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Tag: Bob Seely

  • Bob Seely – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Bob Seely – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in the House of Commons on 20 March 2023.

    It is great to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), I will be ultra-parochial: I am going to talk specifically about the funding model in my constituency in relation to public services, and what the Treasury says or does not say about it. The issue, which I will bring up in my Prime Minister’s question on Wednesday and in my meeting with the relevant Minister in the next couple of weeks, is the funding of public services on the Isle of Wight.

    Isle of Wight Council is the only island authority in the United Kingdom that does not receive a permanent, consistent uplift in its funding that reflects the additional cost of providing services on an island separated by sea from the mainland and without a fixed link. The “Fair funding review” of 2017, which was signed off by the current Prime Minister when he was in a different job, made clear that it recognised the additional costs associated with providing Government services on the Isle of Wight. It set those costs at a fairly high level, estimating them to be the equivalent of an extra 35 miles for ferry passengers on foot and about 70 miles—the distance from London to Peterborough—for those travelling in a car or lorry.

    Since 1989, there have been six major studies of the impact of separation by sea on fair funding and public services on the Island. I shall refer briefly to two of them, the University of Portsmouth model of 2016 and a study commissioned last year by the Government, working with me, to examine the funding settlement for the Island. The University of Portsmouth, in an excellent study for which I thank its academics, confirmed that three separate economic factors were at play in making the provision of local services on the Island more expensive. The first was the lack of spill-over of public goods between the mainland and the Island, the second was the so-called Island premium—the higher prices charged by suppliers on the Island as opposed to the mainland—and the third was the additional costs to the Island that result from physical and perceived dislocation.

    Two years ago, backing up and building on that report, the Government—at my request—spent about £50,000 on commissioning LG Futures, a respected local government think-tank, to review the evidence for the “additional costs” argument in relation to the provision of public services on the Island. The Government worked through with the council and me the parameters of what the review—which they had committed to and commissioned—would be investigating. It confirmed the accuracy of every relevant study of the funding of public services on the Island: it confirmed that it cost more to deliver public services there, for the reasons outlined by the University of Portsmouth.

    In many ways I am delighted by what has been happening in the past few years, and I want Ministers to hear that. We have had a much better deal from the Government in recent years. Since I became the Member of Parliament for the Island, we have got more than £120 million of additional Government funding, including about £48 million for St Mary’s Hospital—and that does not include the £10 million for the new diagnostics centre, which is wonderful news. We have received £50 million to upgrade the railway and the Ryde railway pier. The work on the pier is under way, as is the work at St Mary’s. We have got £20 million for Isle of Wight College, and £6 million to support shipbuilding in East Cowes. All that provides much better life opportunities and life chances for Islanders, which are what I am here to try to deliver.

    However, when it comes to the provision of local government services via Isle of Wight Council, we are lagging behind other islands in the UK, and our need—which has been confirmed by all coherent and responsible academic research into the Island—backs up our argument. I shall be meeting the relevant Minister in the next couple of weeks to discuss that, because the Government have, I am delighted to say, reopened the case for looking at Isle of Wight funding. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will come to the Island in May to talk to the Islands Forum, which I helped to establish along with others, including council leaders in Orkney and, I believe, Wales. I also hope to talk to the Prime Minister about the issue in due course.

    I ask Ministers, including those at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Treasury, to look at a fair funding formula for the Island, because this is one of the outstanding issues that have still not been resolved in our efforts to secure a better deal. We have gone a long way towards delivering that better deal for health, shipbuilding, transport and Isle of Wight College, but a fairer funding settlement that takes account of the fact that the Isle of Wight is an island is still eluding us. I should be extremely grateful if Ministers could work with me on that to solve the issue this year.

  • 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.

  • Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on Moles and Skin Tags – Testing for Cancer

    Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on Moles and Skin Tags – Testing for Cancer

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.

    I am delighted to initiate this debate on melanoma in memory of my constituent Zoe Panayi, after whom “Zoe’s law” is named.

    Zoe died of skin cancer in May 2020 at the age of just 26, after having an unusual mole removed at a private beauty clinic. She had trained to become a carer before finding a rewarding role as an assistant to the radiography and CT department at St Mary’s Hospital in Newport, in my constituency. She was the mother of two boys, Theo-Jay and Tobias.

