Housing (London)

Debate between George Howarth and Diane Abbott

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ms Abbott]

I was of course talking about the top end of the market to illustrate how the effect ripples out to the homeless in Hackney or homeless families in Greenwich. There is constant pressure driving up house values in London, and that is what is behind the spiralling cost of rent.

Colleagues have spoken about what is happening in the rental market—my hon. Friends the Members for Eltham (Clive Efford) and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) did so with particular vividness—and about spiralling rents which mean that families do not have security of tenure.

As for the social cost, London is increasingly becoming a city in which people have to be extremely wealthy or quite poor to live. That leads to a society that is inherently unstable. If we leave it to the market, to live in Islington or Hackney people either have to be able to afford a house that is worth upwards of £1 million, or be so poor that they are eligible for what social housing there is. That is an essentially unstable society and one in which it is extremely difficult to recruit public sector workers.

In Hackney, there is a generation of head teachers who originally bought at the end of the 1970s or beginning of the ’80s and who are now approaching retirement. Now, head teachers of that calibre, willing to stay for as long as they have stayed, will be hard to recruit, because no one can now buy a house in Hackney on a teacher’s salary. Young teachers who are very committed to Hackney and similar areas find themselves having to move outside the M25 in order to own a family house.

The housing problem is not only about bricks and mortar or destitution, but about what sort of society we want to see in London. How do we ensure that that society is stable? How do we recruit for the public sector in future, if increasingly people on an average public sector worker’s salary are scarcely able even to rent in the centre of London, let alone buy anything?

What is the answer to the problems that my colleagues and I have set out? We have to begin with what is happening in the private sector and at the high end of it. Something needs to be done about the non-domiciled overseas buyers—by looking at some sort of levy perhaps—and at the same time we need to make it easier for British buyers to buy off plan, although this is not the whole answer, of course. Let us remember that even flats in Dalston are being bought off plan by buyers in Hong Kong, but British buyers who wants to buy off plan two years ahead cannot get a mortgage. We need to look at the availability of mortgages to people here who are prepared to buy off plan one, two or three years in advance; otherwise, they will always be crowded out by foreign buyers who are able to get mortgage finance, which will continually drive prices up.

We need to have a financial levy on the non-domiciled buyers, but we also need to look at private sector landlords and how they are managed. It would be sad indeed if the boom in the right to buy was to turn into a new Rachmanism. Rachmanism gave private rented housing a bad name when I was a child in north Paddington. It would be extraordinary if, half a century later, through an unwillingness to exercise the right controls on the private sector, we went back to the bad old days of Rachman. I am not saying that we are there yet, but that is where the cycle is taking us. Furthermore, although the idea is unpopular, we also need to have rent controls. I do not care what we call them, but we have to bear down on spiralling rents.

My colleagues and I are saying that the crisis in London is a crisis not only for the homeless and for those who are having to rent for longer and later in life than they might otherwise have done, but for perfectly well housed people who are worrying about whether their children will ever be able to afford a house within the M25. Government could do a range of things, and Labour Members are shocked by the unwillingness of Government and of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to take effective action to fix for the well-being of ordinary Londoners a London housing market that is broken.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

I will call Meg Hillier in a moment. Two more Members wish to speak and I will be calling the Front Benchers from 10.40 am, so if the hon. Lady does the maths she will know what it takes to get her colleague in.

Overseas Aid (UK-based Consultants)

Debate between George Howarth and Diane Abbott

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

In the event of a Division, the sitting will be suspended for 15 minutes, but that 15 minutes will be added on to the time available for the debate.

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

I want to draw the House’s attention to the growing phenomenon of wealthy UK-based management consultancies creaming off millions of pounds from the aid budget. We are seeing—the process has accelerated in recent years—the emergence of lords of poverty. People are building fat businesses and paying themselves fat salaries creamed from the budget of the Department for International Development. Lords of poverty, hardship tycoons, pinstriped famine magnates: whatever we call them, the phenomenon is growing, and I think the British public would deprecate it.

