Housing: Rhondda

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will call Sir Chris Bryant to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the availability and support for housing in Rhondda constituency.

It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms McVey; we were both in the National Youth Theatre, although you are obviously much younger than I, and so were a youth much later than I was—and remain one.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

You flatter me, sir.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I do not know whether many hon. Members present have visited, but they will know the stereotypical view of the Rhondda: lots of terraced houses up the mountains and down the valleys—many identical houses, but painted with different colours, and many of them mini palaces inside. They were built as miners’ cottages in the 19th century and early 20th century. One of the ironies is that in all my time as a Member of Parliament, which is now 22 years, I have never known us to have a housing crisis. Yes, a few people have faced financial problems and lost their homes, but despite the deprivation levels 66% of people in my constituency own their own home. That is very high compared with many other areas with similar levels of deprivation.

We also have very little social housing—just 12%. Compare that with other parts of the country: Cardiff, 17%; Neath Port Talbot, another next-door county, 19.2%; Birmingham, 23.5%; and Lambeth, just across the river from here, 33.5%. We have very few council houses or former council houses. There are estates such as Penrhys and Trebanog, which are now in the hands of various housing associations, but there are really very few. The commercial rented sector is therefore a very important part of ensuring that people have affordable homes to live in.

It is exceptional to me, as MP for the Rhondda, that we now for first the first time ever have a perfect storm of a housing crisis in the Rhondda. It worries me deeply. Several different elements have led to it. One is the bedroom tax. That came in in 2013, but some of the effects are still being felt today; it is pushing people out of some social housing into other commercial properties. Another is the housing benefit cap, which has now been in place for so many years that it simply has not kept up with rental rates, even in areas such as the Rhondda, where rent is much lower than in London or many other constituencies in the land.

Changes to the buy-to-let taxation system have also had an effect on many commercial landlords in the Rhondda. Those landlords would have bought only two properties at most, because they thought of them as their retirement income. They bought them on buy-to-let mortgages and expected to be able to deduct against tax a significant part of the mortgage interest. Now they find that they cannot. It is more difficult for them to afford to keep their buy-to-let properties, and many of them are selling up. That is even before we consider the effect that mortgage interest rates are having on buy-to-let mortgages. Commercial landlords can deduct less mortgage interest than they could before, and they are finding that the sums simply do not add up. I have heard about commercial landlords saying, “I cannot sell the property, but my mortgage is costing me more than the rent I can charge.”

The Welsh housing quality standard 2023, which was introduced by the Welsh Government, has added another burden to commercial landlords who have to meet that standard. Of course we are all in favour of properties meeting proper standards, but one problem is that many of our houses were built in the 19th century, long before the standards that we would expect today. The bedrooms are tiny or relatively small and do not meet those standards. They are difficult to insulate and heat, because of how they were built in the 19th century. That has posed another set of challenges for commercial landlords, who say, “How am I going to find £5,000 or £10,000? Even if I did find the £5,000 or £10,000, would I ever be able to bring that property up to the new housing quality standards?”

Then we have interest rates. If 65% of people living in the Rhondda own their own homes, that is an awful lot of people with mortgages. Many of them might be on long-term fixed-rate mortgages, but we do not tend to do 16 or 20-year fixed-rate mortgages in the UK—it is more like two, three, four or five. People are seeing significant increases in the amount that they have to pay when at the same time inflation is running at 8.7%. That poses a lot of challenges in the whole market.

There is another element. Again, it is something that was introduced by the Welsh Government, which changed the priority need basis whereby local authorities had to determine whether they had a statutory duty to provide accommodation, so it is different in Wales from in England. I fully understand the rationale behind that. I do not want anybody to be homeless. I want local authorities to be there to help whenever they can, but that has added to the situation as well.

The situation has resulted in dozens of landlords selling up. As I have said, most of them have only two properties. The idea that the landlords have vast portfolios of 30 or 50 properties is not what we have in the Rhondda. People mostly have just two. Letting agencies have said to me, “We would normally let three, four or five properties a month—maybe a bit more at some times of the year. Some of us have not managed to let a single property this year because there is no commercial property to let.”

