Domestic Abuse

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I assure the hon. Lady that work across government is taking place on these issues—in the context of the Domestic Abuse Bill and more broadly on the availability of welfare, which, as she rightly says, is often one of the key elements in the support for and funding of rental and other aspects of need. On the point she makes about leaving the abusive relationship, a number of people actually want to stay in a particular home, and this is therefore about how the provisions in the Domestic Abuse Bill work in relation to extra sanctions and such measures. We talk about the concept of accommodation-based services, but important as refuges are, and they are hugely important, we equally recognise that there are other needs, and this is about the way in which that service and such support can be delivered.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is welcome news, as we have seen by how warmly it has been received. A woman in Nottingham fleeing abuse may be reliant on facilities elsewhere, so the decisions taken in other communities are of as much interest to me as those taken in my own. What does the Secretary of State foresee putting in the statutory guidance about the responsibility of local communities and authorities to work together so that we have a genuinely national network of refugees?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. As part of the duty on local authorities, there is a responsibility to monitor and evaluate local delivery, as well as to report back to my Department about their strategies and the implementation of them. One of the things I will be very interested in and focused on as we look to deliver this is the issue of data sharing, which, as we know, can sometimes be challenging and problematic in other policy areas. This is about how we are best able to reflect on the fact that people will understandably move from one area to another; indeed, that may be an imperative part of delivering their safety. As we look to the implementation and delivery, this is therefore an important part, and I hope we are able to get some good responses through the consultation.

Rail Investment in the East Midlands

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered rail investment in the East Midlands.

There are some firsts today, Sir Graham—I am always dealing with firsts. This is my first time under your chairship, which is very much appreciated. I also did not know before now that we could start early, which is very exciting, and I shall avail myself of the extra minutes to illuminate my subject matter further. I have sought this debate for quite some time, so I am really excited to have got it under the wire before the recess.

I am not naturally a whinger or shroud-wearer, but I will say a little about how the east midlands is perhaps not doing as well in terms of rail investment as it could be. I will also outline some really specific and really effective schemes that, with Government support, would deliver better rates of growth in our region. They are credible, ambitious and deliverable schemes, so I am trying to build support for them, and securing this debate is part of doing that.

The east midlands is at the heart of the country’s strategic transport network; it is literally the crossroads of England. Given our growth potential and our good record in the east midlands of delivering big projects, people might think that we would be a prime target for rail investment. However, the latest Treasury statistics—indeed, pretty much everything in the Government’s data —show that we are way behind where we ought to be.

Our region does not secure enough public investment in rail; in fact, we are at the bottom of the pile. The latest statistics bear a brief airing: the east midlands has the lowest level of public expenditure on transport, in total and per head; it has the lowest level of public expenditure on rail of anywhere in the country, at just £70 per head, which is £703 per head less than London and £180 per head less than the national average; for rail investment and transport investment more generally, the east midlands is not only the lowest funded region, but it has actually seen a reduction in funding in recent years; and the east midlands has the lowest level of public expenditure on infrastructure projects, at £230 per head less than the national average and £350 per head less than the north-west. And those figures are not a one-year blip; this is a trend over a series of years. The east midlands has actually experienced a steady downward slide to the bottom of the league.

I believe in levelling up. I do not see this process as some sort of competition against “That London”, and if it was, we would not win it. That is not the point I am making. However, it was very hard for me—I pride myself on being a pretty even-tempered person—to see what happened in one week this time last year. Despite an exceptionally strong business case, we saw the cancellation of the electrification of the midlands main line between Kettering and Sheffield, which represented nearly £900 million of investment. That happened just a day or two before the announcement of upwards of £38 billion of investment for Crossrail 2, the case for which is not as strong. I certainly would not wish to unpick Crossrail 2, but the point is that it was very difficult to hear those announcements on successive days.

We feel under pressure from London and the south-east, but we also feel under pressure, Sir Graham, from your backyard. The northern powerhouse is a competitor too, and it has a significant head start already; it is £980 per head better off in terms of infrastructure investment than the east midlands. Even in terms of the midlands engine, which we are very keen to see succeed, there is a risk of that becoming the west midlands engine, as it is tilted towards Birmingham, which is already £500 per head better off than the east midlands in investment.

We have some real challenges, and perhaps we need to look at why. It is true that we do not have the high profile of cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, with their Metro Mayors, and perhaps we lack an obvious regional identity—that is something I get quite a lot, and I was told not so long ago that the east midlands is basically what is left after everywhere else is taken away, which is a little unkind. Perhaps we struggle to agree local priorities. Or perhaps it has been down to a lack of propositions—well, not any more. That is my key theme for the debate: there are clear proposals for rail investment, and I am confident the Minister will have seen the Midlands Connect and Transport for the East Midlands shared vision for the region, which has recently been discussed with the Secretary of State, and the east midlands declaration on infrastructure funding, signed by Sir John Peace, chairman of The Midlands Engine.

When I was first elected, I went out to speak to as many people as possible, and I asked the business community, and especially our local enterprise partnership, what they wanted from their MPs. I got a very clear message: agree a set of priorities between you and stick to them. Contradictory messages have not served us well in the region. The all-party parliamentary group on the east midlands, which the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and I co-chair, has sought to build that consensus, and this year we are focused on rail. I think that that cross-party approach has served us well and has developed a broad consensus. That is astute. Tenacity is important too, and we certainly will not lack for that.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my hon. Friend’s work as co-chair of the all-party group. The point about cross-party working is incredibly important because there is a lot of consensus in the east midlands, particularly regarding the fact that we get £70 per head compared with £770 in London. We all understand the importance of the capital city, but that disparity really is stretching things too much. However, we are all being patient and trying to come together on the same priorities.

[Alex Norris]

I am very grateful for that intervention. That is exactly right. This is not, dare I say it, an issue for just the current Government; it has been an issue for previous ones too. Our approach has to be one of consensus, and I think that that is how we will best get what we want. In thanking my neighbour to the east, I ought to reference my neighbour to the south, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). It might give the Minister some amusement to know that she is not with us because her Transport Committee currently has the Secretary of State in front of it. I suspect that the Minister will have a slightly easier time than the Secretary of State.

We should be an ideal investment opportunity because investment in the local economies that make up our region offers a great economic return—better in many business cases, in fact, than in other parts of the country. By increasing the proportion of national infrastructure spending in the east midlands, the Government will have a better chance of unlocking the private sector investment needed to revive and rebalance the UK economy. We need only look at the levels of gross value added—GVA—driven out for every pound of transport spend, to see how compelling the case is. That is one league table that the east midlands tops, showing our ability to deliver growth not only locally but nationally.

