We need your support to keep TheyWorkForYou running and make sure people across the UK can continue to hold their elected representatives to account.
Donate to our crowdfunderAndrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking in response to the consultation entitled Powers for dealing with unauthorised development and encampments; and when he plans to implement the measures proposed in that consultation.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to define dominance in respect of the proportion of Traveller sites in a local area.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to paragraph three of his Department's April 2015 Planning policy for Traveller sites, what evidential test is used to ensure that the interests of the settled community are respected; in what way the provision of Traveller sites facilitates the traditional and nomadic way of life of Travellers; and...
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that the Land Registry is kept up to date in respect of land holdings on Traveller sites.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what procedures should be followed by which bodies when non-Travellers live on Traveller sites.
Andrew Selous: rose—
Andrew Selous: Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. Although I wish the House were completing the necessary Brexit legislation today, it is always a particular pleasure and, indeed, a responsibility to speak on the important subject of the NHS. I, too, start by thanking every member of NHS staff —including two members of my own family—for what they do. The pressures on them are unrelenting,...
Andrew Selous: It is even worse, then. Some trusts are paying up to 16% of their income on PFI payments. We really must learn from that and do much better.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure safe and adequate levels of staffing across the NHS to protect patient safety.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to encourage and support people to enter the nursing profession.
Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to increase the number of medical school places to meet growing demand.
Andrew Selous: Does the hon. Lady agree that one easy early win would be to do something quickly about engine idling? All of us could turn off our engines when stuck in traffic and at traffic lights. It costs nothing, and we could do it now.
Andrew Selous: “This cannot be right.” Those were the words of Dr Jackie Sebire, the assistant chief constable of Bedfordshire police, after her officers had spent four to five days trying to find a 16-year-old boy who had gone missing from his unregulated accommodation in Bedfordshire. Her officers had spent an enormous amount of time and effort to return the child to a provision that was inadequate,...
Andrew Selous: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will go on to call for exactly what he has just highlighted to the House. Many of these homes also have adults up to the age of 25 in them, and we know that drug taking is prevalent in many of them. We know that a young man on bail for knifepoint robbery was placed in a home with 16-year-old girls. We know that two girls were placed alongside a...
Andrew Selous: More data is always good. I will come on to suggestions about what local authorities need to do. In 2018, the top six locations for episodes of missing persons accounted for one quarter of the overall number of missing episodes in Bedfordshire. Of those 1,049 episodes, 779—three-quarters of the total—came from these unregulated settings. The Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the...
Andrew Selous: My hon. Friend is absolutely right; like him, I am a huge admirer of Dr Krish Kandiah, and I will say a little bit about that charity and what it can do later in my remarks. In three of the unregulated homes that I visited in September with the police, only three out of the 17 children there came from Bedfordshire. All the other children were from other local authorities. They had all gone...
Andrew Selous: I completely agree; that is another reason for more regulatory oversight, which I will call for. Perhaps this issue needs to come up in planning policy as well. Central Bedfordshire sends very few of its own children out of the area. As a Bedfordshire Member of Parliament, I am simply not prepared to accept this wholly unacceptable diversion of police resources caused by other local...
Andrew Selous: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Why should the duty of care fall only on the police and not on the sending local authority or on the home itself? She makes a pertinent point. It is also completely unacceptable how little information is shared between sending and receiving local authorities, and between sending and receiving police forces. All local authorities have a statutory duty to...
Andrew Selous: I look forward to working with Members of good will on both sides of the House to get this right. This is not a party political issue, and we just have to get it right for children, for police forces and, frankly, for the taxpayer. Sending police forces do not notify Bedfordshire police of the criminal records of the children concerned. One young arsonist was sent to my constituency without...