Building Safety and Social Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I agree with the Secretary of State that we should have an annual Grenfell debate. It would be better to have it on, or as near as possible to, the anniversary date; it is somewhat disrespectful that we have waited nearly a month to have it this year. I am sure that the silent walks will continue. I have tried to attend them, at least on the anniversary, and I have noticed how, over the six years, the mood has changed from grief to frustration about the lack of progress from all sides—whether the Government or the inquiry—and now to real anger. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), was also there, and I am sure that he agrees on that point. I therefore do not recognise much of what the Secretary of State said about what is happening.

What seems to be happening is that, every year, there are more complex issues and while there has been some degree of resolution, more questions are raised and there are more problems to resolve about the causes and spread of fires. That, to a large extent, is to do with cladding, and not just ACM cladding. There are many other reasons why fire spreads through high rise buildings in particular. The families want to see a complete ban on ACM cladding on all buildings not only in this country but internationally. I hope that the Government will campaign for that to happen, because it is not only in the UK that tragic fires such as Grenfell have happened.

There are huge issues with the design of new buildings. That is evolving all the time, as we see in the two-staircase issue, as well as in remediation. It is to some extent easy to set new building standards for new buildings—well, it can be done—but we are lagging behind substantially in doing remedial work on existing buildings. Much of this comes down to finance. That is not just for individual leaseholders, who in certain circumstances will still have to pay out large sums of money, or where money is not forthcoming up front; it is also for social tenants, because social landlords are not getting the same degree of financial support as leaseholders, and social landlords have competing priorities as to what they spend their money on. Although I would like to, I will not take the time to deal with all those issues. I will deal with just three issues in detail.

First, there is the causes of fires. The cause of the Grenfell fire was what I am holding in my hand: a crimp, which is a small piece of wiring that costs a few pence. As I am sure people will guess, I am not an expert in these matters, so I am grateful to Richard Farthing, chairman of the Hammersmith Society, who has a background in electrical and electronic manufacturing. He sent me the expert report on the cause of the Grenfell fire. I will not go through all the technical details, but its short conclusion is:

“A probable cause of the fire is a poor crimp connection…an overheated wire connector within the compressor relay compartment for the fridge freezer (Hotpoint Model FF175BP) from Flat 16.”

It is as simple as that: a little component, costing a matter of pennies, which was either not fitted properly or not manufactured properly, caused a fire that led to the deaths of 72 people. Of course, there were many other issues of causation in Grenfell and elsewhere, but that draws attention to the lack of quality control in manufacturing processes.

The second issue on cause, which I encounter every month—not a month goes by when I do not hear about this, usually in a social housing block of flats in my constituency—is fires caused by lithium batteries. I say fires, but they are usually explosions. This is an extraordinary problem that the London Fire Brigade and, I am sure, fire brigades across the country are very much aware of.

A couple of weeks ago, three people were taken to hospital after a fire broke out in a flat in West Kensington due to a converted e-bike catching fire. What happens is that people buy a bike and want to convert it into an e-bike, so they buy a kit and a battery. Many of these things are bought second hand and are cheap, with faults in manufacture, so they overheat and literally explode. Anyone who does not believe me should look at the London Fire Brigade’s Twitter feed, where they will see explosions that completely engulf a room of a flat—sometimes the whole flat—within seconds. If compartmentalisation works—the fire is kept in that flat because of the construction of the doors and walls—and the occupants of the flat escape, there may be no serious injuries, but if that does not happen and the fire spreads, as it quite easily can, it is almost impossible to contain. That is about a lack of regulation. Why are we allowing such kits to be sold? Why are we allowing people to use them in high-rise buildings in that way? As I said, probably once a month I go and view the site of a fire caused by exactly that somewhere in my constituency, and it is only a matter of time before there are more fatalities. There have been fatalities through lithium batteries in that way.

The third issue on cause again comes from personal experience. The year before Grenfell, in a high-rise block of flats, Shepherd’s Court, on Shepherd’s Bush Green, a faulty tumble dryer caught fire and destroyed the flat. Hundreds of thousands of them were manufactured, mainly by a large company called Whirlpool under names such as Hotpoint and Indesit. They were cheaply made, cheap to buy and often sold second hand, and they are causing hundreds if not thousands of fires across the country. There is a lack of design prowess. Whether it is the crimp, quality control, the batteries, lack of regulation or lack of design, there is a crisis across the manufacturing and design sector.

I commend to the Secretary of State a newly published book by Professor Shane Ewen of Leeds Beckett University, “Before Grenfell: Fire, Safety and Deregulation in Twentieth-Century Britain”. It says:

“the Grenfell Tower fire was a disaster foretold—the culmination of successive decades of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional failure to learn from the lessons of past multiple-fatality fires.”

It is a very good read and I recommend it to the Secretary of State. It indicates that the crisis did not begin and certainly did not end with Grenfell, but has been going on a long time—the result of either deliberate Government policy or Government neglect to take care of the issues.

The second issue is design. As is often the case, I am grateful to the Royal Institute of British Architects, which has been pushing the issues of design and remedial work to high-rise buildings. Its particular ask is the trigger point for a second staircase. I think that people are familiar with the issue of having at least two staircases. Extraordinarily, hitherto, whereas non-residential buildings over 11 metres had to have a second staircase, a residential building can be as tall as you like. I know that because just overlooking my constituency in north Acton is a 50-plus-storey, newly constructed block that has one staircase in it. I am pleased to say that, due to the action of the Major of London, those seeking planning permission for blocks of flats over 30 metres are required to go back and put in a second staircase. A submission from RIBA, experts in this field, states that that should apply to any residential building over 18 metres. I would like the Government to adopt that.

