Long-term Plan for Housing

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)]

I apologise on behalf of the Department for the points you have just highlighted, Madam Deputy Speaker.

With permission, I would like to make a statement on the Government’s commitment to house building and the planning policy reforms we are making today.

This Government want to build more homes in the right places, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably. We know that the right way to deliver this is through a reformed planning system. Today, the Secretary of State and I are laying out our plan for that reform, and we are clear that it is only through up-to-date local plans that local authorities can deliver for communities, protect the land and the assets that matter most, and create the conditions for more homes to be delivered.

Having plans in place unlocks land for homes, for hospitals and general practitioner centres, for schools, for power grid connections and more. It lays the foundations for our economic growth and the levelling up of our communities. The first change we are making today is to update the national planning policy framework. We consulted on a series of proposals last December and received more than 26,000 responses, which we have worked through in detail.

The resulting update builds on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and delivers on the intent set out by the Secretary of State last year, and it does so in a way that will promote building the right homes in the right places with the right infrastructure, which will ensure that the environment is protected and give local people a greater say on where and where not to place new, beautiful development.

I will now summarise the key changes being made to the framework today, and hon. Members should refer to the consultation response and the framework itself for the published policies. First, the standard method for assessing local housing need figures has sometimes been difficult to apply in some areas, and has been blind to the exceptional characteristics of local communities. The new NPPF makes it clear that the outcome of the standard method is an advisory starting point in plan making for establishing an area’s housing requirement.

The revised NPPF also now provides more clarity on what may constitute exceptional circumstances for using an alternative method to assess housing need. The framework is also clear that the urban uplift should be accommodated in the urban areas in which it is applied, and should not be exported unless there is a voluntary cross-boundary agreement in place. New homes are most desperately needed in urban areas, so it is essential that city councils plan properly for local people.

Secondly, given the importance of the green belt to so many, the new NPPF is clear that there is generally no requirement on local authorities to review or alter green belt boundaries. Unlike Labour’s plan to concrete over the countryside, we will not impose top-down release of green-belt land against the wishes of local communities. Where a relevant local planning authority chooses to conduct a review, existing national policy will continue to expect that green-belt boundaries are altered only where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified, and this should only be through the preparation or updating of plans. The Government are making no changes to the rules that govern what can and cannot be built on green-belt land, but we are clarifying in guidance where brownfield development can occur on the green belt, provided that the openness of the green belt is not harmed.

Thirdly, the Government are clear that the character of an existing area should be respected, particularly in the historic suburbs of our great towns and cities. The new NPPF therefore recognises that there may be situations in plan making where significant uplifts in urban residential densities would be inappropriate, as they would be wholly out of character with that existing area. In these cases, authorities need not plan for such development. That will apply where there is a design code that is adopted, or will be adopted, as part of the local plan. I know the shadow Minister will sympathise with this change, given that he recently opposed 1,500 new homes in his constituency due to the impact on Greenwich’s local character.

Fourthly, where an up-to-date plan is in place—a plan less than five years old—and contained a deliverable five-year supply of land when examined by the inspector, authorities will no longer be required to update that supply annually. This change provides those authorities with additional protection from the presumption in favour of sustainable development. We are also fully removing what are known as the 5% and 10% buffers, which could be applied to an authority’s housing land supply. A transitional arrangement will ensure that decision making on live applications is not affected, thus avoiding disruption to applications in the system. For authorities that have not yet passed examination but are either at examination, regulation 18 or regulation 19 stage, and have both a policy map and proposed allocations, there will be a two-year grace period in which they need to demonstrate only a four-year housing land supply for decision making. That is a strong incentive for councils to now do the right thing and agree a local plan.

Fifthly, local communities that have worked hard to put neighbourhood plans in place should not be penalised for the failure of their council to ensure an up-to-date local plan. The new NPPF therefore extends protection for neighbourhood plans from speculative development from two to five years, where those plans allocate at least one housing site. The updated framework also gives greater support to self-build, custom-build and community-led housing, and to encouraging the delivery of older people’s housing, including retirement housing, housing with care and care homes.

Next, the NPPF cements the role of beauty and placemaking in the planning system; it now expressly uses the word “beautiful” in relation to “well-designed places”. It also now requires greater “visual clarity” on design requirements set out in planning conditions and supports gentle density through the promotion of mansard roof development. Finally, the new NPPF also strengthens protections for agricultural land, by being clear that consideration should be given to the availability of agricultural land for food production in development decisions. The NPPF also supports the Government’s energy security strategy, by giving significant weight to the importance of energy efficiency in the adaptation of existing buildings, while protecting heritage.

With the updated NPPF now in place, the other reforms we are making today are focused on setting higher expectations for performance. Those who operationalise the system—local authorities, the Planning Inspectorate and statutory consultees—must live up to their responsibilities. To support that, we are taking action on four fronts. First, we will ensure greater transparency, because exposing what is really going on in a system sparks action. So we will publish a new local authority performance dashboard in 2024, and pull back the veil on the use of extension of time agreements, which in too many instances are concealing poor performance.

Secondly, we have been providing, and will continue to provide, additional financial support. That includes the increased planning fees that went live a fortnight ago, as well as a range of funds to tackle backlogs and improve capability. Thirdly, we will tackle slow processes, with Sam Richards leading a review into the statutory consultee system and a greater focus from the Planning Inspectorate where planning committees are seeing their decisions overturned on appeal.

Finally, we will intervene where we need to. The Secretary of State has issued a direction to seven of the worst authorities in terms of plan making, requiring them to publish a plan timetable within 12 weeks of the publication of the new NPPF. Should they fail, we will consider further intervention. We are also designating two additional authorities for their decision-making performance and we will review the thresholds for designation to make sure to make sure we are not letting off the hook authorities that should be doing better.

We are also taking action in London, because the homes needed by the capital are simply not being built and opportunities for urban brownfield regeneration go begging as a result of the Mayor’s anti-housing policy and approach. A review launched today will identify where changes to policy could speed up the delivery of much-needed homes. If directing change in London becomes necessary, this Government will do that.

In designing these reforms we have aimed to facilitate desirable development, constrained only by appropriate protections. That is a balance I am confident we have struck.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Lee Rowley]

I thank the Opposition spokesperson for his comments, which I will address in turn. He started by saying that this is the fourth time we have updated the guidance in the last few years. If his criticism is that we are willing to listen, be flexible and adaptable, and recognise the differences between his constituency of Greenwich and Woolwich and the constituencies of Government Back Benchers, then he is correct. We are willing to be flexible and adaptable, but we also recognise that we need to build more homes; we just want to ensure that they are built in the right places, which is exactly what today’s update seeks to do.

