Budget Resolutions

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Roger Gale

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I know that the residents of Putney, Southfields, Roehampton and Wandsworth town will be watching this debate, because they tell me all the time as I go out and about in the constituency that they watch the Parliament channel. I also know that they will be very, very disappointed by the Budget. They will have seen nothing for our declining high streets, nothing for youth centres, and nothing to tackle the cost of living crisis that means that there are higher bills but less money for my constituents week after week after week.

The theme of this debate is productivity, which is fundamental for our competitiveness, wage growth, ability to attract investment and overall future economic wellbeing —in fact, our wellbeing as a whole. Without growth, we cannot have the hope for the future, the hope for our young people and the boost for our economy that we need. I will focus on one area of under-investment which has meant a chronic lack of productivity across the UK, an area of investment that is essential to tackle the climate crisis, boost our economy and give young people hope: green skills.

I was disappointed to hear in the Budget that there were no new policies to help boost the roll-out of low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles or heat pumps. There is a clear need for better alignment between net zero investments and the skills and employment system. That is the problem that leads to our poor productivity at the moment. Solar Energy UK called the Budget “virtually nude” of anything to bolster that sector. We cannot begin to move in the right direction on green productivity without having the processes in place to embed green skills within our economic infrastructure, but we need a whole industry and skills approach. There is a massive shortage of heat pump engineers. We currently have 3,000, but we will need 27,000 by 2028. Offshore wind industry engineer numbers need to triple to just over 104,000 to meet our current targets, let alone our future ones.

Political choices have led to that under-investment and under-skilling. The Institute for Public Policy Research found that the UK employs fewer people in renewable energy as a proportion of the working age population than most other European countries. It does not have to be that way. In my constituency, South Thames College offers courses in green skills and solar panel fitting. It is taking proactive steps, responding to the wide range of green jobs arising across the economy. By helping students to move into apprenticeships or jobs, South Thames College shows that it is ahead of the curve in adopting a joined-up approach. Also in my constituency is Treadlighter, a solar energy company in Southfields. It is booming, but it cannot keep up with demand because it needs more skilled trainees and staff to fit panels.

Matching skills with green businesses is essential, but Government inaction is currently holding back productivity. A whole new approach is needed throughout the economy to secure a seamless transition between training, education, manufacturing, supply and services, but we do not see any of that in the Budget. We see no new boost, and nothing about the new revolution in green skills that would be so exciting for our economy and would give us hope. The Government’s green jobs delivery group has been meeting for a year and plans to publish its green jobs plan soon, but the Budget has given nothing to the green energy industry, so I have no high hopes for that plan.

We in the Labour party know how important to our success investing for the future will be, which is why we have committed ourselves to spending £23.5 billion during our first Parliament in government in order to deliver green power by 2030. Green British Energy, a publicly owned energy company, will invest in green energy projects including offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, tidal and nuclear. If we can match that with the green skills revolution, we really will have the productivity that we need to change the amount of money in the pockets of people across my constituency.

The No. 1 mission of the next Labour Government is to get our economy growing so that Britain will be better off, and we will do it through stability, investment and reform. That means bringing stability back so that we can protect family finances with tough fiscal rules and a long-term plan for our economy, it means investing in British business so we can unlock tens of millions of pounds of private sector investment for our towns and cities, and it means reforming planning so we can boost growth and get Britain building again. The Conservatives are missing in action. They have run out of ideas, they have run out of ambition and hope, and they have run out of all the ways in which growth can be boosted. It is time for a new approach: it is time for a Labour Government.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

To make the last Back-Bench speech of this Budget debate, I call the ever patient Ruth Jones.

