Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)]

My noble Lords, it is an absolute privilege to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and so many of the exceptional speeches we have heard today. I pay tribute to the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Katz, Lady Levitt and Lord Evans. They were powerful speeches all, and I hope noble Lords will agree that they will be influential and strong voices in this place.

As we have heard today, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day was “For a better future”. Today I want to pay tribute to an organisation and the people within it who are seeking to create a better future for us all by educating our ever-changing world about the horrors of the past so that we do not replicate them in our futures.

Generation 2 Generation is a charity that enables descendants to tell their family Holocaust stories to a range of audiences across the UK. It currently has 41 speakers and is recruiting more. This academic year to date, the speakers have been booked to deliver their family stories to more than 390 audiences, reaching over 45,000 people. I am sure noble Lords will agree that that is impressive. Its key aim is to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten or denied, and to challenge racism and discrimination in all its forms.

Last Sunday, I was privileged to speak to some fabulous volunteers who wanted the stories of their families to be told and not to be forgotten, to be an education to a world where propagation, propaganda and misinformation is rife. So, let me tell your Lordships about Sabina Miller.

Sabina was born in 1922. She was Jewish, one of five, and she grew up in a warm, comfortable, loving and happy home in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, their home was taken from them and the family was forced to relocate to the ghetto. Some 400,000 people were crammed into just over one square mile. Hygiene was impossible, food was so, so scarce, and disease was rampant. Like many, Sabina contracted typhus. She was overwhelmed with the disease and was unconscious for 18 days. She remembers her mum standing at the end of her bed saying, “You’ve got to live. You will live. You must survive”. But when she awoke, both her mother and her father had died.

The situation in the ghetto was desperate, so Sabina covered her star of David and effected an extraordinary escape. She found illegal work alongside other Jewish girls on a farm—20 years old, digging potatoes, cleaning out stables and forced to sing anti-Semitic songs while they worked. While she was there, she received a postcard from her beloved sister Esther. It said, “I’m on a train. I don’t know where I’m being taken. If anyone finds this card, please send it”. Esther must have thrown that card from a train, and someone, in a simple act of kindness, delivered it. Those were the last words that Sabina’s sister would ever address to her. Shortly after, Sabina heard that the Sokołów and Węgrów ghettos where the remainder of her family had been taken, had been, to quote the Nazis, liquidated. Her siblings, her parents, her cousins, her aunts, her uncles, her grandparents—all gone. She said later, “The fact that people have families and I haven’t is something which hurts dreadfully”.

That was just the beginning of Sabina’s amazing story of survival. She spent the winter of 1942 living in an ice-cold, small ditch, warily begging for food. She changed her identity many times, was imprisoned, was interrogated on four separate occasions by the Gestapo and was eventually sent to a forced labour camp in Germany, where she remained until the war’s end. I cannot do justice to quite how unbelievable Sabina’s story is, and how unlikely it was that she would survive.

But survive she did, as did Lela Black, born in Salonika and sent to Auschwitz with her husband, her daughter and the rest of her extended Greek family. She was the only survivor. Some 50,000 Jews lived in Salonika before the war; approximately 96% of them were murdered in Nazi death camps.

I also want to mention Tony Chuwen, a Polish Jew who survived two concentration camps, hid in the German army and escaped to Finland, finally skiing for three days over the frozen sea to Sweden. Tony, while he was serving in the German army, at huge personal risk shared his meagre rations with the woman cleaning the barracks, a Jewish woman held in a prison camp. Years later, he attended a Holocaust event and heard that two women had survived their time in a Nazi camp by sharing scraps of food that one of them had been given by a German soldier.

Sandra, Gloria and Jacqueline are the descendants of these strong, extraordinary people. They volunteer for Generation to Generation. All three women told me how their relatives completely rejected any notion of bravery or resilience. Instead, these survivors asked, “Why me?” And they answered, “I was lucky”. Their stories are dotted with unexpected acts of kindness from Jews and non-Jews alike. And perhaps that was part of their luck.

We know, in this place, that anti-Semitism, racial hatred and genocidal violence are still with us. I hope—and I know that the volunteers from Generation to Generation also hope—that by sharing these stories from survivors, one day people will no longer be dehumanised, treated as other, humiliated, terrified or murdered because of their race, creed, nationality or religion. Let us remember the horror and the evils of the Holocaust, and let us not rest until justice is done for the victims in our world where genocide again threatens our humanity.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. It is an absolute pleasure to be part of this very well-informed debate this afternoon, and to follow on from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I am not sure that we are going to agree on the clauses within the Bill about pets, but I can inform the House that Cara the dog is going to be delighted by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and I intend to tell her all about it when I get home tonight.

