Grenfell Update

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I can absolutely confirm that to my hon. Friend, Such work is being done not just by the council, but by the voluntary groups it has commissioned to provide support and build an extra level of trust. I can also confirm that members of the taskforce, whom I met yesterday, have engaged extensively with the community and will continue to do so.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The stand-out figure in the Secretary of State’s statement was the 82 households in emergency accommodation. Some of those people are in my constituency, and I know the hotels they are in. They are budget hotels that might be great for one or two nights for two people staying in London, but it is absolutely intolerable for a family to be in those conditions for nine months, particularly if they are traumatised. The Secretary of State should go back to his office and immediately put in place steps to ensure that those families are moved into accommodation. It is not acceptable for him to say, “We are going at the pace the residents want.” Kensington and Chelsea is not up to this job. He has to intervene. The Government must be able to ensure that those 82 families are properly housed within days, not another nine months.

[Sajid Javid]

The vast majority of the 82 families have already accepted offers of permanent and temporary accommodation. The main reason why many have not moved from their hotels, having accepted an offer, is that, rightly, they have been asked what furniture and decoration they would like. It is right that that process is carried out. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that people should be forcibly moved out of hotels, he is clearly wrong. He should treat these individuals as people, not statistics.

Fire Safety and Cladding

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Someone living in a high-rise flat in Hammersmith or Shepherd’s Bush looks at Grenfell Tower every day; a year before the Grenfell Tower fire, they will also have seen the very serious tower block fire at Shepherd’s Court on Shepherd’s Bush Green.

There has been a response from the local authority and from public landlords to what has happened. Shepherd’s Bush Housing Group told me today that it has spent almost £1 million so far on remedial works post-Grenfell. It will not charge its leaseholders for those works, but ultimately the money for them will come from its tenants. The Government should be responsible for funding this work, but they are showing a lack of leadership and of responsibility in this regard.

Let me be specific and give the example of two blocks, both of which were built in the last 10 years. One is owned by Shepherd’s Bush Housing Group and is called Kelway House. After initially failing the Buildings Research Establishment test, it passed it. However, residents do not know whether those tests are robust or not and they are still concerned about them.

The second block is Cranston Court in White City, which is owned by Notting Hill Housing, and it failed those tests. Notting Hill Housing is removing the cladding on Cranston Court and it has acted responsibly in doing so. It is putting up temporary cladding, so that it can remove fire wardens, but it does not know what to do next. It has now resolved that it will put up non-combustible solid aluminium panels. However, that is because there is no guidance; it is taking what it hopes is the safest option.

There are some simple remedies. However, like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), who secured this debate, I do not know why we allow combustible or limited combustibility cladding and insulation to be used any more. It is not used in other European countries, as has been said. That is why I am glad to see that public landlords have taken the advice not to use such cladding and instead are using mineral wool or other forms of cladding or insulation that are available.

However, I am afraid that these issues have to be addressed, and addressed now, by the Government. As we have seen in the trade press recently, the idea that desktop studies will be extended, and will become the norm rather than just being used occasionally, is horrifying.

Also, regarding the conflicts of interest at the BRE and the inadequacy of Approved Document B, some of us have known about them for many years and we have all known about them since Grenfell. As I understand it, although the Hackitt review is good as far as it goes, it does not look as if the final report—let alone the interim one—will give us clear guidance on these issues. It will say that the culture is wrong, but what it will not do is tell landlords—responsible landlords—what they should do. Has that review of Approved Document B got under way and, if it has, when is it due to report and when can we actually tell our landlords what should happen?

I commend the all-party group on fire safety and rescue for the work that it has done on this issue. I have attended a number of seminars on it. However, the Government have to act on it. It cannot be left to the industry alone or to us alone. We must have a solution.

National Planning Policy Framework

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can give my hon. Friend some reassurances on that. We have been clear and have set out, I think for the first time, all the hurdles that need to be cleared to meet the definition of exceptional circumstances. Brownfield is an absolute priority, and we have talked about the importance of density and making sure that neighbouring authorities have been talked to, with a statement of common ground. I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that the green belt retains maximum protection.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

For two years, the Secretary of State has failed to determine the future of the Earl’s Court development, one of the biggest in the UK. The choice is between demolishing 750 council homes and building luxury homes with only 10% so-called affordable and no new social housing, and letting the existing residents keep their homes and develop the rest of the site for new social homes. It should not be that difficult a choice, so could we have some action and not just words?

[Sajid Javid]

I cannot comment on that particular planning proposal—it is a live proposal—but the hon. Gentleman should reflect. If he truly supports more homes and developments in London, perhaps he should have a chat with the leader of his party and ask why they intimidate Labour leaders who want to increase the number of homes in their areas.

Department for Transport

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this debate. If my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and I were of any assistance, it was, as usual, as her obedient servants in this matter. She made a compelling case for her own region, but I am delighted that she does not argue that we should rob Peter to pay Paul—take resources from my region, for example.

Rather than use my own words to talk about transport spending in London, I shall quote the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), Transport Minister until last month and not, I suggest, partisan in favour of the Labour London Mayor. He said last October that spend per head was a bad indication when judging the effectiveness of transport spending:

“The calculation for London…doesn’t account for the substantial number of daily commuters and visitors, both domestically and internationally, who will be using and benefitting from the roads and public transport networks but who aren’t London residents…two in every three rail journeys start or end in London and there are eighteen times more passengers arriving into London during a typical morning peak than at Manchester, the busiest northern city. In particular, as the main international gateway into and out of the country, London will be the location for transport investments which look to serve passengers well beyond the local resident population.”

Indeed, there are severe funding problems in London, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned the most pressing: the withdrawal of the entirety of the operational grant—£700 million. What other capital city would that be true of? But that is only where it all begins; we now hear that the money raised from vehicle excise duty in London, some £500 million, will also be spent only on roads outside the capital from 2021.

It feels sometimes as though these decisions are spiteful rather than strategic. The current Transport Secretary is perfectly happy to overspend his budget by £300 million—including, as the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) said, £260 million on VAT for HS2. He said that we could not make adjustments to the system of penalty notices in London, which would have raised £80 million within our own resources. He also refused to allow the suburban rail service to be incorporated. That would have been more efficient and was supported by a number of Conservative MPs in the capital.

