Westminster Hall

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 19 April 2023

[Sir Edward Leigh in the Chair]

Human Rights in Myanmar

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered human rights in Myanmar.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate and raise my concerns about the ongoing situation in Myanmar, which is deeply concerning and requires urgent attention by the UK Government and the wider international community.

This February marked the two-year anniversary of the coup in Myanmar and the start of the country’s military rule. This rule has been brutal and oppressive, with continued attacks on civilians and opposition forces and parties. According to the Burma Campaign UK briefing, since the attempted coup began, more than 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with the vast majority internally displaced within Burma. More than 21,000 people have been arrested, with around 17,000 still in detention. Under the previous military regime, there were usually just over 2,000 political prisoners. Thousands of civilians and members of resistance forces have been killed. Restrictions on freedom of speech, the media and the internet have increased significantly. The Burmese military effectively banned 40 political parties by deregistering them. Parties banned included the National League for Democracy, which won the last election, and significant ethnic political parties.

More than 60,00 civilian homes and properties have been destroyed. The Burmese military use airstrikes indiscriminately on almost a daily basis, with targets including medical centres, schools, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced people. Data from Amnesty International estimates that thousands of people have been arbitrarily detained, with more than 1,000 opposition politicians, political activists, human rights defenders and others convicted in unfair trials. There have been reports of widespread torture and abuse at the hands of military groups, and in the last year alone, at least 356 people have died in police custody. A report this week from BBC journalists—the first to report from the country since the coup—uncovered the oppressive nature of the country under military rule.

Myanmar is, at this moment, a nation torn of its freedoms. It is a nation run by military checkpoint, with corners occupied by sandbags, there to protect automatic weapon-wielding police from attacks by freedom fighters. Recently, there have been reports of the Burmese military Government launching airstrikes on their own citizens. Just over a week ago, the military launched a brutal attack on civilians taking part in a ceremony in the Sagaing region, with women and children present. It is estimated that around 100 people died in the attack, including 20 to 30 children—an example of innocent bystanders falling victim to this brutal regime.

The Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar have faced years of persecution at the hands of Government forces. In 1982, under the so-called Citizenship Act, they were effectively made stateless, and they now represent one of the largest populations of stateless people in the world.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Last week, the military authorities announced the arrest of 15 schoolteachers for participating in an online school organised by the National Unity Government, and last summer 30 more teachers were arrested for similar reasons. Does the hon. Member agree that the restriction of access to education and the intimidation of the country’s educators is a very concerning restriction of freedom?

[Naz Shah]

I absolutely agree. Without education, we do not have a defence of the defenceless, and it is only through education that we will educate the nation and move it forward.

An estimated 600,000 Rohingya Muslims remain in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, and this group are subject to persecution on a daily basis. The atrocities that the Rohingya Muslim population have been subjected to have been rightly condemned by the international community. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein described it as

“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

More than 730,000 Rohingya have fled the military’s crimes against humanity and acts of genocide, escaping to neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh. Even today, over 1 million Rohingya people live in makeshift settlements in squalid conditions in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. I thank Bangladesh, which is a country with a fast-growing economy, but it still has its own huge challenges and remains one of the poorest countries, and we must ensure that the international community keeps up its support.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the Government’s aid budget cuts mean that the camps have seen a dramatic fall in the humanitarian assistance that the UK provides—assistance that was very welcome when these problems began in 2017. The cuts are making it much more difficult for people to survive in the camps and leaving the Government of Bangladesh and other agencies in a difficult position. For five years, they have had to support and protect those who had to flee the military of Myanmar, having suffered ethnic cleansing and genocide according to the United Nations.

[Naz Shah]

I thank my hon. Friend, whom I admire for all her work and tireless efforts in this area. She is a passionate campaigner for the Rohingya people of Myanmar, and I agree with her powerful words: the Government need to look at this matter. The Labour party has been calling for more aid, and this situation is not acceptable.

Six years on from fleeing genocide, the Rohingya people still face restrictions on their movements and freedoms. Let me tell the House the story of Naripokkho, which is an activist group leading the fight for women’s rights in Bangladesh. Naripokkho was instrumental in supporting Rohingya rape victims in 2017, when Bangladesh once again found itself on the frontline of a rape epidemic as more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed its borders to escape genocide in neighbouring Myanmar. Among them were thousands of women and children who had suffered horrifying sexual violence at the hands of Burmese soldiers. Harrowing details emerged of women being tied to trees and subjected to rape for days, tortured by bamboo sticks and set on fire. Once again, echoing past events, many of the women would find themselves battling the stigma of unwanted pregnancy.

There have been attempts to resettle Rohingya refugees in Myanmar, but that action has rightly been condemned by Human Rights Watch, which has stated:

“Voluntary, safe, and dignified returns of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar are not possible while the military junta is carrying out massacres around the country and apartheid in Rakhine State.”

The conditions must be created to allow the Rohingya community to return home in safety, dignity and security. The Labour party has continuously called for the UK Government to heighten their work with international partners and call out regimes such as Russia and China, which are both alleged actively to have supplied the regime with oil and arms that have been used by the military to launch brutal attacks on the civilian population.

Labour is deeply concerned about the ongoing and long-standing abuse of human rights in Myanmar. The treatment of the Rohingya minority has been, and continues to be, a stain on the world’s conscience. We have consistently called for the announced arms embargo against Myanmar to be applied in full, and have echoed calls from activists for a suspension of exports of aviation fuel to the authorities in Myanmar. We have also called for the Government to engage with British shipping companies and insurance companies covering shipping to urge them to stop any involvement in the trade, as well as the redoubling of efforts to engage with regional partners to shut off the supply of aviation fuel and military equipment to the regime.

Too many times, we have said never again, then stood back only to see something happen once more. How many times must we learn the same lesson? We have an obligation—a moral duty—to work with our international partners to put an end to the seemingly endless suffering faced by the people of Myanmar. We must speak up for them and raise their plight on the international stage. Unless there are robust and tangible international consequences for the military rulers of Myanmar, the problems of the genocidal attacks on the Rohingya people, the military rulers’ airstrikes against their own civilian population and the large-scale refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar will not be solved.

Our view of the world is under threat from Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, China’s aggression in the Taiwan strait, and tyrannical autocrats across the world growing in confidence and strength. They do not believe in international law, nor do they respect human rights.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is setting out the international backdrop to the issues in Myanmar. Does she agree that the sooner full democracy returns in Myanmar, the better? The junta’s decision to postpone elections further will only make the situation in the country deteriorate much further, so rapid steps towards democracy must be taken as quickly as possible.

[Naz Shah]

I absolutely agree: democracy is the cornerstone of giving back to people the power they need.

Autocrats do not believe in international law or respect human rights. If we are to stand up to them and defend our rules-based order, we must show that our values are not just for show, and that they have consequence. We must show that we will stand up for human rights and for the oppressed and downtrodden, wherever they are, whatever they need. Like all people, the Rohingya people have a right to return home, but that will be possible only when there is lasting peace in the region. We have an opportunity and an obligation to act now to ensure that.

09:40

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) made a powerful speech, and I commend her for securing this debate.

It will probably come as no surprise to colleagues that the issue I want to speak about is the fundamental right of freedom of religion or belief, which is being stamped on in Myanmar, with targeted repression of religious actors. I will highlight one individual, but sadly he is one of many.

I ask colleagues to join me in condemning the recent sentencing on 7 April by a court in Myanmar of Rev. Dr Hkalam Samson to six years in prison on manufactured charges of terrorism, unlawful association, defaming the state and inciting opposition to the regime. I ask them to join the international calls for his immediate, unconditional release, and the release of others similarly arbitrarily detained. Yesterday, I tweeted to that effect in my capacity as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. I urge colleagues concerned about freedom of religion or belief in Myanmar, and indeed other rights and freedoms, to join that call.

The Foreign Secretary said just a short time ago in the House of Commons that freedom of religion or belief is a “canary in the mine” for human rights. Where persecution and discrimination occur on account of people’s beliefs, the loss of other human rights follows, as we have seen in the case of Dr Samson.

[Margaret Ferrier]

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners stated that more than 3,000 people have been killed in the military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, including activists and other civilians, such as those the hon. Lady has mentioned. I know she condemns the murder of innocent civilians, but will she join me in hoping that that will not deter the brave, peaceful activists advocating for democracy?

[Fiona Bruce]

I certainly will. I am very pleased that the hon. Lady has given me the opportunity to put on the record my profound respect for the people in Myanmar speaking out against the regime at great personal risk, many of whom are religious leaders.

Dr Samson is a former president of the Kachin Baptist Convention, and is the chairman of the Kachin National Consultative Assembly. He is an internationally respected religious leader and advocate for freedom of religion or belief and human rights in Myanmar. He has dedicated his pastoral career to promoting peace efforts, to justice and equality for Kachin Christian, to reconciliation and forgiveness, and to drug eradication. He has helped to facilitate the safe and voluntary return of more than 100,000 displaced Kachin to their homes. In essence, he has been accused of crimes simply because he has spoken out and criticised the military regime’s brutal repression, because he has met people and groups the military do not like, and because he has called for prayers for freedom for the people of Myanmar.

Dr Samson’s international advocacy is well renowned. In 2018, he came to the UK Parliament to meet Members. In 2019, he travelled to Washington DC to participate in the international ministerial conference to advance religious freedom, which was a forerunner of the international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief that we held here last July, at which once again concerns about freedoms in Myanmar were expressed.

I will close by quoting Benedict Rogers, who is an experienced analyst on east Asia, the author of three books on Myanmar, a friend of Rev. Hkalam Samson and, indeed, a friend to many of us here in this place, because those of us who have been concerned about freedoms in Myanmar have for many years benefited from Ben’s wise counsel and his experience of travelling to east Asia many times over many years. This week, Ben Rogers said:

“This sentence is an outrageous travesty of justice. Reverend Dr Samson is a completely non-violent Christian pastor and a brave and tireless advocate of justice, human rights and peace. He has been jailed simply for courageously speaking out against the Myanmar military’s barbaric atrocities perpetrated against the people of Myanmar. The international community must speak out strongly to demand his immediate release from prison and intensify efforts to apply targeted sanctions against Myanmar’s illegal military regime until all political prisoners are freed, the military ceases all attacks in the ethnic states and Myanmar is placed on a path of genuine federal democracy.”

09:46

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, in this important debate on human rights in Myanmar. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for bringing this important debate before the House.

Tragically, as we look around the world today, despite what we are told and led to believe, we see that human rights are not the universal, inalienable and inherent rights of all humanity that they are supposed to be. The fact is that so many across the globe continue to face persecution, abuse and injustice. Rights are nothing more than a myth—afforded to some but not others, unless of course it suits the needs of richer, more powerful nations.

In Myanmar, the Government and authorities are guilty of persecuting and oppressing countless different minorities. I echo the serious and important points made already, in particular by my hon. Friend, but I will keep my remarks in particular to the Rohingya, whose human rights and protections from abuses have been—I think we can all agree—non-existent. For decades now, the Rohingya have faced systemic discrimination at the hands of Myanmar’s Government. So despicable is their treatment, they are regarded as even less than second-class citizens in their own country, denied the right to citizenship, driven from public places and segregated from society.

For those with even a passing interest in the region, those human rights abuses faced by the Rohingya are not unknown—they are no secret. The Rohingya have been one of the most persecuted peoples for decades. The abuses are well documented, not just by numerous human rights organisations and the United Nations, but by the Rohingya who fled Burma for safer countries and even by the Rohingya diaspora living in the UK, including in my constituency, which I am proud to say is home to one of the largest Rohingya communities in the UK, if not the whole of Europe.

On that point, Bradford is a city of sanctuary from anywhere. We are a proud city of sanctuary, which welcomes people from across the world. Make no mistake: those fleeing persecution, oppression and injustice, wherever that may be in the world, will always be welcome in my city of Bradford. The Rohingya community has made a fabulous and fantastic difference to the diversity, culture and richness of our great city, and they will always be welcome there.

It is utterly inexcusable that the international community continues to stand by and do nothing, knowing full well that the Rohingya face such horrific human rights abuses in Myanmar. What is most unforgiveable is that the world did nothing when the Rohingya faced some of the gravest human rights abuses and worst crimes against humanity imaginable in 2017, when the Burmese military, joined and emboldened by armed thugs and militia groups, who had longed for the opportunity to wipe the Rohingya from the country, marched through countless Rohingya villages, razing them to the ground and savagely slaughtering innocent, defenceless men, women and children.

To be clear, I know full well that, as that grave act of ethnic cleansing was taking place, the UK Government did absolutely nothing. I remember all too clearly standing up in the Chamber of the House of Commons in autumn 2017—as well as speaking privately to Ministers—to implore the Foreign Office to act, only to be told time and again that it was not the UK’s place to get involved, and that they did not want to upset the fragile democracy in Myanmar.

After so many years of military dictatorship, of course we all wanted to see Myanmar become a full, vibrant democracy but, as I told the House, the road to democracy can never be built on persecution, paved with ethnic cleansing and genocide, or stained with the blood of innocent men, women and children. That is a price we should never be prepared to pay. Yet I was ignored by our Government, who continued with their refusal to act, fearful of undermining democracy in Myanmar.

Where did that approach end up? Barely more than three years after the Rohingya genocide, encouraged by the world’s reluctance to act and its willingness to turn a blind eye to war crimes, the Burmese military overthrew the Government anyway, just as we all expected. The inaction of the international community and its unwillingness to stand up for the Rohingya, who were chased out of their homes, tortured, raped, murdered in the street and driven from their country at the barrel of a gun, is clearly evident in the fact that, even now, nearly six years later, the Rohingya still do not have justice for what they faced.

The generals and commanders who ordered that brutal wave of violence against an unarmed, defenceless civilian population, and the soldiers and thugs who carried it out, have yet to face any accountability for their actions, besides a few limited and toothless sanctions for those who participated in the military coup. As each year passes, justice gets further and further away and out of reach for the Rohingya. Because the international community failed to act with sufficient speed or force when the Burmese military and its thugs were burning down homes and spilling Rohingya blood, those responsible will likely now never face the consequences of their actions. They will never be forced to answer before a court for grave and contemptible crimes against humanity.

I come here today, not just with a condemnation of the Burmese military and Government for their record on human rights abuses against the Rohingya and other minorities, and their deliberate, planned genocide, but with a condemnation of our own Government, whose callousness towards the human rights of the Rohingya meant that they were found wanting when the Rohingya needed them the most. Our Government’s ineffectiveness, indecision and inaction, even as the number and speed of Rohingya refugees fleeing eclipsed the horrific genocide in Darfur in the 1990s, cost the lives of thousands of Rohingya. Because neither the UK Government nor the international community stopped the genocide of the Rohingya even as it was taking place, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees now face a bleak and uncertain future in one of the largest refugee camps in the world—a point well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West—located inside one of the most dangerous and natural disaster-prone regions on the planet.

In the squalid conditions of the camp in Cox’s Bazar, where refugees face disease, dirty water, fires, monsoons and floods, the first generation of Rohingya children born outside Myanmar to parents who fled the genocide are now reaching school age. However, the chances of their getting a good education to succeed beyond the camp are slim, and the chances of ever seeing the country where their parents were born are even worse, with no real prospect of the Rohingya ever being safe if they return to Myanmar.

The international community does not care. Funding for refugees is drying up, with barely 50% of the funding target for 2022 set by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees met. It is clear that those children, their siblings and their parents have been forgotten and abandoned by much of the world, who have simply moved on to the next crisis.

The UK Government are not excluded from this charge of abandoning Rohingya refugees. Time and again I have told them about my constituents who have close relatives living in the refugee camps in Bangladesh who fled the genocide—close relatives who are eligible even under normal visas to come to the UK, but who are unable to do so because when they are confined to the camps they are unable to cut through the mountains of red tape that the Home Office puts in their way. Despite knowing those problems and the challenges they face, the Government refuse to make it any easier and deliberately prevent vulnerable Rohingya who should be able to come to the UK from doing so.

The Government tell us that they will stand up for human rights across the world, as of course they rightly should. But what they seem to forget is that they cannot pick and choose which human rights abuses they can act on, and which they can turn a blind eye to. Human rights are universal and the abuse of human lives must be acted upon, regardless of any other thing. They cannot single out some of the abuses that are taking place around the world and treat them with greater importance than others—not if human rights truly are universal, unalienable and inherent to all of humanity, as they rightly should be.

09:57

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) on securing this important debate.

We are debating the human rights crisis in Burma, where ordinary citizens are being denied the most basic freedoms and rights, and the international community is not doing anywhere near enough to change the situation. It has been two years since the Burmese military launched its coup and seized control of the country from a democratically elected Government. Despite heroic resistance and international condemnation, the miliary has instituted a regime of repression and violence on a massive scale.

I want to extend my solidarity to the international non-governmental organisations that have done a great deal to protect people inside Myanmar and support internally displaced people, particularly in Rakhine state, but also in other states across the country, and in Bangladesh where there are now 1 million Rohingya refugees who have had to seek refuge over the years, particularly after the attacks in 2017.

Burma Campaign UK, which I thank for its tireless work, estimates that more than 2 million people have fled their homes and become internally displaced in Myanmar. I want to declare an interest: Burma Campaign UK provides secretariat support to the all-party parliamentary group on democracy in Burma, which I chair.

There are 40 political parties that have been banned, including the National League for Democracy, which was declared the winner in the last democratic elections. More than 21,000 people have been arrested and 17,000 remain in detention. More than 60,000 civilian homes and properties have been destroyed. The Burmese military have used almost daily airstrikes to target medical centres, schools, religious buildings and camps for people displaced from their homes. As has been mentioned, as recently as 12 April the world’s media reported helicopter attacks on a village ceremony including women and children in the Sagaing region. The death toll is likely to have reached 100, including many children—one of the worst atrocities since the military coup. Thousands of resistance fighters and civilians have lost their lives.

Despite the unprecedented level of repression and danger, the people of Burma have resisted their oppressors. The people have boycotted military-owned companies and risked their lives to protest peacefully, and young people have taken up arms to form the People’s Defence Force to fight the military. In the months since the military coup on 1 February, the military has stepped up attacks in ethnic areas, including Chin, Karenni and Karen state, that have involved torching villages, murdering children and burning people alive.

Of course, we must never forget the plight of the Rohingya people. In August 2022, we marked the fifth anniversary of the Burmese military’s genocide against the Rohingya people. For the Rohingya, it has been more than five years of pain, trauma, grief and displacement—five years in camps far from home, robbed of their livelihood, their education, their peace of mind and their future. For the perpetrators, the Myanmar military—the soldiers, auxiliaries and men who issued the orders—it has been five years of evading justice for their crimes, which the UN fact-finding mission described as genocide.

I saw the suffering at first hand during my two visits to Rakhine state, before the military coup, in the camps for internally displaced Rohingya people, and during multiple visits to the camps in Cox’s Bazar, which is now home to 1 million refugees—the largest such camp in the world. The pandemic ravaged the camps and put ever more strain on stretched resources. As has been said, the military coup has made it even more unlikely that the Rohingya will return to their rightful homes in Myanmar. Half of the people in the camps are children—denied a normal childhood and a normal education.

There have been some advances in holding the Burmese military to account, but not enough. The Burmese military has lost control internally in large areas of the country, and we are told that morale among the armed forces is low. As well as the documented restrictions that people face, the people are facing a huge economic crisis and need international support. Many international investors have pulled out, understandably and correctly, but that has a knock-on effect on people’s lives and leads to further poverty. The answer has to be action to remove the military dictatorship and ensure that the democratic Government are restored.

I welcome the UK Government’s support for the International Court of Justice case, and I am grateful to the Minister for the support that he extended in that campaign when he was on the Back Benches. I hope that, now he is back in power, he will do everything that he can to secure justice for those who face genocide at the hands of the Myanmar military. As well as supporting the International Court of Justice case against Myanmar led by The Gambia, the Government have committed in principle to supporting a case at the International Criminal Court. I welcome that, but a former Foreign Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), stated in response to my written parliamentary question that

“there is insufficient support amongst Security Council members”.

We recognise the challenge, which has been mentioned, of certain countries, such as China and Russia, vetoing action to seek justice in the International Criminal Court against the Myanmar military for committing genocide, but our Government, as the penholder in the UN Security Council, have a unique responsibility to ensure that the military is held to account and to show leadership. Otherwise, we will never see justice served for the Rohingya people, who have faced genocide. 

As I have said, it is deeply distressing that the British Government have drastically reduced our aid to the Rohingya refugees over the past few years. For the 2021-22 financial year, British aid to the camps was reduced to 45% of the level of the previous financial year—a reduction of 67% compared with the financial year before that. The need in the camps has not reduced; it has grown.

After years of campaigning with parliamentarians, I welcome some of the steps that our Government have taken, but the fact remains that sanctions against the Burmese military’s sources of incomes are too slow to be implemented. Even after two years, there are organisations and individuals who remain untouched by sanctions, including those working in major revenue generators such as gas, banking and mining. The military finds its way round sanctions, and continues to buy arms and equipment to oppress people. I ask the Minister to address the slow implementation of sanctions and whether he thinks that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has an adequate number of officials working to deliver the policy.

I believe that the UK Government should be doing far more to co-ordinate international efforts to speed things up, and they must go further with sanctions. They should sanction the military cash cow, Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise; ban UK companies from engagement with Burma’s gas industry, which earns $2 billion a year; sanction the mining companies and the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank; speed up the implementation of sanctions; and close the loopholes until sanctions bite hard. We have seen what Governments’ co-ordinated action on sanctions can do in relation to the Ukraine crisis, so where there is political will, we see action in the face of resistance from some players in the international community. I want to see that kind of leadership by our Government, and I am hopeful that the Minister, who was a great advocate of this agenda and worked with Back-Bench parliamentarians when he was a Back Bencher, is best placed to take this issue forward. I hope he will not disappoint me and other colleagues. More than 100 parliamentarians, over many years, have campaigned on this issue with him.

