Deaths of Homeless People

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I am absolutely delighted to place on record my thanks to Churches Together, both in his constituency and across the country. He is right that there is a vital role for community groups and charities around the country in the prevention of homelessness.

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

My local authority, Westminster, has the highest number of rough sleepers in the country. Its rough sleeping strategy found that a third of rough sleepers had been discharged on to the streets from prison, and of course others are ex-servicemen. Can the Minister tell us how many deaths have occurred among people who have been released on to the streets from prison? If he does not know, will he place that information in the Library, and can he tell us how on earth that is allowed to happen?

[Luke Hall]

I completely understand the importance of this issue to the hon. Lady’s constituency and in Westminster. If we are to end rough sleeping, we need to ensure that people leaving prison are supported into accommodation—I say that as both a Minister and someone with three prisons in his constituency. It is important to note the offender accommodation pilots that are under way at HMP Bristol, Leeds and Pentonville, but I am happy to meet her and the local council again to see how we can take this further.

Social Housing

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I hope that she will make a speech later. Her point is valid and I am sure there are huge pressures in her community and other parts of Cornwall. I have discussed this very issue with many of her colleagues on the Government Benches, and I know that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and Members from Somerset reflect similar views. There is a lot of hardship in our rural communities related to access to and requirement for social housing. What is being done in her constituency is admirable, but it comes down to the ability to borrow and what can be done. She may be referring to provision by housing associations, but I am particularly keen that we should see a rapid ramp up in council housing provision if we are ever to achieve the 300,000-plus figures that everyone mentions.

As I was saying, the achievements of the post-war period were extraordinary, and under the Attlee Government an astonishing 80% of houses built were council houses. Materials were in short supply, but they achieved it. The boom continued under the incoming Conservative Government. In response to Churchill’s challenge, Macmillan who had been appointed Minister for Housing, delivered more than 750,000 council homes in just one year: things had never been so good.

The giddy heights of those years and new social housing developments ended abruptly at the end of the 1970s with the radical policy changes of the incoming Conservative Government, and one of their first moves was to cut public expenditure for housing. Giving council tenants the opportunity to buy the homes they were living in, at a generous discount, was one of the defining policies of the Thatcher era and more than 2 million council tenants took advantage of it.

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

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the first acts of the incoming Conservative Government was to shift housing subsidy away from bricks and mortar and into housing benefit? It was a conscious policy decision and the consequence was not a shortage of money, but the spending of £22 billion a year on personal subsidy instead. As lower-income people are increasingly trapped in the expensive private rented sector, that is set to explode still further. The collapse in social house building is an extremely false economy.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend who is very learned on this topic, and I bow to her knowledge. She is right: what we have seen is a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. A big chunk of that budget has gone into private pockets, as opposed to into public assets. Changing that is the ambition behind my motion.

That period was a watershed: it developed our unhealthy obsession with housing and a dependence on the fortunes of the private sector to satisfy it. Rising house prices were all the talk in the pub and they became the nation’s conversation, fuelled by the press and an insatiable media seeking feel-good stories and helped along by the Government of the day. House prices seemed an impossibly good driver of the economy. Those who had capital and a good wage could buy a place and, through the sell-off of council houses, those fortunate enough to have access to money could bag a bargain. What was not to like?

Perhaps most striking was the impact on young people who rapidly realised the possibility of ownership was drifting away from them: data shows that at the age of 27, those born in the late 1980s had a home ownership rate of 25%, compared with 33% for those born five years earlier in the decade and 43% for those born 10 years earlier in the late 1970s. With hindsight—perhaps for some of us at the time—the excesses of the heady 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, when access to finance was unlimited and we saw the mass sell-off of council housing, were akin to financial ecstasy, but it would only be a matter of time before the market would go cold turkey. Of course it did, with the credit crunch and the global financial crash of 2007-08. At the core of that financial disaster was over-leveraged debt and bad property debt. Lending had reached unsustainable levels.

We reach the present day, and housing has become simply too expensive—ridiculously so against relatively flat incomes. The average house price in my constituency is £285,000, 20% more than the average in England and Wales. Supply has been constrained for decades, but now the wrong housing is being built in the wrong places, and it is unsustainable. People are increasingly being driven out of the communities that they work in, such as in my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, and that threatens the local economy. Though average salaries are greater than the average for England and Wales, they are only 10% higher, meaning an absolute differential of 10% against the average house price. Put another way, the ratio of house price to wage is 9.2; for England and Wales it is 8.0.