What am I seeking to raise with the Minister and perhaps secure his support for today? I have four things, the first of which is making the most of HS2. The east midlands has set out plans to use HS2 to drive up economic growth across the region, creating an additional 74,000 jobs and £4 billion of GVA by 2043. The region’s station at Toton will be the best connected HS2 station outside of London and will transform connectivity between the east midlands and Birmingham, Leeds, the north-east and Scotland, as well as London. We believe that HS2 can have a transformative impact on the east midlands; from the hub station at Toton and the Staveley infrastructure depot, to connecting Chesterfield to the HS2 network, there is an opportunity for the Government to invest in getting on with things and bringing them forward, starting HS2 services in 2020, three years early. Partially opening the hub station a little earlier in the next decade would stimulate growth earlier, unlocking the potential for 11,000 new jobs and radically improving connectivity between the east midlands and Birmingham. There is a real prize for us in HS2, and we can get on with it now. I know people think it is a bit of a long way away, but we can get on with it.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on a really important issue, particularly as regards getting the economic benefit from HS2. I want to flag, perhaps to the Minister, the opportunities that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) have been talking about in terms of the Robin Hood line, and the social benefits of connecting villages up to jobs, the tourist economy and, in the long term, the HS2 hub at Chesterfield, giving deprived communities access to the big economic boost that the hon. Gentleman talks about.

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I am a big believer in our region’s future lying in the strength of HS2 and the logistics hubs that we can put around it and our airport. However, the hon. Gentleman’s community and mine will not benefit from that unless we can get there, and getting there cannot mean just going into the nearest big city and going out; we have to get there in other ways as well. I confess to enjoying a nice night out in Mansfield—a tasty night out, I would say—and I would definitely like to be able to get from Bulwell to Mansfield a bit more easily. However, I have picked up in dispatches that there might be a bit of a governmental wobble regarding HS2, especially its second phase, and I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s reflections on that.

The second priority is investment in the midland main line—you would expect me to say that, Sir Graham. We welcome the investment in upgrading the track and the signalling, but the importance of electrification should not be understated, as it is an opportunity to put really modern infrastructure in place for our region, make travel more comfortable, reduce running costs and carbon emissions, and improve air quality, journey times and efficiency. Electrification has an awful lot going for it.

As I said, the business case for between Kettering and Sheffield was really strong, and for it to be a casualty of cost overruns elsewhere is a real shame and a fundamentally flawed decision. That is not just my view or that of local business and council leaders; it is the view of the National Audit Office and the Transport Committee. But we are nothing if not pragmatic in our region. We appreciate that the rail franchise is now out to tender, and that it includes specification for bi-mode trains, so we must start in the world as it is, rather than the world as we want it to be. Let us make absolutely certain that whatever stock is procured for those lines can be converted to full electric mode in the future. Let us ensure that they can deliver on the journey time ambitions in both modes, and let us think about business growth. Our region is the international centre for rail engineering, so let us definitely ensure that those new trains are built in Derby.

Alongside that, in the spirit of pragmatism, let us think about the incremental electrification of the line. There is an opportunity to go bit by bit, and in time for the completion of HS2, so as not to risk losing one of the prizes of HS2 around speed. The Government have already committed to completing the section between Clay Cross and Sheffield in time for HS2. That will get us up to 62% of the line, so let us have a plan for the other 38%. I cannot help but think that we would save money by doing it properly, all in one go, but if it is incremental electrification, then let us have it, commit to it and plan for it, because it would progressively reduce the costs of running bi-modes on the line and release revenue to improve services elsewhere in the east midlands. Without electrification, it will also be more difficult to integrate HS2 into the existing rail network, so we really have to think about this and learn from mistakes elsewhere and from what has gone well in other countries.

The third priority is one I am particularly interested in. While waiting to start the debate, I saw the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) come in, and I thought he was going to talk, as a west midlands Member, about east-west connections, but I see he is in his place as Parliamentary Private Secretary. Nevertheless, if he had intervened, I would have made what I think is a neat assumption—that it is of as much interest to my neighbours to go to Walsall as it is to go to Wallington. That east-west has to be as important as the north-south. Sometimes it feels like a radical act to state that not everything for us is about getting to and from London more quickly; we are just as interested in moving east and west. So let us address the complex rail infrastructure in Newark and press for major investment to reduce conflicts between the east coast main line, which goes at speed, and the much slower Lincoln to Nottingham rail traffic. Let us reinstate direct services between Leicester and Coventry, which are important players in The Midland Engine.

One of my key things to highlight today is this: Midland Connect has developed the midlands rail hub concept, which would significantly improve rail capacity between the east and west midlands. It is a cost-effective package, with an additional 24 trains per hour improving east-west connectivity. At the moment, it takes 69 minutes to go the 50 miles from Nottingham to Birmingham. As you may know, Sir Graham, I am pretty quick on my feet, and sometimes it feels like I could beat the train. I think we can do better than 50 miles in 69 minutes. The hub would also benefit links to the midlands’ two international airports, and to the south-west and south Wales, allowing for an additional 36 freight paths a day, carrying £22 billion of goods every year. That is a really sensible package of ideas and, again, I am interested in the Minister’s reflections.

Finally, when I am on my feet, I never miss an opportunity to talk about light rail. I am a proud Nottinghamian, so I punt for light rail at every opportunity. We are really proud of our tram system. We are proud that we are the least car-dependent city in the country outside London and that we have the best public transport outside London, but there is potential for us to go further, and it would be really positive to expand our network. Similarly, East Midlands airport is a key part of our local economy, but it is hard to get to from East Midlands Parkway, and local roads are snarled up with associated traffic. A light rail link could be the perfect solution.

We have talked a little about the past, but I want to focus on the future. In the east midlands we are practical and pragmatic. We are a can-do region, and that is reflected in Government statistics for employment growth and new business start-ups, but we can do much more. We want to work with the Government to boost investment in key rail and other transport projects that will release economic growth, to not just our own benefit, but that of the county as a whole.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The building of new homes is being choked off in Nottingham by the refusal of the Department to remove the cap on the housing revenue account. I put this to Ministers on 12 March, and was told that if Nottingham stepped up and made a strong case, it would be looked upon favourably. Such a case has been made, but it has not been looked upon favourably. Why not?

[Kit Malthouse]

As a person who is new in post, I am happy to look at the specifics of that matter, but we have obviously given an extra £1 billion of funding to local authorities to bid into, and we are inviting bids at the moment for housing revenue account expansion. I would also point out that, across the whole piece, local authorities already have about £3.6 billion of headroom, and I am at a loss to understand why they are not using it.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill

Alex Norris Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Syms]

This is an important Bill. I think that we all heard the passion with which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke about this subject, which really underlined how important it is.

I have sat in this Parliament for a long time, and it has always struck me that short Bills, specifically to the point, are far more powerful in supporting people’s rights than the Bills that we sometimes see, with clause after clause. We know how complex housing issues are, and that is why guidance is the key. We put the right into primary legislation, and then we have the guidance to deal with the problems. Victims of domestic violence are often in a chaotic situation because of the nature of what is happening in the home. The best way of dealing with that is through guidance.

The Department consults very widely on guidance. A vast raft of housing charities and women’s rights charities can give their views, and then we have a Committee upstairs. I must admit that having Committees upstairs that simply note what has been discussed always seems slightly odd, but the consultation gives Members an opportunity to raise a lot of points. Indeed, if the Opposition want to pray against something, it sometimes comes to the Floor of the House for a vote. There are mechanisms for ensuring that the guidance is comprehensive and right and it was probably written by the same experts in the Department who were trying to deal with this difficult and complex problem under the Labour Government.

