Debate on the Address — House of Commons, 2021-05-11
Topic: International Affairs
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): It shows that we can go on having these exchanges. Sometimes I will speak before the right hon. Gentleman, sometimes afterwards. He has now done both, so I congratulate him on that. I turn to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and congratulate him on the general success of the elections on Thursday. In trying to deliver the sorts of things that people want, we should recognise that there is good on all sides, and where the parties can overlap for progress it is best. If there is a contest of ideas, let the people decide In my constituency, the Labour party did better than some people expected. It is our job to try to find out what we can do to match it, although we took seats from other people, as well as Labour taking some seats from us. It is the kind of contest where if the Liberals are on the up in my area, Labour is down, and if Labour is on the up, the Liberals are down. Conservatives have control and responsibility for most of the decisions made for the quiet, undramatic provision of local services, which is what most of the local elections were about. They were not national elections. They were across the country, but they were about providing services to local people In this Queen’s Speech, there are many points to welcome. If I may say to the Prime Minister, one thing is not in the Queen’s Speech, and I am glad it is not there. When the Chancellor had to come to the House and announce he was cutting the official overseas aid budget, he said there would be legislation. I am glad that has changed. One of the points of leadership is being prepared to change one’s mind Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister lead his Government in re-establishing that target of 0.7% on aid and getting there as soon as possible? We know that the coronavirus epidemic has hurt us. It has hurt other parts of the world and hit the poorer people much, much harder, and our job is to try to help them to raise their standards Turning to building safety, there was a major fire at the end of last week. Three storeys caught fire. The builders who two years ago should have taken the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding off the building—that work actually started two weeks ago—said that the affected cladding did not catch fire. I think that was by chance, not design. The only people who have got no absolute right to sue the builders, the regulators and the component suppliers are the residential leaseholders themselves The only people who are being asked to pay the extra £10 billion—that is on top of the £5 billion that the Government have rightly started as their contribution towards the costs—are the leaseholders. They are left carrying £10 billion, with no right to sue those who are responsible. Will the Prime Minister kindly have a summit on fire safety with the affected groups—the cladding groups, the National Leasehold Campaign, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the officers of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform—and then put to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, together with the Chancellor, this simple point: provide all the money that is needed, whether the building is above or below 18 metres, and then find out who can sue those who are actually responsible What the Government are doing with levy and taxes is one thing, but that £10 billion outstanding makes people’s lives impossible. They have homes that are not safe, that are not saleable, that cannot be funded and that they cannot afford. If we want to know the effectiveness of the waking watch, we should remember that for a fire in daylight it was not effective. The Government have to step in, although not necessarily to say that the taxpayer will pay the money in the end—it can come from those who were responsible. It is partly a public responsibility on regulation, but it is mostly the responsibility of those who designed, built and went on selling components that were known not to be safe, or were not known to be safe I say to media people, "Do appoint a housing editor," because when housing stories come up, it is too bad when each individual producer or reporter has to learn from scratch what is happening. This is as important an issue as health, so it needs an approach that is consistent, effective and fast, and that works I turn to some small issues. One is the VAT treatment of yachts that are being brought back to this country—it may be a small point, but I think that the Treasury or VAT people should look at it. If VAT is paid on a yacht that is then kept abroad for more than three years, it has to be paid again when the yacht is brought back. That will not produce any revenue, because no one will bring their boats back All our important nautical brokerage in this country depends on those yachts being here, so we should either bring in a marine passport or lower the rates that are above 5%. We should have talks with the Royal Yachting Association and get on with finding a solution, not just say, "It is the way the thing has to be." It is not the way the thing has to be; it is not right, and it will not work. I confess an interest, but my boat is an open canoe, not a boat that is affected by the 5% rate or the 20% suggestion I know that many hon. Members want to speak, but I turn briefly to the importance of the Government’s approach to levelling up. More and more young families and households are coming to the south coast and living there as happily as those in more mature households, who may be of retirement age but are not inactive. All of them need the kinds of things that I think are now being provided with the support of all parties Education is now much better than it was. The prospects of people getting training and apprenticeships and moving on to further and higher education are good; I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who has been doing the media round today and putting forward the Government’s approach.