Metropolitan Police: Strip-search of Schoolgirl

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I outlined earlier, there are already two inquiries into the culture of the Metropolitan police in all its aspects—by Dame Louise Casey, who I know will do a thorough job, and following that, part 2 of the Angiolini review—but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to take care. There are 30,000-odd police officers in the Metropolitan police, the vast majority of whom are doing an extraordinary job and doing amazing things on a daily basis to keep us all safe from harm, and they deserve our thanks for doing that. They will be as outraged as we are at this event, and we need to learn the lessons on their behalf as well as on behalf of the Londoners we serve.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The disgraceful, abhorrent, sickening strip-search of child Q took place two years ago, yet the Minister stands at the Dispatch Box today and speaks about the processes around the investigation as if this is a system working as it should. It is not. The constant delay in the outcomes of such investigations is a part of the structural denial of justice to complainants against the Metropolitan police. Can the Minister tell the House when he first became aware of the case of child Q and what action he took immediately to safeguard children in London, and does he have no concern at all about the time it takes complaints such as this to conclude and be resolved?

[Kit Malthouse]

Of course we are concerned about the time it takes for complaints to be dealt with, which is why we changed the IOPC regulations at the end of 2019 to compel speedy investigations. It is the case now that if any investigation is going to take longer than 12 months, the IOPC must write to the appropriate authority—me or, for example, the Mayor of London—to explain why. The director general of the IOPC has done an outstanding job in driving the workload down and bringing more investigations in under 12 months, but there is obviously still a lot more work to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

What recent discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the adequacy of resources for violence reduction units.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse) [V]]

The Home Office is working closely with the Treasury on the future funding of violence reduction units. In February, we announced VRU funding of £35.5 million for the coming year, bringing the total investment to £105.5 million over three financial years.

[Helen Hayes [V]]

The Government’s own guidance for violence reduction units requires them to generate long-term solutions to violence reduction. Why, therefore, have the Government announced only piecemeal funding for violence reduction units, one year at a time, which makes it impossible to plan with certainty for long-term interventions? When do they plan to embed the work of violence reduction units within mainstream long-term funding commitments, so that this vital work, including with some of the most vulnerable and traumatised young people, can be guaranteed for as long as it is needed?

[Kit Malthouse]

We recognise the need to put VRUs on a sustainable funding basis, and the hon. Lady is quite right that much of their work is multi-year, which needs to be reflected in the investment we make. We are working closely with Treasury colleagues and can hope for a multi-year financial settlement, which would allow us to move to that position. Having said that, it is also incumbent on the wider organisations involved in fighting violence, such as the Mayor of London, to embed this kind of work as part of their day-to-day addressing of crime, particularly working closely with young people. I would urge her to lobby City Hall to mainstream the violence reduction unit as part of its activity, rather than relying on Westminster funding, although we will of course support the capital substantially, as we have in the past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Department spends an enormous amount of time and energy promoting Help to Buy to those who are eligible, and the new Help to Buy scheme, which will come in once the current scheme finishes, will be targeted very carefully at first-time buyers. I am more than happy to take any suggestions she may have for how we can focus it more on those on lower incomes.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

There is a £3.1 billion gap in funding for children’s services and a £4.3 billion gap in funding for adult social care, but, eight months before the start of the new financial year, local authorities have no idea what their funding settlement will be for the coming financial year or beyond it. What is the Secretary of State doing to address this crisis in local government funding, which is affecting the most vulnerable residents in communities up and down the country every single day? Why is he being so complacent?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The permanent secretary recently confirmed at the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that the Government have undertaken no evaluation of the impact of permitted development rights since they were expanded in 2013. While the Minister states that more than 46,000 homes have been delivered under the policy, he can have no accurate idea of the quality of those homes. Amid increasing reports of appalling quality, unsafe homes being delivered under permitted development rights, will he pause this policy so that a proper evaluation can be undertaken?

[Kit Malthouse]

There is obviously a concerted attack taking place against permitted development rights, which I find distressing, given the sheer number of homes that they have produced for people who are desperate for those homes. As I have said, all homes, whether under permitted development rights or normal planning permission, have to comply with building regulations, and it is down to local authorities to ensure that that is the case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

It is always a pleasure to be greeted by impatient Members who, as I say, want more housing for the next generation. My hon. Friend is right: we need to constantly examine the effect of the planning system on the production of new homes. As he says, we issued a new planning framework back in July. We are carefully assessing the impact of those policies, but if my hon. Friend has useful and constructive suggestions, I shall be more than happy to hear them.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The Government’s expansion of permitted development rights has caused multiple problems across the country. Such developments make no section 106 contributions towards new social housing. There are reports of homes of appalling quality, with children forced to play in car parks on industrial estates, and of homes in some areas being used only for short-term holiday lets, while developments in other areas are causing the loss of valuable employment space. Last week, the permanent secretary confirmed to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that the Government had undertaken no evaluation of this policy. Will the Secretary of State call time on the policy, so that a full evaluation of the impacts can be undertaken?

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Okay. My final question is on neighbourhood plans and the areas, to which you alluded earlier. Do you think that neighbourhood plans could be put in place by self-defined areas?

Ruth Reed: My understanding was that you could put forward an area and have it accepted. That is, to a degree, self-defining.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Q May I have your views on the availability and level of resources to support communities that want to undertake neighbourhood planning? What more could be done to enable and encourage neighbourhood planning in more deprived communities and in areas of high housing need, for example, where there are voices that might not be heard in the planning process, but that might stand to benefit from the neighbourhood planning process?

