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Tag: Chris Clarkson

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 9 December 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), and to take part in the debate.

    I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) on his Bill. I have the privilege of serving on his Select Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, and the Bill bears all the hallmarks of his forensic attention to detail and, indeed, fundamental decency. I also pay tribute to Safenet, Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association, Independent Choices Greater Manchester, and Superintendent Nicky Porter of Greater Manchester police, who is the VAWG lead for GMP and also my local superintendent. She does remarkable work, and I look forward to supporting her in that regard.

    I was struck by something that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said in her speech. We often talk about oppressed minorities in this place, but in this instance we are talking about an oppressed majority. She said something thoroughly depressing: “Women are everywhere, but we do not get to go everywhere without being frightened.” What an awful statement that is, and how awful it is to have to realise that that is the truth, the lived experience for the majority of people in the country. It is flabbergasting; it is horrendous.

    Safety is not something we should ever be able to take for granted. Walking down the street at night, travelling to school, going to the gym—these are things that women and girls, and men and boys, should be able to do without fear. However, that is just not the case. It is not the lived reality. According to Plan International, 62% of women have avoided doing something routine because they have either experienced sexual harassment or feared it. That is a disgrace, and that is why the Bill is so important. By amending section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, it will make public sexual harassment a sex-specific offence for the first time. Some have suggested that it might be simpler to add misogyny and misandry to the list of hate crimes. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells pointed out, we do not want to leave open a loophole enabling an abuser to simply say that the harassment was not motivated by hatred of a particular sex. While I agree that this is a good first step, I think we need to think about how, technically, we can make those offences work in law.

    More important is the fact that the changes proposed in the Bill have not come out of the blue. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) that the passive term “violence against women and girls” is not an appropriate moniker, and I hope we will start to change that language, but it was the Government’s VAWG strategy that highlighted the need to take public sexual harassment more seriously. The Law Commission then suggested that more attention should be paid to legislative changes. It was therefore good to see the Home Office launch its consultation over the summer to determine how best the law can protect individuals from public sexual harassment.

    I say “individuals” because it is important that to remember that this behaviour does not just affect women and girls, and that men can also experience harassment based on their sex. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), it disproportionately affects the LGBT+ community. I certainly do not wish to diminish the experience of the women who are in the Chamber today, but I myself have experienced a form of sexual harassment. I am a member of that community, and it is pervasive. Even if only one in six men fear it, I think we need to keep an eye on it.

    I hope that the Bill will enable us to give more support to victims of public sexual harassment so they are able to identify instances of criminal behaviour, and to feel confident that once they have been reported, their cases will be dealt with properly. Only through greater clarity in the law can the public have confidence that intentional harassment based on sex will be dealt with swiftly and appropriately by the police.

    Stella Creasy

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case about the importance of being specific, and I think we need to be clear about the fact that this is not about sexual harassment alone. It is about sex-based harassment, because these behaviours are about power—the power to demean and insult somebody, with that sense of entitlement. It must be made clear that, in the case any of the victims, this does not have to involve sexual words or behaviour to be sex-based harassment under the Bill. Whether it constitutes misogyny or misandry, it is unacceptable.

    Chris Clarkson

    The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point, and I absolutely agree with her; these behaviours are entirely about power, and therefore a sexual element is not always necessary in order for them to permeate. I am simply speaking to the use of the language. As I said, this Bill is a good starting point. We need to have a broader conversation about how we specifically make misogyny and misandry hate crimes, but obviously the technical implementation of that will take time. We need this legislation in place now, which is why I will be actively supporting it.

    We have heard some powerful speeches today. People have said, “As a father”, “As a husband”, “As an uncle”, and so on, and those are laudable reasons to give. I am not a father, which will not surprise anybody. I am not married to a woman. I have female relatives, but that is not the reason I am supporting the Bill. I am supporting it because it is morally the right thing to do. It is completely unsustainable that the majority of the people in this country live in constant fear of injury, harassment and simply not being able to go about their lives as I can.