Despite all that, the council has built just eight social homes in the past four years. Soldier Y is not just an individual: he is the victim of a systemic problem in our housing provision—market is no longer the right word. That is why we need to re-set the sector. Yes, the Government have set an ambition of building 300,000 homes, but they are falling way short with just 223,300 built last year, even with the numbers being distorted by the permitted development of office blocks that are often wholly unsuitable to long-term or family accommodation. While 47,000 new affordable homes were delivered in 2017-18, 57% were homes for affordable rent, 23% for shared ownership and just 14% for social rent. For many people, affordable rents are no longer affordable, given that in reality they can be set at up to 80% of market rates.

Most concerning is that the Government have no target for social rented housing. As I said earlier, Shelter’s commission on social housing estimates that 3.1 million homes need to be built in the next 20 years if we are to arrest this crisis. That is an average of 155,000 a year, which would cost only £10.7 billion per year. Just 6,500 homes were built last year, and at that rate only 130,000 would get built over the next 20 years, or just 4%.

We could afford to build those homes. According to Shelter’s report and data provided by the New Economics Foundation, we currently spend £21 billion on housing benefit annually, money that more often than not is going to private landlords. Instead, what we have seen is a massive increase in the private rental sector, insecure tenancies, fees scandals, rogue landlords and too little agency involvement in enforcement among local authorities.

What needs to be done? I want to see a radical reconstruction of our communities. In Tuesday’s debate, the Minister suggested that it is a complicated landscape, but I am afraid I have to disagree. We have made it complicated by yielding to market interests and failing to regulate in the interests of our people and our communities. In my view, we need to urgently reform planning, adopting a model similar to that in Germany; resurrect a regional spatial strategy, including for new towns and villages; reform compulsory purchase; scrap the nonsense that is viability, which is a scam exploited by corporate house builders; and ensure a 50% minimum of social housing on all greenfield developments and 80% on all brownfield sites in towns and cities.

We can address the funding though redirecting housing benefit to investment in the assets that come from building new homes. We should stop the sell-off of 50,000 social rented homes a year, and I urge an end to the right to buy. There are so many things we could do. I have talked about funding, and there is also the possibility of using pension funds, whether local authority pension funds or new ones, to support building homes. Birmingham and Greater Manchester are leading the way. On land, we could do so much with the public estate rather than selling it off to the highest bidder.

I am conscious of time and I know that many Opposition Members wish to speak. As I have said, we face a crisis and, to paraphrase Macmillan, the housing market has never been so broken. Homelessness is now 277,000 and 1.1 million are on housing waiting lists, while rough sleeping has risen 165% since 2010. The Government could, and should, deliver 3.1 million social homes over the next 20 years. It is an explicit target of 155,000 social rented homes a year and it is critical that we focus minds on delivering it. That is what my motion seeks to do. Without it, the housing crisis will only get worse.

Grenfell Tower Fire

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) on securing the debate and on the work she has championed since she was elected. She was plunged into this catastrophe just days after being elected—probably one of the biggest challenges any Member of Parliament has had to face. She knows how much it matters to me, too. My previous constituency boundary included Grenfell Tower. As the neighbouring constituency, many residents in my constituency watched in horror from tower blocks around Harrow Road as the fire claimed those lives. The trauma affects my constituents, too.

The night that Grenfell burned and 72 people died in a modern, refurbished tower block, at the heart of one of the wealthiest communities in one of the most prosperous cities the world has ever known, is seared into our national consciousness. It is a defining moment of modern British politics. It should have been the event that changed everything. It should have brought about a wholly new attitude to housing, social housing and meeting housing need, the duty of care we have to people in high-rise accommodation, risk and deregulation in housing. I let myself believe that that would be true. It should have been a defining moment and it has not been.

Of course, some action has been taken, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, said: the inquiry is under way; we have had the interim report from the Hackitt review; and the Government have today launched a consultation. I am grateful for the fact that the Government backed my private Member’s Bill, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, which allows tenants legal recourse when their homes, including the common parts of flats, are unfit and threaten their health and safety. That includes fire risk. We have also had the £200 million fund for cladding removal in private blocks.

What has not happened, however, is a seismic shift in attitude and action from the Government. That falls into two parts and I will briefly refer to both of them.

