British House Building Industry

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Joan Ryan

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern the ongoing shortage of housing and the housing crisis across England; further notes with concern the number of families in temporary accommodation and the number of people rough sleeping; acknowledges that there are over one million households on housing waiting lists; recognises the Government’s target to build 300,000 new homes each year; acknowledges that this target has been missed in each year that the Government has been in office and that the number of homes constructed by housebuilding companies that are deemed affordable is insufficient; notes the pay ratios between executives and employees in FTSE 350 housebuilding companies; and calls on the Government to tackle the housing crisis as an urgent priority.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for today’s debate and all the Members who will participate. It is amazing to see so many Members here, given the week we have had. At the request of Madam Deputy Speaker, I have stripped quite a lot from this speech because so many people want to speak—I will do my best. I want to give credit to the High Pay Centre and the best possible exposition of its amazing research for this debate on the state of the house building industry.

No Member of this House, whatever their party, can but be fully aware of the crisis in housing and homelessness in all our constituencies. I will open the debate by looking at the scale of the current housing crisis, by considering the record of the FTSE 350 house building companies and their contribution to solving this crisis and finally, and most amazingly, by analysing the utter pay inequality that is rife across the British house building industry.

On streets across our country and on the very doorstep of Parliament, British citizens who simply cannot afford a place to call home are sleeping rough. For the general public, they are the visual representation of our homelessness crisis. As highlighted by the Children’s Commissioner last month, homelessness is far more common in 21st-century Britain.

Not a single week goes by without a normal, hard-working family in my constituency being evicted from their privately rented property and sent to temporary accommodation miles away from family, their schools and their jobs. They join over 83,700 households across our country, including 124,000 children, who are living in temporary accommodation.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (IGC)]

May I add to the picture the hon. Lady is painting by telling her that Enfield has significant problems on housing and homelessness? We have the capital’s highest eviction rate and the second highest number of residents in temporary accommodation, and homelessness has rocketed by 250% since 2011. Does she agree—from what she is saying, I think she clearly does—that the Government’s policy is not only hurting the housing market but causing a huge set of social problems, too?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

The social and financial cost of homelessness far exceeds what we spend on temporary accommodation, which was £1 billion of taxpayers’ money last year—every £1 of it badly spent. Some 6,980 families in my constituency are trapped in bed and breakfast accommodation, having been there longer than the six-week legal limit, including 810 children. Others are stuck in hostels far away from their schools, families and friends.

Some of my constituents are housed, at least temporarily, in Connect House, a warehouse on the busiest south London industrial estate. For anybody who wants to see what Connect House looks like, please have a look at the video on my Twitter account.

I am just crawling through my speech, because I see more and more people here.

Other families who have come to see me are on the ever-expanding waiting list, with 1.2 million families across our country now waiting for a place to call home—1.2 million. Just 6,464 new social homes were built in 2017-18, the second lowest number on record. At that rate, it could take 172 years to give a socially rented home to everyone on the current waiting list. That is utterly appalling when we compare those figures with the 150,000 social homes delivered each year in the mid-1960s or the 203,000 council homes that the Government delivered in 1953. It has been done before and we all know that we can do it again.

In Merton, where my constituency is based, 10,000 families are on the housing waiting list, with lettings for just 2.5% of them in 2018-19. What hope can I give the other 97.5% that they will ever find a place to go? I would like to provide statistics on home ownership but, again, I will move on to some of the other data in my speech.

The statistics and the stories that I have detailed this afternoon should provide thoroughly fertile ground for the British house building industry to get on and build, but its record does not match the potential. Here is the reality: our country’s housing target is 300,000 new homes a year—a figure that has not been reached, as we have already identified, since 1969, when councils and housing associations were building new homes. England is now on course for the worst decade for house building since the second world war.

I would like to look specifically at the performance of the leading house building companies in our country. To the best of my understanding, the figures are all correct as of June. In the last financial year, just 86,685 homes were completed by the 10 FTSE 350 house building companies, despite an extraordinary collective pre-tax profit of more than £5.37 billion. That is a mind-boggling figure, which is better understood when broken down.