I have seen the passion that many Members have expressed on this subject, and I understand that because this is about people’s lives, but I also listened very carefully to the Minister. She talked about training; that is good. She talked about audit; that is good. She talked about various money pots; that is good. She talked about pilots, which means that the Department is open-minded about how we should go about solving some of these very important problems. Providing that the pilots and the audit are done properly, we can get a better service to those who face the real and great tragedy of domestic violence and the consequences that has for them, their children and the family.

I think that the Government are on the right track. I understand the passion that people feel about this. However, it is not about what is in the Bill; it is about what is in the guidance. There is a big debate to be had on that, but today we need to get on with supporting the Bill and getting it on to the statute book. I therefore support the Minister in resisting the amendments. Let us consult on the guidance, listen to what the experts want us to do, and have a listening Government who will try to ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose policy that will deal with people who are facing great misery at home because of this problem.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before coming to this place, I served on my city council, where for a number of years I had responsibility for Nottingham’s efforts to tackle domestic abuse and to support survivors. I learned many things during that period, but one thing has particularly stuck with me ever since: when a survivor—usually a woman—makes the decision to leave their abuser, the state must be there to wrap around that person. There can be no grey areas and no “I’ll call you back on Monday”. It must be immediate and comprehensive. Whether it is housing, support for children or fostering for pets, it has to be there. It is with that in mind that I rise to speak.

The Bill enjoys support on both sides of the House, as we have heard, and from the charities that work tirelessly to protect women and children fleeing abuse. The intentions behind the Bill are decent, and while we in this place may not directly see the impact of the decisions we take today, those decisions will change the lives of very vulnerable people and allow them to escape their abusers and start to live their life free from fear. Nevertheless, there are some grey areas of outstanding concern that I want to focus on briefly.

The first is reciprocal arrangements, which are covered in new clause 1. The nature of the abuse that a survivor is fleeing means that they might need to leave Nottingham and go to Birmingham or even Cardiff or Glasgow, and it is vital that they are not disadvantaged. I am grateful for the assurance we were offered—not this morning, as the Minister said, but this afternoon, in letter form—that the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Administrations are relaxed about their abilities to ensure such arrangements. Nevertheless, people change and circumstances change, and that letter will not be of much significance if co-operation is not properly monitored. That is all the new clause asks for, and whether it is accepted or not, I hope that the Government will continue to commit to that.

The Government have stated that the legislation will protect victims who need to move their secure tenancy across local authority boundaries and that amendment 1 is unnecessary because the courts and Government guidance state that the local connection test does not apply in domestic abuse cases. However, those who work on the ground know that that is not quite how it works. The organisations that work most closely with those fleeing abuse have made it clear that, as is so often the case, there is a difference between the best-intentioned Government guidance and the reality of the situation on the ground.

Women often have to flee across local authority boundaries to find safety, and we know that local authorities are at best inconsistent. In 2016-17, local housing teams prevented nearly a fifth of the women supported by Women’s Aid’s “No Woman Turned Away” project from making a valid homelessness application on the grounds of domestic abuse, for reasons including that they had no local connection. It is said in this place that the local connection test does not apply in domestic abuse cases, but it is not always filtering down. That is a good argument for putting that explicitly in the Bill, so that there is no doubt and no grey areas, and on the night or day when an individual leaves, whether they have a local connection or not, the expectation on the local authority is entirely clear.

Finally, on amendment 2 and the bedroom tax, I was really interested to hear from the Minister. She made it clear that this would happen in a very small number of cases, but I would be interested to hear what the evidence base was for that and what those numbers were. I am certain that none of us in this place would want finances to come into play when an individual is making the very difficult decision to leave their abuser. None of us would want that individual to be punished because the house they were moving into was deemed to have a spare room, because they were waiting to be reunited with their children or because of the way the housing stock we are talking about was structured. In Nottingham, there is not a suite of choices waiting for an individual, with the option of saying, “You’d be suitable for a one-bedroom place,” or, “You might be suitable for a three-bedroom place.” The fact of the matter is that we will be putting them wherever we can. I know that none of us would want them to be financially punished for that, which is an excellent reason for accepting amendment 2, so that we are very clear, because it is in the grey areas that we will struggle.

I am conscious that other Members are waiting to speak, so I will leave it there. I believe that the new clause and the amendments would strengthen the Bill. I do not think that much of their substance has been disagreed with; it is just about whether or not to write them down. I will make this clear argument: let us not leave it to guidance. Let us be explicitly, painfully, to-the-letter clear about the system that we are designing today. The consequences of it are life and death, so it is well worth our putting those words on the face of the Bill.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), who made insightful remarks. Today’s debate has been incredibly valuable and informative. I am so grateful to all Members who have come here to share their experience, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). Often we talk about her passion, for which she is renowned, but she brings to this place the very lucid voice of the women she has worked with and the chaos she has seen, and so often the work we do misses that voice. It is not just her passion for which we should be grateful, but her great experience and her capacity to bring it to us in this place in a way that we can all understand.

I would also like to comment on the hon. Lady’s remarks about children being taken into care as a result of domestic violence. She is absolutely right; the failure to protect so often causes women to lose their children to the care system, and anything we can do in this place to reduce that eventuality has to lessen some of the agony and pain that families go through in these circumstances.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Let me clarify, in case there is any confusion, that the Minister may speak again. It is perfectly fine for the Minister to speak and for Back Benchers to come in afterwards.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairship, Mr Rosindell, and to be part of this important Committee. I am conscious that there are lots of skilled and talented people in the room who are very experienced in the area of domestic abuse, so it is perhaps natural that I rise to speak with a little trepidation, but I care deeply about this issue and I want to make a couple of points about the amendment.

Prior to coming to this place, I was a city councillor in Nottingham for six years. I had special responsibility for a variety of things, but I was responsible for the council’s domestic abuse services throughout that time. I felt that the council had two roles, which pertain directly to the Bill. The first was to set out our stall, in a time of real cuts, to try to protect services in the city—those commissioned by the council and the broader services in our city’s fragile ecosystem. Cuts to the council’s budgets were such that we could not do that in many areas, but we decided that we would draw the line at domestic abuse, and I am happy to say that we held that line pretty well.

The council’s second role was to take away barriers. I do not have direct experience of what it is like to be in a relationship with an abusive loved one, and I cannot imagine how difficult it is to leave such a situation. The closest I have come is through my casework, both as a councillor and as a Member of Parliament. Suffice it to say that I have seen from that vantage point just how difficult it is—but I cannot quite imagine it. However, I felt that the council’s job was to take away barriers, and that is what we set out our stall to do.

We said to people, “If your concern is about your children and the impact on them, then we will guarantee good schooling and we will guarantee that their mental health needs will be met. If your issue is with your pets, then we will make sure your pets are taken care of and fostered. If your issue is with money, then we will support you.” I felt that we had a role as a local authority, as Parliament has a role, to take away those barriers, and housing and secure tenancies are absolutely at the nub of that. The Minister said on Second Reading that the purpose of the Bill is to remove impediments, and I completely agree.

