Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Philip Davies

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an honour to be here today and to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and to discuss the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I congratulate her on securing such a high-profile place in the ballot, which I envy, and on her choice of Bill, her excellent speech and her approach to the subject. Her choice of Bill is important for two reasons. First, it is limited in scope. It recognises the importance of addressing the needs of millions of private renters, a matter of which I am very conscious, given the size of the private rented sector in my constituency—40% of all households in my constituency are in the private rented sector, a massive increase over recent years. That is surely, and very clearly, reflected in the support for this Bill outside this House shown in the large number of e-mails I have had from my constituents urging me to be here today, and the very strong campaigning efforts of various groups at national and local level. I pay tribute to Shelter, which has campaigned on this issue for many years and worked very closely with the hon. Lady on producing the Bill.

Generation Rent must also be congratulated on its vigorous campaigning efforts at national and local level. The Home Sweet Home campaign has been working on the ground in Brighton for many months, backed by Labour’s excellent parliamentary candidate and by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is in her place; I agree with much of what she said earlier. It is heartening to hear of tenants and residents taking action, influencing this place, and actively seeking to improve their families’ quality of home, education and life chances. Labour has been clear that for too long their needs have been totally ignored. That is why we have set out ambitious plans for reform of the sector, and I will come to those later.

The second reason this Bill is so important is that the issue it seeks to address—retaliatory eviction—is completely unacceptable and must surely be brought to an end. That is why the hon. Member for Brent Central has our support for its passage through the House.

In recent years, the private rented sector has grown massively in size, but also beyond recognition in terms of the demographics and the character of those who rent from private landlords. Nine million people now rent privately—more than those who rent a social home. Over a third have families with children, and nearly half are over the age of 35. Many people who are renting privately are doing so not out of choice but because they cannot get on the housing ladder or secure a socially rented home. Yet private rented accommodation is not the cheapest option—far from it. It is, in effect, the most expensive type of housing. On average, people who rent privately spend 41% of their income on housing. For those in the social rented sector, the figure is 30%, and for owner occupiers, it is 19%. However, the extra expense does not buy greater stability or higher standards. Someone who rents privately is more likely to live in a non-decent home than someone in any other tenure, yet they are spending 41% of their income to do so. A third of privately rented homes fail to meet the decent homes standard.

Two issues are at the heart of these proposals—standards and stability. For too long, renters have had to put up with a choice between keeping their home and accepting the poor conditions they are living in. As we have heard, there is currently no protection from eviction for renters who report poor conditions to their landlord or local authority. Shelter has estimated that over 200,000 renters have been evicted or served notice in the past year because they complained to their local council or their landlord about a problem in their home.

This kind of unacceptable action can have a really damaging impact on renters. It can damage the lives of families and the fabric of communities as people are uprooted from their homes with as little as two months’ notice, disrupting schooling, support networks of family and friends, and even access to health care. It means that renters feel unable to complain and are forced to put up with awful conditions.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady was bandying about some rather exotic figures earlier. Can she verify those figures in the context of the English housing survey, which goes into detail as to why people are evicted?

[Lyn Brown]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as always with his contributions here on a Friday. I know that he is going to make a fairly long speech—

Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Philip Davies

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

As ever, I want to make some progress, and it could be argued that I am being thwarted in so doing. I do not want to be distracted today. I want to get on with it, as I always do, and I hope that I will satisfy the hon. Gentleman. But to return to the thrust of the argument that because I agree with virtually all the speech of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish and some parts of the Bill, I must therefore support every Bill that has some parts with which I agree, that is not a view that I share. I agree with some parts of most Bills. An MEP once said to me that it is like having a cup of tea with some poison in it. Most of the tea might be fine, but no one would want to drink it. It is the little bit of poison that one must look for in legislation, not the general thrust.

[Lyn Brown]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I enjoy him very much on a Friday morning, and often listen to him with great interest. But I fear that I must press him on this point. Where is the poison in this four-clause Bill?

[Philip Davies]

I am still reeling from the hon. Lady’s opening remark. That is how rumours start in this place. It would probably be more damaging to her reputation than to mine if that rumour were to spread. I will try to come to the meat of the Bill and put to the back of my mind the temptation that she put in my mind about what happens on a Friday morning. For the record, it is the first I have known about it.

The reason I agree so much with what the hon. Gentleman said is that we need to go back to the purpose of apprenticeships. It is a shame that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is no longer in his place because if I am wrong about this, he would have put me right. Apprenticeships date back to the reign of Elizabeth I.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Of course we agree on that, but I am not convinced that the Bill delivers that; if I were, I would agree with it. It could deliver false expectations and enable companies bidding for a contract to go through the motions of offering something that will not do the apprentice any good and benefit only those companies.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want a false prospectus to be put before young people to help a big company win a lucrative contract. A lot depends on how the initiatives are described. He describes them as he does, but if I describe them as I do, people might come to a different conclusion about whether we should support them.

[Lyn Brown]

I have mostly been paying rapt attention to what the hon. Gentleman has said. However, I have still failed to hear which clause causes such offence. I would be so grateful for a hint.

[Philip Davies]

Perhaps I have been speaking in Swahili.

High Cost Credit Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Philip Davies

Friday 12th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I add my hearty congratulations and thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on his success in securing his private Member’s Bill, and for choosing this vital topic as its subject.

I regret to say that many people in my constituency find themselves in a situation where they have to resort to payday loans and other short-term, very expensive borrowing. Of course, in my part of east London using short-term credit is nothing new. In years past, my family used the pawn shop, as did many others in their communities. It helped out when the week’s money would not go quite far enough to meet the week’s outgoings. However, payday loans are in a different, far more pernicious league, and people are in a very different and more difficult place, with precarious unemployment, falling wages, soaring house bills, the bedroom tax, the benefits cap and rising food bills, along with heating and power costs. It is an ugly and toxic web that brings anxiety and stress to households. It makes it much more difficult to have a stable and resilient family life, and it undermines the entire community.

One of the factors in my constituency that is driving these difficulties is the proliferation of the zero-hours contract, which, in my view, takes us back to Victorian days and the days of my grandfather standing as lump labour on the dockside, hoping that he might earn enough money to feed his family. These contracts are extraordinarily exploitative and need to be regulated in the same vein as the providers of high-cost credit.

After three months of working for a company and being told regularly that he was doing a really good job, one constituent—I will call him Otis—was told to buy more work shirts, only to be told that very same week not to come back the following Monday. He was given no reason, no explanation and no notice. It is for such reasons that people feel helpless and surrender to the advertised images of a friendly, carefree, kindly world in which all is well and money is plentiful and freely given.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with an awful lot of what the hon. Lady has said so far about the cost of living and how difficult families are finding it at the moment. Does she agree that one of the better solutions would be to try to find ways to reduce the cost of living so that they do not feel the need to go to payday lenders in the first place—perhaps, say, through abolishing the BBC licence fee or voting against the Energy Bill, as some Government Members did, which is putting up the price of energy unnecessarily?

[Lyn Brown]

I was with the hon. Gentleman for at least the first three quarters of that intervention.

[Philip Davies]

More than most!

[Lyn Brown]

It certainly is more than most. I do not think we will get accord even if I take more interventions from the hon. Gentleman.