Between 2018-19 and 2022-23, there was a 65% increase in the number of families forced to leave private rented accommodation because of no-fault evictions, which are normally under a section 21 notice. Every week my office has people ringing up in absolute despair. The local authority now recommends that people stay until they are forcibly evicted, because it knows that, try as hard as it can, it simply cannot meet the need.

Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, there was a 69% increase in temporary accommodation placements. Across the whole of Rhondda Cynon Taf, the local authority, that has risen from 598 a year to 861. In addition, the total number of days that people have spent in temporary accommodation is now running at 44,251 because more people than ever before, particularly families with children, are in temporary accommodation and they are staying longer—considerably longer in many instances.

The cost to Rhondda Cynon Taf, because of the temporary accommodation factor, has changed out of all proportion. In 2019, the cost stood at £514,000. Last year it was £1,633,000. In just those few years the cost has more than trebled so there is a significant additional cost. In the end, of course, temporary accommodation is not high quality. It is not the best option, especially for people who have children, a physical disability or other special needs. It ends up being more costly than providing proper social housing and leads to other social problems further down the line.

We also have another problem. Some commercial landlords are now so nervous about having people who might be in receipt of housing benefit, which has been capped, or people who have financial problems because of the cost of living crisis, that they now often insist on substantial deposits beforehand. We have heard of landlords demanding 12 months’ rent in advance. There is no way the vast majority of ordinary people could possibly afford that. If they could, they might as well buy a home, because they would have enough for a deposit to do so. The good news in the Rhondda is that people can buy properties that are relatively cheap compared with many other places in the country, but only if they have managed to build up a significant deposit. Of course, many people who are in this horrific cycle of being shunted from one commercial rented property or one temporary accommodation to another simply do not have those kinds of financial resources.

There is another problem. I am delighted that RCT is able, through the Welsh Government scheme, to offer £25,000 grants for people to take property that is not being lived in and make it habitable again, but that must now meet all the new standards. It is simply not possible to smash a two-up, two-down property with small rooms into the kind of property that meets present-day standards. That is yet another problem facing the whole market.

The demand for social housing is increasing dramatically for all the reasons that I have highlighted—people being forcibly evicted, people not being able to find the big deposits that are needed, and people whose landlords are selling their properties. We now have a situation where RCT, which is doing its level best to provide accommodation for people, is finding that it has not just a few applications for every property that becomes available through its scheme, but hundreds. It is not unheard of to have 250 applications for a single property the moment it comes into the system.

In the last three years, the numbers of people applying for a one-bed flat in Maerdy have quadrupled, and they have trebled for a three-bed house in Penygraig. There was a time when certain parts of the Rhondda or RCT were more popular than others, but now every single social housing property that becomes available is massively oversubscribed, and there is no way on God’s earth that RCT, try as it might, and as inventive as it tries to be, can meet the housing need.

As I said, there are now effectively no commercial rented properties available. This is not one of those debates where I want to shout at the Government, “You’ve done terrible things—look how you’ve completely let my constituents down.” All I am trying to do is reveal to both the Government here and the Government in Cardiff Bay—because some of these issues relate to decisions made in the Welsh Government, and some of them relate to decisions made in Westminster—how an area such as the Rhondda, which has beautiful mountains, lovely valleys and some amazing housing stock—albeit that much of it is old and difficult to heat, insulate and keep up to modern housing standards—is really struggling at a time when the commercial rented sector is falling on its face.

What are the answers? We need to do something about the housing benefit cap, which has been frozen for far too long and is now completely out of kilter with reality for most ordinary properties in the Rhondda. We need to change some of the taxation for buy-to-let properties, because otherwise we will simply lose the commercial rented sector in its totality in constituencies such as mine and perhaps in many other parts of the country, and that is problematic. And of course we need to build more social housing, but I know that that solution will not come on board quickly.