[Gareth Thomas]

Does my hon. Friend also think it is regrettable that the Department for Transport has blocked London from accessing the new national clean air fund, given the scale of problems that diesel is causing, particularly in central and outer London?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not want to stop the debate, but I am going to have to drop the time limit to four minutes for the next speaker. The way we are going, it will have to go down to three to get everyone in. I am bothered about that, so can Members who have already spoken bear that in mind?

[Andy Slaughter]

I will just say that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and will not take any further interventions.

I will give one example of how politics, rather than good sense, is governing the way that London is dealt with. It is a local example, but I think it is a good case in point. I am sure that many Members have visited the Olympia exhibition centre, an excellent Victorian centre that has been going for 100 years, serving the people of the country, not just London. Until seven years ago, it had a dedicated timetabled tube service. In response to lobbying by Conservative Members to take trains away from that part of the service and put it on to the Wimbledon part of the District line, we lost that service, despite the fact that because of development, up to 8 million visitors will be going there and it is in the most densely populated part of London.

We have to start taking sensible decisions. That is what the Mayor of London is doing. He has frozen tube fares, which were going up too quickly, for four years. He has introduced the hopper fare, which means that people changing from one bus to another do not have to pay extra. That has benefited 140 million journeys so far. He has introduced the night tube, which the previous Mayor failed to. He has reduced strike days by 65%, and he has, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West indicated, done a lot for not just walking and cycling but increasing zero-emissions vehicles and, indeed, the whole green agenda in London. Last year, he also reduced operating costs for Transport for London by £150 million in a single year.

I will briefly turn to more strategic matters. We have some major developments in London. I am a supporter of HS2, notwithstanding the disruption it is causing to my constituency and neighbouring ones, because it is one of those great transport projects that I believe the country needs. I agree, as I quite often do, with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that the execution of the project leaves a great deal to be desired.

I declare an interest, because HS2 is bringing a lot of jobs and homes to my constituency, and it is co-ordinating with Crossrail, which is bringing a £42 billion benefit to the UK economy. We need Crossrail. We also need Crossrail 2. I remind anybody who thinks it is a new scheme that it is the Chelsea to Hackney line from the 1970s. Far from building these great infrastructure schemes in a way that is controversial, we delay for years and sometimes decades in doing so.

Finally, one strategic project that I think is a terrible error of judgment is the expansion of Heathrow. We now know that its commercial benefit is half what the Airports Commission said. It is less than Gatwick, and the net present value of it is about zero over the 60 years. Public infrastructure, in terms of road and rail, could cost up to £18 billion. Despite paying a huge dividend to its shareholders, Heathrow is only prepared to put £1 billion of that in.

The expansion will have terrible consequences in terms of noise and air pollution. We must think again about that. I know that the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), is applying the four tests of the Labour party and doing exactly that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Social Housing and Regeneration: Earl’s Court and West Kensington

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered social housing and regeneration in Earl’s Court and West Kensington.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Last Thursday, Property Week carried the story that Capital & Counties Properties plc, the promoter of the Earl’s Court development, is about to sell the Empress State building to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime for around £240 million. Capco confirmed the leak. Indeed, using the “cui bono?” test, Capco was responsible for the leak, which gave a glimmer of good news to its shareholders, who have only had bad news in recent years, ahead of its full-year figures for 2017 being published later this week.

At over 30 storeys, Empress State was the tallest commercial building in London when it was built in the early 1960s. When it was vacated and sold by the Ministry of Defence, the Metropolitan police rented it from its new commercial owners. When Capco acquired the freehold in 2014, it gave notice to the Met and got consent from a complicit Conservative administration—with only weeks to spare before they lost control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council—to approve Empress State’s redevelopment as 440 mainly luxury flats.

Why give up now on luxury residential development, which was previously seen as not just another licence to print money, but a way of integrating the key Empress State site into Capco’s master plan for Earl’s Court and West Kensington? The answer is that throwing in the towel on Empress State is the clearest sign yet that not just the master plan, but Capco itself is in serious trouble and is seeking to cut and run to save its own skin.

This is a story about arrogance and greed; about politicians who thought they could treat people as commodities, units of production and pieces on an electoral chessboard; about developers who could not believe their luck and then fell prey to changing political and market forces; about a vibrant part of London full of industry, commerce and entertainment that was ordered to be razed and replaced with monotonous high-rise blocks as safe deposit flats for the investment market; and about a proud community of 2,000 people who have stood firm for 10 years against the threat of their homes and community being demolished and dispersed.

Ten years ago, Capco conceived a master plan for 77 acres of land straddling the borders of Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea. It was dubbed Earl’s Court, although the majority of the land lay in the marginal North End ward of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was billed as the biggest urban development outside China, with an estimated built-out value of £12 billion.

The plan was audacious, because although designated as an opportunity area, this was no derelict, brownfield land. One third of the site comprised the Earl’s Court exhibition centre, including its iconic 1930s entrance, which is now sadly demolished despite the UK having only a third of France’s exhibition space and a quarter of Germany’s. One third comprised the maintenance, manufacture and stabling of a significant part of London Underground in the Lillie Bridge depot, which was a major employer of skilled labour. One third comprised two estates of predominantly council housing: Gibbs Green and West Kensington. Around 2,000 of my constituents live there in 760 good quality, spacious, affordable 1950s, 1970s and 1990s low or medium-rise homes.

In place of all that, Capco promised 7,500 high-rise flats, of which only 11% would be additional affordable homes that stretched that definition to its limits by, for the most part, offering nugatory discounts on extortionate market prices. Interestingly, now Capco is aching for a deal—any deal—to get out of the scheme, it does not say, as most developers do, “Look at our viability assessment. It is all that we could afford.” It says, “We did what Conservative politicians asked, and they wanted precious little affordable housing and not one new social rented home.”

At the start of the process in 2008, Capco told me with similar candour that it did not want to include the estates in the master plan. Developing the exhibition centre and depot meant negotiating with a single partner, Transport for London. Bringing in the estates meant not only a political minefield, but buying up the land interests of the hundreds of freeholders and leaseholders who had bought the desirable homes, flats and maisonettes on Gibbs Green and West Ken.

Why did Capco succumb? Because the ideologically driven council in Hammersmith and Fulham decided to attract the attention of its political masters in the Department for Communities and Local Government by showing that whole areas of social housing could be wiped and reconceived as luxury developments—they called it “sweating the asset”. For Capco, demolishing the estates was the price of the Tories’ co-operation with the scheme.

