Stem Cell Transplant Patients
Debate between Clive Betts and Mark Tami(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Mark Tami
My hon. Friend must have read my speech, because I will develop precisely that theme, as it is very important. When we went through that very difficult time, we were fortunate financially in that I had a well-paid job, being a Member of this House. I also had a very flexible and understanding employer; I was allowed the time off to be at the hospital. We had a car. We could afford to stay in a hotel if necessary and to eat out. Saying that, we still managed to build up debts, but we were in the hospital off and on for about two years and we saw many people who were not in that fortunate position—single mothers, people without a car who had to rely on public transport, people without a family network to support them, and people without that financial back-up to get through what is not only a traumatic process but a costly process for the family of the person being treated.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
First, let me declare my interest: I am vice chair of the all-party group, and also a recipient of a transplant six years ago. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right on this point. When I was having my chemo, the hospital kindly arranged it so that for several weeks I could go in on a Monday morning, then come down here by train, and go back on a Thursday and have my second dose. Also, throughout the whole process I was able to do my job on email. The nurses used to laugh at me when I had my stem cells harvested—my right hon. Friend will know about that; it took me three goes, four hours at a time—because during that process I would carry on doing my emails. They used to laugh at me, but they understood the process. That is very different from the situation facing someone who has to go to work, perhaps in a manual job on a low income, who loses out right through the process. We must reflect on how we can better help people in those circumstances.
Leasehold Reform
Debate between Clive Betts and Mark Tami
Mr Betts
Absolutely right. I will take that up, and I think we can write directly to the CMA as well. Obviously, the Government will get a copy of the report and will respond. We will make sure that the CMA gets a copy as well and responds to it. This is a scandal. Many people’s lives are being blighted by this situation. We need to do everything we can as quickly as we can to rectify it.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the report. It is a national scandal—that is clear. These people knew exactly what they were doing. These have been sold as financial products. People are making a lot of money out of this and they are preying on many first-time buyers who are keen to get into their homes. We have already heard about the lawyers who were recommended at a discount. People were hoodwinked. They now tell me that it is difficult to sell their homes. They have told me that they do not feel that they actually own their home, but that somebody else owns it. I recognise that it is difficult when people have signed contracts, but that does not mean that we should not do something about it. We need to sort out this scandal for existing homeowners.
Mr Betts
Absolutely. We have said that we think there ought to be retrospective changes to the permission charges and the ground rents where they are clearly onerous. The Competition and Markets Authority ought to look at whether those contracts are enforceable, because they are, in many cases, unreasonable. There are two ways we can and should approach that. I am pleased to see that the Minister has sat through this statement on the Government Front Bench, because in the end she is the one who is going to have to deliver a lot of these changes. I think she is hearing very clearly from across the House that there is a real demand that this whole matter be addressed properly by the Government and that they implement the Committee’s recommendations.
Homelessness
Debate between Clive Betts and Mark Tami(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
In 2016, the Communities and Local Government Committee conducted an inquiry into homelessness and addressed many of the issues, including the fact that we do not have a really good take on what homelessness is. It is about rough sleepers, sofa surfing, and people living in overcrowded accommodation and with in-laws. The statistics are not satisfactory. The Government have accepted that we need to do a lot of work in trying to improve them. The Select Committee also did pre-legislative scrutiny on the Homelessness Reduction Bill, as it was then—the first time a Select Committee had done pre-leg scrutiny on a private Member’s Bill. In the end, the Act that came through the House with all-party agreement and great support was significantly helped by that scrutiny.
There are challenges. Everyone can see that the Act’s content is really good. It tries to put the emphasis on prevention so that there is not the ridiculous situation of people being told to go away and wait until the bailiffs come before they will be considered as homeless. In a case I had recently, people were told to wait until twins were born in a cramped one-bedroom flat before they would be considered homeless. The Act ought to force local authorities to take proper account of such things.
People are entitled to a proper plan when they go to see an authority. Their expectations about what they need in respect of their jobs, their caring arrangements and the schooling of their children should be taken account of; in many cases, however, local authorities are simply not able to do that because of the shortage of housing. People who are not entitled to priority rehousing must get proper advice. One of the horror stories we heard during evidence was that people were often sent away with a scrap of paper on which there were a few telephone numbers—often out of date—and told, “Go and ring them if you want any help.”
