Housing Bodies: Accountability

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Tulip Siddiq

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the accountability of housing bodies.

You and I have known each other for a long time, Mr Hollobone, and I am not sure whether this is the first debate I have been at that you have chaired, but nevertheless, it is welcome to see you in the Chair.

I want to examine a number of core issues in this debate before giving some recommendations to the Government. First, I want to look at the adequacy of the assessment that is currently in place to examine the quality of the design and build of new houses. I also want to consider the accountability of housing organisations when they have made mistakes or are mistreating customers, as it is my opinion that currently, they are not adequately held to account. Lastly, I want to address the way in which data regulations apply to Members of Parliament. That issue has arisen in relation to a housing organisation through my casework, and I know that many other Members have encountered similar problems in their own casework.

We have had numerous debates on the urgent need for more, and better-quality housing. I support efforts to increase the number of houses being built, and that should be happening at a faster rate. It is also vital that those homes are council-owned—I have always believed in that, and the privatisation of housing since 1980 has contributed to the issues that I will be addressing.

In Coventry, we have had several problems with housing organisations’ unhelpfulness when responding to their residents’ concerns. A quick search of our casework database has shown that dozens of constituents have contacted me this year about their housing situation. Housing organisations seem to be particularly unhelpful when responding to complaints, and the same names of problematic housing organisations keep coming up.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate before the House. Many of the concerns that he has cited, and those I am sure he will be citing later, have been represented to me by my constituents who face similar issues, especially Robert Taylor from the Camden Federation of Private Tenants. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is high time that a Select Committee inquiry takes place, examining the accountability of housing associations and their lack of oversight by both tenants and Members?

[Mr Cunningham]

I could not agree more. Such a review is long overdue, as even the data protection people do not give us clear answers about what information we are entitled to. They seem to forget that at the end of the day, we are the last line of defence for tenants—and anybody else who has problems, for that matter.

British Prisoners in Iran

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Tulip Siddiq

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Tulip Siddiq]

I am going to make some progress before taking interventions. I know that a lot of hon. Members want to come in and I will take interventions. Before I do that, I want to outline the plight of my constituent Nazanin.

Gabriella’s short life has already been spent in exile. After they were unlawfully detained at the airport, what followed was a shambolic process of secretive courts, secretive trials and secretive convictions. Nazanin was placed in solitary confinement, in a room one and a half metres square, with no window and no natural light, and with no access to lawyers or to her family. Before Nazanin went to prison, she was in perfectly good health. We then found out that she had suffered from arthritis in her neck and body. There were times when her limbs stopped working and she could not move for periods of time. She suffered from weight loss and hair loss. She was often denied access to medical treatment. The one time she did have access to a specialist, he said that Nazanin needed urgent hospitalisation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for coming with me to deliver a petition to the Foreign Secretary. I agree that the toll taken on the families of those who are held in Iran, who have no contact with their families other than monitored calls, is really shown when speaking to and meeting members of the families. That is, if people bother to meet with them.

Thousands of people in the world have spoken out because of the sheer level of injustice in Nazanin’s case. Led by Richard Ratcliffe, organisations such as Amnesty International, Redress and Change.org have galvanised thousands of people to campaign for the release of Nazanin. At this time, almost a million people have signed a petition saying that Nazanin should be released. Six UN rapporteurs have also said that Nazanin should be released, and the European Parliament has adopted a resolution to say that Nazanin and other EU citizens with dual nationalities should be released.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this issue to the House of Commons and asking the Government to do something about it. Last November, an article in The Sunday Times suggested that these political prisoners were being tortured and, more importantly, that Iran seeks a ransom from the British Government of £400 million. What does my hon. Friend make of that? Surely it is diabolical, to say the least.

[Tulip Siddiq]

That is very worrying. The problem is that, when the families speak to prisoners of conscience in Iran, the calls are heavily monitored and there is no freedom to express exactly what is happening. It is all shrouded in secrecy, so there is no real evidence of what is going on behind closed doors. It is no surprise that the UN working group on arbitrary detention said that the detention was unlawful, arbitrary and against international law.