devastating impact on the lives of people living with the condition and their families. The roundtable set out how the government will continue to work closely with the research sector, cut red tape to make accessing funding easier and boost research into new treatments.

    Following the roundtable, the Health and Social Care Secretary visited the King’s College Hospital MND Care and Research Centre – which was the first in the country and is now one of 22 research centres – to meet staff, patients and charities to see first-hand how government funding for MND research has benefitted them. King’s research labs helped find the only current treatment that targets the underlying causes of neurological diseases such as MND, and is aiming to find a cure and improve quality of life for patients and their families.

    The NHS App has also now been updated to make it easier for people to take part in MND and wider health research. People will be able to visit Be Part of Research through the app to view and sign up to research.

    Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said:

    Motor neurone disease can have a devastating impact on people’s lives, and I’m working with leading researchers to accelerate research and help find a cure as soon as we can.

    We have made strong progress since we pledged £50 million for MND research with new treatments being developed and promising results from clinical trials reported, but I know there is still more to do. Yesterday, I held a roundtable with experts, charities and patients to discuss how we can encourage and invest in the best research to drive more results.

    By cutting red tape and building on existing investments, we are making sure funding gets to researchers as quickly as possible. I encourage people in England to sign up to research via the NHS App and join our ever-growing UK-wide register Be Part of Research.

    There are many different types of research users of the NHS App can sign up to, including studies that test new treatments via interviews or surveys. A study might take place in a hospital, GP practice, or other health and social care locations in the community but some studies can also be done at home, online or by telephone.

    For example, dentist and former football manager Dean Mooney, whose life has changed dramatically since his Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis, has appealed to others who have the disease to join him in a new brain imaging study to help the race to find new treatments. Dean has worked with the University of Exeter’s world-leading Neurodegeneration Imaging Group, led by Professor Marios Politis, that is appealing for people who have MND to get in touch, and take part in a year-long study.

    Since the government cut red tape in December to speed up £50 million into MND research across the UK, immediate investment of £29.5 million was injected through specialist research centres so NHS patients could benefit from cutting-edge treatment and medicines. There are more clinical trials than ever before, delivering promising developments – such as research from NIHR’s Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre into the drug Tofersen, with findings suggesting it may slow progression of the disease for some people living with MND.

    There have also been applications proposing a collaboration between researchers to establish a clinical trial in new medicines and building infrastructure to support MND research activity in laboratories. In addition, discussions are underway with the sector to develop a proposal for an additional £2 million to focus on analysing existing data on the condition to explore the underlying causes of MND and help develop breakthrough new treatments as part of the MND Collaborative Partnership involving patients, researchers, charities LifeArc, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, MND Association and MND Scotland and government bodies MRC and NIHR, and £6 million to help move laboratory discoveries into clinical trials.

    This means patients will have access to medicine trials faster and will receive the care they need as soon after treatment is discovered. These initiatives were discussed at the roundtable so that action can be taken immediately to prepare and agree the proposals so patients can benefit from world leading multidisciplinary research.

    CEO of the NIHR Professor Lucy Chappell said:

    We are working hard to accelerate progress in motor neurone disease research. The charities and campaigners have done so much to focus attention and government is committed to delivering resources. This roundtable is a great opportunity to bring patient groups, world-leading experts, and government research funders together. We need to work together to ensure that high quality research is funded, so breakthroughs can reach patients as quickly as possible.

    MND patients have shown the value to us all of taking part in research and I am excited that we are now making it even easier for people in England to register their interest in research via the NHS App and Be Part of Research.

    The remainder of the £50 million MND funding is available for researchers to access via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Medical Research Council (MRC) who are working together to ensure proposals are referred to the most appropriate scheme for consideration at the early idea stage.

  • PRESS RELEASE : £53 million cash boost to improve housing support for drug and alcohol recovery [February 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : £53 million cash boost to improve housing support for drug and alcohol recovery [February 2023]

    The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 3 February 2023.

    28 local authorities across England will receive funds to help people in drug and alcohol treatment.

