Building Homes

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

These are the answers to the questions. [Interruption.] No, they are the bits that I have written, actually, in regard to her questions.

Members of the party opposite are now talking to themselves and not the country. The right hon. Lady mentioned chaos and uncertainty; I really do not know how Opposition Members can say that with a straight face after the chaos and uncertainty that we have seen, with countless Housing Secretaries not knowing what was going on.

In every inner-city area—this is in answer to the question—there are increases in the targets. I remind Members that we inherited the most acute housing crisis in living memory. I say to the right hon. Lady that the green belt definition is in the consultation document, and I suggest that she read it. It also tackles the issue of “beautiful homes”, We will build homes at scale and they will be beautiful. We will protect the natural environment, and we will make sure that people have the homes that they deserve and need.

I was astonished by what the right hon. Lady said about councils and council leaders. The council leaders I have spoken to are overjoyed by the fact that the Tories were kicked out. They say to me that they have been left in a dire situation. I know that Opposition Members like to think that that is just Labour councils, but councils across the political spectrum have been left in a disastrous situation, because the party opposite did not build the homes that people need. We have a homelessness crisis in this country. People under the age of 30 cannot get homes now. It is impossible for people to get on to the housing ladder. That is the failure of the last Conservative Government, and that is what we are going to fix. That is what we are going to get on and do.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also welcome both the ambition and the detail in my right hon. Friend’s statement, and the commitments made in it.

I have two questions. First, if the targets are not mandatory—although, in the last Parliament, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee said that they had to be—many councils will simply choose to ignore them, but if they are to be mandatory, will my right hon. Friend assure me that they will be based on a proper needs assessment of each local authority, and will do away with the nonsensical and arbitrary urban uplifts to which she referred in the context of London?

Secondly, may I ask a question about social housing? I was proud to be brought up in a council house, as my right hon. Friend was. Will she work closely with local authorities and look particularly at land value capture? Will she ensure that when the planning permission for a site uplifts the value of that site, the total increase in value does not go to the landowners alone, but is used to benefit the public purse and reduce the cost of building those homes?

[Angela Rayner]

I can confirm that we are getting rid of the urban uplift. The new method of establishing housing targets is better than the previous one, which we believed was outdated. The urban uplift figures were plucked from thin air, but we believe that our new method will give councils the stability and certainty that will enable them to plan for the homes and local services that they need. As for land value capture, there is a little bit about it in the consultation document, but there will be more in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am so pleased about the work he has been doing since he was elected to this place and the way in which he has been a real champion of his constituents, which they did not feel they had previously. He makes a really important point, and he is right to point out the huge problem of estate agent charges and fees. The steps the Government are taking to address the issue are welcome, of course, but we absolutely believe there is room to improve the measures in the Bill. The shadow Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), will look to do so in Committee.

[Mr Betts]

Following on from that point, when the Select Committee looked at this issue—it is a real problem—we said that whenever a property is sold, the purchaser or leaseholder, and in some cases the freeholder, should have a right at the beginning to see precisely what the agreement was between the local authority and the developer about where responsibility for ongoing maintenance of the estate and so forth rests. Many purchasers simply do not know who to go to and who is responsible. It would be helpful if that was set out very clearly at the beginning of the purchase.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on his fabulous work in this area. Transparency is incredibly important because it is the first step towards getting accountability.

We spoke before about pets—we all love our pets—and the Secretary of State has rightly protected the reasonable right of tenants to keep pets, yet it is not clear whether he intends to extend that right to leaseholders. I have seen leases that contain an outright ban, so I hope he ensures that the Bill reflects that. It is just one example of the restrictions that terms in leases increasingly impose, but I could cite many more—for example, basic modifications or decorations to flats, or the right to conduct business from home. I know that some Government Members may not be keen on working from home, but it is quite another thing to say that someone could lose their home over it. They might be more sympathetic if I point out the impact on the self-employed, who are often banned from running their own business from their own home.

