Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Bolton) Regulations 2020

Debate between Jo Churchill and Maria Miller

Tuesday 29th September 2020 General Committees

[Jo Churchill]

I understand and recognise how, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North said and the hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Warwick and Leamington have said on many occasions, there is a willingness to work together. They want us to get ahead of the curve, as it were. I understand why that is, but we introduce such regulations under section 45R of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 because we need to move at speed. These are public health emergencies rather than anything to do with the broader setting.

We recognise the impact of localised restrictions on local businesses. That is why we provided Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council with £57,980,000 of business support grant funding. Businesses have access to a large number of support schemes including discretionary grants and tax breaks because there is a need to protect both people and the economy. The measures we are taking in Bolton seek to find balance on that difficult tightrope. No one wants to put restrictions on people’s lives.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North alluded to yesterday’s debate. One thing I took from it is how the power of many of the speeches came from the impact on people’s lives from a human capital point of view and how that spins out. As I said on the Floor of the House yesterday, we are working hard to move things forward and have more dialogue. I appreciate the articulation of his willingness to work with us.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Nokes. I am sure hon. Members do not need their attention drawn to the fact that the Minister was on her feet in the Chamber 12 hours ago. It is astonishing to see her here doing a great job of presenting the regulations to the Committee.

I want to press the Minister on working together. The hon. Member for Nottingham North raised an important point about the timeliness of consideration of legislation. There is obviously a huge amount of secondary legislation at the moment. Could the House of Commons and Parliament be doing more to support the Government to that end? Should we press the authorities to do more?

[Jo Churchill]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention, which I am sure the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash, will take away through the usual channels. Everyone wants to see these things succeed so that we get out of this covid-tinged world and into something more akin to what we are used to.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North asked me about the restrictions. It is too early to know whether they have bedded through. One of the challenges is that if we leave things as they are when we see the spike rising, the argument is that we are too late, but if we go too early, the argument is that we are impinging on people’s lives. One of the big problems with the disease is that, when we see the prevalence rise, there is a 10-day lag before we see the number of people entering hospital rise and then a further 10-day lag before we see the number of deaths rise.

I can report that, unfortunately, from this week, the positivity rate is 241.8 per 100,000. The next review is on 9 October.

These are challenging times. The information I read out was based on local intelligence from the University of Bolton, which knows its own community. In many debates I have been challenged about getting granular and getting local. This is a fine example of where the director of public health and other local bodies are helping us drive the right solutions locally. For my money, that is the right way to proceed.

We recognise that, for many, self-isolating for 10 to 14 days to avoid passing on the virus is a challenge. The Prime Minister announced that, from 28 September, we will be supporting those on low incomes by paying them £500 if they cannot work from home or have lost income as a result of the requirement to self-isolate. That needs to be fed through to see if it also has an effect. The requirement to self-isolate became law yesterday and there are penalties for those who breach the rules. There will also be penalties for employers who fail to support the requirement, for example, by threatening self-isolating staff with redundancy if they do not come to work. We hope that will send a clear message about the importance of self-isolating.

We take Public Health England’s report on BAME communities extremely seriously. However, there is still work to do in understanding how the disease affects different groups, including BAME communities, as well as the broader communities we are working with. Expecting a reliable result within a week or 10 days is difficult in this situation. Other factors, such as comorbidities and occupational risk, mean that every situation is more complex than it might seem at face value. We are investing a large amount in medical and clinical research to get a better understanding. In the meantime, we are making it a priority to safeguard BAME workers in the NHS who might be at risk and in need of specific treatment, while making sure that all workplaces have been risk-assessed.

The decision to impose even more stringent restrictions in Bolton is based on a number of factors and local intelligence. They include not just the positivity and incidence rates but the extent of high-risk behaviours. The next review will take place on 9 October.

I conclude by thanking the people of Bolton and particularly its NHS and care workers and all the city’s key workers for their ongoing hard work to keep our vital services running and save lives through this difficult time. I urge everyone to get behind hands, face and space, so we can eradicate the virus from our country as soon as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Quality in the Built Environment

Debate between Jo Churchill and Maria Miller

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered delivering quality in the built environment.

It is a pleasure to have this debate under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. Having spent much of my working life in the construction industry, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

One’s home is the biggest purchase that many of us will make in our lives. The fact that there is so little consumer protection attached to the purchase of new homes needs addressing. It is staggering that one is better protected when purchasing a kettle than when buying a house, given that the average house price in October was £223,000 and the average price of a kettle is £25. Most of us know our protection under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 or the Consumer Rights Act 2015, so we can get a kettle sorted. However, no matter where a homebuyer is in the system—whether freehold, housing association or charity—they have no clear understanding of how to escalate complaints and seek redress for problems when they move into a new house or move within the guarantee period.

Why is that important? The latest report delivered by the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment, of which I am chair, namely “More homes, fewer complaints”, showed that 93% of all people surveyed reported problems to their builders.

The latest national new home customer satisfaction survey showed customers’ dissatisfaction had risen to some 98%. Not all people are dissatisfied with their homes, but that shows that an alarmingly large number of people move into their new home, full of expectation, but are left unhappy with the quality therein. Thirty-eight per cent. of buyers had more problems than they expected, a staggering 25% of buyers reported 16 faults or more, and just 2% of consumers buying a home in the period reported zero defects.

Given that the debate is brief and I would like colleagues to have time to contribute, I intend to cover quality within house building, and briefly cover skills in construction, the needs of the consumer and where we might positively go from this point. Along with the APPG’s report last year, we held an open inquiry into the quality and workmanship of new housing for sale in England. Evidence suggests that, as the number of homes being built increases, the quality declines. That correlation is supported by the Chartered Institute of Building, which has commissioned an investigation in order to drive up quality. Thus far, it has identified behaviour and education as two key components that we need to address if we want to make changes.

Like many of my colleagues, I have encountered constituent issues: people frustrated with the problems with their new homes. They feel there is a lack of recourse to builders and warranty providers to address the problems.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend not just for calling for the debate but for taking over as chair of the APPG of which I used to be a member—I was involved in the report she has talked about. As a result of that report and work I have done on behalf of my constituents, the Government agreed to make approved inspectors’ reports available to new homebuyers as a way of making transparent build-quality problems. We have yet to hear much about how that is working in practice. Does she agree that that might be one practical way in which a homeowner could understand more about the problems there might have been when their home was being built?

[Jo Churchill]

My right hon. Friend highlights one of the key recommendations that came out of the report, several of which were very easy to implement. I will ask the Minister where we are on that and how we can move forward more swiftly, because it seems that we have been talking about these problems for well over a decade. It was first mooted that we needed to do something in 2008, and we will be 10 years on from that next year.

My right hon. Friend mentioned transparency. That is what is important to people: they want to understand. It needs to be simple, straightforward and transparent. While I appreciate that the Home Builders Federation is looking into a voluntary code, there are problems with the industry policing itself. If there were any real intent, it would not have let the situation deteriorate as it has done, and for so long.