Household Overcrowding: Covid-19

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for setting the scene. Obviously, I will give the Minister a Northern Ireland perspective. I know that he personally does not have ministerial responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I just want to give a Northern Ireland perspective to the debate, and to add my support to the right hon. Gentleman for what he does, and to the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) as well.

The hon. Lady mentioned the bridge. I understand what the Prime Minister is talking about, by the way; it is about connectivity and it is about the Union. But yes, I agree with her 100% that the money could be spent on better things. I say that very respectfully. The bridge is not what this debate is about, but if I had been asked to make any comment on it, that is what I would have said. I would have taken the Prime Minister down to the roads in Strangford and told him to spend a whole lot of money on them, to address the issues that I referred to. However, that is not taking away from what the Prime Minister is saying. But the bridge is not the subject of this debate; it is the subject for another debate.

I declare an interest, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on healthy homes and buildings, so I have a particular interest in this issue. One of our interests in the APPG—indeed, it comes up all the time, and I suppose the clue is in the title of our group—is how we can have healthy homes and buildings. It is about homes that are suitable for today’s modern lifestyle, and how we can move towards ensuring that any new homes built are built in a style that would satisfy the needs of a modern family, but it is also about addressing the issue of homes that perhaps are not built in that style. In the past, we have had an inquiry and we have brought out the results, so it is quite an active APPG, I am pleased to say.

May I also say how pleased I am to see the Minister in his place? I was saying to him beforehand—you probably heard me saying it, Sir Edward—that he has shone in the main Chamber and now is his chance to shine in Westminster Hall.

The Minister and I have been good friends ever since he came to this House and I value his friendship; I hope that he values mine. His kindness to us all in this House is beyond doubt. Every Christmas, he is the man who brings the Quality Streets into the Members’ Tea Room; every Easter, I look forward to a creme egg, because of him. So let us put on the record our thanks to him. By the way, I am a diabetic, so I should not eat any of the Quality Streets or any creme eggs, but temptation sometimes gets the better of me.

My own constituency has a huge waiting list. What I will say will replicate what the right hon. Member for East Ham and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden referred to; their constituencies have not cornered the market in housing problems—we have them as well.

Indeed, we have multiple daily problems in our office back home in Newtownards with the waiting list for appropriate social housing, largely made up of people in overcrowded accommodation who cannot afford private rent, or to pay the difference between housing benefit and rent in the real world. They have no alternative whatever but to move themselves and their children into their mum’s spare room—or worse, the living room, which takes away from where everybody lives. We often come to the problem of multiple families living in houses that may have been built for a two-person family but which have maybe six or eight people living in them, which becomes difficult. To have what should naturally be two separate households living together in such circumstances makes covid difficulties clear on so many levels.

The title of the debate is “Household Overcrowding: Covid-19”. We have learned about many things from the coronavirus situation and how we have responded to it, and one is certainly overcrowding, with people living almost on top of each other. I will give an example in a short minute. If just one person in a house gets covid, everybody has to self-isolate, which has implications, including whether an employer will actually furlough them. By the way, I understand that there is some choice in whether the employer may do that.

This is not the Minister’s responsibility, and I am not asking him to answer on it, but one of the biggest issues in my constituency is securing houses big enough for families. A single family may get a four-bed house. They probably have three or four children. One of those children is autistic, and they have maybe one girl and three boys, so right away an ordinary three-bed house will not be sufficient for them because of their physical circumstances and the disabilities of their children.

Sometimes a family has more than one child who is autistic, or they might have one with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as well, which means they need a single bedroom for each one. The right hon. Member for East Ham referred to some issues. Some issues that I face every day in my constituency relate to those who are disabled and how the implications of that then multiply the housing issues.

I was not surprised to learn from the Health Foundation that, going into the covid-19 pandemic, one in three households—32%, or 7.6 million; what a figure—in England had at least one major housing problem relating to overcrowding, affordability or poor-quality housing. Poor-quality housing is one issue that we are trying to address in the APPG. I see that replicated, to scale, in Northern Ireland and in my constituency.