Let us start with the four FTSE 100 housing companies: Barratt, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley. In the most recent financial year, Barratt completed just 17,579 homes—slightly more than Persimmon, which finished 16,449 homes, with profits of £1.1 billion, of which half was down to public subsidy through the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. Taylor Wimpey came third with 15,275 homes completed but, in fourth place, despite an astonishing pre-tax profit of £934.9 million, is Berkeley homes, which completed a pitiful 3,894 homes. Together, those four companies collected a pre-tax profit of an unimaginable £3.68 billion, despite completing just 53,198 homes—less than 18% of the Government’s house building target.

What went wrong? Did they perhaps just not have the land to build the houses? Those four companies are sitting on a land bank of more than 300,000 plots between them. If we add in the rest of the FTSE 350 house building companies—Bellway, Bovis, Countryside, Crest Nicholson, Galliford and Redrow—the collective land bank is a staggering 470,068 plots, yet they completed 86,685 homes between them.

Foreign Affairs Committee

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Joan Ryan

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)]

I rise to speak against the motion, in the main on behalf of the Independent Group of MPs, but I also associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I want to expand a little bit on what was said by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who has moved the motion on behalf of the Selection Committee, and I am clear in my own mind that he did not initiate this motion at the Selection Committee.

We are told by the Library that, at the start of each Parliament, places are allocated to the political parties on departmental Select Committees on the basis of their strength in the House of Commons. There is no Standing Order that governs this process, or which requires that places on Committees be kept in exact proportion to the House at large. That is why there has not been a change every time a Member has been suspended from their Whip, for example, and the Selection Committee is not compelled to act. However, through mutual agreement, Select Committees are appointed in rough proportion to the House. Unlike with General Committees, such as Public Bill or Delegated Legislation Committees, there is no formula that sets out the exact number required.

That advice makes us look behind what is going on here and see that there does appear to be a personal element to this, because the only names being removed are those of Members who declared their independence just a few weeks ago. We are very clear who is initiating this. Suffice it to say—you may want to give your advice on this, Mr Deputy Speaker—I am told that, in something like 35 years, some very experienced Opposition Back Benchers have not known being instructed by their Whip to vote for such a motion of the House. However, they have been told to do so today, as I understand it, on this motion, which is the business of the House. I think that tells us where this is coming from.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

For the information of the House, I would like to read out the text I have received from my Whips: “The motion to change the membership of Select Committees Foreign Affairs will be starting shortly. We remain on a three line whip. We expect a Division in the next hour.”

[Joan Ryan]

Assuming the Labour Whips represent the Leader of the Opposition and are the vanguard for delivering his will, that gives ample evidence that there is something very personal going on here. May I at some point seek your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, on whipping business of the House in this way? Is that acceptable? It is certainly very unusual, as we know.

I think this is a mean-minded parliamentary manoeuvre by Labour. It is attempting to remove, from one of the most important Select Committees of the House of Commons, a man who has served on it for almost two decades, including as its respected Chair. Select Committees are one of the most important parts of Parliament, and they are integral to the way in which MPs scrutinise the work of the Government. They have always operated in a cross-party way and they are at their best when they are consensual. After members of Select Committees are elected to them by their colleagues, they are not ciphers for political parties; they are representatives of their constituents, performing an important function.

Traditionally, members of Select Committees, and especially their Chairs, are treated with respect by political parties and by this House. This motion is utterly disrespectful. That is true for both Members who are the subject of the motion, but let me talk for a moment about my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), because it is especially true for him. He has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee since 1992, when he was appointed under the then Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. He was reappointed to that Committee by John Smith, by Tony Blair, by Gordon Brown, by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and by the current Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, who apparently had faith in him then, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

In total, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South has served for 19 years on the Committee, with five years as Chair from 2005 to 2010. During his tenure as Chair, the Committee published reports on Afghanistan, Pakistan, the implications of cuts to the BBC World Service and to foreign language capability in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, relations with Turkey, the Arab spring, human rights, extraordinary rendition, the future of the EU and relations with the United States. And that is not all: in his time as Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend took evidence from the Dalai Lama, despite Chinese protests, visited Guantanamo Bay, and exposed corruption and intimidation that led to the UK Government suspending relations with the Turks and Caicos Government, and it was only after the Committee criticised the Syrian Government that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office included Syria as a human rights country of concern. My hon. Friend has also been a convenor and for 10 years a member of the quadripartite Committees on Arms Export Controls.

With my hon. Friend in the Chair, the Foreign Affairs Committee always operated as it should, on a cross-party and consensual basis, not least thanks to his strong belief that the role of Select Committees is to hold Government to account and that Committee members are not there as delegates of their parties. He has served actively and constructively under Conservative Chairs, including Richard Ottaway, the former Member for Croydon South, and the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the current Chair, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat).