Renters (Reform) Bill

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Roger Gale

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson]

We absolutely do. I very much welcome that intervention. We all have so many stories and know so many families for whom the Bill and ending section 21 evictions would make an enormous difference. It would also make for a more level playing field for those good landlords who are doing the right thing. I am therefore appalled that the Secretary of State is potentially pulling the rug from under the Bill by saying that no-fault evictions can only be ended once the courts are reformed. That is Conservative failure in the justice system compounding Conservative failure in housing. Who loses out? It is hard-working, rent-paying British people. I urge the Minister to give a clear timetable for putting those legal reforms in place so that the can is not just kicked down the road.

While I am pleased that the Bill sets out new stricter grounds for eviction, I remain concerned that it does not go far, or fast, enough. First, the Bill has taken too long; the Government must speed up its delivery. About 290 Londoners face no-fault evictions each week, so every six months of delay in the Bill will mean another 15,000 more Londoners will face no-fault evictions. We do not have time. Secondly, there should be a requirement that private rented homes meet the decent homes standard. I have been calling for a Minister for mould for a long time.

Thirdly, provision to increase councils’ investigative and enforcement powers is necessary. There needs to be funding for that as well; otherwise, we are shifting the problem from national to local government, which will need to shift around its resources and take funding from other areas.

Fourthly, there are loopholes that must be closed. Otherwise, section 21 could just continue by another name. Unscrupulous landlords could game the system and exploit the new grounds to sell an occupied property, so it is vital that a high level of evidence is required to demonstrate the intention to sell or occupy a property. The change to discretionary grounds from “likely” to “capable” of causing antisocial behaviour is open to so many varying interpretations that it will lead to inconsistent, unfair application, so it will not be the game changer in getting rid of antisocial behaviour that it could be.

Finally, preventing homelessness by preserving the private renter’s right to access to homelessness assistance from their council as soon as a possession notice is served would be an essential addition to the Bill.

The Bill is a first step that only scratches the surface of what is needed to fix the housing emergency that the Conservatives have created. Mortgage bills and rents are soaring, fewer people are able to buy their own homes and more than a million people are stuck on social housing waiting lists, compounded by the threat of no-fault eviction were they to move into the private rented sector. More homes must be built.

While the Government have promised a rebalancing of the relationship between tenants and landlords, unless we see several amendments, the current crisis looks set to continue. The Bill is a good launching point, but Labour would significantly strengthen protections for private renters beyond its scope, so that good landlords can be assured of being on a level playing field, bad landlords will stop misusing their powers and tenants will finally be able to get the long-term security, rights and conditions that they deserve.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the ever-patient John McDonnell.

Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Roger Gale

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate and to remember the late Sir David Amess, who rattled off so many issues when he used to speak in the debate. I am taking him as my inspiration for this speech, although I will not do it as fast as he would have done it.

It has been another remarkably busy Session for me and my team, and three and half years into this job, it continues to be an enormous privilege to serve the people of Putney, Roehampton, Wandsworth town and Southfields. I invite you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to join me at the Roehampton community week celebrations and events in August. It would be an honour if you can join us and it will be the highlight of the summer in my constituency.

I thank everyone involved in my Putney Gives campaign to support donations to our local foodbanks. The synagogue, the mosque, churches, schools and businesses all came together, and we donated two thirds of a tonne of much-needed food and other provisions to local people who are really struggling at this time during the summer.

I have received more than 18,500 emails from constituents since the parliamentary Session began in May last year and my hard-working team and I have sent out nearly 27,000 in reply. I thank my hard-working and caring parliamentary staff team— Matt, Dan, Mercy, Anna, Jack and Anisah—for all of their work. Together with constituents across the constituency, we are a campaigning team and I have been campaigning hard on the climate emergency; the housing crisis; cladding; discrimination; young carers; early years services; youth services; special educational needs; tackling crime; cleaning up our air; the NHS; saving bus routes; and dealing with sewage in rivers. We saved some allotments in Southfields from being developed on. We are campaigning for a lift for East Putney station. We are also seeking to reopen Hammersmith bridge—yes, it is still closed and I cannot believe it either! We need funding from the Government to reopen it. We are campaigning to stop the closure of ticket offices and to increase safe cycle lanes and cycle parking, so that more people who want to cycle in our wonderful constituency can do so. That is far from an exhaustive list.

