Future of Legal Aid

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes. I will come on to mediation. My hon. Friend highlights two points: first, the lack of early advice and its consequences, and secondly, that the so-called alternatives put in place by the Government have failed, so we are left with effectively no safety net.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is starting to build up quite a case on the issue. Sally Denton, a senior solicitor at the Nottingham Law Centre, made precisely that point about the importance of early advice:

“Given the massive changes to the benefit system coupled with the evidence that most people presenting as homeless to the local authority are doing so following the end of a private tenancy and the massive crisis in homelessness it is clear that failing to enable people to access early assistance with benefits issues will result in many losing their tenancies and either being homeless…or having to be accommodated by the local authorities”.

Do these savings in one area not just create much bigger costs in another?

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend identifies the fact that by pulling away parts of the legal aid structure, the whole thing has collapsed in many areas. It is often the case that one problem, which may be housing or debt, is caused by another solvable problem, which is the lack of welfare benefits. Because they are not in receipt of welfare benefits, someone who would otherwise be eligible for legal aid may not qualify under the eligibility rules, and therefore the whole thing spirals down.

As I was saying, I have three specific requests. There are other discrete issues that I wish to mention and I will say a bit more about those in a minute, but I would like some indication from the Minister, when she responds to the debate, that at least these three specific requests are being considered as part of the review.

LASPO was billed as having four objectives,

“to discourage unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense; to target legal aid at those who need it most; to make significant savings to the cost of the scheme; and to deliver better overall value for money for the taxpayer.”

The Ministry of Justice predicted that the budget for the legal aid bill would be cut by £350 million. It promised that there would be innovative ways in which advice and legal services would be offered, allowing costs to be cut while still maintaining access to justice.

There was, however, little of substance. Instead, LASPO swept away 60 years of the development of legal aid, taking almost all private family law and most of social welfare law out of scope, introducing onerous restrictions on eligibility, and turning on its head the principle of a right to advice and representation. Now, matters would be eligible for legal aid only if expressly allowed by the schedule to the Act.

Later, criminal legal aid got the LASPO treatment. It did not feature in any detail in the original Bill, but subsequent secondary legislation introduced cuts of a similar scale for crime, opening up the prospect of advice deserts and, as we have already touched on, miscarriages of justice, where defendants do not meet eligibility criteria but cannot afford representation.

Airports National Policy Statement

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 7th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

I cannot comment on the pay and benefits for staff who work at Heathrow. Undoubtedly, both Heathrow and Gatwick airport have sought to influence the decision made by hon. Members here today. The Select Committee’s role is important in ensuring that people have independent and objective information that enables them to make a decision.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a good case, and I look forward to hearing the “buts”. It is correct that for a brief moment Gatwick was in the frame, but for many years before that, Gatwick was simply a satellite of Heathrow and controlled and silenced by it. Now that the Government have been so partial and so partisan, again the only name in the frame is Heathrow, so my hon. Friend is making exactly the right point, which is that Heathrow is the dominant voice, but does she agree that it is perhaps much more so than she has said so far?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I think Heathrow is the dominant voice, but in part that is because it is our only hub airport. Many of the arguments that the Government have put forward are predicated on the importance of that hub status, although I will address some of the other points, which I am sure my hon. Friend will want to hear.

Right hon. and hon. Members will have seen the Department for Transport’s latest summary, which rehearses some of these arguments with some very nice graphics, so I need not say more about it than that. Our inquiry sought to get into the detail of the scheme and how valid concerns about the Government’s approach might be addressed in a final NPS before Parliament was asked to approve it. I confess that when we sought this debate, we did not anticipate that the Government would have already laid their final version of the airports NPS, which happened two days ago. I commend them for their speedy actions. I welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks in the Chamber on Tuesday in which he thanked the Committee for the scrutiny we completed. I also recognised the shadow Secretary of State’s acknowledgement that we “left no stone unturned” in our report.