Capco drove a hard bargain. The inequality of arms between developers and local authorities is not unique to Hammersmith. The deal done with TfL on the exhibition sites was hugely preferential to Capco, despite TfL owning the freehold—perhaps the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) was also not trying too hard—but that looks like a master stroke compared with the deal that the Hammersmith Tories did for the estate land.

In 2013, Hammersmith and Fulham Council made a deal to receive £90 million for the estates, plus space in the new development to replace the homes lost. Uniquely in the experience of most planners and developers, however, that sum was not index-linked—as if property prices never rise in central London.

Moreover, the council needed to deliver vacant possession of the land. That meant buying out 171 leasehold and freehold homes, which is normally the developer’s task. The maximum needed to acquire the homes was budgeted as £60 million, although valuation experts assessed the true figure as between £150 million and £174 million. The council has already purchased 26 homes at an average price of £552,000, excluding compensation, which is well in excess of the estimated £350,000.

The true value of the land is not recorded, but reading across from the valuation of the exhibition centre site, which is, suggests that a more accurate figure is around £1 billion. By accepting no more than 10% of the land’s value and by underestimating the costs of acquiring vacant possession, the council could now be left with a zero receipt and a maximum of 672 replacement homes for residents of the estates, having sold 88 homes to cover its shortfall. That will also not guarantee a home for all residents in the new scheme.

For reasons of time, I must return another day to what I regard as one of local government’s great financial scandals: how not just prime land, but whole communities were sold for a song to serve an extreme political agenda of gerrymandering and social engineering. Most of the guilty men of the previous Conservative administration—and they were all men—have taken their poisonous philosophy elsewhere, but Capco still squats on Earl’s Court and West Ken like a toad.

Capco is represented by its chairman, Ian Hawksworth, who is now most famous for being on the guest list for the President’s Club dinner, and Gary Yardley, its managing director, who is quick to pick up lavish bonuses for the granting of planning consents with negligible community benefit and huge community loss. Its development partners are even less savoury. They include Hong Kong-based mega-developers Kwok Family Interests. One of the family, Thomas Kwok, is currently serving a five-year sentence for bribery.

Although I have referred, and will continue to refer, to Capco as the developer, in fact the estates were purchased through an obscure entity called EC Properties LP. The sole partner capital contributed to EC Properties LP is £2 paid in cash by Jersey-registered EC Properties LP Ltd. These and further labyrinthine arrangements appear designed to put Capco in control while shielding it from liability and allowing it to take advantage of offshore tax arrangements.

Before being tempted by the prospect of rich pickings in Earl’s Court, Capco’s business was commercial and retail estate management, specifically through its ownership of Covent Garden. It has no experience as a major land developer, and it shows. It does not have control of the master plan site; it has no option on Lillie Bridge depot, which is owned by TfL; the estate residents, through their lawyers, dispute that the conditional land sale agreement for the estates is enforceable; and now the deliverability of its scheme has been further undermined by the sale of the Empress State building.

Capco’s scheme, the value of which fell by 20% in 2016, includes £1.8 billion of enabling infrastructure costs. At £148 per square foot, that is more than three times the cost of larger development schemes in London. Other residential developers have commented on Capco’s extreme construction costs, which are thought to be 30% to 45% above the market rate.

Capco’s assumptions for residential value, which are significantly higher than the local market and schemes elsewhere in London, have not been realised. Sales are slower than expected: flats have been selling at a rate of less than one a week. At one point it was selling one flat a fortnight, at which rate it would take more than 150 years to sell the entire scheme, yet the business plan relies on a high sales rate of 480 private homes a year. Unsurprisingly, Capco has tried in recent months to sell some or all of the site to overseas investors in America, South Africa, Japan, China and Saudi Arabia, but it has had no takers. Frankly, any developer, however much of a gambler, would be beyond reckless to take any of the Earl’s Court site off Capco’s hands.

With no money in the scheme and none from outside, Capco’s only other option is to return to planning and come up with a new master plan with increased heights and density. Sadly for Capco, that option also looks like a dead end. With Eric Pickles at the Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip as Mayor in City Hall, and Stephen Greenhalgh in Hammersmith Town Hall, anything was possible, but the political weather has changed. Now Sadiq Khan is Mayor and has very different ideas about what constitutes affordable and sustainable development. He has also made a strong commitment to tenants’ ballots and said that he wants

“to make sure people living on social housing estates…are at the heart of any decisions”

involving demolition. Stephen Cowan, the Labour leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, has described the Earl’s Court scheme as “unviable” and “undeliverable” and called on Capco to return the estates to the council. He has the full support of the North End ward Labour candidates, Councillor Larry Culhane, Councillor Daryl Brown and Zarar Qayyum. It appears that he also has the support of the deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea, Councillor Kim Taylor-Smith, who spoke about the scheme at a meeting of the full council on 24 January.

On Monday, I wrote to the chief executive of EC Properties, whose parent company is Capco, to seek a meeting to consider the site’s future. I told him that on 14 June the facts on the ground in Kensington had changed. I wrote:

“I want to make it very clear that I do not believe the continuation of this development under the current terms is right. And, as a minimum, if this is to continue I want to see more social and more truly affordable housing included in this scheme.”

I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) present, because part of the site is in her constituency. As she knows, my reference to 14 June was to the Grenfell Tower fire.

So what happens now? It is too late for the exhibition centres that were demolished in an act of vandalism, but it is not too late to build an acceptable replacement on the site. It is far from too late for the Lillie Bridge depot, which is still owned by TfL, to undergo sympathetic redevelopment to preserve necessary infrastructure for the tube and new affordable homes. If hon. Members will forgive me, however, I will turn my focus to the estates, or rather to the people who live there.

I first got to know West Ken and Gibbs Green in 1985 as the newly selected council candidate for Gibbs Green ward. The first campaign that I had to fight was to stop the then Tory council putting a relief road through the West Ken estate. It has been a pleasure to represent the area as a councillor and MP for 28 of the past 32 years. Although on aggregate it is a low-income community, it includes people from every walk of life, ethnicity, nationality and profession.

Residents reacted with horror to the prospect of demolition of their homes. At first, there was no guarantee of rehousing in the area—only the statutory requirement to rehouse secure tenants in suitable alternative accommodation. Even when residents were told that homes would be available on the site, there were strings attached. Homeowners, private tenants and households who moved into the estates after the land sale agreement was signed in 2013 have no guarantee of finding a replacement home in the area on eviction. Secure council tenants who move into the first phase of replacement homes could see their service charges triple to between £2,500 and £3,500 a year on top of rent. Having been initially promised like-for-like replacement homes, residents who currently have spacious flats and houses built in the 1960s and 1970s, some of which have gardens and off-street parking, have now been told simply that replacement homes will meet the legal minimum size standard. Even if the developer had the finances and political support to begin evicting residents tomorrow, redevelopment of the estates would still take at least 20 years to complete.

