The statement made by Jamie Greene, the Conservative MSP for West Scotland, on Twitter on 14 November 2022.
This is a disgusting and disrespectful attack on the war memorial at Edinburgh City Chambers – those responsible are the lowest of the low.
If you have any information, please get in touch with the police on 101.
The speech made by Trudy Harrison, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
I thank Members for showing such interest in this important subject. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who has a wonderful career ahead of him as a blue badge guide—or, indeed, in any role in the tourism industry in his area—such was the wonderful picture that he painted. I congratulate Members across the House on championing what DEFRA very much wants to achieve: clean water.
Let me set out how we are going to achieve that. We are absolutely committed to driving up the water quality of our lakes, our rivers and our coasts for the public to enjoy and for the benefit of nature. Designated bathing waters protect people’s health at popular swimming spots across the country. As a Member of Parliament in the Lake district who has enjoyed much wild swimming for many of my 46 years, I know the benefits that that can bring. The water quality at those sites is monitored regularly—much more regularly than previously, as Members noted—and improvements are made if it does not meet the minimum standard.
There are 421 designated bathing waters in England. As my hon. Friend mentioned, the vast majority are coastal, but in the past two years we have designated our very first bathing waters on rivers. It is very much thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) that we have been able to achieve that in his constituency. I am pleased to say that we have many more applications for rivers to be designated bathing quality areas.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The Minister will be surprised to hear that I want to talk about a river and not a lake. We are seeking bathing status and clean water status for the River Kent. The “Clean River Kent” campaign has raised over £8,000 to do sampling, lab testing and surveys—massive thanks to it for raising that money, and to the people who sponsored me to do the Staveley trail to help raise a bit of it. Does the Minister agree that the regulator should be driving this work, instead of local groups having to raise the money to do it? Does she also agree that the water companies could come up with some of the money to fund these bids, because, let’s be honest, it is their fault that the rivers are not in a clean state to start off with?
Trudy Harrison
The hon. Gentleman raises an excellent point on the part water companies must play in cleaning up our lakes, rivers and coastal areas. I am a neighbouring MP and will be delighted to meet him to talk about the natural management that could be done—very much part of my portfolio in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—to assist in cleaning up Lake Windermere in particular and of course the River Kent.
Bathing waters across England are a success story, with almost 95% achieving “good” or “excellent” status last year, the highest rate since the new stringent standards were introduced in 2015. Of these, 70% of bathing waters were classed as “excellent”, the highest quality standard, whereas just 28% of bathing waters met the highest standards in force in the 1990s. That demonstrates the excellent progress the Government are making in cleaning up our waters and holding water companies to account. Over the last 30 years, there has been good progress, following more than a century of poorly regulated industrial practices. A large proportion of the improving trend in bathing water quality can be attributed to improvements in sewage treatment.
Over £2.5 billion has been invested by English water companies to improve bathing water quality since privatisation, and England now has the cleanest bathing waters since records began. We know there is more to do to continue to drive up the quality of our rivers, lakes and coastal areas so people can enjoy them and nature can thrive. Areas used by large numbers of bathers and that have facilities to promote and support bathing are eligible for designation. We welcome applications for bathing water designations for both coastal areas and inland waters such as rivers. We actively encourage applications by writing annually to the chief executive of every local authority in England; we also write to other stakeholders such as swimming associations, because local authorities and stakeholders best know which popular riverside bathing areas may be suitable for designation. Once a site is designated as a bathing area, the Environment Agency will assess what action is needed to improve the water quality so that it can meet the standards that the public rightly expect and which are set by the bathing water regulations.
In 2021, we were delighted to approve the first designated river bathing water on the River Wharfe in Ilkley, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley for his superb championing to get that designation over the line—I know he is supporting other Members across the House. That was followed by Wolvercote mill stream on the River Thames at Oxford this year, so it is wonderful to have my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) here, championing bathing water quality and improving all water quality across the country. The designations are driving action to improve water quality.