It is clear that housing problems such as these can affect health outcomes—I believe that, and I see it when talking to people—including physical health, directly from poor-quality homes, and mental health, from affordability or insecure housing issues. I understand that the Governments both back home and here are trying to address poor-quality homes, I am pretty sure the Minister will give us some positive answers on the quality of homes and what the Government are doing, and also—I am not putting words in the Minister’s mouth—some idea of what the Government are doing on new building to address demand.

While fewer homes are classed as non-decent compared with 10 years ago, overcrowding and affordability problems have increased in recent years. The pandemic has highlighted the health implications of housing. Poor housing conditions such as overcrowding and high density are associated with a greater spread of covid-19. We have learned that, when one person gets it, we all have to self-isolate. I had to self-isolate from this House because of contact with an hon. Member, and I had to self-isolate a second time because I had contact with somebody on a Sunday, which I notified the House about. So I have had to self-isolate on two occasions.

People have had to spend more time in homes that are overcrowded, damp or unsafe. The economic fall-out of the pandemic may lead to an increase in evictions. The Government have helped a wee bit with that. The implications for people potentially facing evictions from poor-quality homes with rents that are just too expensive, and with their jobs on furlough—or perhaps even lost—are massive. We should all be worried and concerned about that.

These housing problems can be focused on in multiple ways, including the increase of supply to the detriment of other objectives and sustained reductions in housing benefits. There is not a day when we do not do a housing case for someone back home and deal with their housing benefit as well. We deal with other things, but more often than not the housing benefit comes off the back of that.

I could give examples of issues for an entire day, but I will give just one: people in low-income care jobs going to work in a nursing home and coming home to a house with two families because they could no longer afford the £750-a-month rent on their low income. It is the issue of low incomes and very high rents that both the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady referred to. People had no other option but to move in with someone else but it meant that two nursing homes were affected by a diagnosis of coronavirus. I know that happened back home. A number of people were working in a nursing home, but when one person came in with coronavirus, everyone in that home had to self-isolate as a result. Coronavirus therefore has effects far beyond people’s living locations. It is definitely a disease that is seeking them out.

I finish with this. Covid has merely put a lens on the problem of affordable housing that has existed for some time. The right hon. Gentleman was right when he said in setting the scene that it was a problem beforehand, and it has been exacerbated by where we are. We need to take steps to address it. Mental health, family relationships and now physical health are at stake.

Mental health comes up in every debate we have because it is real and everyone deals with people affected every day. The hon. Lady asked whether the Minister was available to come down to her surgery and meet some of those people. I am sure the Minister is meeting those people in his surgery, just as we are. I do believe we must act, and I look to the Minister to see his plan of action to provide more social housing, more support for private rental and greater ability for people to be removed from unhealthy living conditions throughout this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

The Government are already doing things to tackle overcrowding, not least with our substantial investment in new house building. The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of points in his speech, and I will cover some of them. He asked if we expect a new wave of investment in social house building. We need house building of all tenures, and the Government have demonstrated their commitment to increasing the affordable housing supply. We are investing more than £12 billion in affordable housing over five years—the largest investment for a decade. That includes the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which will provide up to 180,000 homes across the country; and a further £9 billion for the shared ownership and affordable homes programme, running to 2023, which will deliver 250,000 new affordable homes. The affordable homes programme will deliver more than double the social rent of the current programme, with around 32,000 social rented properties due to be delivered

[Jim Shannon]

Are the Government committed to co-ownership—to helping those who want co-ownership homes, and supporting the building projects? The co-ownership scheme enables people who have maybe 50% of the value, or a small portion of it, to get a home earlier. Are the Government committed to that?

[Eddie Hughes]

I will have to come back to the hon. Gentleman on the specific scheme that he is talking about. The Government are certainly aiming to do things to help people. For example, we have 95% mortgages to make sure more people have the opportunity to buy their own home. I will come back to him on the scheme that he mentioned.

The right hon. Member for East Ham asked about prioritising the building of three-bed properties and above. When the national planning policy framework was revised in July 2018, it set an expectation that local planning authorities must put in place planning policies that identify the size, type and tenure of homes required for different groups in the community. We have not changed that, and we would therefore expect it to be a key consideration when planning housing at a local level.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about local housing allowance. During the pandemic, the Government increased the local housing allowance rate to the 30th percentile, which meant that 1.5 million people were able to access that additional payment, which averaged £600 annually.