    On the night of 3 April 2020, Zoe went home from work feeling poorly. By 11.30 pm she had been admitted back to St Mary’s hospital, where she worked, and it was then discovered that she was in the late stages of cancer. Biopsy results four days later found that the melanoma, which had started in a mole on her back, had spread to her lymph nodes, liver, bone marrow, pelvis, and spleen. Very sadly, after the biopsy Zoe survived for just 55 days.

    Over the course of the two years prior to her death, Zoe had raised numerous concerns with GPs about the unusual mole on her back. She had been told on multiple occasions that there was nothing to be concerned about, and after being advised to see a beauty clinic to have the mole removed, staff again raised no concerns about the removal of the mole. Tragically, it was later found that the act of removing the mole probably caused the cancer to grow and spread more rapidly. Zoe’s family, and especially her mum, Eileen Punter, to whom I pay tribute in this debate, have campaigned tirelessly since then to raise awareness of melanoma cancer and to ensure that others do not have to go through the same pain. I will make two suggestions to the Minister in the course of this speech.

    By way of background, malignant melanoma is the fifth most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK, and there are thought to be some 111,000 people living with malignant melanomas in this country. Approximately 16,700 cases are diagnosed every year, and about 2,300 people die every year from this cancer. This should not be the case, because the good news is that since the 1970s, the five-year survival rate for cancers of this type has increased from 52% to about 90%—nine out of 10— especially if they are caught early.

    Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)

    I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this subject. As he knows, I had a stage 3 melanoma and I was told that I would have a 40% chance of living a year, but the science has moved on dramatically in the nearly four years since then. My biggest anxiety is that we do not have enough histopathologists and pathologists, and that people are getting their results slowly. There are also not enough dermatologists in the country, and lots of GPs are simply not trained in recognising potentially malignant melanomas fast enough. Do we not need to do far more to ensure that this cancer is fully understood, because it can kill, and to ensure that we have enough staff in the NHS to be able to treat it?

    Bob Seely

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am going to follow up on several of those points, but I am delighted to see that he is one of the many people who have survived a malignant melanoma.

    If Zoe’s mole had been diagnosed early—especially at stage 1 or 2, and possibly even at stage 3—she may have well survived. Just before I come to some of those suggestions, I must point out that these melanomas are a specific concern on the Isle of Wight, because we have one of the highest rates of skin cancer.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

    I commend the hon. Gentleman for his assiduous attention to his constituents and to the family who have been bereaved. By his words today, we all recognise that he is deeply concerned and compassionate, and we thank him for that.

    May I gently tell the hon. Gentleman—perhaps the Minister might take note of this as well—that in Northern Ireland a new mole mapping and melanoma service has been introduced in my local South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust? It is a nurse-led, two-year pilot project that offers an advanced mole mapping technique for specific patients identified by the clinical team as being at higher risk of developing melanoma skin cancer. I suggest that that should be a standard for everyone not just in my trust area but everywhere else, so that we do not have a postcode lottery. Would the hon. Gentleman be interested in that pilot scheme? If so, maybe the Minister will take note.

    Bob Seely

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for yet another excellent intervention, and I completely agree. In fact, I will come to those points now.

    The Isle of Wight is a specific hotspot for skin cancer. I think it has the worst skin cancer rates in the United Kingdom, primarily as a result of certain factors. First, we still have a very white population, and the paler your skin, the more likely you are to develop melanomas. Secondly, we have an ageing population, and melanomas are cumulative. Thirdly, we have a very outdoors lifestyle on the Island, with golf, sailing, a lot of community activity and a lot of gardening. For the Isle of Wight’s retirement community especially, to be out in the sun aged 60 or 70 doing activities such as sailing, which is very harsh on the skin because of the interaction of sun and water, encourages melanomas. Fortunately, we have one of the best dermatology centres in Britain at Newport’s Lighthouse clinic, and I thank its doctors and staff for doing an excellent job. I have been there myself in the past couple of years, and I know what a great job they do.

    In the NHS long-term plan, the Government committed that the proportion of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 or 2 will rise from about half to three quarters of all cancer patients, meaning that some 55,000 more people a year should survive cancer for at least five years after diagnosis.

    Pilot schemes in various parts of the country are trying to improve the diagnosis of skin cancers and melanomas. One option to improve this still further is what, on the Island, we call Zoe’s law, but it would effectively be a change of practice within the NHS. Eileen, Zoe’s mum, and her family are doing it in memory of Zoe, and it would require all moles and skin tags removed from the body to be tested for melanoma. I am not expecting an off-the-cuff answer from the Minister on this point, but I would very much like her to write to me so that I can pass on her comments to Eileen and the rest of Zoe’s family. If that cannot be done now, I would like to know why not.

