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.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

My constituents will be absolutely furious that the Government appear to be rejecting not only our amendments, but those of the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). My constituents have been constantly told that they will not be made to pay for fire safety problems they are not responsible for, but leaseholders are already paying for them, with huge bills for waking watches, outrageously inflated insurance premiums and eye-watering variable mortgage payments. My constituents are paying through the nose now. These costs are inescapable, and they are taking a real toll on already stretched finances and on the mental health of my constituents—lives are on hold. This is the result of a crisis my constituents did not create.

Let me again raise with the Minister one of the biggest cases in my constituency. Stratford East Village, the former Olympic park, has fire safety risks that go way beyond cladding: defects that violated fire safety regulations in place long before the Grenfell tragedy. The Olympic park contractors were working for the Government, and they should not expect my constituents to pay for it, but they are doing so through huge insurance premiums and watch costs. In one case, the cost of insurance has been raised sixfold in a year.

However, the Olympic park is far from the only area affected in my constituency. In West Ham we find problems no matter where we look, and the same is true in Canning Town. I have been asked to make representations to housing associations so that they understand the impossible circumstances residents are in and to ask them to be flexible. They have to look at their policies on staircasing, sub-letting and buying back from the leaseholder. It is really important that Ministers do not forget how over-extended my constituents already are. London is different—I am sorry, but it is—simply because of the cost of housing here. In 2019, the median house price in Newham was 13 times the median earnings of residents; in 2017 and 2018, it was even higher. It is the legacy of utterly unaffordable housing. When we add in the recession and the financial impacts already experienced, threatening leaseholders with further costs just is not fair. It is cruel.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I want to start by paying tribute to Olivia Marks-Woldman and the staff at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and Karen Pollock and the good people at the Holocaust Educational Trust, for their tireless work to educate us all. “Be the light in the darkness”—what an amazingly powerful theme. It is a reminder that the anti-fascist values of those who stood against the Nazis are so important today.

I have always been awed by the Warsaw ghetto uprising—a few streets that held out against overwhelming Nazi force for 28 days—and today I am remembering Tosia Altman. She was just 20 years old when she joined comrades in Lithuania, but she was the first to go back into Nazi occupied areas—such courage at such a young age. She spent the next few years, at enormous risk, travelling in and out of Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe. She spread information about the horrors that were being perpetrated. She also spread hope. She organised the resistance.

Tosia’s incredible resilience in the darkest of times helped to bring about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. She helped people to know that state-enforced hatred could be challenged. She smuggled weapons into the ghetto. She strategised. Over and over again, she went into burning buildings to rescue others. She saved lives and, tragically, burns finally killed her. After being handed over to the Germans by collaborators in the Polish police, she died on 26 May 1943 after two days of untreated, unmitigated agony. She was the first from her movement to return to the greater danger in Poland, and she was the last of them to fall. Tosia Altman, a light in the darkness—remember her name.

We know in this place that racial hatred and genocidal violence is still with us in this world. That is why I was so disappointed that last week, despite the pleas of holocaust survivors, the Government refused to change the law to prevent trade deals with countries committing genocide. We must have clear pathways to identify and prevent another genocide. “Never again” must not be a platitude. It is an instruction. We must be the light in the darkness.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Newham is one of the worst hit boroughs in the country. We have the second highest level of child poverty and the highest level of homelessness. We have had the highest furlough numbers, and our covid infection rates have regularly been among the highest in the country, especially during recent weeks. There are no signs that our difficulties are going away any time soon. In fact, I am afraid that many in Newham might not be able to get a vaccine for many months, despite significant vulnerability due to health conditions and ethnicity. The fact that we have a young population means that restrictions may well be placed on our local economy for longer, destroying the hopes that many had just a few weeks ago.

My constituents need to know that the decent public services and support on which they rely are going to continue. For that, at bare minimum, the Government will need to compensate our council fully for lost revenue and the added costs of covid. Sadly, the signs are not good. Currently, Newham Council estimates that it will lose £16 million of income this year due to the virus and will only be compensated for £8 million of that—barely half. Frankly, that has a real cost to people’s lives.