I am very grateful to my sponsors, my noble friends Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy, for their enormous support. I thank the House staff most sincerely for their help in getting me around the place; they have all been so massively kind.

I grew up in Silvertown in east London. My parents both worked on factory floors and my home was a council flat overlooking the dying docks. All the opportunities I had as a child were founded on that security of tenure, the affordable rent, the stable school and the local library, from which I borrowed and read incessantly. These resources were just vital. They shaped my life and they have informed my career.

After being the first in my family to go to university, I worked as a residential social worker, which gave me some invaluable insights into the vulnerabilities of young people. I then went on to work for the London Borough of Waltham Forest in a number of social policy roles.

I became a councillor in the London Borough of Newham in 1988 and held that role until my election to Parliament in 2005. During that time, I focused on culture. I saw it as a way of providing opportunities for young people that might not be available to them at home. I fought for the Olympics to come to Stratford, which at that time was blighted by swathes of disused industrial land. I cannot say that all the changes have been positive—there has been a severe lack of affordable homes—but there are also genuine opportunities to combat social exclusion that have been created too, particularly by the cultural offer.

Following my election to the other place, I argued constantly for social homes and action against child poverty. Since 2017, I have been highlighting the appalling exploitation of children by organised criminals, particularly in county-lines drug dealing. We simply must recognise that the same child can be both a perpetrator of appalling violence and a victim of grooming and exploitation. It was therefore music to my ears to hear our new Government committing to take strong action on this with the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.

As we know, Parliament is not only about representing but also about governing. My career on the Labour Front Bench began as a Whip. I was in fact the Whip in charge of the landmark Equality Act 2010. I remained a Whip in opposition and joined the Home Office team, working on fire and then policing but also on topics I knew embarrassingly little about, such as recreational drugs. I recall one very memorable occasion when our now Prime Minister sat alongside me chortling as I was enlightened about the various uses of poppers. He suggested I went away and watch “Breaking Bad” as homework.

It is hard to speak about this period without reflecting on Brexit and the threats that assail us from Putin’s far-right Russia and the rise of divisive authoritarian nationalism, around the world and here at home. My only notable rebellion was to vote against the triggering of Article 50, but, as we know, it passed and plunged us into a maelstrom of chaos, insecurity and vulnerability. I simply could not bring myself to vote to make the people I represented poorer. Now I intend to do all I can to mitigate the damage Brexit has caused and to get us working again on shared challenges alongside our European partners.

After 2019, I took the prisons and probation brief, focusing on issues affecting women that are now being ably taken forward by my noble friend Lord Timpson. My next reshuffle was the luckiest because it brought me to the role of shadow Minister for Africa. My focus was twofold: to address the serious problems of Africa’s present, including the brutal generals’ war in Sudan, the Horn of Africa drought and the conflicts in the Sahel and the Great Lakes. But I also wanted to ensure that we were not distracted from the resourcefulness and leadership of Africa’s people and from the massive opportunities for progress. I want to pay tribute to my dear friend the Foreign Secretary and to my noble friend Lord Collins for their passionate commitment to this very agenda.

I believe that Africa is rising, despite all the challenges of insecurity, despite climate heating and despite unfair treatment by the global financial system. I genuinely believe that historians will look back on this century and say that it was Africa’s. I believe that we as a country will be stronger, fairer and more prosperous if we act as a valued partner to our African friends and not behave like a blinkered patriarch who thinks themselves noble for offering crumbs from the table.

I intend to continue to work on the causes that have defined my career and life, a flavour of which I hope I have given today. I hope you will agree that it is utterly fitting for me to make my maiden speech on this Bill, which promises to deliver a sea change in the balance between renters and landlords.

Sadly, the housing crisis has deepened in Newham, even as our borough has grown massively. Much of that blame lies with policies that encouraged a poorly regulated and unaffordable private rented sector to expand without limit. The damage done by housing insecurity and disrepair is life-shaping. It disrupts education, employment and both bodily and mental health. It is why ending child poverty remains more of a rallying cry than a reality. Families cannot access good work and contribute fully as equals in our society without a decent, secure home like the one that we had in Silvertown. That base was essential for me getting here today, and I support the rapid progress of this Bill into law so that many young people have these very same opportunities in future.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 3 and amendments 12 to 14. A huge number of new builds have been built within my constituency boundaries over the last months, the vast majority of which have been flatted. There have been numerous difficulties over the years, many of which I will not be able to cover today due to the time limit and your exhortation, Mr Deputy Speaker, to stay within seven to eight minutes; as the first woman to speak, I intend to do so.