The first is the meeting of housing need relating specifically to Grenfell. On the day after the fire, we convened in Westminster Hall—Parliament was still prorogued; it was just after the election—and a number of us spoke to Ministers about the aftermath. I recall saying to Ministers that one of the things that needed to be understood was how many of the residents in Grenfell Tower and around Grenfell had direct or close experience of homelessness, and how critically important it was that immediate action was taken to provide permanent accommodation for them. In addition to the trauma of the fire, the dislocation of moving from one home to another and the experience of being in emergency or temporary accommodation would only compound what they had experienced. I remember placing that in the context of rising homelessness across London and the importance of not making other vulnerable families in housing need wait longer for a home because of the demands posed by Grenfell. Heads nodded.

We know now, two years later, that not all those housing needs have been met. Of the 202 households from Grenfell, 14 remain in temporary accommodation. Of the 129 evacuated from the wider area, 41 are still in temporary accommodation. That is unacceptable. It sits in the wider context of homelessness across London, which is detailed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, by the Shelter commission. That should also have been a wake-up call and a demand for immediate action to tackle housing need.

We have seen very little action. There has been a collapse in social housebuilding under this Government. It was inadequate beforehand—I am happy to say that—but there has been a collapse since then, with record lows in housing delivery and an acute homelessness crisis. The needs of the Kensington and Grenfell families should be seen in that context. In a new era for social housing that Grenfell should have generated, we have not seen action from the Government.

The second legacy, as we have heard, is the Government’s commitment that such a catastrophe should never happen again and that people should not fear that it will happen again. They should not live under the shadow of safety concerns in their own blocks, yet two years on that is exactly where we are. We know that 60,000 people live today in blocks with potentially dangerous cladding. We know that eight out of 10 of the blocks that had cladding have yet to have it removed. We know that 16,400 private apartments are wrapped in potentially dangerous cladding. In a question to the Mayor of London two weeks ago, Assembly Member Andrew Dismore found that London Fire Brigade paid 1,200 visits to high-rise premises with suspected flammable cladding, of which 316 confirmed flammable cladding. That is at its most acute in three boroughs: Tower Hamlets, where there are 65; Greenwich, where there are 45; and my own borough of Westminster, where there are 26.

The £200 million the Government recently announced is welcome—it came just under the wire for the second anniversary—but it is clearly not enough to ensure that either the ACM cladding blocks or those in potentially non-ACM flammable cladding can be dealt with.

We have heard from the Select Committee about the generally deregulatory attitude of the building industry. It was very, very concerning to see a survey in Building, which showed how little the business industry had risen to the challenge of safety concerns and how little change there has been in the way it works.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the industry has not taken responsibility. It is a shame that past Ministers are on record as putting the onus on industry, saying it is not for the Government to regulate but for the industry to self-regulate. Does she agree that we have to end that, and that if industry will not take responsibility the Government will have to act?

[Ms Buck]

I totally agree. People living in high-rise blocks wrapped in cladding find it inexplicable that the Government still have such a deregulatory approach and expect the industry to take responsibility.

[Mary Creagh]

Does my hon. Friend share my concerns about the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s review of fire retardants in foam on the back of fridges and in furnishings, cots and mattresses? This issue has been ongoing since 2004, following warnings from officials that the flame retardants were no longer fit for purpose and could, paradoxically, cause more injury through smoke inhalation than they prevent through stopping fire. Three years after the 2016 consultation, the Government still have not published the responses.

[Ms Buck]

It is completely inexplicable. The public expect the Government to act quickly and firmly to ensure that products and building standards are safe, but that has not been done. As the Building survey showed, nearly half those operating in the industry had yet to change the way they carried out competency checks on their supply chain partners; nearly half had not been swayed by the Hackitt report’s recommendations to change the way they shared building safety information with their supply chains; nearly a third reported no change in product specification and performance checks; and more than a third reported no change in checking on the quality of work being undertaken. We have an industry that is effectively in crisis in meeting safety standards. As we approach the second anniversary, it is time that the Government recognise that the deregulatory approach does not work.

We heard a great deal in the early days after the fire about retrofitting sprinklers, but in my constituency, where the local authority—to its credit—was prepared to make that investment, that has faltered, as it has in many other places, because the Government have yet to get to grips with the reality of mixed tenure in high-rise properties and the fact that it is impossible, under the current law, for local authorities to require the owners of private flats in local authority blocks to give them access and comply with the requirement to fit sprinklers. As a result, everybody else in those blocks is potentially suffering.

We are, two years later, in an unsatisfactory position. We have failed to rise to the challenge of Grenfell and this distracted, exhausted and fractured Government have not done enough to honour the memories of the dead and support the survivors—nowhere near.

