Oral Answers to Questions

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

A short sentence of Walsall eloquence—Eddie Hughes.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that young people with disabilities should have access to work experience while they are still at school? Will she join me in visiting Walsall College students on supported internships?

[Sarah Newton]

My colleague is a fantastic champion for his constituency, and he is absolutely right: every young person should have that opportunity of work experience. I will be delighted to visit Walsall College with him to see the excellent work on supported work experience.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [Lords]

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I believe protocol dictates that I should say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith), but anyway.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith), having accused me of moaning, did not wish to do so. I simply say to her: I do not do moaning.

[Eddie Hughes]

And I have certainly not witnessed any—nothing but good grace from my hon. Friend in the past.

I want to touch briefly on the name of the single financial guidance body, when we get it. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) was right to highlight this point, because what we call it is critical. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) suggested that we will need a good marketing strategy to go with it because, let us face it, we have to reach out to a broad section of the population, from the very youngest to the very oldest. I want to discuss predominantly the youngest.

We cannot start too soon in engaging young people in financial business. I know that HSBC operates a school bank service where it goes into primary schools for seven to 12-year-olds to introduce them to the concept of banking and explains the different roles of people within the bank. It also explains how someone setting up their own business might go about obtaining a loan and funding that business.

Right from the earliest age, we should engage with young people. Why is that important? The Money Advice Service released a report this month following some qualitative and quantitative analysis during which it engaged with 470 young people. What did it find? It found that 61% of those young people felt that their lives would be better if they had better financial management skills, but 85% felt that they had not been given sufficient financial guidance when they were at school. That puts them in a precarious position because, all of a sudden as young adults, they are exposed to the opportunity of debt. Indeed, one of those taking part suggested that credit cards should be treated in the same way as cigarette and tobacco packets: there should be photos on a credit card that in some way convey the danger associated with them, because young people with access to cheap debt can easily get into difficult financial positions. That is not a question of ineptitude, as referred to by the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones); it is just that if people have not had that financial education and training, they can find themselves in a difficult position.

For example, at the weekend I spoke to a young man of 26 in Walsall. He had been down in London and he somehow managed to get on the bus without the fact that he had used his card to pay for the ticket being recorded. When the passengers were checked, he was asked to get off the bus and prove that he had paid for his ticket. He could not do so. He was fined, I believe, £80 and given a short period to pay, otherwise the fine would double. He did not pay as he did not have the money at the time. He did not prioritise that debt, so he did not pay it. The fine increased to £180. By then, it was Christmas and he could not afford to pay, so he procrastinated further until the bailiffs were knocking on his mother’s door at the weekend, seeking £750 because he had not paid a £1.50 bus fare. Sometimes, it is not just that people do not have the money; they do not understand which debts must be prioritised to prevent further hardship down the line.

It is incredibly important that we increase the financial capability of everybody across the UK, from the very youngest, when they set out as young adults with access to credit cards, to the very oldest, who will be drawing down their pensions. They all need our support and this Government are on the side of them all.

Universal Credit

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

There are confidentiality issues that we have to deal with. I am not going to get drawn on the funding today, but I will say that we do fund universal support, providing the support that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green was talking about, which is helping to transform lives.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I chair the board of a housing association that has 20,000 homes, operating across 18 local authorities. I do not want those residents unnecessarily disturbed by the scare- mongering from Opposition Members. Will the Secretary of State therefore confirm that those claimants can get an emergency payment of up to 100% of their monthly entitlement within only a few days?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we will have that 100% advances system available in the new year. Let me come back to a point I made. The Leader of the Opposition said that one in eight people in Gloucester City Council had been evicted because of UC—that would be 650 people. It turned out that it was not one in eight—it was eight. And it turned out that it was not because of UC; it was because of other problems that had arisen, including in one case someone who had not lived in the property for 18 months.

Supported Housing

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I want briefly to introduce a tone of optimism and positivity to the debate, although before I do so I need to refer people to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which says that I chair the board of a 20,000-house housing association across 18 separate authorities. I am not speaking from that perspective, however.

