Fuel Poverty in Manchester Gorton
Afzal Khan Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
No one can deny that we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Many of our constituents will be looking in despair at their energy bills. Some of them will, maybe for the first time, be worrying about how to make ends meet, and having to make a decision that it is unlikely any of us in this House will have to make—choosing between heating and eating.
A few weeks ago, one constituent in Abbey Hey told me:
“I have no idea how I will manage these next few months. I will only put on the heating in one room if the temperature goes below zero. I only heat my kettle twice per day and cook hot food only three times per week to save electricity.”
It is outrageous and shameful that here, in one of the richest countries in the world, anyone is forced to limit the number of times they can cook per week because they cannot afford the energy used, but this is not unusual.
Staff at Fallowfield & Withington food bank tell me people are requesting meals and ingredients that cook fast as they cannot afford to keep their cooker on for more than a few minutes. I would like to take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to Fallowfield & Withington food bank and all the other food banks working in my constituency for all their incredible work to support my constituents. I will be following closely their new collaboration with the green doctors to support residents saving on energy bills by becoming more energy efficient.
Another constituent, a lone parent with three children in Fallowfield who is working two jobs to make ends meet, wrote to me desperate for help. She told me she has no idea how she and her children can make it through the winter warm and fed. Numerous churches, schools and community centres have written to me expressing the impact of energy bills that are four to five times higher than they were last winter. Many of these places—including Manley Park Methodist church, Longsight Makki Masjid mosque and the Levenshulme Inspire centre, as well as our fantastic Manchester City Council libraries—want to remain open as warm hubs for those who cannot afford heating at home, but growing energy bills alongside inflation make this so much harder for these organisations. I am grateful to these places for remaining open for those most vulnerable in our society, and I am grateful for our food banks, their staff and volunteers.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way, and I would just like to echo his thanks for the work of Fallowfield & Withington food bank, which does a fantastic job in my constituency as well. We obviously need to tackle energy prices and bills now, but does he agree with me that the long-term strategy needs to be a massive programme of retrofitting houses to make them insulated for the future, which will not only reduce bills for the future, but tackle the climate crisis?
Afzal Khan
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree with him, and I will be touching on that subject as well.
No one should ever be put in such a situation. The cost of living crisis makes this debate feel timely, but it would be wrong to say that fuel poverty is new. The most recent available official statistics are from 2020, before the current cost of living crisis. They indicate that 10,364 households in my constituency were in fuel poverty—that is 24%—which was the sixth highest proportion in England and Wales, and the highest in the north-west. In some parts of my constituency, notably Fallowfield, Rusholme and Longsight, the picture is even bleaker, with nearly 40% of households affected in some areas.
I am not sure whether levelling up is still Government policy, but the statistics show significant regional inequality. The south-east has just under half the proportion of houses in poverty than the north-west—I note that the Surrey constituency of this week’s Chancellor has only 7% of households in fuel poverty, which is less than a third of the number in my constituency. There is also a racial disparity: the proportion of ethnic minority households in fuel poverty is 1.5 times that of their counterparts who identify as white. Purely anecdotally, it is notable that cities and towns such as Manchester, Bradford, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Birmingham, which have high proportions of people of south Asian heritage, are disproportionately represented in the top 50% of households in fuel poverty.
It is important to recognise that fuel poverty is more than being chilly. It is not a case of just putting on another jumper, and it has been shown that cold homes worsen respiratory conditions, cardiovascular disease, poor mental health and dementia. A review by the Institute of Health Equity led by Sir Michael Marmot indicated that diseases linked to cold and damp cost the national health service £6.9 million a day. Fuel poverty has a disproportionate impact on children. In addition to impacting on their health, according to a report from the Childhood Trust fuel poverty has a number of additional indirect impacts, such as lower rates of educational attainment, and it places strain on young people’s mental health.