My Department has received a lot of interest this year, and clearly society is paying a lot of attention to cleaning up our water. Our aim is to announce which new sites will be eligible to be designated before the start of the next bathing season, which is officially 15 May 2023, so get your Speedos ready—other outfits are available. We look forward to receiving the application for the River Nidd in the very near future, and I will be delighted to work with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, as will the Minister responsible for this area, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow).
Guidance to assist applicants with their applications is already available on the Government website, and we plan to update this next year. To respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, that will make it easier for community groups to understand the criteria for bathing water and ensure that only the necessary information is requested, to save such a lot of time and effort. In addition, we are reviewing the Bathing Water Regulations 2013 to ensure that they reflect changes to how and where people use bathing waters.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough raised the subject of wet wipes. There is absolutely no doubt that wet wipes cause huge damage to sewers and to the environment when they are incorrectly flushed away. In fact, they make up 90% of the material that causes sewers to block. Let me take this opportunity to remind everybody across this House and across the country to bin it, don’t flush it.
Blockages can cause pollution and surface water flooding, and cost the water industry in England and Wales £100 million a year. The case for action is very clear. We are considering various options to tackle the issues caused by wet wipes. In November 2021 we launched a call for evidence that included questions on those options to help us build our evidence base and to inform our approach. That call for evidence closed on 12 February, and the Government will publish a response later this year.
Once again, I thank all Members, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, for championing the best quality water we can possibly achieve, to support people to enjoy bathing and so that nature benefits from clean water, which we will all benefit from. I also agree, as has been said across the House, that water improvement is a team effort. We can all play a part. That is why we will continue to take action to require water companies and industry to achieve the necessary improvements to reduce pollution. I am pleased that water companies have committed £56 billion to be spent over the coming years to clean our water and improve storm overflows.
We recognise that healthy and well-managed water is key to our wellbeing and an important part of the Government’s pledge to hand over our planet to the next generation in a better condition than we inherited it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I hope the Minister is reassured that my speedos are at the ready for about May, I should imagine, no sooner.
The speech made by Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) on securing this important debate. I know how passionate he is about securing bathing water status for parts of the River Nidd in Knaresborough and I thank him for allowing me to make a short contribution.
In December 2020, a stretch of water on the River Wharfe in Ilkley in my constituency was granted bathing water status—the first stretch of river in the UK to be awarded such a designation. I know how important that is, having heard my hon. Friend’s points about sewage getting into rivers. I put on record my thanks to the Ilkley Clean River Group, which did such a good job in getting our application off the ground in the first place and continuing with its efforts. I hope that my hon. Friend’s campaign is a success.
Why does this matter? Simply, we all care about improving water quality and ensuring that our rivers are clean, healthy and thriving environments. Of course, achieving bathing water status on rivers provides an additional mechanism to ensure that a river ecosystem is as healthy as it can be. The River Wharfe in Ilkley has had, and continues to have, problems with pollution being discharged due to inadequate sewage infrastructure. When it rains, Yorkshire Water’s sewage treatment works in the surrounding area often spill into the River Wharfe. Residents along Rivadale View will be familiar with that, as will residents downstream of the Ashlands sewage plant. Even more damaging are storm overflows, which are frankly inadequate to deal with the high percentage of rainfall we receive. My hon. Friend has already commented on our challenges with the combined sewer system.
Let us be clear: until now, no Government have had the willpower to tackle sewage discharge. I was pleased to vote for the Environment Act 2021, which will help tackle and put a stop to sewage discharge. I must say it was disappointing that the Opposition parties did not, like us, vote for that Act.
Of course, having secured bathing water designation, we are provided with an additional mechanism, which will help clean up our river system by putting additional pressure on water companies—in my case Yorkshire Water. Regular testing is now required. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that has resulted in the River Wharfe being classified as poor, but the data that is collected will put additional pressure on Yorkshire Water and other water companies to secure investment in infrastructure and additional apparatus to ensure that the stretches of water where bathing water designation is secured are clean.