Conducting detailed scrutiny is absolutely critical, and I am immensely proud of the detailed work that our Committee completed within the time available. The Heathrow plans have been more than 20 years in the making. The implications of Parliament’s decision will last even longer. It is important that we get this right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman is of course concerned about the impact on his constituents. I think that he is right, and the Committee identified that only one set of flightpaths was used in the NPS. Of course it is important that people understand who might be affected and how they might be affected before we reach a decision. That was precisely why we asked for more evidence to be presented on the scale of noise impacts.

On surface access, we recommended that a condition be included in the NPS that ensures approval can be granted only if the target for no more airport-related traffic can be met. Heathrow has ambitious targets for modal shift, as it aims to increase the proportion of passengers and staff travelling to the airport by public transport. While there is a plan for significant investment in London’s transport network, whether that will be sufficient to cope with the extra demand remains uncertain. Without the condition recommended by our Committee, what incentive or enforcement mechanism will be in place to ensure that Heathrow meets its pledge?

[Andy Slaughter]

Unlike the Government, Transport for London has done a lot of work on this issue. The substantial improvements to public transport—Crossrail and the upgrade of the Piccadilly line—will be made to deal with additional pressures in London that are already priced in. Not only is there this huge bill for £10 billion to £15 billion that ultimately the public will have to pick up, but London is losing out by losing that additional capacity, and neither of those absolutely vital factors appear to have been taken into account by the Government; I hope that they have been by the Committee.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right that the Committee will look closely at what the surface access needs are. It is fair to say that in the evidence we have heard there was considerable disagreement between the Government and Heathrow Ltd, and Transport for London. However, it is clear that if additional investment is needed the airport would be required to make a contribution to cover the costs of those improvements that would impact on their passengers and workers.

Our support was premised on suitable mitigations being in place to offset impacts on local communities affected by noise, health and social impacts. Now is the time to set the criteria and the limits of environmental impacts that Parliament deems necessary for the scheme to go ahead. That will enable the planning directorate to do its job and ensure that Heathrow’s detailed plans can be judged against the criteria set by Parliament.

Our Committee also wanted to ensure that the conditions of approval in the NPS provided enough safeguards for passengers. People will rightly say that this is a privately funded scheme, but investors expect a return on their capital. It is airlines and their passengers who will pay for that return and ultimately bear the financial risk of this scheme. The CAA has done some preliminary work on the scheme’s ability to be financed, but questions remain over whether it can be paid for without increasing charges for passengers. Heathrow is already the most expensive airport in the world, and the evidence we received suggests that if airport charges were to increase significantly the benefits of expansion would be diluted. Fewer passengers would use the airport and Heathrow’s competitiveness as a hub, particularly in comparison with its European counterparts, would be undermined.

The Secretary of State expressed his desire to keep charges flat, but desire is not enough; we recommend that it be translated into a firm condition of approval in the NPS. Every single airline that we heard from reiterated this view. The Government are relying on the CAA to meet their ambition to keep charges flat, but can the Minister give us confidence that that ambition will be achieved, given that history suggests that Heathrow’s charges have increased each time it has made a significant investment in infrastructure?

Our support was also premised on suitable measures being in place to guarantee benefits for regional passengers. There is a risk that domestic routes will be priced out of an expanded Heathrow and that the non-London regions and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be left with fewer direct connections from their own airports and potentially no new domestic slots into Heathrow. We recommended that the Government outline more clearly how they intend to secure 15% of new slots for domestic connections, including the policy levers they will use to achieve that target.

The Government have said that they believe most routes will be commercially viable and that public service obligations will be their main policy lever to secure domestic routes. Can the Minister explain how PSOs can be used to secure domestic slots, because I believe that they could be used only on a city-to-city basis, provided there is an overriding social need? What other mechanisms are available to secure slots for the regions and nations?

