Steve Barclay MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Jun 2025 · Environment Agency: East of England · Hansard source

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  It does need fundamental reform. I became Secretary of State very close to the general election, but one of my first acts was to issue an instruction to take more rigorous enforcement action more generally on water pollution. I know that current Ministers want to see a more robust set of actions. I come to my final point. Not least given the Government’s majority and where we are in the parliamentary cycle, there is an opportunity to look at the Department’s relationship with its arm’s length bodies. The Department of Health and Social Care is going through that exact process with NHS England. I encourage the ministerial team to reflect on that, not least for when in some years’ time they are explaining how, if there is lack of action, that sits with some of their priorities. Irrespective of that, as we heard in interventions from across the House, the EA’s lack of transparency and accountability on its operational performance needs to be addressed. I encourage the Minister to focus some time in her busy schedule on doing that.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Environment Agency: East of England · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the performance of the Environment Agency in the East of England. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I have secured this debate to highlight concerns about the operational performance of the Environment Agency in the east of England. This reflects both my time as the Secretary of State overseeing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the run-up to the general election and numerous interactions with it in my capacity as a constituency MP. As we are meeting the week before a comprehensive spending review, it is perhaps prudent to start with the usual excuse given by organisations for poor operational performance: a lack of people or funding. According to the Environment Agency’s own annual outcomes, its full-time equivalent staff increased in the last Parliament by 21% from 10,791 in 2019-2020, at the start of the Parliament, to more than 13,000 in 2023-24. Over the same period, its expenditure has gone up from £1.4 billion to £2.2 billion, so it has significantly more people and funding, while at the same time showing a remarkable lack of transparency or accountability to Ministers or Members of Parliament, and a remarkable lack of willingness to take enforcement action against those causing the worst levels of environmental damage.

• 4 Jun 2025 · Environment Agency: East of England · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member absolutely catches the point raised earlier about the lack of accountability and transparency, and the highlights fact that, although the EA has had more money and resource, it is not targeting priority cases or long-standing issues, while often telling Members of Parliament that they are priorities. I will come on to that, because there is a wider issue of which the Minister needs to be aware: the slowness to act and lack of accountability. Turning to the east of England, and my own constituency in particular, let me give three examples that cover a range of scenarios. The first is the dumping of more than 122,000 tonnes of waste at Saxon Pit in Whittlesey between October 2017 and February 2018. The EA’s initial response was to say that it was totally unaware of 122,000 tonnes of waste being dumped—but, regardless of whether the EA had been asleep at the wheel, we would expect it to then act. In its initial response, the EA said that the operator must dispose of all the non-conforming waste by 10 October 2018; yet seven years on the waste remains in situ. The EA also promised prosecutions, because this was such a serious case. I will quote just one of many letters that I exchanged with the EA over this period. In 2021, the then-chief executive Sir James Bevan promised that “Saxon Pit is being treated as a priority”. The EA’s investigation took a further 14 months to complete, but in June 2022 it said that a “final set of interviews…will take place shortly”. In October 2022, the chief executive asked me to, “be assured that my teams are prioritising this work over other competing criminal inquiries”. Three years ago, the EA said it was prioritising this serious case, with more 122,000 tonnes of waste, over other cases. It was a priority case. Yet three years on, and seven years on from the incident, we still have no prosecutions. To go back to what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said a moment ago, what cases is the EA prosecuting with its additional resource, if it is not prosecuting at Saxon Pit? I thought that the Minister might reflect, “Perhaps that was simply an issue of the past Government. Perhaps things have changed—the Environment Agency has perhaps changed its approach.” I therefore thought it would be helpful to give a second example, from the last year: a very serious pollution incident at King’s dyke, in Whittlesey, the same town as Saxon Pit. I have seen internal papers from the Environment Agency that show that it described the problem, and reported it to the Department, as a category 1 pollution incident. For those not familiar with the term, a category 1 pollution incident is the most severe level, involving a “serious, persistent…or extensive impact…on the environment, people…or property”. The BBC reported that an estimated 900 fish were killed in close vicinity to an Anglian Water overflow pipe, and that the pipe had discharged for 23 hours due to a suspected pump failure. When I spoke to Anglian Water and the Environment Agency, no other credible reason was given for the serious incident. I was then told that water samples had been taken and would be quick to establish whether the overflow pipe was the cause of the category 1 incident. I was told on 10 October 2024 that the lab tests were under way, that it would take a week for them to determine the cause, and that an internal decision would be taken on enforcement in November. November then became December. December became January. We kept chasing, and we were told, “No, it’s no longer January; it’s May.” We chased again in May, and were told September. This is an issue that Ministers say—and I do not doubt for a minute their sincerity—is an absolute priority for the Government. We have the most serious level of pollution incident, a category 1, which happened in September, yet the Environment Agency says it will not tell the public of Whittlesey the cause of it for at least a year—even though I suspect that, internally and within the Department, it is already known whether Anglian Water was the cause and whether, therefore, a criminal investigation should follow. I do not believe that is a sufficient level of transparency or accountability. Let me give a third example. As a former Minister, I thought I would try to pitch these examples in a way that is constructive across the House. One debate that the Minister may recall was led by one of her parliamentary colleagues, the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker). In it, he raised cross-party concerns—indeed, there were a number of the Minister’s colleagues present, though it was one of her colleagues on the Front Bench—around the environmental damage of incinerators. That is something that many charities usually more closely aligned with the left of politics, such as Friends of the Earth, have raised concerns about, but it is also an issue that many on the Government Benches have highlighted, and one that I have consistently raised myself. We now know that DEFRA’s own analysis suggests that there is enough national capacity for incineration. As more waste is recycled, the requirements for incineration come down. A BBC report highlighted the serious damage caused by these incinerators and by waste being burned because of anaerobic digesters. Most of that is now plastic, and it is the dirtiest way to generate power. No one would have thought a Government committed to the environment would want to see more incinerators being built. Incineration is on a par with coal as the dirtiest form of energy generation, yet we still do not have clarity from the Government on whether environmental permits will remain in force for incinerators that have not yet been built. One of those is in Wisbech. To put this incinerator in context, it is so big that one half its size in the neighbouring constituency was turned down—so they doubled it in size to make it a national scheme and take it outside local planning. It is sited 700 metres from the largest school in the district, accessed solely by single carriageway roads, with a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the fens. The Environment Agency, in issuing a permit, says it does not consider any of the environmental harm of transporting waste from six different counties to this small market town, because the permit only applies to the curtilage of the site itself. I simply ask, given the cross-party support on this issue, whether that decision by the Environment Agency is fit for purpose. I will add one further point. Is it not very odd that the decision to grant an environmental permit was made during the general election purdah period, a time when organisations are not supposed to take controversial decisions? I hope the Minister will follow up on that, because I know that many of her own Government colleagues are concerned. Where incinerators have not yet been built, we should not be embedding the environmental damage that so many charities and environmental groups, and so many of our own colleagues have expressed concern about.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that this concern about the high levels of immigration is also an issue of democracy and the sense of people not being heard? I noted the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) expressing support for deportations of foreign-born criminals, but unless the Government use levers—restrictions on visas for those countries not taking people back—we will again see too many foreign-born criminals in our prisons instead of being deported back to their native country.