In Newham, a large number of small businesses, self-employed people and employees have been excluded from Government support. When support is not there—when it is not universal—discretionary council funds are all the more important, but with our very high levels of infection, almost all of Newham’s funding for self-isolation payments has been allocated. To beat the virus and support our overwhelmed NHS, we need more funding for discretionary payments, and we need it now.

We need a financial settlement that provides for necessary spending without raising taxes on our residents at this worst possible time. An increase in council tax can be ill afforded by my constituents, but the Government are providing no other option. The Chancellor said, “whatever it takes.” Well, let me tell him what it takes: it takes Government to properly fund councils, at the very least for covid costs. It takes the Government financially looking after everyone in need, including the excluded. We must not make the poorest pay for this crisis.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I join my hon. Friend in praising her local council, and in particular the excellent local council leader she is lucky to have, Elizabeth Campbell, whom it has been my pleasure to work with this year on many different issues.

My hon. Friend is right to say that business rates are a challenge. Of course, this year the Chancellor has provided a business rates holiday, which so many businesses on our local high streets have benefited from. It will be for him to decide whether or in what form that should continue into the next financial year, and no doubt he will bring forward further details on that next year. There will be a fundamental review of the future of business rates, and I am sure she will contribute to that in due course.

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

Merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the Secretary of State knows full well, Newham has the highest level of homelessness in the country and the second worst level of child poverty in the country, and more than half of Newham residents are either on furlough or out of work. The crisis is getting worse. Our food banks have never known times this bad, and despite fantastic work by local charities, many of our children will be going without this Christmas. Our council has suffered drastic cuts over the past 10 years and has even been underfunded for covid impacts by about £20 million. Can he assure me that the settlement will right that wrong, and if not, will he meet me and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) to discuss?

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can give the hon. Member that assurance, but equally, I would be more than happy to meet her and her right hon. Friend. She raises a number of different points. Her local council has received a great deal of money from the Government over the course of this year. It has received almost £50 million in covid-19 expenditure alone so far, in addition to the schemes I have already referred to, which will no doubt amount to many further millions of pounds. The Government have provided the council with £56 million to support 4,000 of her local businesses. She also mentions homelessness and rough sleeping, on which we have worked very closely with Newham Council—I visited a brilliant move-on accommodation site in her constituency earlier this year with the mayor—and we will be providing it with further funding next year, thanks to the £750 million that we are investing in our campaign to end rough sleeping.

Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

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

I am grateful to be able to speak in this debate, Sir Edward, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who speaks with more authority than any of us on this issue.

Newham has the highest rate of homelessness in the country. We do not yet know how bad it has got this year, but last Christmas one in every 12 of Newham’s children was homeless. I am going to focus on a few typical cases today.

Let me tell hon. Members about Katie. Katie works on the frontline in our NHS. She has been frantically trying to find an affordable home, but nothing is available. Ever since the last time Katie was made homeless, she has had to rely on her family to house her and her two-year-old, but her toddler was getting older, the situation with her family became harder and this May, regardless of the eviction ban, Katie and her baby were kicked out. They are sofa-surfing to stay off the street and desperate for, in Katie’s words, “somewhere to call home.” What mum does not want that?

Katie tells me that the only temporary accommodation she was offered was in High Wycombe or Leeds, so Katie and her child have sofa-surfed and have had higher risks of infection. They have endured terrible insecurity and our local NHS faces losing a much-needed frontline worker. It is not just Katie; far from it. Many families have remained stuck in temporary accommodation without any sense of security or comfort, and they have been without a true home for horrifying lengths of time. I will give just a couple of my cases from this pandemic year.

A teaching assistant has lived with her children in a damp, noisy, polluted property, for two and half years and counting. A single mum has been living in one bedroom with her four-year-old daughter, with damp and rats, since 2015—five years and counting. A mum has been stuck in a two-bedroom flat with her three children, one of whom is disabled and with complex needs, for eight years and counting. A grandfather has been living in temporary accommodation with his adult children and his granddaughter for 14 years and counting. They are all in temporary accommodation. How much longer?