Ruth Reed: I personally believe that there should be a proactive role for local authorities to instigate and identify neighbourhoods, and put in train a process. There should also be an opportunity to financially enable not only the technical aspects of planning, but—on behalf of the Royal Institute of British Architects—to provide design capacity to enable them to input well-worded design policies, and even design codes so that individual neighbourhoods can give expression to the kind of development that they would like to see, and to make it real to them. We believe that there may now be financial provision for this. One of the problems in planning is that it is a paper, two-dimensional base exercise. Sometimes you need people like architects to make it real and three-dimensional and to be able to explain what it would look like, using models or digital models.

Jonathan Owen: The pump-priming funding provided by the Government to support neighbourhood plan development has been an element that has encouraged parish councils to get involved, and it has driven neighbourhood planning of the 2,000 plans that have been produced. Parishes have led 90% of them, so they are embracing that opportunity, and I would like that to continue. The element in the Bill requiring planning authorities to identify the kind of advice that they would provide to groups and draw up neighbourhood plans is helpful. Where it falls a bit short is where it does not set out what is required or expected by the local planning authority.

We would like to see something more formal by way of either a statutory memorandum of understanding or a code of practice relating to what might be expected of the local planning authority in terms of helping with community involvement, helping them to access the principal authority website to do consultation work on it and that kind of thing, rather than just a basic entitlement. So it would be a mix of hard cash and softer things that could be provided by the planning authority. I know that would cost them money, and there was a good debate this morning about planning authority resources.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

That is encouraging. It is certainly the case that it is possible to make more money holding land and trading it than it is developing it. The other area to look at, I suggest, is developer finance, because none of them have got any balance sheets that they can use to expand their operations beyond where they are. I am grateful for the answers, Minister.

[Helen Hayes]

Q I have two quick questions. Can you address the concerns that Carole Reilly raised about neighbourhood forums and their lack of accountability, lack of infrastructure and resources and lack of clear identifiability to local communities? There were also issues raised—I have raised them on a number of occasions—about the intensity of resource you need genuinely to engage a diverse community in a deprived area.

Gavin Barwell: This is a real challenge and I am very open to talk to the hon. Lady, to the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, and to others who have an interest in this matter about how we go about doing things. As I said, there is extra funding in deprived areas that a rural parish would not get. There are also people who have expertise in this area and who can engage with groups.

There is a democratic issue; I do not think we can get around that. Clearly, if someone is in a part of the country where there are parish councils, there is an automatic accountability and legitimacy that comes from that. Although we can now have parish councils in Greater London, I think there is only one in the whole of Greater London; we do not tend to have that kind of infrastructure. So there is a challenge in making sure that the plans that come forward have that legitimacy and are genuinely owned by the whole of the community, and not by a particular group of people who have a certain interest.

If we look at the average turnout in referendums on neighbourhood plans, it is running at about a third, which is actually not that different from the kind of turnout that we would see generally in local elections. That is quite an encouraging average figure in terms of trying to ensure that there is some legitimacy—I think the hon. Lady would regard her local council as legitimate on that kind of turnout—but there is certainly more that we can look to do and I am very happy to have a dialogue with her about that.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Helen Hayes and Kit Malthouse

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

Q I have a further question for Duncan Wilson. You mentioned concerns about archaeology. It seems there have been indications from the Government that some assurance might be provided around the question of archaeology, and we will wait to see what comes forward in that regard. Are there other areas of heritage about which you have potential concerns relating to pre-commencement planning conditions?

Duncan Wilson: Less severe ones. A number of concerns were raised in the context of the Housing and Planning Act that were perhaps more significant than in relation to this particular clause, other than for archaeology. Our concerns on brownfield land, design, massing and density are not really centre stage, as I understand, with pre-commencement conditions here.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Obviously, the Government are trying to strengthen neighbourhood plans in the Bill. Do you think the provisions they have in there at the moment are likely to eliminate the erratic decision making from the Planning Inspectorate that we have seen with regard to neighbourhood plans?

Hugh Ellis: They go some way. The relationship between neighbourhood plans and local plans in law is still really quite problematic. There is a direction of travel question about whether or not we end up with a full coverage of neighbourhood plans and in some sense an idea that they might replace local plans. That is talked about but it is important to get that right.

There are a range of challenges. For example, the neighbourhood planning process is producing neighbourhood plans of variable coverage, predominantly in areas with the social and economic capital to prepare them. In law, neighbourhood plans escape a number of the placemaking duties that the wider planning system has applied; those on good design, for example, in law, do not apply to neighbourhood planning but do apply to local plans. I think these measures try, do they not, to fill some of those loopholes in relation to the status of an unadopted neighbourhood plan as it comes through the process, which might help solve part of that appeal process.

For us there is still a wider issue about how the system will work as a whole and the friction that is inevitably produced by neighbourhood plans coming forward in advance of a local plan; the different legal status between the two plans; and ultimately the adoption of a neighbourhood plan as part of the development plan. Part of this debate could very usefully settle what the vision is for neighbourhood planning. Is the idea that the neighbourhood plan ultimately becomes the key lodestone of the English planning process with local plans doing something else, or are local plans going to remain intact? That is a very important question going forward, because many neighbourhood plans are not dealing with the full range of placemaking issues that we need to resolve. That is perfectly fine because communities have a measure of choice about what they do with them, but in relation to good design, flood risk and climate change, for example, those issues are not well represented in the content of neighbourhood plans. So, this is a step; I am not sure it resolves the full range of legal issues that we are confronted with between neighbourhood and local plan status.