By virtue of his position, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South has been a representative of our Parliament at home, welcoming foreign delegations, and abroad, liaising with diplomats and Governments. To this day, he continues to be active in the Committee, playing a role in amending draft reports and regularly meeting international visitors on behalf of the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I will not detain the House for long, but I felt the need to stand up and be counted on both the specific and the general contents of this debate.

I oppose the removal of my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for Dudley North (Ian Austin) from the membership of the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is not because I oppose my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) or my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) being members of that Committee in future. I am sure that they will, in future, make fine members of the Foreign Affairs Committee should they wish to stand for it. This, for me, is about people being removed because they have held their heads up and said that the membership of the party in which they entered this House no longer represents their values and their views. Because I know both those Members, I know how hard and how difficult that was, and I commend them for their bravery. Over the past almost 22 years of my membership of this House, I have had little interest in the rules of the House, of debate, or of memberships of Select Committees—for me, what matters is what I do in my constituency and how I represent my constituents. I appreciate that people have different views of how they do the job. Surely that is the point, and the strength, of our system.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) may like to look at evidence from the House of Commons Library about how members of Select Committees are dealt with if they leave their party and transfer to another. On 2 March 1981, Robert Maclennan defected from Labour to the Social Democratic party. He was a member of the Public Accounts Committee at the time. He remained a member until the end of the Parliament. On 2 March 1981, John Cartwright defected from Labour to the SDP. He was a member of the Defence Committee at the time. He did not leave the Committee until 31 March 1982—a year later. On 7 October 1981, Tom McNally defected from Labour to the SDP. He was a member of the Defence Committee at the time. He remained a member until the end of the Parliament. On 7 October 1981, James Dunn defected from Labour to the SDP. He was also a member of the Defence Committee. He did not leave it until December 1982, over a year later, and even then he was replaced by an SDP Member.

On 2 December 1981, Ronald Brown defected from Labour to the SDP. He was the Chair of the Committee of Selection at the time and remained so until the end of the Parliament. On 18 December 1999, Shaun Woodward defected from the Conservatives to Labour. He was and remained a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. In 2005, Paul Marsden returned to Labour, having previously defected to the Liberal Democrats. He was and remained a member of the Transport Committee. I would therefore suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the experience in this House, even in the days when Whips had more control over who was on Select Committees, suggests that people could remain.

We all know that this measure is a vindictive one. It shames our Whips—I say that as somebody who has been a Government Whip—to be involved in this manoeuvre today. There is no suggestion that either my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South or my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North have not done their job well, been regular attenders or argued their point of view. They are not being removed for any disciplinary issue or for not being up to the mark. They are being removed because of their politics—because my party has become intolerant and unwilling to listen to other voices.

[Joan Ryan]

As evidence to support what my hon. Friend is saying in the most powerful way, members of the Independent Group who left the Labour party just a couple of weeks ago and who sit in the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe have all been threatened with removal by the actions of our Whips. The Whips cannot remove all of them, because they have a term of office, but that more than demonstrates the fact that this is, exactly as she says, about intolerance.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who is my friend in this place in the true meaning of the word. One of the most shocking things is that attempts were going to be made to remove my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) from the Health and Social Care Committee while she was on maternity leave. Those were attempts by the Labour party —the Labour party of Barbara Castle, of Mo Mowlam and of the late, great Tessa Jowell. The party that introduced statutory maternity leave was considering removing a Member from a Committee while she was on maternity leave. Is that not an indication of how much we have lost our values and sense of who we are?

Whether it is the Conservative party having to remove people because of Islamophobia or the Labour party having to remove people because of antisemitism, we all have to stand up in our parties to extremism and totalitarianism. I say that with regret, but I hope that Government Members do not believe that I do not mean them too—I do. They need to watch their constituencies and their membership. If we move away from where the quiet, moderate majority lie, they will become disaffected with our politics.

Membership of the Foreign Affairs Committee is a small, arcane matter for this House, but it exemplifies the problems that all parties are experiencing. However uncomfortable it is and whether or not it means that some people on our side of the House will choose not to speak to us after this debate, we have to stand up, because for evil to triumph, it only needs the majority of us to say nothing.