• 15 May 2025 · Solar Farms · Hansard source

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  Indeed, the Government are creating an incentive to do the exact opposite of own manifesto pledge, which is why I started with that point. Let me come on to the second place where we can see Labour’s approach—in the Cabinet. Of course, we cannot witness the Cabinet in action at first hand, but it is very clear—certainly to someone who has had the good fortune to sit in Cabinet—how marginalised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has become. We see the Prime Minister announce things such as the compulsory purchase of farmland in order to support infrastructure schemes; we see the former Labour leader, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, make a whole raft of decisions in his first few weeks of office on massive solar farms, overriding DEFRA; we see the Deputy Prime Minister riding roughshod over the DEFRA Secretary of State on housing schemes; and we see the Chancellor phoning officials at DEFRA the night before to say that the sustainable farming incentive had been reduced so quickly that the Government have now had to concede in a legal case that their approach was wrong and allow a further 3,000 farm applications to proceed—and that is without any clear commitments in this area. When I warned at the election about Labour’s farm tax, the now DEFRA Secretary of State said that it was complete nonsense. Well, we have seen the Government introduce that tax and watched while the Treasury rode roughshod over the Department. We have a Department that is completely sidelined in the Government and failing to speak up not just for food security and farming, but for the very commitments that were made in the Labour manifesto. We see a theme running across a whole range of policy announcements that shows the instinct, the values and the priorities of this Government, who always believe that top-down knows best. They do not believe in localism. The implication for solar farms can be seen in how the delivery of the policy is happening on the ground. We are seeing clusters in the east of England, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) would point out, in areas of the best food production. We are seeing a gaming of the system, where the developers bring in consultants to grade the land in ways that sit at odds with historic knowledge of the value of that land.