Let me finish by making a couple of points about what I have learned from our experience. It is not good enough just to have a single monitoring point on a river; we must consider a stretch. I have concerns about the term “bathing water status”; I think “clean water status” would be much more apt, because that is what we are all trying to achieve, and there are some difficulties with rivers and it being safe to swim. In addition, the guidance from DEFRA needs to be updated to deal with rivers and not just coastal areas.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and wish him all success in his campaign on the River Nidd. If he has the success that we have had in Ilkley, that will put more pressure on the utility companies to clean up our rivers, which is what we all want to see.
The speech made by Andrew Jones, the Conservative MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
I am delighted to have been successful in securing this debate to cover such an important subject, and it is very good to see my hon. Friend the Minister in her place at the Dispatch Box. She has led many Government initiatives on improving our environment, which of course I strongly support.
There are many elements to the work to improve our water quality, but I am only going to focus on one specific element in this debate. As colleagues will have seen from the title of the debate, I want to see more rivers achieving bathing water quality status. Specifically, I want the River Nidd at the Lido Leisure Park in Knaresborough to achieve bathing water status. Even more specifically, that is a pinpoint location rather than a stretch of river, because that is the process we have to engage in.
My hon. Friend the Minister is a knowledgeable and well-travelled lady, but I should detail for the House a bit more about the Nidd. It is a tributary of the Ouse, rising in the high dales on Great Whernside and flowing down through Nidderdale, skirting Harrogate and going through Knaresborough before joining the Ouse. The upper section is in the Nidderdale area of outstanding natural beauty, then the Nidd gorge, and when it reaches Knaresborough it forms part of one of the most famous Yorkshire views. I cannot distribute pictures, but I ask hon. Members to imagine a castle on a crag, a viaduct over the gorge and homes cascading down the valley side—Knaresborough is a very beautiful town.
Just downstream from that famous viewpoint is the lido, a leisure home site owned and run by Meridian Parks and the Maguire family. It is also a popular location for wild swimming. Of course the issue of water quality is not confined to one area, and while we have many designated bathing areas around our coast, there are very few inland areas and those few are overwhelmingly lakes, not rivers. Indeed, looking at the data from the Outdoor Swimming Society, 98% of areas with bathing water status are coastal.
There is one river in our area of Yorkshire that has achieved that status, and it is the River Wharfe in Ilkley. It is good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) in his place, and I know he intends to say a few words and share some insights from his excellent work there. The purpose of seeking this debate was to highlight that many more rivers must be awarded bathing water status right across our country and to promote our campaign for the River Nidd in Knaresborough.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
Inadvertently or not, my hon. Friend is making almost precisely the points that the Environmental Audit Committee made in its inquiry into water quality in rivers: that bathing water quality status should be an objective of every water company over the next pricing period, so that we can radically improve the quality of our rivers and allow more people to take great pleasure from swimming in all weathers in more and more rivers around the country.
Andrew Jones
My right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. I have to say that I had not picked up all the output of his Select Committee, so apologies for that, but I strongly agree with everything he has said this evening. He is right that it should be an objective, but to achieve that objective, a team approach is needed, and one that involves the local community, local businesses, Government agencies, local government and national Government.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. I spoke with him before in the Tea Room, so he sort of knows what I am going to ask, and I am sure he is well prepared for it. To achieve bathing water status, it needs the efforts and the input of councils for a start, as well as that of local communities. It also means that the local councils and agencies should look at safe swimming in rivers. It is important that if the waters are right, they have to be safe for swimming. Does he feel that there should be legitimate signage and information posts to make strictly clear that if there is no information, individuals should not swim in any section of that river? It is about the quality of the rivers, but it is also about the safety.
Andrew Jones
Well, it would not be an Adjournment debate if the hon. Member did not intervene. These things should become proprietorially known as “Shannon moments”. I obviously agree with his point that water safety is critical, but also his point about informing people about where it is safe and not safe. There is a role for local government in signage. I certainly agree with him.
