Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Hall and Peter Bottomley

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

What his timetable is for bringing forward legislative proposals on leasehold and commonhold reform. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

We are committed to reforming the leasehold market and have already set out that we will reduce ground rents to zero on future leases and ban new leasehold houses. We are also working with the Law Commission on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage. Given the impact of covid-19 on the agenda and the Government’s wider work to restart the economy, we will bring forward legislation on leasehold as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Mr Speaker, if you and the Minister came to Worthing station and walked from there to my flat, you would walk past a site where Homes England could help Worthing Borough Council to produce extra social housing and potentially more leasehold or commonhold homes. Six times a year, on average, over the last 10 years, Ministers have talked of progress on ending leasehold abuse and providing better homes for the future, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said just now. This time, can we have action, and could Ministers also look at whether statutory instrument 2020/632, the Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development and Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020, takes into account the disbenefits to leaseholders of people putting extra storeys on leasehold blocks?

[Luke Hall]

I know that my hon. Friend has raised issues about this particular statutory instrument. We believe we need to encourage the densification of our towns and cities to allow for additional homes. In the last four years, 60,000 additional homes have been delivered through permitted development rights for change of use. This new permitted development right could deliver an extra 800 homes a year for families across our cities and help to protect the countryside too. Of course, permitted development rights remain subject to prior approval by the local planning authority on a number of matters, including the amenity of neighbours and occupiers of the block.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Luke Hall and Peter Bottomley

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for his work as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism. I agree that people should take action. We are proud to support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which unites experts and 34 member states behind the need for holocaust education, remembrance and research. In 2016, the IHRA created a working definition of antisemitism, which is now internationally accepted. The alliance seeks to ensure that no one can shirk responsibility for their words by playing with semantics, but it will succeed only if organisations sign up to the definition and support it. The IHRA definition is already used in guidance for the police and Crown Prosecution Service, to help them to identify hate crime. I urge public organisations in the UK to sign up to the IHRA definition.

I will finish by saying a few words about the holocaust memorial and learning centre we plan to build in Victoria Tower gardens next to Parliament. We are fortunate that the foundation delivering the memorial is headed up by the right hon. Eric Pickles and the right hon. Ed Balls. By placing the memorial and learning centre next to Parliament, we ensure that it will serve as a permanent reminder that political decisions have far-reaching consequences.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The main purpose of today’s debate is to highlight the importance of people remembering, not forgetting, and of making sure that future generations know what the survivors knew and what the outside world knew and did not stop. May I suggest that today is not the day to go into too much detail of proposals that do not fulfil the specification of September 2015 for a national memorial? We might do better on another day.

[James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

rose—