When refurbishing, it may be difficult to put in a second staircase. There, the ask is that evacuation lifts, sprinklers and centrally addressable fire alarm systems be put in. Those do not have to be fire alarms that any resident can activate. In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, the “stay put” policy increasingly does not work. I understand why it was maintained, and it works in many cases, but it does not work if residents—completely understandably—fear for their lives and evacuate the building. If a decision is made to evacuate a building, there has to be a way of telling people in that building. Alarm systems that are controllable at least by the fire service are an important part of that equation. I cannot for the life of me think why we are not retrofitting sprinklers into high-rise buildings. They will stop 99% of fires. Many, many tragedies could be avoided if that happened.

My final point is the consequence. This debate is partly about social housing more generally, but I am not sure we have time to go into all aspects of that. I would like to address the crossover between fire safety and social housing providers, and the pressures on their resources. I was prompted to do so after reading an extraordinary interview that the Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), gave to Inside Housing a couple of days ago. It states:

“When asked what housing associations should prioritise without additional funding from government, and facing pressure to build, retrofit stock and meet building safety and historic disrepair costs, Ms Maclean replied: ‘It’s up to them.’”

That shows an absolute tin ear to the current pressures on social landlords. They want to develop new stock—again, completely contrary to what the Housing Minister said in that interview, the number of social rented homes that this Government have created is appalling low, standing at 7,644 last year. She said in the same interview:

“We’ve delivered more social rented homes in this government than under the last Labour government.”

These facts are easily discoverable: the current Government have built less than half the number built by the previous Labour Government.

That is only one aspect of the crisis in social housing. We have heard about damp, mould and disrepair, which need to be dealt with. Retrofitting needs to be dealt with—at a cost of about £23 billion—as well as building safety, which is what we are talking about today. Why are social housing landlords in such a plight? The answer is that they lost 60% of the social housing grant under the austerity Government. Due to rent controls and other matters, they are unable to come up with the resources they need. It is so bad that the smaller associations are going under or are having to merge into much larger associations.

The whole sector is being distorted by the financial pressures. The big landlord group G15 says that out of the £6 billion it will need to pay for remedial work due to fire safety measures, it will have to find £4 billion itself. That means that its tenants and leaseholders will have to find that money, because there is no other readily available source. Shepherds Bush Housing Group, a formerly well-respected local medium-sized housing association, has just had to be taken over by Guinness, a much larger association, because it simply cannot financially survive with all the pressures on it.

There is an existential threat to the social housing market. Previous Conservative Governments decided to move from council housing to housing associations in a big way. The Government will have to rethink where they are on those issues because it is no longer sustainable for housing associations to go forward with the financial support that they have.

When the Housing Minister winds up the debate, perhaps she will correct some of the errors that she made in that interview, and perhaps she will address a more listening ear to social landlords. They perform an extremely important function. I heard everything the Secretary of State said about that; the rhetoric is all well and good, but the actuality is that tenants are living in poor conditions and people are in temporary accommodation —we have the highest levels ever—because no decent social housing is being built and maintained in this country. That is what tenants and leaseholders are looking for, not warm words and empty rhetoric.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow another excellent speech dissecting what is wrong with this very faulty Bill. What a contrast it was with the Secretary of State’s opening speech, which was effectively a display of polemical and performative rhetoric, containing assertions that the Bill itself contradicts—and I think that was a shame.

We have benefited from some extremely good analysis, although I have not been able to read all the briefings on the Bill that we have received, not just from eminent KCs—it was, again, a shame to witness one of them being speared by the Secretary of State—but from some leading expert organisations in the field: from the Council for Arab-British Understanding, from our former colleague Richard Burden, from the Balfour Project, from many Jewish organisations including Yachad and the Union of Jewish Students, from many trade unions, and from environmental groups who believe they will be caught up in this as well. I do not think that is what the Secretary of State intended; I think he intended the Bill to appeal to a populist narrative; but I do not think that has happened. Perhaps it is the revenge of the experts whom he trashed so publicly years ago.

While it is good that the Bill is not being given a platform and is not acting in the way in which the Government would like it to act—the way in which all the other legislation they are introducing seems to act at the moment—that does not mean that it is not a dangerous Bill. It does not mean that there is no harm in its provisions: harm to civil society, the rule of law and freedom of speech, principles that the Secretary of State would doubtless say that he wishes to uphold.

I am pleased to say that the nature and number of the risks in the Bill have been helpfully set out by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), in the reasoned amendment, and I commend her for an excellent piece of drafting that really takes the Bill to pieces. I hope it will be approved tonight, because it would deny the Bill a Second Reading. If it does not succeed, some Members may vote against Second Reading, while others may abstain. I will abstain at that point, because I am reassured by the shadow Secretary of State’s assurance that if the Bill is not substantially reformed in the way in which the amendment suggests, it will be rejected. I hope it will be rejected by Members in all parts of the House on Third Reading, before it leaves this place.

In the very limited time available to me, I want to headline my concerns. The first question I want to ask is this: will the Bill help or hinder groups that are under threat around the world, such as the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, minorities in countries, or people in occupied territories—in Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Crimea, or the Palestinian territories? Will it help them in any way? The answer is, I think, a clear no. The Bill will run contrary to international law, it will run contrary to United Nations Security Council resolutions, particularly resolution 2334, and it will run contrary to the due diligence and fiduciary duties of local authorities and other public bodies and to legal principles. The FCDO guidance has already been quoted, and we have heard what Ministers have said as recently as last week in making distinctions between our policy towards Israel and our policy towards the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This point has been made a number of times already. By treating Israel exceptionally, the Bill does it no favours. By treating the Occupied Palestinian Territories alongside Israel, in a way that I have not seen before and that runs contrary to Government policy over many years under different Governments, the Bill makes a significant break and gives comfort to those who wish to see the Palestinian territories under permanent occupation, including many within the extremist Government in Israel.

Whatever the Secretary of State says, the Bill is a clear attack on free speech, and it is quite Kafkaesque in how it denies people the ability to speak out against what is happening. By inflicting not only strong powers of search and seizure but unlimited fines and penalties on those who speak out, this really is appalling legislation.

