Votes at 16

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field]

The hon. Lady refers to inclusiveness. Does that apply to 14-year-olds, or perhaps to 12-year-olds as well?

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman should have been here at the start.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. Let me make this point clear. You do not have to be here at the beginning of the debate to intervene. That is a fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Bone, in a debate on what you rightly said was an important matter of constitutional significance. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the debate and on her passionate speech. She is devoted to the issue and has often raised it in the House, and she had time this morning to set out her thoughts in full. I look forward to the Minister’s response, particularly now that it has been previewed by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) as reflecting both the Government view and the diametrically opposite Liberal Democrat view. We are all used to Liberal Democrat politicians expressing two opposing views at the same time, but it will still be interesting to hear how the Minister responds.

[Mr Harper]

I will not allow my views to be traduced. I was trying to be helpful to the Minister. He will set out the Government’s position, which is that they have not taken a view on either side of the argument because the coalition parties have different views on the subject. He will no doubt take the opportunity to set out the view of the Liberal Democrats as well. The two positions are not opposite, and I was trying to be helpful, as I always am.

[Mr Slaughter]

We will find out. I will resist provoking the hon. Gentleman because we have already heard quite a lot from him so far in this debate. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David); both Members are experienced on this subject, as they are, respectively, the former Minister and former shadow Minister with responsibility for constitutional reform. I therefore feel that my knowledge of the matter is somewhat limited, particularly as I am carrying the flag on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who unfortunately cannot be present because he had a long-standing commitment to chairing a conference on electoral reform. He is particularly keen on that issue, but also on lowering the voting age, and I know that he has been travelling up and down the country meeting young people to discuss the issue. He, the shadow Secretary of State for Justice—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan)—and the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), have led on this agenda and are together putting the issue at the heart of the Opposition’s constitutional reform programme.

We are facing a deficit in politics that goes beyond the issue of young people voting. It would be easy to retreat from the problem, especially in the midst of a significant economic crisis, but it is not enough to do nothing and hope that the tide changes. It is essential that we seek to explore new ways of achieving democratic renewal and political reform. General election turnout in the UK has been on a downward trend since the 1950s, when 84% of the population turned out to vote. At the last election, the proportion was just 65%. As we have heard, membership of political parties has fallen off a cliff, spectacularly so in the case of the Conservative party, which is now at one thirtieth of its peak membership, but all political parties have been affected.

We deplore the fact that a majority of young people do not vote at elections yet decide to do nothing about it. I thought that some Members who intervened earlier and oppose voting at 16 were using that fact as a reason to justify doing nothing, rather than as a reason to take the matter more seriously. Youth is not automatically linked to apathy, and the reasons behind low turnout are complicated. My experience is that young people today are often highly political but wary of formal party politics. Many do not feel that politicians listen to their concerns or discuss their aspirations.

Bite the Ballot is a very good organisation that promotes young people voting, and one of its representatives commented:

“I would say the majority of young people don’t trust politicians.”

It is probably true that a majority of all people do not trust politicians, but that feeling might be particularly significant among the young, who are perhaps not so world-weary, slightly more idealistic, and therefore more shocked by the way in which politicians sometimes behave. People will have heard the exculpatory comments of Chris Huhne during his media exercise yesterday; I think we must all say that sometimes we politicians do not do ourselves any favours at all.

Sitting back, doing nothing and hoping that our young people vote is not enough. Opening up our democratic system to younger people is important and is a way to solve this problem. Rather than turning our backs, we must seek to improve the current democratic malaise by empowering young people.

Only 44% of those aged 18 to 24 voted in the general election. A recent survey found that only a third of 16 to 24-year-olds say they have an interest in politics. Compare those figures with the 76% of those of pension age who voted. The gap has almost doubled since 1970, when there was an 18 percentage point gap between young people and those of pension age, to around 30 percentage points.

There was a good article in the Daily Mirror this morning—there are always lots of good articles in the Daily Mirror—about this issue, although I do not know whether the Minister read it. It stated:

“Almost 60% of young people say they will not vote in the 2015 General Election”

and that the percentage of those intending to vote in the European elections is only 30%, although perhaps the latter is not so surprising. Those are poor figures and they appear to be getting worse. The response to that should not be to write off young people’s voting, but to take the approach that my party has taken. At the Labour conference, the Leader of the Opposition set out how we will seek to change the situation.

It is right to say that introducing votes at 16 is a radical proposal that has the potential to energise a new generation of politically active and engaged citizens. However, votes at 16 need to go hand in hand with wider youth engagement and a renewed commitment to citizenship education. The education participation age is rising to 18. By offering the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds at school, at college and in workplaces, we can intertwine civic duty with our education system. Conferring a democratic responsibility and opportunity on people still in compulsory education offers practical benefits. For example, on polling days, schools and colleges could have polling stations for students, making it more likely that this group would take advantage of the opportunity. That would be intertwined with Labour’s policy to empower schools to work with electoral registration officers to ensure that students are registered to vote.

