Bat Habitats Regulation (No. 2) Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to cut off my hon. Friend in full flow. This is further to my point of order earlier this morning about the security risk this country faces from a European Court of Justice decision to stop the UK kicking out of this country a Moroccan national whom the Home Office believes to be a severe threat to national security. It now appears that the person concerned is Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law. Whoever it is, this is a very serious matter, and this country and this House should be aware of it. What can be done to get a Home Office Minister to come to the Chamber as a matter of urgency to tell the House about this matter and about what threat this country faces?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for bringing this matter, which is indeed important, to the attention of the House again. As he knows, I have no power to require a Minister to come to the House, but I am quite certain, now that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter on the Floor of the House, that those who ought to take note of what he has said will do so. I trust that the matter will be brought before the House in due course, and the hon. Gentleman is of course well aware of the many methods that he can use next week to ensure that it is brought before the House.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for what you have said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I share his concern that this is a very important issue, particularly in the light of what has been said about the need for us to be able, as a result of the current EU renegotiations, to improve our own national security.

The EU is of course a significant issue in relation to the regulation of bat habitats. The only way in which my Bill, as currently drafted, can be put on the statute book is either for the Government to agree to exclude it from the application of the European Communities Act 1972 or for us to leave the European Union. If the Bill does not reach the statute book, the need for such a Bill may be significantly reduced if we can leave the European Union. I do not know whether I will be able to draw out the Minister on that matter in this debate. Last year, I described him as one of the leading Eurosceptics. I hope that in the course of the next few weeks or days, he will re-establish his credentials in that respect.

This morning, I received a written answer to my question. I asked:

“what progress has been made…on developing a toolkit for effective and safe management of bats in churches as recommended in the University of Bristol report on Management of bats in churches, a pilot, published in January 2015.”

The Minister referred to that report when he responded to the debate in January 2015.

The answer that I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), stated:

“The Government has invested significant resources into research and development to assess how we can reduce the impact caused by bats in churches. This has included a three year research project that concluded in 2013, as well as a pilot project led by Historic England that focused on churches with significant bat issues. Natural England is currently creating a licensing framework to provide the mechanism through which the impact of bats will be controlled in churches.”

I will pause at that point. Natural England seems to be taking an inordinately long time to create the licensing framework. One can only assume that either the matter is incredibly complex or Natural England is not investing sufficient resources in that objective. I hope that the Minister will put more pressure on Natural England to come forward with the licensing framework sooner rather than later.

The second paragraph of the ministerial response to my written question causes me concern. It states:

“A partnership of five organisations, including the Church of England and Natural England, is seeking Heritage Lottery Funding for a five year project to support the creation of a national support network for churches that have bat related issues. The outcome of the bid for funding will be known in March.”

That is an incredibly long timescale. Why can the funding not be provided directly by the Government now? Why do we need to go to the Heritage Lottery Fund to try to get it? Why will it take a similar length of time to the duration of the last world war to come up with a solution, if indeed that funding is available? Why, for all the talk, are we not able to do more, more quickly, to resolve what is for many churches and places of worship a really serious issue?

The seriousness of the issue is recognised in the material that has been produced by the Bat Conservation Trust and the University of Bristol. The Bat Conservation Trust has identified a number of case studies of churches where the problems with bats have been mitigated, rather than resolved. It also sets out in detail all the problems that bats can cause in churches, such as droppings and urine, health concerns, what happens when they fly inside churches and the problems that they can cause when building and conservation projects are under way in churches.

The Bat Conservation Trust has a helpful brief entitled “Solutions to bat issues in churches”, and it answers certain questions such as “Why can’t I get rid of bats in my church? What can I do about bat droppings in my church? Why do churches have to foot the bill for bat conservation? What help is available to churches with bats?”, and so on. It is clear from the way that those questions are asked that we are a long way short of finding a solution to this intractable problem that is causing an enormous amount of concern to churches.

In the previous debate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley referred to the fact that it is not just churches that are affected by this issue. The Bat Conservation Trust took up my response to that intervention, in which I said that we should perhaps start with just one small area, such as churches. The fact that I then contemplated the possibility that we might extend that provision to other buildings caused an enormous amount of angst among members of the Bat Conservation Trust, and it placed a riposte on its website. My point is that we have to start somewhere and try to get some urgency into the matter.