Definition of Islamophobia

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree. I hope that that point will be taken up by Ministers as they think about this issue carefully in the course of their consultation.

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

We also know that an excessive level of hatred and abuse is piled on to black and minority ethnic public figures on Facebook, including the Mayor of London, who receives a torrent of Islamophobic abuse on virtually all his pronouncements. I reinforce the point that the social media companies have to be a critical part of this. We have to change the law, but all the partners have to play a part in making it work.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that powerful point. The Mayor of London and my right hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) are among the many people in public life who are targeted because of racism—racism, pure and simple. It has a gendered aspect and a religious aspect, and it has to be recognised and tackled. Social media companies tell us they have the tools in place, but they are clearly not using them, and that is partly because they do not understand the prejudice that is as plain as the nose on their face.

Buildings with ACM Cladding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree with the points that my right hon. Friend has made. I think that she senses my real frustration and, indeed, anger at some of the practice that I have seen. We are taking this exceptional step because of the nature of the material with which we are dealing, but it has also shone a light on some of the wrongful and damaging practice that is out there, including practice in the construction industry. We are continuing to pursue those issues, and will follow through on them in our response to the Hackitt review.

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

I very much welcome the money, although I have to say that the Department‘s idea of urgency is not quite the same as mine, two years after Grenfell. I think that the Secretary of State was wise to make his statement just under the wire, before the second anniversary of that disaster. If he will be writing to owners in the next week or so, he presumably already knows what steps he will be asking them to take to comply with the requirement to seek compensation from those who installed the cladding when that is possible. If he knows what steps will be taken, will he share that information with us, and will he also tell us who will decide whether those steps are sufficient?

[James Brokenshire]

In the case of an individual building, it will be up to the owners to set out what steps will be required. Obviously we will inform them of the nature of the information that we require about, for instance, assessments and the various bids and tenders that we would expect to have been undertaken. The differences between individual buildings, the nature of the system and the extent of the ACM cladding on each building have been very much in our minds in relation to the operation of the public sector fund, and we will apply that experience to the operation of the new scheme. However, I understand that sense of the need for continued pace, given that where substantial works are required, planning permissions will be needed, and given the nature of some of the construction work that will be necessary. It is precisely that work in which we will be engaged.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She champions the cause of the communities of Kingston upon Hull. It is one of the most deprived local authorities in England, yet it is one of the areas that have received the heaviest cuts to their spending power since 2010. That was a political choice, and one that has decimated many communities, including the one she represents, across England.

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

I am sure my hon. Friend will come on to this argument, but does he agree that cuts to essential local government services in many areas inevitably lead to additional expenditure elsewhere? I think particularly of the decimation of youth services and early years prevention, which has undoubtedly contributed to the extra stress and extreme youth violence on our streets.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We used to have something called Total Place, which was all the public sector bodies working together towards a single strategy for a local area. What we have seen as a consequence of the austerity since 2010 is a complete breakdown of that collaborative working. It is worse than that, however, because rather than public bodies working together collaboratively, pooling resources and getting the best possible levels of services for communities, we have seen cost-shunting. For the sake of saving money on youth services, we are seeing a rise in crime that is pushing up costs for the police. Because of the cuts to police budgets, those costs are shunted on to other public bodies. That is not a common-sense approach to dealing with people’s needs and services, to building stronger communities or to spending public money wisely.

Housing

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Sadly, I cannot quite confirm that. We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. At the moment, the numbers remaining are small and the cases are often complex, and we are making significant progress.

I am also mindful of those without a place to call home. When I reflect on what we can do better, I am clear that we must do everything possible to confront rough sleeping and the broader challenges of homelessness. Our cross-Government, £100 million rough sleeping strategy is helping our rough sleeping initiative reach more parts of the country—now more than 75% of local authorities in England. As part of that, we announced £46 million to support people off the streets and into accommodation in 2019-20, because we have already seen how that can work and make a real difference. Recent figures have shown the first fall in the number of people sleeping rough in eight years. However, we should make no mistake: one person sleeping rough is one person too many and we remain more determined than ever to end rough sleeping for good. That means combating homelessness, and our ambitious £1.2 billion package of support will help tackle it in all its forms, giving some of the most vulnerable people in our society the security and dignity they deserve.

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

While the Minister is on the subject of homelessness, will he urgently review permitted development, which allows some homeless families, including those who live in Terminus House in Harlow, to be housed in wholly inappropriate accommodation and bring up their children in a new slum? The permitted development regulations need to be looked at urgently.

