Leasehold Reform and New Homes

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

I got a sense from the Minister yesterday that the legislation will go further. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill is already a great achievement. It is the first time since 2002, I think, that we have legislated on this matter. According to the Opposition, there were some big missed opportunities when we passed that legislation, which has never been commenced—I think everyone across the House agrees with that. The Bill is already good, but I think I detected from the Minister that there are ways we can make it better, and I hope we will collectively be able to do that. To be clear, the people who have been stuffed by the fleecehold estates model do not want a marginal change; they want to end this fundamentally rip-off model.

I asked for this debate to be about new homes as well as leasehold, because sadly fleecehold is just one of the issues affecting buyers of new homes. I have been conducting a survey across Harborough, Oadby and Wigston of buyers of new homes, and I am struck by how widespread the problems are. In two different streets in different places in my constituency, residents have faced sewage in their street and even flowing up into their sinks, dishwashers and showers. There have been occasions when they have been unable to wash because of that.

In the first location, which I visited the other day, the problems have been going on for about four years. The developer plugged the sewage system from a new estate into a sewer for an older estate, causing the older sewage system to overflow with rain water. After four years of denials from the developer, the residents have proved, with the help of Severn Trent, where the problem is coming from. The developer has, in fairness, finally fessed up to causing the problem, and the new person in charge locally seems serious about fixing the problem, so I will not name them for now.

In the second case, Meadow Hill in Wigston, the problem has been going on for about six years. The sewage system in the new estate is simply inadequate. The homes were originally built by Westleigh Homes and were taken over by Countryside Partnerships after completion, which itself has been taken over by Vistry Group. Vistry continues to deny the problem and will not take responsibility, even though I have seen for myself bits of toilet paper in the road that have come spurting up from overflowing sewers. Vistry does not fix the problem. It occasionally sends people to clean up, but mainly it is left to residents to clean up the faeces. I would like to invite Greg Fitzgerald, the chief executive officer of Vistry, to come to see the filth for himself, and I will perhaps ask him how much he would like to have it in his street and coming up into his home. Stephen Teagle, who runs Countryside Partnerships, would also be very welcome to join us to see that disgusting case.

Those are extreme cases, but I am struck by how often British developers sell homes with serious problems, either with the property or with the new estate. For example, a constituent in Wigston has faced a bill of about £10,000 to fix problems caused by his developer, which left his garden at a very steep angle. After two years of fighting, the developer, David Wilson Homes, has agreed to pay about 20% of the cost—a tiny fraction.

A constituent who moved into a new development in Kibworth faced numerous rat infestations due to the pipes in her new home not being fitted correctly. She also experienced mould in the bathroom because the bath was also not fitted correctly.

A constituent who moved into Wellington Place in Market Harborough had more than 200 snags on their property. The toilets did not drain properly, and the downstairs toilet did not work at all for many months, which meant that their disabled daughter had to go upstairs to use the loo. The entire garden needed to be excavated to be fixed and, alarmingly, the fire alarms did not work properly. My constituent found it difficult to get hold of the developer, Davidsons, to get any of those issues addressed, because it had sacked the people responsible for aftercare on the estate.

There are reasons such things happen. On the surface level, some developers are simply more serious about ensuring quality than others. It is not impossible to get it right in the current system, and many do. The Government’s creation of the new homes ombudsman service is a big and very welcome move towards tackling the problems directly. However, some of the problems also reflect wider problems with this country’s model of development: the so-called fast-turn model. In Britain, so much of the profitability of the industry turns on its ability to play our dysfunctional planning system rather than its ability to build in quality.

I was going to make this point today anyway, but as it happens the Competition and Markets Authority’s monumental investigation of the housing market, which was published earlier this week, gives us a huge amount of further evidence that the current model is dysfunctional. Naturally, the sharing of information and cartel-like behaviour between firms was the headline of the report, but many of the other findings are just as explosive. The CMA notes that

“housebuilders don’t have strong incentives to compete on quality and consumers have unclear routes of redress.”

It also notes:

“We see evidence of a statistically significant increase over time in the proportion of homeowners reporting higher numbers of snags, with 35% of respondents…in 2021-22 reporting 16 or more different problems.”

The report brings out what some of those “snags” look like in the real world. One homeowner notes:

“After moving in, my attic hatch fell completely out of the ceiling of its own, because the joiner had only used three screws to fix it instead of sixteen”.

Another says:

“The stairs collapsed while walking up [them] with my son.”

The CMA notes the growing volume of complaints about hidden charges. Among the CMA’s recommendations is

“requiring councils to adopt amenities on all new housing estates.”

That is a very good idea, which takes us back to the issue of leasehold, and I hope that the Government adopt it.