    • Funding will test the impact of providing additional housing support to improve recovery from addiction
    • Strengthens commitment to reducing drug use, and improving treatment outcomes, as part of the government’s 10-year drug strategy

    People in alcohol and drug recovery will soon have access to housing support, helping to break the cycle of addiction and improve health outcomes.

    Up to £53 million will be allocated to 28 local authorities across all regions of England with the greatest need.

    The funding will allow for local authorities to create new housing support schemes tailored to meet local need.

    People in treatment for drug and alcohol dependence are often easier to support if their housing needs are addressed at the same time, as there is a strong link between having a stable home and improved treatment outcomes.

    Examples of how the funding will be spent include specialist housing caseworkers supporting people in drug and alcohol treatment to access and maintain safe and suitable housing. Support will also look to help people create sustainable and long-term recovery by maintaining independent living.

    Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said:

    We’re supporting those recovering from drug and alcohol addiction by addressing the link between improved treatment outcomes and a stable home.

    This £53 million funding, targeted to local authorities with the greatest need, will support the government’s ambition to reduce overall drug use to a historic 30-year low.

    Health Minister Neil O’Brien said:

    Alcohol and drug dependence can have a devastating impact on the lives of people, their families and wider society. It is essential to break this cycle of addiction.

    The £53 million housing support funding will play a key role in testing how housing can help break this cycle, improve recovery and help people to live happier and healthier lives.

    In Manchester, specialist housing caseworkers will work out of three prevention hubs to be established across the city, providing a rapid response to housing issues that may affect people in substance misuse treatment securing or maintaining accommodation over the long term.

    In Lancashire, staff from across housing, drug and alcohol and health services will receive a programme of training to develop skills in substance misuse and housing related support and to will create a joined-up system across other organisations and public services, offering an improved experience for people experiencing homelessness.

    In Wigan, peer mentors with past experience of drug and alcohol treatment will provide support to people struggling to maintain independent living to sustain their accommodation and improve recovery outcomes.

    These projects will also expand our evidence base on treatment and recovery, with learnings helping to inform and develop future policy, in partnership with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

    Director of Addictions and Inclusion, Rosanna O’Connor said:

    The need for better housing and employment support for people dependent on drugs and alcohol is a core part of the current 10-Year national drugs strategy. We have known, for too long, that people in drug treatment with housing problems do less well in their recovery. What we know less about is how to address these problems. For the first time, dedicated funding is available to improve housing support.

    The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities are working closely with 28 local authorities up until 2025 to test and learn from specific approaches to housing support for this population, and Government will take the learning from these areas forward as part of its work to implement the Drugs Strategy.

    This supports recommendations from Dame Carol Black’s independent review, outlining housing support as a key strand needed to improve the effectiveness of drug prevention and treatment to help more people recover from dependence.

    It will support the government’s commitment to its 10-year drug strategy, which sets out the ambition to reduce overall use towards a historic 30-year low, getting people into treatment and deterring recreational drug use.

    This aspect of the wider strategy is part of a total package of £780 million to rebuild drug treatment and recovery services, including for young people and offenders, with new commissioning standards to drive transparency and consistency.

    Dame Carol Black statement:

    Addressing the housing-related needs of people in treatment with drug and alcohol dependence was a critical part of my Independent Review of Drugs.

    I am pleased that government is working with 28 local authorities across England to test the effectiveness of housing support interventions over the next 3 years.

    Learning from these areas will inform and drive forward the 10-Year Drugs Strategy, making the case for safe and supportive housing in recovery from addiction.

  • PRESS RELEASE : New strategy to boost NHS access to innovative medical technology [February 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : New strategy to boost NHS access to innovative medical technology [February 2023]

    The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 3 February 2023.

    Patients across the UK are set to benefit from access to safe, effective and innovative equipment and medical devices as part of the first ever medical technology (medtech) strategy published today.

    The blueprint for boosting NHS medtech will focus on accelerating access to innovative technologies, such as the latest generation of home dialysis machines that enable patients to manage their own health at home and in their day to day lives.