We all know, because this subject has been well played out, that the safest place for a survivor in my community this evening may well be a refuge in Birmingham, and vice versa. That person may need to be physically far away from where they live tonight, and it stands to reason that that may well be true for months or years, or forever. It is important that a secure tenancy is not a barrier and that it follows that survivor. So far, so good. That point was well played out on Second Reading and in the Lords, and there is clear agreement on it.

However, we diverge on whether the Bill needs expressly to state that secure tenancies apply across local authority boundaries. On Second Reading, the Minister said that she did not think there was a problem and that that did not need to be stated in the Bill. I disagree. That position is based on an assumption that local authorities take a common approach to these things. I do not think that is the case, for both positive and negative reasons.

Let me deal first with the positive reasons. Localism says that for all manner of services—perhaps every service—every local authority does things slightly differently. They have a mandate to do so, so it is not surprising especially when it comes to housing, that things will look very different in Nottingham from in south Derbyshire, or Derbyshire in general. As a result, there are times when the Government need to prescribe a broader approach, to make sure that people are not missed out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

It feels like the most helpful thing that many of us can do for the Minister today is to try to give her some examples of the things that we have been dealing with, so that she understands why these amendments have been tabled. I appreciate and understand that she has what she considers to be a fantastic local authority. Sadly, for many of us—not through a lack of wanting to get services right—the reality is that services are not right.

It is worth remembering that there is no actual requirement for a housing officer to understand what domestic violence is. There is no requirement for them to know why it matters to have, for example, a confidential space in which women can come forward and tell people what has been happening.

Many of the things that the Minister talks about assume that the initial conversation, whereby somebody discloses that they are a victim of domestic violence, happens in such a way that there will not be a culture of disbelief. Sadly, my experience of working with victims of domestic violence in my local area, which I do not think is unique, is that they are often not believed, or that barriers are often put up that affect their ability to access services.

That is why training and getting housing officers to recognise that they are often the frontline is necessary. For example, we could train every single housing officer to ask why somebody needs repeated repairs—“Why does that door keep getting broken? Why does that window keep getting broken?”—because the answer is often not that it was an accident but that somebody has been violent in that household, which is very hard for people to admit.

It is frightening how many people in my local area, when turning up at housing authorities and housing offices presenting as victims of domestic violence, have been turned away or told that they would say that because that is how to get a house. That is the culture we have to deal with. I will give the Minister some examples of real cases from my local housing authority which, like many others, has a massive waiting list and is housing people in Luton and Bedford—well out of the area—because it does not have access to housing. It is trying to build more housing in difficult circumstances but, like many others, it still has not got it right when it comes to dealing with victims of domestic violence. The Bill is intended to get that right, and if the Minister wants to do so we have to deal with the reality of how these services are offered and why training would make a difference.

For example, one woman attended the housing authority on six different occasions before she was assisted. It started when she was heavily pregnant and continued with her attending with a newborn baby. The baby was three days old during one visit, and she was made to wait all day without being seen. The woman was homeless and was sleeping with the baby for more than five months in a single bed in a room that she shared with three adults in a friend’s property.

Another woman with two autistic children was provided with temporary accommodation—one room in a shared property. One woman had six children and was refused assistance. The authority insisted that she obtain a court order against her husband and request a panic alarm from the police, despite her being a high-risk victim who did not feel safe staying at her address. Additionally, the woman had a 16-year-old child who required 24/7 care, which was not taken into consideration. Another woman was discouraged from making a housing application when it was stated that she would only be provided with housing in faraway areas, such as Birmingham, which is a very long way from Walthamstow. Other women have had problems because they do not speak English as a first language.

As I said in my first contribution, we ask victims to navigate this system, rather than having a system that understands that domestic violence is far too prevalent in our society, and that offering housing and safe refuge is therefore one of the most important things that we can do. Training would fundamentally change that culture.

I am ashamed that there is not a safe space for women in my local authority to say, “This has happened to me; can I talk to somebody about it?” I am ashamed that housing officers query whether somebody is saying that they are a victim of domestic violence as a way to get a house, as if anybody would go through the shame of having to admit that. I am ashamed that housing officers and social care workers very often do not work together, even though a social services officer might have first seen the signs that something was not right in that family.

Training is absolutely crucial to put domestic violence at the forefront of people’s minds, rather than it being one of the tests that they might have to set to see whether somebody is eligible for housing. I am sure that the Minister wants the Bill to change that tick-box culture, but sadly, without that new culture, it is not going to change; all this will be is another set of obligations. If we truly want to keep victims of domestic violence safe, we have to change root and branch the way in which decisions are made.

The Minister might have a fantastic local authority, but I would love to hear from her local service providers whether they think that it gets it right every single time; whether every woman, when she first has the confidence to say, “This happened to me; I need to be somewhere safe” gets the right response. Training is a crucial part of that—getting people to think about how they deal with somebody who is disclosing trauma. These are victims of trauma, which is not easy to deal with. Any Member who has had somebody come in to their constituency surgery to talk about their experiences knows that. Sadly, for my local authority, the examples I gave were provided by independent sexual violence advisers. Those are the most serious cases of domestic violence.

One challenge we face is that, too often, we wait until something escalates before we intervene. In the past eight or nine years, we have begun to recognise that we do not want to do that, which is good. Concepts such as coercive control have become part of our conversations: we recognise that we can spot the signs when somebody is in a toxic relationship and we can intervene. However, that is not the reality on the ground. I know we are going to discuss later the questions about evidence—people having to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these things are happening to them. The problem is that they are having to prove that to people who are not expert enough to be able to understand what they are being shown. Giving them training would start to change that conversation. Again, I say to the Minister: think of this legislation as a belt-and-braces measure. If, one day, somebody walks into her constituency surgery and this has not been got right, she will realise why belt and braces matter.

[Alex Norris]

Like the Minister, I have a very good local authority. I have long admired the housing officers there, who are exceptionally skilled people. When they open that door in the morning, when they open their emails or answer the phone, they never quite know what they are going to get. It could be somebody suffering domestic abuse, as we are talking about today; someone with drug or alcohol abuse issues, or mental or physical health challenges; or someone does not speak English as their first language. They face all sorts of challenges, they have to be very adaptable to meet the different needs of the people who require their services, and they have to do that against a difficult backdrop. These officers can face hard councillors, which many of us in the Committee were, who prosecute the case for their resident because they want to get them the best deal, and have to balance that because there are five other hard councillors that morning trying to do the same thing.

I believe fundamentally in the best in people—I think that is a strength, but some say it is a weakness. However, I acknowledge that there is still dishonesty, and we have to be able to pick through. We know from our casework that what a case looks like might not be so when we dig into it. We ask our housing officers to be extraordinary generalists—multi-skilled and aware of many different things, at a time when local authorities are under unprecedented pressure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby says, the first budgets to go are those for training, because they are not the immediate frontline services of the day. As a result we are giving our housing officers a difficult challenge, asking them to do more while others are asking them to do it with less. We are sending a real signal that we value their work by putting it on the face of the Bill.