The next Labour Government will create schools that nourish real civic duty and democratic understanding, as well as ensuring, of course, that teachers are qualified and all schools are properly inspected, and taking up other unconventional ideas that the Government do not appear to support.

It is important to note that only about half of young people aged 18 to 24 are registered to vote. If people vote once, they are more likely to vote again. The Social Market Foundation published research that found that the closer to an election an individual’s 18th birthday is, the more likely they are to vote. That demonstrated that people who turn 18 in the year leading up to a general election are significantly more likely to vote than those who turn 18 in the year after the previous general election and have to wait five years. Those who vote when young continue to vote. Over time, voting could become a rite of passage in our education system, like taking exams, but this will require a strengthening of citizenship education.

Almost 50% of the population of my constituency was born outside the UK. This is anecdotal rather than statistical evidence, but in communities in my constituency, there is often much greater political awareness and willingness to vote, and that is passed down from parents to children, whether because they value the vote more or because they are taking more of an interest in a country that they have come to relatively recently. If the same interest was shown more widely, that would help; it is achievable. Often, marginal decisions affect whether people vote. For example, we all know that making it easier to vote by post or by other means massively increases turnout.

The Labour Government made great strides with their introduction of citizenship as a subject in secondary school. Citizenship education should sit at the core of our curriculum, giving young people an understanding and deeper knowledge of, and interest in, civic issues. Votes at 16 would place renewed emphasis on this area for our schools.

[Wayne David]

The Government are introducing individual electoral registration. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the main emphases of the Government’s programme encouraging young people to vote should be schools’ participation in encouraging young people to register, so that they can vote at 18? It would be a small step forward to encourage registration for votes at 16.

[Mr Slaughter]

I worry about individual electoral registration, as a number of wards in my constituency have below 50% initial tie-up. In many ways, that will be a barrier to voting. That makes it all the more important that we ensure that the educational aspect and the simple ability to explain to people how the new system works go hand in hand. These problems are not limited to young people.

Votes at 16 can inspire young people to get involved in our democracy. Many young people are already involved in roles of democratic responsibility. Some 85% of secondary schools have school councils, around 20,000 young people are active in youth councils and there are 600 elected Members of Youth Parliament, each serving for 12 months and voted in by their peers. Most hon. Members will have witnessed Youth Parliament debates and met their local representatives, who are supported by groups like Bite the Ballot, the British Youth Council and the Patchwork Foundation, which do great work getting young people involved in politics.

I agree with Government Members that this is not a partisan political issue, although I worry about why so many Conservative Members are against the idea. So much damage has been done to young people under the current Government. They have abolished the education maintenance allowance and university fees are soaring—we must give a hat-tip to the Liberal Democrats for that, although perhaps we will find out that Constance Briscoe was responsible for that as well, in the long term. The Government scrapped the future jobs fund, too. It is hardly a surprise that the coalition parties are nervous about the idea, but over time that will not be an issue.

Finally, let me deal with the main subject of the speech made by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean. With all due respect to him, he was trying to infantilise young people. It is not as simple as saying, “Yes, there is a single age at which young people are able to do everything.” That is not what my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham was saying. The fact is that we do move age limits up and down, and they differ from those in other countries. For example, we decreased the age of criminal responsibility by four years, just as we equalised the age of consent at 16 for all young people. The point is that one has to make a judgment on the merits of the case. Yes, it has been right in some cases to protect young people by imposing an age limit—for purchasing tobacco products, say, because they are addictive, and because if people start smoking young, they tend to continue. However, we do not need to protect people from voting. If anything, we should encourage that engagement, and the later stages of school is exactly the time to do that.

At 16, people can go out to work, become a director of a company, join a trade union and participate fully in society. Many young people are adults at 16, and it is wrong to restrict them in respect of voting. That is why the next Labour Government will give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. However, that is not enough; they must be given a reason to vote, and the support to engage in the democratic process. Voting is a gateway to participation in society, not an end in itself. If we do not give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote, we are excluding them from some of the rights and responsibilities that we otherwise increasingly load on them. Giving them the vote is the fair and right thing to do.

The Daily Mirror article that I mentioned ends with a rather depressing quote from a young person:

“Young people’s voices don’t get heard, so why should they vote? I don’t think politicians take enough time to listen to us, and it’s a shame because we are the future.”

That downward spiral should be reversed. If we give young people the vote and encourage them to use it, they will feel that we are taking their interests more seriously, and then I hope we will see a rise in participation and in the percentage turning out to vote.

Easter Adjournment

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I want to discuss a subject that strangely we often shrink from discussing in any depth: the housing shortage in this country, its consequences, its causes and its cures. Reflecting over the years on both the social and the economic problems of this country, it strikes me that almost all the social problems and many of the economic ones are either caused by or aggravated by a shortage of housing. This is true not just of homelessness, overcrowding and the huge housing benefits bill—the fastest rising benefit bill and one of the largest components of the Department for Work and Pensions budget; it is also true of the benefit trap and the resultant disincentive to work, in that so many people have housing benefit even if they are in work and consequently suffer a loss of benefit when their earnings go up, and of family breakdowns, single parenthood, declining home ownership, and the inability of young people to leave home. All these problems are aggravated by the housing shortage. Now the average age of first-time buyers in London is the late-30s, which is dramatically different from a generation ago.

