Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Damian Hinds

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

14. What steps she is taking to increase the funding allocated to the f40 local education authorities.

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

We are committed to funding all schools fairly and equitably, wherever they are. The national funding formula replaces an unjust system whereby schools received different levels of funding for no reason.

[Andrew Selous]

It is welcome that funding for all schools has risen, but does the Minister accept that there is deprivation in market towns and villages where transport costs are higher, and that the difference between the sums for the highest funded local authorities and those for the lowest funded, such as Central Bedfordshire, is thousands of pounds per child? What can he do to close the gap more quickly?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right about the importance of deprivation factors and, indeed, transport costs. We are increasing the amount under the formula that relates to deprivation, and there is also the sparsity factor. Of course, all schools are benefiting from increases in funding, which will total £59.6 billion in 2024-25.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to ensure that there is an adequate number of prison officers.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)]

We are committed to recruiting 5,000 additional prison officers across the public and private estate by the mid-2020s. We have seen recent improvements in recruitment, with 655 additional full-time equivalent officers appointed between December 2022 and March 2023 alone.

[Andrew Selous]

At risk of being potted, kettled or attacked with toothbrushes that have razors fastened to the end, the work of a prison officer is not for the faint-hearted, yet their role is essential to keeping us free. We have just celebrated Armed Forces Week, and rightly so—I say that as a former veteran—but it troubles me that we do not have a similar week to celebrate the work of prison officers. We do not do enough to recognise their service to keep us all safe and free, across society. Can we change that, please, and urgently?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right about the paramountcy of safety for our brave staff, which is why we have been investing in security, body-worn cameras, PAVA spray and so on. He is also right that prison officers are often hidden heroes in our society, and they do not always get the recognition they deserve. As it happens, this evening is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service staff awards, which I am looking forward to attending, and I am keen to find more ways to publicly recognise these incredible people for what they do. His suggestion of a Prison Officers Week is interesting. More generally, I hope all colleagues will take the opportunity to visit their local prisons and to speak directly to prison officers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Damian Hinds

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Gangs of criminals certainly do not get a free run, and we will be investing and doing more than ever before to bear down on fraud. During the covid era—the trend had started already, but it accelerated then—while other forms of crime got depressed, there was a boost to some of this distanced crime that people do over their computers. Crime overall across the world is changing, and our response must change in a way that is commensurate to that. We must ensure that we take the most effective action. Part of that is the spending review commitment that has just been made; there is also the new economic crime levy, which represents an additional £400 million over this spending review period.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

5. What recent discussions she has had with police forces to help ensure that oil depots are able to supply fuel to petrol stations in the context of recent environmental protests.

Environment Bill

Debate between Andrew Selous and Damian Hinds

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I support this Bill. It is ambitious in its scope and its aims, and it starts, quite rightly, from the viewpoint of natural capital—the realisation that natural assets underpin all other types of productive capital, whether manufactured, financial, human or social. In a sense, the Bill builds on, and is analogous to, the successful Climate Change Act framework, with the environmental improvement plans and the Office for Environmental Protection.

This Government are determined to have a green Brexit. Notwithstanding what the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said, it is nonsense to suggest that the European Union is the only thing that will keep this country on a path to a better, greener future. [Interruption.] The evidence for that—as she knows, despite her shaking her head—can be seen in, for example, what has happened on climate change, with our leadership on offshore wind, with this country being the first major nation to set an end date for unabated coal and, of course, with our legislating for net zero. These are all things that happened over and above EU frameworks—and all things, by the way, that happened with a Conservative Prime Minister.

There were concerns in 2016, quite justifiably, but they centred on the fact that EU monitoring and enforcement mechanisms would obviously be going and on the environmental principles underpinning legislation. This Bill addresses those points and sets the framework to go further. On one of those areas, air quality, the World Health Organisation target is more exacting than the UK target; in future we will have the opportunity to follow it. The Government have said that it is technically feasible for us to do that at some point, but it has to happen at a credible pace. We cannot just will the thing to happen. I hope that, during the passage of the Bill and beyond, we can get more detail on how the Government envisage that happening.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not give way because of the number of speakers.

I have a few asks of the Minister, not all of them legislative, some of them complementary to the legislation. The first is on fly-tipping, which has a huge cost for my constituency, in terms not only of the responsibility for landowners, who have this stuff visited upon them, but, increasingly, of the cost of putting in place gates and other infrastructure to try to prevent it. I hope we can see higher financial penalties and greater risk for the perpetrator, including the seizing of vehicles.

Trees stand at the intersection of what we are trying to do on climate change and on clean air, and the importance of the physical environment. I very much welcome the Bill’s provisions on street trees, but we can do so much more. My local council has committed, over time, to planting one tree for every resident in the district, and I wonder what incentives can be given to others.

On engine idling, I know that the Department for Transport is currently reviewing its guidance on enforcement, but what more can be done on public information to persuade people not to idle their engines, particularly outside schools.

On electric vehicles, I hope the Minister will continue to work strongly with the DFT, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and others to make sure that the improved performance of electric cars and the way the costs have come down are more widely understood.

I pay tribute to local groups doing practical work: those doing litter picks and sorting litter to help to educate the public; the schools in my constituency that provide recycling for crisp packets; the repair cafés we have seen across the country, and so on. I welcome the principles and so many aspects of this Bill: those on resource efficiency and recycling; the single-use provisions; the deposit return scheme and the measures on waste crime, those on biodiversity and net gain; those on tree cover; and those on the most fundamental, elemental things of all—water and the quality of the air we breathe. If given an opportunity to vote this evening, I will be proud to vote for the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Selous and Damian Hinds

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I hope that Ministers were as concerned as I was that not one of the offenders leaving prison earlier this month who were mentioned in the chief inspector of probation report found work? Will Ministers commit to raise that issue with all employers they meet, not least in the public sector, where our record is still not good enough, so that we can all be safer?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right to identify the importance of helping ex-offenders into work. We know that, if they get into work, they are much less likely to reoffend. The See Potential campaign is important in that regard. Many employers have signed up to that and I commend them for doing so. I and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), the Minister with responsibility for prisons, are in regular contact about how we can further improve our offer for ex-offenders and we will continue to work on that.