[Kit Malthouse]

We have made a commitment to review the implementation of the permitted development rights policy. However, alongside that, I urge local authorities to use the maximum power available to them through their building regulation powers and other forms of inspection to ensure that the homes people inhabit are suitable. I also urge local authorities that place people in those homes to reassure themselves that they are suitable for occupation. We have often found that people in unsuitable homes are placed there by councils that frankly should know better and should seek higher quality accommodation for their residents.

As I hope I have shown, we are making every effort to get everyone on board to deliver not just more homes but stronger communities. My triple challenge—more, better, faster—is the key to the country’s happiness, health and prosperity and the work is starting to pay off. The number of homes built is up, rough sleeping is on the turn, there is greater fairness in the rented sector and more beautiful and innovative places to call home should start to appear. We have every reason to be confident and optimistic as we look forward to our future outside the European Union. A stronger, fairer, more diverse housing market can be the bedrock of our future success—a way to spread opportunity and ensure that no one is left behind. We remain focused on delivering that and fulfilling the basic promise that each generation must make to the next: that their life will be better than ours.

Rough Sleeping

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Foster]

Given that heckle, I will be considerate as there are Labour Members who want to speak, even though I am not under a formal time limit.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on having secured this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince). Rough sleeping is clearly an issue in Torbay, as it is in many other coastal communities. We have the contrast between those people with a £1-million boat in the harbour and a coastal apartment, and the people sleeping on the streets nearby.

The last count showed that 24 people were sleeping on the streets of Torbay. However, the Minister will know that from my time in local government, I have some suspicions about how the rough sleeper count is carried out: it is literally an exercise in going out and spotting homeless people. I suspect it is hard to work out another way of doing it, but if somebody is walking around, even though they visibly could have been sleeping on the street, they do not count towards the statistics. There is even some suggestion that if somebody is stood up with bedding around them, they may not be counted as a rough sleeper, even though most of us would look at them and see exactly what is going on.

The rough sleeper count is a measure that originates from Victorian times, and I am much happier with the way in which the Torbay End Street Homelessness campaign has set about doing a proper survey of those who are sleeping rough on the streets of the bay. Over the course of a week, people have been going out and engaging with those they find; not just spotting someone and saying, “There is someone who is sleeping rough,” but interviewing them about the reasons why they are sleeping rough, what their background is and what types of support services they have engaged with. It is clear that no one gets up in the morning and thinks, “It would be a great idea to go and sleep rough.” Some may feel it is their only choice in life, but we need to engage with those people and get genuine information that allows us to understand what has driven them to that position.

Another charity that works closely with those who find themselves on the streets of Torbay is People Assisting Torbay’s Homeless, a wonderful volunteer organisation that, sadly, is now trying to find a new home. It was removed from one of its previous properties because of a development going ahead, and now finds itself facing possession action by the local council. I certainly hope that the council will not implement a possession order until an alternative base has been found. I accept that the place offered up was temporary, but for PATH to be evicted and literally become homeless would be a rather cruel irony.

There is, of course, Shekinah in Torbay, which has provided a long-standing facility at Factory Row—the Leonard Stocks Centre, to which I used to be one of the closest residents. I recognise some of the comments that other Members have made about the issues that can occur, particularly when residents of such places are targeted, for no other reason than the evil intentions of those who are targeting them.

That leads us on, however, to a wonderful initiative that is happening in Torbay: the town’s night shelter, for which local churches come together and open their buildings to provide an option for those who are sleeping rough over winter. It is not just about having somewhere to keep warm and something to eat; it is about people finding a system of support and friendship, with a family or home atmosphere, to try to get them off the streets for good. Ultimately, it is not spending one night in a church hall that will make a difference to someone; it is having a system of support. I know that the churches in the bay are keen that their buildings should not just be magnificent Victorian structures that people visit on a Sunday morning, but places that really live out the gospel. That is a massive resource, and I know that some others are looking at how they can take it further.

I would certainly like Housing First to be extended into our bay, as we think it would make a great difference. The work of the Mayors of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands in driving that project forward is very welcome, and I do not see why it would not make a difference in Torbay. It has been slightly misconstrued as closing the hostel, but it is not: it is about making sure that people are supported from day one in terms of housing, rather than having to earn a right to housing via being in a hostel for a longer period of time. There will always be a need for emergency accommodation. Other Members have touched on the issue of housing supply, which clearly needs to be dealt with if we are to move forward.