Although low pay, insufficient welfare support or unemployment are factors in fuel poverty, as are global energy prices, there are structural reasons why people from less affluent neighbourhoods are more at risk of falling into fuel poverty. For example, many of my constituents, who are generally in private rented accommodation, are forced to use prepayment meters for electricity and gas. Households with prepayment meters pay what Fair By Design calls a “poverty premium”. They are forced to pay suppliers’ standard rates without being able to enter fixed-rate contracts, and unlike many others, they were immediately affected by hikes in retail energy prices. They are subject to higher standing charges that apply even if no energy is used, and they are unable to access discounts for direct debit payments or paperless billing. That leads to households simply cutting themselves off. If customers with traditional meters do not pay their bill, their energy company might be able to offer them support. If those on a prepayment meter do not have enough money, they simply do not top up, yet they still rack up more debt because of the standing charges. All that adds up, and we know that people with prepayment electricity meters are three times more likely to be in fuel poverty than those with a traditional meter.
In my constituency, Edwardian terraces are the most common form of housing. Now more than a century old, they were built long before modern energy efficient building techniques and insulation. Many residents cannot afford to improve the energy efficiency of their home, or they live in privately rented accommodation and are therefore at the mercy of a landlord. To address fuel poverty we must acknowledge the need for retrofitting—my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) made that point earlier. Retrofitting would address not only cold homes but the UK’s carbon emissions, because 23% of all emissions come from home heating and powering. The least energy efficient houses pay over £900 per year more on their bills.
As the Minister will know, the Government previously ran the green homes grant voucher scheme which—let us face it—was a failure. It completed work on only 7% of the projected targets, and only 224 energy efficiency measures were installed in my constituency.
The average person cannot do this on their own. The estimated cost of a full-property retrofit is £25,000 to £30,000, which would be impossible for most people to pay, let alone those struggling to pay their energy bills. That is why the Government must create a scheme to get homes insulated and retrofitted. It must be a scheme that works, creates green jobs and helps working-class families to heat their homes.
We should acknowledge the work by organisations such as People Powered Retrofit which are helping to tackle the skills gap across the construction sector by offering “retrofit fundamental” courses. Such courses provide the background knowledge needed to begin green construction.
There are great local projects happening in Manchester and across the country. I draw the House’s attention to the work of the Carbon Co-op and its Levenshulme area-based retrofit scheme. The scheme shows the savings from and benefits of a street-by-street approach to home retrofits and how retrofit can be made a possibility for homeowners who may never have had the opportunity otherwise.
Jeff Smith
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. May I add to his comments the example of the Arrowfield Road estate in Chorlton in my constituency, where Southway Housing is, alongside a new heat pumps programme, retrofitting the houses on the estate? That will make a significant difference to the bills and warmth for those houses.
Afzal Khan
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. The more of those schemes, the better.
As we all know, net zero by 2050 is a guideline, but we do not have until 2050 to make serious changes to our emissions. We are already seeing the detrimental effects of climate change. Just recently, we saw devastating floods in Pakistan, where an area the size of the UK was under water and overnight 33 million people became refugees in their own country. Scientists have said that the impact was worse due to climate change. That is why we must treat energy issues as environmental issues. If the whole of the UK was powered by renewables, solar would use only 2.1% of land, which is roughly the same amount currently used by golf courses. Some might say that would be a good swap.
Fuel poverty is an issue of dignity. Households deserve to eat and feel warm this winter and every winter. No one should be made to spend hours on a bus to stay warm or skip meals because they cannot afford the energy that they would use, and no child should go to bed cold.
Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
We have just cut VAT on many of those products. I have already visited my hon. Friend in his constituency, and I am happy to have further discussions about what more we can do to drive the take-up of these important technologies.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
In January 2021, we announced a robust package of measures to help to ensure that no UK organisations are complicit in the human rights violations being perpetrated in Xinjiang. We have also supplied detailed guidance to UK businesses, and will continue to engage with them.
Afzal Khan
I have lost count of the number of times I have urged the Government to take stronger, more robust action against China’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was spot on when he said that UK organisations must immediately sever their commercial ties with Russia to ensure that public money is not funding Putin’s war machine. In the light of a genocide that is happening on our watch, is it not high time that the Government applied the same rules and ensured that public organisations sever their contracts with Xinjiang? Will they also support amendments to the Health and Care Bill to prevent the NHS from being complicit in forced Uyghur labour?