    It also sets out steps which need to be taken to ensure patients can access safe, effective and innovative technology through the NHS, which can help diagnose, treat and deliver care more quickly, freeing up clinician time. The NHS spends £10 billion a year on medtech including syringes, wheelchairs, cardiac pacemakers and medical imaging equipment such as X-ray machines.

    Building on learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid development of medical technologies during that time such as lateral flow tests and ventilators, this strategy will ensure the right product is available at the right price and in the right place. As a result, patients will continue to have access to high-quality care, alongside improved patient safety and health outcomes.

    The strategy aims to deliver value for money, using the latest data on the effectiveness of new technology to ensure prices are reasonable for the health system. It will also help build resilient supply chains and ensure the UK is prepared for future pandemics, just as demand for technology like syringes and ventilators rapidly increase during the pandemic.

    Using medtech effectively will be critical in reducing waiting lists for treatment caused by the pandemic as it has the potential to speed up diagnosis and deliver new and improved ways to treat and support patients. For example, COVID-19 demonstrated the importance of fast and accurate diagnostic testing and genome sequencing to process and share results, and home lateral flow testing showed the potential for increased use of diagnostics outside of formal clinical settings, to support earlier diagnosis and free up staff time.

    Minister of State for Health Will Quince said:

    The UK’s innovative spirit delivered revolutionary technology during the pandemic – from COVID tests and ventilators – and we want to harness this in promoting cutting-edge medical advancements to improve patient care.

    The NHS spends around £10 billion a year on medical technology and I’m looking forward to working with industry to use this as we focus on reducing hospital stays, enhancing diagnosis, preventing illness and freeing up staff time.

    This new medtech strategy will help build a sustainable NHS with patients at the centre so people can continue to access the right care at the right time.

    The key aims of the strategy are to:

    • boost the supply of the best equipment to deliver greater resilience to health care challenges, such as pandemics, and enhance NHS performance through modernised technology which will enable faster diagnosis, treatment and ultimately discharge to free up hospital beds
    • encourage ambitious, innovative research to secure the UK’s position as a global science superpower and attract vital investment for the UK economy and create jobs across the country. In 2021, there were already around 60 different research programmes supporting innovative technologies, representing over £1 billion of funding
    • increase understanding and awareness of medtech by clinicians which will lead to more informed purchasing on new products and deliver better value for taxpayer money and better services for patients
    • build on the Life Sciences Vision to improve collaboration between the NHS, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as an innovation partner to ensure patients can access the right products safely

    The implementation plan to deliver on this strategy will be published later this year and will include a review of the £1 billion spent on appliances in primary care, new comparison tools to enable better decision making when purchasing which achieve the best results for patients, and collaboration with industry to ensure availability of key products to keep patients safe.

    Dr Timothy Ferris, National Director for Transformation at NHS England said:

    Medical technology has an enormous role to play in benefitting patients now and in the future.

    The importance of medtech was made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic and as the NHS moves through its recovery, it will play a key role in addressing the challenges we face.

    Dr Sam Roberts of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said:

    It is essential that clinicians and patients can access the most impactful and cost-effective medical technologies, while medtech companies need to be confident that they are developing products which meet the needs of patients and the NHS.

    This strategy sets out a clear vision for the future. NICE is excited to be part of the delivery of this vision, working with our partners to further develop world leading processes to provide a sustainable pathway for medical technologies, from innovation to implementation.

    Peter Ellingworth of the Association of British HealthTech Industries said:

    ABHI welcomes the publication of the DHSC medtech strategy, and the recognition it brings to the importance of HealthTech in supporting the NHS to deliver exceptional care for people in the UK. HealthTech plays a valuable role in enabling improved outcomes through changing patient pathways as well as productivity and efficiency gains.

    It is important that this strategy supports the ambition of the Life Sciences Vision to create an outstanding business environment for HealthTech companies. We look forward to working closely with the Directorate in the implementation the strategy.

    This strategy follows action to cut NHS waiting times as one of the government’s top 5 priorities, backed by up to £14.1 billion of health and social care funding available for the next 2 years, on top of record funding and the publishing of a new urgent and emergency care recovery plan.