    I would also like to know what more could be done in future, because thousands of people are needlessly dying every year. Skin cancers kill more slowly than many other cancers and are certainly more treatable than cancers such as lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. Eileen said Zoe thought of everyone before herself. When Zoe was dying, she said, “The most important thing is that other people do not have to go through this”—she left two young kids.

    The idea of testing all removed moles and skin tags is potentially very popular, and a petition started by the family has now reached some 35,000 signatures. Tanya Bleiker, the previous president of the British Association of Dermatologists, recommended that all skin lesions, even if removed for cosmetic reasons, as Zoe’s was, should be sent for histopathological testing to confirm that they are benign—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) also made that recommendation—because they might be deep rooted in the skin. Mr Ashton, one of our consultant dermatologists on the Isle of Wight, explained to me on Friday that innocent-looking moles can sometimes be the most deadly. They might look benign on the surface, but underneath they are malignant and hide melanoma.

    I urge the Government to set out further plans on raising awareness of moles, as this is relatively easy to do. If I understand correctly, including this in nurse training and general practitioner training, especially in sunnier parts of the country along the south coast—places like Cornwall, Devon, the Isle of Wight and Hampshire—could be exceptionally valuable.

    Chris Bryant

    No one can see the back of their own head, but their hairdresser can, and quite often they are the person who can spot a melanoma.

    Bob Seely

    The hon. Gentleman reminds me of what Mr Ashton was telling me on Friday, because it is not only hairdressers but dentists. Dentists spend a lot of time looking at people’s faces, so they could potentially help to spot these things, too. Eileen, Zoe’s mum, spends a lot of her time trying to get this education process going, as she does not want other families to suffer as her family have.

    At stage 1, a small and localised melanoma has a 97% five-year survival rate, which is extraordinarily high. By contrast, the five-year survival rate for a stage 2 melanoma is 76%, and it is 58% for a stage 3 melanoma, as the hon. Member for Rhondda had. By the time a cancer has spread from the skin to the lymph nodes, the bone marrow and other parts of the body, the five-year survival rate is only 15%. Sadly, Zoe was one of those who did not survive, because despite her worry, her visits to the GP and the fact that she had it removed, that cancer had been spreading all the time in her body.

    I respectfully ask the Minister to write to me on the potential for 100% testing of moles for melanoma, cancer and whether they require further treatment. If there were such testing, some of the 2,341 people who died of the disease last year might have survived, including my constituent Zoe.

    I pay tribute again to Zoe’s family, especially her mum for all the great work that she is doing. I ask the Minister to respond not only on the issue of testing for melanomas but on broader education for GPs, hairdressers, dentists and nurses, so that they are better able to spot cancerous moles before they spread.

  • Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on the Situation in Ukraine

    Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on the Situation in Ukraine

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    I will not try the House’s patience for too long; I just want to make some general points.

    The Minister was completely right when he said that the Kherson victory was enormously important, regardless of whether it was significant in military terms or symbolically. He made the point that it is difficult for someone to invade a country if they are going backwards, as we can all agree. Although it is symbolically dreadful, I would say that it is not yet a military game changer.

    To build on my question to the Minister, the current Russian strategy seems to be two-pronged. First, Surovikin, with his Syrian experience, has said to the Russian Ministry of Defence, “Give me a line that I can hold.” Because Kherson is on the western bank of the Dnipro, it was simply not holdable: it was a death trap and a disaster waiting for the Russian military. By pulling out of Kherson city and going over to the eastern bank of the Dnipro, Surovikin has effectively put the Dnipro river between himself and the Ukrainians.

    I lived in Ukraine from 1990 to 1995. For those who do not know the geography of Ukraine, the Dnipro river from south of Kherson all the way up to Zaporizhzhia is 0.5 km at its thinnest. If we add the waterbanks, the Konka river, the marshland and the open grassland, it is a minimum of 3 km wide. Up at Zaporizhzhia, where the nuclear power plant is, it is more of a lake; it is 10 km to 12 km wide. By moving his forces to the eastern bank of the Dnipro, Surovikin has effectively made the Dnipro a considerable buffer between himself and the Ukrainian forces.

    Realistically, a Ukrainian advance is not going to happen south of Zaporizhzhia, simply because of the geography—one might as well try to cross the channel. It cannot be done without phenomenal resources. It involves going across significant open territory. The casualty rate, even against forces as disorganised and demoralised as Russia’s, would simply not be acceptable. It would fail, and it would be a significant counter to the Ukrainians. By getting the Dnipro on the right side of him, Surovikin now has a defensible line all the way up to Zaporizhzhia.