    I have the privilege of being a white middle-aged man. I live in a society that was specifically designed by people who look like me for people like me; that is fantastic, I can breeze through life and 90% of the time I will not be affected by anything. I am a member of a particular protected characteristic, but perversely the law already protects me. I can be protected on the grounds of my sexuality but not on the grounds of my sex, which is not an appropriate way for the law to operate in this day and age. So I will be supporting the Bill because it is morally the right thing to do. It is the decent thing to do and, once again, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells on having the initiative to do this, because it has been far too long.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on World AIDS Day

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on World AIDS Day

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 1 December 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards). I welcome this debate and I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) for bringing it to the House today. I also wish to praise him for his leadership in this area and for the work he has done to educate the public on the realities of people living with HIV. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of prejudices out there, and his speaking openly about his own experience as somebody living with HIV is incredibly powerful and important. When people see that their representatives are representative of society as a whole it makes a real difference. I will not speak at length, because we have heard a series of excellent speeches and I am going to use some of the same facts and figures that have been mentioned. However, I want to say how pleased I am that we are still having these debates, because this problem has not gone away.

    The Government committed in December 2021 to achieve zero new HIV infections, HIV or AIDS-related deaths in England by 2030. That is an ambitious target, but I am sure everyone across this Chamber can agree it is essential. The framework for achieving that means ensuring equitable access to and uptake of HIV prevention programmes, scaling up testing in line with national guidelines, optimising rapid access to treatment and retention in care, improving the quality of life for people living with HIV and addressing the stigma surrounding infection and testing.

    We must work to address the lazy stereotypes associated with HIV/AIDS, especially those surrounding the LGBT community. I am pleased to see that real progress is being made. The Government have provided £20 million to ensure that HIV opt-out testing is expanded to areas with a high prevalence, including Manchester, London, Blackpool—I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) for his dogged determination in getting Blackpool included—and Brighton. That has helped to reduce diagnosis times and improve diagnosis rates.

    In Rochdale borough, where my Heywood and Middleton constituency is located, 2.2 in every 1,000 adults are living with HIV. I would particularly like to thank the teams at Middleton health centre and Heywood clinic for their work in providing sexual health testing and support, and I hope we will be able to take advantage of opt-out testing too, as it is essential. The roll-out of opt-out testing saw 128 people newly diagnosed with HIV, 325 people newly diagnosed with hepatitis B, as has been mentioned, and 153 people newly diagnosed with hepatitis C. At a cost of just £2.2 million across 100 days, the opt-out testing paid for itself, saving the NHS an estimated £6 million to 9 million, through early diagnosis and treatment. Opt-out testing also goes some way to addressing health inequalities, with higher proportions of women and people from black African and black Caribbean backgrounds being diagnosed compared with the national average.

    In March 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care provided £16 million in funding to local authorities to provide PrEP. I warmly welcome that, but barriers still exist. More than 57% of people waited more than 12 weeks to access PrEP and only 35% who attempted to access PrEP services were successful. It is essential that that changes. PrEP is a game changer for all of us. It is an essential tool if we are to end new infections by the next decade in the UK.

    Of course, we know that this is not just a problem here at home. The truth is that covid-19 was the second pandemic of our lifetimes and we are still living through the first; this is a global matter. That is why I am proud that the UK provides funds to UNAIDS, the Robert Carr Fund and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. I will join the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown in saying that I would have liked to have seen the levels sustained, but my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) made the important point that there are other things we can leverage as a country to help other countries in their fight against this disease. The UK is a co-founder of Global Fund and the third largest donor historically—my hon. Friend mentioned the figure of £4.4 billion in that regard—and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced on 14 November that the UK will contribute a further £1 billion, so at least we are still in the fight. As with covid, the truth is that none of us is safe until all of us are safe, and we have a role to play in supporting those parts of the world less able to tackle HIV/AIDS than ourselves.