Residents have done everything they can to make it very clear what they do not want: demolition. In December 2009, a year after learning of the possible demolition of their homes, residents from 83% of households on the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates signed a petition to oppose it. In March 2012, 80% of residents who responded to the council’s consultation on the scheme said no to demolition.

Residents have also been very clear about what they want instead: community ownership. In March 2011, they formed West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes, a community-controlled not-for-profit organisation with membership from more than two thirds of households on the estates. It was set up with the intention of exercising council tenants’ right to transfer.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his powerful speech. Does he agree that residents could do a lot worse than learn from the community ownership experience in a neighbouring estate? Walterton and Elgin Community Homes was set up in the face of a threat from Westminster City Council in the late 1980s. It has proved to be one of the most successful and popular models for social housing in the country. Does he agree that that experience shows exactly the approach we should take when estates are threatened?

[Andy Slaughter]

It is a pleasure to see my hon. Friend in the Chamber. I am not surprised to hear her champion one of the most successful community-held developments in the country. I will say a little more about that development before I conclude my speech.

The right to transfer allows council tenants to choose a different landlord for their area. The objective of West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes is to become the community-controlled landlord for its members’ homes. For four years, it lobbied the Government to implement the necessary legislation to enable it to use the right to transfer under the Housing Act 1985, as amended by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. The necessary regulations came into force in December 2013, and in March 2015 members voted 100:1 to serve a right-to-transfer proposal notice. That is a comfort to those whose priority is simply to remain in their homes. Some residents have lived on the estates with friends and neighbours for 30, 40 or even 50 years and dread the disruption of redevelopment and forced transfer.

Estates are home to people who are the lifeblood of our towns and cities. Many residents are people on minimum wage or zero-hours contracts, who feel the rising costs of living the most. Demolishing and marginalising social housing will not work; more importantly, it dehumanises an entire category of people. Certain councils and developers generalise about social housing tenants. They assume they know better than the tenants what is good for them, and they tell them to be grateful when their homes are under threat. That is what the Conservatives did before agreeing the sale to Capco, describing estates as “not decent neighbourhoods”, “barracks for the poor” and “ghettoes of multiple deprivation”. Is it any wonder that communities such as West Kensington and Gibbs Green are bidding to take control and ownership for themselves?

So residents came up with the people’s plan, which shows the professionals how new development ought to be done. At the outset, Community Homes brought more than 100 residents into workshops and site visits with architects. Residents and architects together identified space for up to 327 new homes and devised plans for improvements to their homes, streets and community spaces. The plans were costed and valued, and residents were able to show that they could help to pay for improvements and subsidise the building of new homes at social rent levels through sales. Residents from 65% of households provided written feedback on these proposals, and 90% of respondents said that the plans were “excellent” or “good”, and “better” or “far better” than the Capco scheme. Here is some of their feedback:

“Everybody is trying to save our homes from these rich people. What do you want to destroy people’s lives for? For money?”

“I like that there is a plan to build new homes but I can keep my home. I don’t understand why they are going to demolish decent homes.”

“The most important thing is that we get to stay. I love it here. We know each other and look out for each other.”

I have two final things to say. First, I thank everybody in the community at West Kensington and Gibbs Green, and their supporters and advisers, for the struggle of the last 10 years. It has been gruelling, and 2,000 people have had their lives on hold, unable to move on with everything from modernising their home to planning their family’s future. However, it has created a fantastic community spirit and inspired people to create their own vision for the future.

Even before the political climate began to thaw, I knew that we would win, because I have known people such as Sally Taylor and Diana Belshaw, the chairs of the West Ken and Gibbs Green residents’ associations, and Keith Drew, the chair of West Ken Gibbs Green Community Homes Limited, for 20 years and more. They are strong Fulham people who are standing up for their communities, and they are not daunted by the dirty tricks of the developer and its political cipher.

I am delighted that so many residents have been able to attend this debate. I apologise if I cannot name them all, but they stand for the hundreds and thousands of people on the estates who have fought for their homes and their livelihoods over many, many years. That battle is not over, but there is at least some light at the end of the tunnel.

As I say, there are too many people for me to name, but I cannot leave out Jonathan Rosenberg, the community organiser for these 10 years, who brought not only his absolute focus and determination to an often exhausting David and Goliath battle, but 30 years of experience of community housing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) knows, Jonathan is the chair of Walterton and Elgin Community Homes, which is in her constituency. He is a slayer of Shirley Porter and a champion of tenants’ rights. Jonathan has been ably assisted by a number of professional advisers—accountants, architects and planners—and by community activists across both boroughs, and indeed by residents who have turned up, often when everything looked hopeless and bleak, time and again to assert the identity of their community.

I must also mention Dave Hill, the former Guardian journalist who now runs—I will give it a blatant plug—the “On London” website, which he is crowdfunding for. Dave has written dozens and dozens of articles to expose what has gone on in West Ken and Gibbs Green over the last 10 years. I do not always agree with everything that he says—he is a good, independent journalist—but he has chronicled what I am afraid to say lazier and more partisan journalists would have otherwise missed. It is good that we have it all on the record.

In conclusion, I have only a couple of simple requests to put to the Minister. I know that, new as he is to his post, he will have listened attentively. From my time holding the justice brief, I know that he is serious and has intellectual weight, and I hope that he will give me good news today. First, will he please determine the Community Homes application for the right to transfer, which his Department has been waiting to determine for more than two years? When he does so, can he please heed the residents’ call for him to uphold their legal right to take back control—a phrase I am sure he is keen to hear in this Chamber—of their community, so that they can deliver the homes that we need?

Secondly and more broadly, I ask the Minister to get the Government, including his Department, to work with the residents, the boroughs and the Greater London Authority—they are all now of one mind, a very different mind from the one of 10 years ago—to provide decent, genuinely affordable homes across the Earl’s Court site for families? That perhaps includes families from Grenfell, and thousands of others who are in overcrowded, unfit and unaffordable accommodation in two of London’s most expensive boroughs.