The final objective of our scrutiny was to ensure that any risks of a successful legal challenge were minimised. The north-west runway scheme can be legally challenged at two stages of the approvals process, the first of which is the immediate period after the NPS is designated by Parliament. A legal challenge can be mounted, not on the contents of the NPS document but on the way in which the consultation was conducted. We recommended that the evidence base be comprehensively updated and that its robustness be improved, to ensure that the consultation has been completed in a comprehensive manner and to avoid a successful legal challenge at the first hurdle. Is the Minister confident that he has done enough to address our concerns?

The scale of this project and the grounds upon which a legal challenge can be mounted suggest that there are still more hurdles for this scheme to overcome if it obtains Parliamentary approval. Even in a best-case scenario, a scheme is not going to be delivered until 2026. It is therefore essential that we make best use of the UK’s existing airport capacity in the interim, and our Committee has recommended that the Government develop a strategy to do so. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to develop and implement such a strategy, so that aviation growth can continue across the country while the Heathrow scheme is being developed?

In conclusion, the Committee’s support for the north-west runway was conditional on the concerns that we identified in our report being addressed by the Government in the final NPS laid before Parliament. The Committee has not yet had the opportunity to discuss whether we believe our conditions have been met. Ultimately, it is for every Member to form their own judgment on the Government’s proposal. I hope that our report has provided Members with a strong foundation upon which to make that judgment.

Affordable Housing

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

When the Government introduced the hated bedroom tax, the headline in the Nottingham Post was, “Nowhere to go”. It was spot on, of course. Thanks to the Government’s dismal record on affordable housing, thousands of people are being forced out of their homes or into poverty by the cruel and ill conceived bedroom tax, and millions of people cannot buy the homes they want, or find decent-quality affordable or social homes at all. I do not claim that the shortage of high-quality affordable housing started in 2010, but the Government’s policies have made the situation worse, not better.

Let me begin by setting out how the Government got it so wrong. Their first decision on taking office was to cut the affordable housing budget by 60%, leading to a collapse in affordable house building, and they consistently watered down affordable housing requirements on developers. The Prime Minister rushed out the latest proposals this week in a desperate bid to appeal to first-time buyers, but as Gavin Smart, interim chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said, the Tory plan

“smacks of building for one group of people at the expense of another.”

As usual with the Government, those on lower incomes are set to lose out, but that should not be a surprise. In London, where the housing crisis is at its most severe, the Mayor has, in his London plan, banned Labour councils from insisting on building genuine social homes through section 106 agreements, against the guidance of the planning inspector but with the approval of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Even developers have warned of the dangers of weakening the affordable homes requirements; the Westminster Property Association described the idea as “deeply flawed”.

My constituency was one of the first hit by the Government’s cuts, when a £200 million redevelopment of the Meadows, one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, was scrapped. Nottingham city council had been working closely with local residents for three years to devise the plans to transform their estate by demolishing unsuitable and unpopular properties and replacing them with new homes to meet existing and future need, including extra care homes for elderly tenants. The then Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), promised to visit the area to see for himself the issues left unaddressed, but that was just another broken promise.

If the Government are allowed to continue, we could sadly see the demise of genuinely affordable social housing. Their affordable rent model is anything but affordable to families on low incomes, and it is pushing up housing benefit bills in the long term. The number of affordable homes provided last year fell to its lowest level in nine years, and was 26% below the 2009-10 level. The number of homes built for social rent is at its lowest level for at least 20 years, and is falling.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is primarily driven not by finance but by ideology? Leaving social tenants in insecure properties, raising their rents, failing to invest in properties and failing to accommodate people on the basis of need—all that comes from policies, many of them dreamed up by the previous council in Hammersmith and Fulham. Is that not a deplorable way to treat people in housing need in the 21st century?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right. The Government seem to have no interest in the idea of social homes.

Crisis noted that in England last year, just 7,458 affordable and social rented homes were completed, compared with 9,026 in the previous year. Let us judge the Government by their own standards. In 2010, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield, then Housing Minister, told the Communities and Local Government Committee that building more homes than Labour

“is the gold standard upon which we shall be judged.”