I will conclude with some remarks about the Vagrancy Act 1824, which is a hopelessly out-of-date piece of legislation. I hope that in any review of that Act, we can take a mature cross-party approach, as happened with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and “to your credit, Ms Buck” your campaign for the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill the following year. That Bill became an Act, and it made a difference to people.

The 1824 Act is hideously out of date: it is both morally and practically wrong to think that homelessness can be dealt with by hauling people down to the magistrates court. I was only too happy to stand up against the idea of using a public spaces protection order against rough sleeping in Torbay—I did not see that as a practical thing to do at all—and I was pleased that councillors from both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups made it clear to the independent administration that it was not something they would tolerate or accept. PSPOs should be used against antisocial behaviour. The act of sleeping rough—a person putting their head down and going to sleep—should not lead to them being arrested by the police; it should lead to them being supported by agencies.

This has been a welcome debate, and one that could probably go on for a lot longer. I hope that we will be able to take some comfort from the Minister’s response.

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, it is obvious to Members that we have three speakers to go, and we will be moving to the Front Bench representatives just before 4 pm. I ask Members to time their contributions accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

With respect, that is not good enough—

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I advise Members not to conduct conversations bilaterally.

[Mrs Wheeler]

In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, the number of rough sleepers is down to 13. In Liverpool it has reduced from 33 to 15, in Torbay from 24 to 19, and in the Worthing and Shoreham area from 35 to 11.

Local Government Finance

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We expected better from this Secretary of State and wanted to see better from this Government. I thank our dedicated council staff and our local councillors of all political persuasions and none, because, frankly, over the past nine years they have all been hung out to dry by successive Secretaries of State.

This is an Alice “Through the Looking-Glass” settlement. Ministers present a cut as an increase, but back in the real world, what we saw in the provisional settlement, which was reaffirmed last week in the Secretary of State’s written statement to the House, is that there is no new money, no new ideas and no recognition of the dire situation facing councils. Between Christmas and last week the Secretary of State had the chance to change tack, but he has just confirmed to the House that the settlement is identical to the provisional settlement that failed so miserably before Christmas.

Local government is at the heart of our local communities. It looks after the most vulnerable in society and makes our local green spaces cleaner and safer, but under this Conservative Government we have seen unprecedented levels of cuts to our local councils. The fact is simple: between 2010 and 2020, local government in England will have lost more than 60p in every £1 that the Government provide to our communities for services.

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

We just had a debate on the police settlement grant. Does my hon. Friend agree that local authorities are at the forefront of prevention work, so it is particularly tragic that my local authority, Westminster, has removed all funding from youth services, after-school services and holiday schemes and, like authorities all over the country, lost at least a third of early-intervention funding?

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fact is that councils are the lynchpin of the provision of proper, cohesive, joined-up services with other agencies, whether housing associations, the police, leisure services or youth services. It is crucial that our councils and councillors are given the resources they need so that we do not cost-shunt from one area of the public sector on to the others. It is self-defeating to cut youth services, early intervention and police budgets at the same time, because we end up in the situation my hon. Friend describes.

Tower Blocks: Dangerous Cladding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend makes an important point of which we should not lose sight: there are types of cladding other than ACM cladding. He will know that the Department issued advice to building owners in December 2017 on how to investigate non-ACM cladding systems on their buildings and remediate them. At the Secretary of State’s request, the expert panel reviewed and updated that guidance in December last year, and it reiterates that the clearest way to ensure safety is to remove any unsafe materials. We have commissioned the Building Research Establishment to conduct a programme of testing on non-ACM materials, and we expect that testing to start shortly.

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

Will the Minister confirm that however strongly worded the letters that he writes to property owners are, they have no legal status whatsoever, so those owners can legally ignore them? Given that, will he tell us what the timescale is for the decision on when he will proceed to legislation; exactly what factors he will bear in mind when he makes that decision; and at what point property owners will know that if they refuse to act, legal action will be taken to force them to do so?

[Kit Malthouse]

Whatever the status of the work that has been done by the Department and of the letters from the Secretary of State, it is bearing some fruit. A large number of companies have taken their responsibilities seriously and are now funding remediation, some of which is quite elderly, and they are doing it for all the right reasons. We are working on the group who have yet to acknowledge their responsibilities and are hopeful of more success on that. As far as legislation is concerned, the hon. Lady will know that just before Christmas we published the Hackitt implementation plan for consultation, along with several other calls for evidence and consultations. Once they are all in and completed, we will produce the legislative programme.