There are basic principles at stake for the Opposition, and I hope the whole House can agree that people’s rights to bring up a family, to care for a loved family pet, to own and run their own business, and to pay a fair price and receive what they have paid for are basic British rights and values. The incredible thing is that they are being denied to people in their very own homes—homes that they own. That is surely at the heart of today’s debate, because for leaseholders, their flat or house is not an investment; it is their home—a place to live, to grow up, to grow old, to raise a family, to get on in life and to be part of a community. A home is more than bricks and mortar; it is about security and having power over your own life.

As a leaseholder, someone may have ownership but not control. The dream of home ownership has already slipped away from far too many, but it is less of a dream and more of a nightmare for too many who now achieve it. From what the Secretary of State has said, there is some agreement between us on the problems those people face, but the contents of the Bill do not quite match up to his sentiments or the energy that he brings to the Dispatch Box. So I hope that in winding up, the Minister will not just tell us exactly how far the Bill addresses the problems raised today but accept that we can work together in later stages to go further.

Renters (Reform) Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

It is absolutely right that we get into these challenges, because I do not think people feel that the current situation provides redress for the challenges they face. I hope that in Committee, the Secretary of State will listen to points made by Members across the House to ensure that people get the redress and support that they need, and that we strengthen tenants’ rights in this area.

[Mr Betts]

The Bill does not really deal with the issue of affordability at all. One of the big issues is the freezing of the local housing allowance: some 90% of properties in the private rented sector are not affordable with the amount of LHA that is payable. The Select Committee recommended that we go back to the 30% figure, as was previously the case, so could we push for that to happen? Currently, many people simply cannot afford anything at all in the private rented sector.

[Angela Rayner]

We have to get into that issue, but we also have to deal with the root cause, which is that we do not have enough adequate social housing in this country. We do not have enough housing, and that is because of 13 years of the Tories’ failure to build the housing that we need and to challenge Members on their Back Benches. The Prime Minister has failed to challenge those on his Back Benches who have delayed house building in this country when we need it so desperately.

The Secretary of State mentioned the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and the White Paper, but I am disappointed that many of the proposals in the Government’s White Paper have since been dropped. The Secretary of State said that he is open-minded, and I am glad about that, because the Bill is silent on proposals to make blanket bans on renting to families with children or those in receipt of benefits illegal. That sort of unacceptable practice must be stamped out, and I hope he will work with us to make sure the Bill does so. In the White Paper, the Government also promised to introduce the decent homes standard to give renters safer, better-value homes and remove the blight of poor-quality homes in local communities. That standard is missing from the Bill, but I did hear what the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks. I gently say to him that we cannot miss an opportunity to give private renters the protection—the long-term security and better rights and conditions—that they deserve.

Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I will go a little bit further and compliment some of the Tory Members who have stood up as part of Greater Manchester, and I will be incredibly disappointed if what I have seen over the past 24 hours results in this becoming a party political fight. Because in Greater Manchester, despite what the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary were trying to suggest, we were united in trying to support our citizens across the conurbation in doing the right thing, bringing the virus rate down and supporting our economy. I hope we can continue to do that. I hope we do not get distracted by messages that are not in the motion, and I absolutely hope the Prime Minister does the right thing, because this is not just about Greater Manchester—this is coming to a town near you. In so many areas now, the R number is increasing. So many areas are in tier 2; so many areas are going to go into tier 3. This is a marker to ensure that our economy survives through those problems.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

On that point about coming to a town near you: it is indeed coming to cities and towns in the Sheffield city region, it was announced today. The package of assistance is totally inadequate. It is nothing like what the leaders and the Mayor asked for. It is exactly the same as has been offered to other areas—the standard package. It is not locally negotiated; it is the standard package. As the leader of Rotherham said, “They put lots of civil servants into a room with us to tell us what we couldn’t have.” That is actually what has been happening in the negotiations.