I will start with Legacy Wharf in Stratford, where leaseholders have been stuck with a succession of management companies that fail them time after time. Under the former management company, shoddy—and probably overpriced—repairs were made by favoured companies at leaseholders’ expense over and over again, rather than any investment in long-term, high-quality maintenance. Residents were hugely suspicious about possible kickbacks from service firms to the management company and the use of companies under the management company’s ownership, rather than it seeking the best price and the best quality of service.

Thankfully, that management company has changed, but many problems remain. Residents have just been handed bills for 18 months of energy use all at once due to the management company’s mistakes. Service charges and insurance bills rocket year after year, with residents wondering what on earth has been done with their money: they have poor landscaping, broken lifts and inadequate fire doors; the security of communal areas is rubbish; residents have lost access to hot water and the boilers have not been serviced for as long as four years. Those are all serious concerns raised about just one building. Ultimately, when accountability is sought, there is absolutely no way to get a prompt response. When there is such as constant deficit of transparency, it inevitably looks like a way to cover up wrongdoing, mismanagement or incompetence.

I strongly welcome the provisions in this Bill on service charge transparency, and I add my support for the amendments tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). Amendments 12 and 13 would surely provide additional support to my constituents, because they would mean that leaseholders would not have to pay service charges unless basic transparency and accountability were in place. Amendment 14 would enable a maximum cost to be set for the provision of information to leaseholders, preventing the abuse of such costs to effectively obstruct accountability—it ain’t on.

Leaseholders in every part of West Ham have faced massive difficulties getting accountability. I am reminded of events in the Hallsville Quarter development in Canning Town, where residents in several buildings had to leave their homes after a sewage ingress and power cuts. The two management companies responded in totally different ways: Grainger offered £50 a day in subsistence payments, while FirstPort initially offered just £15 a day and only raised it to £25 after enormous pressure. FirstPort had to be chased by me for multiple basic actions, and responded so poorly to residents whose lives had been turned upside down by problems that were absolutely not of their making.

Next, I would like to raise the continuing concerns of the residents of Chobham Manor about their estate charge, which has increased rapidly over recent years. The charge is supposed to help pay for the upkeep of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, but many Chobham residents believe that it bears no relation at all to the amenities available to residents near the park. Despite my support, they have found it almost impossible to scrutinise the budgets they are paying for and to make sure that they ain’t paying through the nose for poor value for money. Chobham Manor residents frankly do not see what they are getting from the park in exchange for this charge, given that they are the only local residents who pay for it. I know that they will be grateful for an explanation of how they might benefit from the changes that the Bill will make.

I also want to mention, yet again, the continuing limbo of many residents of East Village in Stratford. Leaseholders there have lived under serious financial threat for well over four years now. The remediation needed to make their homes safe is still being held up because this Government’s previous legislation left the issue open to litigation. How can my constituents be reassured that this Bill goes further? The Secretary of State himself committed to using his planning powers to call in proposals submitted by irresponsible developers. I have to ask: will he make good on that promise and target those who are continually refusing to act on fire safety and leaving leaseholders on the hook?

In a final case from West Ham, diligent and determined leaseholders have successfully taken managing agents or freeholders to the tribunal for their dire failings. I am sorry to tell the House that these failings were across the board, including rat infestations, lack of insulation causing skyrocketing energy bills, no transparency on the huge service charges, building safety problems and a complete lack of accountability. Surely it should not have come to this.

We should not be depending on individual leaseholders to battle their way through obscure systems for their plight to get the attention it needs. MPs should not have to make dozens of detailed representations over and over again. It could not be clearer who has the power in these disputes, and in so many cases leaseholders are still paying the price for a system that is absolutely broken. Sadly, the legacy of years of failure to act creates understandable scepticism that change will come now, so I want to hear from the Minister today that he believes that the Bill will finally end this injustice.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown). We share a similar part of the world: Essex and the east of London. In Romford, just as in West Ham and the London boroughs to the east of the capital, we have seen a huge increase in the number of flats and high-rise blocks being built over the last 20 years. Havering is a town and country borough and we have not had many flats in the past, but suddenly we are seeing huge numbers of that kind of accommodation being built. This brings huge numbers of problems with it, including what we are debating today.