    As we aim for our 2030 target, I would also like to draw the Government’s attention to the recommendations of the Terrence Higgins Trust and National AIDS Trust, which are calling for the expansion of opt-out testing to all areas of high prevalence—I cannot stress how important that is—the provision of PrEP to all who could benefit from it, which is very important, and a refocusing of sexual health services that have been displaced by the recent mpox outbreak.

    There is a huge amount of work to do if we are to reach our 2030 target, and that will rely on adequate funding, access and information across society. It will need those of us in this place to speak openly and honestly about HIV/AIDS and to be collaborative, working across the piece. I am confident that we can get to that 2030 target and I will continue to support everyone working to that endeavour for as long as I have the privilege to be in this place.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the Supported Housing Bill

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the Supported Housing Bill

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heyton and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 18 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt)—they say that brevity is the mother of wisdom. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman); this is his second private Member’s Bill, and it is an excellent and incredibly timely piece of legislation. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) and the Minister for their work on this important Bill. I know that it has been a labour of love for them all.

    I will admit a secret: I am a big fan of Friday sittings. I actually quite like them because we usually have a Bill like this that is born from somebody’s wisdom and understanding of a particular area of law. They attempt to address a single problem to facilitate an important change. We get to have a proper debate and to talk cross-party about the rights and wrongs of what is happening already, what can and cannot be done and where we go next. The Opposition naturally challenge that and ask us to go further, but we are given an opportunity to plug some gaps.

    I will be honest: I have been thinking about housing a lot this week, for obvious reasons. We were all here for the statement about the tragic death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, the neighbouring constituency to mine. I have the same housing provider and, although this is not a debate on social housing, I will take a moment to develop my thinking on housing, because my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) touched on something very important: the role of housing in mental health, personal wellbeing and, as we saw, unfortunately, in that tragic case, physical wellbeing.

    If we do not get simple things such as housing right, people’s lives can be utterly devastated. The reality is that there are people who are trapped in a system that simply has not been working properly. We assume that there are thousands of them, but the problem is that we do not have that data, as we have heard. For me, that is shocking. The fact that we consider it too expensive to collect data about what is happening to members of our society—including vulnerable people, people who rely on assistance and do not get it—is deeply concerning, to put it politely.

    We have thousands of vulnerable citizens—whether they are people who have left prison or people who have mental health or physical health needs—who are reliant on a system that is simply not fit for purpose. Let me put on one of my many metaphorical hats as the chair of the all-party group on local government and as a recovering councillor, because I have some insight into the licensing world. Actually, I quite enjoyed reading the report from the HCLG Committee—sorry, the LUHC Committee. The names change almost as many times as the Ministers do these days—please do not note that down. The report highlighted some important areas where local government can do a great deal of good.

    We are already well into the discussion about how we integrate health and social care, and housing is a really important part of that mix. Interestingly enough, when we talk about prison leavers, we say that the three things they need are a job, a home and a friend. A home is a really important part of that because it gives them stability and the means to access such things as work. We have a system where, essentially, scammers—slumlords—can trap people in worklessness and effective homelessness. They are being kept and are almost prisoners in the system.

    I know from personal experience the good that local government can do. As an avowed Manchester liberal, I am slightly dubious about the idea that we need a national regulator. I would see that in the last instance. Personally, I would like to see local authorities sharing best practice. We saw a live example of that in the trial period, when Blackburn with Darwen unitary authority began communicating with its neighbours. As a unitary authority in Lancashire, I imagine that it has quite a lot of experience of doing that. It was a good example of best practice. We are also quite good at that in Greater Manchester. Well before the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, we had the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, so we were already talking to one another.

    There will be ways to develop a framework. My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) made the point that the regulatory framework might look different in different parts of the country. For example, it will look different in London from how it looks in Manchester. In rural communities, for example in Cornwall or Devon, it will have to take another form, but the underlying basic standards have to be there for everybody. It is about finding the right balance. When the Minister is summing up, will she give us some further thoughts on how this will be put in place?