The Welsh Government need to think about the priorities they have set for councils such as Rhondda Cynon Taff, because at the moment it is simply unachievable, with all the will in the world, for RCT to meet its full statutory duties. The Welsh Government also have to think about the housing standards and how they apply in valleys communities. Some people might look at a two-up, two-down terraced property from the outside and think, “I don’t know what that’s going to look like inside,” but many of them are palaces indoors, because people take phenomenal pride in them. In a community where most people own their own home, there is that pride in the street where you live and the house you live in. That builds a sense of community and a sense of communal ownership of the whole terrace, the street and the town.

I want to say to the Welsh Government that I fully understand why they do not want commercial landlords to be ripping off tenants. I argued at the beginning of my time as an MP that we do not want commercial landlords simply coming along, buying up a house, spending 50p on it and then putting somebody in because they know they will be able to get vast amounts of housing benefit over the years because the tenant will be in there. That is the Government effectively subsidising bad commercial landlords. Yet we now have the flip side of that problem, which is that housing benefit is too low, so it is difficult for commercial landlords to make any kind of money from renting their properties, and we need roughly 20% of the housing stock in the Rhondda to be in the commercial rented sector.

I passionately believe in social housing. I would love Rhondda Cynon Taf to be allowed to build more properties. As it happens, the first local authority in the country to introduce the idea of a person buying their own council property was Newport, under Labour control. However, the key then was that if someone bought their property, the local authority was able to invest that money in building more social housing. One of the our problems is that we have not invested enough in social housing across the whole of the country for many years.

I am sure the Minister will be able to respond to all my problems, but if there is anything else she needs, I will send her a little report I have done, entitled “The New Housing Crisis in the Rhondda”; it is available on my website as well. I care passionately about making sure that people have a decent home. That is one of the great things that, historically, people in the Rhondda have been able to afford, but at the moment, we have a real challenge. I hope the Minister can help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is one thing to get a job; it is quite another to get a job that pays enough to put food on the table. That is why the majority of people who use the food bank in the Rhondda are in work, which is surely a Dickensian-style disgrace. Is it not a particularly bitter irony that the Conservative club in Tylorstown in the Rhondda closed and is now a food bank?

[Esther McVey]

What we know is that we provide £94 billion in working age benefits. We also know that, for the extra people we have got into work, in-work poverty has actually fallen by 300,000 since the election. The Government are getting more people into work so that they can have a job, a career and a progression—they can move forward. The hon. Gentleman does not want to hear independent statistics, but that is the case. We have more people in jobs than ever before.

Under-Occupancy Penalty (North-West)

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

I have given way a lot, and have answers to provide. Despite the bluster and fluster and cries of “We cannot do it,” that policy would have been implemented by the Opposition.

We have provided for the most vulnerable, including disabled children who cannot share because of their disability; foster children; overnight non-resident carers for claimants and their partners; and live-in carers. We have also ensured that tenants can retain a bedroom for an adult child who is in the armed forces and deployed on operations. We have established support, and in addition the courts have confirmed that we have satisfied our equality duties by making additional discretionary housing payment funding available. In total we have provided discretionary housing payment funding of £180 million in this financial year. The Government have given local authorities the money to help people in need. In fact, we have gone further, and within the year we have allocated an extra £20 million for which the 380 local authorities in Great Britain could bid.

What happened with that extra money? Not all the local authorities bid for the extra £20 million that we put in place because they did not feel the need to, and only £13 million was taken, meaning that £7 million was not. Yet again, there were screams of protest from the Opposition about what was needed, but the money had been put in place and yet not all of it was utilised. In my local area, for example, Wirral council still had £180,000 to spend on discretionary housing payments by the end of the month. That was made up of £30,000 left over and an extra £150,000 that had been granted.

We are getting all that information back from people and finding out what they need, so I take great exception to the accusation that this policy was developed on the back of a fag packet—I think that is what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said.

[Chris Bryant]

I did not say that.

[Esther McVey]

It might appear that the Opposition’s benefits policy—

[Chris Bryant]

I did not say that.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Bryant, please do not interject from a sedentary position. Mr Bryant may not have said “on the back of a fag packet”, so perhaps the Minister will quote the words he did say to make the point. Mr Bryant, if you want to make an intervention, please do so, but do not interject in that way.