I have met Nidd catchment anglers, the owners of the lido, residents and businesses, and they are all on board with the proposal for the Knaresborough site. So how do we reach that important water quality standard? The answer is to improve the actions and inputs on water quality from so many stakeholders.
One key concern for river water quality is the Victorian design of our sewerage system. This system mixes foul water—sewage—and rainwater run-off in the same sewer system. Combined sewer overflows were installed to enable sewers to cope with the additional volume during periods of heavy rain. That enabled the sewers to discharge into rivers. If the CSOs did not exist, it would back up into our homes when the system is overloaded, and that would be worse, but we have seen them operating more frequently due to increasing population and in particular due to changing weather patterns, with more intense rainfall.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for letting me intervene on him. He speaks with total passion on this issue, and it is a passion that West Oxfordshire feels, too, about the Evenlode and the Windrush, which we have. He is right that this challenge must be overcome with a team effort, but does he agree that sooner or later the Victorian infrastructure he has spoken about will need to be upgraded and water companies’ investment will be key to that?
Andrew Jones
My hon. Friend is as wise as ever. I happen to know the Windrush a little bit, and it is a very beautiful part of our country. He is most fortunate to have it in his constituency. While it is a team effort, it will have to be backed by investment. It is one of a number of policy areas where our requirement for infrastructure has not kept pace with modern demands, so he is absolutely correct, and I do agree with him.
One area where we have seen significant progress is with the increased monitoring of CSOs, and that has contributed to greater awareness of the number of discharges. In 2016, only 5% were monitored—next year it will be 100%. That is very good progress. Information from the House of Commons Library, based on monitoring data supplied by the Environment Agency, shows that 97% of CSOs are monitored in Yorkshire, which is ahead of the national picture. In 2021, each CSO in Yorkshire discharged on average 34 times, with the average duration at 5.8 hours. While that is the second-best performance for the duration of discharges in England, it is still way too much and it shows just how far there is to go.
In terms of progress on this issue by my local water company, Yorkshire Water has recently announced an additional £100 million investment, funded by its shareholders, on top of its existing five-year business plan, aimed at reducing average bills by a minimum of 20% a year by March 2025, and that is compared with a baseline in 2021. In addition to the increased extreme weather and flash flooding events that cause CSOs to operate, a change to what we put into the system has been occurring over the past decade or so, particularly with wet wipes, but also with nappies being the main new entrants alongside fat from cooking.
Wet wipes are responsible for 90% of sewer blockages and contribute to the formation of fatbergs—all hon. Members probably know what fatbergs are; they are truly grim. When the sewers are blocked, the CSOs operate and flush the wet wipes, and anything that is backed up behind them, which obviously includes human waste, into waterways. The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) has done good work with her Plastics (Wet Wipes) Bill to remove plastic from wet wipes. I support that work and think it is right, but even removing plastic from wet wipes is not guaranteed to make the problem go away. Consumer behaviour can change, however, which could help; the UK currently flushes 11 billion a year.
I raised the issue of new building standards at business questions last week. Rainwater run-off from new housing estates contributes to the volume of water that can overwhelm sewers and trigger a CSO to operate. In terms of building standards, developers must ensure that water is retained on site for longer before it is gradually released into the system. Attenuation tanks and ponds have a role to play. We have just had an important debate on levelling up rural Britain, and agricultural practices are also involved. Rainwater can cause fertilisers, pesticides and animal waste to enter rivers and lower water quality, which is highly significant in many parts of our country.
We as legislators also have a major role to play. The Environment Act 2021 contains a variety of measures, but at its heart is transparency. It makes it a legal requirement for companies to provide discharge data to the Environment Agency and make it available in near-real time to the public. That increase in monitoring and transparency has already led to more enforcement action, and in some cases fines, for water companies where breaches have been found—and quite right too.
I view water improvement as a real team effort; it is not for a single actor to take the actions. It means improved targets, vigilant monitoring, enforcement action, increased investment from water companies, and behavioural change. Achieving bathing water status is a significant step to implementing the changes needed to improve river water quality more widely because, if achieved, the Environment Agency will develop a bathing water profile and put plans in place to monitor and protect the bathing water.