There are also economic problems: the level of debt, the diversion of lending from business to mortgages, and the mortgages cycle. They, too, are all aggravated by this housing shortage.

The causes of our having the highest prices and the highest rents in Europe and ever-longer waiting lists are simple enough: the number of households is outstripping the pitiful level of new house building. There are two main factors accounting for that. First, there are smaller households. Over the years, the average size of households decreases by roughly 0.5% as people live longer; often there is one of a couple living in the home; or the children might have left home so there are just the parents living in the home. The average size of households is declining, therefore, and, sadly, family breakdown adds to that trend. We would have to build a 0.5% addition to our housing stock every year just to cope with that factor, and we are barely doing that.

The other factor we are strangely reluctant to discuss is the fact that we are now a country of mass immigration. Since Labour took the brakes off immigration in the late ’90s, between 2 million and 3 million additional people have come to this country. For centuries this country was a net exporter of people. Rather bizarrely, now that we are one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, we are a net importer.

I find it strange that many people argue that immigrant numbers are not the problem so long as we have the right sort of immigrants. They say that so long as we exclude scroungers and the unskilled and so on, numbers do not matter. The situation is almost the reverse, however, because the sort of people we have had are overwhelmingly decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who come here to make better lives for themselves. The idea that they are qualitatively wrong is nonsense, insulting and racist. It is numbers that matter. It is numbers that have contributed and added to, and aggravated greatly, the housing shortage in this country. Very few people come to this country to claim benefits, although that is the focus in the discussions we have in this country, but all of them need homes, and all of them are going to occupy homes that otherwise would be available for the people already here.

I wrote a pamphlet back in the early part of this millennium entitled “Too Much of a Good Thing?” I hope that title makes clear my view of immigration: immigrants are basically decent, nice people—fellow human beings, children of the same God, people we should love as our neighbours when they live next to us. But we are foolish to invite too many people into this country. I was caused to publish that pamphlet by looking at the housing shortage and the reason for the rising demand for house building in this country, and I was immediately labelled a racist and an attempt was made to shut off the debate. I hope we can stop doing that, because we will never solve the problem if we do not understand its cause.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman that this subject is important, and it is the subject I am going to speak about, but I disagree with everything he is saying about it. There are 50,000 new homes being built in my constituency—a small, densely populated constituency—over the next 20 years. The majority of them will be sold off-plan to overseas investors, not to immigrants to the UK—not to people who now have British citizenship or are acquiring it. They will be sold in that way for a profit because mainly Conservative councils do deals with developers to sell them in that way. That is the root of the housing crisis, in London at least.

[Mr Lilley]

The hon. Gentleman is simply factually wrong. It contributes to the housing problem, but to a small degree. I advise him to read an article in City A.M. last week which got the figures for the number of such new unoccupied houses in London, and it is very small. It contributes to the problem, and if it is bigger than I think, I entirely agree with him that we ought to tackle it , but to suggest that it has anything like the impact of allowing 2 million or 3 million extra people, and every year an extra 200,000 or quarter of a million, into this country is simply to try to divert people’s attention from the self-evident realities. Let us deal with all the problems, including the problem the hon. Gentleman identifies, but we should not try to pretend that there would not be a problem if that issue were to go away.

The only answer in the long run is to build more homes. We cannot pretend that we can solve the housing shortage by manipulating house prices or house rents or mortgage interest rates. Whatever the price of a bottle, we cannot get a quart into a pint pot. If we have more people here, we have to build more homes here. I am not suggesting that we undo history. The history means there are more people here, and we have got to build more homes if we are to overcome the social and economic problems that result from a housing shortage.

If there are 2 million or 3 million more people here, we have to build a corresponding number of additional homes, because those people by and large are of child-bearing age, they will want to form households and we have to accommodate that. We also have to avoid the excuses that are often given for not building homes, not least in my constituency. I have a Hertfordshire constituency, and Hertfordshire is the most densely populated county outside central London. None the less, we have to build more homes there and avoid the excuses for not doing so.

The first excuse for opposing any proposal that gets planning permission is, “They’re the wrong type of houses.” In Hitchin people say, “They’re too small. There are too many flats, and we don’t want to build any more flats. Any new proposal must be stopped because it is for small homes or flats.” Elsewhere they say, “They’re too big. We don’t want those. If we have got a housing shortage, we should be building the small homes for first-time buyers and flats.” We must avoid seeking refuge in excuses. We probably need more of all kinds of property, including flats, small starter homes and larger family homes.

