Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Hanson of Flint

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let me first defend the Minister for Safeguarding. I know nobody else in the House of Commons who has committed so much time, energy and passion to ensuring that these issues are addressed. She is paramount in her ambition to secure some outcomes on safeguarding women and girls and on violence against women and girls. As I have said to other noble Lords and noble Baronesses today, the Home Secretary has been clear that the terms of reference will be determined and that the focus will be on grooming gangs and on ethnicity and background. That also means that we need to look at grooming gangs in the round, but there is a real focus on the ethnicity and background of a number of grooming gangs that have operated, which have caused distress and have led to this inquiry in the first place.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, when I was Secretary of State, I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to look at Rochdale. I know the kind of pressure that is placed on a politician when you take that kind of decision, so I am much more sympathetic to the Government. I do not think that this should be political. We are going to uncover some very unpleasant truths about how the establishment in this country looked the other way, so can I ask the Minister to give lots of consideration to the recommendation of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, that this should not be judge led? The nature of a public inquiry, led by a judge, will be overly daunting. We need the confidence of the victims, the confidence of the community and the confidence of the country.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support in this area. He is right to draw attention to the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, recommended that we should try to move away from the judge-led model for this inquiry. That is what we have been trying to do. The very difficult issues that we have been discussing with victims and survivors—of who should be the chair and how the chair should be appointed—are one reason why there has been the delay to date and the very reason that the noble Baroness mentioned. As I said, the Covid inquiry and the Infected Blood Inquiry took seven months to get to a chair. It has been around three and a half to four months since the inquiry was announced. I hope we can make the appointment shortly, along the lines that the noble Lord mentioned.

Prevent: Learning Review

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Hanson of Flint

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I know he was elected in 1983 in North West Norfolk. It does not seem like 42 years ago. I went down in flames in Eddisbury on that day. I pay tribute to the fact that he won his seat, as did Sir David on that day. Again, from my perspective, we have a lot of political knockabout in both Houses at times, but you can also spot and respect integrity, and Sir David had integrity. It is important that we recognise and celebrate that.

While we will always have political differences, including with the noble Lord now, we must recognise that behind the politician is a person with a family and a commitment. Whatever drives us into politics for our own values, this is the place to debate them. We should be able to debate them outside, in our constituencies and in public, without the fear of attack or death by those who disagree with the principle of democracy, and not least with the individual who is the face of their ire. It is not just Sir David but my former colleague in the House of Commons, Jo Cox, and many people from Northern Ireland who have stood their ground, put their views forward, been in the public domain and found themselves subject to violence as a result. That is not the way we should be doing things in this United Kingdom.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I too want to thank the Minister for what was not just a kind and generous tribute to Sir David but also an immensely sensitive Statement, and on point in terms of how to address the issue. These things affect us all. David was a neighbour of mine and was one of the first people to welcome me, a Yorkshireman, down to Essex, and to make me feel at home.

We are about to debate the Holocaust. A Holocaust survivor once said to me a few years back that the thing that she noticed most coming to Britain after the war was that the policemen smiled, and that it was easy to meet councillors and officials. What happened to David threatens that. That ease that we have in this country is very much central to what makes us tick and we need to be able to hold on to that.

amendment of the law

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Hanson of Flint

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point. My own Department in central Government has reduced its running costs by 41% in real terms, so we have led by example.

The Government have set about turning things around. This is a complex area, and the solution requires action on multiple fronts. We have taken three important steps. First, we are radically reforming the planning system to crank up the engine and get things moving. Secondly, we are giving builders certainty so that they can get Britain building. Thirdly, we are intervening dramatically to help people step on to the first rung of the housing ladder. It may be helpful if I set out our approach to each of those issues.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell me how under-occupancy relates to the mortgage relief schemes that the Treasury announced last week? If, for example, one individual buys a house with three bedrooms, will that person be subject to the under-occupancy tests that apply to those in social housing?

[Mr Pickles]

I think that only the Labour party would confuse taxation with entitlement to benefit. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, since coming to office we have made great play of the need to release a number of unoccupied houses, and thus far we have made quite a push towards that. Every household in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency is now paying £900 to subsidise housing benefit. If his council wants to pay more, it can do so.

[Mr Hanson]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Pickles]

No. The right hon. Gentleman has had his chance to intervene, and his intervention was not very good.

Let me deal first with our reforms of the planning system. Labour’s top-down, centralist approach built nothing but resentment. Its regional strategies added a layer of red tape that paralysed planning. By the time of the general election, six years after Labour’s Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, only one in six councils had adopted a core strategy and only one in four had a five-year land supply.

Nor did Labour’s approach lead to better co-ordination. The regional spatial strategies of the unelected regional assemblies contradicted the regional economic strategies of the unelected regional development agencies. Fortunately, the Localism Act 2011 is now scrapping Labour’s regional planning. The national planning policy framework has streamlined 1,000 pages of confusing Whitehall guidance and placed local plans in pole position—safeguarding the green belt, introducing a new protection for valuable green spaces, amending bureaucratic change-of-use rules to make it easier to get redundant and empty buildings back into productive use, and kick-starting brownfield regeneration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Hanson of Flint

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Of course we will meet Kettering borough council. The closing date for consideration of evidence is today, but I believe that Kettering has submitted evidence. We, of course, will look very carefully at any evidence of statistical mistakes that might have been made.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Given that the Secretary of State faces a massive cut in his budget and is devolving issues down through his Localism Bill, how many of his six Ministers does he expect to make redundant?

[Mr Pickles]

We are in the process of making the Department smaller by reducing the number of director-generals, directors and assistant directors. As time goes on, it is certainly our intention to get smaller.