I thank the Minister for bringing this Bill forward. I hope that it will deal with many of the issues that colleagues across the House have raised today, because they are very real. I sense that there is consensus on both sides of the House that serious action needs to be taken, because this can really destroy people’s lives and ruin them; they have saved to buy a property and they have a leasehold, yet they are fleeced by sharks and managing agents who pile on the costs, and by armies of lawyers who make their lives miserable and threaten them with losing their property all together. This is not right for the people we all represent.

I am now dealing with these cases in Romford on a daily basis. The hon. Lady mentioned many of the problems in West Ham, and I have examples in the Steelway apartments in the centre of Romford. I visited those apartments only a few weeks ago and saw the problems that people there are facing. They are failing to get responses from the management agents and those responsible, they are paying money for no service, and they are being ripped off by management agents who are not doing the job they are paid to do. I went to Rubicon Court, a fairly new development built only a few years ago, and was shocked—absolutely flabbergasted —to see how badly the residents are being looked after. The service they are paying for has completely failed. I saw mould, rats, rubbish and CCTV cameras that do not work. That is not acceptable and, when the Bill is passed into law, I hope the Minister will ensure that it is effective. It is no good passing legislation unless it is effective and comes into force quickly.

Building Safety

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is right, and he has been a fantastic champion for the residents of Cardinal Lofts and other people affected by this. I think I am right in saying that Railpen is the ultimate owner of the freehold for this building. It is the pension fund for those who work in the rail sector. There are good trade unionists on the board of that pension fund to whom I appeal to show the same degree of energy in helping working people as my hon. Friend. While pension funds of course have fiduciary responsibilities and all the rest of it, it is vital that we do right by the residents of this building. I hope I will have the chance to visit Ipswich soon, to make good on that commitment.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his care in this matter, but I still have hundreds of constituents who are in financial limbo and mental turmoil because of safety problems that are not of their making. Frankly, West Ham is a building site at the moment. Stratford, West Ham, Plaistow and Canning Town all have major building contracts ongoing. If the developers are not on the “goodie” list of those who have signed the right bits of paper, what happens to that development and the oversight of it? I know that my constituents would want me to ask this: what will he be able to do for those who have not been fully covered by the remediation contract?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for standing up so well for her constituents, as she always does. Actions have to have consequences. The overwhelming majority of developers have done the right thing by signing this contract. It would be wrong for anyone who has wriggled out of their responsibilities to be allowed to continue to make a profit when others are shouldering these responsibilities. It is the case that if a company is not on, as she puts it, the goodie list, that will be it—development will have to pause, and we will make sure that their shareholders and investors pay the price for the irresponsibility of their directors.

On the broader point, if the hon. Lady, on behalf of her constituents, would like to get in touch with my Department and, in particular, our recovery strategy unit, there may well be developments or buildings in her constituency that are not covered by this where there are freeholders or other people responsible whom we need to track down. We look forward to working with her.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute honour to follow the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and to hear again his powerful testimony about what he witnessed. He is right that we simply must never forget. His speech is one of many excellent speeches in this debate.

I will speak about the 1943 uprising at Treblinka, where very ordinary people with very little hope rose to destroy the machinery of death and to escape. Treblinka, as we know, was created for the sole purpose of exterminating the Jewish people. It was not capable of holding many people for long periods. There were no forced labour factories. In little more than a year, an estimated 925,000 people were murdered.

The people who fought back had personally seen tens or even hundreds of thousands of innocent people being murdered. They had been forced to cut off the hair of their fellow victims just before they entered the gas chambers and sort through the clothes of the newly dead. They had to pick through the ashes from every day’s thousands of corpses to remove fragments of bone, which were crushed and burned again so that no evidence of this enormous evil would be left. They had been forced to do all that, to endure all that, and still they had the strength to plan, to work together, and to fight for their right to live.

I believe it is important that we understand just how difficult and extraordinary any form of resistance was within the camps, because we know that the control by the guards was almost absolute. All the prisoners knew of the immediate brutality that would be inflicted upon resisters if they were caught. But it was more than that. The Nazi regime sought to break the very spirit of the prisoners—not only their hope, but their solidarity among themselves. Chil Rajchman, who survived Treblinka after taking part in the uprising, said that the victims

“were so abused, victimised…that they wanted to die… Our vision was overcast. We did not know what was happening to us… The whole world forgot about us. Our lives were worthless.”

