Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

This Gracious Speech should have been an opportunity for the Government to rise to the unprecedented challenges facing our country and, in doing so, to make Britain the best place to grow up and grow old. Its lack of ambition and its stony silence on some of the biggest challenges facing the UK speak volumes about a Government who are out of touch and out of ideas. Worse still, many of the challenges that we need to address are a direct consequence of 12 years of Tory Government—12 years in which, instead of stepping up with ambition for our country, the Government have run down our public services, undermined our economy, negotiated a disastrous exit from the European Union and mired themselves further and further in defending the indefensible current occupant of No. 10 Downing Street.

Our country has been left lacking resilience, both when the covid-19 pandemic struck and as global factors have brought pressure to bear on the cost of living. The Government cannot always prevent international shocks to our economy, but they have a primary duty to ensure that we are as resilient as possible when they come. In that duty, this Government have failed.

The UK cannot be the best place in which to grow up or grow old while households across the country are struggling to make ends meet, while parents wake up in the morning and go to bed at night worrying about how they will feed their children and keep a roof over their head, and while pensioners worry about whether they will be able to eat and keep warm. Knocking on doors in my constituency in recent months, I have been really shocked to see increasing numbers of older people coming to the door wearing a coat on cold days. It is shameful that that is happening in Britain in the 21st century.

The Queen’s Speech includes new Bills to reform the regulation of social housing and private renting. Such legislation is long overdue. Next month is the fifth anniversary of the horrific Grenfell Tower fire, but tenants still cannot have confidence that changes have been made that will protect them. In the private rented sector, I have been calling for an end to section 21 evictions for the past six years, and it is very hard to understand what has taken the Government so long. Alongside the overdue reforms, it is clear that the Government have given up on the large-scale delivery of social housing that is urgently needed to address the housing crisis.

The UK cannot be the best place to grow up while children are condemned to live in poor-quality private rented accommodation that their parents can barely afford to rent or heat. I hope that the Government will consider accepting an amendment to the social housing regulation Bill along the lines proposed in my recent ten-minute rule Bill, the Social Housing (Emergency Protection of Tenancy Rights) Bill, which I called Georgia’s law.

Georgia’s law recognises the devastating impact that a threat of gang violence can have on family life. When a young person is threatened and their family have to move, they can lose all their stability, be placed in temporary accommodation and end up on a waiting list for a new social housing tenancy for years. That is what happened to my constituent Georgia, with catastrophic consequences for her family. Georgia’s law would place new duties on social housing providers to protect the tenancy of a tenant whose family are threatened with violence, helping to limit the harm of gang violence in our communities. It has cross-party support and would make a huge difference.

Finally, as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care, I want to say how utterly unacceptable it is that this Gracious Speech contains no mention of adult social care. The Government have introduced an unfair and unaffordable tax hike, which they justified in terms of the urgent need to provide additional funding for social care. Funding for the NHS is, of course, welcome, although there are far fairer ways to raise it, but the social care sector, which was ignored, neglected and even blamed by the Government during the covid-19 pandemic, and which faces a workforce crisis and a funding crisis, will not receive any funding for at least three years.

The UK cannot possibly be the best place to grow old while across the country people fear losing their homes to pay for their care, and while the workforce tasked with caring for our loved ones are burned out, with staff leaving in their droves to work in retail and distribution because the pay is better. I ask the Government: where is the ambition? Where is the empathy and insight into the real and intolerable pressures that our communities face? Where are the solutions that we so desperately need to the problems that they have created?