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that single men in particular are given that message—that they are right at the bottom of the queue, and sometimes wasting their time—very early on? They will often end up homeless and on the streets.
Mr Betts
It is single people in that situation—women as well as men. We had evidence from both at our Select Committee inquiry. They are not entitled to priority rehousing from the local authority, but they are entitled to advice, although they were not getting it in all too many cases.
The Government have given an extra sum, between £60 million and £70 million, to help the implementation of the 2017 Act. I do not think that anyone in local government thinks that sufficient. I hope that the Government are open-minded about the issue: it was emphasised over and over again, on a cross-party basis, both by the Select Committee and the Bill Committee, that the money will have to be looked at again. The Act must not fail because of a lack of resources for local authorities to implement it.
As it stands, the Homelessness Reduction Act is likely to reduce not homelessness but its growth. As the NAO report on the estimates highlights, the big growth in homelessness and in the percentage of people presenting as homeless and being accepted is because of section 21 notices being served in the private rented sector and people not being able to afford the rent in that sector, as local housing allowance does not keep pace with rent increases. That is the situation, and it seems that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as it is now called, simply have not got their act joined up.
There needs to be an analysis of the effectiveness of constraining local housing allowance and what impact that has on extra spending down the line by local authorities on dealing with the consequences of increased homelessness. That analysis needs to be done if Government are going to justify that position. Something needs to be done urgently.
Another problem is that many homeless people, including single people or people in temporary accommodation, are offered supported housing at some stage. All the evidence, from St Mungo’s and others, has been that the Government’s current proposal of grants being given to local authorities—albeit on a ring-fenced basis initially—to deal with supported housing of less than two years’ duration, which generally applies to people who are homeless, is not going to work. It will not encourage the provision of supported housing or allow existing housing to be maintained. St Mungo’s, the Salvation Army, Home Group and the YMCA have all given evidence to the Government and to my Select Committee to say that that needs to be revisited if we are going to have a proper service and system.
This should not be simply about trying to address the issues of people who become homeless. That is really important. Why have we got a problem? In the end, it is because we have a shortage of housing in this country. I know that the Government have an ambitious target, which I share, to get us to a point where we are building 300,000 new homes a year in this country. However, we are not going to build those new homes unless a very high percentage are built by local authorities and housing associations with Government support. That is the reality.
I welcome the Government giving a £1 billion lift to local authorities by raising the housing cap, but as the Treasury Committee has argued, we need to abolish that cap altogether, and the Government need to sit down with the Local Government Association and look at how we can start delivering social housing that people can afford. What is needed in this country is a major programme. That is needed for the people who cannot afford to buy and cannot afford rents in the private sector, and it is needed to hit the 300,000 target. We will not hit it any other way.
The other great advantage of social house building of that scale is that it is counter-cyclical. We all know that building by private developers will go up and down with the market. At least we can have a degree of certainty in the long term if we plan for a major social house building programme, which will continue through recessions. The Government ought to give serious consideration to that.
Finally, we have to think about the right to buy in areas of acute housing need. It cannot be right to give people a 70% discount to buy homes that are the only ones available for people in acute housing need and people who become homeless. Surely we need a review of the effectiveness of public spending, because that simply cannot be right.
Let us have a look at the discount in areas of acute housing need or at the possibility of suspending the right to buy for a period, with local support. Let us at least look at 100% of the receipts being reinvested in social housing, rather than the percentage of the receipts at present, so that we can deliver back not simply one-for-one replacements—even that is not happening—but like-for-like replacements. A family home being sold off and replaced by an upper maisonette really is not good enough for a homeless family with children who need a home with a garden to live in.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Mark Tami(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Harper
Let me make a bit more progress, then I will give way to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who has been bidding to get in for some time.
The use of data matching to confirm existing electors will simplify the transition process for most people in the country. It will create a floor below which registration rates cannot fall, and importantly it will allow registration officers to focus their efforts and resources on electors whose details cannot be confirmed and eligible people who are not on the register.