Cancer Treatment

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Joan Ryan

Thursday 19th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I cannot compete with some of the wonderful speeches that have been made today. My research would be perfunctory by comparison with some of the things that Members of the House have told us. I will leave this debate knowing so much more about brain cancer than I did when I arrived.

My purpose in speaking is simply to say to Tessa: we are with you. You know, Mr Speaker, that politics is a rough old trade, and sometimes you fall out with people—people you think the most of. I just wanted to be here to say to Tessa that whatever the arguments or disagreements, it counts for nothing by comparison with my admiration and my determination to do anything I can to support her in her campaign.

[Joan Ryan]

Let me grab this opportunity to say something, because I am sure that Tessa can see that she has got these three women here—me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), and my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). We entered this House in 1997 and joined Tessa Jowell on the Government Benches, and we served with her through three terms of the Labour Government. She gave us such fantastic support. I just wanted to leave a rounded picture of Tessa in this very serious debate. I bet she is really a little bit embarrassed at all the praise, but she deserves it. She is such a strong supporter of women coming into this place and getting them through the process to get here. She also has a very ready but very kind wit that we witnessed much of when she was at the Dispatch Box.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my right hon. Friend—my very best right hon. Friend in this House—and Members can see so many reasons why that is.

Sometimes we fall out, and perhaps we fall out harder on our own side than we do with parties on the other side. Tessa is extraordinary in her example, as are so many people, particularly in the NHS. At 7 o’clock tonight, I will be holding a reception in the Jubilee Room of the House of Commons for the winter heroes from Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust to say thanks to them. If anybody wishes to join us, there will be a glass of wine and a packet of crisps for them. Thanks to the NHS, thank you to Tessa, and thanks to everybody for their brilliant speeches today.

Child Poverty: London

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Joan Ryan

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I have a slightly different and perhaps more controversial view of redevelopments. I congratulate councils that try to deal with problems in difficult circumstances and come up with solutions that would not always be their first choice. In life, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, the way to make friends is to do nothing. Sometimes doing something makes you more enemies. I congratulate all the councils of whatever persuasion that are trying to do their best in really difficult circumstances.

A mechanism should be introduced so that any public sector site up for disposal has to be considered for the construction of social or mixed housing, including a substantial proportion that is social. Currently, public bodies tend to sell sites to raise money, not to provide homes. They often hide behind the requirement to obtain best value. For me and many Members here today, best value is the provision of homes for homeless or overcrowded families. How about building on the 19,334 hectares of unbuilt greenbelt land within a 10-minute walk of a London train station? It is not traditional greenbelt land. At no environmental cost, it is enough space for almost 1 million new homes in our capital.

It is not only extortionate housing costs that London faces, but living costs higher than anywhere else in England. In fact, nearly 40% of Londoners have an income below the amount needed to achieve a basic decent standard of living, with children the most likely to live below minimum income standards.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on all the work that she has done on poverty and housing in London and nationally. Does she agree that the distinction between social and affordable housing is crucial to addressing the problem of housing for those living in poverty? In the previous Budget there was no mention whatever of social housing. Affordable housing in London is very often not affordable. If the Government are to do anything about these issues, they need to grasp this distinction, which they either do not understand or deliberately do not want to address.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I am sure that as politicians we often live by our word, and I am extremely offended by the way we now use the word “affordable”. In housing terms, “affordable” means 80% of market rent. I suspect many of us here today could not manage to pay an affordable rent, let alone somebody on a low or median income in the capital. I would be grateful to find a way to ban the word “affordable” in this context.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I wish to say this tactfully because I like the right hon. Gentleman a great deal. The problem and the definition of affordability at 80% market value goes back to the 2010 coalition Government. I do not wish to be mean; I simply wish to put that on the record.

[Joan Ryan]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. I do not think it is a question of being mean. It is a question of holding to account, and there simply is not enough holding to account of either the previous coalition Government and their Cabinet members or the current Government. If there was more holding to account, we would not be facing the dire circumstances in which many thousands of children are paying the price for those two Governments not being accountable and not addressing the issues that matter.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention.

Across the capital, wages have not kept up with the cost of living and in most parts of London a full-time minimum wage job barely covers the rent. While the cost of living continues to soar, state support for low-income families continues to fall in real terms. The extraordinary cost of living has left one in 10 London families—I could barely believe that figure—to rely on a food bank, with three-day emergency food supplies provided to 169,896 people in London since April 2016.