One of the great strengths of the CMA report is the way that it draws the links between the broken planning system and the industry that results from it. Following the conclusions of the Letwin review, the report concludes:

“The evidence shows that private developers produce houses at a rate at which they can be sold without needing to reduce their prices”.

In a paper that I wrote for the think-tank Onward six years ago, I tried to set out some of these dysfunctions. The complexity of the planning system increases market concentration directly and also indirectly, by amplifying the land price cycle, which leads to fewer and fewer developers in each economic cycle, as the small players go bust and are forced out of the market. I am encouraged that the Government are taking great strides towards a better model of development in this country by fixing those deeper, underlying problems.

The vision for more purposive urban regeneration set out in the long-term plan for housing is a good one. The recently passed Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 creates stronger compulsory purchase order powers and requires the dark market in land options to be replaced by a register of land options. I look forward to us cracking on with the secondary legislation needed to bring that about. I also look forward to the Government taking further steps towards creating a more purposive, less passive planning system, in which deliberate, plan-led development becomes a greater share of development and small, speculative development, without the necessary infrastructure, becomes a smaller part of development. The Government are sold on that vision and are making big strides towards it. The current ministerial team—the Secretary of State and our brilliant Housing Minister, who is here today—have that vision and experience these issues in their own constituencies.

I am confident that we are moving in the right direction. I hope that, when the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill arrives in the House of Lords, the Government will proactively take steps to improve it to address these issues. If I read the Minister’s body language right, he clearly understands those issues and wants to act on them. I hope that we can agree to act as quickly as possible, because the issues that I have described in my constituency are horrendous. People have worked hard, saved up a lot, done all the right things, and bought a new home, but they are getting mugged by an industry that, although also having some good players, has some real cowboys. As I said yesterday, the people in my constituency want a new sheriff—in the form of our current Housing Minister—to ride into town on his white horse, blow some of those bad guys away, put right what is being done wrongly and address the glaring injustices that my constituents are experiencing.

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

While the Chancellor seemed to think that last week’s Budget was an opportunity to celebrate the fact that the country had narrowly avoided entering recession, the fact remains that the UK will be the weakest economy in the G7 this year, and the only country that will see negative growth. True to form, when the Government came to choose who to give additional support to, it was the richest 1% and their pension pots when they abolished the £1 million cap on how much an individual can build up in their private pension before they pay additional tax. If, as the Chancellor suggested, the reason behind doing so was to keep doctors in work to boost our struggling NHS, that clearly could have been done through a tailor-made amendment to pension rules.

While the Government are helping the rich to get richer, there are people in my constituency and right across the country who cannot even dream of paying into a pension, let alone saving on the money they have to pay on it. We have families who cannot afford to put food on the table, working people queueing at food banks and children going to school with empty bellies, yet the Government’s response was to bolster the pensions of those who already have more than they will ever need. That is very wrong.

We all want to keep people in work, but to do that we need to help them by offering them the support they need, rather than just offering financial incentives to a tiny elite group. There are women who have worked all their lives, mostly on salaries, where a £1 million pension pot will never trouble them. They hit the perimenopause, and they become engulfed in self-doubt and in need of some minor adjustments to their working conditions, but at the moment, even though we have started to see a breakthrough, not enough businesses have that support in place. Some 10% of menopausal women are leaving jobs. One in four is reducing hours and thousands more are avoiding promotion.

Women are claiming benefits for the first time in their lives simply because nothing was done to help them remain in work, but by leaving work earlier than planned, their national insurance contributions may not reach the threshold for the full state pension, so they may well end up claiming pension credit. There are employers that have taken that on board and implemented changes that have been instrumental in retaining staff, and I welcome the development of a new standard on menopause in the workplace that will be launched by the British Standards Institution later this year. I am absolutely delighted that the Opposition have committed to improving menopause workforce support when we have a Labour Government, because we understand that it is the millions we need to be helping, not the millionaires.

Beauty and Wellbeing Sector Workforce

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the beauty and wellbeing sector workforce.

May I say what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Sir Roger? As co-chair, alongside my good and hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), of the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing, I am well aware of the struggles that the people working in the industry have faced during the past 15 months. Uncertainty around closures and the absence of financial support, coupled with lack of respect for the industry and those working in it, have hit the sector hard. We have seen businesses failing and those that have survived facing an uphill struggle as the country slowly begins to open back up.

This industry has always contributed greatly to the UK economy and supported a substantial workforce. A British Beauty Council report, “The Value of Beauty”, published in 2019—before the pandemic—determined that the industry was worth up to £30 billion a year and supported 50,000 businesses. Figures from the UK Government’s “COVID-19 Response”, published in February 2021, show that in 2019 the industry provided more than 560,000 jobs, 85% of which were done by women, many of whom were working flexibly.

