Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Kit Malthouse

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend speaks the truth. I am very sorry to hear about the circumstances that afflicted the business in his community. I know that he works hard to ensure that his part of the world remains a great place for investment, and I hope that business managed to deal with the problem. The country is littered with businesses that have had to put boulders, huge logs or other barriers over their hardstanding or car parks. That is not a situation we can tolerate into the future.

As my hon. Friend says, the vast majority of Travellers go about their lifestyle in a perfectly legal manner, and we should facilitate and help them to do so, but those who do not and who cross the line into illegality need to be dealt with. We believe that the measures in the Bill will allow the police to do that with much greater efficiency.

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

What steps her Department is taking to respond to the findings of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration’s inspection of contingency asylum accommodation.

Housing

Debate between Catherine West and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I was saying, a home speaks directly to your hopes and dreams and gives your children a good start in life. It is about moving to take up a better job and anchoring yourself in a strong and confident community. However, for too many, particularly young people, a decent, affordable and secure place to live can feel out of reach. We remain determined that that must change.

Housing is this Government’s chief domestic priority, and our progress is already clear. For the first time in 10 years, home ownership among 35 to 44-year-olds is up. We have helped over 500,000 people into home ownership since 2010 through Government schemes such as Help to Buy and right to buy. Last year, we built more homes than in all but one of the last 31 years, bringing us closer to our ambitious target of 300,000 new homes a year. However, there is much more to do if we are to meet people’s aspirations.

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

Will the Minister apologise to all those sat waiting and languishing on homelessness waiting lists across the country?

[Kit Malthouse]

I have many times, at this Dispatch Box and elsewhere, accepted the fact that Governments of all stripes over the past three or four decades have failed to build the houses that the country needs, and we all share some culpability in the housing crisis we are now facing. The question is not how it came about, but what we are doing to address it.

When I took on this role last year, I made my task a simple one: more, better, faster homes. I will begin with “more”, because we are taking bold action on a number of fronts to increase supply. We are putting billions into housing and infrastructure—at least £44 billion over five years. We are reforming planning and we have empowered Homes England, our new national housing agency, to take a more strategic and assertive approach to increasing supply. We have recently announced the award of £1.2 billion of grant funding from our £5.5 billion housing infrastructure fund. The seven successful schemes have the potential to unlock up to 68,000 new homes, and we look forward to announcing further awards in the coming months.

We are not looking only to the market to deliver; we have paved the way for a new generation of social housing by removing the Government cap on how much councils can borrow, so that they can start to build a new generation of community homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman has met me to press his constituents’ case. In turn, I have raised the matter face to face with the representative of Ballymore. We continue to put pressure on the industry generally to do its duty to leaseholders and critically, to remediate to ensure that everybody is safe in their homes. However, I am more than happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in the next few days about the progress we are making generally on the issue.

[Catherine West]

I thank the Minister for taking a further intervention on Grenfell. Can he confirm that every single tenant who was made homeless as a result of the terrible fire in the Grenfell block has been housed?

[Kit Malthouse]

Sadly, I cannot quite confirm that. We are very close to completing the rehousing of everybody who was involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. At the moment, the numbers remaining are small and the cases are often complex, and we are making significant progress.

I am also mindful of those without a place to call home. When I reflect on what we can do better, I am clear that we must do everything possible to confront rough sleeping and the broader challenges of homelessness. Our cross-Government, £100 million rough sleeping strategy is helping our rough sleeping initiative reach more parts of the country—now more than 75% of local authorities in England. As part of that, we announced £46 million to support people off the streets and into accommodation in 2019-20, because we have already seen how that can work and make a real difference. Recent figures have shown the first fall in the number of people sleeping rough in eight years. However, we should make no mistake: one person sleeping rough is one person too many and we remain more determined than ever to end rough sleeping for good. That means combating homelessness, and our ambitious £1.2 billion package of support will help tackle it in all its forms, giving some of the most vulnerable people in our society the security and dignity they deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Kit Malthouse

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I sincerely agree with my hon. Friend that the Government’s objective should be to create a big, wide menu of tenure options from which young people can choose at different stages in their lives, and depending on their circumstances. We want to ensure that everyone can acquire good-quality homes for themselves and their families, but critically that everyone in the country, at some point in their lives, should have a shot at ownership.

[Catherine West]

21. Last month thousands of children marched for a cleaner planet. What support are the Government providing to enable local authorities to bring about a genuine green revolution in new council housing schemes?

[Kit Malthouse]

As I hope the House knows, this Government are extremely ambitious about our environmental targets and want to push further and faster in order to achieve them. The hon. Lady is right that there is enormous potential, particularly in the affordable homes programme and the new generation of council homes that we hope will be built to create higher environmental standards. I saw this for myself on a visit to a factory in Aldridge in the west midlands, where Accord Housing is producing modular homes for social and affordable rent. They said to me that so good are the environmental standards in those homes that they have lower arrears in buildings built that way because they are easier to heat and light.