Let me say from the beginning that I support Britain’s commitment to raise its aid budget to UN levels. I congratulate the Government on their willingness to ring-fence their aid budget. We are talking about some of the poorest people in the world. Those who would cut our aid budget are not just wrong; they are not considering how, in the 21st century, we are all our brothers’ keepers. For a fraction of Britain’s gross domestic product, why would we not take steps through aid and trade to promote stability in other parts of the world? It is not just about standards of living, happiness and health; it is also fundamentally about global stability, and I believe that an aid budget, correctly used, has a big role to play in that.

Aid is not just about a glow of virtue for western Governments and taxpayers; it is about building a world that is safe for all of us. This month’s insurrection in the horn of Africa is next month’s terrorist attack in western Europe.

Legal Aid Reform

Debate between George Howarth and Diane Abbott

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

But sadly, when Governments of all colours consider legal aid, they seem to zero in on the lawyers and the money that they make, rather than the millions of people whom they help.

I repeat what Opposition Members have said about the potential of the reforms to undermine totally the law centre movement. Nobody who has seen people queuing outside their law centre for help could support any action by any Government which undermined that movement. I must add, however, that the legal aid reforms will also undermine the practice of many high street solicitors, who are often close to and help their community. A disproportionate number of them are black and minority ethnic solicitors, and I do not believe that the Government have fully considered how the reforms will undermine the structure for providing the legal advice, help and support on which communities rely.

Earlier, a Member said that one reason why people have recourse to lawyers is the inefficiency of the Department for Work and Pensions, to which I should add the inefficiencies of local councils and the immigration service and the inefficiencies and, sometimes, unfairness of education authorities. But what are we to do? We acknowledge the systemic inefficiencies in many parts of the public sector, but are we going to leave tens of thousands of people to suffer injustice and unfairness in order to save money in the short term on the legal aid budget?

I also want to address the limits of phone advice. Talking down a phone might be all well and good for people in wealthier areas, but in the inner city many people do not have English as their first language, and if English is their first language they might be inarticulate, afraid and inhibited. In 20 years as a Member, I have had to advise hundreds of thousands of people. Often, they come in and mumble about some issue or other, and only after carefully questioning them, looking them in the eye and showing them my sympathy do they tell me their real problem. If we submit such people to talking down a phone, we will find that their issues are completely lost. They will put the phone down, never having explained what they really wanted to talk about.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s constituency and mine are different in many ways, but one similarity has been commented on repeatedly over the years: they both have high levels of deprivation. Does she agree that, if we take away access to organisations such as Kirkby Unemployed Centre, Merseyside Welfare Rights and Knowsley citizens advice bureau, those levels of deprivation—in her constituency and in mine—will go up?

[Ms Abbott]

There is no question but that they will go up, because we are talking not about frivolity, serial litigants or people who litigate for fun, but about people who have to go to law to obtain the basic rights and fairness that we in the Chamber take for granted. On the idea of people in communities in the east end of London picking up a phone, Ministers are not being realistic. They must not understand what happens in some parts of the country if they think that going on the phone is a substitute for dealing with somebody who is skilled, looks a person in the eye, can see that they are nervous, knows how to put them at ease and can really draw from them the issue at the heart of their problems.

Opposition Members understand the need to consider the whole administration of justice budget, and there is a lot to be said for encouraging people with marital disputes to try mediation first, rather than going to law. Indeed, I have never heard of a divorce case in which tempers were sweetened by the involvement of lawyers. I do not reject out of hand the notion of encouraging people in marital disputes to go to mediation, but there are other ways of saving money in the Ministry of Justice budget, notably the organisation of the courts. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are wasted every year when cases collapse because people do not turn up and things have not been organised properly. Let us consider saving money through the organisation of the courts before considering these ill-thought-out cuts in legal aid. Government Members have referred to the NHS. It is better to identify liability earlier and save all the costs in contesting cases where people know perfectly well that in the end they will have to settle in some form or fashion.

It is not enough for Ministers to say, “Labour’s spent all the money and that is why we’re doing this.” They have to understand that if we are serious about a big society and the role of Government, we have to ensure that the most deprived and marginalised communities have minimal protection, and part of that, in my mind, is access to justice and the rule of law. I sincerely hope, on behalf of my constituents and Hackney law centre, which is a tremendous organisation, that this is a genuine consultation and that Ministers will listen to some of the things that they hear in this Chamber this afternoon.