The pandemic has decimated this multimillion-pound industry and has had a devastating impact on the workforce and businesses. On average, businesses in the sector were closed for 250 days during lockdown—far longer than in any of the other, often male-dominated sectors, and too long for them to survive with no income and inadequate support. The knock-on effect of the extended closures has been severe. A recent report from the National Hair and Beauty Federation on the fate of the industry estimated that by the end of this year, businesses will on average have lost £40,000 of revenue. That has led to job losses, with employment in the industry down by 21% from pre-pandemic levels. In addition, 62% of businesses say that they have had to cut staff hours, and 14% say that they are being forced to make redundancies.

Even now that businesses are able to reopen, continued restrictions mean that many are still struggling. Large events, weddings and holidays being scaled back or cancelled has caused a huge deficit in demand, and salons are still operating at only 70% capacity to observe social distancing requirements. While demand for hair appointments and beauty treatments has declined, demand for wellbeing services such as massages and holistic therapy has grown significantly, which is hardly surprising given the increased stress levels that we have all experienced over the past year. Figures from wellbeing platform Urban show that demand for services are now 30% higher than pre-covid. Sadly, however, there are not enough therapists to meet the demand. Some 35% of mobile therapists have not returned to work since the first national lockdown lifted—those skilled therapists have taken on work in other industries due to a lack of income during extended closures. So we have a situation where customers are ready and able to book, but no appointments are available because the industry and those who work in it were unable to survive the long closures without financial support.

As someone who has used massage over the years as a therapy to maintain my mental health, I completely understand why people are seeking those services. I find it sad that because of the pandemic and, in all honesty, the failure of the Government to take the industry seriously and support its workforce, the services are just not there. The gap seems set to continue, as the closure of training schools during the pandemic and limited opportunities to gain workforce experience means that the number of newly qualified professionals entering the sector is significantly lower than normal. Recent data from the National Hair and Beauty Federation paints an equally bleak picture going forward, with only 11% of salons planning to recruit new apprentices in the next three to six months. This once thriving industry is suffering and needs support urgently. In a survey undertaken by the National Hair and Beauty Federation on the state of the industry, half of businesses say that they cannot rule out redundancy when furlough comes to an end, and more than a third are unsure whether they will survive the next few months while social distancing remains in place.

The all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing has already launched an inquiry into post-covid recovery for the sector, looking at how businesses recoup can their losses and how the highly skilled workforce can be retained. There are so many risk factors for the industry that Government support is key to combating them. Financial support for the sector during the pandemic was woefully lacking compared with that given to other customer-facing industries. The Government must now ensure that support is available to businesses for as long as social distancing measures are in place, given their effect on how many staff and customers can be in salons, and therefore on profits.

Promotion of the industry is also needed to encourage young people to follow this career path so that there is a full and flourishing skill base. Beauty and wellbeing practitioners play a vital role in supporting our physical and mental health, and many people use the treatments instead of visiting a doctor or to complement their medication. Figures from the Federation of Holistic Therapists 2021 members survey show that 75% of practitioners have clients who are using their treatments to support long-term health conditions, and 63% of clients use them to prevent poor health. I will give a plug here to the menopause and say that that is a condition where holistic therapy is invaluable.

If the industry is given the support that it so deserves, businesses will begin to thrive again and we will have a growing workforce who will be able to offer treatments to ease the burden on our already overwhelmed NHS. We entered the pandemic last year with a beauty and wellbeing industry that was thriving, that boosted the UK economy and that supported families up and down the country by enabling the huge, mostly female, workforce to work flexibly, yet throughout the pandemic, that loyal workforce has been undervalued and under- appreciated, overlooked for financial support and even ridiculed in the House of Commons Chamber. As we begin to emerge from restrictions, the future of the industry hangs in the balance, and key to its survival is the workforce. The industry needs help now more than ever to ensure that it can support jobs, provide a much-needed wellbeing boost to its customers and once again be a key contributor to the UK economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

It is a pleasure to see colleagues from across the House acknowledge and champion an industry that is a serious contributor to both the economy and the societal life of our country. If we as parliamentarians have achieved anything, it has been to throw a spotlight on the need for greater respect for this industry, but we need to do more than be champions. We need to support the industry and provide solutions to repair the damage. I was disappointed to hear the Minister comment that the Chancellor had been “overly generous” in his provision. I am sure that that is not something that many people across the country would recognise, but I am going to acknowledge that it was, hopefully, a Freudian slip. I am sure that he would not want people to believe that he honestly thought that. I hope that he will take away from today’s debate everybody’s contribution and will think seriously about what more can be done to ensure the security, viability and progression of this very important industry.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the beauty and wellbeing sector workforce.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab) [V]]

Every year across the country, we come together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day: to remember those who have been lost; to hear the retelling of stories from those who have survived; and to reflect on what we can do to stop such atrocities taking place again. I thank the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the fantastic resources and ceremonies they have provided to ensure that the memorial is still happening safely in 2021.