[Esther McVey]

Whether, in colloquial terms, the hon. Gentleman said that it was developed on the back of a fag packet, a cigarette packet or an envelope, it was discourteous, given the hundreds of hours of work that have been put in. I think he used the phrase “on an envelope in the shower”, but that was not the case, because many hours went into developing the policy. That might be how the Opposition make their benefits policy, because so far it seems they do not know what they are doing—what are they agreeing with, or not, and how are they helping the guarantee scheme, or not?

What the Government have done has had a profound effect on what is happening in the country: there are record rates of employment; youth unemployment has fallen for the past six consecutive months; there are record rates of women in work; and, as in the news today, the number of workless households is falling considerably. Far from our policy being made on the back of an envelope or cigarette packet, it is having significant effect. For a moment, I want to think about those people who have now got a job and are fulfilling their potential, supporting their families, getting their foot on the career ladder and working their way up. I meet such people every day, and they say how their lives have been transformed, so it is important that we listen to them as well.

As I said, 86 local authorities applied for extra money, although not all of them spent the extra £20 million, and not all councils felt that they needed it. Many of the Opposition scare stories did not happen at all and, despite the dire warnings, nor did the arrears. The report from the National Housing Federation stated that it is difficult to observe a rise in outstanding arrears. In fact, more than half of all working-age tenants in receipt of housing benefit were already in arrears before the new policy came into effect. While we are talking about people and their lives, moreover, there are lots of examples of people moving and downsizing. Among such people is Suzanne, from south Yorkshire, who had four children who are now grown up and have left home. She did not want to move, but she said that now that she has and has downsized, things are totally different. She has less of a heating bill—less in the way of bills altogether—can manage her cost of living and live within her means. It is key that we look at everyone’s requirements.

On the loophole that has been mentioned, we have been through this on various occasions. The person in question has to have been in the same house and continuously on housing benefit since 1996 to be part of the loophole. The Opposition were right: we did not know the entirety of the numbers. What we deemed to be roughly right, however, was the figure of £5,000, and we said that we would cover those costs, so we agreed with the local authorities—£2 million to do the extra work necessary. We agreed the amount of money to do the administrative work to support those people. Far from screaming and yelling, we have gone into the issue in our discussions. Indeed, we debated it yesterday, so I think it has been covered.

What is key is that we have to think about the policy into the future, and to support people who are in overcrowded accommodation, whether they are on waiting lists or already in social rented housing. It is about how we best go forward and provide support. We are dealing with the issue, which Labour did not want to do when in office—they were happy to see the housing bill double over 10 years and the waiting lists and overcrowding increase.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister has not answered any of my questions, so I will ask them again. She has a moment or two to find the piece of paper bearing the inspiration. My first question is, how many people have already been given back their money because they were illegally charged under the bedroom tax, but who in the meantime have also been given discretionary housing payments? Will they have to pay that back?

[Esther McVey]

No one will pay anything back. The people who have got discretionary payments will keep them—they will have been paid to the social rented sector—and should they wish to use them going forward, they can.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing my continued interventions. How much, therefore, are the Government writing down in that regard?

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

We have said that we will take that into consideration. We are working on a set of numbers, and we presume the figure to be in the area of £5,000. We will take that cost on board, as we said—both the administrative cost, which we have agreed, and the extra costs that would have been used by the discretionary payments.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister is generous in giving way again—

[Chris Bryant]

How much will the total amount of money be throughout the UK and, in particular, how much will it be in the north-west? We need to know the amounts of money the Minister is talking about for writing down purposes.

[Esther McVey]

The Labour party have never cared so much about money—hence we are in the debt we are in. We do not know how to sort out all of Labour’s problems.

