Mortgage Prisoners

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gordon Marsden

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I suggest that Members stick to around eight minutes, because the people who will be punished will be those like your good self, Mr Hollinrake.

[Gordon Marsden]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I pay tribute to what he has done.

Many of my constituents are affected by this and have come forward with heartbreaking stories. The person I mentioned at the beginning of my speech said:

“I have worked hard to pay off just under 6k over the last few years but it is heart breaking to think I have paid over 20k more had I been able to access other products.”

Another constituent said:

“We got a Northern Rock Together mortgage literally weeks before the banking crash… The mortgage is now with… NRAM. No arrears, making the repayments has been a struggle… but we’ve always managed… we borrowed over the equity in the house and since the decline in the housing market we are in negative equity.”

This is particularly problematic in northern and midlands areas where the property market has not recovered since the crash in the way it has elsewhere.

There is a moral duty for the Government to act. It was George Osborne’s “flog it” approach to Northern Rock loans in the first place that failed to provide the safeguards for people who were then put into a transfer lottery, with horrendous results. We need to have proper movement. We need to have a formal inquiry, now that we realise the extent of this cover-up. Why were Ministers not prepared to take that forward? The contrast between the way in which the Treasury has dealt with this and how other Departments have dealt with scandals such as the Primodos scandal is deafening. The FCA’s behaviour is as much use as a chocolate fireguard, and it is time that this Government and this Minister came clean about what they are going to do in practical terms.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gordon Marsden

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 8, line 4, at end add—

‘(3) Before an education administrator may perform functions specified in subsection (2), they must ensure an appropriate assessment is made and published of the impact of performing such functions, including, but not restricted, to—

(a) the impact on the quality of education provided to existing students of the further education body;

(b) the capacity of another body or institution to undertake any additional functions or provide education to additional students;

(c) the infrastructure of the local area, in particular transport;

(d) the ability of students to travel to another body or institution; and

(e) any financial impact on those students, including the cost of travel by students to attend another body or institution, and steps to mitigate those impacts.

(4) The Secretary of State shall make regulations to specify suitable bodies for making the assessments at subsection (3).

(5) Regulations made under subsection (4)—

(a) shall be made by statutory instrument; and

(b) shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

This amendment would ensure that an appropriate assessment is made of any potential impacts on students and their education, if an education administrator puts a further education body into “special administration” and takes action such as transferring students to another institution or keeps an insolvent institution open for existing students. This amendment would also require the Secretary of State to specify suitable bodies to perform such assessments.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 2, in clause 18, page 9, line 15, at end insert—

“(e) suspend the Office for Students protection action for students.”

This amendment would give the court the power to suspend Office for Students’ student protection action for the period of insolvency in which the education administrator has responsibility for the management of an FE body .

Amendment 3, in clause 28, page 13, line 2, at end insert—

‘(1A) Sums guaranteed under subsection (1) shall include statutory pension obligations payable to staff employed by a further education body subject to an education administration order.”

This amendment would ensure that staff employed by an FE college continue to accrue statutory Teachers Pension Scheme and Local Government Pension Scheme pension obligations? during an education administration.

Amendment 22, in schedule 2, page 30, line 39, at end insert—

“3A The education administrator may not transfer assets of any further education body to a for-profit private company where he or she considers that more than half of the funding of the acquisition of the asset came from public funds.”

This amendment would ensure further education bodies with a track record of accruing assets publicly, could not be transferred to a for-profit private company.

[Gordon Marsden]

May I wish you a happy new year, Mr Deputy Speaker?

We turn to the extremely important part of the Bill, which is one of the reasons why the Bill is in the form it is. I shall deal with that in a moment or two when discussing amendments 2 and 3. First, I wish to focus on the importance of clause 14 and of the Government’s welcome introduction into the Bill of the role of the education administrator. Although we welcome that, we want to probe, as we did in Committee, just how it is going to work in practice, and that is the purpose of amendment 1. It is extremely important to remember the end product we are all aiming at. We hope—and I believe, as I am sure the Minister does—that the number of occasions when the detailed insolvency provisions laid out in the second part of the Bill will be required will be as few as possible. Shortly, I will suggest why I think they are particularly necessary and deal with some of the related issues.

This amendment would ensure that an appropriate assessment is made of any potential impact on students and their education if an education administrator puts a further education body into special administration and takes action such as transferring students to another institution or keeps an insolvent institution open for existing students. It would also require the Secretary of State to specify suitable bodies to perform such assessments. The amendment has been tabled at the urging of the National Society of Apprentices and it touches on an area where the Minister and I have common ground: the importance of understanding what the end product of this new education administrator is all about. He or she is there to provide protections and support that would not be available in a traditional insolvency process. That is extremely important in terms of the position of young people, particularly those who might be at college as part of their apprenticeship or of other training.

I wish to speak particularly to the proposed new subsections 3(c), 3(d) and 3(e) set out in our amendment. One thing that the NSOA’s research has shown—this was in 2014 and the figure may well have increased since—is that apprentices spend, on average, about £24 a week on travel, which equates to a quarter of the salary of an apprentice earning the apprentice national minimum wage. Additional research has indicated that some young people were choosing the apprenticeships they could afford to get to, rather than those they were keen to do. In the light of the area review process in England and the creation of fewer, more resilient colleges, we are concerned about the impact on those potential apprentices in terms of their travel time between provider, employer and home. We have had our disagreements with the Government over that review process and will doubtless continue to probe them strongly on it.

The Opposition believe it is important that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education takes a clear and early lead role in encouraging local authorities and transport companies to ensure that all young people, including apprentices, are covered by travel concessions. Without a high-profile champion for their needs, apprentices can too often be excluded from such concessions, because apprenticeships are perceived as employment rather than education and are excluded from the relevant definitions. The crux of the amendment is to ensure that the entitlement that the Bill gives to students to continue their education works in practice. The ambitions of the provisions on special administration are noble; the amendment is intended to be a safeguard against any unintended consequences.

Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gordon Marsden

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister has referred to the potential for further amendments to be introduced. I know we have had an iterative process here this afternoon, to put it mildly, but even I did not think there would be scope for the Government to introduce further amendments in this House. Will you rule on this issue and clarify whether the Minister is making a statement correctly or incorrectly?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Let me help by saying that it would be possible for the Lords to look at that and do something about the Bill at that stage.