Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

There is a lot of what the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said that I agree with. Let us get on with it. Let us come together in this. I commend both the Leader of the House for his approach and his speech and the spokesperson for the Sponsor Body, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). They both spoke in a very outgoing, moderate and sensible way.

This is not a debate between decant and not decant. It is not a debate with, on one side, pragmatic modernisers who want to do what is right and, on the other side, stuffy traditionalists who just care about staying in a Palace that they love. It is far more complex than that. So it is not a debate about decant or not decant—it is about how we get on with the job of restoring this Palace and not having a gold-plate operation. That is what I want to address my arguments towards.

I have to deal, in that regard, with the present proposal—the Northern Estate programme as it is. This is the entire demolition of Richmond House, and this is where I follow what the right hon. Gentleman just said; I would argue that it is financially wasteful, environmentally unsound and not necessary.

Let me look at this in a bit more detail and go back to the original Joint Committee report, which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House signed. It said that

“a temporary Chamber could be established in its”—

that is, Richmond House’s—

“inner courtyard and the rest of the House of Commons’ core operations could be consolidated in and around Portcullis House and the Northern Estate”.

The Northern Estate programme later found that measurements of the Commons Chamber, including the exact footprint of Division Lobbies with the oriel bay windows, would not fit in the courtyard, so the Northern Estate programme claims that this requires the entire grade II* listed building to be demolished, except for its façade, and for total replacement with a new permanent building.

On 31 January 2018, the Leader of the House said that

“the conclusion that we came to, preliminarily favouring a complete decant, was based on the assumption that a temporary Chamber could be put up in Richmond House.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 885.]

Demolition of Richmond House is a completely different cost basis and I, for one, would not have come to that conclusion, had we known the true picture. The possibility of demolishing Richmond House is not mentioned at all in the Joint Committee report.

[Damian Hinds]

My right hon. Friend is right, of course, about the historical sequence, but I hope that it is of some reassurance if I tell him that, since I have been involved in the Sponsor Body, I can honestly say that I have not met a single person, either in this House or on the restoration and renewal programme, who now believes that it is desirable to make the full demolition of Richmond House that he alludes to. We have to cut our cloth and, as I said in my remarks—and indeed, as the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) just said—we have to work within what we have, and we need to work out what compromises we need in order to do that.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is extremely helpful because, as I said, I have to work with what we have at the moment, and from what the spokesperson for the Sponsor Body now says, we seem to have moved on from the demolition of Richmond House. This will be of enormous comfort to the heritage organisations such as SAVE, with which I have been working very closely. If we are looking at a grade II* listed building, even the lowest level of listing is defined as

“warranting every effort to preserve”

these buildings—that is according to Historic England—and Richmond House is above that. It was, of course, one of the most important public buildings created in the 1980s.

I can cut short my speech, because I appear to be on a bit of a winning streak. I do not really need to quote all the various points that have been made by numerous distinguished architects and historic buildings organisations in favour of Richmond House, which was put up only 30 years ago. Of course, demolishing it would be environmentally unsound.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May I put an eccentric point of view to the Secretary of State? If we make a manifesto commitment, we should keep it. Two years after breaking our manifesto commitment to set up Catholic free schools, we were promised new, voluntary-aided Catholic schools. I am told by the Catholic Education Service that not a single one has yet opened, anywhere in the country. If it is a pipeline, it is a very long one. What is he doing about it?

[Damian Hinds]

Schools do take a while to build. My right hon. Friend is right that I made a commitment, including a personal commitment to him and others, that we would make sure that faith schools, including Catholic schools, would be able to open in areas where there was the demographic need and the demand for them. That commitment absolutely remains in place.

Relationships and Sex Education

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I thank the hon. Lady for her words. I am so sorry to hear about the experience of the couple in her constituency. That does help to illustrate why it is so important that, from a young age, people think about respect for all kinds of people and all kinds of relationships, and understand that families of the other children in their school setting may look quite different from their own.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

As far as I am concerned, the best form of sex education is—to coin a phrase—to respect and love your neighbour as yourself whatever their sexuality, just as you would respect and love them regardless of their race, ethnicity or anything else. How boring life would be if we were all the same. This very diversity sums up why all previous Conservative Governments have recognised that religious people, and indeed non-religious people, have their own justifiable formal belief about the best way to teach sex education. All previous Conservative Governments, therefore, have given an untrammelled right to parents to remove their children from sex education, but here, in certain circumstances, that right has been transferred to the headteacher—a fundamental shift of power to the state. How does that square with what Edward Timpson, the then Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, said during the passage of the Children and Social Work Bill? He said:

“We have committed to retain a right to withdraw from sex education in RSE, because parents should have the right, if they wish, to teach sex education themselves in a way that is consistent with their values.”—[Official Report, 7 March 2017; Vol. 622, c. 705.]