The Bill will have a chilling effect. We do not need to analyse the exact effect on every procurement and investment decision to see that pension funds are conservative bodies that will take decisions in ways that do not lay them open to this very woolly legislation. The consequence is that they will make bad decisions that go much further than the Secretary of State says he wishes to take the Bill.

Finally, I speak up, as many Members do, for the Palestinian people. How does this Bill benefit them? What effect will it have? On a day in which battlefield weapons are being used against civilian areas of the west bank for the first time in decades, we are talking about this scurrilous and performative Bill. The occupied territories have been occupied since 1967. Who will champion, as I wish this Government and this country would, their right to self-determination and their right to have their country recognised as a sovereign state, as we absolutely respect for the people of Israel? This Bill only hampers ambitions along those lines.

For those reasons, I ask Members on both sides of the House to vote for the reasoned amendment and not to allow the Bill to pass from this House in its current form.

Future of Social Housing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Not only could I have made this speech in any year since I was first elected in 2005, I have made this speech in every year since then, because sadly, since long before that, there has been a sustained decline of social housing. Effectively, half the council homes have been lost since the right to buy was introduced as part of Thatcher’s attack on social housing.

It has been a very political attack. There is a completely erroneous belief that social tenants vote Labour and that Conservative voters do not particularly like social housing to be built. Actually, a survey last week showed that 70% of Conservative voters do want more social housing to be built. Perhaps the Conservatives’ electorate is slightly ahead of them on housing policy, because we are now in a deep housing crisis.

The cut to the social housing grant that was introduced in about 2011 and the freeze on rents, which prevented housing associations and councils expanding their stock, has really hobbled providers. This has been a 40-year process of decline. We have lost about half our council homes. It has gone from being a mainstream to a residual form of housing. Until we can reverse that, we will never resolve the housing crisis.

In fact, the struggle now is much greater. Because the last major building programmes were back in the ’60s and ’70s, many of those estates and homes are now either reaching the end of their useful life or need substantial repair. That money is not there. We now have, for sound environmental reasons, a huge bill for retrofitting and we also have—which we discovered in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy—a huge bill for fire safety. Against that, there has been a decline in the amount of money available. This is a created crisis. I do not believe that this Government are going to even begin to try to solve it in the next year, but a future Labour Government will have to tackle it head-on.

There are many practical ways. Yes, of course more grants and investment are needed, but there are underspends in Homes England. There are ways of incentivising developers. There are ways of changing plans to require a minimum of 50% affordable housing, particularly in areas of extreme shortage. That is not impossible; in Vienna the requirement is 66%. We need development corporations and an interventionist market in areas of high need.

One of the good things about canvassing, which I first started about 40 years ago, is that we get to see how people live. Forty years ago, we were worried about conditions in the private rented sector. Now, in many cases the social housing sector is just as bad. Housing associations are running their stocks badly, partly because they do not have the means to do it. Unless and until we have a Government that are serious about housing people on low and medium incomes particularly, but also the population generally, as was the pledge from Governments of both parties in years gone by—until we get that sea change in attitude, we are not going to resolve this problem. To think it can be tinkered with through the sorts of means this Government are introducing now is a pure fantasy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens]

I noticed your strict chairing, Mr Paisley, but it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I thank my good friend, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), for opening the debate. He said a number of things that resonated with me; in fact, I got flashbacks when he talked about the challenges in the private rented sector. To this day, I remember the exchange I had with the landlord associations in the Work and Pensions Committee. They told me there was no such thing as “No DSS” and no adverts put out that said it, and then I managed to find one that said, “No DSS. Small dogs considered.” I am still waiting on an answer to the vital question in that exchange: did the small dog have to provide proof of income to get a property? Colleagues raising these types of debates, and the work of the Select Committee system, ensured that that particular policy was put in the bin.

The hon. Gentleman talked at great length about the very real need for social housing. I will touch on that, but not only is there a need for social housing; we need to acknowledge the support provided by social housing providers to their tenants on a daily basis. They must provide those wraparound services because of the effects of Government policy and a broken social security system, such as the challenges people face getting pension credit or disability benefit, or getting deductions at the very start of a universal credit claim, and all the other problems that social housing providers have to support their tenants with.

A number of colleagues have talked at length about the level of rents. With that comes food price inflation—currently at 18.2%. I thank the Linthouse housing association for providing the Linthouse larder, along with Good Food Scotland and Feeding Britain; Southside housing association for opening the Cardonald larder; and the Wheatley Group, which has opened the Threehills larder in Glasgow South West. These Glasgow housing associations have a vision of ensuring that there is affordable food for their tenants right across the great city of Glasgow. What is the benefit of that? It has been calculated that someone who uses an affordable larder saves £20 a week on their weekly shop. That goes a long way to help tenants to not only afford their rent, but buy other things, and it helps them with this Tory-made cost of living crisis.

In Scotland, the Scottish Government are leading the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK. They have delivered 115,558 affordable homes since 2007, over 81,000 of which were for social rents; that includes 20,520 council homes. The Scottish Government are working intensively with social landlords to develop an agreement on a below-inflation rent increase for the next financial year.

The Scottish Government are also committed to tackling disrepair in housing, which many colleagues have talked about, by driving a culture in which good maintenance is a high priority. Social landlords in Scotland are already required by law to meet the tolerable standard, which forms part of the Scottish housing quality standard. That requires housing to be substantially free from rising or penetrating damp. Compliance is monitored annually by the Scottish housing regulator.

One of the challenges we face in Glasgow South West is that housing provision for asylum seekers does not often meet the Scottish housing quality standard. The Home Office has argued that there is no need for asylum accommodation to meet the Scottish housing quality standard. I must say, I find that a disgrace, but I am sure Glasgow is not the only asylum dispersal area where we find that housing standards for those seeking sanctuary in the UK do not meet basic standards.

[Andy Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech. Understandably, most of this debate has been about general needs housing, but there is also social housing, asylum seeker and refugee housing and housing for Roma Gypsies and travellers. These are especially neglected groups, and the Government have an appalling record on each of them.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree that there is an appalling record here, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that it is the social housing providers that have allowed their homes and accommodation to be let out to the Home Office to provide accommodation, but far too much of it is being let out to the private sector. I hope to work with him in holding the Government to account on these issues.