Paul Scully
Evidence of the scale and severity of the human rights situation in Xinjiang paints a harrowing picture. The British Government will not stand for forced labour, wherever it takes place. We require businesses to report on how they are tackling modern slavery and forced labour in their operations and supply chains, and we plan to extend that to certain public bodies and to introduce financial penalties for organisations which do not comply. That will require legislative change, and legislation will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
Gas and Electricity Costs
Afzal Khan Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by congratulating my dear hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on bringing forward this important debate. I also commend the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who this week has had the backbone to stand up for her constituents on the cost of living crisis, while the Prime Minister seems to have inadvertently misled himself as to whether or not he attended a party. That does rather stick in the throat and perhaps shows the priorities of this Government.
This issue really matters because it matters to millions. Like many, I have received emails from concerned constituents. One, Margaret, is desperately concerned. Some 3,000 people in Oxford West and Abingdon are already classed as being in fuel poverty, and she is concerned about how many more are going to succumb. She is right to be. Jessica, who lives literally 10 minutes down the road from Margaret, emailed me on the same day. She is already classed as being in fuel poverty. She is considered vulnerable by her energy supplier. She currently pays £85 a month for her energy and has been told that that is going to increase to £200 a month—she says that there is no way she can afford those kinds of prices. Dave, who is on £10 an hour, contacted me with a similar story and Jane, who is a pensioner, told me that when she looks at what she will have to pay, she knows that she simply does not have the money. I ask the Minister: what are these people meant to do?
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I also welcome this debate and thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing it. My constituency of Manchester, Gorton has long faced a fuel poverty crisis. In 2019, almost a quarter of families there were in fuel poverty; given current concerns about sky-rocketing fuel bills, the number will now undoubtedly be substantially higher. Does the hon. Member agree that this issue predates today’s cost of living crisis and that this Government have overseen a dramatic rise in fuel poverty without taking any of the action necessary to mitigate it?
Layla Moran
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I absolutely agree. I am also deeply concerned that the problem will get worse over the next few weeks. We have only to read the emails or listen to the stories to be moved by them. Martin Lewis, who was mentioned earlier, dedicated an entire episode of his “Martin Lewis Money Show Live” to energy prices the other day. Afterwards, he tweeted that he was “near tears” after being unable to help a single mother, who had recently lost her partner, to afford her energy bills. He called on the Government to do more, and I agree with Martin.
The Minister will have heard many good suggestions today. My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross mentioned cutting VAT on bills, a social tariff and an increase in the winter fuel allowance. Age UK has suggested a £50 one-off payment to those eligible for the cold weather payment and a doubling of household support. All those could work, and we have to ask the question: when are they going to come in? People are already hurting now.
There is also a secondary question, and a correct one: who is going to pay for it? Even more galling than all I have discussed is that after hearing all these stories of hardship and heartache, Gazprom announced a dividend of £179 million. Energy giants such as Gazprom are profiteering from the misfortunes of others. Frankly, the Government are complicit because they are letting them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)
We have been very clear that employers threatening to fire and rehire as a negotiating tactic is completely unacceptable. As we have been concerned by such reports, we engaged ACAS to conduct a fact-finding exercise as to how fire and rehire has been used. It spoke to a wide range of stakeholders, including businesses and employee representatives. We are now considering these findings.
Amanda Solloway
As I previously stated, we find that fire and rehire is just not acceptable. In fact, the Department engaged ACAS to hold discussions in order to generate the evidence that we need. We therefore need to make sure that we consider all this. There is, of course, a degree of confidentiality that we need to bear in mind as well. ACAS officials shared their findings with BEIS officials in February, as the hon. Lady rightly said. We are giving this full consideration and will communicate our next steps in due course.
Afzal Khan [V]
Fire and rehire is utterly immoral. Members across the House have received many emails from desperate constituents who are being subjected to the disgraceful tactic. From British Airways and British Gas to Go North West, workers across the country have been treated with contempt. One of my constituents who was served with a section 188 notice said to me, “We want changes to be made with us, not to us.” Seeing as this Government promised to protect and enhance workers’ rights when we left the EU, will the Minister confirm how many employers in receipt of coronavirus job retention scheme payments have adopted fire and rehire tactics, and will she now commit to outlawing this practice once and for all?
Amanda Solloway
Just to reiterate, we have been holding clear consultations with a group of stakeholders and ACAS has been conducting this for us. We will be republishing the report in due course.