The second excuse that people use in Hertfordshire is that immigrants do not come to our area. By and large, that is true: the vast majority go to central London or to areas with an existing large immigrant population, including Luton. I see my distinguished neighbour, the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), nodding in agreement. Immigrants tend not to come to Hertfordshire, but the people who would have lived in the homes in central London that are now occupied by people from abroad—or kept empty by people from abroad, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) says—do move out to the home counties. We cannot pretend that that does not happen. We cannot just shut the gates and pull up the drawbridge and pretend that we are not going to accommodate them. We have to accommodate more people.

The third excuse that people use is that we cannot build new homes because there is no infrastructure to support them, and if we build, it will just create a demand for such infrastructure. However, it is not houses that create that demand for more schools, hospitals, roads and water; it is people, and the people are already here. It is people, not houses, who consume water and who need hospitals and schools. The people are here, and we need to provide the infrastructure and the homes for them. We cannot pretend that the lack of one is an excuse for not providing the other.

The housing shortage creates problems for people like me who represent densely populated constituencies whose distinctive feature is the green belt. When I was first elected, I made the defence of the green belt a feature of my maiden speech. I pointed out that the one thing that united the diverse settlements in my constituency was the desire to remain separated from each other by strips of green belt. They should indeed remain separated in that way: the green belt is a vital and valuable part of our planning law, and we should attach enormous importance to keeping it. However, that means that we must build elsewhere, on brownfield sites or using infill development, unpopular though that often is.

New towns will also have to be built, not too far from London. We cannot pretend that this can all be done in the north of England. We cannot tell people to go and live in the north, or give them incentives to do so. There are already enormous incentives to move out of London and the home counties to the north. Anyone who sells their house in Harpenden can buy an equivalent property in the north of England for a fraction of the price and live off the investment income from the rest of the money. There are therefore already enormous incentives, but if people still have a desire to live in London and the home counties, that reflects the reality of economic and other forces that have to be taken into account.

We must do everything we can to stimulate and promote growth in other regions, but let us not pretend that we can avoid the need to build homes in and around London. We must do that, and we must avoid the excuses that have been used to prevent us from doing it. We must defend the green belt, but we must not be so hypocritical and bigoted as to pretend that we can have no housing at all elsewhere. I hope that enough of us will have the courage to say that, so that we can at least double the rate of house building in this country, as we must do if we are to tackle the underlying economic and social problems. If we do not do that, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I want to talk about housing and planning policy in my constituency, which is having a detrimental effect on the quality of life of tens of thousands of my constituents in the short term and on the physical and social integrity of the area in the longer term. Given the nature of this debate, I will take a Pearl & Dean moment and give three tasters of other issues that will occupy my time and that of my constituents between now and the general election, and probably long beyond that.

The first is truly a life and death matter: the inaptly named “Shaping a healthier future” programme of NHS North West London, which is overseeing, in effect, the closure of two major hospitals and four accident and emergency departments in north-west London. An article in last night’s London Evening Standard by its health editor, Ross Lydall, summed up the futility, incompetence and callousness of the way in which this largest ever hospital closure programme is being carried out. It was based on research by the London assembly Labour group, which revealed that 200,000 people in London last year went beyond the four-hour limit in A and E. The article stated:

“Imperial NHS trust, which runs St Mary’s in Paddington, Charing Cross and Hammersmith, missed the target on 50 weeks. North West London hospitals trust…missed the target on 51 weeks.”

Those two miscreants run three of the four closing A and E departments.

This process has been a stitch-up from the beginning: it has had fixed consultations; it has been subject to the most appalling propaganda by Hammersmith and Fulham council which simply tells lies, saying that hospital departments are going to stay open when in fact they are closing; and the trust has now put back the final decisions on the closures, which should have been taken as long ago as last October, to the week after the local elections. That does not fill me with anything other than dread.

I am glad that the arguments over the central issue are being made in the local elections on 22 May. It is not because people are Luddites that they oppose new developments and specialisms within the NHS; that has being going on for years in the area. It is because these are crass and life-threatening proposals. What really sealed the issue for me was a garbled letter that I received from the NHS this week. It said that it was going to find, from the various clinical commissioning groups, about £100 million in this financial year to provide the community services that it said it would have provided before the closures went ahead. It then added for good measure that it also wants to share out £35 million between the CCGs, which means that my CCG will have to give money to those CCGs that are in deficit. That is a shambolic way in which to run the health service.

The subject of dodgy consultations links me to my second subject, which is Heathrow’s expansion. People in west London have received a consultation document called “Black Heathrow” from a front organisation for Heathrow. It is completely unintelligible, talking at one stage about the closure of Heathrow, which no one wants, and then trying to advocate a third or additional runways on the site. I am pleased to say that there is a genuine cross-party organisation on this subject, which includes the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), me and many others of all parties and of none who genuinely represent the views of the 2 million people in west London, the overwhelming majority of whom do not want Heathrow expanded.