It is important that the Scottish Government are committed to enabling disabled people to live independently in their own home where possible. The Scottish Government want disabled people in Scotland to have choice, dignity and freedom to access suitable homes and to enable them to participate as full and equal citizens. The Scottish Government have flexible grant funding arrangements, ensuring that specialist housing provision identified by local authorities is a priority, so that disabled people can be supported. The Scottish accessible homes standard will futureproof new homes, building in accessibility and adaptability from the start, to ensure that older and disabled people have an increased range of housing options and to reduce the need to make costly changes to people’s homes as their needs change.

It is also important that steps are taken to strengthen rights for tenants and to prevent homelessness. Tackling homelessness and ending rough sleeping is a priority for the Scottish Government. On top of the funding provided through the local government settlement, the Scottish Government are providing a total of £100 million funding from their multi-year Ending Homelessness Together fund to transform the homelessness support system. I hope that the UK Government will look closely at the situation of people with no recourse to public funds. Too many people with no recourse to public funds are at risk of becoming homeless or sleeping rough. I hope that the Government look again at this issue, because the clear view of the Scottish National party is that nobody should be at risk of homelessness or destitution because of their immigration status.

As other colleagues have already said, the UK Government should—indeed, must—take urgent action to support struggling households by increasing the local housing allowance rates and scrapping poverty-inducing Tory policies; no devolved Administration should have to mitigate those policies, but that is what they have to do.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I thank hon. Members for participating in this debate.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [Lords]

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

We were not convinced by these arguments, and we remain concerned that the Bill, as drafted, will not meaningfully empower tenants. We have therefore tabled amendments 36 and 37 and new clause 6, which taken together would ensure that tenants are adequately represented on the advisory panel established by clause 2 and able to influence how it operates; that the panel would have the ability to provide information and advice directly to the Secretary of State in circumstances in which it feels that is necessary; and that tenants and others have the right to access information held by providers on a range of key issues of concern, including fire safety and health hazards, beyond what they might secure as a result of any information and transparency scheme that might be—I stress the word “might”—established under clause 22. I commend them to the House.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On new clause 6, he knows that I have an interest in freedom of information, and I introduced a private Member’s Bill to do just this. The Freedom of Information Act applies to housing associations in Scotland, the Information Commissioner supports that, and there were endless examples in what the Campaign for Freedom of Information gave us in preparation for this debate of housing associations just refusing or ignoring requests from tenants about fire safety, damp and mould and other issues. Why should they be treated differently from council tenants, and why will the Government not adopt the FIA, which is designed exactly for this purpose, rather than use their own scheme, which would do a pale reflection of that in trying to enable tenants can find out basic information about their own safety?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I could not have put it better. We are seriously concerned that clause 22 does not have the same effect as bringing providers within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. We think that tenants, and tenant representatives and those acting on their behalf, should be able to enjoy those rights, so that they can get information of the kind that, as he rightly says, providers regularly refuse to give to tenants.

Before turning to the Government amendments that have been tabled since the Bill left Committee, I wish to speak briefly to new clauses 7 and 8, which stand respectively in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). I turn first to new clause 7, or “Georgia’s law”, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood has named it, in reference to a constituent of hers who was forced into temporary accommodation for an extended period as a result of her teenage son being threatened by gang members at their family home.

In our view, new clause 7 is a sensible and proportionate amendment that would make a real difference to a small but significant minority of tenants in England who find themselves in the exceptional circumstance—I must stress that fact—of a police referral as a result of being subject to the threat of serious violence. Its effect—the protection of existing tenancy rights in the case of a forced move linked to a threat of violence and greater co-operation between registered providers to rehouse those affected in a social home—is clearly not unduly onerous, and the Government’s argument that such a measure would cause insurmountable problems with local authority allocations policies is entirely unconvincing.

The Minister gave a guarantee in Committee that the Government would work with my hon. Friend

“to see what more can be done in this area to prevent any more cases like that of Georgia and her boys emerging.”––[Official Report, Social Housing (Regulation) Public Bill Committee, 29 November 2022; c. 66.]

It is therefore incredibly disappointing that the Government have not been willing to bring forward an amendment of their own to ensure that others do not have to experience what my hon. Friend’s constituents were forced to go through. As such, if my hon. Friend pushes her new clause 7 to a vote, we will of course support it.

We also support new clause 8, because while we recognise that the Government are taking steps to address the issue of unscrupulous providers of supported accommodation by means of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), we are in full agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden that the regulator should have the ability to inspect temporary accommodation. There is statutory guidance designed to ensure that existing minimum standards are met for all temporary accommodation, but we know that in practice bed and breakfasts, hotels and shared houses used by local authorities across the country to house homeless families are frequently substandard and often hazardous, because that guidance is rarely adhered to.

The truth is that with almost 100,000 households, and now more than 125,000 children, living in temporary accommodation, according to the Department’s own figures, local authorities have little leverage when it comes to deciding what standards they are willing to accept. A huge amount needs to be done to decrease the demand for temporary accommodation across the country, most of which is well outside of the scope of this Bill. But in the short term, stronger regulation and inspections could make a real difference, and in the most extreme cases they could save lives. On that basis, we support new clause 8.

Finally, I turn to the Government amendments that have been tabled in recent weeks. The bulk of them are uncontroversial and largely technical, and we support their incorporation into the Bill. I do, however, wish to touch upon Government new clause 1. Awaab Ishak’s untimely death from prolonged exposure to mould in the house his parents rented from Rochdale Boroughwide Housing should never have occurred and the fact that it did, frankly, shames our country. The coroner was right to call it a “defining moment”, but it falls to this House to ensure that it truly is. It is therefore essential that we legislate to compel landlords to act quickly to remedy hazards of the kind that ultimately killed Awaab.