I have said that that is a cost we will be covering and dealing with. We have put discretionary housing payments aside, although of even the most recent £20 million that we have offered, only £13 million was used, leaving £7 million. We have said that of course we will deal with the situation, and that is what we will be doing. At the end of the day, however, we are talking about what is happening in Wigan and the north-west. We have to look at everyone, whether in the social rented sector, in overcrowded homes or on a waiting list, and at how best to deal with the situation. I fully applaud what the Government are doing and the way we are dealing with what we inherited—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rhondda is laughing at the situation, because we are picking up many of the problems left behind by him and his party.

Inherited Social Housing Tenancies

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement regarding the exemption of those who have inherited social housing tenancies from paying the under-occupancy charge.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

The issue raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is not a new matter, but is part of the 1996 provisions which impacted on the spare room subsidy legislation 2012, and which we have debated in the House before. Upon investigation early in the year, it would appear that some claimants have been unintentionally protected from the effects of the removal of the spare room subsidy, including those who have been in receipt of continuous housing benefit since 1 January 1996 and who have lived in the same property since that date unless the move was due to natural disaster such as fire and flood. There is a grace period of four weeks, or 52 weeks if the claimant or their partner is a welfare to work beneficiary. For example, housing benefit would be classed as continuous if the break is fewer than four weeks, or 52 weeks for a welfare to work beneficiary. Where a claimant dies, the partner or an adult child can inherit the protection, but it must be in respect of the same dwelling and they must qualify for housing benefit.

The issue of the inheritance of housing benefit has always formed part of the understanding of what the loophole meant, and this was part of the guidance issued to local authorities a few weeks ago. The loophole derives from a very narrow but complex set of regulations dating back to 1 January 1996, when the local reference rent rules were introduced. In January 1996, transitional protection was offered to existing claimants, which could, and still can, be inherited if the claimant dies: for example, by a partner or, where there is no partner, by an adult child. The protection applies only in respect of the same dwelling—therefore, partners or adult children must continue to live in that property—and only if they qualify for housing benefit. This protection ends if housing benefit ceased or they moved address.

With hindsight, the protection offered by the regulations could have been time limited. Because it was not, it has lain dormant for 17 years, the effect being that it has now unintentionally been applied to a group of people who were not financially affected by the local reference rent rules. During February’s debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who was Secretary of State at the time the regulations were introduced, clearly stated that this exemption was never intended to come into force.

This matter was fully debated, and voted on, on 26 February 2014, to approve amended regulations to close the loophole. Clearly, the House has already spoken on this issue, and guidance was sent out a few weeks ago to inform local authorities. I am pleased to announce that most local authorities are following that guidance and delivering this policy.

[Chris Bryant]

That was all very interesting but not to the point, because this is actually about inherited social housing tenancies. The Minister just said that this only applied to the partner or the adult child of somebody who had been holding the tenancy, but in her advice to local authorities of January this year, she included the following highly ambiguous footnote:

“it may be the case”—

only may—

“that the transitional protection has been inherited by a claimant and if so they should be treated the same.”

Yet a separate e-mail from the Department for Work and Pensions includes

“any member of the claimant’s family”

and says,

“if the claimant is a member of a polygamous marriage”—

I am not making this up; this is actually what the Minister has written—

“any partners of his and any child or young person for whom he or a partner is responsible”,

a much bigger number, would be included.

In what circumstances does a tenant inherit the right to be exempted? Does that apply to any member of the claimant’s family or specifically just a partner, as the Minister referred to? How many people does that apply to now? What is the total cost of repayments of these illegal charges? How many people who have received refunds for being wrongly charged the bedroom tax have also received discretionary housing payments, and will they have to pay them back? The DWP advice suggests that in assessing whether someone is exempted, local authorities should

“err on the side of caution”.

What on earth does that mean: err on the side of caution to exempt, or not to exempt?

The bedroom tax always had the air of a policy dreamt up in an ivory tower. I know the Minister would love to put this sorry saga behind her, but she should know that before absolution there always has to be confession. So will she now confess that the bedroom tax has been a fiasco from the beginning, that the figures she has given the House were simply plucked out of the air, and that far more than 5,000 people will be affected? Should she not just repeal the bedroom tax? Because if she won’t, we will.