I share the frustration of Howard Davies over the political fix that both coalition parties go along with. I am talking about the fact that the decision on airport capacity in the south-east has been kicked into touch until after the election. I think Mr Davies is a constituent, and his report so far is good as it explodes the myth of the need for a hub airport and raises the prospect of a second runway at Gatwick, which is, on every criteria, a better option. I hope we can have a little more honesty and transparency in this debate, and that we can force a decision before the next election.

The third issue is police crime statistics, which we have already touched on in our discussion on the report from the Public Administration Select Committee. The end of neighbourhood policing, which is what we are seeing in London and around the country, is a huge step back, and does nothing to ensure public confidence in the police force. On the misuse of statistics, I gave the example earlier of a propaganda exercise, which in fairness to the police was carried out by the local authority on their behalf, that pretended that extra resources were going into policing. In fact, the official statistics, if we can believe them, say that there has been a cut of 158 officers—police community support officers and police officers—in Hammersmith since the last election. I raised that matter with the police and crime commissioner.

I raised another matter with the commissioner which will affect Members across London. He was perfectly clear that it was not in his gift to do anything about this, as it was a political decision by the current deputy Mayor to sell off police houses across London. Most police accommodation is effectively social housing. Many tenants are current or former police staff. Many are families who have lived in that accommodation for 15, 20 or 25 years. They do not have security of tenure, so families are being evicted on a daily basis. I have 40 homes in my constituency at Broadmead. Families who thought that they had a home for life are being thrown out on to the streets or the tender mercies of the local authority.

That brings me neatly on to the issue of housing proper. I am only able to talk about that thanks to two sources. One is what I call, pace Sherlock Holmes, the Uxbridge road irregulars. I am talking about the hundreds of my constituents who write to me every month about housing issues and tell me about things such as the 300% rise in complaints about council housing repairs or identify the hundreds of empty council flats that are being sold off on the open market by the local authority. I also want to thank Martin Peach, one of my constituents who happens to be a housing expert. He has written a report on the issue, which reveals the depth and cynicism of the housing policy in Hammersmith. I have had to rely on those sources because, unlawfully, the local authority refuses not only to give me the information voluntarily but to answer freedom of information requests. Over a two-month period, before and after Christmas, I submitted nine such requests. I do not think that is particularly excessive, and I usually put in a lot more, to be honest.

As the local elections are approaching and the authority is so ashamed of what it is doing, it aggregated those freedom of information requests because most of them had the word “housing” in them. Some were about how many properties were sold, some were about rent arrears and one was about the Christmas card sent at great expense to all tenants that said, “Please don’t get drunk this Christmas, pay your rent instead,” which I thought was an excellent use of public money, but because they all contain the word “housing” they were aggregated and I was told that under the Freedom of Information Act it was too expensive to answer those questions. Clearly, I will go to the Information Commissioner and clearly I will get a decision in my favour, as I am sure that that is an unlawful step, but that will probably take me six months and the aim will have been achieved. That is another example of how the Freedom of Information Act is misused by local authorities. However, as I say, we have other sources to help us find out what is going on.

Let me briefly summarise what is going on. The policy in Hammersmith is to build no new social rented accommodation, in a borough where the average house price is, at a conservative estimate, £675,000, although some estimates say that it is £750,000, and where rent for a two-bedroom flat is £400 to £500 a week. At least 10,000 families are in housing need. The local authority’s response is not simply to say that it will not build a single additional social rented home, but to decide that it will reduce the existing stock. In 2011 it decided that any property that required repairs costing more than £15,000 could be sold on the open market. At the end of 2013, 262 properties had been sold, generating £112 million in revenue.

At the time, the local authority was warned—again, this takes us into the realms of illegality—by the director of legal services that it should not sell off scarce properties, when in fact it had sold off 72 ground-floor flats and 31 whole houses, that it should not sell off properties if there was a pressing housing need, which of course there is, and that it should have regard to the effect on persons protected by the Equality Act 2010. The people who are disadvantaged—those who are most in need—tend to be from minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities and other groups who are protected by that Act. The director of legal services also said that sales should not be tainted by considerations of electoral advantage. I will let that one hang in the air.

Selling off perfectly good, sound council flats that could be rented to homeless families is step one, and step two is a joint venture with a private developer that will ensure that initially 150, and over time perhaps several thousand, blocks or estates of council property will be emptied out, not replaced, and then developed into what one of my constituents poetically called “zombie homes for absentee oligarchs”. That is obviously a waste of public funds. Most of those properties have been newly refurbished under the decent homes programme, but they will either be sold off by auction or demolished. Housing the families who would have gone into those properties and who will now be in the private rented sector will cost a great deal in housing benefit, and that does not deal at all with the social cost.