As I have said, there is more action that our Government need to take, including banning British firms from supplying aviation fuel to Burma, sanctioning the Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and Indian companies supplying Burma with arms, and encouraging other countries to uphold the ban on supplying arms. I want to point out that there are three particular UK companies that have insured vessels delivering aviation fuel: NorthStandard, formerly known as North P&I; UK P&I Club; and Britannia P&I. I hope the Minister will look at how the insurance regulators and others in our country can take steps to ensure that our insurance system is not inadvertently, or even consciously, providing fuel for air strikes and supporting a genocidal dictatorship. Can the Minister outline what conversations he has had with his counterparts in other Governments to encourage a ban on arms sales?

The sanctions must hit the supply of aviation fuel to the military. To save lives, we need to ground the jets and helicopters by cutting their fuel lines. British companies supplying fuel, or providing insurance or other logistics, must be dissuaded by the threat of sanctions. The diplomatic pressure must be stepped up, as well as the economic pressure. Why is the Burmese military attaché still free to wander the streets of Wimbledon and live in a mansion? It is an absolute disgrace, and I know the Minister will agree that it needs to stop. The military attaché should be expelled immediately. Can the Minister tell us why that has not happened?

In conclusion, what we have seen is years of persecution. What we have seen is one of the most ruthless military dictatorships in the world, which has jailed the former democratically elected leader. What we have seen is a military who have committed genocide and continue to act with impunity, and what we have seen is a lack of co-ordinated action and limited leadership by our Government. Given the relatively new Minister’s track record, I very much hope that he will do what is needed to hold the Burmese military to account for the atrocities that they have committed in the past and continue to commit today.

10:10

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Sir Edward, for giving me the chance to make a contribution. I thank the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for leading the debate and all hon. Members for their passionate, detailed and significant speeches. It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who knows more than most about the subject. I thank her for sharing her knowledge with everyone in the Chamber, and those outside who are watching.

As everyone probably knows, I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. I will take a specific point of view that is similar to that taken by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), but I will speak generally about the issue. It is a pleasure to see the shadow Ministers in their place, and especially to see the Minister, who grasps what we are saying very well. He knows what we are after. He knows the answers that we seek, and I am hopeful that he will give us the encouragement that we need, which, more importantly, will be encouragement for the people who are suffering in Myanmar. I will illustrate that suffering, which others have illustrated exceptionally well, in my short contribution.

When I think of this subject, the thing that always comes to mind first is the astounding atrocities. Everyone has outlined them, especially the hon. Member for Bradford West. Such atrocities are taking place not only in Myanmar; we had a debate yesterday in Westminster Hall on those occurring in Nigeria. In Afghanistan, too, women and young girls are denied the basic rights that we have as a norm across the world. That was illustrated in the main news on BBC 1 this morning. Today’s debate is an opportunity to shed some more light and make people aware of such human rights abuses, and to support the hon. Member for Bradford West and others in their requests.

I always think that freedom of religious belief and human rights march together. They are not separate; they are one and the same. Religious minorities often find that human rights abuses fall significantly more upon them than upon others, because they seem to be the target. Whenever we speak out for those without freedom of religious belief we speak out for those facing human rights abuses as well. Myanmar ranks at No. 14 in the Open Doors world watch list. Although last year it ranked at No. 12, the fact that it has dropped two places does not for a second reflect an improvement in the rights of Christians in Myanmar. Regrettably, the change in Myanmar’s ranking is a result of persecution in other countries worsening at a faster rate. It is not that Myanmar is improving; others have just got worse and overtaken it.

The press regularly marks the persecution that takes place. There are so many examples across all of south-east Asia, but today’s debate is about Myanmar. Unfortunately, the plight of Christians in Myanmar has worsened in the past year, having deteriorated ever since the military took control in February 2021. This is not the first debate we have had in Westminster Hall on these issues, nor is it the first debate in which everyone present has tried to highlight them. As we know, violence and fighting are increasing across Myanmar, but Christians are suffering disproportionately. Churches are targeted, converts are beaten, and community resources including such basics as clean water are all too often denied to Christians.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Member is, as ever, making a compassionate speech. He referred to churches being targeted. Does he agree that the Myanmar regime’s deliberate targeting of places of worship for attacks, burning and, in some cases, wholesale destruction should be particularly condemned, not only because international instruments such as The Hague convention call for the protection of places of worship, but critically because, so often and particularly in times of conflict, places of worship are focal points where communities gather to support one another and to seek to promote forgiveness, reconciliation and peace?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is so right. For many across Myanmar and the world, churches are the focal point for the local community. That is where people gather to worship, socialise and interact with one another. Although the church is just a building, it is a focal point where people can reassure, comfort and help each other. Whether that is physically, prayerfully or emotionally, it is really important.

[Fiona Bruce]

Of course, we are not just talking about the members of that particular faith group; we are talking about support for the wider community, which is so often offered in such cases.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is right to clarify that. It is absolutely right that whenever someone is being persecuted, whenever someone is under pressure, whenever someone’s human rights are being abused, they do not have to be a Christian to go to the church. Muslims and people from other religious groups can go. It is the social interaction, the encouragement, the brotherhood and the sisterhood that brings it all together. The hon. Lady is right to clarify that.

One thing that really bothers me—I know that it bothers others as well; the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar), who will speak shortly, will probably mention it too—is the terrible, criminal, wicked, vindictive abuse of women and girls. The hon. Member for Bradford West set the scene in referring to those who fled across the border, especially women and children. They have experienced some of the most terrible, mind-boggling and sickening abuse.

Others have asked the Minister this, but I am going to ask him as well. Those who have carried out abuse know that they may get away with it today. They certainly will not get away with it in the next world, because there will be a day of justice for them, but I want to see that day of justice happen a wee bit earlier for them, in this world. Will the Minister give us an indication that those who have carried out some of these despicable, awful crimes will be held accountable? There are some that are yet to be held accountable. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referred to some people being able to walk the streets of London, even though their countries are guilty of some of these crimes. That must be addressed.

Furthermore, as is often the case, women from religious minorities face double persecution. Christian women are forced to adopt disguises in public and are prevented from taking the sacrament of holy communion, which is a basic part of our right to worship and to religious belief. Christians in Myanmar cannot even do that.

The impact of the fighting in Myanmar on Christian displacement is particularly worrying. According to Open Doors research, record numbers of Christians in Myanmar have become internally displaced people or refugees and are living in camps or churches without adequate food or healthcare.

Extreme Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar poses another serious threat to Myanmar’s Christian population. For example, Na Ta La schools aim to convert Christian children to Buddhism, even though their parents do not want that. Buddhist nationalists seem to be pushing that with some severity, effectively stopping Christianity spreading to the next generation. Freedom of religious belief means having the freedom to worship your God as you wish and to have the education that your parents wish. Such Buddhist nationalist tendencies are not prevented by the Government, with actors getting away with impunity. Until legal protections are extended to Christians and other minorities alike, there will always be disproportionate targeting of religious minorities and impunity for the actors.

Is the Minister able to give some encouragement that aid is being provided to the minority Christian populations in Myanmar and the surrounding countries? I underline again the need to ensure that those who carry out terrible crimes are held accountable.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is making a particular plea to the Minister, who has vast experience of development work—indeed, we spent many recesses with others on the Umubano project, working on aid internationally. What often seems not to be recognised, although I am confident that the Minister will do so, is that the specific targeting of people because of their beliefs, and the specific targeting of women and girls, is often a driver of poverty. It is often a root cause of people living in dire need of aid and development support. That is exactly what we see in Myanmar today.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady clearly underlines my—and indeed her—request to the Minister to ensure that some aid and assistance can be given directly to those groups. They are under terrible pressure. This morning, we probably all had a fairly good breakfast. We were lucky. Some of the Christians in those countries today will not have breakfast, a bed to sleep on or a roof over their head. It is about how we can help those people.

Those are all issues to be concerned with to help us all in realising our goal of an environment in which we can live, preach and worship freely. We are here in this House to represent those who do not have a voice to speak with; we are often the voice for the voiceless. My constituents feel the same. The hon. Lady and I get vast amounts of correspondence on these matters—I suspect that we all do. I frequently receive correspondence from Open Doors sent directly to Westminster by my constituents. The debate gives us a chance to make requests to the Minister and his Department directly and encourage them to ensure that aid and support get to the people who need it. We are pushing at an open door, as I know he wants to respond in a positive fashion; we will get that shortly. We must look for improvements and not a deterioration in the rights of people to worship their God as they wish and not to have their human rights suppressed.

10:22

[Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my friend, the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for securing this important debate. She has been a continuous champion for Myanmar, and I know that she is incredibly passionate and vocal about the issue.

I have listened carefully to hon. Members from across the House and would like to reiterate and stress the need for urgent action to help end the ongoing human rights abuses in Myanmar. Since the military coup in 2021, the country has descended into violence. The Government have unleashed untold abuse on their own people, committing widespread and violent human rights abuses that have resulted in unimaginable suffering and devastation. That, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, disproportionately affects women and girls.

As we debate, hundreds more civilians endure the horrors of the conflict. Just last week, an airstrike claimed the lives of more than 100 people, making it one of the deadliest incidents of the civil war, as reported by the BBC. The conflict’s impact goes beyond the immediate threat to human life: more than 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind. They now face dire circumstances, with limited access to food, water, medical assistance and other basic necessities. The devastation caused by the conflict knows no bounds.

Amnesty International has reported that deliveries from aid organisations have been blocked by the military, depriving people of life-saving aid and support, further exacerbating the already dire situation. The crisis also disproportionately affects female-headed households, who, according to the World Food Programme, are becoming more reliant on negative coping mechanisms such as borrowing food, limiting portion sizes and relying on savings to meet food needs.

The erosion of political freedom in Myanmar amid the state-sponsored conflict is deeply troubling. The military has dissolved 40 political parties this year, leaving little to no room for exercising political beliefs. This attack on democracy is a grave injustice that further exacerbates the already harrowing situation faced by civilians in Myanmar. They are at the mercy of the Tatmadaw and are facing atrocities; there is complete disregard for their basic rights and freedoms. The severity of the conflict cannot be overstated. Urgent action is needed to restore democracy and to protect the political rights of the people of Myanmar.

As we heard from the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Strangford and for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), the scale of human rights abuses in Myanmar is staggering. Forces linked to the junta have carried out mass killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence and various other acts of abuse that amount to nothing less than crimes against humanity. Given their gravity, these abuses demand immediate attention and action to hold those responsible accountable.

The military in Myanmar has been systematic in brutally punishing its opponents and their perceived supporters, resulting in unspeakable atrocities. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, an estimated 32,000 political violence-related deaths have occurred since the start of the coup. Mass arbitrary arrests and detentions of supporters of the anti-coup movement have been rampant. Those detained face inhumane conditions, with widespread reports of torture occurring in interrogation centres and prisons. Amnesty International reports that 356 people have died in custody due to torture this year alone.

Based on an assessment of civil rights and political liberties, the Freedom House index ranks Myanmar as one of the least free countries in the world; it scores lower than places such as Iran, Russia and the Gaza strip. As arbitrary arrests and detentions and unfair trials continue, and as the curtailment of freedom of expression, assembly and association enforced by the military persists, the people in Myanmar are experiencing some of the poorest human rights conditions.

A central theme of the conflict has been tensions between ethnic communities. The north-west of Myanmar, which is home to many ethnic minority populations, has accounted for 60% of recorded post-coup deaths. That is compounded by the decades of military operations and aggression by the Tatmadaw in Myanmar’s border states, where the majority of minority ethnic populations reside. The situation is dire, with minority communities disproportionately affected by the ongoing conflict.

Among the minority groups facing persecution in Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslims have been labelled by the UN Human Rights Council as the most persecuted minority in the world. As the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said, the Rohingya Muslims have borne the brunt of the military’s inhumane operations, and nearly 900,000 have fled to Bangladesh in search of safety. They have faced horrific atrocities, including extrajudicial execution, arson and sexual assault.

We must acknowledge that ethnic conflict in Myanmar may have been influenced by the legacy of British colonialism and the arbitrary creation of ethnic groups. The construction of umbrella groupings along ethnic lines during the colonial era may have contributed to the current atmosphere of ethnic violence in Myanmar. Alongside condemning the Tatmadaw’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, I call on the Minister to retrospectively acknowledge the historic responsibility of British colonialism in the creation of arbitrary ethnic groups in Myanmar.

The SNP is of the firm belief that for the UK Government’s strategy of tilting to the Indo-Pacific region to be successful, it must not prioritise trade and defence policy at the expense of safeguarding and promoting human rights in the region. We call on the UK Government to increase pressure on the regime. First, using its position as a dialogue partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the UK must encourage neighbouring states to increase pressure on Myanmar. Although ASEAN has taken steps to promote negotiations and de-escalate the situation, those steps have ultimately failed.

Secondly, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow said, the UK Government must match the sanctions implemented by Canada on the sale of aviation fuel and military equipment. While I welcome the recent moves by the UK Government to implement such sanctions, there must be a co-ordinated effort, like in our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Thirdly, the UK Government must conduct high-level diplomatic discussions with the Bangladeshi Government to reverse their decision to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Rakhine state. There is little doubt that any Rohingya returning would face the same genocidal persecution that they escaped. In order to support Bangladesh, the FCDO should release additional official development assistance funding to improve conditions in refugee camps and look to create a stand-alone visa scheme for Rohingya to settle in the UK.

Lastly, the UK Government must reverse their cuts to conflict prevention funding. Aid to Myanmar to support refugees has been cut by 46%, causing innocent civilians to suffer. Now that the FCDO has merged the conflict, stability and security fund into the new UK integrated security fund, we must receive detail on how much money is earmarked for conflict prevention and accountability projects.

10:31

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, to hear so many excellent speeches from across the House and so much consensus on the dreadful situation in Myanmar, and to debate what the UK can do to highlight and combat the terrible injustices and violence there. The last few years have seen no end of horrific human rights abuses in many parts of the globe, from Putin’s brutal and barbaric invasion of Ukraine to the treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Thus, Myanmar has somewhat faded from the headlines since the height of the Rohingya crisis of 2015, but the brutal oppression and systemic human rights abuses continue apace.

The Government should be acting with much greater energy on this crisis in Asia. As the Government move toward the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership in the region, so must they act in keeping with the values of the British people. It is best practice in trade negotiations to include an element of dialogue on human rights. My first question to the Minister is: what dialogue on human rights has there been from the Department for International Trade as it has gone about inserting the UK into the Pacific region?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said, in the last two weeks we have seen even more airstrikes against civilians. The military junta is currently cracking down on an uprising where civilians are protesting against the Tatmadaw seizure of power two years ago and the ongoing loss of freedoms and violent repression. In her opening statement, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) commented that since the coup against the Government two years ago, the level of human rights abuses and human suffering is staggering.

We heard from the chair of the all-party parliamentary group, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who has been a steady champion for the Rohingya people. They are already an expelled minority, based in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. My hon. Friend has stood up year after year in the House of Commons to speak on behalf of that particularly marginalised ethnic group. She has visited Cox’s Bazar, where up to a million refugees live in poverty, creating another generation of marginalised young refugees.

I speak for the whole House when I put on record our thanks to my hon. Friend for championing this issue. She has challenged the Minister today on being more proactive on the International Criminal Court case to bring the Tatmadaw to book. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s defence of that action and what diplomatic efforts are ongoing in international fora to see justice served. What assessment has the Minister made, in his relatively short period in post, of the 82% cut to development aid for the Rohingya who languish in refugee camps, despite the excellent work done by other Commonwealth countries, such as Canada, in highlighting their plight?

Returning to the desperate situation in Myanmar itself, Burma Campaign UK, which has a strong track record in advocating for the people of Myanmar, has chronicled a deeply concerning level of chaos and destruction. The people of Myanmar have had their democratic dream snatched away. More than 2 million people have fled their homes, with the vast majority of them being internally displaced within Burma. More than 21,000 people have been arrested, with around 17,000 of them still in detention. Thousands of civilians and members of resistance forces have been killed. Here in the House of Commons, I have heard through the all-party parliamentary human rights group about doctors who have performed surgery in trenches in parts of Myanmar. That is how desperate the situation is for civilians in the region.

Forty political parties have effectively been banned by deregistering them, including the National League for Democracy, which won the last election, and significant ethnic political parties have also been discriminated against and experienced violence and repression. We have seen the destruction of 60,000 civilian homes and properties, and the ongoing use of airstrikes to target medical centres, schools, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced people.

As the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have mentioned in today’s debate, freedom of religion or belief is severely curtailed in Myanmar. The hon. Member for Congleton mentioned the important work of Ben Rogers and his book, which was very important for MPs in the 2015 Parliament; it was called “Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads”.

[Fiona Bruce]

I am so pleased that the hon. Lady has mentioned Ben Rogers, because when I spoke about him earlier I did not know that he was here in the Chamber today. I would like to express my appreciation to him for that, and for his continued support of those who express such deep concerns about the people of Myanmar and their situation.

[Catherine West]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and it is wonderful to have allies and champions. In the end, it is the voices of Burmese people that Ben Rogers echoes in his work, and it is very important that we put on the record the work that Burmese people are doing, day in and day out, in order to survive.

Underpinning all aspects of how the UK should approach this brutal regime is the need to tackle its use of violence, and particularly to use all tools available to stop the arming of the Tatmadaw. Without the ability to bomb the civilian population into submission, the military will be severely weakened, and the chances for dialogue and a return to inclusive civilian-led rule will improve. The single best way in which the international community can bring that about is by a ban on the export of aviation fuel to the authorities in Myanmar, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow. Could the Minister provide an update today on the progress the UK Government are making on this important ban? I welcomed the Government’s previously announced sanctions in this area back in January and February, and I fully accept that he appreciates and understands the seriousness of this issue, but there is significant ground still to cover.

The Minister will know that I have repeatedly raised the issue of British insurance companies and shipping companies who may be either directly or indirectly supporting the export of aviation fuel to Myanmar, and I am afraid that the FCDO responses to my repeated questioning on this issue have been very poor. London is at the centre of the global insurance and shipping industry, and we should use its unique position to show leadership on this and make it clear that continued trade in fuel with the regime is not acceptable. I therefore urge the Minister to clarify what discussions, if any, have been had with the industry in London on this specific issue.

I also want to press the Minister on the status of the defence attaché at the Myanmar embassy here in London. I refer the House to the written question that I tabled on this very topic just before the Easter recess, to which I received a response this week. I am afraid that, once again, the question has been ducked. Can the Minister be clear today? Have there been any discussions about the expulsion of the defence attaché from the embassy, to remove any sign of support for or acceptance of the legitimacy of this vile regime?

Finally, we all know that both regional and international action will be critical to success in holding the regime to account. I once again urge the Minister to outline what specific discussions are being had with partners in the region to cut off the supply of weapons to the regime, boost the effectiveness of arms embargoes, and condemn the suppliers in Moscow and Beijing who are playing a key role in legitimising the regime and facilitating the ongoing chaos.

I conclude with these four questions to make it easier for the Minister, because I have asked rather a lot. The UK is the penholder for Burma/Myanmar in the United Nations, with particular reference to the welfare of children. First, what progress has been made on banning aviation fuel, which a number of hon. Members mentioned? Secondly, what progress has been made on banning insurance companies and other financial industries? The City of London has a particular role to play there. Thirdly, will the Minister undertake to raise with the Foreign Secretary the concern that a representative of the Myanmar Government, whose actions have been described, is enjoying a diplomatic lifestyle, which is completely inappropriate given what is going on in that country? Finally, will the Minister review the 82% cut to aid to the Rohingya and work with Bangladesh to provide safe conditions in the immediate short term for the refugees? Will he work with other countries in the region for a decent future for the next generation?

The crisis in Myanmar may not be in the headlines as much as it ought to be, but the suffering of the people there remains in our hearts. The onus is on us to match our actions to our feelings and show the global leadership that the British people want us to display.

10:41

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

It is a rare but enormous pleasure to appear before you in this debate, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for securing this excellent debate. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have made extremely important, helpful, interesting and well-informed contributions, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to respond. It is a great pleasure to hear from everyone who has spoken—in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who makes such good contributions on these important matters. I will directly address several of the points she raised.

It is also a pleasure to debate this issue with the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). As she pointed out, when I was on the Back Benches, she and I worked together constructively and with great enthusiasm. Indeed, we did so when she shadowed me as Secretary of State for International Development.

The contributions of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) always enliven our debates and ensure we focus on the critical issue of religious freedom. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke with authority and conviction about the appalling treatment of the Rohingya community. I will address that point directly. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) spoke eloquently about these issues. I will address the shadow Minister’s points towards the end of my remarks.

I thank all Members for their efforts to maintain a spotlight on the appalling human rights situation in Myanmar. I have been there on several occasions, in opposition and in government. I spent a day campaigning with Aung San Suu Kyi in her constituency, and I had the great honour of introducing her to the largest crowd I have ever addressed in my political career.

More than two years since the coup, when the armed forces seized power, the people of Myanmar continue to suffer terribly at their hands. The regime’s atrocities are increasingly brutal. Indiscriminate airstrikes are more frequent, as are reports of mass burnings of homes and villages. Conflict-related deaths in Myanmar last year were second only to Ukraine, and gender and sexual-based violence is rife.

Only last week, the military carried out the deadliest airstrike against civilians since the coup, killing more than 160 people in Sagaing. That followed a devastating airstrike on 10 April in Chin state, which killed at least 11 citizens. The targeting of civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and places of worship, is absolutely grotesque and appalling, and must cease immediately. Civilians must be protected, and human rights must be respected.