The regulator’s initial findings on damp and mould in social housing, published on 2 February, estimated that up to 160,000 social homes have notable problems with it, and a further 8,000 have hazards so severe that they pose a serious and immediate risk to health. Given the scale of the problem, landlords who fail to proactively review the homes and buildings they manage or lease for hazards, who deal with tenant complaints relating to such hazards ineffectively, or who blame damp and mould on lifestyle choices and myriad other factors, rather than taking responsibility, cannot be tolerated.

Government new clause 1 is a laudable effort at amending the Bill to ensure that social housing providers are forced to investigate and deal promptly with hazards that are a danger to the health of tenants. As the Minister said, it would allow the Secretary of State, by regulation, to set timescales to which social landlords must adhere in respect of remedying hazards or be in breach of a tenancy agreement, as well as specify what kinds of action must be taken. Enforcement will, of course, depend on access to legal representation, and in many cases legal aid, Government new clause 1 nevertheless provides an enforceable right that enhances the provisions contained in the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck). We commend the Government for tabling the new clause and we support it in principle.

However, we are convinced that Government new clause 1 could be strengthened in several important respects, and to that end we have tabled amendments (a) to (f). Taken together, they would set out on the face of the Bill the location of the relevant prescribed requirements at proposed new section 10A(2); make clear the extent of their application; detail the circumstances in which any provision of a lease or any agreement relating to a lease is void; and clarify where courts may order specific performance of certain obligations. We believe those changes would improve the clarity and functionality of Government new clause 1 and thereby make it stronger, and we hope the Government will give serious consideration to accepting them.

To conclude, this is without question an important and urgently needed piece of legislation, and we are extremely pleased it will complete its passage today. Everyone has a basic right to a decent, safe, secure and affordable home, and it is our sincere hope that by overhauling the regulation of social housing by means of this Bill, we will better protect the health, safety and wellbeing of social tenants across the country. We welcome the numerous concessions that the Government have made throughout the passage of the Bill, but we believe it is not yet the most robust piece of legislation that this House can possibly deliver, the achievement of which has been our objective from the outset. We will shortly have the opportunity to amend it further so that it is, and I urge the House to come together to that end.

Voter Identification

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

On the hon. Lady’s final point, absolutely we will review what happens in May. We have already committed to that both in this place and elsewhere. We want to learn from the experience, just as Labour wanted to learn from the engagement at the introduction of this scheme in Northern Ireland in 2003. We will absolutely do that, but if the hon. Lady has concerns about reaching out to communities in Liverpool, I encourage her to speak to her council, which has been given additional money to undertake communications to do that very job.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I now ask constituents when I knock on doors whether they know about producing voter ID, and so far this year not one has known about the requirement and not one has been in favour of it. Voter turnout depends on familiarity with where we go to vote and what we do. Low turnout is a much more serious problem for our democracy than the de minimis level of fraud. Does the Minister think that turnout will go up or down as a result of these measures?

[Lee Rowley]

As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, we all want high turnout. We all want the maximum number of people who can vote to do so. That is one reason why in other parts of the Elections Act 2022, we are extending the franchise. This is part of a broad group of measures that seek to protect the integrity and sanctity of the ballot box while ensuring that as many people who wish to vote can do so.

Building Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The aim is to do this in the Queen’s Speech.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said nothing about leaseholders in smaller buildings, nothing about leaseholders who have bought their freeholds, and, above all, nothing about social housing. This is a time when social landlords are selling their vacant stock and not developing new programmes. When will he make some announcement on this? At the moment, the only solution is for the Government to step into the shoes of social landlords. Why should social tenants have to pay for these mistakes?

[Michael Gove]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s passion and commitment on this issue. I trespassed on the House’s patience by speaking for more than 10 minutes, so there were a number of issues that I did not cover. I hope to be able to do so in greater detail at departmental questions and through correspondence. The nub of the matter is that this Government have acted, and are acting, to ensure that social housing tenants get a better deal. The announcement I made last week, while it is only £30 million, is earnest in its intent to ensure that tenants in social homes get money from central Government in order to ensure that they are safe.

Social Housing Standards

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point; I am grateful for her support for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and his legislation. There is a big problem in supported housing. As she knows, additional funds are provided to landlords to ensure that they provide the additional support required by individuals who are living with a variety of challenges. There is a subset of landlords who pocket the cash in those circumstances and then leave vulnerable individuals in conditions that put them at risk and lead to problems for their neighbours. We need to deal with this scam; legislation is part of that, although not all of it. I look forward to working with her to tackle it.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

While we are waiting for the improvements that the Secretary of State has promised in the regulation and resourcing of social landlords, many tenants are relying on legal aid solicitors and law centres to pursue disrepair claims. Thanks to legal aid cuts, they are already a vanishing part of the legal system, but from next year, housing claims will be subject to fixed recoverable costs, which will make it unaffordable for small firms and not-for-profits to take on housing cases. Will the Secretary of State talk to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about how representation can be maintained for victims of the neglect, incompetence and discrimination so tragically highlighted in Awaab’s case?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that case. The housing and planning Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), is a former Justice Minister; I know that she and the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan), appreciate the importance of the issue. I hope that we will be able to make progress.

Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [Lords]

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We do need to look again at the position. I have to be careful because the Home Office is a separate Department and I am not the Secretary of State there, but I do know that the new Home Secretary and the new Minister responsible for fire safety appreciate and understand the need to look closely at the concerns that tenants expressed on the previous position. I have to say that the previous position was taken in good faith, but we need to pay attention to the concerns expressed.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I am sure that we all want social landlords, and indeed all landlords, to be held to account when they fall short. Does the Secretary of State accept that there may be a problem with some financial penalties? We may end up punishing tenants twice: once for having a bad landlord and again by having funds withheld. I can give a specific example from my constituency. A social landlord is failing financially so is penalised by not being able to bid for the building safety fund, with the consequence either that fire safety works do not get done, or that properties are not sold or developed and new properties are not built. Will he look at that specific instance and see whether we can avoid penalising tenants in that way?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes the fair point that there are lots of pressures on registered social landlords and housing associations. The Bill is there to ensure that all emulate the best, but I appreciate that with pressures to increase supply, pressures on building safety and pressures to deal with the poor-quality stock that many have inherited, we need to be sensitive. I am sure that the regulator will be, in the application of any fines, if the correct action is not being taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

May I be the first to welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place. I very much enjoyed sparring with him over the Dispatch Box last time. I also particularly enjoy these very rare moments when the House can come together in political consensus to deliver on something of enormous importance to people outside this place. I look forward to working with him and the team to make good on the promises that we made to people all those years ago.