That is why I wanted to bring this complex and long-standing issue to the House to ask the Minister what more can be done to promote the quality of inland waterways. Bathing water status in the UK has mainly been a coastal issue up to now, but rivers must be included far more in future. I also wanted to highlight, of course, our campaign to secure bathing water quality status for the River Nidd at the lido in Knaresborough to make one of Yorkshire’s best even better.
The speech made by Alok Sharma, the out-going COP President, on 14 November 2022.
Thank you, Minister Jorgenson.
Can I just remind all of us friends, that at COP26 we did resolve collectively to peruse efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.
I have always said what we agreed in Glasgow and Paris has to be the baseline of our ambition.
We’ve got to stick to that commitment. We cannot allow any backsliding.
But we are already at 1.1 degrees global warming and I know I don’t have to remind all of you the impact of that around the world.
Even at 1.5 degrees we are still going to have devastating outcomes for many millions. As our friend from Bangladesh reminded us 1.5 needs to be a red line.
And this cannot be the COP where we lose 1.5 degrees.
So, we’ve got to fight for this and every fraction of a degree absolutely makes a difference.
And it’s the difference, for very many, including each of your countries, between a tolerable existence and an impossible future.
Let me remind you a year ago what Mia Mottley said – in Glasgow she said 2 degrees “would be a death sentence” for very many nations around the world.
I believe we can keep 1.5 alive – we’ve got the business community on our side.
We all would have seen on Saturday, 200 international businesses signing up a to an open letter in defence of 1.5.
We are seeing impressive sectoral impacts – renewables, zero emission vehicles.
We’ve heard about that this morning.
Yes, there is a serious work going on with our finances. We need to be in a place where we can see more in terms of MDB reform, we need to do more on JETP. Yes, we need to include more on finance.
But on the 1.5 we need to make sure that we reaffirm our commitments to that.
We’ve got a G20 leaders meeting going on right now.
They’ve showed leadership last year. They need to show that again.
They need to, coming out of that G20, to reaffirm their commitment to Paris and to Glasgow.
In terms of mitigations outcomes here, really quickly there are four things we need to have.
One is for those countries that have not set out their revised NDC to do so aligning with 1.5, we’ve got 33 countries that have already done so including the UK.
Secondly let’s make clear our commitments to the science, no rowing back on the science, we heard from the science this morning.
Thirdly, further steps to phasing out coal phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
And fourthly we need to agree the legalities on the Mitigation Work Programme to shift the dial on implementation and ambition.
The reality is without progress on mitigation we are going to beyond our ability to adapt and of course I want to see progress made on loss and damage here but unless we stick to the mitigation piece all of that is going to be a lot more difficult.
So, friends in conclusion, we’ll either leave Egypt having kept 1.5 alive or this will be the COP where we lose 1.5.
You need to work out how you want future generations to look upon this COP and each of us individually as countries.
It’s really up to us to decide, I hope we will decide to keep 1.5 alive, thank you.
The statement made by Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, on Twitter on 14 November 2022.
Utterly beyond comprehension that someone would vandalise a war memorial on Remembrance Day – sickening and disgraceful. I hope those responsible are identified and brought to justice.
The speech made by Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
It is always very good to be called last in debates because it means that I get to listen to everybody else’s speeches. I have enjoyed the debate enormously and it has been very edifying, particularly to listen to everybody boasting about how big and beautiful their constituency is. My Devizes constituency is as big and beautiful as any, but more importantly, I suggest that it is the oldest place in England—[Interruption.] My goodness me, 1066—in my part of Wiltshire, we were trading in the fourth millennium BC, as evidenced by recently discovered archaeology. In Amesbury near Stonehenge, there was the discovery of the body of an archer, who—carbon dating and testing demonstrates—came from somewhere in central Europe in about 2000 BC. They obviously had some freedom of movement arrangements, which some disapprove of. It did not turn out well for the Amesbury archer, who died near Salisbury.