Risk is an issue that weaves throughout the Bill and will do so throughout the next domestic abuse Bill, later in the Session. When I was in local government and had responsibility for domestic abuse services, it was not the women who were considered high risk who gave me the most anxiety, although of course those cases are really serious. Those women get the very intense, immediate support, wrapped round them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there is some comfort in that. My concern was about those who were low and medium risk—cases that might escalate quickly, but one cannot know which ones might do so, or they would be classified as higher risk. The only mitigation against those fast-escalating, low and medium risk cases is to make every contact with people count. Someone might directly speak about their situation, or we can try to read other cues that give us a clue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow said. That only works if, with every single contact, that person is skilled enough to read those cues. To give them a fair chance, we need to give them proper training. Putting that on the face of the Bill would send a strong signal.

[Mrs Wheeler]

Though I understand the intention behind the amendment, I do not believe that it is necessary. Local authorities already have to identify whether a person who is applying for social housing or homelessness assistance has been a victim of domestic abuse. The purpose of the Bill is to provide important protections for victims and it does not require local authorities to make decisions in relation to domestic abuse cases that may be significantly different from those already made.

--- Later in debate ---

We have two choices. We either get rid of the charges, as the amendment proposes, or we change the way that we take evidence and risk-assess people. Will the Minister consider both points? For now, making sure that no victim of domestic violence has to scrape funds together, borrowing money, perhaps taking out a payday loan, going hungry or having to steal money from the perpetrator to pay for paperwork is not something that should happen in our society. The day on which one of those cases walks through her door and one of those people turns up at her surgery she will know why belt and braces matter.

[Alex Norris]

I came this morning more in hope than expectation. I can count how many Opposition Members there are and how many Government Members, which brings a certain likelihood to whether we will get what we hope for out of the sitting. Come what may, I want to know that we have made the case for the person who has made that incredibly difficult decision and weighed up the pros and cons, and removed all the artificial arguments against leaving that very dangerous situation. There cannot be any worse argument in that column than, “I can’t afford the money to do so”. That would be an awful reflection on us as a society. Wherever that happens, we must do our absolute best to remove it. We will have let people down if, in their moment of greatest challenge, they turn to the services we rely on to live our lives freely and find out that they are asked for a fee that they cannot afford.

We have heard lots of sums discussed so far in the debate. We will have seen it in our casework as well. Every single time, whether the fee is £25, £50, £70, £100 or £150, it is always a suspiciously round number. There is no calculation that sits behind it. I do not think anybody is saying that we want to see public service finance suddenly decimated by this extra requirement of support—that is not the case. Hon. Friends have made the point that it is done because it can be done. We have the chance this morning to make sure that it cannot be done and we ought to take it. There are very compelling arguments for amendment 3.

On evidence, will the Minister say what evidentiary standard she thinks local authorities will be looking for and whether there will be local variants? That comes back to the arguments that we made earlier about training, local discretion and any possibility of a postcode lottery. I hope that that will not be the case.

What will be the exemptions? I am conscious of the exemptions in other pieces of legislation. I think about benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions which have a domestic violence exemption. Similarly, there is the application for the exemption from the Child Maintenance Service. Are similar exemptions likely to apply here?

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

As Opposition Members have mentioned many times, the barriers to leaving are crucial. We are talking mostly about women who have spent months, years, sometimes decades making mental lists over and again about their route out. Their route out will be to sort out the children’s school, to talk to their friends, to reach out to someone and to go to services. All those things take huge amounts of courage at the first step and then the next step, and then it possibly gets easier.

Our main responsibility today is to remove all the barriers on that route out. If those of us here decide to do something, we mostly have the money to do it. These women have been controlled financially, which is the main way in which women are controlled in a domestic violence situation. The partner may have run up debts that the woman cannot deal with, or certainly will have stopped access to money for anything from children’s presents to basic sanitary products and food. We have a duty to make sure that that crucial element is included in the Bill.

Finances are the barrier—the brick wall with no holes. Someone might be able to deal with the other things; they might be able to borrow a little money from a grandparent for a children’s present or for Tampax, but they will not be able to find £100—from the list of desperate, emergency things in their head—to prove that they have been a victim. It is essential to make sure that that is not a thing that happens.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I want to speak in support of new clause 1 and the principle of co-operation, and to give a couple of examples. I used to work for Shelter, and I lobbied successfully for the Homelessness Act 2002. It was a groundbreaking piece of legislation because, for the first time, local authorities had to have a strategy in place to tackle homelessness. It also extended the definition of priority need to many different groups who had not fallen into that category before, including people fleeing domestic violence, as well as 16 and 17-year-olds and people leaving care, prison or the armed forces.

Shelter put a huge amount of resource into lobbying for the legislation. We worked during the passage of the Bill and lobbied civil servants on the guidance that followed. It was a good Bill and there was good guidance, but we knew that we could not necessarily guarantee that it would be implemented in the way that legislators had intended. As a charity, we funded about 15 full-time members of staff to work with every single local authority to help them understand the legislation and implement it.

My point is that even though we had a good Bill, good guidance and all this extra resource from Shelter, which was used widely by all local authorities, there were still differences in implementation, with pockets of good practice and pockets of bad practice. For example, the good practice was that a local authority should have a safe place—a safe room or a safe opportunity—for people once they came to the local authority and said that they were fleeing domestic violence. Not every local authority does that; there are differences in implementation. The implementation and what is written in the Bill are absolutely crucial.

We know that there are different definitions of priority need in different nations. If someone is fleeing domestic violence in England, the category of priority need is stronger than it would be for someone fleeing in Wales. If someone is fleeing in Wales, they have to have been the victim of domestic violence. In England, they have to be the victim or at risk of domestic violence. There is a slightly different way of interpreting that legislation, because it is different in the two nations. I would hate, as I am sure the Minister would, for us to introduce legislation that does not enable every single person we can possibly help to get the support that they need.

The new clause is a sensible addition to the legislation. Giving six months to look at this before anything has to be introduced is sensible. We can support those victims of domestic violence who need our support. Croydon, which I represent, has the highest number of applications by people fleeing domestic violence of any London borough. We have a fantastic service in Croydon. We have the only family justice centre in Europe, which brings together all the agencies that help to support people who are fleeing domestic violence, including housing and the police. We provide brilliant support, which I would like to see across the country and across the nations, but sadly that is not the case. I am supportive of co-operation and new clause 1.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Ms Ryan, this is the first time I have served under your chairship and it is a pleasure to do so.

In this morning’s sitting we had a long and interesting discussion on amendment 5. It was a shame we could not reach consensus. We ended up having a conversation about whether what the amendment said was already in the Bill and it became an almost semantic conversation about whether “a local authority” is the same as “any local authority”. That is what will happen when something is gone through line-by-line, and it is important that we get to that level, but it was a shame we were not able to establish consensus.

With new clause 1 we have basically the same principle, but grown out. We now know for a fact that “a local authority” falls once we get to the boundaries of England, but we also know that the need for refuges does not drop off that cliff as we meet that border.

We also spent a lot of this morning talking about not wanting to put up barriers. Our job is to remove whatever barriers there are to the survivor leaving that situation. Whether the barrier is money, housing, family or whatever, we should seek to remove it so that they can make that best decision for themselves. This is a pretty big barrier: it is a border. I almost hesitate to say that because we talk too much about borders, especially in the context of Northern Ireland, but mercifully we are not going in that direction today.