Basic human rights have come under attack in many ways across Myanmar. More than 17,000 people are detained arbitrarily, including politicians such as Aung San Suu Kyi, journalists, students, lawyers, medics and protesters. Last July, death sentences were carried out for the first time in 30 years. Civic space is all but closed and further threatened by a new, highly restrictive organisation registration law. Only recently, the military regime dissolved 40 political parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. That further underscores the regime’s assault on the rights of the people of Myanmar.

This brutal campaign of atrocities is plunging the country ever deeper into political, economic and humanitarian crises. More than 17 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than 1.8 million have had to flee their homes. The consequences for regional stability and security are clear. The countries around Myanmar house a third of the world’s population. Through our partners, we are assisting those in need on the borders with Bangladesh, Thailand, China and India. The Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are some of the most vulnerable, and their plight was eloquently described by the hon. Member for Bradford East.

We are nearly six years on from the horrific violence that the Rohingya communities suffered in 2017, and more than 10 years on from the violence of 2012. Last month, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), who is the Minister of State with responsibility for the Indo-Pacific region, visited the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and witnessed the difficult living conditions at first hand. Her observations and learning from the visit inform the policy of the Foreign Office.

Rohingya communities continue to face systemic discrimination. Access to services is often blocked by the military regime. Rohingya are denied citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to education and healthcare, which leaves them vulnerable to human trafficking. We have seen a tragic increase in Rohingya people attempting risky journeys to third countries, with too many lives lost at sea. More than 3,500 desperate Rohingya attempted deadly sea crossings in the Andaman sea in the Bay of Bengal last year—a 360% increase on the year before.

Sadly, there is no sign of a solution. The worsening situation in Myanmar means that conditions for the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return of the Rohingya are not in place.

Let me turn directly to the UK’s action, and indeed the international response. The UK is committed to ending the human rights crisis in Myanmar. Since the coup, we have been at the forefront of a strong, co-ordinated international response to the military regime’s brutal oppression of its own people. In December, we led efforts to secure and pass the first UN Security Council resolution on the situation in Myanmar. It urges all parties to respect human rights, demands an end to violence, and urges the military regime to release all those arbitrarily detained.

Our targeted sanctions restrict the regime in accessing the money, arms and equipment it needs to carry out those atrocities, and we have already sanctioned 20 individuals and 29 entities, most recently including companies and individuals supplying fuel to the Myanmar air force and thus enabling its barbaric air campaign. We are also targeting the military junta, including the Office of the Chief of Military Security Affairs, through those sanctions.

Since the coup, we have provided more than £100 million in humanitarian assistance. That includes ensuring that the most vulnerable still have access to health and education, and supporting human rights defenders. I will say more about the funding in a moment. Delivering through local organisations, we are able directly to reach communities that are often hard to reach, and we remain committed to supporting the Rohingya. Since 2017, the UK has provided more than £25 million for the Rohingya and other Muslim communities in Rakhine state, and we thank the Government of Bangladesh for their continued effort to support the Rohingya community.

Humanitarian assistance alone cannot solve the crisis. We continue to engage with partners to encourage dialogue, find a peaceful resolution and support a return to democracy. We will use all available opportunities, including the G7 and our ASEAN partners, to push for that. We will also use our role as penholder at the UN Security Council to keep the situation in Myanmar high on the agenda. Through accountability, we have the possibility of ending the military’s culture of impunity and preventing future atrocities. Justice must be delivered for victims.

Last year, the UK Government announced our intention to intervene in the International Court of Justice case brought by The Gambia regarding Myanmar’s obligations under the genocide convention. We have also established the Myanmar witness programme, which reports on some of the most egregious human rights violations. We have provided £500,000 to the independent investigative mechanism for Myanmar to preserve evidence of atrocities for future prosecution.

I want to say a word or two specifically on spending. Although we are enormously constrained, particularly during this financial year, I am pleased to be able to reassure hon. Members that the position is not as bad as suggested. We have increased spending since the coup and spent £100 million. That was £45.8 million inside Myanmar in 2021-22, and £57.3 million last year. As I explained, since 2017 we are spending more than £25 million in Rakhine state in Myanmar. We are the second largest funder since 2017, and have spent £350 million bilaterally supporting the Rohingya in Bangladesh. That is more than a third of a billion pounds, and takes no account of the multilateral funding we provide through the World Food Programme, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I hope hon. Members across the House will accept that the position is immensely constrained, but that we are spending an enormous amount of British taxpayers’ money on this very important and needy issue.

[Rushanara Ali]

The Minister has not really answered the question. When will he be able to restore funding to its former level? There is a real-terms cut. I recognise the aggregate he mentioned, which is very much appreciated, but he needs to do more to restore the funds. This is a major humanitarian crisis, and Bangladesh, INGOs and international agencies should not be left to their own devices to deal with these cuts.

[Mr Mitchell]

I very much appreciate what the hon. Lady said. When we come to make decisions on funding, we do not look at the issue of restoring the money, we look at the issue of need. I can tell her that we will always take account of the need. That is why we have spent more than £350 million—a third of a billion pounds—inside Bangladesh, supporting the Rohingya, precisely for the reasons she eloquently put to us. I would also say that, although this year’s budget is very stretched, we will try, and expect to be able, to maintain the same coverage in the water, sanitation and hygiene programme for the Rohingya in the camps that we have done in the past. I am sure she will welcome that.

I turn to what my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton said. I pay tribute to her as the PM’s envoy for freedom of religion or belief. She occupies the office next to mine in King Charles Street, and so is sure to keep Foreign Office Ministers up to the mark. What she said about the treatment of Reverend Samson is absolutely right; it is disgraceful. His Majesty’s Government call for the release of Reverend Samson, and all those who are arbitrarily detained. She also spoke about our friend Ben Rogers, with whom I visited Myanmar when we were in opposition. I pay tribute to Ben Rogers’s wise and expert testimony and the extraordinary way in which he has dedicated so much of his life to helping those who live in an environment without religious freedom, and where so many are arbitrarily detained.

Finally, I return to the excellent speech made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who raised a number of matters. There is no support from the embassy in Yangon for this illegal and pariah regime—let us be in doubt about that. In respect of the individual in the United Kingdom to whom she and others referred, their rights are obviously governed by the conventions that apply, particularly the diplomatic conventions. As she would expect, we abide by those rules. In view of the concern that she and others expressed on the subject of aviation fuel and insurance, I will have a look again to check that we are doing everything we are able to on those matters, and I will write to her if I have anything to add to what I have said in the debate.

[Catherine West]

I thank the Minister for his excellent response to all the matters raised, particularly freedom of religion or belief and the million people in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) will raise with him later. May I press him on the important symbolism of stripping away the diplomatic role of the military attaché based in Wimbledon? He enjoys freedoms that so many people in Myanmar do not because of his Government. Will the Minister review what more can be done to strip away the legitimacy we are affording that individual?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Will the Minister leave time for the Member in charge to wind up?

[Mr Mitchell]

I will indeed, Sir Edward, and I will bring my remarks to a close.

On the hon. Lady’s latter point, we will have a careful look to see if anything further can be done. I will write to her anyway on the answer to that question.

The people of Myanmar have shown great determination and resilience in the face of unspeakable atrocities. They continue to demonstrate their commitment to democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms, and we continue to stand with them. We will do all we can to ensure that in the future they can live safely and in peace—something that is comprehensively denied to them today.

10:57

[Naz Shah]

I thank all Members for their contributions, and I welcome the Minister’s response. One thing I would mention is that he appeared to use only humanitarian figures and not the figures for overall aid to Burma. Before the coup, aid to Burma was roughly around £100 million a year.

I thank the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for the continued passion with which she speaks up for freedom of religion. I also thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), who has the largest Rohingya community in the UK, and who passionately advocates for them and for our city of Bradford as a city of sanctuary.

The continued efforts of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) to highlight this issue are noted and very welcome. I also admire the passion with which my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who chairs the APPG on democracy in Burma, continues to advocate for the Rohingya people and others in Myanmar who are fleeing persecution.

I thank everyone. We are unanimous across the House in this debate, and it is not often that that happens in this place. It heartens me that the Minister will maintain the funding for sanitation and water in Burma, but there is more work to be done. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) said, we have not done enough. I urge the Minister to relook at some of the figures for aid that is going to the Rohingya people.

Many of my constituents come to me on the issue of the Rohingya, and I also have members of the Rohingya community in my constituency. I hope that today’s debate and the unanimous feeling in this Chamber will give them some reassurance that the world has not forgotten and that we will continue to advocate their plight.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate. Many years ago, I led a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Karen people. I think that we have had a very good debate. These debates do make a difference.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered human rights in Myanmar.

Food Security and Farming

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Relevant documents: e-petition 611113, Ban development on agricultural land to increase food self-sufficiency, and e-petition 606663, Produce a Farmland Protection Policy to regulate the loss of farmland to solar.]

11:01

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered food security and farming.

I thank the Minister and my hon. Friends who are present for joining me for this rather short debate. We will cover as much ground as possible. It is a little disappointing that there is no Opposition spokesperson, and a distinct lack of people on the Opposition Benches. Why does food security matter? There is a war in Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe. There is global inflation. There are global supply chain challenges, and climate change. There is the challenge of rising prices and the cost of living. We all need food; it is a basic need. So as I said, I am very disappointed that no one from the Opposition is present.

In this place, energy security rightly is firmly on the agenda, and the Government are taking action, but I believe that we must take food security equally seriously. Food security has many dimensions, including availability, affordability, nutrition, the state of global agriculture, logistics and food safety. The journey from farm to fork has never been more complex than it can be today.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this very important debate, short though it is. With food inflation at 18%—which hits poor people particularly hard, because staple foods are going up the most, not luxury foods—does she agree that it makes no sense to take grade 1 and 2 land out of production here, only to fly in food from all around the world, increasing the carbon footprint?

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I will touch on a little later.

Much of the journey from farm to fork is unknown to our constituents until they see gaps on the shelves of their local supermarket, or read of shortages in the media. Overall, we produce 61% of all the food that we need in the UK, a figure that has been broadly stable for the past 20 years. The food strategy commits to keeping it at the same level in the future. I acknowledge that the work that the Government are doing is putting significant investment into the food system, but I will challenge my good friend the Minister, who knows more about food and farming than many in this place, by saying that investment and innovation are great, but they can take time. We need to be addressing the challenge and delivering today.

The first UK food security report was published in December 2021, but I am sure that we would all agree that much has changed significantly since then, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and global energy and inflation pressures. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) alluded to, today’s figures report that food inflation is running at 19%. Many of us, when we go into our local supermarket or shop, often see that reflected in the basics that we buy, whether that is bread, milk, butter or whatever.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for securing this debate. On food security and farming, Strangford is an important constituency for beef and dairy farming. They are prominent exports and a major part of our economy. We all want to go forward together, as the Minister understands and knows very well. But one of the changes that we are experiencing in Northern Ireland—I say this respectfully to the right hon. Lady and the Minister—is that, as DUP colleagues have stated before, exports face a delicate issue when it comes to the small print of the Windsor framework, which disadvantages my beef and dairy farmers. Does the right hon. Lady agree that we must move forward together?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we have a short intervention? It is only a half-hour debate, Jim.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is important that we continue to look closely at regulation and some of the bureaucracy around food production and farming, and ensure that the journey from farm to fork, and from one market to another, is as smooth as possible.

The production-to-supply ratio of food in the UK has been declining since it peaked in the mid-1990s. For me, the question is not so much why, although that is important, but what we are doing about it and what more can be done. We can start by recognising the dual role that farmers play as both food producers and custodians of the countryside. I am a farmer’s daughter, so I have a bit of experience in this, although it is a few years since my dad gave up farming. We need to get that important balance right, because farming must be viable and economically sustainable, as well as environmentally sustainable.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady is being very generous, and I thank her for bringing an important debate to this House. Like me, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has demonstrated that, while the official Opposition may not be here, the unofficial one is deeply concerned about the future of farming across our great family of nations. In Westmorland, and indeed across the rest of England, 100% of farmers will lose more than a third of their basic payment by the end of this year. Less than 10% are in the sustainable farming incentive so far, so there is a real gap in farm incomes. I can tell the right hon. Lady, just from my own experience of talking to farmers in Westmorland last week, that that is forcing some farmers out of business and some to intensify farming. Would it be wise to address that, so that we can continue food production?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. This is only a half-hour debate. It is not normal to have many interventions in this sort of debate. The Back Bencher produces his or her argument and the Minister replies.

[Wendy Morton]

Thank you, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he makes a crucial point. Farmers in my constituency have highlighted to me the challenge they face in getting the balance and the mix right. For me, it comes down to how we keep farming sustainable while producing the food we need and looking after our environment.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

May I make a point about viability, very briefly? I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on this debate and on making such important points. I appreciate that she may not have time to go into the international aspects, but does she agree that we need to have a much more ambitious food and wine export strategy that promotes brand Britain, and that we must genuinely address the legitimate concerns of farmers in relation to food standards and cheaper imports?

[Wendy Morton]

I am a passionate supporter of British farming and produce. In recent years, we have seen a greater focus on exports of British food, so I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that there is an international angle to all this. Alas, I doubt that I will have time to cover it, but I will see how much progress I make. The situation in Ukraine—the breadbasket of Europe—has highlighted just how important global markets are when it comes to food and food security.

We also need to do more to tackle food waste, which is another of my pet hates at home. It is important that we do all we can to help people to reduce food waste. Food waste is bad for landfill, and it goes right down to the household level. I am interested to hear what the Minister might have to say on that.

I particularly want to mention two other key areas: first, land use, the environment, land for food production and solar farms; and secondly, support for our farmers. I will take support for our farmers first, because a number of Members have alluded to its importance. In my constituency of Aldridge-Brownhills, we have only a small number of farmers, but they are very important to the local economy and the national production of food. Local farmers tell me that the cost of fertiliser has gone up by 161%. I spoke to farmers who have had to find an eye-watering extra £200,000 just to cover the increase in costs. When they produce a crop or a product on contract, they cannot just put their price up because prices are fixed. Red diesel has doubled in price. I think we all appreciate and understand that there is volatility of energy costs. Whether they need heat for greenhouses or refrigeration for the storage of potatoes, farmers are being hit in a number of ways. The cost of growing a tomato, as we realise when we go into a supermarket or a shop, rose by 27% between 2021 and 2022.

The environmental land management scheme has seen a reduction in basic payments, and by 2028 will be no more. In 2022, it was recorded that £22 million-worth of fruit and veg had been wasted due to a workforce shortage for picking. I appreciate that the Department is working on that, but something is not quite right when we have to waste food because we cannot pick it and process it, particularly when some are struggling to afford food. It was highlighted to me this morning that the UK horticulture sector alone needs around 70,000 workers each year to harvest fruit and veg. What more is the Minister’s Department doing to address that issue? Our farmers and our farms need support.

There will always be pressures on our land—farming versus housing and development. I know that particularly because my constituency is on the edge of the west midlands, close to the urban sprawl of Birmingham. Land use has to be about balance. I am sure that the Minister is aware of two recent petitions to the House of Commons: one to ban development on agricultural land; and another that calls on the Government to consider the cumulative impact of solar farm developments on the availability of agricultural land.

My good friend the Minister knows that I talk a lot in this place about protecting the green belt and developing a brownfield-first policy approach to housing and development. That is the right and sensible way to protect our countryside, our food supplies and our farms while also delivering the homes that local communities need.

I might be straying off the point a little here, Sir Edward, but I will bring it back to the debate. With the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recently undertaking a consultation on the national planning policy framework, and with the Levelling-up Bill passing through the other place, it would be remiss of me not to press the Minister and ask him if he could explain a little more about the position of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when it comes to the balance between development and protecting our green spaces.

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I am very lucky to be able to go to the local supermarket and buy the apples that have been farmed in my constituency, but, sadly, nearly 7,000 hectares of greenfield in my constituency are up for residential development. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the competing issues of being able to buy locally sourced food, house building and the value of our farmers’ fields need to be resolved so that we can protect locally grown products?

[Wendy Morton]

My right hon. Friend re-emphasises the point about balance. It has to be a good thing, where possible, to make the most of local land that can produce food and to buy food locally, but it must be affordable. It reduces the carbon footprint and supports local farms and shops. I agree wholeheartedly with her; she is fortunate to have so much local produce on her doorstep in her constituency. It comes down to getting the balance right, and I do not think we are quite there yet.

Agricultural land is a finite resource. It is important that we never take food security, farming or our farmers for granted. I want to spend a couple of minutes on the international aspect, although I will give the Minister plenty of time to respond. I have mentioned the war in Ukraine. It is a sad fact that we have the need of a UN-led Black sea initiative to get grain out of Ukraine to some of the most needy countries. That situation highlights the importance of global markets and the global food chain.

Taken together, Russia and Ukraine account for one third of the global wheat trade, 17% of the global maize trade and 75% of the global sunflower oil trade. It is critical to consider that perspective, and important to recognise that weaknesses in global security impact on not just us in the UK, but elsewhere; they often constitute a humanitarian crisis in some parts of the world. That can equally have a knock-on effect back here in the UK. Drought in Somalia displaced more than 1 million people. Almost 2 million people have been displaced amid the worst food crisis in a decade in Burkina Faso. We know that those are some of the factors that also contribute to migration.

The UK can be a leader in producing climate-friendly food, but we must not let our own production levels drop. We should be maintaining and increasing our domestic food focus and production, and helping our farmers, because then we can help at home and help some of the world’s poorest populations as well.

11:14

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing the debate.

Farming is the lifeblood of our communities. As a farmer myself, I know at first hand the invaluable work that farmers do, putting food on our plates and caring for the environment and for nature. As we all know, farming in England is now going through the biggest change in a generation. It is an exciting time, but it is important that we get those changes right. We are phasing our subsidies so that we can invest the moneys in policies that work for farm businesses, food production and the environment. We have a unique opportunity to shape our policies to the needs of our farmers. I pledge that we will do exactly that, making sure that farmers are at the heart of everything that we do.

Here in the UK, we have a highly resilient food supply chain. We are well equipped to deal with disruption. However, farmers are facing challenges as a result of the global economic situation to which my right hon. Friend referred, including the illegal invasion of Ukraine, which is of course driving up the costs of fuel, fertiliser and agrochemicals, and that is why we have taken action to support them.

We have already split direct payments in England into two instalments each year to help with cash flow. We have committed to spend around £600 million on grants and other support for productivity, animal welfare and innovation over the next three years. We have provided 10,000 farmers with help and advice through the future farming resilience fund. We have moved the 25% tariff on maize imports from the US to help with animal feed costs and we have now passed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 to help farmers become more productive and to feed the nation.

Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources—strong domestic production as well as imports from stable trade routes. Recently, we saw in supermarkets some disruption to a small number of fruit and vegetables due to poor weather affecting the harvest in Spain and north Africa, where a high proportion of the produce consumed in the UK at that time of the year is grown. In that instance, we met the industry to assess the severity of the disruption. Item limits have now been removed, so we are in a much better place than we were at that moment in time. DEFRA has a collaborative relationship with supermarkets, retailers and suppliers, to get involved and to help minimise any disruption.

The Government recognise the importance of food security. We certainly did in the Agriculture Act 2020, and we will carry on monitoring that and ensuring that we monitor food security every three years. The first UK food security report was published in December 2021. We have committed to at least maintain current levels of food production under the food strategy, which set out what we will do to create a more prosperous agrifood sector.

When it comes to self-sufficiency, which my right hon. Friend referred to a number of times, we produce about 74% of the food that we can grow in the UK. Thanks to our farmers, we are almost 100% self-sufficient in fresh poultry and certain vegetables, and close to 90% self-sufficient in eggs. Further to that, we are 86% self-sufficient in beef, fully self-sufficient in liquid milk, and produce more lamb than we consume.

Sectors such as soft fruit, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) referred, have seen a trend towards greater self-sufficiency in recent years. However, we do recognise the huge pressure on the sector. She has done a lot in this place to highlight the challenges faced in the soft fruit and food production systems, particularly in the county of Kent.

Let me turn to getting the balance right between the environment and food. Ultimately, putting food on the plates of people across the nation is the primary purpose of farming in this country and always will be, but if we want farming and food production to be resilient and sustainable over the long term, farming and nature must go hand in hand. Indeed, our new farming schemes invest in the very foundations of food security, from good soil health and water quality to climate resilience and an abundance of pollinators.

[Tim Farron]

This will be a short intervention—I apologise for being overly long before. In this transition period, where we appear to be phasing out the old subsidy scheme but trickling in the new ones, is the Minister seeing in his communication with farmers, as I do in Westmorland, some who find it hard and are thinking of giving it up all together, and some who feel that they cannot access the environmental schemes and therefore must increase their intensity of farming? I am sure it is not just happening in Westmorland. What can he do about that?

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Member will be aware that last week I was in Cumbria talking to those very farmers. I think it is fair to say that with the sustainable farming incentive in particular, we have been through a trial period where we have been talking to farmers directly and taking their direct feedback on how those schemes work. We will roll out the latest phase of the SFI this summer and, as he has identified, as we move away from common agricultural policy payments and direct payments to this new phase, we want to make that as accessible as possible.

We continue to have conversations with farmers in order to support the very people he talks about. We can do that in a number of ways, such as, as I said, supporting farmers’ soil quality, improving their grassland and trying to help them to reduce their input costs. We can also give them access to capital grants to help make them more productive and efficient in their farming. It is an ongoing process. This is not a presentation saying, “Here are the new schemes and this is how it will be for 20 years.” Outside the EU, we now have the flexibility to listen to the industry, to work with the sector and to ensure that we can respond to its needs, so that we can keep ourselves well fed while continuing to look after the environment.