In the period from 1 January 2010 to 20 November 2013, 2,505 homeless households approached the council for help. As of 20 February 2013, 138 people were sleeping rough on the streets of the borough. The council’s emergency housing costs rose from £387,000 in 2009 to £1.7 million in 2012. It placed 463 households with one child or more outside the borough, and a further 121 households with no children but to whom the council owed a homelessness duty were placed in accommodation outside the borough. Of all the households that were housed temporarily, 329 were placed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, often for longer than the law permits. A further 22 households were housed outside London altogether, at a further cost of £79,000. All told, 600 households were housed outside the local area and 12 hostels were sold off.

How many people are in housing need in the borough? I said more than 10,000, which was the number on the housing waiting list this time last year, but then the housing waiting list was effectively abolished and now the council will tell you that the figure is only 700. However, the waiting time for properties was between two and seven years depending on the size of the property. How selling off or demolishing hundreds of homes helps, I do not know.

What reasons are given for this? First, that there is too much social housing, but there is 31% social housing in Hammersmith and Fulham, which is below the inner London average. Secondly, that there is no need for social housing; we need a property-owning democracy. The net effect between this census and the one before is that owner-occupation in the borough fell from 43% to 35.6%, the second highest fall in the country. That is a very successful policy.

On planning, the target is 40% affordable housing in any scheme. What is achieved, on average, is 16%, and none of that is social rented housing. Most of it will be for a discount market sale or some form of shared ownership, with a likely income needed of £50,000, about £37,000 net. That is not affordable housing by my definition, yet the definition of affordable housing has been extended so that it now applies to households earning £80,000 a year.

Who are the 50,000 homes in Hammersmith being built for? As I said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), that is the target number. The answer is in a letter that comes through my letterbox in an ordinary street in Shepherd’s Bush every day, from estate agents who say that they have demand from overseas investors. They say they have 3,000 purchasers looking to buy in our area, many of whom have 100% cash funds.

I shall give one example of a riverside development next to an ordinary terraced street in Hammersmith. It is a modern, contemporary development of one, two and three-bed luxurious apartments in a tranquil riverside location, priced between £600,000 and £1.7 million. The agents details say this:

“Also exclusive to the services residents will sport complex, which includes a swimming pool, sauna, spa room, gym, massage room, virtual golf, movie theatre for residents, a wine room and a room for meetings…The complex is in walking dostants…and the Royal Borough of Kensington Park…is another Stronie away through the area Fulham—is one of the larges parks in London—Richmond Park.”

I apologise for the English, but, of course, that was translated from the Russian by Google translator, because almost all the developments in my constituency are marketed either through The Straits Times or through websites in the middle east or Russia. That is who a local authority in London thinks it is appropriate to build for when we have tens of thousands of local people of—I say this to the right hon. Gentleman— whatever ethnic origin, whether they are indigenous, first, second or third generation in the UK, who need homes. We have a successful and vibrant mixed community in Hammersmith, which suffers only because of the direct policies pursued by this Government, this Mayor and the local authority in my area.

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend asks for a debate before the European elections, but it seems to me that the European elections are about who we send to the European Parliament. The debate between now and the European parliamentary elections should be about sending Conservative Members of the European Parliament, as we have in the past and will again in the future, who will go there and fight for British interests, vote against measures that are not in this country’s interests and promote competitiveness and deregulation in the European Union. That is what the European parliamentary election is about. At the same time, we might have a further opportunity in the course of the next Session in this House to debate through a private Member’s Bill how the people of this country can have their say in a referendum. That is a critical issue in getting such a debate to happen.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is bidding for foundation trust status so that it can take advantage of the Government’s hospital closure programme and sell off half of Charing Cross and Saint Mary’s hospitals, which the people who pay for the NHS, my constituents, do not want. May we have a debate on NHS land sales, and may we have it before 22 May and the local elections? Since Labour made this an election issue, the decision to close Charing Cross has unaccountably been put back to the week after the poll.

[Mr Lansley]

One might imagine on hearing the hon. Gentleman that foundation trust status had been introduced by this Government when, of course, it was introduced by the previous Labour Government. It certainly gives freedoms but, as it happens, it does not give a trust any greater freedom to sell property than it would have as an NHS trust. I am quite sure that the hon. Gentleman’s description of the purposes of acquiring foundation trust status does not match up with what Imperial College Healthcare itself believes. Many other trusts, including Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in my constituency, have used their freedoms to enable them to invest in additional capital, including new buildings, to improve the quality of the service they provide for patients.

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will not go on at length, but my hon. Friend and other colleagues from the south-west have—quite rightly—stressed the need for resilience and improvement in connections through the south-west, both road and rail. The Environment Agency is currently considering a number of studies on that rail route, and the Department for Transport and the Highways Agency are considering a number of expediting studies relating to the route from the A30/A303.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on how the Metropolitan police investigates fraud? That will allow Members to contrast the cosy relationship between the Met and big business—whereby it assists private prosecutions in return for a share of the compensation—with the treatment of my constituents who have to report even substantial frauds online to Action Fraud. Its pro forma response is, “It’s not possible for the police to investigate every report they receive.” People only hear from the police now if they are able to progress the investigation further. The rest is silence.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman might like to initiate an Adjournment debate on that subject, although I suspect we have just heard the speech.