The difference between my party and that of the Opposition spokesperson is that we recognise the nuance in the discussion. Within the NPPF, we are trying to accommodate the fact that different areas and parts of the country have to be approached in different ways. While the policies of the hon. Gentleman’s party move backwards and forwards on different days of the week, we will continue to ensure that we build more homes—in the right place, with the right infrastructure and with the support of the community. In the long run, that will ensure that we make progress on housing in general.

The hon. Gentleman asked a question about freedom to plan. The housing needs assessment will be made by all councils, but councils can make a case if there is an exceptional circumstance that applies in their local area. If that were not possible, there would be no exceptions for any council, local authority or community anywhere, which would be completely unnuanced. However, on a macro level it remains the case that we will seek to build more houses. When councils have plans in place, they tend to deliver more houses than when such plans are not in place, so if we can get more plans in place, we will have the opportunity to build more homes that have the consent and support of the community in which they will be built.

The hon. Gentleman asked about urban uplift and the removal of co-operation with neighbours. We uplifted the targets and expectations on the basis that those houses would go into cities and would not be exported into the countryside near cities, because the whole point was to acknowledge the infrastructure in those cities. There are schools in London that are closing because insufficient numbers of children are using them. We do not want to export housing elsewhere; we want to use that infrastructure—including transport links and educational establishments—as was intended when it was built.

This is not about whether we believe in a plan-led system or not—we clearly do. It is about the fact that this Government are getting on with the hard job of striking a balance, recognising the nuance and ensuring that more progress is being made, versus the Opposition stating that they want to build houses, but then voting against that happening in relation to nutrient neutrality. If they put their money where their mouth was and did what they say they will do, they would have the ability to stand up and make such arguments consistently. They do not and, as a result, I will not listen to them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Before talking about the general policy, may I mention one small point? In paragraph 22 of his statement, the Minister talks about energy efficiency in heritage buildings. In Ambrose Place in Worthing—including at the house of one of my neighbours, where Harold Pinter lived—people are being told that they can have only secondary glazing, not double glazing, because it is in a conservation area. I hope that the Minister will talk with experts and say that double glazing is acceptable in reasonable circumstances, when people want to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

On the general point, the Minister mentions the green belt. According to one calculation, there are 16 green belts in England, none of which is in East Sussex or West Sussex. I interpret his words as meaning “green gaps”: an expression used by the Secretary of State when he commented on the problems of Worthing, where every single bit of grass—the vineyards, the golf courses and the green fields—between Worthing and its neighbours to the west is subject to a planning application. It is important that the inspectors in his Department do not come along, as they did over the land north of Goring station, to Chatsmore Farm and the Goring Gap and say that even if Worthing built on every bit of lawn in town, it would not meet the full target, and yet give permission to build on that farm, which distinguishes Worthing from its neighbours.

It is also important to follow up the Minister’s words about intense development in the centre of villages, towns and cities, so that there are homes in high-density accommodation that elderly people can choose to live in, so that their family homes can be freed for families. The idea that most of the development on our green fields is for families is for the birds—it is for people on their second or third homes. I think people who are my sort of age ought to have the choice to live securely in high-thermal efficiency apartments, with services that do not require cars, and where they can live more easily and happily.

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[Lee Rowley]

The footnotes to paragraph 61 use as an example

“areas that are islands with no land bridge that have a significant proportion of elderly residents.”

I hope my hon. Friend will welcome the fact that that sounds very much like the Isle of Wight.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The prize for patience and perseverance, with the last question of the year, goes to Nigel Mills.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a privilege, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Five years ago, the export of houses from Derby made a local plan in Amber Valley impossible, but there is no reason for delay now. Does the Minister agree that there is no reason for the Labour-run council not to have made more rapid progress with the pretty reasonable plan it inherited in May? Will he also confirm what the consequence will be if the 12-week direction he has issued today does not result in rapid progress, to ensure that residents in Amber Valley get a local plan sometime soon?

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Member.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The Resolution Foundation’s report on economic stagnation, published today, shows how levelling up simply is not happening under this Government. One of the speakers at the event this morning was Andy Haldane, the chair of the Levelling Up Advisory Council, who said that greater financial devolution was needed in all areas, not just in the favoured few. It sounds like he has been taking inspiration from our proposed “take back control” Bill. Does the Minister agree with him that more economic devolution is needed in all areas of the UK?

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[Jacob Young]

I can confirm to the Chair of the Select Committee that I met the relevant Minister in the Ministry of Justice just this morning to discuss that point. We are working at pace to ensure that the courts are ready for the biggest change in the private rented sector in over 30 years. The hon. Gentleman talked about local government funding. We are conducting a new burdens assessment for local government to ensure that any additional burdens that are placed on local government are funded properly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

In the festive spirit, I extend my sympathies to the Secretary of State, who seems to spend his time haunted by the ghost of Christmas past. In 2019, a Tory Prime Minister promised to ban no-fault evictions. Since then, households have been put at risk of homelessness because of a section 21 notice nearly 78,000 times. In 2017, the fifth predecessor of the Secretary of State pledged action to end the medieval practice of leasehold, but just last year another 207,000 homeowners became stuck in that expensive nightmare. All the while, the Secretary of State has been beavering away drawing up what can only be described as Alice in Wonderland legislation: a Bill to ban no-fault evictions that will not ban no-fault evictions, and a Bill to ban leasehold that will not ban leasehold. Is he too scared to stand up to his Back Benchers, or has he truly fallen down the rabbit hole?

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

As you will no doubt be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, designed to ban the sale of new leasehold houses, does not actually contain any provisions to ban the sale of new leasehold houses, because the Department apparently did not have time to draft them before publication. If and when the Government rectify their mistake and add the necessary provisions, will they incorporate measures to reinvigorate commonhold by making it accessible and available to both prospective homebuyers and existing leaseholders? If not, why not?

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[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about the formula. I am tempted to say that if the spectre of covid had not, quite rightly, taken up a huge amount of bandwidth in both central Government and local government, we might have been in a different place. We can spend an awful lot of time discussing the minutiae of the formula, and there will be a time when that needs to be done. The crucial task that we have in hand at the current time is to play the cards that we have been dealt, to deliver a settlement that works for local government and to deliver the quality and range of services that all our communities, irrespective of where they are in the country, have a legitimate expectation to receive.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We are not making terribly fast progress this afternoon. Could everyone who has their question written down cut out the bit at the beginning and just ask the question? This is not speech time; it is Question Time, so let us just have questions. If we get short questions, we can get short answers, too.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

Local government finance has been front and centre of our local news given the stark situation in Nottingham. The Minister will know about Nottingham’s unique circumstances following decades of poor decisions and mismanagement, but it will not be lost on him that the whole sector is under significant pressure. I know that he will make the case about finances to the Treasury, but the Government could help significantly by allowing more flexibility in the system. Will he work with colleagues around Government to help us to remove ringfences, particularly in areas, such as public health and transport, in which we could make better decisions if we had more freedom to do so?

