Tag: Lee Rowley

Lee Rowley – 2022 Statement on Sizewell C Power Station

The statement made by Lee Rowley, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in the House of Commons on 14 January 2022.

This statement concerns the application for development consent made under the Planning Act 2008 by NNB Generation Company (SZC) Limited for the construction and operation of the Sizewell C nuclear power station, with associated infrastructure near Leiston in Suffolk.

Under section 98(3) of the Planning Act 2008, the examining authority must submit its report to the Secretary of State by the end of the period of three months beginning with the deadline for completion of its examination of the application, or, if earlier, the end of the day on which it completes the examination, unless the Secretary of State sets a new deadline under section 98(4) of that Act. Where a new deadline is set, the Secretary of State must make a statement to Parliament to announce it.

A request has been made to the Secretary of State by the planning inspectorate to extend the report writing stage of the examination by six working weeks, from 14 January 2022 to 25 February 2022. The reasons given for this request were that a significant number of change requests were submitted by the applicant during the pre-examination and examination stages of the planning process. These changes require significant additional consideration from the examining authority. The examining authority has also been affected by unexpected health issues which have impacted upon the reporting stage of the process.

Taking these reasons into account and, after careful consideration, the Secretary of State has decided to reset the statutory timescale for the report writing stage, extending the deadline for the examining authority to submit its report to the Secretary of State by six working weeks, from the original deadline of 14 January 2022 to 25 February 2022.

However, mindful of the need to avoid unnecessary delays to the development consent processes, the Secretary of State requests the examining authority make best efforts to complete its report as soon as is reasonably practicable within the extended period.

The decision to set the new deadline for the report writing stage for this application is without prejudice to the decision on whether to grant or refuse development consent.

January 17, 2022
Lee Rowley – 2020 Speech on EU Negotiations

Below is the text of the speech made by Lee Rowley, the Conservative MP for North East Derbyshire, in the House of Commons on 4 June 2020.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who has been throughout my time in this place a doughty and courageous advocate for the opportunities of leaving the European Union. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), whose work on the European Scrutiny Committee is much appreciated: the work in its previous guise, displaying the massive amounts of legislation that came from the European Union over so many years and doing so much to create the view in the United Kingdom that we were losing control of our sovereignty; and now in terms of the overview mechanism, which it does so well.

Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)

The hon. Gentleman praises the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), whose analysis of this I thought was fairly sound. What part of that analysis would the hon. Gentleman disagree with?

Lee Rowley

The right hon. Member for East Antrim has a particular view around Northern Ireland, and we have debated that extensively in this place for a number of months, even years. Where I agree with him is that we needed to leave the European Union, and we have done that. Where I disagree with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is that he never wanted to leave the European Union in the first place, whereas we delivered on the decision of the British people in 2016.

Like so many others, I voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Leaving it in a way that works for our country—both the opportunities that it can provide and the responsibilities that it creates for us as an internationalist, outward-looking country—is incredibly important. My constituents in North East Derbyshire remain extremely committed both to having left the European Union in January—some of us at some points in the previous Parliament were not actually sure we would quite get there—and to taking the opportunities that will come as a result of that.

I would just gently say to the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), for whom I have a great deal of time and respect, that as someone who represents one of those red wall seats that she was so keen to reference in her speech, I can give her absolute assurances that the hard-working people in that red wall seat who wanted to leave the European Union still want to leave, still wish to get the clarity that is required by the end of December and do not want the double whammy of the Opposition parties, who wanted to frustrate this in the first place and continue to want an extension that would serve no purpose.

My constituents feel so strongly about this because democracy matters. After we made the decision in 2016, it took this place three years to ensure that it would occur. Now we have a great opportunity to build a future partnership, to build something that works both for us and for the European Union over the long term, but it has to be done on the basis of mutual respect, obligation and responsibilities. We cannot fall into the same inane and asinine discussion that we did in Parliament in 2019, where we said, “How can it be possible? We are not able to do it. We cannot possibly expect to be able to do it in the time.” Let us let the negotiation go through, let us allow the space and the opportunity for that to happen and then see what comes from it. I am certainly confident that it is possible. The residents of North East Derbyshire and many of the red wall seats want to ensure that it happens and I know, with confidence in the Government, that it will.

June 5, 2020
Lee Rowley – 2020 Speech on the Trade Bill

Below is the text of the speech made by Lee Rowley, the Conservative MP for North East Derbyshire, in the House of Commons on 20 May 2020.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Over the past three months, our primary focus has been coronavirus and the challenge we face on a national and local level. It is right that we have spent a huge amount of time, effort and focus on coronavirus. At the same time, if we do not prepare as parliamentarians for the future beyond coronavirus, whenever that terrible disease eventually moves on, and if we do not spend time thinking through how we reshape the world and take advantage of the opportunities that will come, we are not doing our jobs adequately.

One of the big jobs is ensuring that we have the right foreign policy, trade policy and international trade policy. That is why I welcome the opportunity to debate this Bill. I do not share the criticisms from Members that we are not giving the Bill adequate scrutiny or that now is not the time to make these decisions. I do not claim to be an expert in international trade, but in some ways, we do not need to be experts in international trade to welcome a Bill that, at its heart, perpetuates the principle that I hope most people in this place stand for: free trade.