Despite the devastating impact of years of unceasing trauma, courage and solidarity remained and could not be broken. In the summer of 1943, news came to the camp of the Warsaw ghetto uprising a few months earlier, so against enormous odds, plans for an uprising to destroy Treblinka began. The guards had built an armoury and selected a Jewish locksmith to work on the lock. He was able to make an extra copy of the key and pass it to the organisers. Others were brought into the conspiracy, including the Jewish boys of just 12 or 13 years of age who had been given the weekly task of cleaning up after the camp guards. The uprising began on 2 August 1943. Those brave, brave young boys smuggled guns out from the armoury underneath the rubbish in their carts. The barracks were set alight, and the main gate was attacked, but the towers could not be captured and the guards fought to maintain their brutal control. All that could be done was to run and hide.

Of the 840 people in the camp that day, only 200 fully escaped the pursuit, and just 100 survived the rest of the war. Let us remember that those who rose up in Treblinka were ordinary people willing to die that day so that others would have a chance to live. They were not bound together by training or ideology, but were thrown together in the midst of utter horror. Their desire to survive and resist came from within and from each other. We must remember them. As a country, we must try to match just a fraction of their resilience as we stand against atrocities in our own time, because—as we know and as we have heard—people in this world are still systematically murdered because of their identities.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the start of acts of genocide in Darfur—horrific crimes against humanity that have happened on our watch. In Darfur, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, rape has been used as a weapon on a massive scale, and millions still endure forced displacement. Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, we say, “Never again”, but I genuinely believe that saying and believing that requires us to act. Atrocities continue regularly in Darfur, and the people accused of those crimes against humanity have faced no justice. We need to recognise that, instead of being put on trial, some of those implicated in Darfur have built careers on the murder and destruction that they planned and organised. Many remain in positions of power and prosperity in Sudan today.

I absolutely welcome the Government’s statement at the UN Security Council yesterday calling on the authorities in Sudan to act. I hope that justice for the atrocities in Darfur is a primary UK objective as we continue to support the movement of Sudanese people who wish only for peace and democracy. We must always remember the victims of the holocaust, and we can never rest content until justice is done for the victims in Darfur and those everywhere else in our world where genocide again threatens our humanity.

Section 21 Evictions

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have a quarter share in a private rental somewhere in the country—it was an accidental rental. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for bringing this issue to the House and giving us the opportunity to talk about it today. His speech was absolutely excellent. I am grateful for the chance to add my two penn’orth.

As we should all know by now, the economic crisis is putting families at financial risk. Spiking mortgage rates are not just affecting homeowners, but causing massive worries to renters, so it was appalling to see reports that the Government were going to drop rental reform. The Conservative party has promised these reforms over and again without, it appears, ever starting to act on its promise. I can only hope that the incoming Prime Minister will see how the issues of economic stability, renters’ rights and homelessness are linked, but I am not holding my breath. To help families in this country, mortgage rate projections need to come down, inflation needs to be controlled and the economic damage done by this Conservative Government over years needs to be repaired. We can surely all see that. To prevent homelessness from rising even further, the Government need to repair their policy on renters’ rights as well, which means honouring the promise in the Conservative manifesto and finally ending section 21.

Let me tell the Minister a little bit about Newham, just in case he has not come across it during his tenure. We have the highest homelessness rate and the second highest child poverty rate in the country. At the last count, before the cost of living crisis hit, one in 22 people in Newham was homeless. That mostly means that families are stuck in poor-quality temporary accommodation month after month, year after year. That can be a hotel with no facilities for cooking or for washing clothes, and there is a huge cost to the council and a massive cost to those who wait. Imagine having children but no cooking facilities at all. Imagine how expensive and unhealthy that is. In those circumstances, it is massively difficult for people to live a normal life and to give their children the opportunities that all our children deserve. How much worse will that get now, with rents, bills and mortgages all rocketing? We have seen estimates that private rents in London have increased by as much as 16% over the past year. Whose wages are going up by that much?

Let me talk about Syeda, who has been on the waiting list for social housing in Newham for 15 years. She lives with her husband and three children in a basement flat. She and all her children, who are between the ages of five and 18, sleep in one room. Her children are afraid to sleep alone because of the recurring rat infestation, and they have to do their homework on the floor. Understandably, they are falling behind at school. Syeda’s children have increasing breathing difficulties and frequent illnesses because of the severe damp and mould. Syeda has a disability, which makes getting up and down the stairs to the flat very difficult. Unsurprisingly, her mental health is damaged by the family’s awful living situation.