[Simon Hoare]

I am not going to give a running commentary on the situation in Nottingham, save to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I keep it under close review. On my hon. Friend’s wider point about trust and liberalisation, his call falls on open ears. I am happy to work with anybody who wants to ensure that our local authorities can stand up and deliver, as long as they accept accountability and responsibility for the decisions they take. The Government have a proud record on working in a relationship of trust with our local councillors and councils in order to deliver for people up and down the land.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 2018, Tory-led Northamptonshire County Council issued a section 114 notice—as close as a council can come to declaring itself bankrupt. Since then, under this Conservative Government, we have seen a further eight councils from across the political spectrum do exactly the same. In September, the credit agency Moody’s warned that more local authorities will

“fail over the near term”

due to high inflation, interest rates and service demand. By the Government’s own assessment, how many more councils are at risk between now and budgets being set next year?

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[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady raises a serious point, and let me put it on record that I would be happy to meet her and the APPG to discuss their issues and concerns. We have made great strides—there is a specific workstream—in ensuring we maximise how those who have a disability can vote and do so in a free and unfettered way, and we will continue with that. I am very sorry to hear about the case the hon. Lady raises, but if she wishes to write to me on the issue, I will of course look into it in my discussions with the commission. It is absolutely pivotal that, in all we do with regard to our election rules, access to voting—freedom to vote—is absolutely at the heart of it, and as the Minister responsible for elections, I shall guarantee that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Right, I am going to issue a challenge to the House. We have 10 topical questions and others to get through, we have very little time to do it—and we have a lot of business today—and I would not like Mr Speaker to think that we are going slowly just because he is not here: short questions, short answers!

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

T1.   If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

At the autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made available to my Department money for investment in London, Cambridge and Leeds, planning capacity and capability, the local authority housing fund, the local housing allowance, home buying and selling and the affordable homes guarantee scheme—quite a coup.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Brilliant.

[Ruth Jones]

I think I got most of that. Newport West is home to a thriving and inclusive Muslim community, and I pay tribute to the multi-faith work being done to bring our communities together after the terrible events in the middle east. Can the Minister outline what discussions he has had with the Welsh Government about supporting this multi-faith work, and about eradicating Islamophobia in Wales and the UK once and for all?

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

Fixed-term tenancies can trap tenants into poor-quality homes, and trap landlords into long-term tenancies with bad tenants. With the abolition of section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, we no longer see such things as necessary, but I am happy to work with my right hon. Friend to ensure that the Renters (Reform) Bill works for his constituents.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The latest Government figures highlight that a record 139,000 children—children!—are in temporary accommodation in the lead-up to Christmas, which is a 14% increase. Meanwhile, only 9,500 homes for social rent were built last year. If we take into account all the homes built since 2010, that is minus 14,000 each year. Does the Minister regret handing back £1.9 billion of unspent departmental money to the Treasury last year, given that we are in an urgent housing crisis? Why not adopt Labour’s plan to get Britain building again, with 1.5 million homes over that parliamentary period?

Renters (Reform) Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The Bill talks about the ombudsman. We need to make sure that landlords understand their obligations, and where they do not, we need to ensure that there is redress. As I mentioned earlier, that ombudsman must have real teeth, and I hope the Secretary of State understands that. While I respect the landlords who are in the Chamber and those who are listening to this debate—I know many of them do a good job and are trying their best—we have to have a minimum standard. We cannot have circumstances, as we have seen in Greater Manchester, where children are living in very poor conditions. It is really important that we have regulation and, where people are in accommodation that falls below those standards, we have redress.

After four years, the clock is ticking. There can be no more delay, but the Government’s track record does not instil much confidence. On the Tories’ watch, mortgage bills and rents are soaring, fewer people are able to buy their own home, and over 1 million people are stuck on social housing waiting lists. Those problems are only going to get worse because the Prime Minister could not stand up to his Back Benchers on house building targets. Now it appears that once again, he is caving in to them, rather than keeping his promises to the British people.

This Bill is an important step forward, supporting renters at the sharp edge of the cost of living crisis, so Labour will work constructively throughout its passage. We will not be the cause of delay—I hope the Secretary of State can say the same about his Back Benchers. If they cannot act in the national interest and support a renters’ reform Bill worthy of its name, let me make clear that our offer is to do so instead, because over the course of our proceedings today, 33 renters will have been put at risk of homelessness because they were issued with a section 21 notice and 11 will have got a visit from the bailiffs evicting them. Every single one of those people will be faced with anxiety about the future—anxiety about having to pay eye-watering moving costs and about whether they will be made completely homeless. They cannot afford to wait for the Prime Minister to find a backbone and stand up to his party. They cannot afford to wait for the Secretary of State to buy off his Back Benchers, and they cannot afford to wait yet more years for this Government to keep the promises they made to them.

We stand ready to work in the national interest, and will do so with anyone else who is prepared to join us. I urge the House not to waste this chance.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It will be obvious to the House that a great many people want to catch my eye. We have a long time—we have three hours ahead—but I want to be fair in the way that that is divided up, so we will begin with a time limit of seven minutes.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

In 2014, fellow housing expert Calum Mercer and I published a then-seminal paper called “Nation Rent”. That paper challenged what was then the status quo, which was that generation rent affected only younger people and would be a passing phase. “Nation Rent” set out that it was a changing structural environment in the housing and financial markets that had occurred since 2003, which saw a rapid acceleration of the private rented sector—overtaking social rent—together with a fall in home ownership. That structural change started long before the credit crunch and financial crash, but accelerated after them.

A decade on, little has changed in structural terms, and it should concern Members of all parties that generation rent has now become nation rent. The percentage of people aged between 35 and 44 and between 45 and 54 who are renting privately has tripled over the past two decades, and has more than doubled for those aged between 55 and 64. Nation rent is now embedded, not just in the younger generation but through the generations. As I set out in my 2018 paper with the Housing and Finance Institute, “A Time for Good Homes”, that structural change towards private renting affected around 2.4 million homes, or around 6 million people.