• 15 May 2025 · Solar Farms · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is completely right; the issue is hiding in plain sight. When I was in the Government and sought to strengthen the protections for farmland, changes to the guidance were made, including bringing forward independent certification for agricultural land classification in soil surveys. We know at a constituency level that malpractice is going on and is not being challenged. The point is that that is not by accident. This is not an error of delivery. This is by design, and we can see that design in the raft of decisions made by the Energy Secretary in his very first weeks in office. Indeed, close to our constituencies, just near to Cambridge, there was an important announcement on a mega farm, which was made by the new Secretary of State against official advice. This matters because it is related to wider trust in our politics. A clear commitment was given to rural communities by Labour in its manifesto that is being broken. I will close, conscious that many colleagues want to participate in this debate, with this comment for Labour Back Benchers. It may be that Nos. 10 and 11 have simply decided that, with their majority, they can afford to sacrifice a number of their rural MPs who had not been expected to win the election, and it may by that they decided that those MPs were not essential, but it is baffling that there is so much silence. These MPs are voting for measures that are having such a harmful effect in rural constituencies, and those measures are so short term that they are putting our food security, which does indeed matter to our national security, at risk.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend recognise that there is an issue of democracy here? Successive Governments and Ministers have said that they want to toughen up the regime, but that is undermined by activist judges. That is a further reason to support the new clauses that he mentions.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It sounds like in one week my hon. Friend has seen more farms than the Secretary of State has since the general election. I draw his attention to the story in the Farmers Guardian that suggests the Secretary of State has been to only four farms since the general election. On a more serious point, that story also draws attention to the 84% of farmers who feel that their mental health has been affected by the autumn Budget. My hon. Friend is correctly setting out the financial implications of the changes, but does he share my concern about the mental health issues as well?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  To pick up the comments made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) on reservoirs, I also have a reservoir proposed for my constituency. I noted that the Secretary of State refused to be drawn on specific schemes, including when challenged by her own Front Bench. Perhaps the Minister can tell us in winding up how much more quickly a typical reservoir will be constructed as a result of this Bill and what the percentage of savings will be from that. That sort of detail is currently lacking from claims such as those made by the hon. Member. [ Interruption. ] I note the Minister’s wry smile. Let me start by picking up what the Government said last week and what they are saying this week. Last week, they said that they were scrapping a big quango, NHS England, because they wanted to ensure more democratic oversight, yet this week they are giving huge new powers to another quango, Natural England, so that they can seize land at below market value with little democratic oversight. Indeed, the hon. Member just mentioned the bat tunnel. It is a strange paradox to criticise that while supporting giving Natural England more powers to make similar decisions. There is not just a lack of consistency, but a lack of co-ordination across Government. The Government are currently consulting on the land use framework—the consultation is open and does not close until 25 April—but Ministers seem to be ignoring that. The Secretary of State talked in her opening remarks about the Bill unlocking land for nature and energy schemes, so we have one part of the Government consulting on the land use strategy while another part is legislating to seize land that is in the scope of that ongoing consultation to use for its schemes. It would be helpful if the Minister told us why he is ignoring the consultation that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is conducting. Perhaps we will just have a slew of Government amendments. If the new powers for Natural England are indeed necessary, that suggests that a significant amount of land will be taken for nature restoration schemes. We know from the land use strategy that about 12,000 farms will be lost over a generation. Either the power is needed—in that case, what is the impact of clause 72 on farmland and farm security?—or not much land will be taken as a result, in which case why do we need this power now? In the shadow Secretary of State’s opening remarks, he pointed to the number of Cabinet Ministers who have objected to development schemes in their own constituencies. That is a challenge that we all face, as Members of Parliament, when constituents raise concerns. Certainly, my experience of dealing with Natural England —not least as Secretary of State for DEFRA—was that once things were in primary legislation, it would often take a gold-plated interpretation. It may just be that Ministers are being bold, but it would be helpful to understand why they think that granting further powers to seize land will not weaken democratic control. When the Secretary of State was challenged on that, she said that the democratic controls were being maintained but streamlined. I do not think that is how Natural England will interpret it. Let me give the House a practical example. In the David Fursdon review of Dartmoor, there was conflict in interpretation regarding sites of special scientific interest between Natural England and farmers who had farmed the common for many years. There was huge tension, which David Fursdon skilfully managed to resolve, but that will not happen if the powers in the Bill are enacted. Finally, there is a paradox. The people we need on side to support nature restoration are the farmers, who are the ones who care most about nature. The Bill is a missed opportunity on things like incinerators, as it will make it easier to get planning permission to burn plastic, which is damaging for the environment and damaging for nature. And yet the farmers, who are the people we need on side, will have their land confiscated by an undemocratic quango that is being given more control, and there is nothing in the Bill to address that. Given the shortage of time, it would be helpful if, in closing, the Minister could clarify some of those points.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend think it is notable that current chief medical officer, who remains in post under this Government, in his 2023 annual report, cited specifically the concern that cold homes were a driver of hospital admissions? My hon. Friend will also note that delayed discharge from hospital is often a cause of pressure in urgent and emergency care departments, yet the Government have again delayed any changes to social care. While we all recognise that there are often challenges—indeed, as a Minister, I faced them myself—the hypocrisy of those who suggested before the election that there were simple solutions, and yet are now taking decisions that are actively leading to elderly, frail patients being admitted to hospital, at the same time as other decisions are deliberately delayed, is striking.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Not only standing, but I recall that in the debate on Monday, the hon. Gentleman was sitting next to the Minister, such was the pressure on seats. Given that none of the Minister’s colleagues have bothered to come to the debate, perhaps he might consider sitting over there again and giving the Minister a little company. As other hon. Members did, the hon. Gentleman is talking quite rightly about the speed and the targeting of the policy. The point is that it was a choice. There is a debate to be had about universal benefits and targeted benefits, but the speed with which it was done meant that some of the targeting, such as for pension credit, was not addressed. That has caused the cliff edge that hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about, so that if someone is just over the threshold, they lose out entirely. On choices, the Government have chosen to fund not just the Chagos deal, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) said, but the above-inflation pay rises to trade union workforces such as train drivers. The hardship cases set out by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others show that this issue is not about a wider debate on the economy, the mistakes made in the Budget or their effect on our growth projections, but about choice. The Government have chosen to give money to their other priorities—but before the election, they told pensioners that they would choose to prioritise them.