Syeda’s landlord has served them with a section 21 notice, and her family are on the verge of homelessness. The landlord says they want to make comprehensive repairs—from hearing the description, that is absolutely necessary—but instead of recognising the duty that they owe their existing tenants, they are ending the contract. They will no doubt seek a massively higher rent from new tenants once—or if, frankly—any repairs have been effected. Section 21 gives exploitative landlords a free hand to abuse families such as Syeda’s. It makes it much easier for rents to be ramped up far beyond what local people can afford and, frankly, what the property is worth.

Morgan is a single mum of four who already works almost full time. One of her children has a disability. Morgan is on the local housing register and has been waiting for a social home for 18 years. That would be shocking if it was not normal. Until she found her flat, Morgan was in temporary accommodation. She and her children were moved five times from place to place, and had to deal with rats, mould and the additional cost that moving entailed. Her current home ain’t great. It is in bad disrepair, with mould, leaks and broken lights. The flat costs Morgan £1,800 a calendar month—barely affordable even before prices started to increase so much. Having the flat avoids the need for constant moving and the consequent costs, and it is close to Morgan’s work and her children’s schools, but the landlord wants to increase her rent for that poorly maintained flat to £2,500 per month—an almost 50% increase. It beggars belief.

What can Morgan do when the law is on the landlord’s side? What will the Government do to help Morgan and the hundreds of thousands of Morgans and Syedas? I want to hear a really clear reassurance from the Minister that this Government will bring forward a Bill to abolish section 21, and will implement the comprehensive protections for renters that are urgently and desperately needed. If rapid progress is not made, there is surely only one conclusion that we can draw: that this Government and their previous incarnations in the past 12 years have not given a stuff for the plight of renters in Newham, London and across this country. What we need, not just for renters but for the entire fabric of our society, is a general election, and a Labour Government, now.

Local Government Finance (England)

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The House should also note that the Local Government Finance Report has since been updated with a small correction on page 14. Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments for its careful consideration of these reports.

Before I turn to the details of the reports, may I say a brief word of thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), who until very recently served as Minister for Housing and Planning? We will be starved of his eloquence at the Dispatch Box, because he has been translated to the Whips Office, but I know that that eloquence will not be wasted on my right hon. and hon. Friends, who will benefit from his wisdom and gentle guidance as they consider which Lobby to enter in the light of all the delicate matters that we discuss.

I should add that it was on the watch of my right hon. Friend that the number of first-time buyers in the country reached a record level, and that the stewardship he displayed, and also the imagination and attention to detail, were those of a model Minister. He will be missed. I should also add that although his shoes are both difficult to fill and always highly polished, we are nevertheless very fortunate to have in the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), an excellent new addition to our departmental team. We welcome him to his place, and we know that he is a doughty defender of the interests of the north of England, of local government overall, and of those who aspire to live in and to own a decent home. I am therefore grateful for the fact that he has joined the team.



The local government finance settlement makes available, to local government in England, core spending power of £54.1 billion for 2022-23. This is an increase of £3.7 billion on 2021-22, a real-terms increase of 4.5%.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the considerable eloquence of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) will be deployed inter alia in drawing attention to the years from 2010 to 2017-18 when there were necessary economies in local government spending. I suspect, although I cannot be certain, that she will for partisan reasons, entirely fairly, seek to contrast the restraint in public spending during those years with the increases that we are now making to suggest that the increases do not make up for the previous restrictions on public spending, but it is impossible to consider those restrictions without appreciating the context of the economic circumstances that the coalition Government inherited in 2010—I do not wish to make any partisan points—and that required us to deal with the inevitable consequences of the financial crash.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am not going to delve into history; I would just like to talk about the pandemic of the last couple of years. In my constituency, Newham Council is about £10 million shy because of covid spending, which will have ongoing consequences. Much of it has come from revenue accounts for temporary accommodation. Newham has the largest housing list in the country and the second highest rate of child poverty, yet we are still having to cope with covid costs of £10 million and counting without any respite from the Treasury.

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a series of important points. Newham Council faces serious pressures for a variety of reasons, as do so many in local government. This provides me with an opportunity to draw attention to, and to praise, the efforts not only of elected councillors but of those who work in local government in Newham and elsewhere who, in dealing with the strains of covid over the past two years, have shown immense determination, energy and forbearance.