The need for legislation reflects that long-term structural shift. The private rented sector is no longer a flex or transitory tenure: it is the main tenure for millions of people for much, if not all, of their lives. The current legislative framework—a short-term tenure for long-term living, one person’s pension pot but another person’s only home—is not fit for that purpose. That is why there is tension and strain, which is reflected in the design of the Bill and the comments that have been made about it. There is a need to find a new balance that reflects this new reality for millions of people in our country, acting in a way that is fair and responsible to those who are being housed as well as to those who house them.

It remains my view that although the principle of the Bill and its measures are very welcome, they do not go far enough in dealing with the fundamental challenges of an overweighted private sector. There needs to be a long-term plan for housing that rebalances the housing tenure mix—a plan to boost home ownership and expand affordable rented housing substantially; one that unblocks the financial and regulatory constraints on affordable home ownership and professional renting, and one that builds more homes. I continue to work cross-party and cross-industry, inside and outside of this place on those priorities, as I have done for many years and as is reflected in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Given my long-term campaigning for housing, I was pleased to stand on a manifesto to build 1 million homes this Parliament, work towards 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s, and scrap section 21 evictions. We have done well on the first, the second is a work in progress and the third manifesto commitment is why we are here today. I know at first hand the personal commitment that the Secretary of State and the Housing Minister bring to this matter, and how hard their commitment to it is.

This is a vital piece of legislation, because it seeks to provide greater security and stability for renters. This matters—and it should matter to everyone on the Conservative Benches—because housing instability destroys wealth creation, damages life chances, restricts educational prospects and harms health. I see this in my constituency inbox, as I am sure do all Members. In my MP surgery, I had a mother who had spent hundreds of pounds of her own money over many years building a comfortable home for her and her disabled daughter, only for them to be turfed out by their landlord with nowhere to go. Recently, I had to discuss with Ukrainian refugees how someone had complained to their landlord about the heating not working, only for them to find themselves served with a section 21 eviction notice. How do you begin to explain that that is just how things work in our country? They should not work like that; this needs to change.

That is why this reform is so important, but we cannot allow any delay, and that includes the proposed delay because, supposedly, repossession is taking too long. That is nonsense. There is already clear court guidance to deal with repossession claims in a timely manner, as set out in civil procedure rule 55.5, which states that the hearing must take place between four and eight weeks from the claim. Although there have been some spikes in court hearings over the covid pandemic, the timeliness of possession claims has remarkably improved. The latest available figures from the Ministry of Justice show that the average time between claims and orders is now back to under eight weeks. The average time between claims and warrants is the same as it was in December 2019, when the Conservative commitment was made to the nation. The repossession figures have collapsed from the post-covid high of 69 weeks, and are back on track to pre-covid levels. For landlords, every single median metric—be that for orders, warrants or possessions—has dramatically improved on the latest Government data.

Therefore, this landmark section 21 reform should not be delayed on the basis that court improvements are required. That was a concern of our Select Committee, and I think it has now been met in part by the improved data. Any change to the Bill that delays the implementation of these vital reforms cannot be supported. This issue affects millions of people in our country. That is why renters reform—specifically the abolition of section 21—was in the 2019 manifesto, on which all of us on the Conservative Benches stood. It was a manifesto that put the Conservatives on the side of the people, and a manifesto that secured such a huge majority. It would be a grave mistake not to honour that commitment, or to stifle it by delay.

To conclude, the Renters (Reform) Bill will provide security and stability to millions of renters across the country. It should be passed by Parliament without any further delay, but we must also do more to continue to unlock home ownership and other housing to deliver the homes and the housing stability that our nation needs.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

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[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

This is without doubt a significant Bill, which shows that the Conservative Government are serious about delivering our manifesto commitments and delivering for the British people. In my constituency, tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority. To make in-roads, we must reform the private rental market. Many of my constituents and people across the country are trapped in high rental spirals, with little or no other viable options available to them. On that basis, the Bill’s proposal to enable tenants to appeal excessive market rents designed to force out tenants could be an important step, but we need to ensure we see more detail on how that would work in practice.

On top of that, and more broadly, we must go back to these proposals and make sure that they do not let up on the delivery of more affordable housing and social housing. The Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) has heard me say that time and again. I believe there is a consensus across the House on that point. As the Bill progresses, I will be keeping a strong look-out for the appropriate protections for renters, but we cannot forget that without landlords, we would not have a rental market at all. That is why we need to strike the right balance between assurances for landlords and protections for renters. The tendency to vilify landlords is not just unhelpful to our public discourse; it is unhelpful to how we are developing legislation. We must make sure that we look after landlords in this process; they form a critical part of the housing ecosystem, and scaring them off would set us back even further, so we must tread carefully.

Through my role as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for housing market and housing delivery, and from meeting landlords and tenants in my constituency, I have engaged with a huge range of stakeholders, including professional landlords such as Grainger and charities such as Shelter. Through those discussions, I am aware of the sticking points that we need to resolve as we progress this Bill through its remaining stages.

To get into just one of the details—I know we are pushed for time—Grainger and others in the industry favour the idea of introducing the ability for landlords to request a six-month minimum tenancy length. Once that period is over, renters could issue a two-month notice. Responsible landlords such as Grainger—and many others; in fact, the vast majority of them—want to build communities and have lasting bonds with the people they house, which is an often forgotten point in these debates. Conversely, charities that I have been talking to that fight for the side of tenants and renters, such as Shelter, want to see a longer protected period for tenants, with a focus on open-ended tendencies. They want to see the protected period lengthened from six months to two years to give renters more certainty and security. In the light of proposals to introduce comprehensive possession grounds for landlords, we need to be careful that we find a compromise between the two positions.

The reforms proposed in the Bill are promising, and I think we can all accept that they are a step in the right direction. However, there is more work to be done in finding the right balance between the needs of renters and landlords and successfully integrating the rental market with our levelling-up plans and the need to deliver more affordable housing across our country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Feryal Clark—not here. That is a shock.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Just for the sake of clarity, let me say that I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker). He took the correct allotted time. There seems to be a mistake with the clock, but the hon. Gentleman has done the honourable thing, and I thank him very much for that.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

I thank Members from throughout the House for their impassioned and heartfelt contributions. Let me remind the House why we have introduced this legislation: we believe that we should have one foreign policy, and we also believe that BDS campaigns risk undermining community cohesion. We believe that public bodies should not be wasting time and money on pursuing their own foreign policy agendas and should instead focus on providing vital public services and delivering value for money for the taxpayer in their procurement and investment decisions.

Let me also clarify certain misapprehensions that certain Members have about the Bill. First, the Bill applies only to public authorities. It does not apply to private individuals or private companies, except if they are exercising public functions. It does not place restrictions on local councillors, except when they talk expressly on the behalf of their local authority. It does not prevent public authorities from making statements on foreign policy; it prevents them only from making a procurement or investment decision if it is motivated by moral or political disapproval of a foreign state’s conduct.