    The second thing that Surovikin has done is to prioritise the destruction of civilian morale. Sadly, those of us who followed him in Syria know that that is par for the course. One of the really awful and depressing things in Syria was that the Syrians and their backers from Russia, which is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, prioritised the destruction of civilian targets. Most importantly and most tragically—I have talked to many Syrian doctors about this—the Russians targeted hospitals for destruction. Destroying the hospitals first destroyed popular morale. Men would fight as long as their women and their families stayed, but for that to happen they needed some kind of food supply and they needed hospitals. Destroying hospitals meant that women and children fled. Without the women and children, men were effectively pulled back as well. Destroying civilian infrastructure destroyed morale.

    There was another thing that the Syrians and their Russian backers did. For four years Aleppo had been bombed, and for four years it had survived: civilian life, in bizarre and horrendous circumstances, continued. Then the Syrians and their Russian backers used chemical weapons for 17 days and cleared the city. There were four years of bombardment and there were attacks on hospitals, which took a few months to clear civilian populations, but what cleared the city pretty much overnight was the use of chemical weapons.

    I raise that point because the Russians are still making accusations against the Ukrainians and the Americans about bioterrorism, and we know that they are still talking about nuclear. The Russians are still holding out the option of using chemical and nuclear weapons. We should not simply dismiss that as bluff. It may well be bluff, but we do not know that—we cannot tell.

    Those are the two prongs of the Russians’ strategy: getting a line that they think is defensible, and destroying civilian infrastructure. The current phase of the war started back in September, when I was in Ukraine with several hon. Members present; it is good to see them in the Chamber today. We saw Zelensky on the Sunday, and the Ukrainians were overjoyed because of the collapse of the Kharkiv positions. We were there as it was happening. That was the beginning of the new phase, in which the Russians realised that they could not win. That was the weekend when the Ukrainians thought, “Actually, we can win this war.” It was a very important moment.

    By having a defensible line and attacking civilian infrastructure, the Russians bought some time—they probably bought themselves a few months. The next phase of the war will probably take place in the spring, when Russian positions come under significant pressure. If my understanding is correct, they will come under pressure in the south between Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk or in the east around the Luhansk area. The Ukrainians may try a feint to the south while attacking Donbas, because that is where their best armour is. Either way, when the new phase happens, with a spring offensive or potentially a late winter offensive, what we will witness—if we do witness it—will be the collapse of Russian positions.

    The critical point for the strategy in the war is not necessarily securing a defeat in Donbas, which would be great for the Ukrainians, but the collapse of the land corridor between Crimea and Donetsk. If that happened, it would be the beginning of the end for the Russians. They could continue to hold the area of Donbas that they seized in 2014, and it would not make much difference; they could keep hold of Crimea, which I think will be last to go; but the destruction of the land corridor will mean the final defeat, or entering the endgame. It will be the beginning of the end for the Russian forces if that land corridor goes.

    At that point, Putin will face a series of very important decision points, to use a military term. Does he go nuclear? Does he not? Does he use chemicals? Does he not? Does he blow up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station? Does he not? Those questions will become critical, because Russian military defeat in war often signals the collapse of a regime. People like the KGB or the FSB—whatever they are calling themselves now—do not distinguish between collapse of the state and collapse of the regime. Collapse of the regime and collapse of the state are not identical, but they are much closer than they would be in our country.

    Of the wars that the Russians have fought in the past 200 years, they won the Napoleonic war and world war two, but pretty much every other war they have lost, resulting in the collapse or significant reform of the Russian state. The Crimean war resulted in the end of serfdom. The Russian-Japanese war resulted in the 1905 revolution. The horrors of world war one resulted in the appalling disasters of the Bolshevik revolution. The Finnish war could have gone very badly wrong in 1940. The Afghan war heralded the end of the Soviet Union.

    When this war is lost by the Russian state, we will have to start asking ourselves how desperate Putin will be and what will happen internally to Russia. On Wednesday morning, for those who are interested, Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov will be talking to the all-party parliamentary group on Russia about the potential for the collapse of the Russian state.

    There are clearly some significant decisions to be made. Internally, Putin has arrested, murdered, killed off and imprisoned many of his opponents—most noticeably Navalny, whose health may or may not be slowly worsening in the penal colony where he is doing nine years. Putin does not face pressure from the democratic bloc, but he does face pressure from two groups and it is worth paying attention to them both.