Let me turn to what we have done this year. We have provided farmers with extensive detail on the new schemes; increased payment rates in countryside stewardship to reflect the increases in costs; and introduced new, additional management payments for farmers taking environmental work through the sustainable farming incentive. We have accelerated the roll-out of SFI, with six new standards coming this summer—three more than originally planned —and we have announced that we are expanding our existing countryside stewardship scheme, adding about 30 actions to the 250 that are already available.

We will continue to broaden our offer and support thousands of farmers up and down the country with the schemes. We will continue to do everything we can to meet our three main goals of supporting viable farming businesses, maintaining food production at its current level, and achieving high environmental and welfare outcomes. My door is continually open to those conversations and discussions. We will continue to support our great British farmers and we will continue to ensure that our constituents are well fed with beautiful British food.

Question put and agreed to.

11:24

Sitting suspended.

Future of Social Housing

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

14:30

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of social housing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Paisley, for this important debate. I am glad that so many Members from across the House have joined me to make their case and give their perspective on the future of social housing. I want to acknowledge the contribution of the stakeholders that have campaigned for social housing over a considerable number of years, and especially those that have supported this debate, including Shelter, Crisis, the Local Government Association and its constituent councils, the National Housing Federation and the housing associations in my constituency.

I will make a passionate case for a new generation of social housing in this country, built at scale, in mixed communities, from north to south and throughout out devolved regions and nations. It should put tenants centre stage in the healthy and affordable—I mean genuinely affordable—houses of the future.

I will start with the story of a real family in my constituency to add context to the debate. Members from across the House will have encountered similar stories in their caseloads. Sarah and Eddy are a young couple who approached me some time ago. They have a baby on the way. They had been living in the private rented sector for nine years, and were served a section 21 notice. Section 21 should have been consigned to the history books some time ago. There have been many promises that that will happen, and I am sure the Minister will elaborate on that.

Sarah and Eddy were desperate. Weaver Vale Housing Trust, one of the housing associations in my constituency, was in the process of building affordable housing in a place called Helsby, and I was able to go along with the chief exec and hand keys not only to that family but to other families that the housing association and I had helped. I saw their desperation, then their hope, then their happiness. It was one of those days that makes us all tick in this job. Those issues keep us awake at night, but resolving them gives us a sense of purpose and achievement.

That example is one of only a few that I can refer to, because housing is not being built at a sufficient scale to meet the need that is out there; it barely scratches the surface. We have 1.2 million people in housing need, and the number is growing. There are 100,000 families living in temporary accommodation. I am sure some Members have seen the report published today—I think it was from City Hall, commissioned by the Mayor of London—which shows that there are 300,000 children sharing bedrooms with their siblings in very cramped conditions.

Of course, we see the visible consequences of not building enough genuinely affordable housing, whether we walk around the streets of Westminster, Manchester, Norwich or Birmingham, and undoubtedly it will be the same in Northern Ireland, Scotland and so forth. Quite simply, the status quo is broken.

The consensus on the need to build 300,000 homes of all tenures has now been ditched by the Conservative party—the Conservative Government—to placate Back Benchers and some Tory councillors. Now it is being reported that planning applications in England have fallen to their lowest level in 16 years. The Government are once again well below their target—I say “target”, but I am not sure that it is now. Is it a target or not? It changes by the day.

Limiting supply is shattering the dreams, hopes and aspirations of so many families and young people. There will be Government Members sat across from me now who are very much aware that it is actually market-led housing schemes that are providing some of the affordable housing schemes in our community. The situation provides yet more evidence that the current Government have set in train a collapse in house building across England, with all the harmful social and economic consequences that that entails.

Let us take our minds back to the covid pandemic. There was grand talk from Ministers of “building back better”, with the homes for key workers scheme draw on the post-war programmes of homes for heroes. We saw that scheme being announced, and spun, in the press. Unfortunately, it amounted to little in the way of substance. It was policy by press release, soundbite and broken promises. Lessons from history are simply being ignored.

During the current cost of living crisis, the relationship between housing and income has been magnified more than ever. Many commentators refer to a housing crisis; in reality, at its heart this is an affordability crisis. Too many people and families are excluded from what should be a basic right for all—a decent, genuinely affordable home that is safe and secure, and free from damp and mould. The case for social housing is stronger now than ever before—for now, not just for the future. That case is not just a moral one; it is about sound economics, too.

Let me start with the economic case. The cost of housing benefit in the UK is now truly astronomical. The Government’s own figures show that it is £23 billion a year. I will repeat that figure: £23 billion a year. Much of that goes into substandard properties in the private rented sector, where—as we all know from looking at our caseloads—rents are rocketing and local housing allowance rates are not meeting the basic costs of those rents. Again, I would like to hear from the Minister whether that will change.

As Sadiq Khan and City Hall have highlighted, over £1.6 billion is being spent on very bad—substandard—accommodation. The Government talk about the affordable homes programme, don’t they? In reality, in a lot of cases that programme is not building affordable homes, yet it costs £11.4 billion over four years. There is £23 billion every year going into the private rented sector, much of it for substandard accommodation, and yet £11.4 billion over four years has been spent on the so-called affordable homes programme.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a measure of the waste of public funds and the state of the housing crisis that in Kersal and other areas in my constituency—and, I dare say, in his constituency and others—small terraced houses are being turned into houses in multiple occupation for four families, with each individual family in these tiny properties claiming housing benefit? It is bad housing policy and bad public finance policy.

[Mike Amesbury]

My hon. Friend is correct, and he will know that I am very familiar with the area that he refers to.

Surely it would be better to recycle that money and build the green social homes to provide for need, reduce costs and stimulate the economy. This Government talk about growth, and we do not have it. What better way could there be than to get Britain building and get Britain working? The result of that investment would be a long-term saving for the nation, while improving health and wellbeing and, importantly, the environment.

The National Housing Federation, Shelter, Crisis and the Local Government Association all point to figures of between 90,000 to 100,000 for the number of new homes needed every year over the next decade if we are to stand a chance of meeting demand—I mentioned the 1.2 million who are in housing need—yet the Conservative Government’s record on social housing is pitiful. Since coming to power, they have failed to build sufficient homes to meet demand and even to meet their own targets. Under right to buy, 2 million homes for social rent—public assets—have been sold off. Just last year, some 21,600 social homes were either sold or demolished, while only 7,500 new homes were built, leading to a net loss of 14,100 homes. That has happened every year since 2010; it is a familiar picture.

The Government aim to deliver just 32,000 social rented homes over the next five years. The Prime Minister is quite keen on maths—that is 6,400 a year. It is even less than they are building now, which is pitiful, so it gets even more pitiful. In contrast, post-war Governments built more than 100,000 homes for social rent right up until the end of the 1970s. Part of the answer to this housing affordability crisis has been staring us in the face for too long. It is time to summon that spirit of the 1945 Labour Government and the consensus years beyond it to build hope, houses and opportunity Britain.

If this Government do not change tack over the next 18 months, a future Labour Government must reprioritise social housing to tackle housing poverty and provide genuinely affordable housing for those in need. Our party has already committed to ensure that social housing is the second largest tenure, with that pledge made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), the shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities and Local Government, at the last Labour conference.

I want to put a number of points to the Minister. The affordable homes programme should be reinvigorated, with an increased focus on delivering homes for social rent over the next 18 months, not the current vandalised version of affordability that, in many cases, is anything but. Social rent of up to 80% of market rents in London, the south-east and many cities is just not realistic. The Government must change direction on their current proposals for section 106, given that 47% of affordable homes are currently funded by these means. The proposed infrastructure levy is becoming the Government’s very own magic money tree. We have all been in debates where we have been told that it is a remarkable, amazing levy that will pay for all these things. The one thing missing is affordable “affordable housing”.

The Government need to power up local councils and combined authorities, as argued by the Local Government Association, with even greater freedoms to borrow to build, while reforming planning to reduce the cost of land for public housing. I know that it is rather difficult with Government Back Benchers and so forth, but they have to do the right thing. The Government should also direct Homes England to take a more interventionist approach in the marketplace and acquire the land needed for building. In their first 100 days, an incoming Labour Government will do much of that, and very much more, with our “take back control” Bill. I think it will be in the first 100 days after the King’s speech; I look forward to that moment.

Some councils, from Manchester to London, and out to Norwich and further afield in our nations, have started to build council housing again, but meeting the scale of need will require political leadership and missionary zeal to charge up councils as well as housing associations—certainly those that have not lost sight of their founding principles. We must ensure that there is capacity in planning departments to turbocharge that missionary zeal into building social homes. I believe that time is up for right to buy—that is a personal perspective. To protect and grow the public housing stock, redirect an element of that subsidy to first-time buyers, so that they can have first dibs on market-led housing development.

The current Government’s first homes scheme has delivered just 35 completed homes. It is a scheme that had lots of fanfare in the not-too-distant past, with a target of 10,000. I suppose I will pay some slight credit to the Government and the Minister: it is much better than what came before it, which was zero. I think that is referring to starter homes, none of which have been started in any way. The direction of travel on social housing regulation is the correct one, but putting the voice of the tenant at the heart of the community will require sufficient resources for tenants as well as social housing providers to improve housing stock.

I am interested to hear the Minister expand on that. What minimum standards can we expect to be required of social housing providers? Will we see a programme such as we saw some years ago, in the last Labour Government, which drove up standards of social housing? I hope that the Minister can update us on when we can expect to see section 21 abolished.

Let us consider the pressing question for the Minister: will she recognise that it is now time to make significant investment in building genuinely affordable social homes? If she changes tack in the next 18 months, maybe she can make a mark in history. If that is not the case, it is clearly time to step aside and let people and communities take control, with a Labour Government to provide hope, houses and opportunity.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Can hon. Members remain standing so that I can see who wishes to speak? I do not want to put a time limit on Members, but if they can keep in mind a maximum of three and a half minutes when they make their speeches, it will give everyone an opportunity to speak. This is a very well-subscribed debate, and I know Members have important things that they wish to say.

14:48

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing the debate and enabling us to have this vital discussion about social housing.

I am sure we will cover a broad range of issues relating to social housing; therefore, given the time limit, I will limit my comments to speaking about conversions and incentives to build social housing, where I know we need to be making much more ground than we already are. As of now, 145,000 new affordable homes need to be supplied in England each year to meet current demand, including 90,000 homes at social rent levels. However, Government figures show that just 59,000 new affordable homes were delivered in 2021-22, with only a small proportion for social rent, so we know that we need to do more.

I will cut to the chase: some 1 million households are currently on the social housing waiting list in England, and private sector rents are increasing at their fastest rate in 16 years. It is harder for younger people to afford social housing, and it is harder for anybody to find affordable housing. It is well documented that a lack of affordable housing options contributes to homelessness, which unfortunately remains a significant problem in my constituency of Milton North. It is vital that we deliver more affordable and social housing to keep people off the streets. Therefore, we must incentivise building more affordable social housing.

I have been looking at getting that done through conversions. The all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, which I chair, is doing a joint inquiry with the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness, which is spearheaded by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who I am delighted to be stood opposite.

We must find a way to make it easier for council housing associations, individuals and organisations to build. Permitted development could be an opportunity for that. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, a total of 72,980 new dwellings were added to our housing stock through permitted development rights, 89% of which were the result of office-to-residential conversions. We have all heard the horror stories about PDRs, so we must ensure quality and standards. In addition to boosting affordable supply through conversions, another crucial element to consider is the infrastructure levy itself. I welcomed the Minister’s commitment at the Dispatch Box last year to look into exempting affordable accommodation from the infrastructure levy, following an amendment I tabled that would have done exactly that. Social housing should be included in that.

We must incentivise SME house builders to play a more significant role in the social housing sector. SMEs bring innovation, flexibility and local knowledge to the table and are often better equipped to take on small, bespoke projects than large firms. Therefore, we must make it much easier for them to enter the market.

The future of social housing in the UK requires a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach from both the Government and private sector. We must increase the supply of affordable housing, including social housing, by incentivising conversions and supporting SME builders. Consequently, we can realise our shared ambition, which is for everyone to have access to safe, secure, and affordable housing that meets the needs of our local communities.

14:52

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Not only could I have made this speech in any year since I was first elected in 2005, I have made this speech in every year since then, because sadly, since long before that, there has been a sustained decline of social housing. Effectively, half the council homes have been lost since the right to buy was introduced as part of Thatcher’s attack on social housing.

It has been a very political attack. There is a completely erroneous belief that social tenants vote Labour and that Conservative voters do not particularly like social housing to be built. Actually, a survey last week showed that 70% of Conservative voters do want more social housing to be built. Perhaps the Conservatives’ electorate is slightly ahead of them on housing policy, because we are now in a deep housing crisis.

The cut to the social housing grant that was introduced in about 2011 and the freeze on rents, which prevented housing associations and councils expanding their stock, has really hobbled providers. This has been a 40-year process of decline. We have lost about half our council homes. It has gone from being a mainstream to a residual form of housing. Until we can reverse that, we will never resolve the housing crisis.

In fact, the struggle now is much greater. Because the last major building programmes were back in the ’60s and ’70s, many of those estates and homes are now either reaching the end of their useful life or need substantial repair. That money is not there. We now have, for sound environmental reasons, a huge bill for retrofitting and we also have—which we discovered in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy—a huge bill for fire safety. Against that, there has been a decline in the amount of money available. This is a created crisis. I do not believe that this Government are going to even begin to try to solve it in the next year, but a future Labour Government will have to tackle it head-on.

There are many practical ways. Yes, of course more grants and investment are needed, but there are underspends in Homes England. There are ways of incentivising developers. There are ways of changing plans to require a minimum of 50% affordable housing, particularly in areas of extreme shortage. That is not impossible; in Vienna the requirement is 66%. We need development corporations and an interventionist market in areas of high need.

One of the good things about canvassing, which I first started about 40 years ago, is that we get to see how people live. Forty years ago, we were worried about conditions in the private rented sector. Now, in many cases the social housing sector is just as bad. Housing associations are running their stocks badly, partly because they do not have the means to do it. Unless and until we have a Government that are serious about housing people on low and medium incomes particularly, but also the population generally, as was the pledge from Governments of both parties in years gone by—until we get that sea change in attitude, we are not going to resolve this problem. To think it can be tinkered with through the sorts of means this Government are introducing now is a pure fantasy.

14:56

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for securing this important debate. Housing has long been my driving passion and interest. I have published extensively on housing. In that regard, I draw attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my unpaid role in the Housing and Finance Institute.

Hon. Members know that I am a strong advocate for the importance of social and affordable housing. I grew up in council housing, and I firmly believe that it is social and affordable housing that provides a good home. That is somewhere that provides opportunity—a springboard for life chances—as well as stability, flexibility and affordability. A good home is not incidental or subsidiary to the other fundamental needs or priorities of a Government, such as health or education. Providing good homes is itself a fundamental need and priority. It is the foundation stone for families and people across all ages to live well and prosper in our society.

The evidence is clear that a good home is provided best in two forms of housing tenure: social housing and home ownership, not the private rented sector. The link between the private rented sector and deprivation has long been shown, and it is time to rebalance the long-standing issue of growth in that sector. The uncontrolled expansion is a grave error. There needs to be a fundamental change to rebalance the tenure mix and provide more social and affordable homes. The nation needs good homes to provide home ownership and stable social rented housing.

Last month, I published Operation Homemaker, which is a groundbreaking plan to house the homeless and provide permanent homes for the most vulnerable households in Britain. Nearly 100,000 households in our country are without a home of their own, including a staggering 11,000 children in bed and breakfast accommodation. The Homemaker plan is to build 100,000 homes over a year and a half. Those homes will house the homeless and provide a permanent home for every family stuck in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts. Operation Homemaker will not only house the homeless, but boost the economy. Building the homes will provide a £15 billion stimulus to the economy, which will help to keep the building industry going and secure hundreds of jobs. The Homemaker plan can be funded by better using available funding. That is both public and private finance, revenue and capital spending. With private finance and institutional investment appetite, the funding and the planning permissions are available to deliver on this important ambition.

As a constituency MP, I am proud of the work that the Conservative-led Dover District Council has undertaken to provide new council and affordable homes for our local community. However, more must be done nationally to support those in need. It is time for Operation Homemaker —a new national mission to house the homeless and build the affordable homes that our country needs. We can and must deliver the social homes that are needed. The time to deliver social and affordable housing is not the future; it is right here and right now, and that is what we must do.

14:59

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing this important debate and his excellent introduction on a subject that he is passionate about, as is every hon. Member here.

If our debates were guided by issues that constituents come to see us about, housing would be very near the top of the list. Whether it is tenants facing eviction, tenants coming to see me for the fourth or fifth time because the damp has still not been fixed, or people who simply want a roof over their heads, it is clear that we do not have enough housing at the right price, of the right quality, in the right places or of the right tenure.

I look at what the young people of today are facing: student loan repayments, sky-high private rents, huge deposits for a home, and maybe even saving for retirement. With inflation continuing to outstrip wage increases for many, even renting privately is a challenge, never mind saving for the future or for a home of their own. A young person who lives with their parents and cannot afford to move out, as many cannot, will probably not even qualify to get on the housing register in the first place. They are essentially trapped.

To get on the housing list now, people have to be in a pretty serious situation. Simply being unable to afford a place of one’s own is no longer enough. Even with those restrictions, there are nearly 6,500 people on the housing register across my local authority area of Cheshire West, with more than 1,500 in the most urgent categories. For context, in the past year, only 922 vacant properties were advertised across the whole of Cheshire West. The average waiting time for an applicant in band A—which is for the most urgent cases, such as those involving domestic abuse or homelessness—is around 22 weeks, while the longest wait is just over three years. Those are just the most urgent cases—the so-called lucky few who can even get on the register in the first place.

The only answer is to massively increase the amount of council housing. As the LGA says, a generational step change in council house building is required to boost housing supply. What we have at the moment is a lottery. If there is a central Government grant going, or a new private development, where the developers might be required to build a few affordable homes, we might get a bit of new social housing, but it is piecemeal and nowhere near enough to meet demand.

The new builds we are seeing are not even enough to replace the homes lost to the right to buy, never mind to meet existing demand. I understand why, in the rush to reach the decent homes standard, many councils transferred their stock to housing associations at the start of this century, but that has led to council housing becoming detached from the communities it is supposed to serve. It is now all about asset management.

Although our council has built what it can, it is nowhere near what it needs to be, because of the straitjacket imposed by Government. Most of the new social housing built in my constituency in recent years has been built by housing associations, often based many miles away from the constituency, with no connection to the area, other than having a few dozen homes there. I doubt very much that the leaders of those organisations have spent much time in the constituency, if they have visited it all.

When councils had the capacity and resources to plan over the long term for housing need, it was about so much more than just putting a roof over people’s heads. It was about building communities, and successive generations living side by side in secure, well maintained, low-cost homes. We have lost all that. Decent and affordable housing, built in sustainable, joined-up communities, has the power to fundamentally improve people’s lives, and the life chances of children in my constituency and across the country. What we have now is a market-first, people-last approach, which ultimately makes us all the poorer. Build more council houses and build them now.

15:03

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I thank my hon. Friend and north-western neighbour the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for securing this important debate. I know he is passionate about improving the provision of social housing in his constituency and across Britain.

Every single week my office is inundated with stories about scandalous rent hikes in the private sector, amounting to hundreds of pounds, and an ageing stock in the social sector, meaning damp and mould are rampant. Recent census data revealed that house prices in Stockport have risen by almost 50% in the last five years, compared with 20% in the rest of England and Wales. As a result, rents in the private sector are sky rocketing. Understandably, people are turning to an already oversubscribed social housing sector, where temporary and emergency accommodation is full.

Local housing allowance is dwarfed by the median rental value in the two broad market rental areas in my constituency, and with the Government’s consistent delay in abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions, the security of tenure in the social sector is rightly and more understandably attractive. When the Chancellor announced his Budget last month, I was deeply disappointed that local authorities were not given the money to improve the housing stock, or the ability and finances to build more council houses.

I recently received an email from a woman living in social housing, who said that conditions were so bad that her one-year-old baby has

“had to stay with family as we have to protect her health. She was constantly coughing and had bad breathing”.

Another example is a mother who wrote to me following an accident that left her paralysed from the waist down. She is in a property that has no wheelchair access and so is bedbound. There are currently no suitable properties for the family.

In the last fortnight I met with Stockport Homes, which is the primary social housing provider in my constituency. The truth is that it is so much more than a social housing provider. Whether by providing food and mental health or employment support to its tenants, or by tackling antisocial behaviour in and around its properties, it regularly goes above and beyond. Take, for example, the work it does through its money advice team, which supported more than 2,000 customers to obtain additional income worth £7.2 million. Stockport Homes is truly an example of an excellent social service.

But when I met with representatives from Stockport Homes, they shared with me the utter despair that they feel, day in, day out, about their inability to provide suitable housing to the people who come through their doors, despite the excellent work and services they already offer. There are 7,000 households on the waiting list, 4,000 of which are in housing need of some kind. There has been an almost 30% increase in the number of homelessness inquiries from people currently in the private rented sector across the Stockport borough. A total of 569 properties have been reported as having damp, mould and condensation. If those figures are not shocking enough, in the last month a single studio flat received 325 bids. That means that 324 people missed out on securing one single-bed property, which demonstrates the exceptionally high demand in the Stockport constituency. I place on record my thanks to the chief executive, Helen McHale; the head of homelessness and rehousing, Jeff Binns; and all the staff at Stockport Homes who work so hard to provide for people in my constituency.

The Government must understand, though, that without addressing the inadequate finances and the much-needed upgrades to a significant portion of the stock, Stockport Homes will continue to struggle. The Government talk a good game on housing. The Secretary of State has previously publicly shamed failing social landlords, and the overdue renters reform Bill is coming, although it seems to be stuck in the pipeline. Beyond words and empty promises, what are the Government doing to ensure both that there is enough social housing provided and that the stock is of the highest quality, meeting the demands of tenants in Stockport and across Britain? I want to hear much more from the Minister on that.