    On another note of caution, local government is extremely stretched and has been for a long time. Councils and council officers do a fantastic job, often with diminishing returns. I implore the Minister to ensure that, when we hand over these responsibilities to councils, they are properly funded. We will not find most local authorities wanting in their ability to deploy these skills, but, realistically, the pot has to have at least enough resource in it for them to discharge proper enforcement, as the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) mentioned in an earlier intervention.

    I am certain that what we are debating here today is a necessary piece of legislation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, smart regulation is the way forward. The law should be a scalpel, not a machete. What we are trying to do here is to excise from this system the very worst people. The truth is that there are many organisations that are doing that very well and we want to encourage them. We want to have almost a gold standard for those people providing good quality housing—those people who can say, “Well, yes, we are licensed. We have met the conditions. You can feel safe and secure in my accommodation. When I say that I will provide support, it will actually be support.” It will not be—as we heard from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood)—just sticking their head round the door saying, “Are you alright?” when, quite frankly, they may not even have seen the individual in question. That is all to the good. Those providers will probably find that they have more influence and more agency with that regulatory framework. I am just very keen to make sure that it does not become too burdensome and too expensive for them to comply with it, so that good providers drop out of the market.

    Most of the good points that could be made about this have been made, and I will not belabour the point because I know that this is a popular Bill. However, I do want to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that it is remarkable to secure a private Member’s Bill in the first place, but to have two must seem like good fortune. To do what he has done with them is impressive, and he can be extremely proud of what he is doing here today. I am sure that his constituents are, too. I am extremely proud to have been able to participate in the debate.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on Documents Relating to Suella Braverman

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on Documents Relating to Suella Braverman

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 8 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord). I was not planning to speak at length, because this all has an air of déjà vu about it, and apparently that is also true for official Opposition Members because there are so few of them here. I mean, this is an Opposition day motion and we are outnumbering them here by two to one. They are fed up with hearing about this too. It is not as if this topic has not been hashed and rehashed ad nauseam, but I suspect that Labour Members will continue to bang this particular drum for a while because, let’s face it, they have absolutely nothing else to talk about.

    The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has taken on the demeanour of the witchfinder pursuivant lately: “I saw Goody Braverman talking to the ERG in the Aye Lobby—she must be hanged!” It is not like we are looking at the second coming of the Blair era here. We are not faced with bright, intelligent people bringing alternatives to this country; it is just more carping. They are a tired, lazy Opposition. I was going to call them beige but I think they are more of a Farrow and Ball crowd. I had a look through the range and the closest colour to beige I could find was called smoked trout, which I think is quite apt.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, with your indulgence I am going to get to the motion via a slightly circuitous route. I am headed there and I am developing my argument en route. I think Labour Members might want to reflect on why they lost supposedly safe seats at the last general election, including mine in Heywood and Middleton. I know it is very easy to blame Brexit and that is of course their go-to: it must have been Brexit because everything was fantastic and they had such a good manifesto and everyone agreed with it; that is why people did not vote for them. We saw the first signs of that in 2017. There is a clear values dissonance between the Opposition’s increasingly metropolitan and louche outlook and what used to be their core vote.

    When I knock on a door in my constituency I can guarantee that if I mention the Home Secretary, the first words out of someone’s mouth will not be, “Well, there was a data breach.” The first words out of their mouth will be “small boats”. Of course we are not talking about small boats today, but people want to know what we are doing to stop that influx of illegal migration. They want to make sure that our rightly generous and welcoming asylum system is not being abused by people coming here to take the mick. The fact that Labour Members care about what we are talking about today more than that issue should be extremely telling for the people who voted Conservative for the first time at the last election. My constituents want more coppers on the street and fewer boats in the channel, and I think we have the team in place to do that.