Many Members have mentioned clause 4. I reassure Members that clause 4 only prevents public authorities from making statements of intent to boycott or divest. It does not prevent public bodies from disagreeing with this legislation. The Bill does not ban ethical, religious or socially conscious funds, so, for instance, climate change funds can continue with the Bill unless there are issues that are country-specific.

A number of Members mentioned clause 3(7). I want to clarify the role of the clause. The Bill applies equally to all countries. Countries can be exempted from the ban by secondary legislation, which is what we are planning to do with Russia and Belarus—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. This has been a very good-natured and difficult debate. It has been held with disagreement, but courtesy across the House. People have now come into the Chamber who have not been here during the debate and it is most discourteous of them now to make so much noise that we cannot hear the Minister. That is bad behaviour and it is bad for the way in which we do things in here, especially on a day when we have had a very well-constructed and conducted debate.

[Felicity Buchan]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Given the focus of the BDS campaign on Israel, we are simply saying in this clause that, for Israel to be exempted from the legislation, it will require primary legislation. I want to make that very clear. This policy does not affect our foreign policy position. We are not legislating for the UK’s foreign policy on Israel or on any other country in the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure a consistent approach to foreign policy across our public bodies, led by the UK Government. The Bill will not prevent the UK Government from imposing sanctions, or otherwise changing our foreign policy on any country in future.

I stress that none of the provisions in the Bill changes the UK’s position on Israeli settlements in the west bank and the Golan Heights. We are continuing to urge Israel not to take steps that move us away from our shared goals of peace and security. We support a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states and a just, fair and realistic settlement for refugees.

Furthermore, our position on settlements is clear: they are illegal under international law; present an obstacle to peace; and threaten the physical viability of a two-state solution. Our position is reflected in our continued support for UN Security Council resolution 2334, with which the Bill is compliant.

Holocaust Memorial Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

Second Reading

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The reasoned amendment in the name of Sir Peter Bottomley has been selected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. From the meetings I have had with the commission and the conversations I have had with people in the Jewish community and beyond, I know they want us to proceed. They understand that we are a country governed by laws and they understand why the court came to the decision it did on the 1900 Act, but they also want the Government, as well as this House and the other place, to proceed at the fastest possible pace—giving due consideration to all the arguments that are and have been made, but at the fastest possible pace—to ensure that an appropriate memorial is established.

I would like to close by reflecting on the words of Mala Tribich MBE, who is now 92 years old, and a holocaust survivor herself. As she says:

“As the Holocaust moves further into history and we survivors become less able to share our testimonies this Memorial and Learning Centre will be a lasting legacy so that future generations will understand why it is important for people to remember the Holocaust, to learn from the past and stand up against injustice. The memory of the Holocaust cannot be left to fade when us eyewitnesses are no longer able to share our memories.”

I believe we owe it to Mala and to all survivors to pass this Bill, and I commend it to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

Adult Social Care

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and he has been through some of those discussions on the Select Committee—I think the County Councils Network also made that point strongly to us—so he is absolutely right. I was not going to go too much into the long-term reforms of local government funding, but as a Committee we have said that there is a real challenge with the reforms of both council tax funding and business rates, and we have produced reports on that. There is not a clear linkage between how much money a council might get in from business or non-domestic rates and how much demand for social care is going up. Demand for social care is going up that much faster and the tax base needs to be adapted to recognise that, so his point is an important one.

To some extent, that demand is being met by tightening the rules on exemptions. More and more people who would have got social care in the past do not get it now. Age UK says it is 1.5 million—an estimate, but probably not an unreasonable one. There is also less prevention work going on, which means that people who have small needs to help them live in their homes do not get those needs addressed until they become serious needs. Then they end up in hospital, which is much more expensive and a much worse outcome for the people concerned. It results in more pressure on the NHS, more cost and a less good service.

On the other hand, there is the pay and conditions for care staff. People doing the same job in care get less money than people in the NHS. That is true of nurses, for example, where we can make direct comparisons. We know that up to half of care staff tend to leave within a year, and many are on zero-hours contracts. There have been repeated requests for a long-term workforce plan. There has rightly been a request for a long-term plan for the health workforce, but we need one for the social care workforce as well. I think that the Chancellor, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), when he chaired the Health and Social Care Committee, argued that case very strongly, and quite rightly.

There is a question of pay: these are skilled people with a real commitment that should be recognised, and not at a minimum pay level. There should be a system with proper career progression and training, so that people can realise the benefits of their skills and commitments. There is evidence that the care market is broken, that many care providers have gone out of business or struggled over the years and that the level of fees in some areas probably does not reflect their costs.

Then, of course, we have the issue of people having to give up their homes to pay for their care costs. It is a complete lottery. If in the end someone finishes the last years of their life with dementia, much of the value of their home will go to pay for their care. If they finish their life by having a heart attack and dying, they do not pay anything towards their care. That is an unfair system and it needs to be addressed. The Dilnot reforms have been around for some time. They have been nearly started and then not started, and nearly started again and not started; I will refer in a couple of minutes to how we might take things forward.

How might we change things to improve them, then? This debate is not just about making complaints; it is about providing solutions. I accept that, and that is what the Select Committee is trying to do. One suggested solution is, “Well, just amalgamate it—let’s have one big service. Put it all in the NHS and it’ll all be all right.” I think most would say that the NHS has enough challenges at present without taking on another great challenge on top. What we do not need is another mass reorganisation affecting both health and social care, the cost of which would probably be a lot more than the cost of doing things any other way.

We should also remember that most people receiving care receive it not in a hospital or even in a care home, but in their own homes. The link that councils can make between their home service, providing adaptations and the like, and care, is key in that regard. The other thing I would say is that we cannot carry on relying on short-term fixes, with one-off grants here, one-off grants there, and a council tax system that is regressive and not fit for purpose, let alone for long-term funding of social care—or, as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said a few minutes ago, business rates, which bear little relation to demand for social care either.

I go back to the 2018 joint report with the Health and Social Care Committee, in which we said two things. We did a lot of work with the focus group on this question and spent a lot of time on weekends away in a hotel in Birmingham. What people said was, “If we knew the money was going to social care, we would happily pay more.” That is what happens in Germany and Japan, two countries that we looked at. We said, “Let’s have a social care premium.” Immediately, it might be said that that is not dissimilar to the Government’s proposed increase in national insurance rates. The difference was that, at the time, we said that we had to target any payments. There will be different ways of doing this, I accept, but there has to be a way of raising extra money for social care that neither comes from the current local government system, nor takes care out of local government.