Nevertheless, we will clearly have to do something. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby said very eloquently, the need will be the same around border towns, but the facilities will be different. In a big city such as Nottingham, we might have things that they do not have in small border towns. From the perspective of people going from Scotland or from Wales to England, I should like to think that we would be there for them if that was best for them. I am sure that everybody would share that thought.

We have to be mindful of devolution and the devolution settlement, but it seems sensible, and to behove us, to accept the clause because it will give us a proportionate way of looking at how to get to something sensible. I suspect that it will be said that there are different arrangements in these countries. I am perfectly willing to accept that; nevertheless, how the arrangements marry up with our own is really important. It is important for English survivors, but it is also important for survivors in those nations.

I do not want to rehash everything from this morning, but I thought it regrettable that we did not push forward on the question of training in amendment 1. This is exactly the sort of situation that will be very complicated for a housing officer. We ask housing officers to understand an awful lot of things about an awful lot of different needs, and this is yet another one. We need them to understand that, if they are talking about people moving to different communities, that will need to be in England. We would not want people to be advised that their secure tenancy will apply somewhere else if those are not arrangements that we have been able to secure. I do not think that that is asking for much, but it will certainly give us more confidence that down the line we will get to a point where we will have a stitched-up nationwide look at the issue laid before Parliament, which would be desirable.

Local Infrastructure (East Midlands)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will move on to that point later in my speech. I too have a number of villages in my constituency that are affected by speculative house building. The important point, which I hope is the message that will come out from this debate, is that we need more houses, but we need them in the right place and we need to have local community consent in order to ensure that they are built.

The east midlands benefits from its strategic location, its workforce, its skills base, its good strategic connectivity, its strong supply chains and its reputation. It is an area that gets on with it. It is one of those quiet, industrious and energetic motors of the wider United Kingdom economy. Unemployment is lower than the national average and employment is higher. We are privileged to be the home of great cities such as Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton and Nottingham. We have East Midlands Airport and, in my own county, world-leading manufacturers such as Toyota, Bombardier and Rolls-Royce.

Over the past 30 years, my constituency has transformed itself into a manufacturing, logistics and service centre. As somebody who comes from the area, I am hugely proud of that. We are propelled by small and medium-sized business, the aspiration to do well and the desire to succeed and take advantage of the opportunities before us. For example, the Worcester Bosch factory is home to 300 workers in Clay Cross, the second-largest town in North East Derbyshire. The factory has been in our area for many decades. A few years ago it had only 100 employees but, following investment, support and increased market demand, it now has 300 workers and the number of oil-fired boilers coming off its production line has increased from 30,000 to 50,000 a year. The factory is a market leader and is showing the drive, ability and verve that is the hallmark of the east midlands. We are a “get on with it” constituency in a “can do” region, supporting a growth-driven and aspirational country.

We are also making significant strides on housing. Last year almost 15,000 new properties were built in the east midlands. After the south-west, that was the highest number of completions in the UK on a proportionate basis, based on the existing number of households in our area. That is more than the north-east and the north-west, and—for a proud region with the usual healthy competition, I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) will not mind my saying—more than our friends across the border in Yorkshire and the Humber. However, if we are to meet the Government’s laudable objective of increasing the supply of homes, and therefore increasing the proportion of our constituents who have the opportunity to buy a home, we need to continue to assess and debate the challenges that prevent that from happening. That is the purpose of this debate.

Housing is a controversial topic on the doorsteps of Eckington, Killamarsh, Dronfield, Clay Cross and all the other towns and villages in my part of the world. Most of the residents I speak to recognise and support the Government’s objective of building more houses and their recognition of the importance of ensuring that the next generation can aspire to own their own home and have the same opportunities afforded to them. Many residents have personal experiences of sons or daughters who cannot get on the housing ladder, or perhaps they themselves are years away from doing so. Some of that is solved laterally, by being willing to move a few miles further out than would be ideal, by being willing to wait longer, or by the famous bank of mum and dad—I have to admit that I benefited from that in a small way when I bought my first property a few years ago. The desire to own is real and it continues to burn bright, irrespective of age or the place in which we live. Yet there is also real frustration about the way the house building process works and how the planning process manifests itself in the localities.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and the strong case he is making. Does he share my sadness that too often communities seem pitched against the developer and it becomes a battle of wills as to who will get what they want? One way around that, much in line with what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said, might be for the community to be the developer through the local authority. The local authority would then have a greater stake in ensuring that the right infrastructure is in place to allow the development to live sympathetically in the community, because it will continue to have that relationship with the present and future communities.

[Lee Rowley]

I agree that communities and developers can often be pitched against each other—I have seen that in my constituency and will talk about it later. For me, it is not about who builds the houses; it is about the consent to build them in the first place. That is the challenge. We have a good planning system as a whole. I wholeheartedly welcome the Localism Act 2011, but the reality is that it has to be implemented locally in a way that works, and in my part of the world it is the council that has not taken the leadership over the past 10 to 15 years. We have not had a local plan in North East Derbyshire since 2005. I would argue, from my experience, that that is where the problem has been created, because it leads to speculative planning applications that completely undermine the cause of house building in our part of the world. There is also a failure of leadership to say where housing should or should not be built, which engenders the cynicism that can cause the kinds of problems that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) has referred to.

In North East Derbyshire we want to build new houses—people accept that we need to build more houses. As the hon. Member for Nottingham North indicated, there is huge frustration in my part of the world about the local plan. We have been without a local plan since 2005—it has still not been updated, despite several attempts. North East Derbyshire District Council is one of only 15 local authorities in the entire country being called out for failing relating to their local plan. Over the past four years that has encouraged the kind of speculative house building that hon. Members have already referred to.

The beautiful village of Ashover in my constituency has been fighting speculative housing applications for four years. Its settlement limits have been pretty consistent for 40 years, yet a field that for centuries has been used for pasture and grazing will now receive 40 houses. That is not the fault of local residents, or because those residents do not recognise that more housing needs to be built, but because the council did not get its local plan in and the five-year housing land supply could not be evidenced, which meant that those speculative applications could be pushed forward. That community had decided through its own neighbourhood plan to find more houses than will be built on that field, which it was trying to save in order to preserve the overall look and integrity of the village. I find that very sad. There are many examples of that across my constituency, as I am sure there are in others. We have to get the local plan right if there is to be consent in the first place for the house building that we all know we need.

There is also frustration about the lack of infrastructure and forward thinking, because infrastructure sometimes comes only after the house building has begun. To some extent that is a function of the planning system, which we all accept and recognise is a necessity. I recognise that capital spending on schools, health and other public services is unlocked through the provision of housing in the first place, but it is the strategic infrastructure—the next level up—that is particularly important. Some of the problems are solved by the planning process, however imperfectly, but many are not.

In my part of the world, roads and railways are a real problem. Staveley, which lies partly in the north of my constituency and partly in that of the hon. Member for Chesterfield, is a former mining town that has huge potential and is seeking to regenerate and rejuvenate over the next 10 to 20 years, building on its proud mining heritage and industrial past. It has been looking for a bypass for many years—I believe that one has been in the works since 1927. If we want the bypass to be built before the proposal celebrates its centenary, we need to shout about it at country, regional and county level, and as MPs, so that it can unlock Staveley’s potential.