Thinking of this year’s theme—“Be the light in the darkness”—I think of those glimmers and moments of hope brought about through unimaginable bravery and courage. I came across Madeline Deutsch’s story in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, where she shared the sacrifices that her mother made to keep her safe during their time in the camps in the second world war. Madeline spoke of how her mother would give up her scraps of bread in order to keep her child safe and fed through the hardest and most trying of circumstances. Although we are aware of how the Nazi regime targeted their evil at all Jews, along with those who did not fit the idea of Aryan, today I want to talk about the treatment and experience of women in camps.

Ravensbrück was the largest Nazi concentration camp established for women. Over 120,000 women had been imprisoned in Ravensbrück by the time it was liberated in 1945. Those women faced not just the harsh reality of the camps; they could also face forced medical experiments and sterilisations, be made to work in makeshift brothels or were murdered. In what must have been the very darkest of times, we still hear stories such as the sacrifices that Madeline Deutsch’s mother made to keep her child fed and safe.

Although we know that identity-based persecution often affects all those who fall into the targeted groups, women’s experiences during genocide can be unique. Today we remember those women who lost their lives or experienced persecution not only in the holocaust, but in the genocides that have sadly followed since. Let us remember the light and hope shown by men and women; let us remember the sacrifices made by fathers and mothers; and let these stories show us that in the very darkest of times, there can always be light.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) on his excellent maiden speech about a venue to which all South Walians have made the annual pilgrimage to see the lights. We thank you, Blackpool.

I am honoured to have sat next to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and witnessed his speech. His testimony was mesmerising and truly humbling. I deeply congratulate him on it.

It is a privilege for me to be able to take the opportunity each year to remember and pay my respects to those who were lost. That is particularly true this year, as we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. As those who experienced these atrocities reduce in numbers, it is more important than ever that we continue to observe this day and talk about their stories and experiences, and to honour those who lost their lives, so that generations to come never forget the horrors that occurred and the sacrifices that were made.

The holocaust has always been of great interest to me personally, and many moons ago it was the subject of my dissertation. Over Christmas, I read “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”, the true story of Lale Sokolov, who described the horrors that he witnessed while living in the camps. As I have said many times before, I am continually shocked and saddened whenever I read or hear the many, many experiences of the horrors faced in the genocide.

I note that this year’s theme is “stand together”, set by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which I must thank for its amazing work around Holocaust Memorial Day each year. The fact that nearly 8,000 activities take place throughout the UK every year around 27 January is a true testament to the work of the trust in exploring and remembering the Nazi persecution and the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The “stand together” theme highlights how isolating a group in society allows such horrors to occur. The creation of societal divisions, the fractioning of relationships, workplaces and schools, and the destruction of an individual’s rights all make it easier to oppress a group and divide them from mainstream society. However, there are many examples—importantly shared by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust—of people uniting in the face of such hatred to protect the persecuted from genocide. Those examples include the story of Sir Nicholas Winton.

Members will be aware that I have worked on children’s rights for a long time and the issue is incredibly important to me. When I hear of the devastation that was inflicted on children during the holocaust, it truly breaks my heart. The murder of innocent young people is something that I cannot comprehend. To know that around 1.5 million children died in the holocaust—it is just too big a number to comprehend. But we can never forget.

When I read stories of how individuals, families and groups stood together to protect children, it truly amazes me to hear of the steps they took to save the innocent and vulnerable. They were people like Sir Nicholas Winton, the stockbroker from London who worked to secure foster families who would provide homes to Jewish children, whom he would transport from Prague to Britain in 1939. The children travelled on trains through the heart of dangerous Nazi territory, then through Holland and on to London. Sir Nicholas Winton’s co-ordination of those trips and his work to find families for the refugee children led to the protection of 669 children from the horrors and atrocities of the holocaust. Winton’s incredible, brave work demonstrates how standing together alongside one’s fellow man in the face of such evil can truly save lives.

By keeping alive the memory of acts of defiance and bravery during the holocaust, we shine a light on the exceptional examples of individuals standing together in the face of evil. It is important that we remember them on this day, as well as the many, many victims of the holocaust and the families who lost people in the camps, to remind us how important it is that we unite against hatred. For the sake of those who were taken too early—those who could not defend themselves against the evil they were up against—we must continue to tell their stories and honour their sacrifice. Holocaust Memorial Day gives us the opportunity to stop and reflect; to remember those who were lost; to pay tribute to those who risked their own safety to help; and to ensure that we will never forget the innocent victims of this dreadful and evil crime.