15:07

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for introducing the debate, setting the scene so well and, by having the debate, giving us all an opportunity to participate. The Minister will obviously not be able to answer questions on Northern Ireland, because she does not have responsibility for that—it is a devolved matter—but I always like to come along and add a Northern Ireland perspective to debates. It is important that I do so, because I will replicate what everybody else is saying. The problems in the UK mainland are problems for us back home in Northern Ireland, so I want to make that contribution, if I can.

Housing issues have always been at the top of my agenda in my office, which perhaps indicates that back home we have the same problems that others have referred to. I work incredibly closely with the local housing executive and housing associations in my constituency of Strangford. I put on record, as the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) did, that the managers provide incredibly timely responses and always aim to do their utmost for their tenants and my constituents. I very much appreciate our working relationship and partnership.

There are issues, however, that need to be addressed for the future of social housing, so it is good to be here. I have no hesitation in saying that in my office—I am sure that yours is the same, Mr Paisley—we receive and deal with between five and 10 housing issues per day, for five to six days per week. It is massive issue. When it comes to the workload in my office, the only thing that beats housing is benefits. More individuals are relying on social housing, especially because of the rise in the cost of living—private rentals are so expensive and out of proportion. Many people are pushed financially to the very limit.

On 31 March 2022, there were 44,426 applicants on the social waiting list, and of those, 31,000—three quarters—were in housing stress. In other words, they were priorities. Others, including the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, have referred to the number of priorities. One of the issues that must be dealt with is the disparity between the amount of social housing available and the number of tenants waiting to be homed. I am very pleased that two new social housing developments are coming to my constituency—those properties will be allocated in about a month’s time—but the number of priority tenants on the list has increased by 12% to 15% in the last number of years.

The locality of social housing must be addressed as well, as well as the sharing of properties. There was a news story this morning, which I am sure others will also have noticed. A gentleman died in a flat, and there were 16 people staying in that flat—multiple people in one property. We have a real issue.

The girls in my office would say that the issues we deal with are split 50:50 between maintenance issues and social housing transfers—50% for maintenance issues and 50% for housing allocation. Maintenance issues such as mould, damp and insulation are prevalent. That is one of the most important factors in providing a successful future for social housing. I asked a parliamentary question back in January about what the Department was doing to address the issues of damp and mould. The reply said:

“All social housing must be safe and decent, providing those living in homes with security and dignity.”

The problem is that that is not the reality. We will all have examples of that across our constituencies.

I am conscious of your direction on time, Mr Paisley, and I will conclude. Despite the issues, we have a social housing system to be proud of, and a system that looks out for and protects those who are at risk and vulnerable. We must do our job here, to help them do theirs. In this place, we have the capacity to improve things further down the line, and to help the social housing sector to create healthy and safe homes for those most in need. That is our job to do here. Let us do our best.

15:11

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Paisley.

Recent figures suggest that at least 271,000 people are homeless in England. Of those, 2,400 are sleeping rough on any given night. We desperately need more social housing. In the 1950s, councils were building an average of 147,000 homes a year. Slums were cleared and people moved into decent modern homes. According to figures from the National Housing Federation, by the 1960s, a quarter of all the country’s housing was council housing. There was a belief in state provision of housing.

Since those days, there has been a massive decline in council or social housing. The introduction of right to buy in 1980 under the Thatcher Government reduced the amount of social housing owned by councils and the amount of social housing overall. Following the Housing Act 1988, many councils transferred ownership of their housing stock to housing associations, and housing associations continued to build more social homes through the 1990s and 2000s. However, a drastic reduction in Government funding since 2010 has seen fewer social and affordable homes built.

In 2010-11, nearly 36,000 social rented homes were started. The following year, after funding cuts, that number reduced to just over 3,000. But it is worse than that. Some 165,000 social homes for rent were either sold or demolished without direct replacement between 2012-13 and 2021-22. That is an average net loss of more than 16,000 desperately needed, genuinely affordable homes a year, meaning that those who cannot afford to buy their own home—that includes pensioners and those living in poverty—are often forced to rent privately and live in constant fear of rent hikes or eviction. It is not just people in poverty who are affected. A generation of young people are struggling to find a home in which they can have some dignity and raise a family.

The Government should be bringing forward an ambitious programme of new social homes built on brownfield sites to high energy efficiency standards. It is also important that existing social housing is maintained to a decent standard. It is a matter of real concern that after almost 13 years of Conservative Government, there are insufficient welfare rights agencies to support tenants when they need help with issues such as damp, mould and disrepair. I know from the casework I receive, as I am sure colleagues across the House do, that there is a desperate need for such support.

It is a matter of extreme concern that the Government have failed to address the crisis in supply of social housing. Successive Conservative Governments have not only singularly failed to build the social homes we need over the past 13 years, but they have actively sought to remove them on an unprecedented scale. We need a sea change in attitudes to social housing and a commitment and a belief that social housing is a social good. Without it, the misery of homelessness and insecure and overpriced accommodation will continue to prevail.

15:14

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing this debate. If I had a fiver for every time I was asked by an older person to help them move to a bungalow, or I encountered a plea for help from a person with a disability who needs specialist accommodation, I could probably build a house. I could build half a street if I included all the individuals and families who are homeless, or who need more space for a growing family or an extra room so they can accommodate and care for a relative. After 13 years of Tory Government, we simply do not have the houses to meet those needs. All those people have been failed. We have simply failed to build sufficient social housing.

We do not just need to put a roof over people’s heads; we need to provide safe homes that are fit for purpose in places where individuals and families can thrive without worrying about the end of yet another 12-month lease, which are so common in the private rented sector. More and more people are stuck in that sector when they should have a council house to rent.

It is reprehensible that the Tories have abandoned their 2019 manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes a year. The Prime Minister refused to say why when he spoke at Prime Minister’s questions today. Perhaps the Minister will be able to answer that question. Thatcher produced the right-to-buy scheme and opened the door for millions to buy their council houses, but she failed to ensure that those homes were replaced when they were sold, which meant that there were insufficient homes to rent for future generations. The Labour Government from 1997 did not build enough houses to rent either, but they did concentrate on refurbishing millions of existing council homes, which had been neglected by the Thatcher and Major Governments for nearly two decades.

The Local Government Association says that we should

“give local government the powers and funding to deliver an ambitious build programme of 100,000 high-quality, climate-friendly social homes a year”,

and I agree. It adds that that would

“save the public finances by £24.5 billion over 30 years, which includes a reduction in the housing benefit bill and temporary accommodation costs.”

For a long time, what used to be our council housing stock has been transferred to housing associations, and they have succeeded in many ways, but I worry about the focus on building new houses rather than social houses for rent. More and more are being built for sale. I do not doubt that there is a place for that sort of activity, but we need a policy to drive a revolution in the building of affordable homes for rent. Shelter is banging the same drum. It says:

“Unless we act now, we face a future in which a generation of young families will be trapped renting privately for their whole lives, where more and more people will grow old in private rentals, where billions more in welfare costs will be paid to private landlords—and hundreds of thousands more people will be forced into homelessness.”

My local authority, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, is also seeing rent increases, which are making housing more unaffordable for residents. There is therefore a greater demand for social housing. That comes at a time when there is a lower turnover in social housing, which means that the generations coming up that require housing do not get it. Of course, there are significant waiting lists for properties that can provide independent accommodation for those who have a family member with a disability.

Thirteen, the social housing provider, wants to upgrade its old houses, but it is a risky business because of the way the financial system works. We need that revolution, and I believe that only our Labour pledges will drive a generational step change in housing. Our people will be happier and healthier as a result.

15:18

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for securing this really important debate and for his powerful contribution. He spoke passionately about this issue, which is close to many of our hearts.

Debates on social housing are personal to me, as they are to many people in Vauxhall. Like many other Members, I grew up on a council estate. I am the eldest of three girls, and I still remember being placed in temporary accommodation in a bed and breakfast in King’s Cross. My mum never allowed us to miss school, so we still had to get on the tube every morning down to Brixton. I remember the joy we felt when we received our permanent accommodation in the Barrier block in Brixton, and the relief of not having to wheel around a suitcase or look at my belongings in a black bag.

Many years later, many of the constituents I represent are still in that vicious cycle of not having somewhere stable to call home. I look back on my childhood and almost feel guilty, because I had my own bedroom on our council estate. In many of my constituents’ houses, three, four or five siblings share a bedroom. That is totally unacceptable.

This morning in the Jubilee Room, I hosted, along with Shelter, an event looking at young people’s housing aspirations. Many of the issues that we have discussed today came up. Those young people cannot start their lives—how can we expect the next generation to build a life and study properly if they do not get an adequate night’s sleep?

Housing is a basic human right. One of the things that I remember about growing up on a council estate is the fact that people stereotyped us and looked down at us. That is still how social tenants are treated but, as we all know from our casework, these tenants just want to live their lives, pay their rent and work. They have aspirations. The sneering in some of the media about people in social housing is part of why we are not building enough. We need to believe in those people—they are our future.

The home I had in Brixton gave me and my family a roof over our heads. In my borough of Lambeth, more than 36,000 people are on the housing waiting list, and a number of them will never get the social housing that I grew up in. My casework, like that of many other Members, is filled with housing issues. Housing is the top issue—repairs, damp, mould. I will read out one example of an email I received recently:

“I’m 27 years old and I currently live with my disabled 70 year old mother and poorly 92 year old grandmother. I am currently 33 weeks pregnant and at my wits end with the issues I’m facing. Over the past 7 years one of the bedrooms has suffered dark stains that come through the wall. These stains are so severe that a recent workman told me that it looks like there has been a fire. This is the room I have been breathing in the last 8 months of my pregnancy and this is the room I plan to bring my newborn baby into. As my due date is looming my anxiety is through the roof. Please please help.”

After the tragic case of Awaab Ishak, nobody should be living in those circumstances—but they are, because our housing associations and councils do not have the funding. The Minister is the 15th Housing Minister since 2010. When will the Government make housing a key priority? They keep on talking about it. I know that the Minister is very able, and I hope we will see a step change when it comes to building more houses, supporting our local councils and making sure that my constituents and many more do not have to live in this way.

15:22

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is always a pleasure, Mr Paisley. Here is a scandal: in York over the past four years, just 94 social housing units were developed, in addition to some resettlement homes. Currently, just 27 units are in development. Over that period, there have been 229 sales of social housing, while the waiting list has more than doubled—an average of 24 social homes built and 57 sold each year.

Meanwhile, York has seen the growth of short-term holiday lets: this morning, AirDNA showed 2,056 places to let. Why does that matter? It matters because people who want to rent social housing are forced to rent private housing, then their landlords serve section 21 notices, kicking out their tenants and flipping homes into Airbnbs, while residents have nowhere to go. We are drowning in luxury accommodation, with relocations, second homes and empty homes having driven up the “for sale” market costs by 23.1% in York just last year—the highest in the country.

There is a housing crisis. Ownership is inaccessible, current residential properties are flipped into Airbnbs, private rent is unaffordable and insecure, and council house builds number fewer than half the sales. There are no excuses, but that is what we get after 13 years of Tory Governments combined with a Lib Dem council.

The stock is old, cold and full of mould and damp. As I was switching off my laptop last night, there was yet another email, pleading:

“I live in a 2 bed second floor flat. I have 3 kids. I’m overcrowded and I’ve got bad mould on bedroom windows and on walls and living room windows are broken and unsafe for my 3 and 4 year old kids. Can you please help?”

It was not the first such email that day and, given that we receive hundreds and hundreds of cases, it will not be the last. Overcrowding, neglected conditions, people placed in completely unsuitable neighbourhoods—that is York today under this Conservative Government and the Lib Dem-Green council. My city and my residents are ignored as developers and private landlords profit. Our council and this Government are not incensed by the burning injustice of their own failure, but seek every reason to justify it.

Forgive me for being angry, but I am. I talk to these families every week. I am part of their community. I see the price of neglect; I know their stories, frustrations, sadness and lost dreams. When I see the Ministers, Government and councils with all the power to make a difference squander opportunities and fritter away the privilege that elected power gives to transform lives, it says politics is a sham, and politicians must be shamed if they cannot even build the homes that the poorest among us need. They cannot even find the parliamentary time for the promised renters reform Bill. Instead they publish Bill after Bill, consuming an inordinate amount of time fighting petty political battles, crushing workers and human rights, rather than using their power to retrofit homes and build the new ones that we need to restore communities and give people a new start. Labour will do that, because that is why we are here. It is the purpose of our politics.

I want no more embarrassing justifications. We have the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill in the House of Lords right now. As the Government heard my cries about Airbnb and introduced legislative changes and a consultation, I ask them to do the same in that Bill to bring forward the legislative changes to build a new generation of social housing. The opportunity is now. It must not be missed.

15:25

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing this debate. We have heard fantastic, powerful speeches, particularly from Labour Members. I add my voice to say that the UK faces a severe housing crisis.

As the Member of Parliament for Luton South, I find that housing is the most common issue that local residents contact me about. High rents, poor quality housing and low rental stock mean that many Luton residents struggle to access affordable, safe, healthy and secure housing. Luton council has over 8,000 families on its housing waiting list, many with complex and multiple needs, and over 1,000 families in temporary accommodation. That is completely unsustainable and getting worse with the increase in section 21 no-fault evictions in Luton. Alongside low pay, rents in Luton are high mainly because of the town’s proximity to London, and the average house price is £289,000. That is 10 times the average wage in Luton, so owning their own home is a pipe dream for many.

We can see that the Government do not recognise the importance of a good affordable home. Around 2 million private renting households—about 38% of the total of those in the private rented sector—receive housing costs support through either universal credit or housing benefit. Yet the Government have chosen to freeze local housing allowance rates at the same time as rent inflation continues and new cost of living pressures have emerged. In Luton, Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis shows that there is now a £100 deficit in the local housing allowance rate in comparison with the lowest rents in the area. That does not acknowledge the types of properties that people need, as high demand for family homes means that the average rent for larger homes continues to grow.

In Luton, all homeless applications are placed in band 2 on the choice-based letting system. For a three-bedroom property, which is where the high demand is, the likely wait time is four to five years. That is four to five years of bringing up children in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation. Without action, it will get worse over the coming years. The Government’s decision making is forcing people in Luton South and across the country into poverty.

I am proud that the Labour party has committed to be the first Government in a generation to restore social housing, including council housing, to the second largest form of tenure. The next Labour Government will rebuild our social housing stock and bring homes back into the ownership of local councils and communities. Home ownership will be opened up to millions more. For those in private renting, we will put into law a new renters charter and a new decent homes standard. Unlike the Tories, we know that housing is not a market, but a fundamental human right. The title of this debate is “Future of Social Housing”, but, as so many have said today, the future is social housing; the future is council housing.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Before I call the SNP spokesperson, I thank colleagues for self-disciplining themselves brilliantly and making sure that we got to this point without my having to call anyone to order. I call the SNP spokesperson, Chris Stephens.

15:29

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I noted that your friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), exercised self-discipline, which is not always the case.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

It is because I am in the Chair.

[Chris Stephens]

I noticed your strict chairing, Mr Paisley, but it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I thank my good friend, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for opening the debate. He said a number of things that resonated with me; in fact, I got flashbacks when he talked about the challenges in the private rented sector. To this day, I remember the exchange I had with the landlord associations in the Work and Pensions Committee. They told me there was no such thing as “No DSS” and no adverts put out that said it, and then I managed to find one that said, “No DSS. Small dogs considered.” I am still waiting on an answer to the vital question in that exchange: did the small dog have to provide proof of income to get a property? Colleagues raising these types of debates, and the work of the Select Committee system, ensured that that particular policy was put in the bin.

The hon. Gentleman talked at great length about the very real need for social housing. I will touch on that, but not only is there a need for social housing; we need to acknowledge the support provided by social housing providers to their tenants on a daily basis. They must provide those wraparound services because of the effects of Government policy and a broken social security system, such as the challenges people face getting pension credit or disability benefit, or getting deductions at the very start of a universal credit claim, and all the other problems that social housing providers have to support their tenants with.

A number of colleagues have talked at length about the level of rents. With that comes food price inflation—currently at 18.2%. I thank the Linthouse housing association for providing the Linthouse larder, along with Good Food Scotland and Feeding Britain; Southside housing association for opening the Cardonald larder; and the Wheatley Group, which has opened the Threehills larder in Glasgow South West. These Glasgow housing associations have a vision of ensuring that there is affordable food for their tenants right across the great city of Glasgow. What is the benefit of that? It has been calculated that someone who uses an affordable larder saves £20 a week on their weekly shop. That goes a long way to help tenants to not only afford their rent, but buy other things, and it helps them with this Tory-made cost of living crisis.

In Scotland, the Scottish Government are leading the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK. They have delivered 115,558 affordable homes since 2007, over 81,000 of which were for social rents; that includes 20,520 council homes. The Scottish Government are working intensively with social landlords to develop an agreement on a below-inflation rent increase for the next financial year.

The Scottish Government are also committed to tackling disrepair in housing, which many colleagues have talked about, by driving a culture in which good maintenance is a high priority. Social landlords in Scotland are already required by law to meet the tolerable standard, which forms part of the Scottish housing quality standard. That requires housing to be substantially free from rising or penetrating damp. Compliance is monitored annually by the Scottish housing regulator.

One of the challenges we face in Glasgow South West is that housing provision for asylum seekers does not often meet the Scottish housing quality standard. The Home Office has argued that there is no need for asylum accommodation to meet the Scottish housing quality standard. I must say, I find that a disgrace, but I am sure Glasgow is not the only asylum dispersal area where we find that housing standards for those seeking sanctuary in the UK do not meet basic standards.

[Andy Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech. Understandably, most of this debate has been about general needs housing, but there is also social housing, asylum seeker and refugee housing and housing for Roma Gypsies and travellers. These are especially neglected groups, and the Government have an appalling record on each of them.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree that there is an appalling record here, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that it is the social housing providers that have allowed their homes and accommodation to be let out to the Home Office to provide accommodation, but far too much of it is being let out to the private sector. I hope to work with him in holding the Government to account on these issues.

It is important that the Scottish Government are committed to enabling disabled people to live independently in their own home where possible. The Scottish Government want disabled people in Scotland to have choice, dignity and freedom to access suitable homes and to enable them to participate as full and equal citizens. The Scottish Government have flexible grant funding arrangements, ensuring that specialist housing provision identified by local authorities is a priority, so that disabled people can be supported. The Scottish accessible homes standard will futureproof new homes, building in accessibility and adaptability from the start, to ensure that older and disabled people have an increased range of housing options and to reduce the need to make costly changes to people’s homes as their needs change.

It is also important that steps are taken to strengthen rights for tenants and to prevent homelessness. Tackling homelessness and ending rough sleeping is a priority for the Scottish Government. On top of the funding provided through the local government settlement, the Scottish Government are providing a total of £100 million funding from their multi-year Ending Homelessness Together fund to transform the homelessness support system. I hope that the UK Government will look closely at the situation of people with no recourse to public funds. Too many people with no recourse to public funds are at risk of becoming homeless or sleeping rough. I hope that the Government look again at this issue, because the clear view of the Scottish National party is that nobody should be at risk of homelessness or destitution because of their immigration status.

As other colleagues have already said, the UK Government should—indeed, must—take urgent action to support struggling households by increasing the local housing allowance rates and scrapping poverty-inducing Tory policies; no devolved Administration should have to mitigate those policies, but that is what they have to do.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I thank hon. Members for participating in this debate.

15:37

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.

I start by warmly congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing this incredibly important debate and on the compelling remarks he made to open it. His personal commitment to tackling the housing crisis in all its manifestations is second to none. He made a passionate case today for doing what is necessary both to tackle the present chronic undersupply of genuinely affordable social homes and to drive up standards in those that already exist. I thank all the other hon. Members who have contributed this afternoon in an extremely powerful set of speeches, particularly those of Labour Members, who really brought home the human cost of the neglect in recent years.

A wide range of issues has been raised in the debate this afternoon, but the vast majority of them have related either to the pressing need to build more social homes or to the equally pressing need to ensure that our existing social housing stock is well managed and of good quality. I will seek to address each issue in turn, starting with supply.

It is beyond dispute that England’s social housing deficit is now immense. Over 1.2 million households are now on local authority waiting lists, and that number is almost certainly a significant underestimate of the number of families for whom social housing would be an appropriate tenure if it were available. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) that because successive Governments have failed to build enough social homes, millions of families are trapped in overcrowded or unsuitable properties, an increasing number of low-income households have been forced into insecure, unaffordable and often substandard private rented housing, and the number of households in temporary accommodation has rocketed from 48,000 in 2010 to 99,000 in 2022.

The cost of this tenure shift has been borne not only by those trapped in inappropriate housing, who are often at risk of homelessness, but by the state in the form of a rapidly rising housing benefit bill, which now stands at a colossal £23.4 billion per year. That sum amounts to more than the total running costs of several Government Departments, yet when it comes to social housing supply, the record of successive Conservative-led Governments since 2010 has been nothing short of woeful. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale mentioned, the Department’s own data makes it clear that just 7,528 social homes were built last year. At the same time, 21,638 were either sold or demolished. That is a net loss of 14,110 genuinely affordable homes when we know that we need to build around 90,000 a year if we are ever to meet housing need.

That meagre 2021-22 output figure is not an aberration. By means of slashed grant funding, the introduction of the so-called affordable rent tenure, increased right-to-buy discounts and numerous other policy interventions, Conservative-led Governments have actively engineered the decline of social housing over the past 13 years, presiding over an average net loss of 13,000 social homes in each and every one of them. For all that the present Secretary of State waxes lyrical about the need to build more social homes, the steps that the Government are actually taking—namely, slightly tilting the balance of affordable homes programme spending towards social rent and providing local authorities with some additional flexibilities around the use of right-to-buy receipts—are not only too little, too late but undermined by other measures that Ministers are committed to enacting; not least, as my hon. Friend mentioned, the introduction of a new infrastructure levy that will almost certainly deliver less affordable housing overall than is provided through the present developer contribution system. Labour is the only party seriously committed to a marked increase in social house building. We will set out plans ahead of the general election that will make clear the level of our ambition and how we intend to meet it.