Employment Rights: Government Plans
Afzal Khan Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) [V]
May I first declare that I am a member of Unite and the GMB trade union? Workers in Manchester and up and down the country are currently preoccupied with negotiating the coronavirus pandemic, trying to stay safe and well, caring for their children, fulfilling their working responsibilities and keeping businesses afloat while the Government are debating how best to rip up hard-won workers’ rights in post-Brexit Britain. The Minister says that no workers’ rights will be reduced, so can he confirm that the Government will not abandon the cap that prevents people from working more than 48 hours a week, and that they will not take any steps to undermine the entitlement to paid holidays or rest breaks at work?
Years of repeated assurances from the Government about their intention to protect and even strengthen workers’ rights after Brexit have now been revealed to be utterly meaningless. Many of the workers who will be affected by these changes are the same key workers that the Minister was so keen to clap for in the summer. Working people in my constituency have been to hell and back over the past year. They have made immense sacrifices and put themselves and their families at risk and yet this Government think that they have too many rights.
The motion also calls on the Government to end the abhorrent practice of fire and rehire, which has been used to threaten workers across the country, dismissing employers only to re-employ them on less favourable terms. This current environment means that working people are effectively paying for the economic impact of the covid-19 crisis. In Manchester, GoNorthWest is pushing ahead with its threat to fire and rehire bus drivers on new contracts. This will result in a 10% reduction in the number of drivers employed, an increase in unpaid working hours, and drivers’ conditions slashed.
Meanwhile, thousands of British Gas workers are being threatened with fire and rehire by the parent company, Centrica. Unions, including Unite and GMB as well as others across the country, are fighting this threat of fire and rehire and I thank all of them for their commitment and determination to protect working people during this difficult time. The Government could step in and stop this disgusting practice today, but instead they have chosen to tear up these rights. Weakening workers’ rights in the midst of a global pandemic and with the UK suffering the worst recession of any major economy is deeply unfair and reveals much about this Government’s priorities.
Office for Students: Appointment
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Afzal Khan
Toby labelled Islam a “deeply misogynistic religion,” and he referred to the choice of some Muslim women to adopt the hijab as forced by male oppression. At a time when many more young British Muslim women are entering higher education, do the Government consider it appropriate to appoint such a person to the Office for Students? What is the likelihood that Toby Young will command the respect of Muslim women in higher education who wear the hijab?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) looked almost inconsolable not to be called. It is true that I was looking in her direction at an earlier stage and might very well do so again, but it would be a pity to squander her at too early a stage of our proceeding. I am saving her up.
Oral Answers to Questions
Afzal Khan Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Margot James
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The pension scheme, if left unchanged, would result in virtual bankruptcy for Royal Mail. It would require an injection of £1.3 billion annually, against profitability of approximately £700 million. I think he can do the maths himself.
Afzal Khan
Royal Mail is paying out over £200 million in dividends every year to private shareholders. Last year, the chief executive saw her pay increase by 23%. How can the Government stand by a model of ownership that sees postal workers’ pay being frozen and their pensions left unaffordable?
Margot James
I understand that Royal Mail’s offer of a pay increase to its workforce is far from frozen. I do not propose to comment much further, however, other than to say that the figures the hon. Gentleman refers to are misleading, because they go way beyond the chief executive’s base salary and include performance-related benefits, which are in line with a position of that stature.
Tuition Fees
Afzal Khan Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to give my maiden speech in this important debate on education fees. Many young people are facing this increased burden more often.
It is with great pride that I rise to speak representing a constituency in my home city of Manchester. In May, the city I love was the victim of a terrible attack—22 adults and children were killed and more than 100 people were injured attending a concert at Manchester Arena. It was an act of pure evil. Faced with this tragedy, the people of Manchester responded in the only way they know: with solidarity, with compassion, and with the determination that those who seek to endanger our way of life will not succeed.
When such events happen there is always a danger that some people will try to use them to divide us, and unfortunately we witnessed an increase in hate crimes in the wake of the attack, yet just a few weeks later the people of Manchester elected me—a Muslim—as the city’s first ever BME MP. I cannot think of a more powerful message to the terrorists and bigots that their attempts to divide us will never succeed.