Let me give another example. In the south of my constituency, just outside Chesterfield, is a stretch of the A61 that has been congested for many years—since I was growing up in a nearby village. It has experienced a significant increase in traffic over the past 10 years. In truth, it is a problem that will be difficult to solve. The county council has introduced some welcome changes through the local enterprise partnership, but they will not solve the underlying problem: a road that cannot cope with the amount of traffic on it.

The fundamental point is that even though the council has messed up its local plan and we are not building as many houses as we need in certain parts of north Derbyshire, there are plots around the A61 for up to 2,000 houses over the next 20 years, including brownfield sites for new houses on the old Biwater factory in Clay Cross and on the old Avenue coking works near where I live. Although people often do not want houses built near them, people in my part of the world generally recognise that those are the places where they should be built: brownfield sites with lots of potential that were once engines of growth in our area and can be so again. However, there is no point in building 2,000 new houses to the south of Chesterfield and creating jobs for the people in them if massive traffic jams on the A61 are going to stop them from getting between the two. We need to take a coherent approach to these problems.

The south of my constituency also used to have several railway stations—even my small village was proud to have its own station when it was a significant mining area—but they have all gone. Over the past eight or nine years, the Government have looked into improving and recreating rail opportunities and have put new investment into rail where possible—the former Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin), is sitting next to me. I think there is a case for a new station in or around Clay Cross. That has been an aspiration for several years, and I hope that we can make it happen.

Solving congestion on the A61, creating a bypass that has been in the works for more than a century, investigating the potential for a new commuter station in areas that will grow and improve over the coming years—these are the projects that we need to consider in my part of the world to give people confidence that we are putting infrastructure in place. Other hon. Members will have equivalent examples from their constituencies.

A few weeks ago, I took the Transport Secretary around the south of my constituency. We looked at the Avenue coking works and then went down to Clay Cross to see where the old station used to be, near Tupton. He was very interested, and I am very grateful to him for coming to talk to us about it. I understand that these discussions take time, and I do not expect solutions to come quickly, but we have to start talking about the options so that solutions can emerge in the long term. Later in the day I took him up the A61, and what happened? We got into a massive traffic jam, which did my job for me: as well as demonstrating the problem, it gave me the time to explain it. He was a captive audience, because we were sitting there moving at 0 mph—a problem that my constituents experience daily.

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

I know that the Government are doing hugely encouraging things on infrastructure. Since 2010 they have been at the forefront of pushing the case for increased investment in the regions and spending on new infrastructure projects that will benefit millions of people—unclogging roads, building rail stations, renovating hospitals and expanding schools. To the Government’s credit, we have seen some of that in Derbyshire over the past eight years. A new train station at Ilkeston, just down the road from my constituency, opened a few months ago and is already thriving, demonstrating what can be achieved through strategic planning. Recent improvements to the M1—a key artery that serves our region and is so important for our economic growth—include an additional lane to increase capacity.

As east midlands MPs, we should be hugely ambitious about what we and our region can achieve in the coming years. The Government are making huge progress on unleashing our economic potential and building the housing needed to support it. The east midlands is often a victim of its own success and its quiet determination to get on and get going. We remain stubbornly low in our infrastructure spending, particularly on roads and rail.

I know that regional comparisons are often misused by Members of Parliament, who take narrow figures and extrapolate from them all manner of evils that have befallen their area. I have therefore used only figures that show the east midlands in a good light—what we are doing to outperform, rather than why we have such issues. However, I hope that the Minister will allow me to point out that the east midlands is the lowest funded region for transport per head of population. Much is being achieved, and more will flow from those achievements in the coming years, but just because in the east midlands we sometimes prioritise getting on with things rather than shouting about them, I would not want the Minister to think that the Government do not need to focus on our infrastructure needs and on how we can propel and power progress over the next 20 or 30 years.

All MPs have asks to make, and I am no exception. We all recognise that many others are asking for support and that some of them may take priority—I do not envy the Government their job. I am not sure that we will ever solve all the constituency issues that I have raised today, but I certainly want to see how we can mitigate and make progress on some of our congestion problems. For example, I want to work with our local councils to get the bypass moving in the north of Chesterfield and unlock the opportunity to bring thousands of proper houses and jobs there.

I know that the Minister knows that the east midlands is open for business. I know that he knows that we are doing our bit and will do more in future. However, I also hope that he will remember us when we talk about the need for further spending to continue our economic growth. We accept the need for more housing and recognise that it needs to be built in the right place, but the east midlands knows that it needs the infrastructure to support that new housing. The Government are doing much, but I hope and am sure that in the coming years they will look favourably on us and do more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has asked that question, because some people seem to be causing mischief. This is less than 3% of the total budget. The money has been re-profiled, to come back in in future years. When councils, local authorities and housing associations can bid in, the money is there to be spent. We want it to be spent.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Building council houses is a very effective and financially prudent way to provide houses for social rent, but it is being choked off by the Government persisting with only inching the cap up, when they could remove it completely. When will they remove the cap and let our councils get building?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I do not understand why people misunderstand what is going on in local government finance. For those areas with the most serious shortages of affordable housing, the cap has been lifted to £1 billion of borrowing. We need local authorities to step up. If the hon. Gentleman’s local council has projects, like mine does, they will be looked on favourably. Please ask local councils to step up.

National Planning Policy Framework

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend. There is no need to trade-off between the two. We have shown through the consultations today that it is absolutely possible both to protect our environment and to deliver the homes that this country needs.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I bring excellent news for the Secretary of State from the city of Nottingham. We are ready to build the houses we need to; we just need him to remove the cap on Nottingham City Council’s ability to borrow in order to do so. When will the cap be removed?

[Sajid Javid]

The £1 billion increase that the Chancellor set out at the last Budget will be from 2019, but if Nottingham has particular plans and wants to consider approaching us for a housing deal, it should do that.

Local Government Finance

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I came to this place having represented my community on Nottingham City Council for six years—something that I enjoyed greatly and that was a real privilege. However, being a councillor between 2011 and 2017 was quite a difficult proposition. We saw massive real-terms decreases in our funding every year as the Government downscaled their commitment to our city. That meant service cuts, council tax increases, and business rates being increasingly vital. It meant local people paying more so that the national Government could pay less. All this in pursuit of an austerity agenda that decimated demand in our local economy, leading to a historically slow economic recovery, and is now to pay for tax cuts of little social value.

I am afraid that is the picture we see again this year: spending cuts. I used to think—I do not know if it was a naive or an optimistic view of the world—that Ministers did not understand local government and that that was why there were cuts of such a scale. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who is not in his place, said that local government has been targeted as much as anywhere else in the public sector. I thought that it was because Ministers did not understand it, and thought that the services were unimportant and wasteful. Actually, it is quite the reverse. Ministers target local government because they know exactly how it works. They know that hard-pressed councils like mine in Nottingham have to set balanced budgets, so if they pull a lever and say what the reduction is, they will get that reduction, to the penny, from local government, and they can go to their Treasury colleagues having done their job. They will have had none of the responsibility and will get all the benefit. What an easy cut to make!”