We said that there should be a social care premium as a percentage of income, but that we would raise the bottom level so that the poorest people would not pay. We would increase the top level in the way that national insurance does not, so that people on the highest incomes would continue to pay, and we would include unearned income and higher-level private pensions, but we would also exclude the under-40s, as they do in Japan. We felt that people under 40 were probably getting the worst of the deal after the financial crash in terms of the impact on their finances. That is how we thought we could raise the funds, and it was agreed by the 22 members of the two Select Committees as a way forward.

What is sometimes missed, and what we also suggested, is that we have to deal with the issue of people’s homes being sold. I have to say to the Government that their arrangements to try to implement Dilnot are complicated and unfair. People may not pay until their assets reach a minimum level, but—and I have never heard a Minister address this point—the Government cap the amount that people pay in such a way that people with lower value houses pay a bigger percentage of their homes than people with the highest value houses.

Someone who has a home worth half a million pounds pays a much smaller percentage than someone who has a home worth £100,000. That is not fair, so our Select Committee said that a percentage should just be taken from everyone’s estate. Then, the people with the most would pay the most, and the measure would not be confined to people who need care. That removes the unfairness of people with dementia paying all or most of the value of their home while those who do not have dementia paying nothing. With a small amount of inheritance tax, or another way of assessing people’s estates, we could raise a lot of money and deal absolutely with the problem of people having to give up most of their home to pay for their care costs. That is certainly worth a look.

We need to find a long-term solution to the problem. It is not going to go away, is it? The number of elderly people will continue to grow; the number of people with learning disabilities will continue, quite rightly, to require more from our services. Councils said that the funding gap was £7 billion last year, but they have also said—the Health and Social Care Committee has addressed this, and other important think-tanks have confirmed it—that if we are to deal with the combination of problems, including the immediate funding gap, the need to address eligibility criteria and bring more people back into the social care system, the challenge to local government finance, and the need for a long-term workforce plan, the gap is probably about £14 billion. That is a big sum of money, and we cannot find it in the existing local government finance system, which cannot cope as it is.

If we carry on as we are, and demand keeps increasing with no improvements to eligibility or workforce pay, there will be a consistent further increase in the pressures on other local government services. There will be bigger cuts to libraries, buses, planning, street cleaning and so on. The public, in the end, will simply not stand for that. I say to the Minister: please, let us just have a bit of long-term thinking and recognise that this is a serious problem that will not go away. Local government funding, as it exists at present, cannot take the strain any longer. We need an alternative source of revenue, we need to keep social care linked in to the rest of local government services, and we need, of course, to develop better contacts with the health service. Money to deal with the problem of people sat in hospital beds when they need to be in social care is welcome, but all that is short-term thinking.

I say to the Minister—and, to be non-partisan, to the Labour Front Benchers—where is our plan for long-term care? Where is our recognition of the funding needs? How will we bring about change? Could we, as the Joint Committee said, just possibly get a bit of cross-party thinking on this for the future? Whatever solution we come up with, we need one that will work for the long term, not just for half a Parliament or for one Parliament.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Damian Green.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I was not going to speak, but I have been drawn by some of the speeches that I have heard to add some comments, particularly on autistic people and people with learning disabilities and their care. One of the worst aspects of the chronic underfunding of adult social care is that it has led to a reliance on inappropriate in-patient care for autistic people and people with learning disabilities, 2,000 of whom are in that situation. The Government seem chronically unable to get that number down; there have been all kinds of targets to reduce it, but it has not happened.

That care is often expensive and far from home. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) told us about people in a care home far from their homes, but when the care is in in-patient units, it is often unsuitable. We know from scandals at units such as the Edenfield Centre, most recently, and Winterbourne View—there have been 10 years of scandals in those in-patient units—that they are frequently found to use restraint and seclusion as a punishment.

There have been inquiries and reports into the level of social care funding, such as that chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who made an excellent speech. The Health and Social Care Committee, of which I was a member, also looked into the issue and made recommendations. The squeeze on local authority funding means that local authorities feel that they have to put the bill on to the NHS—it becomes easier for a local authority to let the NHS pick up the bill for an autistic person or a person with learning disabilities.

Those placements can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds a year—up to £1 million. In one case that we have spent a lot of time talking about in the House, the NHS was funding a placement that cost £1 million a year. Clearly that makes no sense, because the money could go into housing or care for that person, but there does not seem to be any way to passport the money from the NHS, which is shelling it out every year, to the local authorities that would need it if they were to house and provide care for those people.

However, we had a solution years ago. When people were moved from long-term mental health institutions into the community, a dowry went with them from the NHS to the local authority. When I was the vice-chair of social services as a councillor, if we picked up somebody who had been in a long-term mental health institution to move them to the local authority, they came with a dowry that might be as much as £1 million. If a local authority were to buy a property or pay for care for a number of years, that system would work.

I urge the Minister to look at the recommendations made by the Health and Social Care Committee when we looked at this, but also to take account of what the hon. Member for North Shropshire said about how we cannot leave this in an unsatisfactory and precarious situation. It is good that some solution was found in the case she mentioned, but too often people end up in in-patient care and then will be there for the rest of their lives. There are people in these institutions who have been there 10, 20, 25 or 30 years, and it is tragic, because once someone has spent that long in an institution, it is very difficult to find a way back to the community. I wanted to mention that because it has been raised in the debate.

I want to mention one other thing. The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) talked about support and recognition for carers, and they are right to do so. We should all think about how we support unpaid carers. However, I want to say that I think the thing that is missing is that we do not have a proper national carers strategy. The last national carers strategy we had in this country was under the last Labour Government, and it came out in 2008. That would solve the problem, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East talked about, of there being no respite care breaks for carers. That national carers strategy had a commitment of £255 million specifically to support carers, including £150 million for respite care breaks. We now find that there is no money we can identify or point to that is specifically for respite care breaks. Given the squeeze on local authority funding, it just does not happen.

What this Government have had is a carers action plan, which is a weak document. The last one, which covered 2018 to 2020, had no funding commitments and was very short of ambition. I know that carers organisations very much campaign for us to go back to having a national carers strategy, which in the case of the Labour Government had the commitment of the Prime Minister and each of the Secretaries of State responsible for services used by carers. I think the key thing, as we have heard in this debate—I really stress this point—is that we have to go back to having some money that is kept separately for respite care breaks for carers, otherwise they will be pushed and pushed, and they will not get the support they need.