Given the chronic shortage of social homes across England and the corresponding lack of choice available to tenants, it is critical that what social housing stock remains is of decent standard, yet we know that the lives of far too many social housing tenants are blighted by poor, unsafe and unhealthy conditions. The shared recognition across these benches of that fact and the consequential need for the Government to act—[Interruption.]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a vote in the other Chamber, and there will be at least two votes, possibly three. Hopefully, we will be back here at about a quarter past the hour to complete the debate.

15:42

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

16:19

On resuming—

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I thank colleagues for making their way back so promptly; that is very helpful. I call the Opposition spokesperson—you have six minutes, or thereabouts.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Thank you, Mr Paisley. As I was saying, the shared recognition that exists across these Benches of the fact that the lives of far too many social housing tenants are blighted by poor, unsafe and unhealthy conditions, and of the consequential need for the Government to act, enabled the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill to complete its Commons stages in short order.

However, when it comes to ensuring that standards in social housing improve markedly and rapidly, the Bill is not a panacea. The onus to drive reform is, of course, ultimately on the sector itself, and the steps being taken following the publication of the “Better Social Housing” review are a welcome sign that it may be doing just that. However, the Government are ultimately responsible for the state of social housing in England and, subsequent to the Bill’s receiving Royal Assent, the Government will still have a significant role to play in assisting social landlords to improve their stock and tackle the underlying causes of problems such as damp, mould and leaks.

The problem is that political choices made by successive Conservative-led Governments have piled significant financial pressure on to social landlords. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) argued earlier, the cumulative impact of having to build new, affordable homes despite swingeing grant funding reductions; the four-year 1% rent cut imposed between 2016 and 2020; the fact that the shortfall arising from this year’s 7% rent cut is unfunded; and the long-term challenges posed by decarbonisation and building safety in the absence of adequate Government support cannot be overstated.

Social landlords who wish to improve their existing stock face a monumental challenge. We need a Government who at least recognise that situation and are willing to explore what more is required from them, not least in funding and financing mechanisms to support social landlords to upgrade their stock, yet we see no signs that the present Government are giving the issue the attention it deserves. It is therefore likely to be yet another task that will fall to the next Labour Government.

The historical and ongoing failure to build enough social rented homes has seen growing numbers of families trapped in overcrowded, unsuitable, insecure or unaffordable properties. Those families suffer in terms of diminished health, wellbeing and life chances, and the state also pays in the form of an eye-watering and ever-rising housing benefit bill. Social housing is at the heart of the solution to the housing crisis, and the Labour party is committed to its renewal and rebirth through a substantial programme of social house building and further measures to drive up standards in our existing stock.

When it comes to social homes, “more” and “better” must be our watchwords. It is high time we had a Government who do not just pay lip service to the importance of social housing, but are wholeheartedly committed to providing decent, safe, secure and genuinely affordable homes for all who need them.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister—our third Rachel of the day.

16:22

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under you, Mr Paisley. Before I start, may I seek your guidance? How much time do we have for the debate?

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

You have 10 minutes, Minister; we probably have another 12 minutes left.

[Rachel Maclean]

Thank you—I will crack on, then. I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for today’s really important debate. It is a pleasure to be here and to respond for the very first time on this particular issue in this Chamber.

The hon. Member powerfully articulated the case for building more social homes not just in his constituency, but across the country—that is reflected in the Members here. It goes without saying that that is an objective we all very much share. I will be responding to the comments made by Members, both in the course of my speech and at the end, and I thank every Member for making powerful contributions.

I start by reaffirming the unshakeable commitment of the Government to driving up both the quality and quantity of this nation’s social housing stock. It is a core tenet of our levelling-up agenda, and that has been reflected in recent years, starting with our affordable homes programme. The Government have been clear that they are entirely committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing in the country. That is why we launched the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme in 2020, with a commitment to deliver tens of thousands of affordable homes for both sale and rent.

At this point, I would like to say a bit about the social rent component of our affordable homes programme. We recognise how vital these homes are to building and maintaining thriving communities, and I was particularly struck by the very fluent remarks of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) on this point; she really brought it to life and I thank her for doing so.

I know that every hon. Member will agree that homes for social rent are a fundamental part of our housing stock—a lifeline for those who would struggle to obtain a home at market rates. It was absolutely right for us to bring social rent homes into the scope of the affordable homes programme, as the Government did in 2018. Since then, we have doubled down in our levelling-up White Paper on our commitment to increase the supply of social rented homes, while also improving the quality of housing across the board in both the social and private rented sectors. The affordable homes programme has been changed to meet this commitment, with further increases to the share of social rented homes we are planning to deliver.

However, although social rent is a key element to our approach, we are also a Government who truly believe in supporting aspiring homeowners to take their first step on to the housing ladder. We understand what a difference that increased sense of security can make to all aspects of someone’s life and the lives of their family. That is why home ownership continues to be a fundamental part of the affordable homes programme offer and we will continue to deliver a significant number of homes through our shared ownership tenure.

[Alex Cunningham]

At Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister dodged the question as to why the Conservative party was reneging on its manifesto commitment to build 300,000 homes a year. Can the Minister answer the question and say why that has happened?

[Rachel Maclean]

The hon. Gentleman must be telepathic, because I was just about to come to that point. We are more broadly focused on accelerating housing delivery to make home buying a reality for a new generation, so we must build homes in the places that people want to live and work. As the Prime Minister said, and I agree with him, we want decisions about homes to be driven locally, which is why we need to get more local plans in place to deliver the homes that our communities need. We are working tirelessly across the country with our local partners and we intend to deliver 300,000 homes per year, as our commitment set out, so that we create a more sustainable and affordable housing market that benefits everybody.

However, I am not here only to talk about commitments, because it will make no difference unless we deliver on those commitments. We are making progress in our mission to increase housing supply and the numbers back that up. Many Members talked about numbers; let me give them some. Since 2010, we have delivered over 632,000 affordable homes, including 441,000 affordable homes for rent, over 162,000 of which were for social rent.

I hope that the hon. Member on the Opposition Front Bench, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), will forgive me for making the comparison, but it is worth noting that this Government have delivered more affordable homes in the last 12 years than were delivered in the preceding 13 years of a Labour Government. Actually, I note that the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) agrees with me. He said very clearly—

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

When I have finished this point, I will. The hon. Member for Stockton North said very clearly that the last Labour Government did not build enough social homes, either to rent or to buy, and I agree with him. [Interruption.] I will let the hon. Member for Weaver Vale intervene on me, but I want to answer his point. He has set out that he thinks a Labour Government are the answer to this situation; I disagree. A Labour Government are not the answer—the last Labour Government did not build enough affordable homes, social homes or council homes. If we look at Labour-run Wales, we see that they have an appalling record of building social housing.

Two London MPs spoke in the debate to highlight problems in London. I would like to remind—

[Matthew Pennycook]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

When I have finished my remarks. I would like to remind the House that the Mayor of London is responsible for housing in London. He is a Labour Mayor of London and the problems there lie firmly at his door.

Many Members have also spoken about councils. I would like to point out my own local council’s record. Conservative-run Redditch Borough Council is delivering council housing. That is happening now that the Conservatives are in control of the borough. When Labour was in control of Redditch Borough Council, it delivered precisely zero.

[Mike Amesbury]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

rose—

[Rachel Maclean]

I give way, first to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, who first asked me to.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I should have welcomed her to her place, so I will get that on the record now.

This debate is about the future of social homes. I keep referring to that vandalised version of the definition of “affordable homes”; many of them are not affordable. On the track record of the previous Labour Government, let us compare social housing build. In those last few years of a Labour Government, considerably more social homes were built than under this Government—not enough, as hon. Members have said, but, going forward, the next Labour Government definitely will build enough.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Member for his remarks. I listened carefully to the response of the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich on the Front Bench. What I heard is our agreement about the need to build more social homes to rent or buy, and Government Members also set that out very clearly. What I did not hear—from any Opposition Member—was a clear answer on how they will do that, so we await that.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

No. With respect, the hon. Gentleman has had his time, and I need to get these points on the record.

I want to talk about what we are doing. To support continued delivery, in March this year we announced that local authorities will have access to a new concessionary Public Works Loan Board interest rate for council house building from June this year. Local authorities have a real part to play in that endeavour. We are giving them the flexibility to make locally led decisions that deliver the best deal for their communities.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will create a new infrastructure levy—many Members touched on that, so it is important that we set the record straight. The new infrastructure levy will capture more land value uplift. That will enable us to deliver even more affordable housing, which is badly needed.

Local authorities will continue to benefit from the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which we have discussed today, along with the scrapping of the housing revenue account borrowing cap. They will also benefit from greater flexibility, which someone mentioned from a sedentary position, in how they can use receipts from right-to-buy sales. I strongly urge councils to make use of those measures so that we can see more new homes built in the places where they are needed the most.

We briefly touched on social housing standards. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities could not have been clearer in his statements to the House when he said that every person in this country, no matter where they are from, what they do or how much they earn, deserves to live somewhere that is decent, safe and secure.

The tragedy of Awaab Ishak’s death made clear to us all the devastating consequences of inaction. The time for promises of improvements is well and truly over. Awaab’s law has been added to the Bill, with new requirements for landlords to address hazards such as damp and mould in social homes within a fixed period.

I want to finish by thanking all the Members who have contributed. We are committed to the abolition of section 21 eviction orders—

[Hon. Members]

When?

[Rachel Maclean]

Very soon—Members do not have long to wait. They will have all their questions answered in due course.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) for his excellent speech on social housing. I reassure him that social housing will be part of the infrastructure levy, and it was a pleasure to meet his small builders and business experts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) for her considerable expertise in the sector and for bringing to us the Operation Homemaker programme. I thank her for all the work she is doing to help us.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who highlighted similar issues in Northern Ireland; the hon. Members for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Stockton North and for Vauxhall; the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who will know that we are committed to introducing the measures she has called for to control Airbnbs; and the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins). I thank everybody who has contributed. We will not stand for any tenant being mistreated—[Interruption.] I forgot to thank the hon. Gentleman from the Scottish National party Front Bench, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), for his contribution. That is all I will say on the matter—[Laughter.] We are committed to working with all hon. Members across the House to ensure that we get the safe and decent homes people deserve.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Minister. It is clear that Mr Stephens needs to try harder to get noticed. Mr Amesbury, you have one minute to wind up.

16:34

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank everybody for the good spirit in which they staged the debate. Everybody made powerful contributions, particularly the Labour Members. They were genuinely passionate about building a new generation of decent, affordable social housing. The future is social housing, and the future is a Labour Government to build it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of social housing.

Litter Action Groups

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

16:34

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will call Mr Virendra Sharma to move the motion and will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate, but I understand that there may be a couple of interventions, which have been signalled to the Member who will move the motion, and the Minister is also agreeable to that. I call Mr Sharma.

16:35

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of support for litter action groups.

It is a great honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I called this debate for two main reasons, the first of which is to recognise and thank those in my constituency who tirelessly volunteer to make it a better and safer place. They do not do that as a job; they do it because they see the great strain the council is under and the lack of awareness among too many people of the cost of littering and fly-tipping. In particular, therefore, I want to thank LAGER Can—Litter Action Group for Ealing Residents—and its leader and inspiration, Cathy Swift. Cathy is in the great tradition of British volunteers: she rolls up her sleeves, digs in and does not take no for an answer. National Rail, take note: that trackside still is not litter-free; you may not have granted her access to the trackside yet, but no is not the right answer. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Paisley, for gesturing to the Public Gallery and thanking everyone here today from LAGER Can, and the other volunteers, for their work.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend also take this opportunity to join me in commending the huge effort by Harrow Litter Pickers, a group set up and co-ordinated by the remarkable Casey Dalton, which last year collected more than 11,500 bags of litter in the London Borough of Harrow? Does he agree that the Minister should be clear that local authorities should work with litter-picking groups to support their efforts and that some sort of nationally devised standard to help quantify those relationships might be helpful in holding local councils accountable for the support they give or, sadly, potentially do not give litter-picking groups?

[Mr Sharma]

I really appreciate and acknowledge the contribution made by my hon. Friend. The Harrow team work closely with LAGER Can in my constituency; we work together to improve conditions. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I am sure the Minister has also taken note of his suggestion.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate. He is speaking about his constituency, and the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) is backing him up. In my constituency of Strangford, it is the youth groups, the community groups, the Boys’ Brigade and the Girls’ Brigade and action groups that have taken it upon themselves to go out and clean the place up, and they have done extremely well. What our council does, which might be interesting to other speakers, is give them the pickers, the safety bibs and the bags, and it picks the rubbish up afterwards. That is an example of the council and local volunteers working together.

[Mr Sharma]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, which I will come to later in my speech.

I want to raise awareness of the constructive relationship that LAGER Can has with Ealing Council. It makes them both more effective, saves hard-stretched resources and shows the value of volunteers and the esteem they are held in. Without them, much of the work would not get done and we would all be worse off. I thank Ealing Council. It has recognised the value of the partnership and has worked with LAGER Can, supporting that organisation in material ways that make a difference.

That is a success story, but it is not the same everywhere. People across the country could benefit from other councils adopting this model, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have suggested.

We have a serious issue with fly-tipping in Ealing, Southall. Brilliant organisations such as LAGER Can are taking action to reduce the problem, and we, the politicians, must support their efforts and heed their advice.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate on litter action groups. This issue is very close to my heart as the proud chair of the tidy Britain all-party parliamentary group. My hon. Friend might be aware of the recent Great British spring clean campaign, organised by Keep Britain Tidy, which was a huge success and saw groups across the country collect thousands of bags of litter. Will he join me in thanking Keep Britain Tidy and everyone who took part in the Great British spring clean, including the excellent groups in my constituency, such as Keep Hecky Tidy and Cleckheaton in Bloom, which volunteer year round to keep their neighbourhoods clean and free of litter?

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us of the role that Keep Britain Tidy has played in the whole campaign, not just in one area of the country. I thank her for joining us in this debate as the chair of the APPG.

LAGER Can is identifying hotspots and clearing them. That intelligence and action helps Ealing Council. The group is not just tackling the problem as it presents itself, but working to reduce it in the future.

LAGER Can is partnering with schools and is having a great impact. Khalsa school in Norwood Green in my constituency won the Young Litter Heroes award this year, recognising pupils’ efforts and their commitment to promoting environmental awareness and reducing litter in communities. Khalsa school’s environmental message is about protecting our green spaces, and these brilliant litter heroes will be the next generation, reducing and tackling fly-tipping and littering for good.

Last year, LAGER Can volunteers donated at least 16,506 hours to Ealing Council, saving it approximately £282,000 in 2022, and similar amounts in 2020 and 2021. Of course, this is not a saving—the work just would not have been done without these volunteers, who are performing a valuable service for Ealing Council and everyone who lives in the borough. I declare my interest as one of those volunteers helping in my constituency, in Norwood Green, Southall Green, around the station and in the canal.

LAGER Can is clear and grateful in its words:

“Ealing Council provides excellent support to LAGER Can.”

As part of that support, Ealing Council provides the group with some essentials—litter grabbers, LAGER Can-branded rubbish sacks, work gloves and third-party and employer’s insurance—and ensures the prompt removal and disposal of the rubbish collected, even from private land. A volunteer provided with a litter grabber and a roll of bags will have repaid the council in less than one hour of volunteering—LAGER Can is great value for money.

However, the council does not just offer essentials; it works with LAGER Can. Ealing Council makes engagement a priority, and Cathy and other volunteers are able to speak to key decision makers in the council regularly to make suggestions and understand why decisions are taken. Ealing Council is usually highly responsive to requests made on behalf of members. It is rewarding for LAGER Can members to know that their requests are being taken seriously. Those involved do not agree on everything, but everyone sees the relationship as constructive and valuable, and working together as partners is conducive to good-faith working.

That amazing local example should be available to volunteers everywhere. I know that there are people across the city and around the country willing and ready to do the same, but they run up against bureaucracy time and time again. LAGER Can is part of national groups, and by working with a wide range of people it has identified key areas where the Minister can help other groups to grow. I would therefore like to put four questions and challenges to the Minister.

First, volunteers need more support. In some places, such as Ealing, volunteers are encouraged and nurtured, while, in others, groups are threatened with fines for taking the rubbish they collect to the local tip. The Government could help to co-ordinate the response, with national good-practice support for volunteer litter-picking groups. The savings available are clear to see, and that should surely encourage any of the more sceptical councils.

Secondly, attitudes towards enforcement appear to vary in different parts of the country. In some areas, councils react to fly-tipping by installing more CCTV and imposing more and bigger fines, while other, neighbouring boroughs take a more lenient approach. That only encourages “cross-border” fly-tipping, moving the problem around and leaving offenders to dump their waste in areas where they know that enforcement is weaker. We would like to see a national standard on fly-tipping, as suggested earlier, based on the approach taken by the stricter boroughs, which do not hesitate to name, shame and fine culprits.

Thirdly, the introduction of a deposit return scheme is welcome. That will lead to less littering. However, the failure to include glass bottles is a problem that we can avoid, and it should be rethought. The Government are also taking action on the consumption of nitrous oxide, but the canisters are still a problem. It is difficult to find anywhere to recycle them, although some scrap metal dealers are willing to. The Government should act to ensure that these containers are manufactured in a recyclable way.

Fourthly, there is the issue of wet wipes. The build-up of wet-wipe islands is devastating for wildlife and people. Many fish in our rivers have plastic fibres clogging up their digestive system, and the situation is only getting worse. The plastic fibres are contaminating rivers, and wipes are building up in large numbers on the foreshores of the Thames and other rivers. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) has campaigned tirelessly on that. There must be an end to plastic in wet wipes; I urge the Government to include a ban on it in upcoming legislation.

I am lucky enough to represent an area where there are good news stories that set an example to others. That does not mean that we are without our problems, but I hope that the good practice seen in my area can be emulated, so that there is improvement in other areas. Once again, my congratulations to LAGER Can and Cathy Swift, and many thanks to other hon. Members, including the Minister.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Mr Sharma, for your most uplifting speech.

14:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this debate about litter, an issue that is so important to so many of us. It is great to have the opportunity to talk about it and what we are doing about it, and to highlight and commend the many volunteers and groups doing so much commendable work to tackle this criminal activity, and this blight on our communities.

It was really interesting to hear about the hon. Gentleman’s local group, the Litter Action Group for Ealing Residents, otherwise known as LAGER Can—a nice, easy name to remember. It should not be confused with the all-party beer group, or anything to do with it. That sounds like a really good model, and Cathy, whom he mentioned, should be commended; I share in his comments. We also heard of excellent work done by others, including the Harrow Litter Pickers—I thank the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for mentioning them; these people all need a really big shout out—and all the volunteers and groups in Strangford.

I would like to give a shout out to a chap called Tim Walker in my constituency, whom I have been out with a number of times. He started a big litter collection off his own bat; it was, I think, just before covid. He got together a community group through Facebook, which joined him every week. More and more people started to turn out. He was so determined to tackle litter and other environmental concerns that he has set up a shop in Taunton called My Carbon Coach, and he is influencing people on even wider environmental issues. All these people need a big “thank you”.

It is usually just a careless minority who cause the issue. Councils have responsibility for keeping our public places clear, but we simply cannot underestimate the role and work of volunteers, who are very much driven by a sense of civic duty, and by pride in their community, which they want to be the best place possible in which to live. In 2019, the Government provided £9.75 million for a high street community clean-up fund, to empower local authorities across England to support communities in undertaking community-led high-street clean-ups. I have checked, and as far as I know, I do not believe that Ealing Council got any of that money, but it sounds as though it was doing a good job anyway. Councils were able to use that one-off funding to support volunteers. I think that the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, asked for more support for volunteers; certainly, a lot of our recent funds have gone towards them. For example, funds have gone towards supplying people with litter-picking kit, and on training for residents in how to remove graffiti, which is another blight.

More recently, the Environment Agency removed barriers for litter action groups by publishing a regulatory position statement that enables volunteers to litter-pick without a waste carrier licence. That allows local tips to accept litter from pickers. There was an extraordinary incident that gave rise to a bit of concern about that, but that has all been ironed out. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is pleased about that; I think that he referred to it. I call on all councils to provide as much support as they can to volunteer litter-pickers. Residents going to a waste site in all good faith to deposit the bags of litter that they have worked so hard to collect should not be turned away. 

While we are talking about all those who have done such good work, I want to mention the Prime Minister’s Points of Light awards. Through those, we have recognised the outstanding work of individual volunteers who have tackled litter in their community. Recipients of the award include Lizzie Carr MBE. She launched the successful “plastic patrol” campaign, which inspired thousands of people to take to their local waterways to prevent plastic pollution. Another recipient was Dom Ferris, who founded Trash Free Trails, which brings together runners, riders and rovers in Britain’s national parks and wild places to tackle plastic pollution.

Let me deal with the issue of councils. We are going about tackling litter on many fronts. We have developed and shared best practice on the provision of litter bins, and have supported that with £1 million of grant funding for 40 councils to purchase new bins. The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, suggested that good models should be copied and followed, and actually a lot has been learned from the practices of councils such as Ealing. It is interesting; even I have learned that there are good and bad places to put a bin. I suppose that makes sense; we want it to be where people have just finished their drink, or want to stub out their cigarette butt or whatever. It has to be convenient.

