Debate on the Address

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

May I extend my thoughts to my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who has been targeted, particularly in the last, very difficult, month? It reminds me very much of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) talked about as a Jewish MP when she was targeted. It seems to be even more intense for women MPs. I am grateful to the Speaker’s Office and the Speaker’s team, which have reached out more than once to MPs to re-engage with us over safety concerns. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse has taken the practical measures that the House has put in place. The Speaker has been exceptional in introducing many new measures to help MPs at this critical time, when foreign policy is sensitive. Organisations such as Tell MAMA UK, which looks at the number of attacks on Muslims, and the Community Security Trust, which records the alarming rise and increase in attacks on the Jewish community, underline the importance of security, taking a record and making sure that we are as safe as we can possibly be.

The theme of security came up in the King’s Speech, and I was pleased that the King mentioned the sensitive time that we are going through, as he has a record of interfaith work. One of the most helpful things I did during Prorogation was attend two synagogues in my constituency, where I took part in prayers for Israel. I also attended the London Islamic Cultural Society mosque in my constituency, as well as the interfaith group that meets every couple of months in the constituency, usually to discuss interfaith work, but in the context of the unfolding tragedy in Israel and Gaza, to talk about how we as a community can respond to the horror of the attacks that Hamas perpetrated in the south of Israel on 7 October, a month ago today, and the feelings of despair and sadness experienced by families whose loved ones are still in tunnels somewhere in Gaza, as well as the terrible television coverage and newspaper reports of the situation in Gaza. I think the Financial Times reported a week ago that people in Gaza were running out of shrouds in which to wrap the fatalities, and were having to build mass graves, which is a terrible moment for any humanitarian organisation.

I am pleased that tomorrow we will hear from the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who will update the House on the UK’s role. It is good to see cross-party support for the UK’s role in humanitarian action that can be taken to try to save lives, even at this most intense and difficult time.

I now turn to a domestic concern that I have arising from the King’s Speech, and that is the housing question. Many Members have said in the debate this afternoon that the leasehold provisions do not go far enough, and I share those concerns. Since I was elected in 2015, I have had hundreds of emails from leaseholders about the lack of protection they feel with their housing tenure. I look forward to the Renters (Reform) Bill being amended in Committee to strengthen its provisions, so that leaseholders are not negatively affected financially in the coming years.

I want briefly to put on the record my concern about rough sleeping. In the last 24 hours, I have been approached by three beggars. One was on the Thameslink service, who has clearly had addiction issues; another was a 19-year-old girl who approached me at King’s Cross St Pancras, who had obviously been assaulted and was sleeping rough, and she was begging for help, and money of course; and the third was an autistic man, who approached me once again asking for money. I do feel that begging and rough sleeping have got quite extreme in the last couple of months. Many people will have read the newspaper coverage about how the United Nations has underlined the growing inequality we have in the UK and the need for us to act with much more energy in addressing it.

The food bank in my constituency has just written to give me the update that, in the three hours it was open last week—it is open just once a week—there were 369 requests for food parcels. That figure has gone up enormously. We all hoped back in 2010 that food banks would be needed just for a brief moment while the economy righted itself following the global financial crash. Sadly, it has become business as usual to have all these food banks, and we all live to see a world without food banks.

I want briefly to mention other housing tenures. On the rented sector, a constituent wrote to me to say that their landlord had decided to increase the monthly rent from £1,470 to £1,720 overnight. In a further email, they told me:

“We originally thought we’d be able to buy our own property around this time but with current interest rates…we definitely can’t afford it.”

A year ago, we had the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) as our Prime Minister, and unfortunately we still have not recovered financially from that period. A constituent in another rental property told me:

“My partner and I are looking to stay in our one-bedroom flat”,

but the letting agent wants to put up the rent by £500 a month. They already pay £1,900, and this

“is absolutely crazy. We are very good tenants; we fix things ourselves and keep the property in an excellent condition”.

Another constituent told me:

“I just wanted to say that today our rent was increased by 24%. The landlord’s agent would not accept any negotiation. Our phone, utility, etc bills go up annually by the rate of inflation +4%. I’ve been a tenant here for 20 years.”

That is obviously getting extremely serious.

Sadly, I have also noticed the impact on the high street in areas such as mine. Normally, a place such as Crouch End would be very vibrant, but I have noticed a number of high street shops closing just in the last two months. What was once an area with a very vibrant villagey feel has one shop closing almost every two or three weeks, because people are so exposed to high mortgage payments and high rent payments that they are not able to keep the high street going. To give just one example, a constituent told me:

“Our mortgage has increased from £1,950 to £3,000 a month and this has clearly had a significant impact on our household income. I have had to reduce my monthly pension contributions and we have both changed our working hours to reduce our childcare costs. Such was the pressure on lenders that the deal took months to go through, which in itself was agonisingly stressful. We waited and watched on as mortgage deals were pulled left, right and centre, aware that if our deal had fallen through then we would have had to reapply at higher and higher rates. I note that if we were to switch at today’s rates, our payments would be at least £3500 with further increases likely through to 2024. It’s an absolute mess.”

The final element I will talk about is the social housing sector—the other tenure we have in the borough. I want to put on the record what so many others have said: we are simply not building enough homes, and the supply of new homes needs to be addressed with urgency. Completions of new homes have dropped again this month, and we desperately need more supply so that we have somewhere to house the future generation. Constituents are writing to me saying that they have several children in a one-bedroom flat, and nowhere for their children to study. The impact on the education and mental health of my constituents is extreme.

Buildings new homes would provide opportunities. As a local authority leader in a previous life, we found that by building new homes we were able to have an excellent apprenticeship scheme. This seems to me a great opportunity for green jobs, for more training and skills development for engineers, for the construction industry to introduce insulation, and to introduce new homes that are more effective in terms of the environment. I hope that the Government will listen and get on with building those new homes, not just to alleviate the terrible overcrowding that we see, but to give people hope, a future and a sense of security.