    Turning to the motion, I would love to say that I was surprised by it, but yet again we have sixth-form politics. The official Opposition are asking to breach the confidentiality of advice regarding appointments. Officials should be able to rely on the advice that they give being done in a private and confidential way. Setting a precedent that their advice could be published as a matter of course would inevitably weaken the quality of the advice that they give to Prime Ministers of all parties.

    We already know quite a lot of the salient details that the Opposition are asking for in this motion. The Home Secretary’s letter to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) is unfortunately not in her place—said:

    “The draft WMS did not contain any information relating to national security, the intelligence agencies, cyber security or law enforcement. It did not contain details of any particular case work.”

    The letter also points to the fact that the data in question was already in the public domain.

    I hate to labour the point, but I feel I must in the vain hope that the message starts to percolate through to the Opposition. My constituents want more police, like the 15,300 we have already put on to the streets. They want to stop illegal crossings, and they want to stop the evil traffickers who exploit and endanger the most desperate. They like the Rwanda plan and they like the tough measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, both of which the Labour party voted against.

    Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

    Chris Clarkson

    No, I will not.

    My constituents think we should be banging up people who glue themselves to the roads and vandalise buildings and monuments. They want fair, controlled migration, not open borders. Any of those things would have been a worthwhile use of an Opposition day but, again, we are talking about a process issue—the same thing we have talked about half a dozen times. It is a waste of parliamentary time. Sadly, it is predictable, wearing and utterly ridiculous. Get a grip.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the State Pension Triple Lock

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech on the State Pension Triple Lock

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 8 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). It is also a pleasure to see the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), in her place, and I congratulate her. I also thank the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) for his tub-thumping support for a Conservative policy. There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.

    There is never a bad opportunity to talk about this Government’s inestimable record when it comes to helping pensioners. Instinctively, everyone on the Government Benches wants to ensure that those in receipt of state pension get the best possible deal from the Treasury. Many of us will already have made representations to the Chancellor in one way or another, and I am pretty sure he will be making pensions a priority come the 17th.

    At a time when every one of us, especially those on low and fixed incomes, is feeling the pinch as a result of the perfect storm caused by Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine and the economic shock of covid, it is right that we continue to support the most vulnerable with the limited resources we have available to us. That is why I am proud that this Government have introduced the triple lock, when no such innovation was ever introduced by a Labour Treasury. A lot of us have already mentioned Gordon Brown’s generous increase of 75p a week back in 2000. That was at a time when Labour was borrowing like it was going out of fashion and spending like a drunken sailor in a brothel. It caused so much offence that one pensioner wrote Gordon Brown a cheque to return the 75p. Gordon Brown cashed the cheque.

    It was this Government who responded to the current economic challenge with the energy price guarantee to keep bills as low as practically possible. This Government provided up to £850 of additional support to most pensioners in the face of rising energy costs. This Government increased the warm home discount to £150 and extended eligibility by a third to 3 million of the most vulnerable households. Since 2010, the state pension has increased by £2,300. That is £720 more than if it had just been uprated by simple inflation alone. We have brought in automatic enrolment for workplace pensions, so that more people have extra support in their old age.

    This Government take pensioners seriously. We do not treat them as tools in a now all too predictable cycle of gamesmanship that we get with every Opposition day debate. I can practically see the paid content on social media already, with a black and white photo of each of us and a misleading statement underneath, and I can see the emails coming in tomorrow morning from frightened pensioners who want to know why we have done this terrible thing we have been accused of, and that they reckon we are going to do. It is absolutely shameless, but all too predictable.

    The Opposition know there is a statement coming in a few days’ time, on the 17th—as my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) had to get his birthday in, it is actually five days after mine—but that means nothing to the Opposition, as there are games to be played and points to be scored. The truth is that poverty figures show that there are 400,000 fewer pensioners in absolute low income after housing costs than in 2009-10. There are 1.2 million fewer people in absolute low income before housing costs than in 2009-10 —that is 200,000 fewer children, 500,000 fewer working-age adults and 400,000 fewer pensioners. That is in part because of what we have done as a Government to increase participation in private pensions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) mentioned, under the last Labour Government, the actual participation rate went from 47% down to 32%. Under this Government, thanks to auto-enrolment, that is now around 75%.