As we close for the summer and this long Session continues, the Government continue to provide more questions than answers, so I have several issues I wish to raise today. First, I want to thank all those in NHS Supply Chain for movement on our campaign for NHS uniforms to be standardised. In the equivalent debate three years ago, I talked about Putney’s Scrubbery, which, at that time, with covid hard upon us, had mobilised lots of volunteers to make scrubs in hospitals. As they did so, they found out that the NHS scrubs were not fit for purpose: they were made for men who were much bigger than most of the staff; and they were not standardised across hospitals, which made it difficult to do laundry services and cost a lot more money. We have been campaigning on this issue. As a result, following hard work by staff at NHS Supply Chain, this has been turned around. Some 50,000 people got involved in the consultation and now uniforms that are more comfortable, fit for purpose and save money are being developed. So I am grateful to all of those who have helped with that campaign.

My next issue is probably the biggest question being asked by Putney residents at the moment: where is the Renters (Reform) Bill? Every week, with bated breath, I have looked at the Order Paper to see what is on in the next week in here, but I have never seen that Bill. Will the Minister explain at the end of this debate to the 21,000 private renters in my constituency, which has an average rent of more than £4,500 a month, where the Bill is? Why do I have to keep asking about it? Why is it taking so long?

It has been 1,500 days and four Prime Ministers since the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) first promised to scrap no-fault evictions, back in April 2019. That was announced with huge fanfare but it was never followed up. The situation is getting desperate. Since then, more than 50,000 households have been threatened with homelessness by section 21 notices. No-fault evictions are a leading cause of households approaching their councils for homelessness relief. No-fault evictions have gone up by 116% this year and, with mortgage rises being passed on by landlords, many renters are facing homelessness. I have spoken to many in the past few weeks. The Deputy Prime Minister reiterated the line at Prime Minister’s questions recently that the Bill would be brought forward when parliamentary time allows. We have had plenty of parliamentary time since then, and we will probably have some more this afternoon, but we will not see the Bill this side of the summer recess, leaving renters across the country waiting yet again.

I thank all the schools in my constituency that have welcomed me to visit them. I get a lot of questions and answers—I get all sorts of questions. I am given a hard time, rightly, by lots of young people from across the constituency, but every time I talk with schools and young people they raise one issue above every other: mental health. We need to talk about child and adolescent mental health services and the long waiting lists. A quarter of a million children in the UK with mental health problems have been denied the help they need because the NHS is struggling to keep up with the demand for services. Some 95% of GPs believe that mental health services for children and young people are critically failing and have deteriorated in the past six years. Ministers have failed to deliver on parity of esteem for mental health services and children, especially, are being badly let down.

Labour has a plan for this. We will provide a specialist mental health support service in every secondary school. We will put an open-access mental health hub for children and young people in every community, providing that much-needed early intervention—prevention. We cannot wait until we are in government—we cannot wait for that—to do something about this matter. I seek a response from the Government on their solutions to this issue. They are very welcome to steal and implement Labour’s plans for improving our mental health services.

My next issue is driving test waiting times. This has been concerning for many of my constituents who have been waiting an extraordinary amount of time to get their test booked. Many are unable to take up new jobs because, by the time they have managed to book a test, they have lost their job offer. That is very concerning. Recently, I had to book a test with my daughter and found that it was harder to get a test date than to get Taylor Swift or Glastonbury tickets. We woke up at 6 o’clock on a Monday morning, went online, and then found that there were 8,400 people in the queue ahead of us for the test. We had to wait half an hour for the queue to go down, and then we jumped on the last remaining test in the whole London area, which was many miles away from us in north London. This crisis is going on, and I do not think that it is being raised enough in the House, which is why I am doing so now.