This situation should not be seen as a tragedy but as an opportunity. If there is going to be redevelopment, it should be sympathetic and sustainable, and in the interests of the people who need it most. They are the people who need social and affordable housing in Hammersmith and Fulham, and in Kensington and Chelsea.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. As is the custom, I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on securing this debate. We have sparred many times on justice matters, and I look forward to an equally rigorous friendship on housing issues. He takes a close interest in those issues and I know how tenaciously he makes his case for his constituents and on matters of principle. I pay tribute to the residents who have come to listen to him and to hear the different views on this important matter.

I take note of all the hon. Gentleman’s points regarding the merits or otherwise of the development of the Earl’s Court and West Kensington area. He will know that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been asked to make a decision on two specific matters submitted for his determination. The determination requests are currently being considered in the Department. The hon. Gentleman made some specific requests that I want to address clearly. As a lawyer and an assiduous local MP, he will know that that process precludes me, for legal and propriety reasons, from commenting specifically on the regeneration proposals for the Earl’s Court and Kensington area. As he knows, to do so would prejudice the very decision making he is calling for. Notwithstanding those limits, in his usual deft way he has highlighted his concerns over the Earl’s Court project while also raising—the shadow Minister did this, too—wider issues relating to social housing and the place for regeneration within that. I will say as much as I conceivably can.

Members will know that social housing is a priority for this Government. Last year we announced a review to examine the issues affecting social housing. To help inform the Green Paper we have spoken directly with 1,000 people who live in social housing, as well as with more than 7,000 people through online surveys. Notwithstanding the fact I have only been in this post for a short time, I have been to two workshops this year in Basingstoke and for Lancaster West residents in north Kensington. I hope that reassures the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). Those workshops and the wider feedback have made a profound impression on me. We have an important opportunity to look afresh at the sector. A lot of the wider points that Members have made will feed into, touch on and resonate with some of the issues we will be grappling with. We will publish the Green Paper this year for consultation, and I look forward to engaging with all Members at that point on those wider policy issues as we strive to get the best out of the social housing sector.

More broadly, the Government are increasing the supply of homes and implementing policies that help people to access housing, whether they are renting or looking to buy in whichever sector, private or social. In 2016-17, which is the last year for which we have full figures, nearly 220,000 net additional homes were delivered. There were more than 41,000 affordable housing completions, which was up 27% on the previous year. We saw nearly 145,000 completions on the Help to Buy equity loan scheme by the end of September 2017.

Building affordable homes is a top priority for this Government. Since 2010, we have delivered more than 357,000 new affordable homes. In relation to the specific issues raised by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, about one quarter of those homes have been delivered in London. The Prime Minister recently announced an additional £2 billion of funding for affordable housing. That will increase the affordable homes programme budget to more than £9 billion. The new funding will support councils and housing associations to build more affordable homes where they are needed most: where families are struggling with rental costs and some may be at risk of homelessness.

The shadow Minister raised the issue of affordable housing in the wider context, and the hon. Member for Hammersmith made a number of political points. I hope both will forgive me for pointing out a few basic undeniable facts about affordable homes in Hammersmith and Fulham. Affordable home delivery in Hammersmith and Fulham in 2016-17 was 28% of the level of the last year of the previous Conservative administration. In the same year, Hammersmith and Fulham delivered 15% of the affordable housing that Wandsworth delivered. I note that as a matter of balance with the account of the borough given today by Members. It is worth putting it in some perspective. Nevertheless, across the political aisles and across the country—the issue is most acute in relation to London, where there is a serious housing shortage and high demand—I think we all are clear about our ambition and restlessness to go much further.

At the autumn statement in 2016, we agreed a record-breaking £3.15 billion package of funding for affordable housing in London to deliver at least 90,000 new affordable homes by March 2021. In addition, London will also get a share of the extra £3.4 billion investment in the affordable homes programme announced recently. Since 2010, we have delivered more than 357,000 new affordable homes, and about one quarter of them have been in the capital.

As London struggles to build enough homes to keep pace with demand, attention is naturally turning to the broader options regarding the regeneration of housing estates. Estate regeneration done the right way can create new improved homes and communities for the people who live there. It can increase the supply and quality of homes through densification and design. Those two can be viewed as a win-win, rather than a zero-sum game. Savills has estimated that in London there is capacity to provide more than 54,000 additional homes using a street-based model. The Government published a new estate regeneration national strategy in December 2016, which supports local partners to improve how they do estate regeneration in partnership with residents to drive better quality housing, local growth and wider opportunities for the residents of local communities.

To give some examples of good practice, in the north Solihull area of Birmingham, a focus on education with the local community infrastructure amenities has led to an increase in educational standards. The regeneration set out to change the lives of 40,000 people by building new homes of mixed tenure, developing new state-of-the-art schools and creating new village centres with improved health and enterprise facilities. The best estate regeneration schemes make the community central to the project.

The Spirit Quarters redevelopment in Coventry is a resident-led scheme. They have set up three social enterprises: a community café, a neighbourhood centre and a business centre. In addition to the physical transformation, there have been improvements in many social and economic outcomes. Overall, reported crime in the area is down by almost 20% and the number of residents claiming jobseeker’s allowance has reduced by 44%. The percentage of students leaving school with five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C has increased from 5% to 33%. Those are all incredibly positive outcomes.

The issue of tenant participation has been raised by hon. Members. Residents are clearly key partners in any regeneration scheme. They should have opportunities to participate from the start, developing the vision, design, partner procurement and delivery. Working with residents can help to build trust and consensus on regeneration. I have said this numerous times since taking on this portfolio: we need to build more homes, but we also need to build up stronger communities, too,

It is particularly important that residents have the opportunity to express their views on the final options for regeneration, whether as individuals or through the democratic process more generally. The way that is done should be agreed locally. That is the template for the national policy that we put out. The regeneration should have the support of a majority of the residents whose lives will be directly affected. At the Wornington Green estate in north Kensington, support for the regeneration was helped by early and ongoing conversations with residents. It included a resident steering group, regular outreach, independent advice and advocacy, regular public meetings, and training for residents.

It is important to set out a clear set of commitments about how the regeneration process will work and what housing options are available. Providing security and confidence through a charter early on is one option for helping to establish trust and foster positive discussions about the scheme. All existing council and housing association tenants, whether on a lifetime or fixed-term tenancy, should have the option to return to the estate. It is a legal requirement for leaseholders to be compensated if their home is demolished. However, we expect that schemes will go further and offer leaseholders a package that enables them to stay on the estate or at least close by.

