Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Last Thursday I met some of the water companies from the areas that will have the extreme heatwave, to be reassured that they will not run out of water during that period. Ofwat has also launched a public information campaign about the value of water. He will know from my previous answers that we have the water delivery taskforce, which is looking at water supply, house building ambition and growth to ensure that we have the water we need. It is one of the reasons we need to get on with building the nine reservoirs, as none have been built for the past 30 years.
Thames Water
Bob Blackman Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Emma Reynolds
My hon. Friend is right to say that Thames Water has a terrible record going back—as I said in my statement—at least 15 years. He is also right to say that sewage spills in the Thames Water area are completely unacceptable. As I have said, the Government stand ready for all eventualities, including a special administration regime.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Secretary of State is absolutely right to put customers at the forefront, but the problem, as she said in her statement, is that this will all take rather a long time to unwind. At present, uncertainty is the real concern for customers, especially the uncertainty about whether they will be charged extra on their bills. The Secretary of State has given a letter to Ofwat, but what specific changes does she want to see in the deal to encourage her to agree to it, so that we can move forward rather than having uncertainty?
Emma Reynolds
Quite simply, I do not want customers to pick up the bill for the repeated failures of Thames Water, but I hear the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about uncertainty, and I would like to see this situation resolved.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Emma Reynolds
We have promoted and protected farmers in trade deals, unlike the previous Government, who sold them down the river with the US and Australian trade deals.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
The hon. Member is absolutely right, but in the last five years under the previous Government, incidents rose by 20%. We are encouraging councils to seize and crush the vehicles of fly-tippers, and we will be consulting on a conditional caution so that people who do fly-tip will pick up and pay up.
Animal Welfare Strategy
Bob Blackman Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Emma Reynolds
In the new year, we will issue a consultation on banning trail hunting, as we committed to do in our manifesto. My hon. Friend is right in the things she says about it.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Since we cannot scrutinise the strategy today, may I ask what action is included in it to phase out animal testing in scientific laboratories?
Emma Reynolds
As the hon. Member will probably know, that is a joint responsibility with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which leads on it. We are working closely with DSIT. It released a strategy recently that ensures we can use alternatives more quickly to phase out animal testing. I would be happy to discuss it with him, but it is led by DSIT rather than DEFRA. It is seen as an animal welfare issue, but it sits with DSIT.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Solicitor General
The grooming and sexual exploitation of young girls in this country is nothing short of sickening, and the Government are doing everything in our power to secure justice for the victims and protect children from further harm. The Crown Prosecution Service has significantly increased prosecutions for child sex offences and recently secured convictions against three offenders for truly hideous crimes going back to 1999.
The Solicitor General
As the hon. Gentleman will know, listing is a matter for the independent judiciary. However, I can tell him that certain areas have pilot schemes of weekly listing meetings across criminal justice partners to ensure—as he says—that we lessen victim attrition, which is unfortunately far too high as a result of the record court backlog.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I welcome the fact that the backlog of those cases will be examined again, and that historical cases will be looked at, but one of the challenges is that whistleblowers in local authorities were sacked under non-disclosure agreements. What advice is the Crown Prosecution Service providing to ensure that those NDAs are removed so that we can get to the truth of what happened with those terrible crimes against young girls?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Gentleman refers to a very important issue, which is why I am pleased to tell him that through our flagship Crime and Policing Bill we are working to implement the key recommendations from the Jay review, one of which is including long-overdue mandatory reporting duties for those working with children. It also includes making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing and crucial changes to address safeguarding loopholes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Attorney General (Victoria Prentis)
I have regular meetings with the Director of Public Prosecutions. His priorities align closely with those of the Government—namely, tackling delays, combating violence against women and girls, enhancing our work with victims and driving improvement across the system.
Bob Blackman
It appears that almost every week on our streets we see hate-filled demonstrations with antisemitism rife, yet no action seems to be taken. The end result is that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) has announced his decision to leave this place because of antisemitism and the threats against his person. Will my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General take up the matter with the CPS, to ensure that that is the last such case and that antisemitism is prosecuted properly in the way it should be?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend raises an important and serious matter. I reassure him that I have been working closely with the CPS, which in turn is extremely close to the police, to deal with these very significant issues. The CPS has been embedded in the control rooms during the most serious of the marches that have taken place.