That would be bad enough, but these spending cuts have been incredibly unevenly distributed. Between 2014 and 2016—around the transition grant period—Nottingham households lost 250 quid each in spending power, while those in Windsor, to pick one area out of dozens that would fit into this category, lost just £34. But it was those very communities such as Windsor that benefited from the £300 million transition grant to help them to deal with the cuts. In Nottingham? Not a bean.

Inevitably—what else could it do?—that has led to council tax rises in my community. One of the poorest communities in the country, with the lowest discretionary spend, we will now again receive a near 6% increase in our council tax. We have a small council tax base, as others have mentioned, so that will be less helpful for us than it will be for other communities. Our gap in Nottingham starts at £33 million. The Secretary of State talks about increased spending, but the reality of the situation—I suspect it is the same for all hon. Members here today—is that my council will have to make reductions. If I tell my council leader that he has more money, he will tell me that he has to make a £33 million reduction in services. If he gets £6 million in council tax, that is still £27 million that has to come from elsewhere as we deal with the toxic combination of losing grant and having significant increases in demand.

We have heard a lot about demands in adult social care, which are important, but we should not forget children’s social care and the extraordinary pressures it creates. So for my community there will be service cuts. Lest people think that this is an efficiency issue, I want to share with the House the proposals in Nottingham—[Interruption.] I am glad the Chancellor has joined us: I will be able to make a personal plea. The proposals in Nottingham include job cuts in adult social care; reducing funding for weight management, smoking cessation and drug and alcohol services; reductions in youth services; reducing funding for the careers service; reviewing transport services for vulnerable adults; reviewing fees and charges for leisure centres and bereavement services; and increasing fares and reducing frequency on the Link bus services. We have our political differences, but I doubt that anyone would say that those are “nice to haves”.

More importantly, as well as being vital services in my community, those are all stitches in time that save nine. Every single one of those reductions will lead to an increase in spending in public services elsewhere, and that is why this settlement is an act of vandalism. It is short-sighted and ill-judged. But as we all know—and I suggest this is why the Secretary of State is so attached to the idea—my council will receive all the blame. It should not; it is doing an excellent job in impossible circumstances. The fault lies at the door of the Secretary of State.

As for the fair funding review, I have no problem with systems that are a generation old being looked at, but we should be clear when we talk about fairness. I know there is an enthusiasm for capitation, but we should be clear what that would mean for communities such as mine. I am happy to accept, and I almost hoped I would get, an intervention on that point.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that areas of high social deprivation end up bearing the brunt of cuts? In particular, in my constituency, the council has had to contend with £54 million in cuts, £12.4 million of which is to schools, thereby hampering the education of the next generation.

[Alex Norris]

I share my hon. Friend’s perspective. I know that he will work with his council to try to mitigate those cuts, but there is a point at which that becomes impossible. I am sure that in Slough, as in Nottingham—and, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), in his area—they have received reductions that are significantly over the national average. The reductions are not just ill conceived, they are unfairly distributed. When we look at the fair funding formula, we must look at that.

I have heard persuasive cases from Shropshire about the needs there. That is why we should look at hard deprivation indices to make our judgments, not special pleading or bartering for votes. We need hard figures that say where the need is greatest, because that is where the funding should go.

I have not been here very long, but I have noticed a couple of curiosities that have been in full force today. Earlier in the day, at Prime Minister’s questions, the Government Back Benches erupted with stories of how great things are going in Members’ constituencies and what a wonderful job the Government are doing. Fast-forward a couple of hours to this debate and suddenly we hear how hard-pressed those communities are and how much more money they need—and need now. As I have said, this is a zero-sum game, and the money would come from poorer communities such as mine. That is one of the odd spectacles.

We also often hear from Ministers at the Dispatch Box that the answer to public service issues is not more money, and councils should not just ask for more money. But then we have had a series of speeches this afternoon asking for just that. When the challenges are in better-off communities, the answer is always more money, but it is always less money for us. I come from Robin Hood country, and it is a sort of reverse Robin Hood. It is particularly galling to have lectures on the state of local public finances from communities that never put their council tax up, use that as a political article of faith and then say, “Look at the shortfall we’ve got.” We have always had to put our council tax up, because that is the only way we can hope to stay anywhere near in line with our demands. Those are our challenges. As we move to the fairer funding review, let us use fairness in its proper and most evidence-based form.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), who made a passionate case for his area and touched on the issue of fairer funding. He is absolutely right that a fairer funding review has to be done after a period of time. I can remember making that argument to Labour Governments. The problem is that when a fairer funding review is done people then say, “Gosh, that area needs more money, but we’ve got to cap somewhere else” and Governments are not very keen on cutting elsewhere. So while I think the fairer funding formula is essential, and it is clear that county areas such as Northamptonshire should benefit, it is not the answer to all evils.

One clear issue in this debate—Members on both sides of the House have mentioned it—is adult social care. It strikes me that there is no Tory solution to adult social care, and there is no Labour or Liberal Democrat solution either. We need to work together to find a solution to a broken system. We need to do it now, way before the next general election when we start playing party politics again.

You would expect me, Mr Speaker, to talk primarily about Northamptonshire County Council, because by definition it is now the worst council in the country, having effectively said that it has run out of money. It would be very easy for me to get up and say it is all down to the Government not giving the county council the right amount of money, but that is entirely not the case. Other county councils have managed their affairs better—much better. The problem with Northamptonshire County Council is its governance over a number of years. I have to say that it has been the most difficult organisation to deal with. It does not respond to communications—to be honest, it would be easier to get through to God.

All seven Northamptonshire MPs have issued a statement saying that we have lost confidence in the leadership of the county council. The Secretary of State and the previous Secretary of State have known our concerns. I am very grateful for all the effort the Secretary of State has put into tackling this problem and putting in an inspector at the county council earlier this year. I hope that the inspector can report as soon as possible. It is clear that the solution is Lords Commissioners. The county council cannot resolve its own affairs.

How did we get to this mess? It seems to me to be partly due to the cabinet system of government. We have had the same local politicians in the cabinet year after year. They just recycle the jobs. The vast bulk of county councillors in Northamptonshire, of whatever political persuasion, are very, very good, but the fact that they do not get any information from the cabinet has not allowed them scrutinise the mess that has been going on. In fact, we could say that a clique ran the county council, and that is where it failed.

[Alex Norris]

I am sorry to stop the hon. Gentleman in full flow, but I have heard him say that a few times now. For the budget to have passed, the very same councils that he says are outside the clique and ready to save Northamptonshire County Council must have voted for it, either thinking that the budget was a good one or thinking that it was not a good one but doing so out of party loyalty. Either way, would that not disqualify them from leadership as well?

[Mr Bone]

In this particular case, the budget was passed on the assurances that were given by the cabinet, and those assurances were given to the local MPs. We said, “Are you sure you’ve got the money to do this? We’re worried,” and they said, “Oh no, everything’s rosy. The budget is fine.” They produced a budget and passed it. In year, it was clear that the savings they had suggested were not happening, and they had to take emergency measures. The budget will have to be set in February or not, and that is a dilemma for the council at this very moment.