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his insight. Many of the local leaders I have heard from have said that it felt like they had been blackmailed and pressurised into taking a deal. Greater Manchester and the Mayor were not just trying arbitrarily to get more than somewhere else. We put a package together based on the needs of our city, our conurbation, our lowest-paid and the businesses that needed the support. It was not a bargaining chip to get this or that; it was about making sure that there was a floor that meant people were given the support that, by the way, this Government promised. They promised that support, and we are just asking them to keep to their promise.

Public Services

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that he needs to get out more.

The Secretary of State’s predecessors, and even the former Prime Minister, have now admitted that the abolition of maintenance grants was a mistake, but unless the Government act in this Session another generation of 18-year-olds will go to university next summer without maintenance support. The Education Secretary has already accepted that the system is unfair. In a recent letter to the Office for Students, he raised the possibility of moving to a new system of post-qualification admissions. I am delighted that he is keen on one of Labour’s many evidence-led radical policies on education. If only that had been in the Government’s programme this week, and if only they had fully acted on the recommendations of another of their independent reviews on school exclusions. So far, they have promised to take up only those relating to formal permanent exclusions, but if they take no action to deal with the problem of children falling off school rolls without any formal process at all, they risk making that situation worse.

The Secretary of State’s predecessor did manage to get almost the whole House to support the passing of one signature piece of legislation: the regulations implementing statutory sex and relationships education. I was proud to support that step from this Dispatch Box. Before I became an MP, I was a volunteer for the Samaritans, a charity that was founded after a young girl took her life because her periods had started. She did not know what was happening to her; she thought she had a disease. If she had had sex and relationships education, she might have been here today. So now we have legislated, but we must support the schools that are teaching the curriculum. We need to set down the resources that they need and the moral leadership that they deserve. I hope that the Education Secretary will make it clear later that there is no opt-out from equality in schools, and that he will stand with teachers and heads in delivering that.

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend is making a really important point. Will she emphasise the importance of saying to schools that they are required to do this form of education? If they leave it open as an option, that is when they come under real pressure from those who want to undermine this whole agenda.

[Angela Rayner]

Absolutely. There is a majority across the House to ensure that we push forward with this important legislation and support teachers and heads in delivering it in our schools. We have to lead the way, taking communities with us, in ensuring that our children and young people feel safe, secure and valued. Every young person deserves that in our education system.

School support staff are another section of the workforce who deserve that support, which the Education Secretary rightly acknowledged in our first exchanges. He will have been told at close quarters about the value of teaching assistants as he is married to one, so I will not question his commitment. However, as his predecessors found, commitment from the Education Secretary is not enough if they do not have it from their Prime Minister, so I hope that the Education Secretary will stand firm and make it clear that he will not countenance balancing the books on the backs of our support staff. Perhaps he could look again at the abolition of the national body for school support staff, because restoring it would be another step that he could take with the support of the House.

There is no doubt that the Education Secretary will talk about investment in schools as if they have not faced a decade of cuts. The Prime Minister promised to reverse those cuts, forgetting to mention, of course, that he sat around the Cabinet table and supported those very cuts time after time. Far worse is the gap between his words and his actions, because the Government are not even reversing their own cuts. Not only did the package ignore the cuts to capital funding, central education spending, further education and so much else, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that the announcement made in the spending round would not even undo the cuts to schools since 2010 in its final year—another broken promise from a Prime Minister who cannot be trusted. He promised £700 million next year, but councils are already facing such a shortfall. The Local Government Association has put next year’s deficit at £1.2 billion.

The Education Secretary has warm words about further education, but the spending round included less than £200 million for increasing the base rate—little more than a real-terms freeze. If the Secretary of State truly believes in investing in further education, why did the spending round not include a single penny for adult education? After a decade of managed decline and billions of pounds of cuts, why are the Government refusing to give that vital part of the system the investment it needs? Even in apprenticeships—apparently his passion —we are far from on course to meet the Government’s target of 1 million this year. We do not even know whether that is still the target. We have been told it is an ambition, an aim and an aspiration, so perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us which of those it is and what on earth that means?