• 9 Dec 2024 · Skills Training · Hansard source

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  At the general election, the Government said that they would specifically target technical training in areas such as construction, engineering and digital, in order to take pressure off immigration into key roles, so why are they failing to act on the pay gap between further education teaching posts and those in schools?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  I begin by congratulating the Secretary of State and the ministerial team on their appointments and wishing them well. I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) and for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones), who did a lot of the hard yards in opposition and missed out on ministerial roles this time. I pay tribute to the excellent maiden speeches we have heard on both sides of the House today. We started with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), who I was delighted to hear has significant rural areas in his constituency and has an interest in this sector. We heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who gave the House an informed tour of his constituency. We had a fantastic speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who brings real practical and professional experience to rural affairs and rightly focused on the need to tailor policies to the needs of rural communities. We heard from the new hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer), who was very generous in his tribute to his much-respected predecessor. We had a brilliant speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths), who highlighted the importance of the rural economy and water quality—what an asset she will be in the House. We also heard from the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), who talked about farming as the beating heart of his constituency, while the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) spoke about the radicalism of a former figure from Middleton—I hope that will inform her relationship with the Government Whips Office moving forward. We had two outstanding closing speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) spoke about the importance of infrastructure in the rural economy, and focused particularly on planning. We also witnessed the huge experience, which is respected across the House, that the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) brings as a surgeon. I know he will be an important voice in health debates, among others. I am delighted that all those new Members chose to make their maiden speeches on the issue of rural affairs in the King’s Speech. Labour campaigned on a slogan of change, but they are offering only uncertainty to farming and fishing communities. It is no surprise that, just last night, the president of the National Farmers Union said that farmers are facing a “cliff edge” and are “being kept up at night” by the uncertainty. That uncertainty is not because the Labour Government have not had time to prepare their policies for farming and fishing; it is because the issue is not a priority for a Labour Government. That is why the Labour manifesto had just 87 words on farming and nothing at all on fishing. It is why this King’s Speech has nothing for the farming and fishing communities. It is why the Government have not even given any dates for when this uncertainty will end. We should be clear in this House that that is an active choice. It is a point that the Government have chosen to prioritise, in contrast to the prioritisation we were willing to make with the additional funding that we committed. Is it not all the more ironic that just a few years ago, the now Prime Minister went to the NFU and admitted that farming and rural affairs had for too long been an afterthought for the Labour party and promised to change that? That is an early example of promised change that is not then delivered. We can see that uncertainty in the farming budget. The Government have made no commitment to what the budget will be, or whether they are continuing it or increasing it. We were willing to make decisions to prioritise £1 billion of additional funding over this Parliament. There is nothing from Labour on that, leaving farmers uncertain. Can the Secretary of State confirm what his budget will be? Does he even know? Has the Chancellor told him? Can he even tell the House when he might know? We do not even know when the spending review will be. He is probably as much in the dark as the rest of us. What about the uncertainty on food security? We made commitments with the food security index, the annual farm to fork summit, the food security duty, the biggest ever grants payment, and the additional funding to deal with the wet weather that farmers had recently faced. What is the commitment from the Labour Government on food security? There is nothing in the King’s Speech about legislating for that. Can the Secretary of State confirm whether they intend to legislate and it was just an omission that they did not get around to, or is it something that he is now ruling out? What about the uncertainty about just how much farmland will be lost as a result of this Government? We know what their 2030 environmental targets are—to triple solar, to increase onshore wind and to increase the pylons connecting to offshore wind—so can the Secretary of State confirm to the House that he will publish before the summer recess an impact assessment on how much farmland will be lost as a result of delivering his 2030 environmental targets? Does he even know?