I also reassure my hon. Friend that a large number of prosecutions have already started. Most of the ones that have come to conclusion are necessarily guilty pleas, because prosecutions take time, but we all saw, sadly, a large uptick in that horrible crime after 7 October last year, and we are just starting to get to the phase when trials are beginning where people have not pleaded guilty. I hope he will take some reassurance from my answer and that he will come and see me so that I can talk him through some of the work we are doing.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
That is one of the issues that I look forward to dealing with in the weeks ahead, and I shall be happy to drop a note to the hon. Lady.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I apologise for not being here earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Fly-tipping is the No. 1 issue in my constituency. Will my hon. Friend join me in praising Conservative-run Harrow Council for introducing free bottle waste collections and 24-hour notice of fly-tipping clear-ups, and indeed increasing the number of fines for fly-tipping from 60 per year—under Labour—to 600 last year?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)
I commend the great work that Conservative-run Harrow Council is doing, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for bringing those points to our attention. The new fly-tipping league tables allow central and local government, and indeed members of the public, to identify councils that are taking a proactive approach to enforcement—instead of simply cleaning up after fly-tippers—at fly-tippers’ expense.
The Solicitor General
The hon. Gentleman will understand that the Attorney General and I superintend both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Serious Fraud Office, but that does not mean that we direct how they conduct investigations, and nor should we. It is right and proper that both organisations conduct their matters independently of Government, and that will continue.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Further to the question by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), what guidelines are given not only to the police but to the Crown Prosecution Service about the level at which fraud will be investigated? As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on personal banking and fairer financial services, I have referred a number of cases that have come to me to the police and to the CPS, and they say that they do not have the resources to investigate them. Could my hon. and learned Friend update the House on the position?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend is diligent in these matters, and he raises an issue that affects us all as constituency MPs, as we have all had cases brought to us that need to be investigated. I work very closely with both the police and the Home Office, and I will continue to do so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Blackman Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Attorney General (Victoria Prentis)
We are committed to increasing the volume of prosecutions and supporting more victims of domestic abuse. For example, we have ensured that victims now have much longer to report offences.
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend is a great champion for her rural area. She will be pleased to know that, in the south-west England CPS area, we consistently see one of the highest conviction rates for rape and domestic abuse. Her area is covered by Operation Soteria, which is testing new ways of working between the police and the CPS.
Bob Blackman
The breakdown of a relationship is a particular stigma for women in families from the Indian subcontinent, many of whom are forced to either remain in coercive relationships or return to their abuser. What measures could my right hon. and learned Friend take to ensure that those women are given full support through the Crown Prosecution Service and assisted to rebuild their lives?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend is a great campaigner for Harrow East and all the communities that live there. He will be pleased to know that CPS London is also working hard: this week, it is holding an event in his constituency to develop the domestic abuse joint justice plan, where colleagues from across the criminal justice system will come together to increase prosecutions in the cases he has outlined.
Food Price Inflation
Bob Blackman Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mark Spencer
It is always a pleasure to meet the hon. Lady. She did text me to draw my attention to the event, but my diary did not allow me to attend. However, I will of course be happy to read her report and to meet her at some point in the future.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Government’s short-term measures are of course welcome, but we also need a long-term food security plan to encourage farmers to grow more and to ensure that more of our food is produced in this country rather than our relying on expensive imports. What action is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that that long-term plan is implemented?
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend has asked an important question. This applies to energy production as well as food production, which is why we are moving away from the common agricultural policy to environmental land management schemes that will help farmers not only to produce great food, but to have a positive impact on our environment and our biodiversity.
Water Company Performance
Bob Blackman Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Rebecca Pow
Clearly I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The water companies have invested billions of pounds since privatisation—£120 billion—and they will invest a further £56 billion up to 2050. That investment has already begun and Ofwat is going through the water companies’ new plans to agree what is necessary in the next price review. We must remember that what comes out of our taps is considered the cleanest water in Europe. We must also be mindful of the cost to bill payers. We have to balance a clean and plentiful supply of water with holding our water companies to account, while enabling customers to be able to afford the bills.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
In Edgware ward in my constituency we have had a large number of new housing developments without a single improvement to the sewerage system. As a consequence, during heavy rain raw sewage comes out of the manhole covers on to the streets. Will my hon. Friend have a word with the planning Minister to ensure that before developments take place sewerage systems are improved to cope with the additional housing?
Rebecca Pow
My hon. Friend raises an important point about housing supply and the suitability of our water supply system. I have been in close communication with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about all those related issues, which is why I am delighted that we have agreed that sustainable urban drainage systems will now be mandatory. That will make a great difference to our water system. Similarly, the amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will enable the upgrade to tackle phosphates produced by waste water treatment systems—after all, sewage comes from us—and make sure that what goes back into rivers is clean, so that we can have the clean water that we all deserve.