Whichever party had been in power, these covid costs would have been inevitable because of the nature of the pandemic. I would argue that the big choices made by the Prime Minister on the vaccination programme and the approach we took immediately before Christmas in the wake of the omicron wave have been vindicated by events. I would also argue that the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s adoption of the furlough programme ensured that our economy weathered the storm more effectively than other economies did. Because of those big decisions made by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, we are now in a position where the spending review can increase expenditure by 4.5% in real terms.

[Ms Brown]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning how very difficult it has been to be a councillor or officer in local government over the past two years. They have had a terrible job, but it is not made easier when they were told that their costs would be covered only to find themselves £10 million shy and counting. I hope he will take that away and think about how he can give respite.

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. The position of those who are served by Newham Council has been very clearly outlined by the hon. Lady. Within the context of the settlement we are debating today, we will look at all the additional support we can give to those who are dealing with the consequences of covid.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for his powerful and moving opening speech. May I say how sorry we were to hear of his family’s recent experiences? He has solidarity on the Opposition Benches against those racists.

Every day on my Twitter feed, I see the Auschwitz memorial’s images of people murdered. Those that grab me particularly are the faces of the babes in arms, toddlers, children and teens who were murdered in the gas chambers. Every single day, I wonder how those faces could be treated as the enemy, having their very humanity denied. Every single day, I wonder how it is possible that human beings could do this to such innocents. Every single day, I have genuinely no idea how it happened.

Today, I want to tell the story of Rena Quint, who survived the holocaust at just nine years of age. Rena lived with her mother, father and two brothers. She remembers that across the street was a kiosk that sold ice cream; she remembers her brothers pulling her through the snow on a sledge. She was just three years old when Germany invaded Poland. Her home was in the new ghetto: it took in many sick and hungry strangers, and people died before her eyes.

Then, one day, there was a round-up. All the women and children were brutally forced into the synagogue. Rena, her mum and her brothers were among them. She describes it as a scene out of hell, but she remembers a man at an outside door who beckoned to her, called her by name and told her to run. She still does not quite understand why she let go of her mum’s and her brothers’ hands, but she ran. Rena says that maybe the hand of God pushed her, because all those women and children were transported to Treblinka, and they were murdered.

Rena was given a new name. She was dressed as a boy and joined her father’s forced labour group. She has no idea how she was able to pretend for so long, but pretending kept her alive. She had to work at a glass factory at just five or six years of age, carrying heavy loads in extreme heat all day long.

In 1944, when it was decided that their slave labour was no longer needed in the factory, Rena and her father were packed into freezing cattle cars to Bergen-Belsen. They had no food, no water and no toilets, and they were locked in for three days with the dead and the dying. When they arrived, her father knew that they would be forced to strip for inspection, so they were forced to separate. Rena never saw her father again. She endured the utter horror of the camp for many months, with nothing to eat but sawdust bread and sometimes thin, greasy soup, with cold and disease all around. Rena never cried in response to any of the thousands of deaths that she would have witnessed. Murder was her every day.

And then, one day, when Rena was sick with typhus, she remembers lying under a tree. She felt that it was impossible to get up and she just wanted to fall asleep forever, but then there was a commotion. British soldiers had arrived and they were liberating the camp. Rena remembers getting some milk and bread and going into a hospital tent and being cared for.

Rena has lived a long and flourishing life to this day, but she was so young when her birth family were murdered that she no longer remembers their faces. Rena’s account reminds us of the systemic inhumanity that so many millions of Jews were subjected to during the holocaust, and it speaks of how the innocence of children was so completely disregarded and destroyed by the Nazis.

Rena had to behave as an adult from as young as five years of age while having to deal with things that no adult, still less any child, should experience. We must never forget her story. Her story reminds me of the children growing up today in the Rohingya refugee camps. It makes me think of the children in Bosnia now facing the same rising threat as their parents and grandparents. What are we going to do to stop these young lives being brutalised, too?

This year’s theme is “One Day”. My hope is that, one day, children will no longer be dehumanised or treated as enemies, targets or soldiers. But even when that day comes, as I pray it does, we must remember Rena’s life and her family’s lives and all the other millions murdered.

