Maria Miller: I commend my hon. Friend for her strength, courage and tenacity in speaking up on this important issue, drawing on her personal experience. She is a great role model for us all.
Maria Miller: What progress her Department has made on ensuring that more schools achieve good and outstanding ratings by Ofsted.
Maria Miller: Nine out of 10 of the schools in my constituency are good or outstanding, reflecting this Government’s commitment to high standards and the incredible hard work of the staff and the school leadership, but special schools have struggled to achieve the same in my constituency. How is my right hon. Friend helping them to get to where we want them to be, where they can all be good or outstanding?
Maria Miller: What progress her Department has made on ensuring that more schools achieve good and outstanding ratings by Ofsted.
Maria Miller: Nine out of 10 of the schools in my constituency are good or outstanding, reflecting this Government’s commitment to high standards and the incredible hard work of the staff and the school leadership, but special schools have struggled to achieve the same in my constituency. How is my right hon. Friend helping them to get to where we want them to be, where they can all be good or outstanding?
Maria Miller: First, I should point out that I think every debate should end with two Marias. I thank all Members who have spoken for their contributions today. Words matter, and the words we use matter even more because they are often repeated by people outside. That point has been clearly made by a number of Members today and I thank them for doing so. I thank everybody for their contributions and remind...
Maria Miller: The hon. Lady makes an important point. Will she join me in regretting ever hearing a Member of this House refer to their opponent as “scum”?
Maria Miller: I beg to move, That this House has considered the use of language in politics in light of International Women’s Day; agrees that the respectful use of language is an important feature of a strong and inclusive democracy; and calls on all parliamentary candidates to pledge that respectful language will be used at all times in the upcoming General Election campaigning period. I would like to...
Maria Miller: I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and for her support for the all-party parliamentary group. Trying to make this a place that people want to come to should be a cross-party effort, along with tackling social media abuse and not only holding online platforms to account, but ensuring that they take down abusive images and messages inciting violence against Members of Parliament. That...
Maria Miller: The hon. Lady is entirely right. In fact, I had included that analogy in my speech, but I took it out for the sake of time. I see that you are looking at me intently, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I know that a great many Members want to take part in the debate. As the hon. Lady says, there is a discussion to be had about language versus behaviour. We have tools such as a code of conduct and the...
Maria Miller: I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. He has made it clear that this is not only about security and policing and that we need to look for new ways to tackle what is fuelling anti-democratic abuse, which many hon. and right hon. Members are facing in their day-to-day work. Too often, that culture is developing online. Will he consider my call for a Committee of this House to monitor...
Maria Miller: Can my hon. Friend confirm that there will be more types of exceptional circumstances put forward in the future than there have been in the past?
Maria Miller: On that point about exceptional circumstances, many local authorities appear to be concerned that pleading exceptional circumstances will land them with a big legal bill and that they will be challenged in the courts. Can the Minister give some comfort to those authorities that such cases will be looked upon by planning inspectors as something that they expect?
Maria Miller: I am grateful for having secured this debate, and even more grateful that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety is here to respond. In December, the Government announced significant changes to their house building planning policy, giving new powers and freedoms to local planning authorities, such as mine in Basingstoke and Deane, through changes to the national planning...
Maria Miller: It is as if the hon. Lady has read what I am about to say—she is completely right. Cutting house building in Basingstoke will better reflect the situation we have in our community, and that is what my residents want to see, not those numbers continuing to be set from Whitehall.
Maria Miller: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Each of those considerations is different in our individual constituencies, so rather than taking a sledgehammer and telling each of our local authorities how many houses to build, they should reflect the nuance that the hon. Gentleman mentions. As the Secretary of State set out when he announced the changes to the national planning policy framework, it...
Maria Miller: I am sure the hon. Gentleman’s point has been heard loud and clear by the Minister. He is right that those are essential services on which all our residents now rely. The updated NPPF deliberately does not provide an exhaustive list of the applicable exceptional circumstances. The NPPF now shows that exceptional circumstances are not to be drawn narrowly, which was too often asserted in the...
Maria Miller: The right hon. Gentleman may not know this, but I am the mother of two musicians and I would have to agree with him—for fear of the consequences if I did not. I hope that the Minister has listened to him as well, as he makes a valid point. I know from conversations that I have had on the doorsteps in Basingstoke for many years that excessive house building is the No. 1 issue for many...
Maria Miller: It is against the law to silence victims of crime, but that is exactly what the Post Office did through the use of non-disclosure agreements, and this is just the most recent case of NDAs covering up mismanagement, misconduct and even crimes at work. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister consider banning their use in all severance agreements once and for all?
Maria Miller: I welcome the announcement. The evidence is clear that hundreds of victims have lost trust in the criminal justice system, so we need an exceptional process that ensures that every miscarriage of justice can be put right. However, the scandal involves more than financial redress. There are reports that the Post Office insisted on non-disclosure agreements, which silenced victims. In...