It is important that home purchase options are made available. Residents should be given the opportunity to change tenure if they so wish. Regeneration can help first-time buyers get a foot on the housing ladder and provide opportunities for tenants to own their homes. Shared ownership has an important role to play in helping those who aspire to home ownership but cannot afford to buy. For example, residents of the Rayners Lane estate in Harrow have been guaranteed the right to remain in affordable housing on the estate, with the extra 260-plus homes creating a vibrant mixed-tenure community through the introduction of outright sale and shared ownership. All of that requires strong leadership from local authorities.

Our strategy highlights the importance of devolution and the leadership role of local authorities working with their communities to support estate regeneration. We have seen good examples of that type of strategic leadership and co-operation. Notwithstanding the criticisms that have been made, I hope we will not throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose sight of the good examples and the positives.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dominic Raab]

I will make a little more progress and the hon. Gentleman can comment at the end.

Combined authorities in the Tees valley, the west midlands and Greater Manchester are now tackling housing and regeneration alongside transport, infrastructure and skills as they take a more holistic approach. Strategic regeneration plans can act as the catalyst for delivering place-based services and infrastructure through, for example, new community hubs and schools that service the areas being regenerated.

Opposition Members have sometimes accused me of focusing too much on London and the capital. However, the regeneration of Anfield in north Liverpool has focused not only on housing, but on the place as a whole, including the commercial offer and the wider infrastructure. Your Housing association, Liverpool football club and Liverpool City Council created a partnership that enabled them to consider the needs of the community across the whole Anfield area. That was important and is a good example of the strong joint partnership and long-term community engagement that has transformed Anfield into a place where people want to live.

[Andy Slaughter]

I appreciate the tone of the Minister’s speech and what he said about not giving a view on the regeneration scheme. However, may I press him a little on two points? First, if he cannot say what his position is, can he indicate—this is not unreasonable after two years—when there is likely to be a decision on the right to transfer? Secondly, there are many regeneration schemes, but so many of them involve a reduction in the number of social rented homes. When we have a new deal for Earl’s Court and West Kensington, will he agree to work with the other players there to ensure that we preserve and enhance the existing community?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point in a constructive and reasonable way. I appreciate his frustration on the time issue. After the length of time and all the issues that have been churned over, no one will say this has been done in a rushed way, but we need to take the time required to get the decision right. I cannot give him a specific timeframe, but we will move as expeditiously as we can. I certainly will take back to the Department the point that he has made.

On the wider question, we have an opportunity through the social housing Green Paper. We will collate the extraordinarily wide range of feedback we have had. We will put that into the proposals through a Green Paper for consultation. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman and hearing from him at that stage.

In conclusion, I want to make sure this debate does not lose sight of the fact that local regeneration can offer enormous scope to build more homes and at the same time build up our local communities, which, whatever side of the political argument we sit on, is the shared objective. It requires ambition from local authorities, which many are providing. It also requires that residents have a strong voice in the process to shape the local plan, and support from central Government, which London and many other communities are receiving, not least with the recent homes infrastructure funding that has been made available. It also requires strong leadership to carry local communities with us.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am glad we had a civilised debate, but that does not detract from the fact that what has happened, particularly to the tenants and residents of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates over the past 10 years, has been an outrage. It would not have been tolerated were this not an area of social housing. Threatening to demolish 750 private homes in the same way simply would not happen. All we ask is that similar standards are adopted. That is why I am delighted with the Mayor’s new guidelines and his wish to use his own power and economic clout to ensure that tenants are fully consulted in future.

I want to make two or three quick points. I accept that local authorities can always do more and that it is very difficult to build genuinely affordable housing in London, where land values are high, but it is not impossible. I do not want to dwell on the political past, but I will give one statistic: in the past three years of Conservative control in Hammersmith and Fulham, the number of social rented homes actually fell. It is the only borough in London where that happened. I would be willing to draw a line under the past and to accept at face value what the Government say and what some Conservative councils now say about a new commitment to social rented homes. I suspect the new settlement will not be until after the local elections because Capco, like all desperate gamblers, will want one more throw of the dice to see if it can get a more sympathetic administration. I suspect it will be unlucky on this occasion, not only in Hammersmith but in Kensington. I invite the Minister to work with all players after that time to ensure that we begin to build the homes that Londoners need and can afford.

I end where I began by thanking everybody who has taken part in the debate, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), and for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who are passionate about these issues, as I am. Most of all I thank the tenants and residents not only for giving up their day and being here—they have given up so many days—but for everything they have done for their community. By resisting the demolition that was due in the area, they have prevented it from happening to other communities in Hammersmith and elsewhere. For that we all owe them an undying debt of gratitude.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered social housing and regeneration in Earl’s Court and West Kensington.

Grenfell Tower

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

It is not just in relation to local authorities and housing associations that the freeholder is responsible for renovations; it is also the case for private landlords. The question of the allocation of responsibility for funding and financing the renovation is partly determined by the terms of the leasehold arrangement, but my understanding is that, as a matter of general law, a freeholder cannot pass unreasonable costs over to leaseholders. There is always recourse to the tribunal and we know plenty of leaseholders have taken such action. We have been very clear that, morally, such costs should not be passed on to leaseholders.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

At the last Housing, Communities and Local Government Question Time, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and I both asked about the review of technical documents. We did not get an answer. To be clear, we are talking not about the Hackitt review, which is doing some good work on the wider issue, but about individual types of cladding and what document B says. We cannot go ahead with the replacement of cladding —we may still put up partially combustible materials on those buildings. The review of technical documents has not yet started.

[Dominic Raab]

If the hon. Gentleman writes to me about that, I will follow it up. There is detailed dialogue with any local authority that raises such issues. If he wants me to follow it up, he should write to me and I will be very happy to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Let me update the hon. Lady. My records show that the number of authorities is still 36. We have requested further information from 10 of them, and four have provided it. As I said a moment ago, however, we are ready to provide any local authority with whatever financial flexibilities are necessary to ensure that all essential fire safety work is done.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

How are local authorities or other landlords to know what steps to take to ensure that there is adequate fire protection when the relevant building regulations are 11 years old and no review of them has yet commenced?

[Sajid Javid]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not in Parliament last year when the Home Secretary and I asked for an independent review of all building regulations by Dame Judith Hackitt. Just a few weeks ago, in the House, I presented the findings of her interim report, the recommendations of which we accepted in full.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am delighted to support a Bill that will make a real difference to serious problems affecting millions of people who rent in the public and private sectors. Housing is 45% of my casework, and the largest proportion relates to house conditions. Unfitness beats disrepair as the major concern. Put simply, this is the biggest single issue for many Members whose constituencies have a large private rented sector.