    When the economic truths are complex and difficult, we deserve better than the glib sixth-form politics of the Opposition. The Chancellor is absolutely right to take the time to finalise his spending decisions as part of the autumn statement, so that we can take a compassionate Conservative approach to target our cost of living support to the most vulnerable.

    The truth of the matter is that we know why we have not heard anything from the Opposition: they do not have a plan. The Prime Minister made the point at Prime Minister’s questions last week that you cannot oppose a plan if you do not have a plan. We have not heard a bat squeak from the Opposition about their policies for the next election. We know that the Leader of the Opposition has already binned all the pledges he was elected on, so we have no idea what the party stands for. I will wait for the Chancellor’s statement on the 17th, and in the meantime, I will be talking to and working with colleagues to ensure we put the case for the people we have the privilege of representing, because that is what they deserve: MPs who put them first, not politics.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Comments on Rishi Sunak Becoming Prime Minister

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Comments on Rishi Sunak Becoming Prime Minister

    The comments made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, on Twitter on 23 October 2022.

    Tomorrow our party faces a choice – I was proud to back Rishi Sunak in the leadership contest this summer because he was being truthful about the challenges ahead and had a realistic plan to tackle them.

    He’ll have my vote again, tomorrow.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Chris Clarkson – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    Today’s motion is on whether we have confidence in the Government, and obviously I will be speaking in favour of that. I want to register my exasperation with the way that we arrived at having to table this motion, after the botched stunt by the Labour party last week. By attempting to table a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, Labour Members sought to do away with constitutional precedent and decades of convention. Whatever their personal animus towards the Prime Minister—I have listened to the speeches, and I can tell it runs very deep—the office is bigger than any one person, and the institutions around it, and our constitution, are bigger still. To seek to upend that in a fit of petty spite just shows how irresponsible and deeply unfit the Leader of the Opposition is to lead. He is a man who should know better, and a man who, as a lawyer, does know better, but he simply cannot do better.

    This is the mother of Parliaments, not a sixth-form debating society. However, that is not what the debate is about. I appreciate this is a popular debate, so I want to touch briefly on why I will be supporting the Government tonight.

    Government Members were elected on an ambitious manifesto, which was not just about Brexit, as some would like to claim. It was also about how we use that opportunity to change the way in which our country is working, because frankly, for a very long time in a great number of places, it simply has not been. Areas like mine were left in abeyance, written off, put in the “too hard” basket and subjected to their own passive form of managed decline, and that is not right. It cannot be the case that all the talent and ability is clustered in one part of the country—we know it is not—so why should all the opportunity be focused in a postage stamp-sized area of the country? Our manifesto promised to address that, and we have already made great strides.

    That job has undoubtedly been complicated by the pandemic, which nobody’s manifesto contained. The pandemic has meant that it has been necessary to do extremely difficult things, but it was years of making tough choices since 2010—restoring our public finances—that enabled us to put our arms around the nation at the darkest of times. There will undoubtedly be those who want to talk down the pandemic response, but the simple fact is that this country went further and faster than most to protect, vaccinate and unlock. It was not all that long ago that Opposition Members were demanding that we emulate the EU, New Zealand and a host of other countries, only to then see them grappling with surging infections and repeated lockdown measures.

    I have always believed that levelling up—or whatever we want to call it—is about different things in different areas. For me in Heywood and Middleton, it meant improving educational opportunities and transport links—seemingly simple things that will open doors that are currently just out of reach of so many. In my borough alone, about £130 million was injected into the local economy to protect lives and livelihoods at the height of the pandemic, and, after a genuine fight to stop the Labour Rochdale Borough Council siphoning most of that into its reserves, we got the money to the people who needed it. During my first 18 months as an MP, I closed more cases than my Labour predecessor did in her five years. That is the level of intensity that this Government have put into supporting the country, and the amount of disinterest shown by my predecessor and her party.