[Esther McVey]

It is clear that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to the statement that I made and did not understand what the inheritance was or what he was voting for on 26 February. Obviously, we do not necessarily want to have to put this policy in place. It is something that we are having to deliver—

[Chris Bryant]

It is your mistake.

[Esther McVey]

No. It is something we are having to deliver because of what we inherited from the previous Government, including a benefit, the cost of which had doubled in 10 years, and a policy that had left nearly 2 million people on housing waiting lists and 400,000 in overcrowded houses. It was a skewed policy under which people living in private rented accommodation could have their spare room subsidy removed but people who lived in the social rented sector could not. And as for people giving out wrong numbers, I would remind the hon. Gentleman that, when he plucked numbers from the air in the last debate, St Helens said that he had got his numbers wrong. Now, in response to his citing a figure of 2,100 cases, Birmingham has put up on its website this statement:

“We haven’t finished identifying them at Birmingham so can’t give you an exact number, but the number of possible cases has dropped substantially below the 2,100 that was reported in the papers”.

We have trebled the discretionary housing payments. We have also said that we will cover the differences involved for people who are exempt and that we will help local authorities with the administration charges. We have answered these points and we have voted on them. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman look again at the debate we had on 26 February.

Housing Benefit

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to answer that question. I looked into the freedom of information request and the numbers that had been obtained, and I was assured categorically that there was no way the Opposition’s figures could add up regarding claimants who were continuously on benefits while remaining in the same accommodation. When I spoke to various housing associations and local authorities, they were somewhat surprised, because they had given the numbers of people who might be affected and the numbers of cases they were still investigating, but the Opposition had added them together to try to multiply the numbers. When we answered the question on the numbers, the figure we gave at that time—5,000—was the best we could do. It is incorrect to say that the Opposition have those numbers; that is not the case.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed give way, to hear some more information sprung from nowhere. Go on!

[Chris Bryant]

No, this is not information sprung from nowhere; it is direct questions to local authorities under the freedom of information legislation. A classic instance of this is to be found in the Minister’s own backyard: there are 600 cases in the Wirral. If she does not know the numbers—which is effectively what she is saying—is she not simply seeking to change the law on the basis of cruelty?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There are many dimensions to this, because it is not just about a housing benefit bill that doubled under Labour’s watch; it is also about the lack of houses that were built, fairness in the system, getting housing right and building right for the future.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This might be all right if there were smaller properties for people to go to, but there are not. It might be all right if £14.50 was a tiny sum, which it may be to the hon. Lady or to any of us in the Chamber, but it is not to the carers who do an invaluable job, not only on behalf of the person they care for, but for the whole of society. So how can it possibly be right that 60,000 carers are paying, on average, as the Minister has just admitted, an extra £14.50 a week? Are this Government dim-witted, short-sighted or just plain cruel?

[Esther McVey]

I am afraid none of those are true. I see that the hon. Gentleman gathered much information together, but let us see what happens; as I said, we have got to get this right. We have to get the housing right. We have got to have more smaller buildings. He wrote to me as he did not understand about conversions and I had to lay it out clearly in the letter; the National Housing Federation agreed with me. Despite not knowing the facts, he did produce a press release for the papers. We are getting conversions right, sorting out the problem and helping as many people as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct, and that information is key, because decisions are overturned for many reasons. Most of the time, it is because new information comes into play at the appeal. We need to find out why decisions are overturned, not just for the claimant but for the DWP and everybody involved.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the truth of the matter that in the vast majority of cases where a decision was overturned, it was because the wrong decision was made in the first place? Would it not make far more sense to make the right decision in the first place, so we did not have to waste time, money and energy on pursuing the matter all over again?

[Esther McVey]

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman was listening to what I said. Actually, the majority of overturns are the result of new information being supplied on appeal. To ensure that we get this right first time, there will be mandatory reconsiderations, just like under universal credit and the personal independence payment. That will also be the case for employment and support allowance from the end of October. That will provide a proper administrative route, rather than a judicial one involving extra costs, extra pain and extra stress. We are getting this right, which is something the previous Government never did.