    One group is the nationalist-fascist military blogger community. These are people who have been very vocal; importantly, the state allows them to be vocal because they were significant supporters of the war. We know from reading sites such as Telegram, where they have half a million followers, that they are now despairing and calling for firmer, tougher action. Some public figures, such as Prigozhin, who runs the Wagner mercenary group, and the Chechen head, whose name I have temporarily forgotten, are also outliers in attacking bits of the military, various generals who displease them or the Russian Ministry of Defence. There is a problem building up in the nationalist-fascist community within Russia.

    There is also a problem building up with the wives, mothers and partners of soldiers killed and injured. I have met on many occasions the mothers of soldiers in the Afghan war—a wonderful group of people. They fought very movingly for the memory of their kids; it was really sad to see. The number of Russians dead or seriously injured is probably pushing 100,000, which means 100,000 wives, partners, girlfriends, occasionally boyfriends, and mums and dads. That is a significant potential audience. The new soldiers’ mums and soldiers’ wives have not made common cause with the democratic faction, which is pretty much non-existent in Russia, and they have not yet made common cause with the nationalist-fascist blogger group, which I think would be difficult. Those are the two groups that I think Putin will be looking most nervously at.

    Thank you for letting me speak for so long, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me now sum up the position. We have to start thinking about the endgame, because it will probably begin in the spring. Then we will have to start thinking about what will happen with nuclear decision points, and then we will have to start thinking about, potentially, the failure of Russia and what the disaster of a chaotic nuclear-powered Russia looks like—so there is much to do. I congratulate the Government on almost all they have done. I would just say that I think a bit more integration across Government Departments is always needed and we still do not have that.

    When it comes to diplomacy—I asked the Foreign Secretary about this earlier—the United States and the United Kingdom have the best diplomatic networks in the developing world, while Ukraine has very few such networks and they are modest, certainly by comparison with ours. There is much more that the US and the UK can do systemically across Asia and Africa to make sure that we partner with the Ukrainians so that they can make their case. Those are the nations that are receiving grain from the Ukrainians and they want to know where it is. We must ensure that they know it is the Russians who are the problem in that regard and not the Ukrainians, but those are also the people who are most neutral to what the Russians are doing. We have to start to get them onside and get that community built.

    On Wednesday evening this week, the Magnitsky awards will be presented, in memory of Sergei Magnitsky, beaten to death 13 years ago on Wednesday by agents of the Russian state because he was exposed while trying to investigate a $250 million Russian fraud. We remember people like Magnitsky, but we also remember many of those human rights activists. It would be great to see more non-aligned and neutral countries, and countries in Asia and Africa, bringing in their own Magnitsky laws so that they can start prosecuting these bad people, whether they are in Russia, in Iran or, indeed, in China—but that is a discussion for another day.

  • Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on World Biosphere Day

    Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on World Biosphere Day

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in the House of Commons on 3 November 2022.

    Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for letting me take part briefly in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) is in competition with me and a relatively select few to deliver more for her wonderful patch than we do for our respective patches. I hear nothing but amazing reports of the work that she is doing. Similarly, I try to deliver as much as I can for my folks on the Isle of Wight. We both care so much for our wonderful parts of the UK. I thank her and the Minister for letting me contribute to the debate.

    I agree with much of what my hon. Friend has said and I will stress two points. Before I do, our Island biosphere designation came quite late—we got it a few years ago after a campaign led by our area of outstanding natural beauty organisation—but I thank Joel Bateman, Councillor Jonathan Bacon and, more recently, Holly Jones and Natasha Dix for their impressive work in delivering that successful bid to UNESCO and since. There are 17 UNESCO sustainable development goals that we are trying to work into the Isle of Wight Council’s planning. We have lots of exciting projects, such as regenerative farming, carbon sequestration in soil and local agricultural, net zero homes, active travel and smart renewable grids that we are trying to do off the back of getting biosphere status.

    The first valuable point that my hon. Friend made that I want to stress is that there is no similar designation in British law that achieves the same effect. I am keen for the Government to take it on board that we have this valuable designation that combines the human world, the natural world and the maritime world. That is actually quite unique; there is nothing like it in UK law, but should there be? For example, 75% of the Isle of Wight comes under some form of UK designation: there are eight separate designations and 13 distinct areas. For an island of our size—it is only 15 miles by 30 miles —that is highly fragmented and somewhat over-complex, and creates a needless bureaucracy when it comes to nature protection and planning. I would love to know how the Government could incorporate and recognise biospheres within UK law. At the moment, we have a tapestry on the Island, but we need a blanket, which is the idea that the biosphere gives.

