Storm Henk
Ben Bradley Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Robbie Moore
Absolutely, and I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. Regardless of the size of a local authority, what matters is that we protect our constituents from flooding. I am more than happy to meet him and his neighbouring colleagues to ensure that, as a Government, we deliver on protecting as many homes and businesses as possible.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for his visit to various parts of Nottinghamshire this week to see the impact on many of our communities. I reiterate his thanks to the many hundreds of staff, and community flood wardens and other volunteers in our communities, who have been working around the clock in recent days. He will have seen the impact on our infrastructure locally. Part of the recovery and the prevention of future flooding impacts is about reinstating and recovering that infrastructure—not least our roads, which have taken a massive hit in recent days. I see that he is sitting beside the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). Could they have a conversation about how they might support local councils in reinstating that infrastructure, which will cost many millions of pounds?
Robbie Moore
It was a very worthwhile visit to Nottinghamshire and Nottingham at the weekend and at the end of last week to meet my hon. Friend’s councillor team, who have been incredibly proactive in delivering for many communities across Nottinghamshire. It was important for me to visit Radcliffe on Trent, where I saw park homes that had been flooded and, unfortunately, residents evacuated from their properties. I am of course willing to work with colleagues—such as the Minister for local government, my hon. Friend in his role as leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, and others—to ensure that we are delivering as best we can for properties impacted by flooding.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ben Bradley Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
The Government absolutely take that seriously. Investment in sewerage has seen a huge reduction in phosphorous and ammonia entering waters, and the Environment Agency is very active on the issue. It undertakes checks of the ecological health of rivers regularly and it will, as will Ofwat, take action against Yorkshire Water when it fails.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
Mansfield and Warsop are full of animal lovers, as is the rest of the UK. News of tougher sentencing for animal abuse is very welcome. What steps will the Department take, perhaps working with charities such as Battersea and others, to make sure that everybody is aware of the new sentencing rules, so that animal cruelty can be prosecuted as robustly as possible?
Theresa Villiers
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He makes a very good point. It is not enough just to change the law; we need to make sure there is a greater awareness of the changes that I hope are soon to be implemented. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the coalition of charities that campaigned so hard for the proposed legislation, which will shortly come back to the House, to ensure that we raise the maximum sentences for animal cruelty.
Insect Population
Ben Bradley Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Alex Sobel
I have seen Professor Hill’s work. She is a credit to this country. Our UK academic research community is brilliant, and the Government need to take more notice of its work.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
On the point about pollinator corridors, I withdrew my private Member’s Bill on pollinators last year, because the Government agreed to fund Buglife and Matt Shardlow—the hon. Gentleman has mentioned them already—to complete their mapping of those corridors across the country, with a view to using the environment Bill to look at planning regulations to force local authorities to plan for them in new developments, which would be welcome. Does he agree that the charities already doing that work have a huge role to play, and that the Government should support them with funding to continue? There does not need to be a massive revolution in policy.
Alex Sobel
The hon. Gentleman will be unsurprised to hear that I absolutely agree, and I would like that to be legislated for in the environment Bill, particularly as he lost his piece of legislation on that proviso.
I will move on to ecosystem services. On top of the loss of invertebrates, the loss of species generally means that we do not have a lot of other services, such as natural pest control, natural decomposition of pollutants and natural nutrient cycling. Without those, we will increasingly have to intervene in ecosystems to provide them. A good example is that trees draw carbon down from the atmosphere really well, and have done forever, but because we have lost the part of the ecosystem that does that, we are now talking about engineering artificial means of carbon drawdown.