How much longer do we have to wait for a Government willing to build social housing at scale, who will not pinch pennies from the housing support that keeps our families off the streets. How much longer?

Leaseholders and Cladding

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He campaigns hard and long for his constituents in Blackpool South. We have now advanced more than 100 applications and the first payments for work will be made imminently. I am confident that the full allocation of £1 billion that the Chancellor made available in the Budget earlier this year will be made by the end of this financial year, for which the money was made available.

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

Hundreds of constituents are affected by safety problems, from social housing tenants in Canning Town to leaseholders in Stratford. Those in the Prime Minister’s flagship Olympic park have had the Olympic dream turned into a nightmare. This crisis is getting worse. Just two weeks ago, four more blocks were placed on waking watch. They have been told there is a risk of fire, which increases their fear. They are trapped in unsellable homes and there is a dread that, at the end of all this, there is going to be an unaffordable bill for them to pay. Why can the Government not understand that this continuing uncertainty and punishing of leaseholders is plain wrong and that the notion of affordability is massively contentious and concerning? Perhaps we can have a meeting.

[Christopher Pincher]

I entirely understand the concern of the hon. Lady and her constituents. The Government are working hard and at pace to remediate these buildings and resolve the issues that her constituents face. I am very happy to meet her to discuss the specific issues in her constituency, but she can be assured that I have every sympathy with the plight of her constituents. We are working very hard, very quickly to make sure those issues are resolved.

Local Government Finance (England)

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am absolutely delighted to agree with my hon. Friend. Serving on a parish council is an important role in local democracy. I give my praise, along with hers, to all those who serve on parish councils—including in my own constituency, where a number of communities were flooded very seriously over the past week—for the work that they have done to support their local communities as they begin to recover from the very serious floods.

It is because those individuals and the communities they represent matter to this country that today we are backing them with the best local government funding settlement for a decade. The settlement delivers a 4.4% real-terms increase in spending power for councils—£2.9 billion extra. It has been widely welcomed by the sector. It injects significant new resources into adult and children’s social care. It places councils on a stronger financial footing from which to build. It achieves all of that while protecting people from excessive council tax rises—the kind of regressive tax increases that we saw hurting working people year after year under the last Labour Government, during whose time in office council tax doubled.

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

I am staggered, to be honest, because I think that council tax is a regressive tax. Each adult in Newham has lost 50% of the grant that was given by the Government, in an area where more than 50% of our children live in poverty, in order to give to the Tory shires. Does the Secretary of State honestly think that is a fair settlement?

[Robert Jenrick]

If the hon. Lady is concerned about funding for local public services, she will join me and my colleagues in supporting the best local government settlement we have seen for a decade. She says that council tax is regressive, so what happened under the last Labour Government, when council tax doubled? Under this Government council tax has fallen by 6% in real terms, while we have continued to deliver important public services.

I was determined to champion local government in September’s spending review. I want to thank those who responded so constructively to the two consultations we ran at the end of last year. We can be proud of what we have achieved, and particularly of how the settlement delivers for the most vulnerable in society. It secures £1 billion of new Government funding for social care, alongside the extra £410 million that we invested last year. That is a major new injection of funding that will help local authorities to meet the undoubted rising pressures on the care system, which we all see in our communities and in our own lives.

We will also be maintaining all funding going into the improved better care fund, at the same time as the NHS contribution to the better care fund rises by 3.4% above inflation to over £4 billion, in line with the broader NHS settlement. Alongside this, I am allowing local authorities responsible for adult social care to raise council tax by an additional 2% above the core referendum principle. That is a necessary step that is specifically targeted to meet demand and ensure that vulnerable people are supported.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. This is an extraordinary issue that is causing terrible problems to many constituents and I am sorry that I will not have the time in this debate to do their cases justice.