In England, the average wait time for a test is 13.6 weeks. Before 2020, it was just six weeks, which is an acceptable amount of time, but waiting about six months on average is just not acceptable. In London, it is worse. Of the 26 test centres in London, 16 have wait times of 24 weeks—the average is 17 and a half weeks. In the many written parliamentary questions that I have put to the Department for Transport, I have asked exactly how long people are having to wait, how many Londoners are able to get tests in London, and what the situation is across the country. The Department could not give me information on that. Officials said that they had no data because the moving and the rebooking of tests means that they do not know when people first booked their tests. That is not good enough. If the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency does not even have the data on waiting list times, it cannot fix the problem. Will the Minister look at the system, as it really is not working at the moment, and take this matter up with the Department for Transport and the DVSA?

The next issue, which has cross-party support, is my campaign to ban plastic in wet wipes. It has come a long way and I know that Members are waiting with bated breath to find out what the next steps are. I introduced my private Member’s Bill in 2021, and it was supported by Members from across the House. Billions of wet wipes are used every year, and, because they contain plastic, they do not break down, they block sewers, they add costs to our water bills and they cause environmental damage in our rivers and oceans. There was a consultation, which was great, and it ended in February last year. Suppliers, retailers and all parts of the industry are united in saying that a ban could be achieved. Tesco and Boots have led the way as retailers, banning plastic in all the wet wipes that they sell, which amounts to billions of wet wipes a year. Producers and retailers agree that a date could be set, and that they could introduce a ban. The Government’s plan for water was published in April. There was the opportunity to get the ban. It included an announcement from the Government that it would be done—fantastic. So far so good, but there is no actual ban and there is no actual date. Instead, we have a promise of another consultation. I ask the Minister today: why is there another consultation; when will it be launched; and when will the actual ban come in?

I wish to finish on the climate emergency. One of the first things I did when I was elected MP for Putney was set up the Putney Environment Commission. It is a wonderful thriving group of activists and local people who want to take ownership of our local environment and tackle the climate emergency globally, nationally, locally, and in our own gardens. We held a recent meeting focused on the need to save nature, and how much of a nature-depleted country we are compared with other countries. Local people in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields see the data, they see Europe being scorched as we speak with record-breaking heat, and they see the inaction of the Government, and they are horrified. They do not want to stand by and do nothing about it.

It is not just the people of Putney who are concerned about the failure of the Conservative Government to do enough on the environment. The Climate Change Committee has highlighted 18 areas in which the Conservative Government are failing on energy and climate. Those include failure to reform the planning system to bring more home-grown power online; failure on renewables; failure on energy efficiency; failure on making new homes green; failure in comparison to other countries; failure to take global climate leadership; failure on heat pumps; failure on hydrogen for home heating; failure on the delivery of nature targets; failure to deliver on international commitments, instead going backwards; failure to grasp the opportunity to protect consumers; failure on workers and skills; failure to address the UK’s second highest-emitting sector, which is buildings; and failure on fossil fuels and stopping more coal mines from being built.

The Government have failed to ensure that their own Departments, such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, meet the Committee’s priorities. They have also failed on green financing, which should be underpinning all of those actions. The Government should be going further and faster on climate action. I hope there is time for reflection over the summer recess, and that action on the climate can be speeded up incredibly. We cannot wait for the Labour Government who will take that action: we need it now.

Today, there are train strikes and an NHS doctors’ strike. My son graduates from university next week, but was told last week when he should have had his mark that it has not been allocated, so he will be graduating without even a mark after three difficult years at university under covid. That is because the Government have failed university staff, and are failing students. Food and housing costs are also spiralling. I cannot look back on the past 13 years without the word “failure” coming to mind. This country deserves better—Putney, Roehampton, Wandsworth town and Southfields deserve better.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish you and all Members present a restful and joyful summer. If you get the chance, do come and visit gorgeous Putney. It is a fantastic place to come in the summer, and I am so proud to be its MP.

Royal Assent

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that His Majesty has signified his Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023

Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023

Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023

Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023

Illegal Migration Act 2023

Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.