I just wanted to speak on those two points, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I join everyone else in saying what a pleasure it is to see you back in your place.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you. I call the shadow Minister.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her comments, and she is absolutely right. Some local councils are over-delivering and overperforming, and some are underperforming. If we look at, for example, some areas of London, the Mayor’s plan for London is not delivering the homes that London needs, is not providing the densification and is not providing homes for people who live in London. Instead, that is getting exported to the home counties, to places such as Kent and Basingstoke. I completely agree that we need to look at making sure that the local plans and local delivery are appropriate, and that it is locally-led planning, but we also need to ensure that councils are responsible about meeting their housing needs. That balance must be there in the new NPPF because house building is not just a very important industry in terms of GDP. It is also the means by which we live better financial, better social and better connected lives in our community. It has a really important part to play.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Gagan Mohindra.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a real pleasure to be called in this debate, especially with you in the Chair, because a lot of what I am going to say now is about when I was a councillor in your beautiful constituency of Epping Forest.

First, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), who have done a substantial amount of work over close to two years now. I also thank those on the Front Bench for their proactive engagement to ensure that this legislation is in a fit state. I hope we will all be voting to support it in due course.

Prior to getting into this place, as I have said, I spent many years in local government. I ended up sitting on a planning committee for close to 17 years, during most of which I was chairing at both district and county council level, and I was holding the pen when the Essex design guide was adopted by Essex County Council. The point I want to make is that, while the public normally focus on housing, the local plan model is actually one that works. I have the scars of the regional development agencies, prior to local plans being introduced—actually by a Liberal Democrat Cabinet member at the time—back in 2011. The importance of this is that planning is one of those emotive issues that, if we get wrong, are a blight on our community for many years. I am sure I speak on behalf of the whole House when I say that we need to make sure we get this right.

I am fortunate enough to represent the beautiful constituency of South West Hertfordshire, which is approximately 80% green belt. While there is absolutely a demand for new homes, they do need to be the right type of homes. We have spoken about housing numbers before, but I want to focus on housing type. While we are blessed with a lot of medium to large-sized homes in my constituency, it is the first-time homeowners who inevitably will have to move out of my constituency to get on to the property ladder. As someone who bought their first home two years ago, the biggest and most frustrating issue I had in my constituency was trying to afford a home of a reasonable size. That was a challenge, even at my age and with what is the very well-paid job I do now.

I commend the Bill to the House. I hope that further engagement will happen, because I think this will be an evolution of the planning reform that we so desperately need in this place. I am conscious that I am before the Minister and the votes, so I am going to sit down now.

Death of Awaab Ishak and Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for his tireless efforts. Awaab’s death was an avoidable tragedy, and I am sure that Members from across the House have casework where tenants in both the social and private rental sectors are too often left in terrible conditions similar to those that caused this incident. Will he join me, in thanking the Manchester Evening News for its important campaign with Shelter to bring back regulation on consumer standards for social housing? Does he also agree that we must strengthen the rights of all tenants, regardless of whether they are living in the social or private sector? Finally, does he agree—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I cannot hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying because he is facing away from the Chair. If he spoke to the Chair, we could all hear him.

[Afzal Khan]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. Finally, does my hon. Friend agree that, in view of this systemic failure, the whole board is in an untenable position and must go?

Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Friday 18th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the excellent and thoughtful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt). Along with all my colleagues, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on bringing this Bill to the House and on all the work he has done. I recognise the work of the Select Committee and express gratitude for being part of this important debate.

It is also a particular pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), who captured the mood of this debate when she said that debates and subjects such as this show that all of us across the House care about how we can support those in most need and how we can all make a positive difference to vulnerable people in our constituencies. She was absolutely right about that.

There are big questions to answer about how we can best support those who may have made mistakes or suffered misfortune in their lives, but, at a very simple level, how can we possibly expect anybody to rebuild their life without the basic requirement of adequate shelter? I welcome this Bill, because it will improve the quality of supported housing and improve governance at both local and national level. It will also ultimately improve taxpayer efficiency, by providing the means for people to live more independently of the state.

No matter what a person’s background, condition or circumstances, we in this place have a duty to ensure that quality accommodation and care is the baseline. We should acknowledge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) rightly did, the Government’s work to date in this area. I acknowledge the national statement of expectations in 2020, which set out minimum standards guidance for supported housing. It set out, for example, that housing should be accessible and be assessed by local council commissioners and that housing staff should be trained. The National Housing Federation endorsed and supported that guidance, but the Bill clearly builds significantly on that work to date, and quite right too.

In the many excellent speeches today we have heard examples of terrible things happening in this area. Landlords are still providing unacceptable housing. New residents are still being placed with unsuitable co-residents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East pointed out, and some accommodation is not fire safe, frankly. I warmly welcome this Bill and, in particular, three measures: the introduction of a supported housing advisory panel makes a ton of sense; the requirement for local authorities to review exempt accommodation and publish a supporting housing strategy is something we all completely agree with; and then we have the powers given to the Secretary of State to make licensing regulations for exempt housing.

This is an excellent Bill. I am not surprised that it will go through today with cross-party support. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend. If I can build on the praise that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) set out, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has shown that if a Member acts with strong purpose in this job, they can, with the right energy, drive real change. He showed it in 2017 with his Homelessness Reduction Act. He has shown it through his tremendous work to build relations between the UK and India, for which he has received one of India’s highest civilian honours. He is the only person I know with a Padma Shri. I am also very familiar with his campaigning for a smoke-free England. I am greatly proud to share these Benches with him.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister, Matthew Pennycook. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon; I did not know that the hon. Gentleman had already spoken. I am sorry I missed his speech. I call the Minister, Felicity Buchan.

Social Housing Standards

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)]

Members throughout the House and people across the country will have been horrified to hear about the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Awaab Ishak. Awaab died in December 2020, just days after his second birthday, following prolonged exposure to mould in his parents’ one-bedroom flat in Rochdale. Awaab’s parents had repeatedly raised their concerns about the desperate state of their home with their landlord—the local housing association, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing. Awaab’s father first articulated his concerns in 2017, and others, including health professionals, also raised the alarm, but the landlord failed to take any kind of meaningful action. Rochdale Boroughwide Housing’s repeated failure to heed Awaab’s family’s pleas to remove the mould in their damp-ridden property was a terrible dereliction of duty.

Worse still, the apparent attempts by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing to attribute the existence of mould to the actions of Awaab’s parents was beyond insensitive and deeply unprofessional. As the housing ombudsman has made clear, damp and mould in rented housing is not a lifestyle issue, and we all have a duty to call out any behaviour rooted in ignorance or prejudice. The family’s lawyers have made it clear that in their view the inaction of the landlord was rooted in prejudice.