We have also committed £1.2 million to helping another 30 councils purchase equipment to tackle fly-tipping. That includes a range of projects that try to identify the offenders. That is harder than might be imagined, but there are some very creative ideas out there. As I said, councils need to play their role; that is why we have committed to putting enforcement guidance on a statutory footing. That guidance will give those to which it applies a clear and explicit duty, which they must have regard to when exercising their enforcement functions. Councils have a range of enforcement functions, but it is important that we ensure that they use them.

One of my bugbears is fast food outlets. I am sure that it is the same in other Members’ constituencies: often, an amount of litter accumulates around those sites. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has recently updated planning guidance to clarify the powers available to councils to ensure that new hot food takeaways do not increase the impact of litter in their communities. Councils can also issue what are called community protection notices, which can be used to require the owners of premises such as fast food outlets to take certain actions to tackle the litter that is created by their activities. Those are all positive measures to tackle one of the types of location where we often find litter.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful to the Minister for much of what she has said. I am sure that she will acknowledge what Harrow Litter Pickers has found, which is that on occasion, there are basically organised fly-tippers going around and causing problems for local councils, and litter pickers have to help the councils respond to those problems. To what extent is the Department willing to support intelligence-gathering efforts about those rogue fly-tippers, to help make councils’ enforcement a little more effective?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is very much linked to the wider littering issue, and I will come on to it in a minute, because fly-tipping is an important part of this debate. Before I do so, I want to mention the Government’s new antisocial behaviour plan, which takes even tougher action against those who seek to degrade our public places. For example, it raises the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to £1,000. That was a manifesto commitment, so I am really pleased that we brought that forward. The penalty for littering and graffiti has also been raised to £500. Those penalties can be issued wherever there is evidence linking someone to one of those crimes.

Alongside those increases, there are also new measures to help councils issue more penalties. Under the action plan, there will be a league table for local authorities on fly-tipping rates. In other words, we will ask: how much are they actually enforcing this? How often are they using the powers? I genuinely think that would be helpful; we would see which are the active councils, such as Ealing Council and potentially Harrow Council. It is almost naming and shaming. This problem really annoys people, and if they saw that their council was using these powers, that would be popular.

The Government have pledged a further £93 million of additional investment in what is called community payback, so that criminals sentenced to probation and supervised community sentences at court across England and Wales can complete up to 8 million hours of unpaid community payback per year in hi-vis jackets, under supervision. They will have to clean up graffiti, pick litter, clear wasteland, and redecorate public places and buildings. That will include offenders’ involvement in Keep Britain Tidy projects.

The Great British spring clean was mentioned. That saw 1,500 offenders spend almost 10,000 hours on 300 community clean-up projects. This year, we will build on that success, and will run a second clean-up week in the autumn. Under the action plan, a new approach called immediate justice will be introduced to make perpetrators repair the damage that they have done. They will be forced to pick up litter, wash police cars or clean up graffiti within 48 hours of being caught. That will start in 10 places across England and Wales next year. Local people will have their say on that scheme. The Probation Service is relaunching the community payback nominations website early next year. By law, it will be required to consult key community leaders and local authorities on how and where payback schemes should be used to improve the area, in terms of litter and other things that I have mentioned.

We have taken some major legislative reforms in trying to tackle fly-tipping, one of which is that last year we consulted on preventing charges for the disposal of DIY waste at household waste recycling centres. We will publish the results of that soon. That is potentially a lot of the stuff that gets fly-tipped, because people are trying to avoid paying to take it to the right place. We are also taking forward our commitment to develop proposals for the reform of the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime. That should make it easier for regulators to enforce against non-compliant operators, while making it much harder for those who are not registered properly to find work in the sector. We have consulted on that, and we will publish the response shortly. We are introducing mandatory waste tracking. All those things will make a difference to tackling the pernicious issue of fly-tipping.

We also have a range of other measures around reducing waste overall that will help to reduce litter, such as our extended producer responsibility scheme for packaging and the deposit return scheme for drinks containers. That is particularly aimed at in-scope containers, an awful lot of which are on-the-go products that are bought in a local shop, consumed in the street and then chucked away. The deposit return scheme is really designed to help tackle that.

Similarly, we have really cracked down on the issue of chewing gum on pavements. That is another absolute bugbear of mine. We have established a chewing gum taskforce, which has provided £1.25 million of funding to help more than 40 councils clean chewing gum off the pavements. It has had superb results: it has achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 80% in the first two months.

Behaviour change is really important in all this, as is education, which was mentioned comprehensively by the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall. I fully support him and all those schools that are doing such great work to teach their kids that it is not right to throw down litter.

I will end there. I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for bringing this debate to us. Huge congratulations and thanks to all those volunteers and community groups, including in Ealing, Southall, who have done such great work on cleaning up litter.

Question put and agreed to.

Asbestos in Workplaces

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

17:07

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in this debate, as a number of names have joined the list since I first had notification of it. I call Jane Hunt to move the motion.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered asbestos in workplaces.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, in this debate on proposals to manage asbestos in workplaces and introduce measures to prevent the public’s exposure to it. I thank Mesothelioma UK, a national charity based in my constituency, for its work supporting those living with asbestos-related cancer. As well as providing access to mesothelioma clinical nurse specialists at the point of need in hospitals across the UK, the charity offers a range of support services and does dedicated research. I also thank the House of Commons participation digital team, which ahead of the debate helped me to create a public survey on the issues that I will raise, and the very many people who shared their experiences through that venue.

Earlier this month was Global Asbestos Awareness Week, which is crucial to Mesothelioma UK. It consistently receives feedback from patients, families and professionals that the public should be made more aware of the risks of asbestos, and that action should be taken to ensure that deaths from exposure to it are prevented for future generations. Currently, there are three hazards considered dangerous enough to have their own regulations: radiation, lead and asbestos. While lead and radiation are now strictly controlled, and as a result account for zero deaths, the continuing low profile of asbestos in public policy is putting the public in danger. That is supported by the mortality statistics, which I will go into shortly.

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that was extensively used as a building material in the UK from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, and found its way into products such as ceiling tiles, pipe insultation, boilers, sprayed coatings and garage roof tiles. Given that it was often mixed with other materials, it can be difficult to determine its presence. There has also never been a widescale investigation into exactly how many buildings contain asbestos. We can therefore go only by the estimates produced by various organisations when trying to determine the extent of its presence.

One such estimate is from the Health and Safety Executive, which believes that between 210,000 and 400,000 buildings in the UK contain asbestos. However, other sources say that there are about 6 million tonnes of asbestos, spread across approximately 1.5 million buildings—the most asbestos per capita in Europe.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. The Work and Pensions Committee criticised the Government and the HSE for showing a lack of imagination in working towards wholesale removal of asbestos in non-domestic buildings. Does she agree that the HSE should fund research to inform a wider credible strategy for wholesale removal?

[Jane Hunt]

I certainly agree that there is work to be done. That sounds like a very good idea. The Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) will speak later, I believe.

A freedom of information request to the Department for Education last year found that nearly 81% of schools reported that asbestos was present in their buildings. The responses to my survey indicate that schools are one of the hotspots for asbestos exposure, with one response stating:

“My lovely mum was a primary school teacher, who taught children with special educational needs. She was 64 when diagnosed with Mesothelioma, and 67 when she died…After investigations, she was asked if she’d ever worked with asbestos. She said no. It was an odd question as she was a teacher. Then we found out that asbestos is still present in UK schools today.”

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this very important debate. Does she consider the idea of forcing educationalists—whether they are teachers or lecturers—to sign non-disclosure agreements about not discussing asbestos in their establishments on leaving their institutions to be an affront, and does she agree that it should end?

[Jane Hunt]

I was not aware of that. Perhaps I could put that to the Minister for a response. If she cannot give one, I will try to get an answer from the Department for Education.

Another response to my survey stated:

“My husband was diagnosed in October 2012 with Mesothelioma at the age of 34…It changed our lives forever! We do not know exactly how or where he was exposed to asbestos but, from research, we believe he either had secondary exposure from his father bringing it home on his clothes from his place of work, or he could have been directly exposed in the schools he attended which all still contain asbestos to this day.”

A separate information request to the NHS found that more than 90% of hospital buildings contained asbestos. Hospitals were identified as another hotspot for exposure in my survey, with one response stating:

“Before her 40th birthday my wife was diagnosed with Mesothelioma, a mother of 3, who for her whole life worked as an NHS Nurse. She was studying and working in what you would expect to be a safe environment.”

A further freedom of information request to 20 local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales from the law firm Irwin Mitchell revealed that 4,533 public buildings still contain asbestos. That averages to around 225 buildings per local authority. Irwin Mitchell estimates that if the data provided is repeated around the country, about 87,000 public buildings contain asbestos.

Asbestos exposure is the single greatest cause of work-related deaths in the UK, with the HSE estimating that more than 5,000 people die from asbestos-related cancers every year. More than half of those deaths are from mesothelioma, a type of cancer that can occur on the lining of the lung or the lining surrounding the lower digestive tract. Shockingly, according to the HSE, the UK has the highest rate of mesothelioma deaths per capita in the world.

Mesothelioma is not typically detected in the early stages of the disease, as it has a long latency period of 15 to 45 years, with some prolonged cases of 60 years before symptoms show. Therefore, once diagnosed, it is often advanced, so up to 60% of patients die in the first year after diagnosis, with just over five in 100 surviving for five years or more.

Furthermore, while historically, men working in building-related activities as well as other heavy industries such as shipbuilding were the most likely people to develop asbestos-related diseases, we are now seeing a trend of younger people, both men and women, dying as a result of exposure. As Irwin Mitchell highlighted, over the past 20 years, an increasing number of people have developed asbestos-related illnesses from more indirect sources.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The historical legacy of asbestos in heavy industry is well documented, but does the hon. Lady share my concerns and those of the Clydebank Asbestos Group in my constituency about the increasing number of women being diagnosed with asbestos-related conditions, critically reflecting the reality of women’s exposure and a failure to recognise the many types of asbestos-related conditions, which can also include ovarian cancer?

[Jane Hunt]

I was not aware of the ovarian cancer element. However, I was going to mention family members washing work clothes covered in asbestos dust and that kind of thing, or non-industrial exposure. This is greatly concerning.

I will take this opportunity to share a few extracts from a statement provided to me by one of my constituents, whose husband died from mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos:

“[My husband] at first did not show much reaction when he was diagnosed. All he really wanted was to find out what could be done to help him. He felt angry later that it could have been prevented. [My husband] was very matter of fact that all he could do now was fight it and try to survive as long as possible.

I felt absolute terror, I felt extremely upset and tearful but because [my husband] was handling it so well, I kept some of my worst feelings hidden and just supported him in the way he wanted me to, but I felt an overwhelming panic that I was going to lose my wonderful husband to this devastating cancer. Something that was totally preventable.”

A number of regulations have rightly been introduced in the past 90 years to try to limit people’s exposure, including in 1999 a full ban on its import, supply and use in manufacture. The Government’s current policy reflects HSE advice, which states that, wherever possible, asbestos-containing materials should be left in situ.

The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 provide the regulatory framework on working with asbestos and apply to all non-domestic premises. Under the regulations, the HSE requires duty-holders to assess whether asbestos is present in their buildings, what condition it is in and whether it gives rise to the risk of exposure. The duty-holder must then draw up a plan to manage the risk associated with asbestos. Importantly, that must include the removal of the asbestos, if it cannot be safely managed where it remains in place. Duty-holders are also legally required to remove asbestos-containing materials before major refurbishment or demolition work.

Despite those efforts, asbestos is still present in many buildings, and people are still suffering and dying from asbestos-related illnesses. We therefore need to take a look at what more we can do. I welcome the fact that the Work and Pensions Committee considered this subject as part of its 2022 report into the HSE’s approach to asbestos management. The Chair of that Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham, is here, and I thank him for his dedication to highlighting this very serious issue, and for his support and assistance with today’s debate. I am sure that he will want to speak in more detail about the findings of the Committee’s report. However, I would like to mention two issues that were raised by the Committee and which Mesothelioma UK has highlighted in its new campaign, “Don’t Let the Dust Settle”.

The first of those is the Committee’s recommendation that a central asbestos register is introduced. The lack of in-depth and up-to-date data is proving to be a barrier to dealing with the risk posed to the public. A central register would help to alleviate that problem and support a longer-term strategic approach to managing asbestos. It would also provide vital information on the level of compliance by those with a duty to manage asbestos on their premises, and ensure that enforcement action is focused in the right areas.

As one respondent to my survey put it:

“The existence of asbestos in public and private buildings is rife yet there is no proper cataloguing of this or scheme to remove this highly dangerous substance. The hospitals caring for people with asbestos related cancers are full of the very substance that is killing them. There is a need to systematically catalogue and schedule a programme of removal of asbestos from all buildings”.

Without a register and steps being taken to remove asbestos, the British Occupational Hygiene Society estimates that we are likely to see a spike in occupational, and potentially non-occupational, illness arising from asbestos exposure in around 2060. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister reconsidered the Government’s position on a national register.

The other recommendation from the Committee is that a deadline is set for the removal of all asbestos from non-domestic buildings. That approach would bring our strategy in line with that of France, where a general plan has been implemented to remove asbestos from every building within 40 years. Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the UK is obligated to seek out and adopt international best practice. Currently, the classification of acceptable exposure levels to asbestos fibres in the UK is 10 times greater than that now allowed across Europe.

The current way to deal with asbestos—to leave it in situ—is clearly not working, given that the people affected by asbestos-related cancers are becoming younger and younger. Materials are degrading over time through wear and tear, and are being damaged inadvertently. Research published last year by the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association and the National Organisation of Asbestos Consultants identified that more than 70% of asbestos-containing materials managed in situ had deteriorated, indicating that management of the risk was ineffective.

We therefore simply cannot afford to delay asbestos removal further. That is particularly true in education and health settings where many of our most vulnerable stay, work and study. The majority of those who have contacted me ahead of the debate are in agreement that in order to deal with the current risk, we need a national asbestos strategy. That approach has proved effective in other nations, which have accepted that leaving asbestos in situ is not safe. Since developing national asbestos strategies, such nations have seen an improvement in their asbestos monitoring and detection technologies and practices. The UK needs its own asbestos strategy that incorporates this best practice, as well as a timetable for the safe removal of asbestos, prioritising the highest-risk asbestos in settings such as schools and hospitals. Taken together, those two actions will help to focus minds across Government and industry, and will help to drive progress.

I will close with extracts from a statement provided by another of my constituents, whose husband died of mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos. Her husband said before his death:

“I was never told about any risks of working with asbestos. The environment was so dusty that sometimes you could struggle to see clearly. It was therefore obvious to me that health and safety was being ignored.”

My constituent said later that her husband

“was 69 when he died from Mesothelioma…We had been married for 45 years.”

She continued that he

“was a family man who always put others first. His death from this terrible disease has deprived me of a loving husband and friend, his daughters of a wonderful father and my daughters’ children of an amazing grandad.”

The grandfather of one of the members of my team also died from mesothelioma. We must put a stop to this. Please, don’t let the dust settle.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will call the SNP spokesperson at 17.47. I do not want to put a clock on Members, but the SNP spokesperson will have five minutes, Labour will have five minutes and the Minister will have 10 minutes.

17:22

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) for bringing this extremely important discussion to Westminster Hall.

I want to pay tribute to a number of people—I will be brief—who have been campaigning for generations on asbestos-related cancers. These are the people in the field, who deal with individuals who have died, and who assist and support people through the darkest period in their lives. Asbestos-related cancers and, in particular, mesothelioma are dreadful diseases. As has been mentioned, 60% of people when diagnosed with mesothelioma die within a year, but by heck has it been a struggle to get rightful compensation for many of the people involved—not just for them, but for the families, and everyone who has suffered.

I give a big thank you to the TUC, the Joint Union Asbestos Committee, the Asbestos Victims Support Group Forum and the different forums up and down the country—I can see members present. I also say a big thank you to Mesothelioma UK for all its work, but by heavens, that has been a very difficult task, because successive Governments have not done anything to protect people from mesothelioma and other asbestos-related cancers.

With mesothelioma, it is not just people in heavy industry, but, as the hon. Lady mentioned, teachers—and if it is teachers, it is kids. We should not forget that kids are more susceptible to mesothelioma in that environment. They are five times more likely to get the disease than teachers. I think 400 teachers have died since 1980— 21 a year. What have we done about it in this country? Absolutely nothing. The Government have failed at every turn to do anything at all about mesothelioma.

What has happened as a result of that? People are dying, and not just teachers, but plumbers, doctors, nurses and people in the NHS. We are talking about people in the building industry and patients in hospitals. People within the school and educational estates are dying. It just takes a drawing pin into asbestos and a little bit of dust lodges in someone’s lungs. They do not feel it. They could have that little bit of dust in their lungs for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years and die as a result of it once they are diagnosed.

It is essential that we do more as a Government than we have ever done before. We are one of the only Governments in the world where cancer-related diseases and deaths are on the increase, and we are doing absolutely nothing about it. That is really not acceptable. It is as if we have kicked the can down the road to 30 or 40 years’ time. Mr Paisley, you will remember Alice Mahon, the MP for Halifax, who recently died of mesothelioma—after being in this place, by the way, for more than a decade. It was because of her work in the national health service as a nurse, and she died as a result of mesothelioma. She had an awful death.

I could speak for ages about this issue, but I understand that lots of people want to get in on this debate. It is important to recognise that every now and again we speak about mesothelioma, cancer-related diseases and everything that is killing people, but we do nothing about it. We will have another debate in 10 years’ time and say we have not done anything. We have to get our act together. We have to make sure that we support people who, unfortunately, have lost loved ones because of diseases like this. They need proper compensation and proper support. But listen: if we prevented this and took action in the first place, we would not need to support those people, and we would not have the deaths that we are having.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will not put an official clock on you, but for guidance, colleagues, you have four minutes.

17:27

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on leading the debate, and I am pleased to follow my friend and good colleague, the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who obviously has personal knowledge of this subject.

We have heard about the life-threatening danger of asbestos, which includes diseases as serious as lung cancer. For employers, the health and safety of our staff should be our utmost priority, but we still hear of cases today. That is where I am coming from. Clusters of individuals have become ill due to spaces being riddled with asbestos.

We have similar problems in Northern Ireland. I always bring a Northern Ireland perspective to these debates; it adds to the comments of others across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where we are often challenged by things not just collectively, but individually in our regions. We must work together towards making all spaces asbestos-free. We must study the figures in greater depth and take the steps necessary to protect and save lives.

When discussing issues relating to asbestos in workplaces or mesothelioma, I often recall a situation in Northern Ireland in late 2018. A Northern Ireland Cancer Registry investigation was triggered by a former member of staff who approached the registry with concerns that several cancers had been diagnosed among people who had been working in one area of the Ulster University Jordanstown campus. However, the NICR found insufficient evidence to prove that it was asbestos in the university that caused cancer in those staff members.

Specific figures for Northern Ireland show that cases where asbestos-related illness was the primary or secondary cause of death increased from 63 in 2019 to 99 in 2020. In some cases, that has been put down to historic working practices and the widespread use of asbestos in the building trade before 1980, with little awareness of the long-term implications. You will recall this story, Mr Paisley: I can remember films of east Belfast and Harland & Wolff—the hon. Member for Loughborough referred to shipbuilding in particular—where asbestos was flying through the streets. Kids were playing in it and breathing it in because they did not know any better. The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said a pinhead is enough to be affected. Many people died from that. When I first got elected to the council in 1985, I had a number of constituents who lived in Greyabbey and Ballywalter and worked in the shipyard. The shipyard employed 30,000 people at one time. The number of deaths from mesothelioma or asbestosis was incredible. I have seen men of the ’60s and so on who just could not get a breath and seen the impact of what has happened to them because they did not know. Now that we do know, let us take steps to ensure it does not happen again.

[Margaret Ferrier]

The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 are retained EU law, so they will sunset at the end of the year. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is still to complete its parliamentary passage. The Government have not yet set out their intentions with this issue specifically. Does the hon. Member agree there must be sufficient planning to prevent a gap in legislation for asbestos, considering the serious health risks?

[Jim Shannon]

I agree with the hon. Lady but I will refer that to the Minister, who I think will be better placed to reply. Again, I am throwing the burden on to the Minister to respond. I know she will be more than happy to do so.

The Government have paid out some £40 million in compensation for asbestos-related illnesses in Northern Ireland, with Belfast shipbuilding unjustly being linked to most of the claims. Asbestos was used in the building materials until it was discovered later that the inhalation of fibres could also cause cancers. Where there has been more in-depth research into links between cancer and asbestos, that has proved to be an ongoing problem. The Department of Education in Northern Ireland—the hon. Members for Loughborough and for Wansbeck referred to this, and I know others will as well—has many buildings that teachers and children use that contain asbestos.

I will highlight one other area that the hon. Lady did not refer to. I do so because I live on a farm, so I understand that asbestos risk is an ongoing problem. I removed one of the roofs just last year. I had to get a specialist company in to do so. They came—it was like “Star Wars”—booted from head to toe, and we were not allowed up near the top of the yard, because obviously stuff was everywhere when they were removing it.

I conclude with this because I am conscious of time. Many have asked what the price of a life is, when preventive steps should be taken to stop lives being unnecessarily lost. Compensation for those who unduly lost loved ones is one thing, but ensuring that proper precautions are taken to make workplaces safe is another. I hope that today, as a joint collective across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we can do both. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

17:29

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

We owe a great debt to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) for securing the debate and the way in which she moved the motion. I used to be a union organiser in the public sector before I became a Member of Parliament, in the National Union of Public Employees. In the early ’70s, when the debate started about the health, safety and welfare at work legislation, which was put in law in 1974, the issues and dangers of asbestos were known. Huge profits had been made by Turner & Newall and other companies from selling asbestos, and it was installed regularly in lots of places even after the dangers were well known. Asbestos lagging on pipes in heating installations and on exhaust systems of buses and other vehicles led to an awful lot of workers getting mesothelioma as a result.

