Supported Exempt Accommodation

Debate between Jess Phillips and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend has been doing huge amounts of work on this issue in her constituency. Many of my Birmingham colleagues are in this Chamber today. This is a big problem in our city, and I thank my colleagues for their interest in this debate and for the work they are doing in their own constituencies. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about regulation, and I will come to some of the regulations that will be needed.

Some might be thinking that there is surely someone regulating the system and carrying out the very checks to which my hon. Friend just alluded. There is a regulator for social housing, but it simply does not have the powers to deal with rogue operators, because those people know how to game the system. They have set themselves up as small operators, so they are outside of the direct purview of the regulator. They can make lots of money with little to no scrutiny, which is leaving too many people in my patch in utter despair. More than 150,000 households in the country are living in exempt accommodation—this represents a 62% increase in five years—and there are 1,600 such properties in my constituency alone. There has been a massive increase, and we are seeing these problems all over the country.

As I have said, the tenants are too often being let down. Many of my constituents come to me with their problems, and many of my colleagues have raised in the House, and with the city directly, the issues that their constituents face with their properties. It is not unusual to find properties that are in complete disrepair and that we would not consider fit for human habitation in any way. It is not unusual for vulnerable women to be housed with dangerous men in these properties—for them to be at risk of attack or, in fact, to have been attacked.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I am becoming a broken record. I have brought a case to the Department of a 19-year-old rape victim who is waiting for trial and has been housed, without any regulation, with men who have been released from prison for the exact same crimes that she wishes to put people in prison for.

To respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), two women in the last three years have been murdered in “exempt, supported” accommodation. In one case, the key worker did not notice that the woman had been murdered. After visiting the property, she said to the woman’s mother, “Oh, she’s absolutely fine”—but the person she had seen was the person who had murdered the woman. That is the level of support that vulnerable women are getting in this accommodation. It is dangerous, and it must stop.

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has raised those horror cases in her constituency at regular intervals, directly with the Department and in this House. Those cases of women left at real risk of harm, having truly suffered at the hands of dangerous men who they should have never been housed alongside, are not unique.

It is not unusual, when I have investigated cases in my constituency, to discover that the housing contract that was approved has forged signatures on it. There are multiple layers of subcontractors that get involved with the providers in this sector, and it is not unusual to see faked documents. I have had constituents come to me and say that they are being held to a contract that they have never seen before. It is also not unusual for people to be left without any hot water or electricity.

It is often the case that the tenants, who are desperately in need of care, support or supervision, are left to rot in disgusting properties and at real risk of physical danger. The residents who live alongside them are also being let down: over-concentration in particular areas just loads more need and deprivation into areas that are already struggling. Crime and antisocial behaviour has massively increased. I have had constituents break down, explaining that they are worried that their children are witnessing public drug taking, people collapsing in the street having drunk too much or urinating in their front gardens, all on what were once modest, quiet residential streets that were home to tight-knit communities. That is why so many people in my patch and my city are in utter despair.

Speaker’s Statement

Debate between Jess Phillips and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my colleague and friend from Birmingham, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), and what I want to say is going to be all about Birmingham. Jack did not sound like me. He was not groomed as I was, just as a child loves their parents no matter what, to love Birmingham, because it was given to me at birth. Jack did not have that, and he loved it way more than me. He would talk about Birmingham in terms that made it unrecognisable to me. I love the place, don’t get me wrong, but Castle Vale, while I love it, is not a place of great beauty. The Aston expressway is not a thing to behold, yet when Jack talked about Birmingham and Brummies, he felt so much as if he was from the tradition of the place of my birth. I think much of that is to do with his Irish ancestry, which so many of us in Birmingham have, but there could be no greater advocate for the city of Birmingham.

I know that many people want to speak, so I will touch slightly not only on Jack being an honorary Brummie—not even “honorary”, Jack Dromey was a Brummie through and through, without question—but on him being an honorary sister. The first time I ever spoke in this building, it was Jack Dromey who sat next to me. He put his arms around me afterwards and said, “I am so proud of you. I am so proud to see you here”—mainly because I was a girl from Birmingham and he loved Birmingham. The last time I ever sat in this place with him was just a week before he died, and we had just been put on the same team together, the shadow Home Affairs team. He said to me, as I sat down from asking a question of the Home Secretary, “It is so delightful to be completely outsmarted and outflanked by brilliant women.” That came as no surprise to me. I say to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), all her family and her children that Birmingham will truly miss Jack Dromey. All the love of a sometimes not very beautiful place is with you and your family.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

Jack and I were both elected in the 2010 general election, and he was my constituency neighbour, but because he was selected relatively late to be our candidate in Birmingham, Erdington, we did not get to meet until we were both newly elected Birmingham Members of Parliament.

I remember in those early weeks lugging around a massive rucksack that basically had a mobile office in it, having no idea of the lobbying required to get ahead in the race for an office in this place. Jack came over to me—we had only spoken a couple of times at this point—and told me that he had secured a whole suite of offices in Portcullis House. On hearing that, I was immediately insanely jealous, but he went on to ask whether I wanted to share them with him. Of course, I went from insane jealousy to all but falling at the man’s feet with gratitude. He laughed and said he simply had to rescue me from my flipping bag, because it was practically the same size as me, and he could bear it no longer. That set the tone for our friendship—lots of gentle mickey-taking and loads of laughter.

I was always struck by how ready Jack was—we have heard so much about this today—with his praise and encouragement. It is something that his children spoke so movingly about at his funeral. Jack would always stop you, text you or drop you a note to say he had seen you make a speech or give a TV interview—whatever it might be—and that it was “first-class, absolutely brilliant, the best of Labour.” He never hedged his bets when it came to praise, did Jack, but he really believed in generous and uncomplicated affirmation not just of his loved ones, but of his friends and colleagues. The sincerity meant it always mattered to the person on the receiving end. It always made a difference.

Not every conversation with Jack was quick. He would stop you to talk about the famous “three or four quick things,” but I soon clocked that the correct number was calculated by taking the number of things Jack said he wanted to talk about, multiplying it by two and adding three. It seemed to work every time, and Jack always got a promise out of you, or maybe more than one promise, to attend a meeting, to look into something or to join one of his campaigns.

In one of our more recent conversations, he told me he wanted to talk about campaigning—four quick things were actually 11—and at the end I laughed and said, “Jack, mate, how is it that your four quick things have now led to 10 absolutely urgent, immediate priorities for my to-do list?” I soon regretted admitting those 10 priorities, because he then laughed wholeheartedly and said, “That’s the target from now on, Shabana: 10 things to be added to the to-do list.”

It is difficult to believe that a man so full of energy, positivity and generosity is gone. He leaves an immense legacy, not just as a titan of the labour movement but as a thoroughly decent, good man. Jack Dromey was first class, he was absolutely brilliant and he was the best of Labour.