The coroner who investigated Awaab’s death, Joanne Kearsley, has performed a vital public service in laying out all the facts behind this tragedy. I wish, on behalf of the House, to record my gratitude to her. As she said, it is scarcely believable that a child could die from mould in 21st century Britain, or that his parents should have to fight tooth and nail, as they did in vain, to save him. I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to Awaab’s family for their tireless fight for justice over the past two years. They deserved better and their son deserved better.

As so many have rightly concluded, Awaab’s case has thrown into sharp relief the need for renewed action to ensure that every landlord in the country makes certain that their tenants are housed in decent homes and are treated with dignity and fairness. That is why the Government are bringing forward further reforms. Last week, the House debated the Second Reading of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill. The measures in that Bill were inspired by the experience of tenants that led to the terrible tragedy of the Grenfell fire. The way in which tenants’ voices were ignored and their interests neglected in the Grenfell tragedy is a constant spur to action for me in this role.

Before I say more on the substance of the wider reforms, let me first update the House on the immediate steps that my Department has been taking with regard to Awaab’s case. First, as the excellent public-service journalism of the Manchester Evening News shows, we are aware that Awaab’s family was not alone in raising serious issues with the condition of homes managed by the local housing association. I have already been in touch with the chair and the chief executive of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing to demand answers and that they explain to me why a tragedy such as Awaab’s case was ever allowed to happen, and to hear what steps they are now undertaking, immediately, to improve the living conditions of the tenants for whom they are responsible.

I have been in touch with the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson), both of whom are powerful champions for the people of Rochdale. I have discussed with them the finding of suitable accommodation for tenants in Rochdale who are still enduring unacceptable conditions. I also hope to meet Awaab’s family, and those who live in the Freehold estate, so that they know that the Government are there to support them.

It is right that the regulator of social housing is considering whether the landlord in this case has systematically failed to meet the standards of service it is required to provide for its tenants. The regulator has my full support for taking whatever action it deems necessary. The coroner has written to me, and I assure the House that I will act immediately on her recommendations.

Let me turn to the broader urgent issues raised by this tragedy. Let me be perfectly clear, as some landlords apparently still need to hear this from this House: every single person in this country, irrespective of where they are from, what they do or how much they earn, deserves to live in a home that is decent, safe and secure. That is the relentless focus of my Department and, I know, of everyone across this House.

Since the publication of our social housing White Paper, we have sought to raise the bar on the quality of social housing, while empowering tenants so that their voices are truly heard. We started by strengthening the housing ombudsman service so that all residents have somewhere to turn when they do not get the answers they need from their landlords. In addition, we have changed the law so that residents can now complain directly to the ombudsman, instead of having to wait eight weeks while their case is handled by a local MP or another “designated person”.

One of the principal roles of the housing ombudsman service is to ensure that robust complaint processes are put in place so that problems are resolved as soon as they are flagged. It can order landlords to pay compensation to residents and refer cases to the regulator of social housing, which will in future be able to issue unlimited fines to landlords that it finds to be at fault. Of course, all decisions made by the ombudsman are published so that the whole world can see which landlords are consistently letting tenants down.

It is clear from Awaab’s case, which sadly did not go before the ombudsman, that more needs to be done to ensure that this vital service is better promoted, and that it reaches those who really need it. We have already run the nationwide “Make Things Right” campaign to ensure that more social housing residents know how they can make complaints, but we are now planning—I think it is necessary—another targeted multi-year campaign so that everyone living in the social housing sector knows their rights, knows how to sound the alarm when their landlord is failing to make the grade, and knows how to seek redress without delay.

Where some providers have performed poorly in the past, they have now been given ample opportunity to change their ways and to start treating residents with the respect that they deserve. The time for empty promises of improvement is over, and my Department will now name and shame those who have been found by the regulator to have breached consumer standards, or who have been found by the ombudsman to have committed severe maladministration.

While there is no doubt that this property fell below the standard that we expect all social landlords to meet, Awaab’s death makes it painfully clear why we must do everything we can to better protect tenants. Our Social Housing (Regulation) Bill will bring in a rigorous new regime that holds landlords such as these to account for the decency of their homes. As I mentioned, the system has been too reliant on people fighting their own corner and we are determined to change that. The reforms that we are making will help to relieve the burden on tenants with an emboldened and more powerful regulator. The regulator will proactively inspect landlords and, of course, issue the unlimited fines that I have mentioned, and it will be able to intervene in cases where tenants’ lives are being put at risk. In the very worst cases, it will have the power to instruct that properties be brought under new management.

Landlords will also be judged against tenant satisfaction measures, which will allow tenants—indeed, all of us—to see transparently which landlords are failing to deliver what residents expect and deserve. It is the universal right of everyone to feel safe where they and their loved ones sleep at night, which is why our levelling up and private rented sector White Papers set out how we will legislate to introduce a new, stronger, legally binding decent homes standard in the private rented sector as well for the first time. We recently consulted on that decent homes standard and we are reviewing the responses so that we can move forward quickly. It is a key plank of our mission to ensure that the number of non-decent homes across all tenures is reduced by 2030, with the biggest improvements occurring in the lowest-performing areas.

The legislation that we are bringing forward is important. We hope that, as a result, no family ever have to suffer in the way that Awaab’s family have suffered. We hope that we can end the scandal of residents having to live in shoddy, substandard homes, such as some of those on the Freehold estate. We want to restore the right of everyone in this country, whatever their race or cultural background, to live somewhere warm, decent, safe and secure—a place that they can be proud to call home. I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

Again, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his work. I know that he has been extraordinarily diligent in following up the cases of poor housing that have been brought to his attention. He is absolutely right that the leadership of RBH has presided over a terrible situation in his constituency. Action does need to be taken. He is absolutely right that we need to make sure that all of the tools at our disposal are used to investigate what went on and to hold those responsible to account. He is also right to say that individuals who earn well in excess of what our Prime Minister earns and who have responsibility for 12,500 homes should take the consequences of those actions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

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

May I associate myself with the aims that the Secretary of State has set out in his statement? I think they will be supported across the House.

I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to the Select Committee’s report, “The Regulation of Social Housing”, published in July—I gently remind him that the Department has not yet replied to it. In the report, we identified some social housing that was unfit for human habitation, and causing the sorts of health problems that tragically have been seen in this case. We identified problems with repair reporting, complaints handling, and a lack of proactive inspection of properties by housing providers and the social housing regulator. We put that in context and said

“some blame must attach to successive Governments for not investing enough in new homes, which has increased the sector’s reliance on outdated stock, and for not providing funding specifically for regeneration.”

Some of those are not individual repairs; there are failures of whole blocks and whole estates. I say to the Secretary of State: let us share the common objectives, and let us work together to get the money to ensure that those objectives can be realised.