Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We cut fuel duty for everybody across the country by record sums. The right hon. Gentleman talks about pensioners; we are giving £850 more to every pensioner across the country. He talks about the cost of energy; everybody is going to get another £400 to help them with the costs of energy.

The blissful fact about the Liberal Democrats is that people do not actually know what their policies are. They are able to go around the country bamboozling the rural communities—not revealing that they are, in fact, in favour of massive new green taxes, which is what they want, and not revealing that they would like to go back, straightaway, into the common agricultural policy, with all the bureaucracy and all the costs that that entails. They do not say that on the doorstep.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Q6. There are proposals for up to 10,000 housing units on flood-prone greenfield sites to the west of Ifield in my constituency that would also represent intolerable pressure on local services. May I have an assurance from the Prime Minister that as we update planning legislation, we will enshrine the “brownfield first” principle for new developments, and save our environments and our services?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right. We encourage the use of suitable brownfield land, and our policy is brownfield first, everywhere and always.