Our great friend Alice Mahon was also a member of NUPE. She worked in a dilapidated old hospital building in Halifax and in this building. I was at her funeral in Halifax last month. It was a sombre occasion. It was a huge gathering at the minster in Halifax that paid tribute to a wonderful MP and a very principled campaigner. The collection was for victims of asbestos in the Calderdale area. In this debate, we should remember that asbestos can affect anybody. Who would have thought that a Member of Parliament would get this kind of condition from being in this building? This is not about MPs, but a lot of people whose voices have not been heard: those who clean buses or trains, those who work in or install heating systems and, indeed, people quite innocently doing a few home repairs, not realising they have actually pin-pricked into asbestos in a building.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

My grandmother, when she lived in Durban Avenue in Clydebank, had a white picket fence brought out of a sheet from Turner’s asbestos factory in Clydebank. The right hon. Member is right to remind us of the differentiation around how people get asbestos. It also relates to where the asbestos is now dumped. Does he share my concern that, besides the traditional aspect of asbestos, it is hidden in grounds across our country? They also need to be investigated—that is to say, hidden asbestos dumps.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Member raises a very important point. There are a number of unaudited rubbish dumps around the country, including unaudited rubbish dumps from the Ministry of Defence, many of which will contain asbestos remains that are completely unknown. Somebody will come along, perhaps to construct something on that site, and dig it up. As a result, asbestos will be released into the atmosphere. We are facing a serious issue of epidemic proportions.

In the 45 seconds that I have left, I thank the Minister for being present. We need a full audit of all the asbestos dangers in the country, including the tips and so on that we have mentioned. We need a programme of containment and labelling of it everywhere before it is removed, and we need a programme of removal. We should not be the worst country in Europe, or indeed in most of the world, on the question of asbestos safety; we ought to be the best. None of this is new. All of this has been around a long time, and I hope that today’s short debate will serve as a reminder that this House is determined that we will rid this country of the dangers of asbestos, and the danger of taking lives 50 or 60 years from now.

17:36

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on securing the debate and on her speech. As she said, the Work and Pensions Committee published a report on asbestos management on 30 March last year. Ministers unfortunately rejected our recommendations but, for reasons that we have heard today, the case for action looks even stronger now than it did then.

Our report opened with this point:

“Asbestos-related illness is one of the great workplace tragedies of modern times.”

Asbestos is still the biggest source of work-related fatalities in the UK, and the fact that we used brown asbestos for a long time, and used it very heavily—

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the debate but there is a Division in the main Chamber. Please try to be back here within 15 minutes.

17:37

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

17:46

On resuming—

[Sir Stephen Timms]

The assumption in the current regulations, as the hon. Member for Loughborough said, is that if the asbestos is in reasonable condition and not disturbed, it should not harm anybody, but that assumption looks increasingly unsafe. We have heard from others about the extent of the problem of asbestos in schools and hospitals—I understand that the scale of the threat will be highlighted in a big article in The Sunday Times magazine this coming weekend—but I worry that there has not been enough focus on this problem over the last few years.

In 2019-20, the Health and Safety Executive conducted 907 inspections of work by licensed asbestos inspectors, which is 40% fewer than in 2012-13. The fall in number of asbestos enforcement notices from 2011-12 to 2018-19—a period when the HSE really struggled with resources and should have had more support—was 60%, which was much greater than the fall in the number of HSE enforcement notices in that period, at only 10%.

The Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), told our Committee that the Government had “a clearly stated goal” that

“it is right to—over time and in the safest way—work towards there no longer being asbestos in non-domestic buildings.”

We agreed with the Minister about that, and I hope the current Minister will reaffirm that view, but we think we need a plan to achieve that goal, not just a hope that it happens by happenstance. As the House has been rightly reminded, we recommended a 40-year deadline to remove all asbestos from non-domestic buildings and a plan to achieve it, and that the HSE should develop a central digital register of asbestos in non-domestic buildings.

We know that we will have to do a lot of work to our buildings to deliver net zero in the next few decades, and that means two things. First, asbestos left in place will not be left alone for long; it will be disturbed. That potentially creates a big problem, but it also creates an opportunity, because we can remove asbestos at the same time as making the net zero changes that will have to be made, and so achieve removal relatively cost-effectively. That is what we should be doing.

Since the Select Committee’s report, published research has strengthened the case for action. We have heard about the report of the Asbestos Testing and Consultancy Association, which I am glad will become an annual report. One of the lessons from that survey is that producing a national central register of asbestos, as recommended by the Select Committee, will not involve massive new data collection. A lot of the data is already there. It needs organising, assessing and quality-assuring, but that is a wholly manageable task. The industry has done a large chunk of it already without any Government support; with Government support, the whole thing becomes a very manageable task.

I welcome the programme of inspections in 400 schools that the Health and Safety Executive has been undertaking. The HSE has made the point that a lot of those schools do not have a plan for managing asbestos risk. The Irwin Mitchell report, which has been mentioned, estimates that if we do not do anything, it will take 80 years to get rid of asbestos from all local authority buildings, so we really need to get a move on.

Finally, and to echo an earlier intervention, if the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill reaches the statute book in its current form, there will be no UK regulations on managing asbestos for the first time since 1930. I do not think that anybody wants that to happen, so perhaps the Minister can reassure us that there will be secondary legislation to fill that gap. Can she tell us when it will be published and whether it will be consulted on? I ask her as well to reconsider the Government’s response to those two crucial recommendations for a 40-year deadline and a central register.

17:51

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on securing this important debate. It is particularly timely for those constituents of mine who were forced to take strike action in February when their employer, a local social housing provider, was accused of forcing them to handle asbestos in tenants’ homes, a job that they were not properly trained for. Thankfully, that strike was successful, but at a cost of significant disruption to the tenants and, of course, great anxiety for those workers, who feared being exposed to such a lethal substance. I raise it today as a reminder that asbestos is not a historical tragedy. We continue to live with asbestos today, and it is vital that employers in high-risk sectors are reminded of the duties they have to keep their staff safe.

I was an active trade unionist when we first began to reckon with the dangers of asbestos. Experts warned of the dangers for decades, but it was only in the 1970s, when confronted with rising rates of mesothelioma across the UK, that the construction industry was forced to acknowledge the devastation that asbestos can wreak. Even then, it was not until 1999 that we finally achieved a total prohibition on its use, more than 15 years after the first law banning some forms of asbestos had been introduced. I am not sure that it will ever be possible to calculate the number of people who were exposed to asbestos in buildings that were built or refurbished in that 15-year window alone, but we can say with some confidence that lives could doubtless have been saved if we had acted far sooner.

So we are gathered here today to confront a deadly legacy. Asbestos can be found everywhere in our lives—in the environment, our schools, our homes and our office buildings. Indeed, the Labour Research Department found that there were 451 premises in London alone with asbestos and that two thirds of NHS premises and buildings that were considered still contain asbestos today.

According to the Health and Safety Executive, asbestos remains the largest killer in the workplace and its enduring prevalence means that, tragically, there are healthy people alive today who will die from asbestos-related diseases, including mesothelioma, of which the UK has the highest number of cases in the world.

As a former regional secretary of Unite the union, I have represented thousands of workers in construction, which is the industry with the highest asbestos-related mortality rates. I have seen at first hand the terrible suffering that these vicious diseases inflict, and I know just how important it is that we deliver a strategy to rid our country of this ticking time bomb as soon as we possibly can.

I want to express my gratitude to charities such as Mesothelioma UK, as well as the Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Group, for everything they have done to bring this issue to broader attention.

Any objective assessment of the progress made in the more than two decades since asbestos was banned for good, and in particular over the last 13 years of Tory Government, cannot but lead to the conclusion that that progress has been woefully inadequate. The families of those who have lost their lives to mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases are angry. They have just cause to be angry, and so do those whose loved ones will lose their lives in the future.

The Work and Pensions Committee’s recent report revealed that there is no clear strategy on how to realise the vision of an asbestos-free Britain and that there is a lack of meaningful investment and research into the removal of asbestos. It called for a pan-Government and system-wide strategy and for a legally binding 40-year commitment to the removal of asbestos from all non-domestic buildings. That is the kind of clarity and certainty that the victims of asbestos rightly deserve.

17:55

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) on bringing forward this really important debate and on her wonderful speech, which was well-informed and passionately delivered. I will make a few brief observations and then ask a few questions of the Government.

The management of asbestos in buildings is a reserved matter—it is for the UK Government and the Health and Safety Executive, which has UK-wide responsibility for enforcement of legislation and regulations. The Scottish National party would call for health and safety legislation to be devolved to the Scottish Government so that we can create fairer working practices and conditions and rectify buildings to adequate standards. I do not know whether Members are aware of this, but Scotland is, I believe, the only place in the United Kingdom where people can receive compensation if they develop pleural plaques. I ask the Minister why that is not available across the UK.

I am grateful to the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the TUC, which have given me a really good briefing for today. I have listened to hon. Members carefully, and I note with interest the fact that many have referred to teachers who have been affected. I taught in a further education college, and when I took early retirement in 2011—that worked out well—I was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. In it was a paragraph that said I would waive all my rights to claim compensation from the college in the event of my getting asbestosis. I had a good lawyer look at the NDA and I refused to sign it. My remarks to the then principal of the college were, “You worked in that building too. You might want to reconsider putting this in an NDA.”

Asbestosis can affect everyone and can do terrible things. We have heard numerous examples from Members across the spectrum of how people can contract it and the terrible price they pay if they suffer from it or from mesothelioma. It has been difficult to listen to some of the stories we have heard this afternoon, so why will the Government not collect comprehensive and accurate data on the extent, type and condition of all asbestos in public buildings, including schools and this place—as we heard, there have been problems here? Surely it is a false economy not to tackle this issue of asbestos as soon as possible. We cannot keep kicking down the road the dangers people are facing, waiting to see what happens 50 or 60 years on.

The Health and Safety Executive has had a 54% cut in funding. Will the Government commit to reversing those cuts and letting it do its job properly? We heard about the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill and the sunset clause. This has to be addressed. We cannot just ignore this problem.

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, for the work it has done. The Government are well aware of what is happening, so I ask them to please do something about it. If not, please devolve the powers to the Scottish Government.

Here is something that no one has mentioned yet: can we have a public awareness campaign on this issue? We all know about it, but there are people outside the House who do not understand. We have all sorts of public campaigns on how to detect cancer; we have all sorts of information and awareness raising. Can the Government confirm that they will look into that for this issue as well?

I also thank, as someone has already done, the TUC, the Joint Union Asbestos Committee and the Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum. This huge issue affects many people, including in my constituency, where there was formerly a steelworks, among other things. But we have to be reminded that it is not just people who worked in heavy industry who contract this disease. Please will the Government take on board everything they have heard this afternoon, answer some of the questions, bring forward help for the future and not keep kicking things down the road?

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.

18:00

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Mr Paisley, it is of course a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, sir. I, too, start by thanking the hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) for bringing this important debate here today. I think we can all agree that, in her opening remarks, she made an absolutely firm case on the real dangers of asbestos.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my right hon. Friends the Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who all made excellent contributions and highlighted the real dangers, but also some tragic real-life stories of the real impact that asbestos is having.

As we all know and as has been said here today, asbestos is a deeply dangerous material. It was therefore right, and long overdue, that the last Labour Government banned the import, supply and use of asbestos in 1999. Yet asbestos remains all too prevalent in many buildings across the UK, as we have heard. The serious dangers that asbestos poses, despite being banned for almost a quarter of a century, are shown nowhere more clearly than in the number of people who have died as a result of asbestos-related conditions. Each year, there are about 5,000 asbestos-related deaths in the UK, with 2,300 in 2021 alone attributed to mesothelioma, and almost 500 mentions of asbestosis on death certificates.

The risk that asbestos poses for working people in particular—they are forced to spend significant periods in workplaces riddled with it—is significant and deeply alarming, because there are just so many workplaces, especially in the public sector, where asbestos remains present. The TUC found that 90% of schools still contain asbestos. We have heard similar statistics for hospitals—the NHS—and other public sector buildings.

It seems that the primary protection at the moment is through the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, but with so many people contracting asbestosis after being exposed in their workplace, there is real concern that the existing legislation is just not enough, so the Government need to look long and hard at whether further protections, which are actually enforceable, are needed.

I am rushing slightly because time is limited. The Government first need to make clear whether the current legislation and protections for working people from the risks of asbestos exposure will actually exist beyond the end of the year, because right now that is far from clear. Under the Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which will automatically delete a huge number of pieces of employment rights legislation, the Control of Asbestos Regulations will cease to have any force unless amended or replaced by secondary legislation. The Government were warned of that when they were rushing the retained EU law Bill through Parliament. They were warned that sunsetting so many rights and protections was reckless at best and dangerous at worst. They were even pushed on the Control of Asbestos Regulations specifically during the passage of the Bill. The Minister responsible answered that the Government saw opportunities to reduce business burdens and reaffirmed that the United Kingdom has high standards of health and safety. I would be grateful to hear this Minister’s views on where they are going with that. We have a number of asks for the Government. Evidence on the number of asbestos deaths and the number of buildings that still contain asbestos shows us that we need to more, not less. The Government should start by following through on recommendations made to them. First, they must ensure adequate data collection and reporting of buildings that contain asbestos. Many locations are not known about until renovation starts. Secondly, the Government should conduct a serious review of the adequacy of asbestos exposure limits. The UK’s limit is 10 times lower than limits across Europe and 100 times lower than the limit recommended by the International Commission on Occupational Health.

Thirdly, the Government should reverse the cuts made to the Health and Safety Executive’s funding. Because of cuts of up to 50% between the levels seen under the last Labour Government and 2019-20, there has been a huge reduction in the number of inspectors, from 3,700 to 1,000. At the same time, the Government should reverse their attacks on trade unions and their ability to organise, because trade union health and safety reps play a critical role in keeping workers safe.

Time not permitting, Mr Paisley, I will conclude by saying that I will be grateful to hear the Minister’s response to each of those four questions, particularly the one about retained EU law and how the Government plan to continue regulation and legislation in this area.

18:06

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) for bringing this important debate to the House. I too extend my heartfelt sympathy to all those individuals in Great Britain and beyond who have lost a loved one or a colleague, or who are living with the impact of asbestos-related disease. I thank all hon. Members across the House for coming here to talk about their concerns, their impactful stories and their truths, as well as all the members of the public in the Gallery who have joined this afternoon.

Asbestos continues to be a problem experienced around the globe. As my hon. Friend mentioned in her opening remarks, earlier this month the United Kingdom joined other countries in recognising Global Asbestos Awareness Week, designed to remind us all of the impact of asbestos-related disease and how it continues to be felt. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said, I shall be talking about raising awareness later in my speech, but I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome the important work done by charities to support people affected by this devastating disease, such as the charity Mesothelioma UK, which is based in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and all those who do the great campaign work that has been outlined today.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). Asbestos was banned in Great Britain in 1999, and stringent interventions and regulatory controls are now in place to prevent people from being exposed to it, but I assure the House and all those listening to or reading the debate that I too, when preparing for the debate, put similar searching questions to the HSE and my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions property team, one of whom is a former HSE inspector and removal specialist. I have not just come here to read the speech I have been given, and I hope that that reassures everyone.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

In this analysis, will the Minister include the problem of unmarked dumps around the country, particularly Ministry of Defence dumps, which are highly likely to include large quantities of very dangerous blue asbestos, which is probably the worst type?

[Mims Davies]

I have a feeling I will be sent a note on that, and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We have spoken about a lot of matters this afternoon, and I hope I will be forgiven if I do not respond to every question. I shall respond to some, and I assure right hon. and hon. Members and the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), that I shall put a copy of the responses in the Library of the House.

Under the law on dumping locations, asbestos must be disposed of in licensed sites, but we are aware of some issues of illegal dumping. The HSE supports local authorities in their enforcement responsibilities in this area, but I will take that point away.

Before I move on, I will try to answer some questions before progressing with my speech. On the question regarding asbestos research from the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, the Health and Safety Executive has published a comprehensive science and evidence strategy associated with a delivery plan, and it includes commitments. It will continue to research and publish those findings.

On the retained EU law questions, the focus continues to be on ensuring appropriate regulatory frameworks, and maintaining the United Kingdom’s high standards for health and safety protection, but we balance that with reductions in burdens to business. The HSE’s approach is closely aligned with the Government’s pledges to do more for business, to promote growth, to deal with disproportionate burdens and to simplify the regulatory landscape.

Our standards are all about health and safety protections, and they are among the highest in the world. The HSE will continue to review its retained EU law to seek to look at the opportunities, but it always looks at what is happening around the globe, as has been mentioned.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I do not think the Minister would suggest that we should scrap all asbestos regulations for the first time since 1930, so that does imply that there will be some secondary legislation. Can she give us any indication of when that will be forthcoming?

[Mims Davies]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are looking at exactly that at the moment. The rules and regulations are for the HSE. It has the experts and it needs to do what it sees fit. I will be looking very closely at the HOUSE, which will be bringing proposals to Ministers; that is being looked at currently. As soon as I have more to share, I will do so. We are clear that the HSE is committed to its regulatory role and to supporting wider Government priorities.

The right hon. Member for East Ham, who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, talked about resourcing, as did other Members. We know that this area is highly risky. Licence holders—those who undertake removal work—are individually reviewed and that is followed up. The inspections are really important. Our end-to-end approach provides assurance that the licensing regime is fit for purpose and working effectively. The HSE takes that very seriously. In ’23-24, as part of its planned inspection activity, the HSE will continue to carry out inspections across the construction industry where asbestos exposure risks continue to be raised. Inspection work in schools and other organisations, which has been mentioned this afternoon, will continue to happen to effectively manage that asbestos legacy.

The HSE allocates budgets and resources on the basis of levels of expected interventions, including inspection, investigation and enforcement activity, and does not allocate budgets at sub-activity level, such as for construction and health inspection. We have a range of different interventions and a way of doing things on which the HSE is very strident, and I reassure the House that nothing has changed.

I will mention NDAs, because, like others, I have been appalled this afternoon to hear about the issues affecting teachers. This is a matter for the Department for Education, but I will ask my officials to raise it with the DFE so that a response can be provided.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw asked how we are supporting people suffering with asbestos-related diseases. In 2022-23—it says ’23-24 in my notes; I do not think that is right, but I will get my officials to check whether that is the case—1,890 payable industrial injuries disablement benefit assessments took place, and the scheme provides a weekly payment based on the assessed level of disablement. I will write to the hon. Lady with further details and confirmation for her. There are lump sum compensation payments as well, and I am happy to send her further details on that.

[Marion Fellows]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mims Davies]

I am running out of time, but okay.

[Marion Fellows]

I just wanted to say that my point was to show the difference in the compensation for pleural plaques; I was not insinuating that there was no other compensation in the rest of the UK.

[Mims Davies]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point and I am happy to expand on that further. She will be keen to know that, later this year, the HSE’s “Asbestos and You” campaign will move to a new focus on the duty to manage asbestos safely in buildings by highlighting the requirements placed on those responsible for the buildings to manage any asbestos present.

The Government are not opposed to an asbestos register, or any steps regarding support to improve the safety regime to enable effective risk management. However, I understand from the HSE that the suggestion that Great Britain creates a national register for buildings would need to be considered carefully because of the potential unintended consequences.

In Great Britain, the regulations require duty holders to either survey premises constructed before asbestos was banned or to presume that it is present. Most duty holders decide to survey. and to arrange a register and plan for every room and area detailing the presence of any type of asbestos-containing materials and their condition and quantity. The new register would therefore require significant resources from duty holders and the Government. I understand the point made by the Select Committee Chair. The concern is about duplication of information, and there is no clear understanding that risks of exposure would be improved. We want people to focus on the duty to manage, and to presume that asbestos is in situ, but I will expand on that in my further response.

I will try to conclude, because I believe I am one minute over, Mr Paisley.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

You’re okay.

[Mims Davies]

Are you okay with that? Thank you very much.

The challenge, as we all know, is that there is no easy way of safely removing asbestos from buildings, and disturbing asbestos inevitably creates fibre release and increases the risk to health. Provided it is in good condition, the HSE confirms that it is likely to be safest to remove asbestos at the end of a building’s life. If removal is in a staged and phased way, there is a pathway for Great Britain no longer to have asbestos in its workplaces, as we have heard this afternoon.

I have much more to say, which I will share with the House in a further response, but I hope that my remarks now have reassured Members that the current regulatory regime and framework for Great Britain remains sufficiently robust and enables the legacy of asbestos exposure risk in workplaces to be managed. I will comment on the concern about women later in my broader remarks, because I am conscious that I have not had time to respond now. I strongly want to continue to work with Members, the sector, campaigners and the HSE to ensure that we develop an asbestos-free Great Britain, as my predecessor my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) said. I take on board all elements of the debate today, and will continue to work robustly with the HSE, the Select Committee and all campaigners to deliver that.

18:18

[Jane Hunt]

I will take just a moment to thank everyone for being present today and the Minister for her remarks at the end of the debate. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who chairs of the APPG that deals with asbestos, and the right hon. Member for East Ham, who is the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee and has been particularly helpful with my preparation for today.

Those of us present today are from across parties, and we have all tended to agree, so let us make some action and actually achieve something, please. We have a catalyst for change in the remedial action to be taken towards net zero on buildings. To me, that is the ideal opportunity to make the change and to get asbestos out of our buildings. I request that that happens.

I thank especially Mesothelioma UK—present here today—which is a great charity, among other great charities, that provides support and research into this terrible disease. Again, I thank the many people who responded to my survey. I had many hundreds more quotes that I could have used, but I am afraid that I just did not have time. I thank everyone again.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered asbestos in workplaces.

18:20

Sitting adjourned.