I see damp, mouldy, draughty, infested and unsafe properties every week when I knock on doors in my constituency. It is utterly appalling and it affects the health, wellbeing and life chances of many of my constituents, and it has been getting steadily worse over the past few years, which is highly regrettable.

I am delighted that, at last, there is a likelihood of getting this Bill on the statute book. As the shadow Secretary of State said, this is not the first time such a Bill has been before the House. The predecessor Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill, which was also introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), was talked out in 2015. I suppose we should thank the usual suspects for staying away today to allow this Bill a fair wind.

Two years ago, in January 2016, my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) moved a new clause to the Housing and Planning Bill with similar terms to create a duty on landlords to ensure that properties are fit for habitation when let, and remain fit for habitation during the tenancy. En passant, I note that all but one of the Conservative Members who have spoken today voted against that new clause, so we welcome their contributions today. The hon. Members for Telford (Lucy Allan), for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), and indeed the Minister, have all seen the light in the past two years.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Like a sinner who repenteth.

[Andy Slaughter]

Indeed. I would hate ever to be churlish in the Chamber, and I raise these matters only to rejoice at lost sheep who have been found. They have spoken so well today.

I do not wish in any way to delay the passage of this Bill today, but I want to make one serious point. Paragraph 32 of the explanatory notes states:

“The Bill will not entail additional public expenditure, local authorities already have strong enforcement powers to tackle poor property. The aim of this bill is to enable tenants to pursue their landlord without recourse to their local authority.”

Many people have made the point that local authorities now lack the resources to do that, and that is part of the reason why we need to enable tenants themselves to do this, but these are often complex matters, legally and procedurally, to pursue. I ask the Minister to address that point specifically when she comes to speak.

In only two or three months’ time, we are due to have the long-awaited review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and I hope that part of it will look at whether legal aid can be extended to cover the provisions of this Bill. Indeed, I hope that we can go further than that, because, as has been established in review after review—in the Bach commission and the Low commission, and in what the Law Society, Shelter and Citizens Advice have said—the cuts in housing legal aid have been some of the most damaging. That applies to disrepair cases, where only “serious” disrepair is now eligible for legal aid. In fact, because the cuts are so substantial we often now have legal aid deserts as far as housing is concerned, and it simply is not possible, given how little is in scope, for private practitioners or law centres to offer the same degree of advice. That has to be looked at, and as part of that process we need to bring in the provisions of this Bill.

I always watch the Conservative party conference with great enthusiasm, so I noted that the Secretary of State said in his speech there that he was thinking of introducing a housing court as part of a simplification of the process for resolving housing issues. I do not know whether the Minister has any more to say about that, but we need a simple and straightforward process.

[Chris Ruane]

Is my hon. Friend aware that £22 billion is spent each year on housing benefit, with much of it going to slum landlords, who own houses in multiple occupation. A better solution would be to give part of the housing benefit bill to local councils to build properties on land that they own, so that—I hope hon. Members pardon the pun—we will have more bangs for our buck.

[Andy Slaughter]

I could not agree more, although I do not want to be tempted too far away from today’s subject. Clearly the switch from investing capital sums in building decent properties, which happened under parties of all colours for many years, towards subsidising landlords—in many cases, bad landlords—has to be reversed at some point; that was a deliberate ideological step taken by Conservative Governments and it has served us very badly. That is a more endemic and chronic problem. This Bill resolves the immediate crisis that we have, particularly in the private rented sector. I look forward to the Minister at least saying what the Government are intending to do to enable tenants to pursue their remedy properly.

Let me end, as so many other Members have, by saying that we would not be here at this point were it not for my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. She has championed this cause and this Bill over many, many years, and it is right that Members from both sides of the House have paid tribute to her today. I hope that we can now proceed to see this Bill become law.

Supported Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the First Joint Report of the Work and Pensions Committee and the Communities and Local Government Committee, Future of supported housing, HC 867, Session 2016-17, and the Government response, Cm 9522.

It is a great pleasure to introduce this debate. I welcome the Minister to her place. This is her first opportunity to respond to a debate on the issue, and we look forward to her customary approach to local government matters—I am getting in early before she is taken over by her civil servants and told what to do. She certainly has a long track record with local government matters, having been a councillor, chair of the all-party group on local government and a member of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government.

I also place on record the Committee’s thanks to the former Minister, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), who appeared before us to answer questions on supported housing and, more recently, on homelessness. He certainly listened to the Committee on many occasions and responded positively to us; I will say a little more in due course about how positive his response was to our report. I used to tease him a little by saying that his primary job was trying to save the Department for Work and Pensions from itself when it ventured into housing matters and made policy that subsequently unravelled rather badly, having posed serious problems for much of the housing sector on the way.

The joint report is the result of our two Select Committees getting together to address this very important issue. Anyone who reads the Government response will see the wide range of accommodation that is covered by the term “supported housing”, from long-term traditional sheltered housing and extra care provision to what are essentially people’s homes—accommodation where people with learning or physical disabilities may live for long periods, or provision that people with mental health problems rely on. It also includes very short-term accommodation, often for homeless people who have nowhere else to go and need a roof over their heads, but who will eventually move on to more long-term accommodation. The report also covers the very important issue of how to provide accommodation for women fleeing domestic violence.

We probably would not be here this afternoon were it not for the Government’s intention to change the funding arrangements for such accommodation back in 2015 and 2016, and their now rather infamous decision to link payments to the local housing allowance. At least the Minister can relax this afternoon, because she does not have to defend the indefensible, unlike the Ministers who gave evidence to our inquiry. No one could begin to defend relating the costs of supported housing in any way to those of renting in the private sector, because the differences in local housing allowance rates were so extreme and bore no relation to the costs of providing supported housing in different parts of the country. At least we have got there now. At some point, the penny dropped for Ministers and civil servants and they extracted themselves from the impossible position that they had got into. That was certainly a great benefit of the inquiry. I pay credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who jointly chaired it, for putting Ministers on the spot and making them so uncomfortable that in the Government response they have extracted themselves from that impossible position.

I think I can see how it all came about. Someone in the Treasury must have said, “You mean you pay all this money to these housing providers—you just pay what they ask for? They ask for the rent, you pay over the housing benefit and there is not really any control. We need to anchor the payments to something or other, so let’s come up with a local housing allowance. That’ll do—it’ll provide an anchor so that the providers cannot simply write cheques to themselves.” I am sure that that is how we got into that position, but at least we are not there any more.