Given that the Government have presided over the lowest levels of house building in peacetime since the 1920s, I suggest that they will be found wanting. House building in every year under this Government has been lower than in any year under Labour. There were 118,000 home completions last year; we are building fewer than half the homes needed to keep pace with demand.

Affordable housing is not just an issue for tenants, although I will return to the issues faced by those renting their home later. Many of my constituents want to own their own home, but if they think that the Tory party will help them to achieve their dreams, they will be sorely disappointed. Home ownership is at its lowest level for 30 years, and there are now 205,000 fewer home owners than there were at the previous election. To put it another way, in 2009-10, 67.4% of households owned their own home, compared with 63.3% now. For the first time, home ownership in the UK is below the European Union average for the pre-accession 15 countries. The number of people with a mortgage has declined, and is now lower, for the first time in more than 30 years, than the number of households living mortgage-free. Rising house prices and the requirement for larger deposits, in combination with low wages and insecure employment, is pushing home ownership out of the reach of many people. The National Housing Federation’s report, “Broken Market, Broken Dreams”, shows that with the average house price in England having risen to more than £250,000, the average first-time buyer needs to find a deposit of £30,000—almost 10 times as much as was needed by those buying a house in the early 1980s, or when I bought my first house in Nottingham 21 years ago.

Two thirds of first-time buyers rely on financial help from their parents, a figure that has doubled in the past five years. It is easy to see the disproportionate impact on those from poorer families. In the past, they may have been able to get on the housing ladder; now, they could be locked out of home ownership for ever. For the sake of the next generation, we need to tackle the housing crisis, and the Government’s plans are simply not up to the task. Their schemes have not helped anywhere near the number they claimed they would. The Prime Minister claimed that New Buy would help 100,000 on to the property ladder, but it has actually helped less than 6% of that target.

It is questionable whether a one-size-fits-all approach is appropriate. Local housing market conditions and local demographics are important factors, and there is huge variation between and within regions. In Nottingham, average house price are well below the national median, although so are wages, and we do not suffer the problems found in London and the south-east, where there are large numbers of buy-to-let, or buy-to-leave-empty, investors.

Help to Buy has not been taken up in large numbers because those on middle incomes have alternatives, so it is those on lower incomes who are still missing out. In contrast, right to buy has increased significantly since the higher discounts were introduced in April 2012. It benefits those who are able to participate, but makes life even more difficult for those struggling to find somewhere to live. Ministers promised at the time that the additional homes sold would be replaced one for one, but that simply has not happened.

Across the country, more than 26,000 social homes have been sold in the past three years, but according to the Department’s own figures, only 2,298 homes were started by councils between April 2012 and September 2014. This month’s Inside Housing reveals that the Department’s original claim of 4,795 had to be revised down after it was challenged by the Chartered Institute of Housing. Even the most recent figures from December take the number of starts only to a total of 2,712. A further 3,285 homes were sold between October and December, up 15% on the previous quarter. The problem is getting worse, not better.

With their route to home ownership blocked, more and more people are living with their parents into their 20s and 30s, and only 36% of 25 to 34-year-olds now own their own home. With the social housing stock being depleted, it is no surprise that the proportion of young people renting in the private sector has risen to 48%. Overall, a record 11 million people—one in five of the population—are now living in the private rented sector. That is an increase of 2.5 million since 2010, and it includes 1.5 million families with children.

Rents rose across England by an average of 8% last year, according to the English housing survey. That has not only had an impact on household incomes, although rising rents are undoubtedly contributing to the cost of living crisis for many families. It goes to the heart of the Government’s failure to reduce the housing benefit bill, as more people—particularly working people—are forced to rely on state support to rent in the private sector.

Although rents in Nottingham have not risen as rapidly as in other parts of the country, there has nevertheless been a dramatic increase in the cost of subsidising private sector rents. In 2009-10, local housing allowance payments totalled £22.5 million. By 2013-14, that figure had risen to £41.6 million—a staggering 85% rise. More people are using the private rented sector, and they need financial help to do so.