[Damian Hinds]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I do not think I can do any better than read word for word from the guidance:

“Once those discussions”—

that is to say, those on the request to withdraw—

“have taken place, except in exceptional circumstances, the school should respect the parents’ request to withdraw the child, up to and until three terms before the child turns 16. After that point, if the child wishes to receive sex education rather than be withdrawn, the school should make arrangements to provide the child with sex education during one of those terms.”

But the right continues to exist up until the three terms before the child reaches 16.

Schools That Work For Everyone

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. I totally acknowledge—I think I have already acknowledged it—the point that not enough children who are eligible for free school meals are able to attend these schools. We are trying to get that number up, which is why to bid into this capital fund schools need to come forward with a proposal for how they are going to make their admissions broader and more accessible. At a minimum, that must include priority for pupil premium recipients, ensuring outreach to specific primary schools and looking again at admissions criteria to make sure they are as broad as possible.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

What justification is there for the Secretary of State reneging on a solemn Conservative manifesto commitment, on which we all stood, to drop the totally ineffective 50% cap on faith schools? He has reneged on that commitment. He knows perfectly well that the only new free schools that will not now open are Catholic schools. Catholic schools are the most diverse, the most inclusive and the most prone to operate in deprived areas, so why has he reneged on the cap? He knows all these arguments, because he made them when he was a Back Bencher before he became a Minister. He knows there will now be faith free schools all over the country, except for Catholic schools. Before he says that we are now going to open voluntary-aided schools, he is shackling us to a model that has not been encouraged for 10 years. He can give no commitment that local authorities will want to use them or that the funding will be available. This is a disgraceful announcement.

[Damian Hinds]

I join my hon. Friend in recognising the value of faith schools as part of our overall diverse school system. There are thousands of faith schools across the country, and they do get slightly above-average results at both primary and secondary. He specifically mentioned Catholic schools—it is true, again, that they get a slightly better set of results than the faith school average, and I totally value their contribution. I also acknowledge, as I think I did earlier, that some groups—the Catholic Education Service is chief among them—have not felt able to take part in the free schools programme because of the admissions criteria. We are very conscious of the sensitivities and the need to make sure that we promote societal inclusion, including in narrowly defined local areas. Having published the integration strategy, we have taken the decision to retain the 50% faith cap on new free schools, but it will also be possible to open voluntary-aided schools, of which there are thousands across the country. They have existed since 1944. It has always been possible to open new voluntary-aided schools—it just has not happened in recent years, because the money has not been there, but it will be possible under these proposals.

Tax Credits

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

As a matter of fact, living standards have this year reached beyond their pre-crisis point, or indeed any prior year.

We can make lasting economic reforms only because we have taken the tough decisions to get this country back on its feet after the financial crisis that crashed into Labour’s structural deficit, which was among the highest in the developed world. Some choose to indulge in a game of “What if we had unlimited money?” We face facts. In 2010, the Government inherited a deficit of £153 billion. That is almost £6,000 for every household in the country. Our budget deficit was 10.2% of GDP. For every £4 the Government were spending, £1 was borrowed. That could not be allowed to go on, because when Governments lose control of the national finances, those who lose the most are generally those who have the least.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Minister is making some excellent points and I fully support his desire to reduce the deficit and reform tax credit. This is a listening Government, so I just wonder whether, in the coming weeks as we consider the impact of the reform and in terms of compassion, it might be worth looking at tweaking the child tax credit—or the marriage allowance, which is very low—to try to soften the blow. I do not expect the Minister to answer now, but that is surely worth considering.

[Damian Hinds]

As I will come on to outline, the Government are doing a number of things that have some offset against what is happening on tax credits.

Finance Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

What “he” says is that eight out of 10 families will be better off as a result of the blend—the complete set—of measures in the summer Budget.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

With regard to the point about removing tax credits to families with more than two children, I want to establish a principle which I think is quite important. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I have six children. I apologise for that. I just want to establish that the Government are not following the sort of liberal line that there is an ideal family—that a family of two children is more worthy than one of one or three or four or five. The Government are not approaching the subject from that viewpoint, are they? We can at least establish that principle, can we not?

[Damian Hinds]

I can confirm that absolutely. We have not managed six in my household but we do have three, and I, like my hon. Friend, do not think there is an ideal number of children to have in a family. I do not think it is for Government to say what that should be. But what we do say is that in making decisions about starting a family and about growing their family, people in different circumstances, whether they are supporting themselves entirely through employment or with the help of benefits, should have to make the same sorts of decisions.