    As we emerge from the pandemic, what next? Rochdale borough has bids in for £40 million of levelling-up funding. Greater Manchester has been allocated £98 million from the shared prosperity fund, in addition to over £1 billion earmarked to improve public transport, which is a game-changer. More than £1 million has been given to cultural recovery in the borough, and the Government have designated us as one of their priority education investment areas, with a share of more than £40 million. Despite everything that has happened in the past few years, we are getting on with the job.

    I have been extremely proud to sit on these Benches for the past two and half years, and I genuinely believe that what we have done has been with the best intentions—to make this country a true partnership of people, all of them engaged in a common endeavour, and all of us equally able to achieve if we are willing to put the work in—and that is why I will be voting confidence in the Government tonight.

  • Chris Clarkson – 2020 Comments on Tree-Lined Streets

    Chris Clarkson – 2020 Comments on Tree-Lined Streets

    The text of the comments made by Chris Clarkson, the Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, in the House of Commons on 15 July 2020.

    I beg to move,

    That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require building developers to ensure that the streets of major new developments are lined with trees; and for connected purposes.

    In my short time in this place, I have spoken repeatedly about my admiration for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and his new deal. However, in introducing my ten-minute rule Bill, I must first turn to the architect of the original new deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who remarked:

    “Forests are the ‘lungs’ of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

    Put simply, trees are good for us, and the presence of trees and other greenery in urban environments has a discernible effect on the physical and mental wellbeing of those who live there. The presence of trees has a particularly important role to play in that philosophy, as they are inextricably linked to cleaner air, increased physical exercise and enhanced health and wellbeing. Trees also play a central role in nature’s recovery and in addressing climate change.

    This Bill is important, as it would ensure that new developments fully recognise those benefits, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Woodland Trust for its tireless work in highlighting the importance of trees in our national and environmental life.

    Street trees seem particularly important in supporting this work. Indeed, a recent study into neighbourhood green space and health in large urban areas was able to map the location of 530,000 trees and compared them with the health records of 30,000 residents, concluding that people who live in areas with a higher street tree density report better health perception and fewer cardiometabolic conditions compared with their peers living in areas with lower density.

    The planting of trees is also crucial in our fight against climate change, as trees store carbon and can help to make our towns and cities more resilient. The ​Bill could therefore make a small contribution to the Government’s aim of eradicating the UK’s net carbon contribution by 2050.

    In my seat, we widely welcomed the Government’s £10 million urban tree challenge fund, which was introduced in May 2019 and which will see 130,000 trees planted across towns and cities in England by 2021, and the Bill could also support that ambition. Additionally, it would contribute to the Government’s ambitious target of planting 30,000 hectares of trees across the entire United Kingdom by 2025.

    In recent years, we have certainly seen a reluctance among developers and local authorities to promote trees in streets. Frequently, issues such as expense, hassle and liability are levelled as excuses not to rise to this environmental and public health challenge. Therefore, a Bill placing a requirement on major new developments to ensure that streets are lined with trees would ensure that important environmental health and aesthetic considerations are at the heart of new developments across our country.

    The people of Heywood and Middleton, like every great citizen of the four nations of our United Kingdom, love nature and frequently demonstrate a desire to protect it—whether the precious green belt around Bamford, Crimble Mill or Slattocks, or smaller green spaces in the towns of Heywood and Middleton—and their enduring objection to any new developments.

    Over 100 years ago, the aims of the Planning Act 1909 were to secure

    “the home healthy, the house beautiful, the town pleasant, the city dignified, and the suburb salubrious.”—[Official Report, 12 May 1908; Vol. 188, c. 949.]

    That seems more relevant now than ever. In our desire to build beautiful we must strive to create an atmosphere that promotes community health and cohesion, and I believe that this Bill will go some way to supporting those values.