Of course, for many people in our city, the private rented sector is not a positive choice. With more than 10,000 households on the waiting list for social housing, the private rented sector is simply the only option available. Nottingham still has a larger-than-average social housing stock, and possibly as a consequence, a larger proportion of the population want to live in a council or housing association home. However, demand outstrips supply. The problem is particularly acute in some parts of the city, such as Clifton, where there is a high demand for social housing and a large number of social homes have been lost as a result of tenants exercising their right to buy.

For families with children, the lack of long-term certainty about their housing is a particular worry. For working parents who have settled their children into local schools, built up support networks and got child care arrangements in place, six-month tenancies and the possibility of significant rent rises do not offer the stability and certainty that they need.

The difficulties have been exacerbated by the bedroom tax, which affects more than 3,000 households living in Nottingham’s council-owned social housing and hundreds more in housing association homes. The policy penalises poorer households, who are forced to cut back on essential items to pay their rent, go into debt or build up arrears that put the future of their tenancy at risk. Some, who genuinely have rooms to spare, would be prepared to downsize to escape this iniquitous measure, but there simply are not the homes to move into, with an acute shortage of smaller properties in some areas, particularly two-bedroom houses.

As the Post predicted, some people are left with nowhere to go. According to “The homelessness monitor”—independent research commissioned by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation—the combination of a lack of affordable homes, the recession and cuts to social security has led to substantial rises in homelessness in recent years. Department for Communities and Local Government statistics show that in 2014, over 111,000 people in England made an application to their council to state that they were homeless—an increase of 26% in four years—and “The homelessness monitor” found that the true figure was even higher than the statutory figures indicate. Rough sleeping has become noticeably worse, rising 55% in the last four years and by 79% in London.

Once people are homeless, the lack of affordable homes is keeping them trapped. It is increasingly difficult to access hostel accommodation, because there is a lack of affordable rented properties for current occupants to move into. Even for those tenants who choose to live in private rented housing—for many students in Nottingham, that is the case—there are real concerns about quality and suitability. Student unions at the university of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent university and New College Nottingham recently published their “Notts Student Manifesto 2015”. In it, they identified student housing among their top-four priorities,

“with rogue landlords and poor conditions a threat to wellbeing.”

Problems highlighted range from a failure to meet basic safety standards to poor maintenance and issues relating to personal safety and security. International students reported particular concerns.

Of course, positive initiatives in the sector have been put in place since 1997; I particularly highlight action to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. Statutory homelessness fell by 70% under Labour, from 135,000 in 2003-04 to 40,000 in 2009-10. We also took action to improve housing standards. Having inherited a £19 billion repairs backlog, we brought 1.5 million social homes up to a decent standard through the decent homes programme, including by fitting over 700,000 new kitchens, 525,000 new bathrooms and over 1 million new central heating systems at a cost of £33 billion.

Locally, Nottingham’s arm’s length management organisation, Nottingham City Homes, is celebrating its 10th year, and I am proud that tenants are more satisfied than ever with the quality of their home, value for money and the repairs and maintenance service. Over the last decade, the proportion of non-decent council homes in Nottingham has fallen from 44% to around 2.6%, and with work still being carried out to improve the stock—more than 26,000 homes—that figure could be close to zero within weeks.

I have spoken before in the House about the difference that the decent homes work has made to the lives of the people I represent, and I pay particular tribute to the tenants and leaseholders who, in 2010, took their campaign to the front door of Downing street to secure continued funding for that vital work, which has improved the health and well-being of thousands of families in our city.

Nottingham City Homes and Nottingham city council have also led the way in improving the energy efficiency of homes in our city. Again, I have spoken many times about the greener housing scheme; despite the Government’s energy policy changes, which threaten to wreck our plans, that scheme has already delivered solid-wall insulation to thousands of families in Nottingham across all tenures, cutting fuel bills, providing warm and comfortable homes for residents and improving the appearance of our estates.

