Debates between Luke Pollard and Bob Seely during the 2019 Parliament

Thu 22nd Sep 2022
Wed 26th May 2021
Environment Bill
Commons Chamber

Report stage & Report stage & 3rd reading

Ukraine

Debate between Luke Pollard and Bob Seely
Thursday 22nd September 2022

(1 year, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Luke Pollard Portrait Luke Pollard
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I am grateful for that intervention. The shadow Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), and I were in Kosovo only a few months ago, where we witnessed the effects of the horrible sexual violence that was used as a weapon of war. The determination of the international community then was that it would never be repeated, but it has been in conflicts ever since. We need to make sure that not only is the evidence collected, but the victims are given the support that they will need, in many cases, for the rest of their lives. As we made it clear that killing civilians will not be countenanced, so we make it clear that using rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war will not be countenanced. We will come after those people as well.

Bob Seely Portrait Bob Seely
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In the Syrian war, the Russians and their Syrian allies targeted hospitals as primary targets. Does the hon. Member agree it is regrettable that at the time we did not say and do more and that the international community did not say and do more to hold responsible those senior army officers who were responsible for the deliberate targeting of hospitals, which is one of the most basic breaches of the Geneva conventions?

Luke Pollard Portrait Luke Pollard
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I am grateful for the hon. Member’s intervention, and I do tend to agree with him. As a country, we need to take stock of the freedom that Putin has been given over many years—not just in Syria or parts of the countries bordering his country, but in Crimea—because the tactics the Russians are using in Ukraine now have been perfected over many years and the space the international community has given him to do that has encouraged the use of many of those tactics. We need to look carefully at how we stand up for such individuals in the future, but we will do that by standing firmly with the people of Ukraine at this time. I will make some progress before I give way again.

It is clear that Vladimir Putin is a bully. His partial mobilisation announcements along with his sham referendums to illegally annex large swathes of Ukraine are shameless. They are a cynical attempt to justify a war that has gone badly wrong for Russia. We should view partial mobilisation as weakness—an attempt to hide the fact that, so far, Russian strategy has failed, weapons have failed, command and control has failed, and none of Russia’s war objectives has been met. Putin’s latest miscalculation will lead to more Russian families losing their sons, more Ukrainians being killed and more suffering. The mobilised forces sent to Ukraine will be on the receiving end of high-end western weaponry, and a determined and morally just Ukrainian military defending every inch of its country. In these circumstances, with the poorly equipped Russian conscripts facing cold weather, it is perhaps not surprising that we are seeing so many reports of desertion and troops being unwilling to fight. That means Putin will, I regret, resort to more and more fear to try to achieve his objectives.

Environment Bill

Debate between Luke Pollard and Bob Seely
Luke Pollard Portrait Luke Pollard
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I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention; I know he always listens carefully to my speeches on this subject, and his question is a good one. We are facing a bit of a planning crisis. I am concerned that the developers’ charter that has been set out by the Government regarding planning on one side of Government practice does not fit neatly with what is being proposed in this Bill, on this side of Government practice.

If we are to have the expansion in a free-for-all for development that is being proposed by one Government Department, it is hard to see how that fits with the biodiversity protections on another side of Government. I would like them to gel together, because I want developers to provide the more affordable homes, the zero-carbon homes and the low-carbon homes that we need in all our constituencies. To do that, we need to send a clear message to them about how biodiversity is to be built into the planning system. Where, for instance, is the requirement for swift bricks to be built into new developments—building nature into them? Where is the requirements to have hedgehog holes in some of the fences, as we have seen from some developers?

There are an awful lot of good interventions on biodiversity and planning that create not unnecessary red tape or cost, but an environment where we can build nature into our new planning system. At the moment, I am concerned that those two things do not match together, which is why we want to see biodiversity much more integrated into the planning system. If I am honest, I think Government Members also want that to happen, which is why the planning reforms proposed in the Queen’s Speech do not fit with this Bill and why there is such concern.

Bob Seely Portrait Bob Seely
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These are good individual ideas, but the problem is actually a much wider one. If we do not have a recycling culture in housing and planning, we are just going to use lots of greenfield sites. Doing so would damage not only our environment, but our communities; we would be doing social damage by leaving brownfield sites undeveloped. We need to start taxing greenfield sites and doing radical stuff, so that we get joined-up Government and use that money massively to clear the way for developing brownfield sites. That is what we need to be doing—not just putting in nice little bee bricks, as important as they are.

Luke Pollard Portrait Luke Pollard
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I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I am a big fan of bee bricks as well as swift bricks. I fear that his intervention was aimed more at the Government than at me. I hope that the Minister will be listening carefully to her own Back Benchers, because, whether she agrees with the words of the Opposition or not, we need a bolder Environment Bill. We need it to be better joined up across Government because we are not there yet.

DEFRA was at the heart of Government when the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) was in charge, but it has lost its way. It has lost its va va voom. It is now dominated by a bland and dreary managerialism. Where is the energy and drive needed to tackle the climate crisis? The Department has a lot of decent junior Ministers—one of them is opposite me now—but I think it has lost its way. This Bill is okay. It is passable. It is a bit “meh”. But it is not landmark. Indeed, it is deliberately not a landmark Bill.

I say to the Minister: look carefully at Labour’s amendments and please let us work together to get this Bill back on track. I agree with her on the need for bold action; I just do not think that this Bill delivers it. If we are properly to address the climate and ecological crisis, we need more, bolder and decisive action than I am afraid this Bill includes.