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Not only Sir Michael Wilshaw, but The Times Educational Supplement has made it clear that there has probably never been a better time to be a teacher and to join the teaching profession, and the quality of teachers in our schools is at one of the highest levels it has ever been. That is partly because of the reform of initial teacher training, and 74% of graduates entering initial teacher training now have a 2:1 degree or higher—that proportion is the highest on record.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on education, particularly on the refusal of Tory councils to support or invest in community schools? That would give me the opportunity to raise the case of Sulivan school in Fulham, one of the best performing primaries in the country, which on Monday Hammersmith and Fulham council will decide to close and demolish solely so that its site can be given to a free school.

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot comment on the particular case, but I will of course ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education to look at the matter and respond. I will discover more about the circumstances then. In my experience, there is an undoubted determination on the part of councils—I know Hammersmith and Fulham as a council pretty well—to ensure improvement in the provision of schools.

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will not repeat what I have said previously, but in the light of the points that my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) have made, I will talk to Ministers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who fully share the concerns of the House and are working with our partners, pressing for the political progress necessary, including the implementation of the agreement in April. Time is not on our side, and our concerns increase day by day.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I say how much I will miss Paul Goggins? I was looking forward to working with him this year on holding the Government to account on the promises they made to mesothelioma sufferers in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012—an issue that I know was very dear to his heart.

Has the Leader of the House seen The Times’ letters page, particularly the letter from the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, who complains that in interviews this week the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who has responsibility for legal aid, has exaggerated barristers’ average earnings by more than 300%? Is not the problem that, while making the biggest attack on the criminal justice system in a generation, the Government have allowed no legislative time or debate? Will the Justice Secretary now table a debate in Government time so that at least we can get to the bottom of some of these dodgy statistics?

[Mr Lansley]

I know that my hon. Friends would never use dodgy statistics. At nearly £2 billion a year, ours is one of the most expensive legal aid systems in the world. I understood there to be consensus across political parties that savings needed to be made. That is why we are taking these steps. Previously, the Leader of the Opposition said that his party supported cuts in the legal aid budget. If he and his hon. Friends are changing their position, it would be helpful if they would explain how they would pay for it. It is of course open to the Opposition—and to the hon. Gentleman to tell his Front-Bench team this—to raise these matters: they have two Opposition days in the next two weeks, and if they wish to raise these issues, as they have done before, they can do so.

Points of Order

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that. He will, I hope, have heard the statement from the Chair. To put it very candidly and bluntly, these announcements should be made to the House, not by the mechanism of Twitter. I think it is pretty clear.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are used to the Government making announcements to the press before they come to the House to make them. What happened this morning is different. The press have been privately briefed and the Secretary of State for Health has come to the House still not prepared to tell the House what is in the Keogh review. Is this the first time this has happened? Do you agree that it should not happen again? Will you now order that the Keogh review is put in the Library today, so that we do not have to wait till tomorrow to find out what is in it?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He asks whether this is the first time that this has happened. There are very few firsts in this place; most things have happened before at some stage or another. I am not sure that it is within my bailiwick to insist upon the deposit of the report today, as the hon. Gentleman rather earnestly beseeches me to do. I hope that he will not take offence when I say that he is rarely satisfied about anything. He is an experienced parliamentary hand and he knows that Members apply for permission to put urgent questions, and it is for the Speaker to decide whether to grant the urgent question. I did grant the urgent question, which carries its own message about my sense that it was important that the issue should be aired in the Chamber today. The hon. Gentleman took part, I believe, in the exercise, and I think we will leave it there for today.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

When I first looked at the Bill, I initially thought that it was badly drafted. As has been mentioned on several occasions, it has been described as a dog’s breakfast, and I initially thought it was even less nutritionally useful than that. I have now come to a different view. I think it is a well-drafted Bill, because it serves several specific purposes, none of which actually is the purpose that we think the Bill should serve in terms of cleaning up lobbying, sorting out third-party funding and regulating the way in which the political process works for elections and parties.

Part 1, as several hon. Members have suggested, ought to be the subject of further discussion and broadening out. The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made an excellent speech in which she set out the extent to which lobbying seems to have made a substantial difference in her constituency on a particular issue close to her heart. Of course, such lobbying not only cannot be included under the definitions in the Bill but has been designed out of it. The title of the Bill includes the phrase “transparency of lobbying”, which will mean that people think the Government are doing something to sort it out, but the long title shows that it is only about “consultant lobbying”, excluding 97% of the real lobbying that goes on in and around this place.

The Liberal Democrats said in their election manifesto that they would:

“Curb the improper influence of lobbyists by introducing a statutory register of lobbyists, changing the Ministerial Code so that ministers and officials are forbidden from meeting MPs on issues where the MP is paid to lobby”,

but I am sorry to say that they have ended up as a human shield for a Bill that is trying to minimise the changes that can be made. It is a damage limitation Bill, not a change to lobbying overall. Those hon. Members who think that they will take part in a process over the next couple of weeks whereby we have a dialogue for change have already lost. The Bill seeks to limit the process by which lobbying can be changed, which is what the public expect this House to be dealing with. It does so to such an extent that it is mendacious about its real effect on lobbying.