I mention that because we have been an economic entrepôt since the dawn of time. Through the middle ages in particular, my part of Wiltshire was incredibly prosperous. The great wave of prosperity arose from the wool trade, particularly, and then by about 1800, when the town of Devizes was a very important centre of the wool trade, it started slowly to decline as industrialisation happened, as the Kennet and Avon canal that comes through the town was dug and as Brunel was building his railway out to Bristol. Those amazing industrial innovations were actually the harbinger of the economic decline of our area, as people moved from the land into the cities. However, even through the 19th century, all sorts of important innovations and technological developments happened in our area. I pay particular tribute to one of my favourite local firms, the agricultural engineers T. H. White, which has been going since 1832 and has a £100 million turnover. It is still based in Devizes and is still a family firm, employing people all over the country and, indeed, the world. I have seen some of its amazing agricultural machines in use in our area.
Places left behind by industrialisation are becoming viable again. Our rural economies are becoming viable and thriving. Brilliant companies are hidden up almost every farm track and in every little backwater. In all our towns and industrial estates, there are brilliant, modern, high-tech firms such as Varivane, which makes kit for the Royal Navy. Most of our frigates have been kitted out by this little firm on an industrial estate in Devizes.
The other day, I visited a firm just outside Marlborough called Design 360, which makes amazing writing. It is run by a man who noticed when he was growing up in the area that everything seemed to be made in China. He said, “Why does everything have to be made in China?” and dedicated himself to developing a business in Wiltshire that makes the best possible kit at good prices and employs local people.
We have all sorts of other amazing industries, particularly in the agritech space. We have artificial intelligence that can monitor a multitude of crops in a field, so we can get away from the monoculture model of farming and have a variety of crops being grown in the same place. The health of millions of plants is being monitored through AI. We have vertical farming industries and are developing proteins that can be a massive British export and feed the urban populations of the world.
It is not all high tech. We should not think of the rural economy of the future as being all about whizzy new technologies. Actually, the future could and should look much like the past. I particularly want to see a revival of local food processing. That should be one of our great ambitions in this space, because it feels all wrong that farmers have to send their produce miles away for processing. It disappears into other regions of the country, and if it comes back to Wiltshire at all, it is packaged by some other firm. Why should we not have shorter food journeys and good local processing, as other countries do?
I totally endorse everything that has been said about the importance of food security and about the opportunity that environmental land management schemes bring to enhance the production of food as part of our public goods regime. There is no conflict between supporting the environment and supporting growth, but we need to recognise that the production of food is farmers’ primary objective. I would say that food security is more important than enhancing global trade, so I would prioritise it over trade deals.
How can we help? I agree with everything that has been said about the importance of support with energy and about VAT and rates relief, particularly for pubs and brewers. I want to mention a few other things quickly, beginning with skills. We export too many young people. We have a culture of higher education; we should invest more in further education. Wiltshire College is a brilliant local institution. I would like to see more support there.
I echo everything that has been said about housing. We need more housing in our local villages. We should say no to the five-year land supply rule; every village should be able to build more houses without having to use that rule.
I turn to connectivity. We need more broadband. Thankfully, I am confident that we will get a railway station in Devizes. I agree about demand-responsive buses. We must say no to HGVs. I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith): we have to improve the situation.
Lastly, I turn to planning. I must mention a brilliant firm, Poulton Technologies, which is run by the Coplestone family. They want to build an amazing factory to create undersea technology for fixing pipes, but they cannot do it here. They are having to do it in Saudi Arabia, because the planning system does not allow the space in the UK. That is what we need.
The statement made by Roz McCall, the Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, on Twitter on 14 November 2022.
This is appalling and vile. I hope that the culprits are caught and made to face up to the disrespect they have shown to everyone who has served or lost a loved one due to conflict.
The statement made by Meghan Gallacher, the Deputy Leader of Scottish Conservatives, on Twitter on 14 November 2022.