    My second pitch, in the brief time that I have, is that if the Government are going to bring in a Bill about protected landscapes, such as national parks and AONBs, which I hope they do, and if they are going to slightly fudge the difference between them and perhaps bring in new designations, one of the new designations could be a biosphere designation, which would give biospheres a status within UK law, or an island designation. If we are going to have city parks, why can we not have island parks? It is not a national park on an island but an island park that looks at human habitation, maritime protection and landscape protection as a single whole.

    I would argue that an island park designation for the Isle of Wight would have AONB status throughout. We have only a finite amount of land and we cannot keep giving it up endlessly to low-density, car-dependent, un-environmentally friendly greenfield developments; we need to use land better. We could have maritime and landscape protection, as highlighted by my hon. Friend, and we could use the island park designation to attract tourism and help with our identity, as the biosphere potentially does. We could perhaps get some targeted support for agriculture, because we do not have an abattoir on the Island, so all the livestock goes to the mainland for slaughter, which adds cost and inhibits the circular economy that we need. Those are some of the ideas that an island designation or a biosphere designation could provide.

    The biosphere is about human habitation, so we could also do a great deal with culture. The Isle of Wight was one of the most celebrated places in Victorian England with Tennyson, Keats and many others coming down to enjoy it and paint it. People fell in love with the place and sometimes used it as an escape from mainland Britain. Other people based themselves there, such as the Bonchurch school of artists and the Freshwater set with Julia Margaret Cameron. We also had—who wrote “Alice in Wonderland”?—Lewis Carroll, who used to hang around there back in the day hoping to catch a glimpse of Tennyson. We have had a phenomenal cultural input. Given the Island’s culture, together with its unique species and unique dinosaurs—we have more dinosaur finds than anywhere else in Europe, and in fact it is one of the leading dinosaur places in the world—and our landscape, there has to be a better way of recognising and protecting that. We could do so either by making biospheres part of UK law or, for the Island as a separate issue, having an island designation, which other islands—the Isles of Scilly, Arran in Scotland—could eventually share. It could be a very good idea to have some kind of island designation in UK law. I thank my hon. Friend so much for bringing forward this debate, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

  • Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on Ukraine

    Bob Seely – 2022 Speech on Ukraine

    The speech made by Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, in the House of Commons on 22 September 2022.

    It was a pleasure to lead the delegation last week. For anyone who is interested, I am organising another to take place later in the year, and it will be lovely to see colleagues on it.

    That weekend when we were in Ukraine heralded a new phase in the war. First, while there is still a long way to go, there is now a sense in Ukraine of a pathway to Ukrainian victory and Russian military defeat, probably within the next three to 18 months. Secondly, the partial collapse of Russian forces will compel it to commit reserves that it would have wanted to build up until the spring for the chance of a spring offensive. From now on, Russia’s war will almost certainly become a defensive war of digging in and holding on.

    It is clear that Russia’s weakness is on the battlefield, while Ukraine’s is economic and political. It has an almost total economic dependency on the west, and it has a dependency on our arms supply. It is clear that Putin will try to break this alliance and gain a political victory where he cannot seize a military one. In military terms, the umbilical cord between us and Kyiv becomes the centre of gravity for the Russians to attack. This explains, in part, Putin’s decision to threaten the use of nuclear weapons and to annex territory to Russia, and his decision on the mobilisation.

    Is nuclear weapon use likely? Not by any means, but I think we should speak with a sense of care and proportion. In the minute I have left, I will try to explain a slight difference with the Government. To minimise the chances of nuclear use, tactical or strategic, we have to assume that that threat is real and that at some point, probably as Russian troops face collapse in the south, Putin will have—again, this is a military term—a decision point to either use tactical weapons or not. We have to assume that he may well use them, and the purpose of making that assumption is so that we can plan. To say that he is bluffing means that we do not have a plan, and we will again, as we have been doing since 2007, be playing catch-up in a disastrous situation, with a fascistic Russian state.

    Hope is not a strategy. Keeping fingers crossed is not a policy. At every point, Putin has chosen to escalate and increase risk. There is no sign that he will do anything different now. In short, we need to maximise the chance of avoiding tactical use that will kill thousands by planning for it now. I have run out of time, but I will in due course write further on this and what the Ukrainians told us.