Let us not forget, however, that 85% of new development of supported housing in this country was put on hold. We wasted months—indeed, a couple of years—while nothing happened. Although we may be in a better place now than at the beginning, we have still had two years when, despite the urgent need for more supported housing in this country, nothing has happened on 85% of the schemes that were in train. Everyone has said, “Wait a minute. We can’t go ahead because of the uncertainty. We can’t borrow the money because of the uncertainty. We can’t develop the schemes that we all know are needed, because the Government got the initial proposals completely and absolutely wrong.” We should not forget that; indeed, it was worse than that. Organisations such as St Mungo’s that came to give evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee before the joint inquiry was set up said: “If this carries on, not only will we not develop new accommodation; we will pull out of what we have, because we cannot make it pay.”

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight St Mungo’s, which used to be based in my constituency and has done a lot of projects there. It is under a continuing threat: because there is still an intention to rely on local authority grants to fund short-term housing, there is not only insecurity but hostels will have to close.

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: there is an underlying problem. St Mungo’s representatives came to see me this morning and spoke on behalf of a number of providers about the difficulties that still exist, despite the Government’s proposals and the fact that we have got away from LHA rates, as a first move in the direction of sanity. At least that has been clarified, but we should not forget the problems that have occurred in the past two years.

I think the report is excellent. It deals with more than just funding issues; it looks at the role that local authorities play in provision in their area; at how to get people from supported housing into more permanent mainstream housing; and at enabling people to get into work while they are in supported housing. It includes a lot of good recommendations, but I will focus on three key funding issues. I would like some clarification and some certainty from the Minister about where things are going, at least in the medium term. I hope I can also persuade her to think again about two key issues in which the Government have not quite got to the right place.

The first issue is longer-term provision. To some extent, the Government response separates sheltered and extra care housing from long-term supported housing. I accept that slightly different regulatory regimes are proposed for those two sorts of housing, but in essence they will both be funded through the welfare system, as the Government response says. Their funding arrangements look similar, if not identical, so I shall address them together.

I think the Government response is helpful. It is an awful lot better than what we started with. It is clearly right, as we heard overwhelmingly in the evidence we received, that paying for supported housing should be linked to housing benefit, or to the housing element of universal credit when it comes in. What I want from the Minister is a little more explanation and clarification of the wording. The word “control” is used several times, including a reference to

“enhanced cost controls and oversight, ensuring value for money for the taxpayer”.

Of course, everyone recognises that the Government’s job is to ensure value for money for the taxpayer, but what does that phrase actually mean? Does it mean that in the future there will be an effort to bear down on the amount of housing benefit that is paid, to reduce the amount and say, “Well, we paid you the 100% that you requested for housing benefit last year, but next year it’s only going to be 95%, because we expect you to start squeezing the costs that are applicable to this scheme”? Who exercises the controls? Will there be a system with criteria, or will things simply be done on an ad hoc basis for individual schemes?

It would be really helpful in the cases of sheltered and extra care housing, and of long-term supported housing, for which slightly different regulatory regimes are being proposed, but necessarily the words “cost control” come into both of them, if some further explanation could be given about precisely how those cost controls will operate. Who will operate them? Will it be something that is done for three or four years ahead, or will it be something on an annual basis and, if so, how? Such an explanation would be helpful, not merely for our satisfaction here. We come back to this issue of long-term investment. We want more providers to come in with proposals, to get more places and more schemes, but they will only do that if they can satisfy the people they are borrowing money from that there is a long-term future for such schemes and that the money can be paid back. So it is absolutely crucial that we get that right. I am not making a criticism of the proposal as such; instead, I am seeking clarification about how these schemes will operate. So, can we have a bit more certainty about they will operate for the providers in the future? I think we are getting there; we are on the same page, but we want to be clearer about what longer-term arrangements are actually written on the page.

I will come on to something about which I think there is a more fundamental problem, which is the issue with short-term accommodation. I think the term itself causes some difficulties; the Government certainly have difficulties with it. Paragraph 19 of the “Conclusions and recommendations” in this excellent joint report says—I am sure that the Minister has read that paragraph several times already, but I will read it for her again—that

“The Government is right to consider an alternative funding mechanism for very short-term accommodation”.

I will stop reading there, because there is an important word in that sentence. It refers to “very” short-term accommodation. Paragraph 19 continues, “given the emergency nature”—again, those words are important—

“of that provision and the inability of Universal Credit to reflect short-term changes in circumstance.”

I think that that is a given; everyone knows that there have been problems with universal credit in the first few weeks. However, I do not think that anyone thinks that the problems with universal credit are likely to last for two years, do they? Do Ministers think that? Is that why the “short-term” arrangements last for two years under the Government’s proposals—because they do not think that universal credit can be sorted out in two years? I do not know. However, if the Minister thinks so, she is even more pessimistic about universal credit than most of the rest of us are. Anyway, that is the issue.

It was very clear when the two Committees produced their joint report on this subject that they were thinking of accommodation where people literally could not get their universal credit sorted out within a matter of days or very few weeks. I think the period of around 12 weeks is probably reasonable; I think that is the period that most providers are looking at. It is “emergency” accommodation—accommodation for people who have not got a roof over their head; they live there for a very short period. I think everyone accepts that that sort of accommodation needs a different funding model. The problem is that recommendation 19 is being used by Ministers to justify having a completely different funding model for any accommodation that is provided for up to two years, and there is no justification at all in the Government’s response as to why there is that sudden extension from what had been looked at as “very short-term”, “emergency” accommodation for up to 12 weeks to accommodation that is for up to two years.

People from St Mungo’s came to see me this morning and they spoke on behalf of the Riverside Foundation, YMCA and the Salvation Army, which provide around a quarter of so-called “short-term supported housing” units in this country. They said that that extension gives an element of uncertainty to their funding that really causes them major difficulties. St Mungo’s said that 98% of the accommodation it provides will be covered by this ring-fenced grant to local authorities, about which there is absolutely no certainty at all.

I raised the concerns about the need for more clarification and certainty about the long-term funding arrangements linked to housing benefit. However, I think that most providers think there is an awful lot more certainty about those arrangements than there is about some unspecified, ring-fenced grant that can be changed at the stroke of a Chancellor’s pen at any time in the future.