The story of decline and neglect is the same in perhaps the most vital area: early years provision. The hourly rate for child care providers has not increased since 2017, Sure Start funding has collapsed, and the additional funding for maintained nursery schools runs out at the end of the next financial year. Will that be addressed, or have the youngest children been forgotten?

Even in schools, the extra money promised by the Government is not only years away but is being deliberately skewed to schools with the wealthiest intakes. The Education Policy Institute put it plainly, stating that

“almost all schools serving the most disadvantaged communities would miss out.”

The EPI found that the average pupil eligible for free school meals would attract less than half the funding of their more affluent peers. That comes on top of the research conducted by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) last week, which found that over £200 million has been lost since 2015 thanks to the freeze in the pupil premium. The EPI concluded:

“If this is the Prime Minister’s idea of levelling up, then his legacy might be even more disappointing than his predecessor’s.”

Frankly, the funding that the Prime Minister has promised for future years will be rendered a fantasy if it comes after a bad deal or a no-deal Brexit.

We are yet to hear, of course, what all this means for higher education. Will the Education Secretary tell us any more about the fee status of EU students or our participation in Horizon 2020 or Erasmus? We are no wiser this week than we were before. The Queen’s Speech may have had nothing to say about education, but I can promise parents, children and educators across the country that a Labour Government will not neglect our education system, as the Conservatives have.

Education and Local Services

Debate between Clive Betts and Angela Rayner

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I am absolutely astonished by that, given what has happened over the last 24 hours and the magic money tree that has suddenly been found for a coalition of chaos. I will take no lectures from the Conservative party, especially when the only numbers I saw in its manifesto were the numbers of the pages I was reading.

The Prime Minister also threatened to end universal infant free school meals during the general election. I hope the Government will now confirm that that policy has been abandoned, as part of their full-scale retreat from their own manifesto. Ministers claimed during the election that free breakfasts would be more cost-effective. Their costings left a bit to be desired, though: the original plan would have allowed only 7p per breakfast. I remember that when Labour was in government we got our school meal recipes from Jamie Oliver. The Conservatives must have been getting theirs from Oliver Twist. Even then the new costings were based on take-up of just 20%, so I look forward to hearing a full explanation of their policy on free school meals.

On a similar note, one thing that the Secretary of State has announced today is the Government’s new policy on mental health first aid training in schools. They said they would train the first 3,000 staff for £200,000—£66 per member of staff. At the same time, the charity delivering the policy said it would cost at least £117.25 per person, so the Secretary of State’s figures were out, but only by about £150,000. Having realised that her numbers do not add up, she has now rushed out another U-turn, saying that the £200,000 is for only the first year of the policy. Can Ministers finally tell us how much the policy will cost per year, how many teachers will be trained each year and how she managed to get the policy announcement so badly wrong? It seems a long time ago since the Conservatives were talking about strong and stable leadership. Only one day after the deal for the coalition of chaos was signed, and this Government are even weaker and wobblier than ever before.

Now let me turn to the words that the Secretary of State did get into the Queen’s Speech, which promised reform of technical education. However, she has already legislated for reform of technical education earlier this year, in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017, so can Ministers tell us whether there will be another new Bill on technical education in this Session? Or is the reality that this Government have come to the House with such a threadbare programme that they have been reduced to announcing Bills that they have already passed, in the last Parliament?

The Government had nothing to say on higher education. No wonder they wanted to talk about our policies. It is just weeks since they used a statutory instrument to sneak through their latest rise in tuition fees, while freezing the threshold at which graduates begin to repay their debts. The election came before the scheduled debate and vote on that rise, so I hope the Government will now provide time for that debate on the Floor of the House.

