Chinese Embassy Development
Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Kieran Mullan(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Matthew Pennycook
I do recognise that point. As I have made clear, the Government will stand with and support members of the Hong Kong community. As I said—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber for this—the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), and the Minister for Security met members of the Hong Kong community only recently. We will continue to stand with them.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The Minister has made it clear that he will not comment on the specifics of the case, and I will not ask him to, but can he offer a view in principle on why we would ever offer a foreign state with known cyber-espionage capabilities that it deploys regularly easier access to critical cyber-infrastructure?
Matthew Pennycook
Again, the hon. Gentleman is making assumptions that I do not recognise, and thereby tempting me to comment on the case. I am not going to make blanket, in-principle statements, given the quasi-judicial nature and involvement of planning Ministers in the process.
Planning Committees: Reform
Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Kieran Mullan(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Matthew Pennycook
It is progress, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We do need to speed up the process of local plan development. In a way that the previous Government never did, we are going to adhere to the timelines we are setting for local plan development—for new-style local plans to come forward—and we need to ensure that individual planning applications are made in a timely manner, within the set timelines, to give certainty to the sector that what they bring forward can be built out if they put an application in.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
May I say gently to the Minister that he has been passed a bit of a dud here? I think that experienced Labour Members know that, which is why not a single long-standing Member on the Minister’s Benches has stood up to defend this specific policy this afternoon. Is that because Labour Members, like most MPs, know that the local planning committees they have been involved in and seen make important decisions on a regular basis? They cannot be replaced by planning officers, because those officers are not embedded in local communities. Does the Minister really think that planning officers can replace local councillors on important matters such as this?
Matthew Pennycook
I say to the hon. Gentleman that 96% of planning application decisions are already made by planning officers. What we are saying is that there is a way to streamline the system that we want to test views on, which will ensure that the most significant and controversial applications still come to elected members, but that we get the full use out of trained planning officers, who are embedded in their local communities and are cognisant of what a local plan requires.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Kieran Mullan(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Labour’s housing targets desperately need reform to take into account land availability around protected landscapes. The Government have said that the answer is the costly planning appeals system. Does the Minister think that is a good use of taxpayers’ money?
Matthew Pennycook
Local plans have to go through examination for a determination of whether they are sound. Hard constraints, such as the type that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned, will be taken into account when those plans are tested, even under the new framework.