Disrespectful. Disgusting. Vile. Just a day after Remembrance Services took place and our country fell silent, Edinburgh City Chambers war memorial was set on fire. This is one of the many reasons I am bringing a Bill forward to better protect war memorials.
The speech made by Greg Smith, the Conservative MP for Buckingham, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this important debate for rural communities across our whole United Kingdom, not least the 335 square miles of rural north Buckinghamshire that I have the privilege of representing in this place.
I associate myself with the points multiple hon. Members made to quash the myth that rural communities are all universally wealthy without pockets of deprivation. In my constituency, there are certainly communities that are struggling and need support. The energy crisis has really highlighted that, following on from the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) made about off-grid households. It took until September for Whitehall to acknowledge that off grid existed. The £100 scheme is too universal and does not address the real fuel poverty that exists in off-grid households, not least those that are not on oil and do not have the space to have a liquefied petroleum gas tank but are on the 47 kg LPG bottles, which I believe are up to something like £88 plus VAT a bottle now and, on full burn, only last for 19 hours. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take that point back to the Treasury, because if we do not get the basics right for rural communities it is very difficult to level up rural communities and deliver for everyone.
I was struck by the figures my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) gave that rural communities receive for their public services 37% less than their urban counterparts. Clearly, that is not right and we absolutely need to address it to ensure that every community across our United Kingdom gets, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said, their fair slice of the cake. For communities like mine, when it comes to public services it is not just the core funding that is a challenge. It is also the way we remunerate the expenses of some of the lowest paid but most vital and important public servants. Carers often have to go in their own cars to visit patients and those they are caring for. Often, they do not even get the 45p a mile set out by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which, as we all know with rising prices at the fuel pumps, does not actually cover costs in the first place. That needs to be addressed urgently.
For my constituency, there is something that needs to be tackled very, very urgently: projects that are done in the name of levelling up, but do anything but level up north Buckinghamshire. I have two railways being built through my constituency. One is HS2. It is totally toxic—a destroyer of farms, countryside and our very way of life—and I have spoken in total opposition to it many times in this House. The other is East West Rail. While we welcome that railway, which will bring vital connectivity, those responsible have made, if I may put it in such a way, a bit of a hash of building it.
The unintended consequences need to be resolved through cross-governmental work to ensure that where big infrastructure projects are being built, whether they are welcome or not, they are not allowed to disrupt the day-to-day lives of communities. Only this morning, for example, I learned that the Crooked Billet pub in Newton Longville has closed its doors for the last time and is being handed back to the brewery, because the endless road closures from East West Rail have starved them of their trade. When the Addison Road bridge in Steeple Claydon was closed for months on end earlier this year, the Prince of Wales pub’s takings were £2,000 a week down. That is a devastating amount for a rural village pub to lose. There was no compensation—nothing whatever. W. G. Hill & Son just outside Marsh Gibbon has effectively been shut down by East West Rail replacing a bridge next to that business, as it cannot now legally get its HGVs underneath the bridge.
All those businesses have essentially been allowed to fail in the name of levelling-up projects. I urge the Minister to look at that very carefully to ensure that, in the future when infrastructure projects are built, we do not allow communities and businesses to suffer in that way—not to mention the state of our roads, which have literally been ripped up by the sheer volume of HGV movements around the large infrastructure projects. Buckinghamshire Council is doing its best; it has a £100 million programme to resurface roads across the county. However, when others are doing the damage, it is not fair that council tax payers have to pick up the bill.
I welcome the infrastructure first moves that the Government are introducing, but there needs to be some retrospective action on GP access in my constituency. Long Crendon lost its surgery last year. It secured land through a development, but it desperately needs the funds to build the new surgery; that needs attention. Likewise, on the Kingsbrook development just to the east of Aylesbury, the integrated care board is trying to claw back the section 106 money to spend it on other surgeries. I urge the Minister to take urgent action to ensure that infrastructure first can be retrospective, too.