Apparently, when the right hon. Gentleman arrived back in the Department, he told civil servants that he was getting the band back together. The Department has now had seven line-ups since the Bill was first promised—amazingly, that is officially more reinventions than the Sugababes. I look forward to us going “Round Round” again. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), is shaking her head. I gather that she is a Taylor Swift fan, so I promise her that I will try to get some Taylor Swift references in next time.

The Secretary of State will know that since he last held office, the job has got much harder, but the Bill, which the Labour party strongly supports, has got much better, in large part thanks to Baroness Hayman and our colleagues in the other place, who have worked together in genuine cross-party spirit to strengthen the hand of social housing tenants.

For 120 years, social housing has provided the foundations of a decent, secure life for millions of people across Britain—a home for life, handed back into common ownership to be passed down through the generations. Labour believes that that is part of our inheritance and an ideal—one that empowers people to live the richer, larger and more dignified lives that they deserve—worth fighting for.

It should, then, shame a nation that in 2020 one in seven social homes in London, along with many others across the country, do not even meet the Government’s decent homes standard. As the Secretary of State knows —he paid tribute to the incredible work of Dan Hewitt at ITV—the reality is one of children growing up in squalid, damp and overcrowded homes that would not be out of place in the Victorian era.

When people in social housing have tried to sound the alarm, they have too often been completely ignored. Nothing has brought that into sharper relief than the appalling tragedy at Grenfell Tower and the treatment of the residents who—along with many others—tried to sound the alarm over many, many years. Today, we remember the 72 people who lost their lives on that day, and those whose lives were changed for ever and who live with those memories. We pay tribute to the work that they have done to get us this far. But they want more than remembrance; they want justice and a lasting legacy. That includes setting right a system that has failed them and failed many, many others. It is a system where concerns were repeatedly ignored, where the value of lives was weighed against the value of profits on a balance sheet and could come out the poorer, and where, in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, just a few miles from the centre of power, those concerns could be rendered completely invisible by decisionmakers just a few miles away.

For far too many people in this country and for social housing tenants, the reality is that they too often hold none of the cards. That is simply wrong. When they challenge bad practices, they should not have to fight the system. They should feel the whole system pulling in behind them.

That is why we welcome and support the Bill. It is also why we believe that tenants deserve the strongest legislation that this House can provide. Let me take three areas where we know the Bill can be improved and strengthened. We welcome the establishment of an advisory panel, but tenants should be at the centre of that, setting the agenda, not just responding to it, and we will bring forward measures in Committee to seek to ensure that that is the case. We welcome, too, the progress that the Secretary of State referred to that was made in the other place on the professionalisation of standards in the social housing workforce, but we know that that could be further improved and further strengthened. I was genuinely interested to hear the Secretary of State raise concerns about the impact that that might have on smaller providers. It is a very different reason than the one given in the other place for why the Government felt that it was not possible to strengthen those provisions. Perhaps that is something that we can work together on to resolve. Finally, rights are no good without the means to enforce them. The regulator must have the resources necessary to do the job, and we will be bringing forward measures in Committee, which we hope the Government will support, in order to ensure that that is the case.

Most of all, we want to see the Government get on with the job. It has been five years since Grenfell, four years since the Green Paper, and three years since promises were made in the Conservative party’s election manifesto. How can it possibly be the case that we are approaching the end of 2022 and we still do not know when the measures in the Bill will come into force? This is a short Bill addressing an area of clear political consensus. We have a Secretary of State in post again who has a reputation for getting things done when he sets his mind to it. It took him seven months to scrap court fees, six months to ban microplastics, and three months to pass the entire Academies Act 2010, using powers normally reserved for passing anti-terrorist legislation. It has been well over a year since he was first appointed to this post. Why is this less of a priority?

The Bill is an important part of solving the housing crisis, and we need to get on with it, but it is only one piece. It seeks to address the imbalance of power in social housing and the appalling conditions in social housing that too many people have to endure, but there are 1 million people languishing on the social homes waiting list, struggling with those same power imbalances and squalid housing conditions in the private rented sector and watching their rents soar completely out of control. The only way to deal with that is to build more social homes, but the record has been indefensible. Every year since this Conservative Government took office, an average of 12,000 social homes have been lost from our housing stock. The Secretary of State knows it, and, to give credit to him, he has acknowledged that we need more social homes.

“The availability of social housing is simply inadequate for any notion of social justice or economic efficiency.”

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As she has correctly said, the biggest problem with social housing is that there is not enough of it. The past 12 years have seen under-investment in the social housing grant and many properties being lost to the system—many associations are selling off properties because of the multiple demands of having a development programme that they cannot fulfil, of having poor conditions of properties and of having overcrowding in their stock. That means that, increasingly, they are looking at more and more desperate measures. Although the measures in the Bill are welcome, what we really need is to see social housing restored to its pre-eminence as the first port of call, rather than the last port of call, for people in housing need.

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for the work that he has done over many years to highlight the housing crisis in this country. He is absolutely right; it is not just that we are not building enough, but that far more social homes are being lost from the social housing stock. I pay tribute to the many Labour councils that are seeking to do something about that, even in very tough times. In Salford, Ipswich, Southwark and Doncaster, house building has continued and the social housing stock continues to grow. When Labour was in Government we built double the amount of social homes than are currently being built. When we come back into Government, whether in a few months’ or a few years’ time, we will finish that job and restore social housing to the second largest form of housing tenure, where it belongs.

