Steve Barclay MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I do share them. Just for the Minister’s benefit, the hon. Gentleman’s constituency will be materially affected by the Wisbech incinerator in terms of transport; when the developers doubled its size in order to take it out of the local planning process, they created a different problem of how to get sufficient waste to run it. Therefore, it has to take in waste from further and further afield. As Wisbech is a market town, accessed by single carriageway roads—the A47 is single carriageway into Wisbech—bringing waste through my neighbour’s constituency will cause huge traffic there, as it will in many other constituencies across the eastern region. A BBC report highlights the severe environmental damage that would be caused by the proposed incinerator, but the hon. Gentleman also highlights a wider point about lack of transparency. As in the King’s dyke fishing example, as a constituency MP one chases on behalf of constituents to get them some answers, yet organisations feel they are unaccountable. That brings me to my final point. It will not surprise the Minister that, as a member of the last Government, I quite frequently raised my constituency concerns—before I was in the Department—with relevant Secretaries of State, and I know that they raised those with the EA; yet, as we see with Saxon Pit, it still failed to take prosecution action over seven years while saying to people locally, “It is a priority case.” As Secretary of State myself, I found the organisation so unresponsive that I had to take the unusual step of issuing a ministerial direction. In fact, I issued two in my six months in the Department, where none had been issued in the seven years before. I fear that Ministers now need to look at the accountability to democratic control of not just the Environment Agency, but Natural England—not least given the three interventions we have heard from colleagues across the House.

• 3 Apr 2025 · Waste Incinerators · Hansard source

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  That is a fair point, which is addressed in DEFRA’s December paper. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) highlighted, there are two at Huntingdon, another at Peterborough and two at Boston. There is already a concentration, so I do not accept the point about the east of England in that paper. My point is that we need to see analysis from DEFRA around the bridging issue for the next few years as the Government meet their legal target to reduce the amount of waste by 50% between 2019 and 2042. The amount of residual waste is coming down and we already have sufficient capacity, but there is a bridging issue. There will be short-term options around landfill refuse-derived fuel exports. We need to look at the respective merits of building huge incinerators and the damage that they will do compared with the short-term bridging options. The second point is that the waste mix has changed. That was a feature of the BBC report that the hon. Member for Derby South highlighted. Burning food waste produces less CO 2 than putting it in landfill, but burning plastics produces 175 times more carbon dioxide than burying it. The reason that that matters—to my first point about bridging—is that the mix going into incineration has fundamentally changed from when the planning rules were initially put in place. What we have seen, and what the BBC highlighted, is an increase in food waste being dealt with through anaerobic digestion. As the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pointed out, the predominant waste now going to incineration is plastics. It is the burning of plastics that drives the environmental damage, and that is why the hon. Member for Derby South correctly pointed out that it is the dirtiest way that the UK generates power. My second question is whether the Minister will commit to publishing a composition analysis study of the residual waste treated at energy recovery facilities, as I asked for in a written question on 16 October. DEFRA has confirmed that it is undertaking a composition analysis study, but it was not published with the December analysis. Will the Minister commit to publishing that, so that we can see where the waste is going? Again, that fundamentally changes the environmental case around incineration.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Police Funding: Cambridgeshire · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend highlights an important point about rural crime. He has powerfully set out how Cambridgeshire is underfunded per capita compared with other forces, and he has explained how that is more acute in areas such as Fenland and rural constituencies. Can he also see the irony in the Prime Minister launching his housing strategy in Cambridge, and in the fact that the Government say they want to see much more housing in Cambridgeshire, yet their per capita funding discriminates against Cambridgeshire as an area?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Planning Committees: Reform · Hansard source

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  There are a remarkable number of contradictions. The Minister says that he wants more democratic oversight while removing the democratic local voice of councillors. He said he is being decisive while also saying he has existing powers that he has not used and that this is not a firm set of proposals. He is not proposing anything around tech and improvements, while the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is giving a big speech this week on exactly that, as the centrepiece of Government change. Why does the Minister think that the way to bring clarity to the transport system and local plan is to tell people to engage with the local plan, then at the same time tell them that if they do so, the people most engaged with that, the democratically elected councillors, will be ignored if they then follow that local plan?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  I would never suggest such things of you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could not quite spot the hon. Lady’s question—it seemed to be more of a statement. I am sure that farmers in Tiverton, as well as those around the country, want to know why the £50 million that was allocated in May has not been given out. The Lib Dems may not care about that money, but Conservative Members want that support for farmers. Secondly, the £75 million of support for internal drainage boards needs to be deployed in full and without delay. Thirdly, the £220 million allocated for technology and productivity schemes needs to be honoured in full. Fourthly, the Government need to confirm there will be no cuts to the farming budget—an issue that is causing so much concern—so that we do not lose the £2.6 million that has been allocated for this year. Fifthly, we need a commitment from the Government that they will keep the farm to fork summit in Downing Street, they will have the food security index and they will appoint a tenant farming commissioner. Looking further ahead, the Government must do more to give farmers confidence. That means ruling out the removal or reduction of the agricultural property relief, better protecting farmland from schemes for solar and pylons, and ensuring that food production is central to the land use framework. Only by doing those things can they show that they are backing our farmers and protecting food security, but sadly I fear an urbancentric Government simply will not do that, not least with a Labour Secretary of State who is currently getting pushed around by his Cabinet colleagues. It is only this Conservative team who are, and will be, a voice for rural businesses, rural communities and our rural way of life, with improved farming production at its very heart.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State should be doing that, but there is a marked difference between us. I persuaded the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to strengthen the guidance against solar farms, but the Secretary of State is being pushed around by his Cabinet colleagues. The Energy Secretary has already walked all over him, granting permission for a whole load of solar farms, and allowing the clustering that is causing such an issue. I will give the House an example of how the Secretary of State is not championing farming. Baroness Rock was a true voice in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for tenant farmers, and she wrote the review of tenant farming that I commissioned in a previous role in No. 10, but it seems that she has been sacked or asked to leave the DEFRA board. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State said why such a respected and talented figure had to leave her role.

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

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  My right hon. Friend gets to the nub of the issue, because if a Government are promising change, they need to be able to say what the timelines are. They need to say what the budget is and what legislation they will pass to deliver that. On all those things, there is silence in this King’s Speech. The Labour manifesto has lots of high-sounding things that are hard to disagree with. Labour wants more food security, and says that food security is national security, and we on the Opposition Benches agree. Labour says it wants to raise animal welfare, and we have done a huge amount to do so. That is fine. However, if the Government say they want to end the badger cull, when will they do that? There is nothing in the King’s Speech on that, so what are the timelines? Dairy farmers would like to know. Will the Secretary of State publish the analysis from the chief veterinary officer on what the impact of ending the cull would be on the trajectory? We know that the current approach has seen TB cases come down in England from 34,500 in 2018 to below 20,000. Certainly the advice that I had was that vaccinations would not be ready for some time. Will he publish the trajectory and tell us when the cull will end?