Unhealthy Housing: Cost to the NHS

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend highlights one of the kernels of the debate. Our white paper calls on the Government to take a holistic approach to future housing and ensuring that people’s health and wellbeing is placed at the heart of the built environment. That is clearly what my hon. Friend is saying, and that is where we are. Our white paper states that there must be effective leadership, and recommends that there be one Department responsible for healthy homes and buildings to ensure, critically, that homes and buildings maintain the highest standards for health and wellbeing; to identify where homes and building are causing health issues; to measure the economic and social benefits of healthier homes and buildings; to reduce health inequalities, of which there are many across the postcodes of the United Kingdom; and to provide for a common definition and approach to policy, regulation and standards. That makes complete sense to me.

Furthermore, an interdepartmental Government committee involving all Departments and agencies responsible for health, housing and construction—including the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and Public Health England—should be formed to ensure that health and wellbeing is placed at the heart of existing and future housing provision.

If we are to build houses, let us build them right. Let us ensure that the issues to which the hon. Member for Huddersfield referred do not arise, whether the homes are very expensive or of a lesser quality. I have serious concerns about the standards and quality of new housing inadvertently being driven downwards, without consideration of the cost to human health. In the context of the Government’s very healthy ambition to build 300,000 new homes and their healthy new towns initiative, standards must be driven upwards. It is essential that the Government adopt a holistic approach to delivery that addresses safety, space, energy efficiency, ventilation, heating, noise, air quality and lighting. We must all want to see quality new homes and communities being built with health and wellbeing in mind. I hope that the Government will agree that maximising the occupants’ health and wellbeing must be placed at the centre of new housing provision and building design.

Of course, we live in homes that have already been built, most of us in the privately owned or privately rented sector, to which the hon. Member for Huddersfield referred. Renovation of existing housing stock must also become a Government priority. This is not just about building new homes, but about ensuring that the homes that we already have are up to standard. Our white paper calls on the Government to develop plans to retrofit existing homes to maximise health and wellbeing and improve health performance.

Today, I have set out the problems caused by unhealthy homes and buildings. I now call on the Government to take on board the recommendations in the APPG for healthy homes and buildings white paper, which are as follows. There needs to be greater public awareness of the health problems exacerbated by unhealthy homes, and the health benefits to be gained through simple improvements and behavioural change. Importantly, how we live in the homes we build becomes part of where we are. In building new homes, priority must be given to ensuring that people’s health and wellbeing is foremost, specifically at the planning stage and through the national planning policy framework. Again, we look to the Minister for responses on these issues.

The Government need to commit to building greater numbers of quality social and affordable homes to help to alleviate issues of overcrowding and poor physical and mental health, which are all part of this. The Government need to optimise the health performance of new and existing homes, and ensure that they are built or retrofitted to “full health”. There must be greater focus on enforcement and quality control of home renovation standards, so there is a role for councils to play when it comes to checking the work that is done and ensuring that it is done to an acceptable standard.

The Government must commit to building the evidence base and promoting the link between housing and health and wellbeing. That would result in considerable savings to healthcare costs, increased educational attainment, improved productivity, and people leading longer, healthier and happier lives. The exact cost of unhealthy housing to the public purse, and the human cost, in terms of health and wellbeing, educational attainment and social care, is unfathomable. To date, Government attention to and policy thinking about this problem have been—I say this respectfully—woefully absent. We ask the Minister to address the issue in her response. We are looking for constructive comments. That is what I am about—indeed, what we are all about in the House—but we do need answers on what we are putting forward.

Ultimately, the recommendations made in the white paper provide the basis for a step change in policy, which will drive up standards and help to reduce the health problems caused or made worse by living and working in unhealthy homes and buildings. That is the purpose of this debate: to consider how we can do this together, and better, across the whole United Kingdom. The white paper is testament to the need to build better quality homes and buildings, as well as to upgrade existing housing stock, which comprises the vast majority of the homes that people live in today. We need to do something with new homes and set the standards, and then we will have to do something with the homes that we already have to bring them up to the standard necessary.

It is beyond doubt that there is a problem that needs urgent action. There is a lot to be gained by building and retrofitting homes to the highest quality and standard to achieve health and wellbeing. These are the pluses: lower costs to the NHS and a healthier population; better finances; better educational attainment and workplace productivity; reduced emissions—the hon. Member for Huddersfield referred to carbon monoxide—lower energy bills and a lower carbon footprint; improved health, wellbeing and comfort; and greater life chances and independent living and care.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and on the work that he continues to do on these issues. Does he agree that the subject that he is entering into—the need to renovate and upgrade housing stock—is particularly applicable in lower socioeconomic areas, in both Northern Ireland and, I am sure, across the UK? In those areas, health issues are even more prevalent than in the rest of society, so his point about the benefit to the NHS is even more applicable with regard to those socioeconomic groups.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those are the cases that we deal with in our constituency offices each and every day. Those issues are the subject of the site meetings that we have with the executives of housing associations, and of the meetings that take place with councils’ environmental health departments, back home and over here. There is a greater impact on those at a certain socioeconomic level, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) also said. Benefits also come into the process; there is the question of what people can afford to purchase and deal with.

I call on parliamentary colleagues from across the House to join me in taking forward the recommendations in the white paper, and call on the Government to join together and provide the necessary leadership and focus. We look to the Minister to do those things. The cost-benefit and rewards could be significant. The economic burden and sheer human misery created by poor homes and buildings, to which other hon. Members have referred, are simply too great to ignore.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for being here, and thank those Members who have come along to make a contribution. It is so important for us to deal with this issue. We look to the Minister for a significant and positive response—no pressure, but we do think it is important that we air these issues.