Britain-Iran Relations

Debate between Catherine West and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) on her excellent speech, and particularly her references to her own family. It is always a pleasure to hear about other Members’ backgrounds and their interests in Parliament. I want to put on the record my interest in Iran, not least because of my reading the novel “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi, which I am sure many Members know and which has been made into a lovely film. I hope many can watch that film and learn about Persia, its history and about the beautiful Farsi language.

We are so lucky to have room 52 at the British Museum just down the road, so that we can go and see all the beautiful cultural treasures from Cyrus the Great’s 6th-century Persian empire. We also have my alma mater, the School of Oriental and African Studies. I am delighted to hear from other Members today that SOAS is offering trips to Iran as part of scholars’ interest in that wonderful country. One day I hope to visit Persepolis and see the wonderful marbles. Of course, Iran has 21 UNESCO world heritage sites.

I also want to put on the record my appreciation and that of Labour Members of the role of the European Union foreign team, including the excellent work that Cathy Ashton did, in developing the big step forward that was made in July 2015 in what is now called the Iranian nuclear deal. Sometimes we forget the important role that the European Union has played in foreign affairs.

I look forward to the Minister’s comments on Iran. I ask him whether we can anticipate what resources there will be in the Foreign Office in years to come, when we may be doing foreign affairs in a slightly different way following our Brexit negotiations. How many experts in the Foreign Office speak Farsi, for example? I am sure we have a couple with us today, but is there an argument for increased resource so that we can meet demand?

Members are right not to have too rosy a view of Iran. I was pleased that the hon. Members for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned the persecution of Christians and other minority groups. We know that many gay people have a very difficult time in Iran. We also know that the arbitrary imprisonment of human rights activists is a common occurrence, which many Members raise regularly at Foreign Office questions.

Following the question asked in the House of Lords in September 2016, will the Minister update us on the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Many constituents have written to Members about her case. It is great that we have so many constituents who are concerned about the position of women in Iran. I am sure the hon. Member for South Ribble also feels strongly about that, and I am sure she will raise that matter if she gets the opportunity, perhaps through her work on the all-party group when it visits Iran.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and the all-party group for the work that they do. It is slightly under-appreciated outside Parliament just how much cross-party work can be done. I understand that there was a trip in recent years when the former Member for Blackburn went to Iran with my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I do not know whether the hon. Member for South Norfolk was present on that trip, but there is a lot that can be done, with a cross-section of interests, to promote good relations and a positive side of foreign affairs. We all come from different constituencies and have different interests, but in the end we are trying to promote dialogue and a peaceful future in the middle east.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that we have common interests with Iran, particularly with regard to the current conflict in the middle east and how we can tackle the long-term problem of al-Qaeda and Daesh. I wonder whether we could question the Foreign Office more on that cross-section of interests, including on how we as parliamentarians could push forward on those issues.

I want to emphasise a couple of points that have come up in my research. We are focusing very much on the positive today, but there is of course always unpredictability to our relations with Iran—I think particularly of the 2011 incident when a mob stormed the British Embassy, which it is important to put on record in a debate such as this. There have been cautious steps forward, but we must not forget the importance of our staff’s safety. That incident did lead to a slight step backwards.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady and other hon. Members have mentioned some dreadful incidents that have taken place in Iran. Would she accept that part of the argument about engaging with Iran is that we need to recognise that millions of Iranians will have been horrified at those events too? Millions of Iranians who saw the storming of the British Embassy will have held their hands up in horror at what was happening and the damage that it was wreaking to their relations with the rest of the world.

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman is right to put on record how these incidents need to be regarded and to say that we need to move forward and not dwell on things, but it is equally correct to put it on record that sometimes it feels a bit like two steps forward, one step back. That is the case in any relationship—in the major foreign policy discussion that we are having at the moment around Brexit, day by day we move small inches forward and a couple of steps back. We need to be realistic about that process when talking about important, strategic places such as Iran.

I will come to a conclusion, as I am sure the Minister is keen to make his remarks. I press him on the question of providing further debating time for this important relationship; on how we can work together to strengthen our approach to tackling security concerns around al-Qaeda and Daesh, including by working with Iran at a cross-sectional interest level; and on how we can promote the understanding of cultural and language groups, through the all-party parliamentary group, our excellent universities such as SOAS and places such as the British Museum,. I was pleased to hear that the Minister had stepped in to save Farsi as a taught language. Along with Mandarin, Arabic, Turkish and Greek, Farsi needs to be on the curriculum much more regularly in our schools and universities, and I was pleased to hear of his interesting role in that. I look forward to his updating us not just on human rights concerns in Iran but on how we can work more cohesively and positively towards our relationship with that great country.