I am delighted that Nottingham city council and Nottingham City Homes are building new homes and replacing some of the less popular and difficult-to-maintain stock, as the shadow Minister has seen for herself. Some 166 homes have already been completed, and there are plans for a further 327. Small disused sites, such as derelict garages, have provided opportunities for redevelopment, and some of these homes, including five on Eddleston drive in Clifton, were built using NCH’s own labour force, boosting local employment and providing apprenticeships. Housing associations, including Nottingham Community Housing Association, asra Housing Group and Derwent Living, have also built new houses, mainly on sites provided by the council, but we could do so much more if we had a Labour Government with a real plan to tackle the housing crisis. That is the choice that voters can make in 64 days’ time.

Labour has endorsed the comprehensive plan set out by Sir Michael Lyons’ housing review, the first of its kind in a generation. It sets out how we will meet our commitment to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020, and sets a course for doubling the number of first-time buyers by 2025.

We will give local authorities the powers and resources to build the homes that their communities need, ensuring that all councils produce a plan for home building in their area and allocate sufficient land for development to meet the needs of local people. We will provide powers for groups of local authorities to collaborate and form Olympic-style new homes corporations to build on designated land at pace. We will implement measures to drive competition in the house building industry, increase capacity and expand the number of small firms. We will introduce a help-to-build scheme to underwrite loans to small builders to get them building again and fast-track planning on small sites. We will set out Treasury guarantees and financial incentives to unlock sustainable garden city development, and we will give local areas real powers to deliver garden cities through garden city development corporations, based on updated new towns legislation.

Labour councils are already building twice as many affordable homes as Tory-run authorities. A Labour Government will make housing a bigger priority for capital investment in the next Parliament.

Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

rose—

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

rose—

High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

It’s a laugh a minute today. The net saving is of course welcome. Will the Minister also tell us, when he responds to the debate, when we can expect the first report on HS2’s initial expenditure, under the terms of the preparation Act?

There are two motions before us today: the carry-over motion and the instruction motion to the Select Committee. The hybrid Bill is reckoned to be the longest piece of legislation ever produced, once the environmental statement is included. When the new documents published today are included, it will have broken its own record. It is therefore right that the provisions for the electronic depositing of Bill documents should continue, although there should also continue to be a number of specified sites where residents can consult physical copies.

The instruction motion requires the Committee to consider a number of alterations to the route, which take the form of additional provisions. The additional provisions published by the Department cover a range of recommendations, from the location of balancing ponds and the preservation of public rights of way to the maintenance of golf course car parks. They mainly affect the constituencies of Government Members and I shall do my best to finish my speech in a timely fashion, because I know that a number of hon. Members wish to speak.

It must be noted, however, that these provisions cover the end of phase 1 in Lichfield and Birmingham Curzon Street to Hillingdon, but no further. I am mindful of the many contributions made in the House by London colleagues, especially those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who I note is in his place today. It is vital that, when future additional provisions are brought forward, those areas should be given at least equal consideration to the local authorities affected by the proposals.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

As a London MP who is majorly affected by HS2, I echo what my hon. Friend has just said. I wish that the Minister had mentioned London in his speech. I know that it is not the subject of the motions, but will he look again at the subject of the compensation for London being adequate and commensurate with that being given to the rest of the country? I have just had details of a brand-new part of the rail link dumped on me today, as an afterthought, in the form of a letter. If there are to be significant changes, proper notice must be given to Members of Parliament and residents, and a full consultation must be carried out. That is not happening at the moment.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend speaks on behalf of his constituents, who will be particularly affected by the proposals for Old Oak Common.

In the area around Euston station in particular, considerable uncertainty has been caused by revisions to the designs for HS2’s London terminus. Three times now, alternative plans for Euston have been presented. Local residents deserve better.