The Secretary of State acknowledged the problem in his speech. I agree with him, but that was back in February and still very little has been done. That is why I press him on the urgency of passing the Bill and getting this done. There is much more to turn our attention to. He sat in the Cabinet in 2010 that cut the budget of the affordable homes programme by 60%. He has served multiple Prime Ministers who cut local authorities’ budgets to the bone and imposed social rent cuts that have hampered their ability to build and invest. It is time to finally get this legislation on the statute book so that we can turn our attention to tackling the housing crisis.

Nothing matters more than a home. Security in your own home, the right to make it your own and the right to live somewhere fit for human habitation are non-negotiable. Housing is not just the market—it is a fundamental human right. Any Government worthy of the office would take action right now to mend that deliberate vandalism of our social housing stock, restore it to the second largest form of tenure and finally get developers to sign fire safety pledge contracts. The deadline for that passed months ago.

We must get on with this and release people from the misery of not knowing whether they live in a safe home. Leaseholders face appalling charges and uncertainty, trapped in homes that they thought were forever homes but have become a prison. We must abolish the feudal, archaic leasehold system and replace it with a commonhold system fit for modern Britain. We must make good on the promises to hand power back to private rented tenants, starting with abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions and proper, decent home standards fit for the 21st century.

Families across this country are desperate to escape their housing conditions. Many are desperate to get on to the housing ladder, but a few weeks ago their Government crashed the economy and mortgage payments were sent through the roof. For hundreds of thousands of people, the dream of home ownership has gone up in smoke.

Surely, the absolute bare minimum that any Government worth their salt ought to deliver is for every single person in this country to have a decent, safe, warm home and the power to drive and shape the decisions that affect their lives—and nowhere more so than in respect of the housing that they inhabit. The Government have recognised the need to empower social housing tenants and to improve safety and standards in social housing, and they will get no complaints from us about that.

There is, finally, political consensus that the scandalous conditions in which far too many families are forced to live are not just unacceptable but a stain on modern Britain. We welcome that recognition, even though it has taken too long to get here. There is so much more to do. We need to now get on with the job.

Section 21 Evictions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Nokes, to speak with you in the Chair. I realise that when you are in a minority of one, although you are not necessarily wrong, it probably increases the chances of your being wrong, so I will probably swim against the tide of some of the speeches in this debate.

Before I go any further, I should say that there is no doubt that there is a problem in the private rented sector. Everybody would like to see a solution so that people who want to live in accommodation for the longer term are able to. However, let me take Members back to 1985, if I can. I was a relatively young estate agent in York. If someone wanted to rent a property back then, they had a very limited choice—it was probably between three or four quite dark and shabby two-bedroom terraced houses off Bishopthorpe Road in York. There was so little choice back then because we did not have section 21, so if someone invested in the private rented sector and rented a property out—if they were a landlord—and somebody occupied their property, in effect they did so permanently, if they wanted. Members might think that is a really good idea and the solution to our problems; I fear it would lead to many unintended consequences, as it did back then.

Back then we had rent controls. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) may say that having rent controls is a really good thing, but it would end up putting layer upon layer of legislation on top of what the Government are currently thinking of doing in terms of the abolition of section 21. That will lead to more and more regulation, which will lead to less and less supply. Ultimately, that is very counter—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that was the reality of the mid-1980s.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I know we are not here to talk primarily about rent controls, but they go back to at least 1915. On section 21, the hon. Gentleman may be flogging a dead horse. I do not know whether he has seen the briefing from the National Residential Landlords Association, but it says that 70% of landlords could envisage operating without section 21 and another 8% say that it had never been important to them in the first place. The hon. Gentleman may be defending the landlords’ cause, but they may have accommodated the Government’s position and our position already.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I have seen that briefing. That means that in effect somewhere between 20% and 30% of supply might go overnight, or go very quickly, and we have seen that in Scotland—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but it is a reality. We have seen in Scotland a reduction in supply on the back of the abolition of section 21, followed by rent controls.

Back in York in the mid-1980s, what the Government are saying will happen is—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Nokes, and to take part in a debate instigated by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden).

I will start by trying to agree with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on this point at least: it is a complex matter to get rid of section 21. Just doing so is not going to be an answer to all our problems in the private rented sector or the housing market as a whole. He took us back to 1985—somewhere I am always happier, politics apart. The housing market was very different in those days. We had just had the Housing Act 1985, which introduced secure tenancy for local authority tenants. A few years later, the Housing Act 1988 introduced assured tenancies, which are still the default tenancy, and are the main—should be the exclusive—tenancy for other social landlords, such as housing associations. We also had protected and controlled tenancies. Other Members with constituencies such as mine, with large private rented sectors, will still come across some protected tenancies, which predate that Act. Generally speaking, those tenants have had, by definition, decades-long good relationships with landlords, fuelled by the fact that they not only have security but a degree of rent control—a fair rent, though not entirely.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is an interesting point, but the hon. Gentleman will concede that when trying to sell a property with a protected tenancy, the value is usually about 30% below market value. If he is suggesting that that would be the effect of abolishing section 21, that would have a very detrimental effect on property values throughout the country.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will develop my argument and hope to take in that point.

I was giving the background to saying that the one thing that dramatically changed—one of the most fundamental changes in housing law, in the Housing Act 1988—was the ability to opt out of an assured tenancy and create an assured shorthold tenancy. Some social landlords do that; I deprecate it, but they do. Certainly, most private landlords would do that. That was a real change: introducing the free market, changing the relationship between landlord and tenant, and treating people’s homes as commodities for the first time. It is not that most landlords are not well intentioned or do not look after their tenants or, indeed, that they are not entitled to make a return on their investments, but I fundamentally believe there is a slightly different relationship because we are dealing with someone’s home.

