Housing (London)

Debate between Diane Abbott and Heidi Alexander

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I have met nurses in my constituency who might be able to afford to buy a flat elsewhere in the country, but in London that is simply impossible. I have not dreamt up the nurse, the rough sleeper on a bench in a railway station or the others whom I have described; they are real people whom I have met and spoken to in the past few years. I am not surprised when I read that 82% of Londoners think that the capital is in the grip of a full-scale housing crisis, or that 27% believe the affordability of housing to be the most important issue facing the capital, because I hear the same thing week in, week out.

One of the most common conversations that I have at my fortnightly advice surgeries is about the huge mismatch between the demand for and the supply of affordable homes in London. I see family after family living in overcrowded conditions who want to move to a suitably sized property at a rent that they can afford. I say “rent”, because the idea of buying a home is completely out of reach for many. Someone on a minimum-wage job lucky enough to be working full time—that is quite a big assumption—earns less than £12,000 a year. The idea that there is any property in London that they could afford to buy is laughable.

The truth is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead said, that if I had not been in the fortunate position of buying a home with my husband, many parts of my constituency—that is Lewisham, not Kensington or Chelsea—would be unaffordable for me as an MP on a salary of £68,000. I do not say that to plead poverty; I recognise that I am very well off. However, my situation demonstrates that the housing market in London is such that people in many different walks of life cannot afford the modest home that they would like.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend says that there are parts of Lewisham that she cannot afford on an MP’s salary. Is she aware that there is nowhere at all in Hackney where I can afford to buy a property on an MP’s salary?

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I am quite lucky that my husband and I bought a terraced house in Lewisham a few years ago, because if we were buying today, I am not so sure that we could afford it. House prices have gone crazy. The Government are stoking up demand with their Help to Buy scheme, but they are simply not doing enough to increase supply. The result is a potentially massive housing bubble.

With fewer and fewer people able to buy, more people end up living in properties in the private rented sector, even when that would not be their first choice. There is increased demand at both ends of the private rented market, because people are not buying and homes to rent from councils and housing associations are so few and far between. The rents of thousands of working people in London, many of whom rent from private landlords, are subsidised through housing benefit.

Since 2009, the number of people working in London and receiving support from housing benefit has increased by 110%. That has happened on the Government’s watch. Ministers claim that they want to reduce the housing benefit bill, but unless they invest in building significant numbers of homes to be rented at social rents—not so-called affordable rents—that bill will continue to rise.

What needs to change? First, money must be made available in the form of capital grants. The Government’s decision in 2010 to slash the affordable house building programme by 63% was just plain wrong. Housing associations need finance to deliver homes. Councils must be given greater borrowing powers so that they, too, can once again build on a reasonable scale. We must lift the cap on borrowing on the housing revenue account.

I know that the Government have made minor changes, but they do not go far enough. London councils estimate that if the cap was lifted, 14,000 extra homes could be built by 2021. We should also explore the idea of setting up a London housing corporation to build homes directly, as suggested this week by Labour London assembly member Tom Copley. The simple truth is that we need to invest now to save on revenue costs in the longer term. Taxpayers’ money is being used to line the pockets of London’s private landlords on a massive scale. That cannot be right, and the solution is to build more social housing.

Secondly, we must take a more strategic approach to public land. Londoners know only too well that the shape of their public services is changing. Fire stations are closing, changes have been proposed to police stations, and virtually every hospital faces some form of reconfiguration. Such buildings and the land that they sit on are precious public assets and should not be flogged off to the highest bidder simply to end up as expensive flats for overseas investors to leave empty. When there is such housing need in the capital, that is scandalous and should not be allowed to happen.

Thirdly, we must take some difficult decisions about our planning policy, in both London and the areas around it. Do we build up or out? How can we finance comprehensive regeneration schemes on brownfield sites in London? How do we ensure maximum benefit to existing communities? Politicians at all levels have a role to play. If we are to deliver the homes that London needs, there will controversial planning applications time and again. Politicians are going to have to step up to the mark and argue the case as to why something is the right thing to do. It is notable that recent figures from the House of Commons Library show that Labour-run councils in London have built five times as many affordable homes as Tory councils.

Councils need proper powers to deal with developers who sit on land waiting for house prices to rise, and they need to be able to negotiate hard with developers about social rented housing provision. That comes back to my first point: financing mechanisms must be put in place for social housing to be delivered. I do not pretend that solving London’s housing crisis is easy, but we must understand the scale of the challenge and act now to do something about it. I do not want to be stood here in five years’ time making the same speech again.

If we have a Labour Government after 2015, I believe that they will be committed to doing something about the situation; I am afraid that the present Government do not fill me with the same optimism.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Diane Abbott and Heidi Alexander

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is a convention to say that it is a pleasure to follow the preceding speaker. I shall not go as far as that, but it is probably appropriate for me to follow the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). He focused on provisions relating to new regulations for private landlords, and I, too, shall focus the substance of my remarks on that aspect of the Bill.

Before I do so, however, I want to make a few general observations about the Bill as a whole, which is a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly. Tightening the law on sham marriages, improving our ability to deal with dodgy immigration advisers, and speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals are good ideas. Addressing the length of time it takes to deal with immigration applications, thereby reducing the number of years in which people have to live in limbo, literally not knowing whether they are coming or going, is a reasonable aspiration. However, I am not convinced that the right checks and balances exist in the new decision making and appeal process outlined in the Bill. It is a complex area. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) is right to draw attention to the fact that briefings on this part of the Bill were issued late in the day. The Government cannot be confident that the review that they wish to implement on immigration decisions will be any better or of higher quality than the initial decision-making process in the Home Office. There should be an independent review mechanism for appeals on immigration decisions.