Residential Leaseholders and Interim Fire Safety Costs

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I am very grateful for the extra 30 seconds, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) for organising this debate and speaking so brilliantly in opening it. In West Ham, we have the highest take-up of furlough and unemployment is up 240% since the pandemic began—it is grim. That is what people in Newham already face, and the costs and stresses of so-called interim fire safety measures come on top of that really difficult reality. Interim means that until the blocks of flats have been certified and, if necessary, remediated, people are in limbo, and that is proving to be a really long time. Because of these measures, residents are still living with the constant reminder that their building is not safe. It preys on their mind, and they are paying through their nose for the privilege.

Zain’s block was found to be unsafe, but the original developer of his building is now operating another company. It has refused to take responsibility, so the costs will inevitably fall to Zain and the other residents of his block. The Minister knows full well what I think about that. I would be grateful to him if he touches on what he can do to help Zain and other residents in similar circumstances.

Before the expensive remediation work even begins, Zain has been faced with massive bills. The insurance premium for the block has rocketed from £3,500 to £280,000. Unbelievably, Zain was asked to cover 2021’s bill with one day’s notice. Then there is the cost of the new alarm system, round after round of surveys, a new managing agency and even the dreaded waking watch. Overall, that could cost Zain £20,000—probably more. His building is not a high rise, so unless the Government change tack, the estimated £40,000 per household for the cost of remediation will not be covered fully either. Zain is terrified. He is going to have a bill of £60,000 and upwards in total.

I cannot emphasise enough what a strain this issue is putting on my constituents’ lives, their relationships, their ability to move on, and their mental health. It is so unfair. Time and again, Ministers have promised that leaseholders trapped in these situations will not have to pay to fix problems that they did not cause, but as I said before, with the interim costs, leaseholders are already paying. That is why so many people were bitterly disappointed when the Government rejected Labour’s amendments and the McPartland-Smith one-two. I really hope that today the Minister will provide us with fresh assurances that we can pass to Zain and the thousands of others that this seemingly endless awful situation will finally be resolved, and that the Government will step up.

Building Safety

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We all believe in home ownership. We want to get more people on to the housing ladder, and we know that owning a home of your own is one of the most special achievements in life. But we also know that, in recent years, some of our developers—and some of our most prominent ones, too—have built homes that are to a poor standard; they have admitted it in some cases. We need to make sure that that is corrected, so that the quality of homes in this country is high and members of the public can have confidence when making that life-changing investment.

It cannot be right that buying a home affords someone less protection than buying a mobile phone or many other things we do in our daily lives. We want to see a major change in the culture of the industry, so that homeowners get the product—the brilliant, beautiful, high-quality home—that they deserve. We have set up a new homes ombudsman, which will be passed into law as part of the building safety regulator. The new regulatory regime, which is already in existence in shadow form, will be put into permanent form through the passing of the Building Safety Bill. For higher-rise buildings—those over 18 metres—that will create a very strict, world-class regulatory regime.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said, with knobs on. My constituents will not be reassured by what they have heard. Loans for leaseholders still are not off the table. The Secretary of State has avoided talking about non-cladding costs, and there is still no guarantee that my constituents will not be left with large associated bills for problems they did not create. A number of institutions are profiteering from this crisis, including parts of the insurance industry and others, with eye-watering premiums. Why are we still waiting for the Secretary of State to get a grip on this crisis?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am disappointed by the tone of the hon. Lady’s remarks. She has followed this issue closely and has fought for her constituents, and I praise her and recognise her for that hard work, but this Government have done a huge amount, and I entirely reject her accusations. We have brought forward the public inquiry. We have planned and are now legislating for a new building safety regulator—a world-class regulatory regime. We have brought in people to ensure that the unsafe cladding on ACM-clad high-rise buildings is remediated, and that work has progressed a great deal over the course of the year. As I said earlier, many Labour politicians, including the Mayor of London, opposed that initially, at the height of the pandemic. We have done a great deal, but there is more to be done.

I do not know what the hon. Lady’s proposition is with respect to other materials beyond cladding. All the expert opinion says, “Focus on cladding. That is the primary risk here—that is the focus that Government should have.” I will keep following expert advice. If the Labour party’s position is that we should not follow that, and that in fact the Chancellor should write a blank cheque and say that absolutely any building safety defect on any building of any height should be paid for by the taxpayer, that is a very substantial cost, and I would be interested to know how she intends to fund that. With respect to the insurance companies, I do now expect them to step up and ensure that their premiums are proportionate and risk-based, because I think some of them have been exploiting leaseholders in a very difficult position.