The dramatic effect of that is disguised by the fact that—even in 1989, after council house sales had been going for most of a decade but had not really taken off—we still had a thriving social housing market in the 1980s. It was the first port of call for people who wanted a secure home in the rented sector. That disguised the full effect of assured shorthold tenancy and section 21. The briefing we have from Crisis for this debate tells us that 1.3 million families with children now live in the private rented sector of nearly 4.5 million households. I am sure that most of them would prefer the security and affordability of living in the social housing sector, but that is simply not open to them.

The dramatic decline in social housing really began with austerity in 2010, with the almost complete eradication of the social housing grant, after which more and more pressures and misery were piled on social landlords. Post Grenfell, we now have essential work on fire safety, but it is costing individual landlords tens of millions of pounds and they are getting very little of that back from the building safety fund. There is also retrofitting to comply with environmental standards. There are all those issues, along with the lack of resources among housing associations.

I have a major housing association in my constituency that has no build programme until at least 2030. It is selling off hundreds of its properties as they become void, just to make ends meet. The social housing that was the first port of call for people who wanted secure, affordable rented accommodation is no longer there for many people. As for the other source, which was through planning gain, I am afraid we are still—despite the best efforts of the Mayor of London and others, along with individual councils—subject to viability assessments. Therefore, we are not in any way delivering the degree of social housing that we need to.

Such is the context in which we see the private rented sector. It will take time and a Labour Government, I am afraid, to turn that round. I wish the last Labour Government had done more on building social housing and possibly on reforming the private rented sector. Yet as I say, the problems were not as apparent then; they are now. It will take years to build the properties we need. To make the substantive changes in the law, we probably need another major piece of housing legislation. In the time it takes to turn that round, the private rented sector has to be reformed; that is a quicker option. That includes getting rid of no-fault evictions to give people that basic security, but that will not be sufficient in itself. It has to be done in the round.

We have to look at rent levels; if landlords can put rents up as high as they want to, that will just be another way of evicting people without due cause. We have to look at disrepair, which is worse than I have seen it for 20 or 30 years. We have to look at what the exemptions and exceptions are that would allow a landlord to evict. Clearly, there have to be some, but if there are too many and they are too vague, we will simply be replacing one type of no-fault eviction with another.

I do not say all that to get the Government to say, “We will take this away and bring it back in a couple of years’ time.” We would like the Minister to keep the promise that has been made. I know it was a couple of Prime Ministers ago—I think it was last week—but I think we heard from the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) that this was still part of the legislative agenda. I hope it still is and I hope they get on with it and do it. What they must not do is think that that is the end of the matter. We will have to wait for a Labour Government to have wholesale housing reform, but if the Minister is going to surprise me on that, I will be very grateful.

This is my last point. I mentioned earlier that the National Residential Landlords Association had given a very thoughtful briefing for this debate. As a body, it is helpful in engaging with people, including with tenants’ organisations and trying to represent decent landlords in that way—all their members probably are decent landlords, because indecent landlords would probably not be members of the NRLA. It specifically mentioned improving tenants’ access to legal support. That is absolutely vital, whereas other things that the Government are doing are not.

If tenants want to challenge matters—even section 21 notices can be challenged if they have not been properly served or executed, or if there are other matters, or if there has been harassment—legal advice is very important. Next April, the Government will impose fixed recoverable costs, which means that not-for-profit organisations such as law centres and those few solicitors who still operate under legal aid will not be able to subsidise their housing work by recovering costs inter partes in that way. I have nothing against fixed recoverable costs in principle, but in practice they will mean a further collapse in the housing legal sector, which in turn will mean that it will be increasingly difficult for people to challenge matters.

The other issues that the NRLA raised are local housing allowance and universal credit, including the delay in paying universal credit, and the gap between what housing allowance gives and the actual cost of properties. Those are all legitimate points. If the Government think they will get a big tick from the private rented sector—any part of it—simply by dealing with the section 21 issue, I need to disabuse the Minister of that notion. Nevertheless, we would like to hear a little more confirmation about what the Government are going to do to about the situation—most of these people, whether they would prefer to be in social housing or to be owner-occupiers, increasingly do not want to be in the private rented sector.

If we had a decent and thriving private rented sector, then some people would make it their first choice, but many people are in the sector because they have no other option. They have run out of options in terms of their living conditions, their overcrowding, their security and the amount of rent they have to pay. The sector needs a proper look. Since the Housing Act 1988, we have declined into a society in which people’s right to a decent home—that is a human right, although if we are going to have another change of Lord Chancellor, perhaps it will not remain one for very long—has declined. The Government need to look at this sector in the round. They cannot just say, “We will do one or two piecemeal things”. They cannot tinker with the housing market; it needs full, wholesale reform.

Private Rented Sector

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Lady raises an incredibly important point. Obviously, the Government are committed to spending £2 billion on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping in the next three years, but I completely accept the point she makes about the LGBT community. We work very closely with charities in that sector to ensure that we understand the challenges they face, and they certainly inform our policy formation to make sure we are offering the support we can.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It would be good to see some security restored to the private rented sector, 35 years after a Conservative Government introduced no-fault eviction, but housing in the UK also has a crisis of affordability and disrepair. The social housing sector, although far from perfect, is better placed to tackle all these issues, but it has been weakened in favour of the private rented sector over many years. What plans does the Minister have to rebalance the housing market and restore social housing to its previous role as the leading provider of decent homes?

[Eddie Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the fact that a Conservative Government introduced the legislation 35 years ago. Perhaps he has forgotten that, just occasionally, the public vote for a Labour Government, so they have had the opportunity to repeal it during their time in power. I know it does not happen very often, but when they occasionally get the levers of power, they could pull them. However, the hon. Gentleman will also be aware that we have introduced the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill to the other place. That is going to make its way through Parliament and make significant changes to how the social housing sector is managed and regulated. Our intention is to drive up standards across the social and private rented sectors. Our ambition is to reduce by 50% the number of non-decent homes by 2030, across all tenures.