Remploy

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

The real problem at the Remploy factory in the Rhondda is that, although the vast majority of disabled people in the Rhondda are in mainstream employment, we have 72 people there who are affected, some of whom have been transferred from a previous Remploy factory that was closed, and we have rising unemployment and very little prospect of jobs for people. So will the Minister please take up the offer that Leighton Andrews, the Assembly Member for the Rhondda and also a Minister in the Welsh Assembly Government, made to take over the Welsh factories with their assets, so that if she is not prepared to do anything to protect these jobs, the Welsh Assembly can?

[Esther McVey]

I will correct the hon. Gentleman; we are doing everything we can to protect jobs for disabled people. I spoke with Leighton Andrews last week on what we have agreed to put in place; obviously the commercial process has to be gone through correctly, as other people might put a better offer on the table. What we have to do is get the best offer for those disabled people, whom we so want to help. Should Leighton Andrews have the best offer, that will be the path we take.

Media Regulation

Debate between Esther McVey and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely spot on. I agree. In addition, it is inevitable that political parties, craven as we are, will seek to influence somebody with so much concentration of media ownership and the relationship will become too close. Tidying this up is for the good of us all. It is not just for those of us who take a particular view about News International; it is about any potential conglomeration in future.

In relation to the fit and proper person test, one danger is that because so many members of the BSkyB board have been there for way in excess of the eight years that is now considered to be the maximum time that people can be considered as an independent director, to all intents and purposes none of that board’s members is now an independent director. That is bad for BSkyB. I could go on at great length about why BSkyB operates on a monopolistic basis. It uses its application programming interface, its operating system and its hoovering up of rights, in a way, to crowd out any new entrants to the market. Broadcasting is always intrinsically prone to monopoly, because it costs a lot to make a programme and relatively little to give it to 1,000 people, rather than to 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000. That is why statutory intervention is needed.

We need reform in relation to seeking redress. I have already mentioned the powers that a new body might have, but we also need legal redress through the courts that is cheaper than the present arrangements. Let me give figures in relation to myself. I was awarded £30,000 in a settlement. My legal costs came to some £300,000 and are being paid by News International because of the settlement. That is the normal proportion in such situations. The maximum that has ever been awarded in a privacy case by the courts is £60,000, yet if people go to court in a privacy case their costs will be between £300,000 and £500,000 and they may have to meet the costs of the other side as well, which might be in excess of that.

For the sake of both newspapers and ordinary members of the public, we need a cheaper way of doing this. We should set up some form of small claims court, perhaps limiting awards to £20,000 or £25,000. Such a process would not be heavy on lawyers—people would not need legal representation—and cases would be fairly simply and straightforwardly adjudicated, but they would go through the court system, which has true independence built into it.

We need to change some elements of the law. First, in relation to interception, it is clear in the law that if people listen to a voicemail message after the person for whom it was intended they are still intercepting it. Some believe that this matter is not quite as clear as crystal. Perhaps we should clarify that position. That is not to resile from the existing state of the law, which is perfectly adequate, but for the sake of clarity.

Similarly, we should take away the public interest defence for blagging. If someone is obtaining private information about someone else by deception, there should be no public interest. The corollary is that, just as the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service always have to decide, first, whether they are likely to obtain a conviction and, secondly, whether it would be in the public interest to prosecute, so we should give a specific power to the DPP to decide not to prosecute in media cases.

There will be times when a journalist will rightly break the law because there is greater criminality to be detected. I suspect that the journalists in the United States of America who revealed Watergate broke the law on many occasions, but no one prosecuted—wisely, because they were revealing greater criminality and levels of corruption. Such an option should, manifestly, be available to the DPP and CPS.

Let me say something about the public interest test. The PCC has its own test:

“The public interest includes, but is not confined to…Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety…Protecting public health and safety…Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation”,

and, secondly:

“There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.”

That test, frankly, is riddled with holes. To say that there is a public interest in freedom of expression itself is a circular argument—that, basically, it is better to reveal whatever it is even if there is no other public interest at all. That idea is mistaken; we should not look at the public interest but at the public good. Many people—many editors—confuse the public interest with what the public are interested in, but the public can be made to be interested in absolutely anything.