I am currently dealing with 31 separate cases, and counting. One of those cases involves representing 57 different constituents in a single block. One local housing provider has told residents they will fund just 20 fire risk assessments a year, in an area where it has more than 100 properties. When I say 100 properties, I do not mean 100 flats—I mean 100 blocks.

In so many cases, my constituents have been left trapped and powerless. Many do not know if their homes are safe. Many have been unable to sell or re-mortgage. Massively expensive retrofitting is often necessary but is not being carried out.

One constituent is living with his young daughter in a one-bed flat. He cannot sell or move somewhere more suitable because his block does not yet have a cladding report. Another constituent split with his partner and cannot re-mortgage to make good that separation. The current mortgage has expired, trapping the couple on a higher rate, and costing an exorbitant extra £450 a month. It is causing severe financial and emotional strain. Another constituent was told it could take five years to provide the cladding report.

Something is desperately and fundamentally wrong with the whole legal structure around the issue, and it is our job in this place to put it right. My speech today has not allowed me long enough to do justice to constituents’ cases; I hope they will forgive me. The Minister can see how many of us there are in this room. She knows the issues. Can she not make some time available for us to be able to debate this in a full-length debate on the Floor of the House?

I have talked about the problems with the practicalities, but my constituents live with the knowledge that the place they are trapped in, which costs them a fortune, might be a death trap. As a child who grew up in a flat in the shadow of Ronan Point, I know the impact of such fear on families. So I want to hear from the Minister today that the Government will intervene strongly to exorcise the spectre of the tragedy of Grenfell that constantly hangs over my constituents’ lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I will go through exactly what we have done and how we have done it, and note the significant steps that we have taken, including the provision of £600 million to support people and the further work led by an expert panel. We have accepted all the recommendations from the independent review, and are going forward at a rigorous pace, which we can do, obviously, once we have had all those negotiations with the Treasury.

In December 2018, we banned the use of combustible materials in external walls of new high-rise buildings and, after implementing the ban, we checked its effectiveness. In January, we launched a consultation on the ban, which went further and asked whether the limit should be lowered from 18 metres to 11 metres. The Government also announced the fire safety Bill, and the associated regulatory changes, to deliver the recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry phase 1 report.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

I thank the Minister for the extensive detail that she is giving, but will she address the gentle point that I made? Even if the Minister had another five minutes, that would not be enough to address all the issues, many of which have not been raised simply because of a lack of time. Will the Government consider giving us a proper full-length debate in the main Chamber so that we can better express ourselves and hear more comprehensively from the Minister?

Homelessness

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I want Government Members to understand the root causes of much of the homelessness in West Ham. More than a third of my constituents work hard for less than the London living wage. A month’s rent for a cheap two-bedroom property in Newham is £1,300. If someone has one of the lower quarter of pay packets locally, they will earn just £1,266 to pay the bills. It is less than the rent alone. For many, it is a choice between food and rent, between buying new shoes for their children and the rent, between paying the bills and avoiding debt and the rent. Most people choose the rent because they know in their hearts that nothing is more damaging for them and their children than becoming homeless, and yet homelessness is rising and rising.

The Government have chosen to increase housing payments by 1.7% this year, and that is good. It is better than zero—even with my maths, I get that—but it will do nothing to repair the damage, and in a huge part of London, including Newham, not a single extra two-bedroom home will be made affordable by this increase. For us, it is actually worse, because rents in Newham are so unaffordable that we received a little extra help: a 3% uplift in housing support for people on social security. We are now losing that 3% and getting 1.7%. The Government’s decisions are making rents less affordable, not more affordable, in Newham. Newham—which has the second-highest child poverty rate in the country. Newham—which has the highest homelessness rate in the country. Newham—where one in 12 of our children are without a safe, secure, warm home. It beggars belief.

Newham now has only 17,000 council properties, which is 10,000 fewer than the number of people on the waiting list alone. The only way we will reduce the cost to people’s lives and to the public purse is through building social homes with social rents for all that need them. West Ham needs a Government who will commit to that, and any Government who do not must live with the responsibility for the continued poverty and homelessness that is completely and utterly blighting the lives of the people I represent.