Where the Bill is undoubtedly ugly is in its unworkable and unrealistic proposals to outsource the job of immigration officials to letting agency staff and private landlords up and down the country. Such a change in the law may or may not contribute to creating the Home Secretary’s “hostile environment”, but it undoubtedly risks inflaming racial tensions and smacks of the era in which landlords in the UK put signs above their doors proclaiming “No blacks, no Irish”. I for one do not want to return to those days. I want an immigration system that is firm and fair, and which is in the best interests of everyone in our country. I want a system in which the rules are enforced properly and in a timely fashion. No matter what Ministers say, the immigration arm of the Home Office—the former UK Border Agency—is a total mess. No amount of nasty rhetoric turned into sentences on the statute book will make up for the basic failures in administration, efficiency and competence that have characterised the Home Office for far too long.

I said that I wanted to focus on the Government’s proposals for private landlords. Part 3 introduces a new duty on landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants before properties are let, with hefty fines if flats and houses are rented to people without leave to remain. There are already tight rules about who can access homes rented from councils and housing associations. On a superficial level, I suspect that many people would say, “What’s the problem with asking private landlords to do that? It sounds like a good idea.” However, there is a serious problem with the proposals because of the way in which that would work in practice.

I have been a Member of Parliament for three years, and in that time I have dealt with my fair share of immigration cases. When people come to my surgery with reams of paper from the Home Office I sometimes find it difficult to ascertain exactly what their status is. It can be complex and confusing: people do not always fall into neat, defined categories. Sometimes three people in a family have indefinite leave to remain, but one, inexplicably, is still waiting to hear from the Home Office. Sometimes a Home Office decision to refuse an application is overturned by the tribunal, but then there are inordinate delays in sending individuals new documentation to confirm their status. Perhaps all small private landlords and letting agents have an insight or training in the immigration system, or a special link to the Home Office, which I do not have, but I think that is unlikely.

What is going to happen? Let us imagine a busy letting agency in south-east London, where demand for rented property routinely exceeds supply. Two people turn up to rent a flat that has just been put on the market. One is a woman of Nigerian heritage—someone who came to this country as a child, went to school here and now works as a nurse. She has indefinite leave to remain and she has become a British citizen. The other person is also a British citizen—a white woman, a nurse too, but with an English-sounding surname. The admin person in the letting agency is presented with Home Office papers by one, but not the other. They know that if they let to an “illegal immigrant” they might be fined £3,000. They are confused by the papers. They have a stream of people waiting to be seen, and they have other things to do. Which of the two people do they go for? I do not think that I need spell out to hon. Members what might happen in that set of circumstances.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes the case very vividly. Does she agree that even though we deal with immigration paperwork week after week, we find it confusing, so what would it be like for a letting agency, which sees it only rarely?

[Heidi Alexander]

I entirely agree, and I believe that what is proposed will lead to racial profiling in the letting of properties that could end up on a scale reminiscent of the 1950s.

We are told by Ministers that they will set up a hotline to provide a 48-hour checking service for landlords. It will have to be a Home Office hotline like no other. Confusion, procrastination and obfuscation characterise Home Office hotlines at the moment. Why will this one be any different? How will landlords and letting agents know who is living in a house apart from the individual who signed the tenancy agreement? What happens when someone’s leave to remain expires during their tenancy but they submit an application for renewal that is caught up in intractable delays and administrative chaos? How will the Home Office even know if properties are let privately if the Government refuse to set up a register of private landlords?

Recent migrants often rent a room from a friend of a friend. Sometimes whole families live in one room in a house. There is no tenancy agreement, and they do not go to a letting agent. Anyone would think that these people are going to letting agents on the King’s road to secure their properties, but that is not true: these transactions take place in the shadows of our economy. This policy is unworkable and unrealistic, and it is deeply unpleasant. Last week in London, the headlines were of racial discrimination in the letting of property—people being told that flats and houses were no longer available because of the colour of their skin. Those headlines made me feel ashamed to be a Londoner. Does the Minister really think the proposals will make the situation better? Of course not. They will make it worse—much, much worse.

I have lived in London and in Lewisham for more than 10 years. I love it. It is a bit lively at times, but I am pleased that I live there. I love being able to go to Lewisham market on a Saturday morning and thumb through African fabrics for sale, buy jerk chicken from a van in Catford or go to the beautiful presentations and performances of the local Tamil supplementary school. I am pleased that I do not live in a monocultural place where everyone looks the same, sounds the same and has the same views and life experiences. People generally get on with one another in Lewisham but tensions do exist, often simmering beneath the surface. Some young black men feel that the police do not treat them fairly. Some people tell me of problems in getting work because they have a foreign-sounding surname.

When in May this year the BNP wanted to march from Woolwich to the Islamic centre in Lewisham, it made me feel sick and worried—worried about my home, my neighbours and my community. The Minister may not have to worry about such things in the Forest of Dean, but let me tell him and the Home Secretary that they are playing a dangerous political game which I am not prepared to participate in. I believe our immigration system must be firm in order to be fair. I believe its enforcement needs to be timely, professional and effective. I do not think outsourcing immigration control to private letting agents and landlords is the answer, and I have grave concerns about the impact of this policy on community cohesion in areas such as the one that I represent.

So I go back to what I said at the beginning. I have not talked about the things that I think are positive in the Bill. There are some things which I believe should happen and which I can support, but because of what I have explained in the past 10 minutes, I cannot support the Bill tonight, but neither will I oppose it.