One of the ironies of the past 20 years is that the tabloid newspapers in particular, seeing the collapse of their circulation, have ended up pursuing titillating, salacious stories about who is sleeping with whom and all the rest of it, thinking that celebrity would maintain their circulation. They have tended to do that in a pejorative, condemnatory and judgmental way, but we cannot have prurience and judgmentalism together—they just do not fit. If we are going to be prurient, we have to give up on the judgmentalism, which in practice is what has happened.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I am listening with great interest, and he has brought up many relevant points. To dip my foot in the water a little, can we look further than newspapers and expand the discussion to all forms of media, including social media? I have worked in the media for 14 years and know how they shapeshift and move into different areas. Does he agree that regulation must capture that as well, because social media are currently more or less free from control? Anyone can go or could have gone in there to collect data, photographs and conversations, which could be used for the same purposes, but without redress because we are not dealing with giant organisations that we can have a Leveson inquiry into.

[Chris Bryant]

Social media are a vital part of news now. I sometimes say to people who worry about the future of the media in Wales that I get most of my news about my constituency not from the Rhondda Leader, the Western Mail—it was never from there, actually—or the South Wales Echo but from Twitter, which is by far the fastest newsfeed. I certainly learn things before they are announced by Ministers in Parliament, and that is true for most newspapers. I know that half of what I read on Twitter will be untrue, so it is fine for me to dismiss it, but something in a newspaper, supposedly, has the authoritative seal of truth.

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Gentleman might know that 50% of what he reads is untrue, but when data are collected, added online and someone does a form of Google check on people and their history, anything found is taken as definitive. Does he agree that that, too, should come under the same form of scrutiny and exacting regulation?

[Chris Bryant]

Social media should not have the same regulation, but they should have the same exacting scrutiny so, yes, of course I agree. There is no point in us legislating for a world that died five years ago, which is almost always what happens with communications Acts, by definition. I remember one debate in the House of Lords on the Communications Bill in 2002, when two supposed experts talked about black and white television licences, which I think had already been discontinued. There is no point in having legislation that does not meet the future as well as today.

I wish to finish on the issue of lying to Parliament. Members will know that it is available to Parliament, through the Speaker or the Chairman of a Select Committee, under the Parliamentary Witnesses Oaths Act 1871, which was added to by the Perjury Act 1911, to insist that a witness providing evidence to the Commons do so on oath. It is difficult, if doing an investigation that goes on for six months, to decide suddenly that the one witness who is coming before the Committee on a particular day needs to give evidence on oath, because that would imply that they are the one person who cannot be trusted. I would prefer us to move to a model in which every person who gives evidence to a Select Committee does so on oath.

I am concerned that the Government want to introduce a new parliamentary privilege Bill which, as I understand it, will put into statute provision on oaths. The danger with that is that if someone lied to Parliament, the case would be decided in the courts, but the courts would almost certainly ask whether the Committee had the right to ask the question, as a judge in a court might ask whether a question was inappropriate and rule that it need not be answered. Was the witness being bullied? Was the witness having a question sprung on them to which they could not possibly know the answer? Were they being ganged up on, and so on? The danger is that we would lose control of our own proceedings.

We should act robustly in relation to those who have lied to us; they should be summoned to the Bar of the House and, as in the 1950s, we should not be frightened of telling people where to get off when they have manifestly, in effect, put two fingers up to Parliament. I am not convinced, however, that that element needs to be in statute law.

Many people think that we have heard the last bit of this story, but I suspect that we have just crept into act IV, scene ii, after being in act III, scene ii, for a long time. I hope that hon. Members will bear it in mind that although we might be punch drunk about the story, there are a lot more punches to come. So far, Leveson has completely avoided touching anything of a criminal nature—rightly, because no one wants to compromise the ongoing criminal investigations or the prosecutions that I suspect may follow. In the end, however, I think we will find that this has been the single largest corporate corruption case in this country for more than 250 years.