Before I came to the House, I worked for YMCA Birmingham for three years. When I joined the YMCA, it was a recent recipient of approximately £1 million from the Homes and Communities Agency, which allowed it to build 33 units of move-on accommodation. Those who know the sector will understand that if someone is in supported accommodation, they need somewhere to go for the next step of their journey, so the delivery of those 33 units was critical in freeing up the pipeline to allow us to move people along their journey. That was three and a half years ago.

Move forward three years, and just as I was leaving the YMCA we had it confirmed that we had £850,000 of homelessness change funding from the HCA and the Department of Health that allows us to renovate a homelessness hostel we have in Northfield—a 72-bed hostel in not very good condition. The ground floor of that hostel will now have en suite accommodation as well as training and health facilities. That is an absolutely amazing development for the people who use that service. They will have not just great quality accommodation, but training facilities on site that will help them to get employment. It will also allow health visitors to come in and give them the healthcare they need.

The YMCA has been around since 1844. George Williams founded it and Birmingham set up its YMCA fairly soon after. I am reliably informed by my old chief exec that one of the first meetings of the board of YMCA Birmingham referred to the distinct lack of funds; 173 years later, YMCA Birmingham appears to have coped quite well. Such organisations adapt and change to the circumstances they find themselves in.

The YMCA has set up some social enterprises. For example, Adele Biddle and Emma Rhymes are working tirelessly to generate income from their social enterprises, which they hope will ultimately fund and support some excellent housing activities. Today, we have the announcement from the Prime Minister that the LHA cap will not apply. What do I say? I say some organisations battle on regardless of what the Government do. They continue to do their—

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Eddie Hughes]

I am nearly finished. Trust me, I will be quick.

Organisations battle on regardless of what Governments of any persuasion do and they continue to offer excellent work. Occasionally, and fortunately, they are subsidised and supported by an excellent Conservative Government. The YMCA has produced hundreds of thousands of pounds and it will, no doubt, continue to deliver its excellent work for at least another 173 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I also welcome the announcements. I think I have asked for the local housing allowance rate to be removed in the mind of policy makers from supported housing every single time I have spoken in this House, so I am pretty chuffed that that was finally heard.

The hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) is a passionate speaker, and it is nice to hear somebody in the House who sounds a bit like me, but I do not share much of his optimism, because when I have walked around the streets of Birmingham during the past seven years I now step over the bodies of people who have nowhere to live, and that was not the case before. In Birmingham, a man was found dead in the streets because he was cold and homeless. With the greatest respect, therefore, although the support of services like YMCA in Birmingham is brilliant, 33 beds for a population of 1 million is a woeful figure.

[Eddie Hughes]

I said there were an additional 33 beds. There are 300 units of accommodation across Birmingham.

[Jess Phillips]

And we would need an additional 300 to get anywhere close to dealing with the problem.

Universal Credit Roll-out

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

In 2016-17, the United Kingdom spent approximately £218 billion on welfare. I fully appreciate that a significant amount of that will have been spent on benefits that are not covered by this policy, but a not insignificant amount will have been. That is why Governments seek reform in this area, and it is probably why, in 2003-04, the Labour party sought to reform welfare by introducing the working tax credit. That was clearly an unmitigated disaster at the time, which shows that there have been complexities under Governments of both parties. I understand from the Office for National Statistics that of the £13.5 billion that was paid out, £1.9 billion was an overpayment. Welfare reform is complicated, but it is important for us not to look to the Government to fix everything.

I chair the board of a housing association, whg in Walsall, which manages 20,000 houses across 18 different authorities. We are currently dealing with 327 live cases of people on universal credit, 83 of which were clear of rent arrears when they came to us. We fully understand the complexity of this problem. However, we are using this opportunity to work with our tenants to ensure that they have planned their budgets. We have also applied, jointly with Accord housing association, for £23 million to operate the Click Start programme so that we can help both the unemployed and the economically active with computer literacy.

I say this: do not just look to the Government to fix your problems. Housing associations across the country are doing fantastic work to help their tenants themselves.