I am humbled to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor, the late Sir Gerald Kaufman. Sir Gerald was a legend in this place and he will be missed by Members on all sides. He brought colour to proceedings here—sometimes literally through his keen sense of style, and at other times through his sharp wit. He served in this House for almost 47 years, until he passed away earlier this year. He served in many roles: as an Environment Minister, a senior shadow Cabinet member, Chair of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and later Father of the House. But above all, Sir Gerald was a tireless champion for his constituents and in return he was loved by them. I worked with him for 20 years on issues such as peace in south Asia and the middle east and standing up for oppressed people in general—work that I will try to continue in this House. I was always grateful for his support, advice and, above all, his friendship. I know he will be a hard act to follow, and although I cannot promise to match his dress sense I will try my best to at least fill his shoes. Most of all, I will never forget the people of Manchester Gorton, who have given me the privilege of representing them here.
The Gorton constituency is a wonderfully diverse and vibrant place, taking in Fallowfield, Gorton, Levenshulme, Longsight, Rusholme and Whalley Range. It has thriving local businesses, such as Belle Vue speedway and dog track; wonderful green spaces such as Platt Fields, Debdale, Alexandra and Crowcroft parks; and, of course, the famous curry mile. It is also a spiritual place, home to a huge number of places of worship, with beautiful historic buildings such as Gorton monastery and Victoria Park mosque, the first mosque in Manchester.
But it is not without its challenges: seven years of austerity have hit my constituents hard; more than one in three children live in poverty, the average wage is £100 less than the national average; £300 million has been cut from Manchester City Council’s budget; and there are 2,000 fewer police on our streets.
During my election campaign, I promised I would always put Manchester, Gorton first; that is exactly what I intend to do during my time in this place. Manchester is a thriving, world-class city and a great place to live. The people in my constituency are decent and hard-working. They play by the rules and do the right thing, but they have not always felt the benefits of our city’s success and they have not had a fair deal from this Government. So I will stand against the cuts and further austerity, and I will fight for the extra investment in housing, schools, NHS and local businesses that Manchester, Gorton needs and deserves.
My own journey to this place has not been a typical one. I was born in Pakistan and came to the UK when I was adopted out of poverty as a child. Since then Manchester has been my home for nearly 40 years. I often tell people that although I was born in Pakistan, I was made in Manchester. I left school with no qualifications and, at 16, went straight into work as a labourer in a cotton mill. Later I became a bus driver and then a police officer, one of Manchester’s very few BME officers in the 1980s. That caught up with me during my election campaign when a voter approached me and said he would not vote for me. Like any candidate, I was a little hurt and wanted to know why. He said, “Twenty years ago, you arrested me.” Even after a brief chat, I was not able to change his mind.
I always felt that I had missed out on an education. I was supporting my wife and young children, but I also went to night school, got my O-levels, A-levels and eventually a law degree. I became a solicitor because I wanted to defend those most in need. I worked my way up to become a partner at my own law firm in Gorton. Over the past 17 years, I have been a Manchester councillor and Lord Mayor, and latterly an MEP.
I entered politics because I believe in the power of social justice to transform lives, to bring hope and to deliver opportunity. I believe in a world in which someone’s prospects should be determined by the content of their character and not by their circumstances at birth or the colour of their skin. Although progress has been made, it is clear from the recent increase in inequality that more is still to be done.
As a father, I can see society’s unfairness clearly when I look at my children—I have three, two daughters and a son. I see them equally, but society does not. It is more than 45 years since the Equal Pay Act 1970, but women still earn less than men. I do not want to have to wait for another 45 years for my great-great-granddaughter to be treated equally.
In the House, I will always be a champion of equality; I will stand against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all other forms of discrimination. I look forward to the upcoming release of the race audit so that we can better ensure that our public services do not fail the most vulnerable in our society. I will no doubt touch more on such issues in future debate. I also hope to bring my experience from my time in the European Parliament to bear on the important discussions to come on Brexit.
For now, I thank the House for indulging me while I made my maiden speech. I look forward to making the voice of Manchester, Gorton heard loud and clear during my time in this House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I call Mike Hill to make his maiden speech.