Free trade is one of those principles and ideologies that is not much talked about other than as a negative, but actually, it has significantly improved our lot domestically over many centuries. Vitally, it has also improved the lot of so many people across the world, ensuring that so many people are lifted out of poverty and giving us so many opportunities. Yet Members on the Opposition Benches focus on the challenges or disadvantages of it.

We as parliamentarians suffer the quagmire—the fog—of special interest groups, who are perpetually rent-seeking when it comes to these Bills. We suffer the white noise of groups such as 38 Degrees who seek to spam us in ways that misinterpret and offer misinformation about the reality of what we are trying to do.

It is free trade that has partly been responsible for the reduction in absolute poverty by more than half since 1990. It is free trade that contributed to the magnificent growth of economies around the world, such as those in South Korea and Germany, out of the ruins of war 50 or 60 years ago. We should stand up for the opportunities that free trade offers.

This is not a paean to free trade on just a principled or conceptual basis. Free trade presents demonstrable opportunities for people in my constituency and constituencies across the country. It supports jobs in places like Clay Cross, where people go to work every day in highly skilled factories to export goods across the world. It supports entrepreneurs who see new opportunities and new markets around the world for their ideas, so that they can grow their businesses in places like Dronfield and Eckington. Bluntly, it supports us all in our old age, because we put money into pensions that grow by investing in companies that use free trade to satisfy demand, move goods around the world and ensure that, ultimately, people get the things they need. I do not just support free trade from a principled perspective; I support it because it helps North East Derbyshire and every single other constituency in this country.

We also need to support free trade and Bills such as this because of the opportunities that will come in the next few decades. We will have to get over the challenges caused by coronavirus in the next few years. Opening up markets, seeking to obtain deals across the world and seeking to roll over, as the Bill does, existing deals and enhance them where possible are exactly the kind of opportunities we need to take as we rebuild our country after the grave difficulties that were so unexpected in the last three months or so.

Free trade does not mean a free-for-all. It means the opportunity to build fair and equitable trade for all of us. Ultimately, free trade and the legislative framework that supports it give us and our constituents the opportunity to build better lives and to offer that to people across the world. It is something I celebrate, and I hope that the majority of people in this House do the same.

May 30, 2020
Lee Rowley – 2020 Speech on Covid-19

Below is the text of the speech made by Lee Rowley, the Conservative MP for North East Derbyshire, in the House of Commons on 12 May 2020.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Like so many Members who have spoken in the Chamber and by video link, I want to start by paying tribute to all the work that has been done in my constituency over the last few difficult months. In particular, I want to put on record my thanks to everybody at Chesterfield Royal Hospital who has dealt so brilliantly with such a challenging time, to the healthcare workers in the community, to the people working in our GP surgeries across the towns and villages of North East Derbyshire, to the pharmacists who have been in touch and are working hard, and to everybody working in our care homes and social care settings across north Derbyshire. My thanks go out to all those who are working so hard at this incredibly difficult time.

And it goes beyond that. I also want to thank the people working in our jobcentres in Chesterfield and Staveley, those who are helping in our schools to allow the sons and daughters of keyworkers to continue, and our local councils. Derbyshire County Council has been ensuring that the people who need to shield—of whom there are 1 million across the country—by staying out of the community for their own safety get the medicines and food that they need. North East Derbyshire District Council has done some wonderful work over the last few weeks, contacting those who are self-isolating to make sure that they get the support and help they need and to check up on people where necessary. I am incredibly grateful for all the work that has been done.

The little acts of kindness are particularly important, and I want to mention a few that have come through my inbox in the last few days alone—the PPE that is being created by Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School and St Mary’s at the moment; the pupils of New Whittington Community Primary School who have done a video to say thank you to their teachers; Mrs Shelagh Cheetham and her friends, who have made thousands of pieces of PPE for local hospitals and healthcare settings; and James Cutts from Wingerworth, who goes on his daily run around the village not in normal running wear but in a Batman or Superman suit, to cheer up local children when he goes past their windows. I am grateful for all that they are doing, and I hope that they continue.

In the time I have left, I want to spend a few moments looking at the broader challenge that we face. Members have raised many different questions today. Some are fair questions. Some, in my view, are unfair questions, but I understand why they are being asked. A series of broader truths has come forward over the past few weeks. We live in unprecedented times. There is no absolute certainty in decisions, and fundamentally, it reminds us all of the frailty of humanity. We think that we control our environment. Actually, our environment controls us. However brilliant our science, however able our politics and however fantastic our communities, ultimately, decisions are sometimes beyond us.

We have done so much over the past couple of months to get on top of this virus, and I am confident that we will do more in the coming days, weeks and months. This is the first pandemic in a century that we have had to deal with, and it is the first pandemic in a globalised world. We are seeking to do something that has never been done in the history of humanity: to turn back the tide of a pandemic and stop it overwhelming us. We have made huge progress, and I am grateful to everybody for the work they have done. Together, we will continue to do that work, and together, we will get through this, to a better world at the end.

May 20, 2020