Part 2, unlike part 1, was not long in gestation. Indeed, it turned up out of a bright blue sky two days before the House went into the summer recess. Its effect comes from the opposite form of drafting. The drafting of the regulations and amendments is so loose and vague that third-party lobbyists, campaigners and organisations will, as hon. Members have said, probably self-police to ensure that they do not inadvertently get caught by it.

Do not get me wrong—I think that it is important that we take further action on lobbying of Parliament by third-party groups. Hearing some of the discussions this afternoon, one might think that the process had only started with this Bill, but such groups are subject to considerable regulation under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. The Bill states that people can be caught retrospectively for undertaking action, particularly at a local level, in the year before an election and can be judged for so doing by the Electoral Commission. Believe me, the last thing the commission wants to do is to get involved in political judgments about who has been doing what at a local level and in local elections. Those people will be subject to all sorts of registration penalties which they never thought they would have to undertake.

My view, on balance, is that the drafting is deliberately vague to ensure that pesky groups do not come along to constituencies during an election period and start campaigning on the doorstep about parties that might have a few worries about their approach to the election.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The Bill attacks the most important parts of civil society: charities, non-governmental organisations, pressure groups and trade unions. It might well be unlawful under articles 8 and 11 in schedule 1 the Human Rights Act 1998; but of course, the Government would like to get rid of the Human Rights Act as well. This is a fundamental attack on civil society.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am tending towards that view. As has been said, the Bill should be a matter of careful thought. Indeed, over a long period there has been substantial and careful thought about third-party campaigning. Nevertheless, the Bill has been the subject of no consultation, not even with the Electoral Commission on how it would carry out this rag-bag of proposals without putting itself in an impossible position. Turning up without consultation or warning is just not the way to organise and regulate third-party campaigning at elections.

Part 3 seeks further to regulate trade unions to count their membership in a way that they already do. I wonder what that is about. That seems to be dog-whistle politics that says, “We are putting further impediments in the way of trade unions, which are already doing what they are supposed to do, but we are taking action as though they weren’t.”

Overall, this is a shocking Bill, which goes 100% away from what we should be doing to regulate lobbying and about the process of third-party campaigning and civil society. We really need to take the Bill away and think again. I hope that we will vote to do that today, to get a Bill that we are in favour of—

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The House will have been shocked, as my hon. Friend no doubt was, by the report. The House, through the Backbench Business Committee, was able to debate child sexual exploitation last week. The issue has been debated, but we must press forward, and my colleagues are doing so with the tackling child sexual exploitation action plan and other measures. The interim report made a number of recommendations that we must pursue. We must also look at the recommendations from phase 2 next year, but be ready now to take all the action we can, as illustrated by my hon. Friends’ response to last week’s debate.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), during a statement earlier this week, called for a full debate in Government time on the situation in the middle east. The response of the Leader of the House today was as incoherent on the issue as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were in trying to justify not supporting Palestinian statehood. This is a serious situation with a fragile ceasefire, the threat of a ground attack and 160 dead. May we have a debate as soon as possible?

[Mr Lansley]

We will of course consider that. I had a conversation with my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) and he was clear in encouraging us to consider having a debate on the middle east. I have not been able to find time now, but it is open to hon. Members to seek such a debate using the time available to the Backbench Business Committee. Likewise, it is open to the Opposition, which has time for a debate next week should they wish to use it for that purpose. I think what I said was simply a reflection of what has been said many times by the Government and was repeated by the Foreign Secretary on Tuesday: what we want to do is secure the best possible progress in negotiations and use the ceasefire to make progress quickly. His response illustrated that urgency and the Government’s view that precipitating a vote at the United Nations was not necessarily the best way of making progress.

Business of the House

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We have two days on the Finance Bill, including a debate on Third Reading, when that might be possible. I would welcome such a debate. The Prime Minister said yesterday—at this Dispatch Box, I think—that he believed in flatter, fairer taxes, which is why we have taken 2 million people out of tax altogether, reduced corporation tax and now have a lower top rate of tax to make Britain competitive with the rest of the world. I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s contributions on Third Reading of the Finance Bill on Tuesday.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Could we have a debate about health service reorganisation and cuts, including plans to close four of the nine accident and emergency departments in west London, where the local NHS says that without closure they will

“literally run out of money”?

The right hon. Gentleman will know these hospitals very well, as hospitals such as Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Central Mid and Ealing served his former constituents, and they are much needed by the people they serve.

[Sir George Young]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I had an interest in the area he now represents. We are putting more resources into the NHS than were planned by the Labour party, but I will share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and ask him to write to the hon. Gentleman about the proposed rationalisation to which he refers.