Nor did the Government have anything to say on the even more critical issues of early years education and childcare. At the end of the last Parliament they left early years education and childcare in disarray. They promised an early years workforce strategy but have given no indication of how they will implement it. Providers across the country have told the Government time and time again that the funding they are providing is inadequate, and hundreds of thousands of working parents have been denied the service that they were promised. How many words were there about that in the Queen’s Speech? None whatsoever.

Let me also touch on another issue, which is perhaps more important than any other this week: the safety of our school buildings. The Government had been planning to change the regulations on fire safety in schools contained in “Building Bulletin 100”. Funnily enough, those proposed changes have now been removed from the Department for Education website, but luckily we have a paper copy. The proposed new draft no longer included an expectation that most new school buildings would be fitted with sprinklers, on the basis that

“school buildings do not need to be sprinkler protected to achieve a reasonable standard of life safety.”

Perhaps the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government could take the opportunity later to confirm that these proposed changes have now been abandoned for good.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to carry out a thorough and comprehensive check on the fire safety of every school building in the country? We cannot put too high a price on the safety of our children. In view of the likely costs, does my hon. Friend think that the Government should set up a contingency fund to cover all those costs, as a matter of urgency, so that local authorities do not have to consider cutting other already shredded budgets to find the money to pay for the necessary work?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree—indeed, I was intending to deal with that point later in my speech. I hope that the Secretary of State will take my hon. Friend’s comments on board. We know that local government in particular has been hit by the Government’s so-called austerity agenda. The cuts that our local authorities face need to be looked at.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government told the House that the Government had ordered safety checks to be carried out to ensure that flammable cladding was not used on school buildings. Will he update the House on the results of that survey as soon as possible? If there are schools that use flammable cladding, can the Secretary of State for Education give a clear assurance that the costs will be covered by the Government, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has requested?

It would also be helpful to know what action is being taken in student halls of residence. Can the Communities Secretary confirm that they are classed as “other residential buildings”, and are therefore subject to weaker requirements for sprinklers? If so, will the Government consider closing that loophole? What action will the Government take to ensure that both university and private halls are checked for flammable cladding?

Let me now turn to the subject of school funding. Yesterday, the First Secretary of State came to the House to announce the Government’s deal with the Democratic Unionist party. Fortunately for them, they seem to have located the magic money tree about which we heard so much during the election. The package included £50 million for schools, to “address immediate pressures”. That is £150 for every pupil in Northern Ireland.

Of course I welcome the Government’s acknowledgement that they were not properly funding schools in Northern Ireland, and the money is to address that; but can the Secretary of State explain why, as schools face billions of pounds in cuts, the Government are doing nothing to address the immediate pressures on schools in England?

The Conservative party manifesto said that the new funding formula would be introduced, and that no school would lose funding as a result—in fact, the Secretary of State said it herself. Achieving that will require an increase in school funding over and above current plans, so, again, it is time for clarity. When will the Department publish a response to the second stage of the consultation on the fair funding formula, and when will the new funding formula be introduced? Will the Secretary of State provide a cast-iron guarantee today that no school will be worse off, in real terms?

If the Secretary of State has been talking to parents and teachers in her own constituency—let alone across the country—she will know that schools are facing severe cost pressures, and that head teachers are being left with impossible choices. I absolutely agree with what she said earlier about the staff and workforces in our schools and public services, but I must say to her that they need more than words. Even given the money that the Government found by scrapping school meals, the Institute for Fiscal Studies—which the Secretary of State likes to quote so often—has found that the implementation of their plans for school spending would mean a real-terms cut of nearly 3% in per-pupil funding.

The Gracious Address referred to a highly skilled workforce in high-wage jobs, but in-work poverty is at a record high, and the UK has the second lowest wage growth in the OECD since 2010. The only country where wage growth is lower is Greece, and that is a direct result of the failure of this Government. Their failure to invest in education will lead to a generation of children not getting the education they deserve, and not getting on in life.