Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) on his excellent maiden speech. Given that I was thoroughly entertained throughout and gripped by what he was saying, I am sure he will have a long, prosperous and useful career in this Chamber.

I want to thank and pay tribute to Olivia Marks-Woldman, the inspirational Karen Pollock and all the wonderful people at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for their tireless work. Among the many things that they do is ensure that, every January, we have pertinent themes and rich resources from which to draw when we stand up to contribute to this poignant, far-reaching and important debate. I really try to contribute something different every year, because I think that that is important. I am very grateful to them. Often, because of the shortness of these debates, we do not get enough time to praise them as we should, so I find myself in the bizarre situation of thanking the Government for making time available today for us to have a proper and fulsome debate.

Today, the theme is “standing together”. We spend months in my office talking about what we are going to talk about in this debate, because it is an annual event and we always buy an extra book or two. One of the things we talked about was the different forms that resistance to the Nazis took. In previous debates in the House, I have spoken about the incredible bravery of Jewish people in the most extraordinary and terrible circumstances, and the extraordinary strength that they displayed when they must truly have felt that there was no hope left. That strength was epitomised in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The Bielski partisans also showed that strength, as did the Sobibor uprising. The strength and courage in evidence there were simply staggering.

Today, because of this theme, I want to share stories of some of the people who stood with the Jewish community despite the grave personal danger to themselves. As we have heard, after the German occupation of Poland in 1939, the Nazis pursued a policy of segregation. The Jews of Warsaw were relocated to a ghetto, and at the outset 138,000 Jews were forcibly transported there, and 113,000 non-Jewish Poles were also forced from their homes. Society was split in two. People were forbidden to bring their possessions into the ghetto, and they were thrust into immediate destitution. Conditions inside the ghetto quickly deteriorated. Eight or 10 people were living in just one room, and the German Administration severely limited food supplies. Jews found trying to escape were murdered. Within the first two years, 92,000 had died of starvation, of disease and of cold; that was 20% of the people imprisoned in the ghetto.

It cannot be denied that some were looking on in satisfaction, gloating that their Jewish neighbours were being forced from their homes and forced apart from them, but thousands of people stood against this awful racism. They shared their food and their shelter, but that had a cost too. As we have heard, a new law in Poland decreed a death sentence for all those who

“knowingly give shelter to such Jews or help them in any way”.

Helpfully, examples were given, just in case anybody was in any doubt. Those examples included taking a Jewish family in for the night or offering a lift in a vehicle. Any of these led to execution.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Lady rightly acknowledges that Poles were killed for helping their Jewish friends and neighbours, but it was worse than that. In the case of my family, it wasn’t just that you were shot by the Germans; first, you had to watch as your children were shot. They made you watch as they killed your wife and children, then they shot you. Your crime was helping your Jewish friends and neighbours.

[Ms Brown]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, right.

I know I will not be the only person in this Chamber to own a copy of Martin Gilbert’s tremendous yet totally horrific book, “The Righteous”, which documents many stories of brave people who defied that law and similar laws, not just in Poland but across occupied Europe. I do not have personal stories that I can recount, but I would like to use the debate to put on record stories of heroic people, and today I want to talk about two Polish families who stood together with the Jewish people in the Warsaw ghetto.

First, I want to talk about Jan and Antonina Zabinski. Jan was the director of the Warsaw zoo, which was emptied of animals because of the air raids. When deportations to Treblinka began in 1942, Jan and Antonina decided that they had to help. They secretly provided shelter to 20 Jewish people in their two-storey home, and Jan sheltered hundreds more using the only other shelter he had available—the empty animal cages. Jan was employed by Warsaw city council, and he used that privilege to gain access to the ghetto. He used the pretext of looking after small trees and the public gardens inside the ghetto to aid his Jewish friends, and he tried to help them in any way he could.

One of those that Jan helped was Rachel Auerbach. Rachel secretly compiled records of everything that happened in the ghetto. This was an invaluable record of daily life under Nazi persecution, and she entrusted Jan with her precious manuscripts. He buried them inside the zoo grounds in glass jars. When the war was over, Rachel was able to retrieve her book and publish it, and it provides us all with a precious, dreadful insight into her first-hand testimony of the holocaust, as well as her memories of pre-war Jewish cultural life. Unsurprisingly, Jan was a member of the underground resistance, and he was eventually discovered. He was arrested and deported to Germany, but even after that, when Antonina was alone and even more aware of the terrible risks, she continued to provide shelter. The courage of Jan and Antonina was recognised at Yad Vashem as members of the righteous among nations.

Another of those recognised at Yad Vashem—one of the very first—was Dr Felix Kanabus. Felix was a young Polish surgeon, a socialist. He was disgusted, as were so many, by the sight of his fellow Poles aiding the Nazis in their persecution of the Jews, because he had many Jewish friends and he had spoken out publicly against antisemitism. So, when the crackdown began, many of his friends reached out to him for help, and he used his skill as a surgeon to help where he could.

Felix helped several Jews to avoid persecution by performing operations to reverse their circumcisions. In other cases, he provided medical certificates stating that a circumcision had been performed as a medical necessity—anything he could do to throw the Nazis off and stop their attention from falling on those that he could help. Felix protected a colleague and their family when they were summoned to the ghetto, by disguising them as servants, and he and his wife Irena worked with their networks to find safe apartments for many others. Like Jan and Antonina, Felix and Irena risked their lives, and those of their families, to resist the holocaust.

These are truly moving stories; but they are absolutely nothing compared with the scale of the violence—the 6 million Jewish victims and the millions of others who were subjected to systematic disfranchisement, dispossession, detention and murder. These stories of Jan and Antonina, Felix and Irena tell us something about what it means to stand together; because each and every one of us has a role in standing up to hatred, discrimination, persecution and genocide, whatever form it takes. One person’s actions will never be enough, but it is infinitely important to act, rather than do nothing.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a German theologian that I absolutely love; I love the idea of religionless Christianity. He was an anti- Nazi dissident, and he said:

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of the victim beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Bonhoeffer was a Christian pastor and a pacifist, but when he saw what was happening all around him in Germany society, he understood what he had to do. He saved many Jewish lives. This German pastor—this man of God—became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and as a result he was arrested and taken to Buchenwald where, just one month before the Germans surrendered, he was hanged. I can recommend “Letters and Papers from Prison”, which talks about his ministry in Buchenwald and is a remarkable testimony.

Sadly, the reason it is so important to remember these histories is that the poison of racism has not gone away. It is really frightening to see how it rears its ugly head again and again, right around the world; whether it is the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims, who have been put into re-education camps in Xinjiang; the treatment of Indian Muslims in Assam and throughout India—many of whom are being stripped of their citizenship and being attacked; or the attacks on refugees by the President of the United States, who employs the rhetoric of the terrible so-called “great replacement theory”.

In the spirit of today’s debate, let us reflect on what standing together actually means. I believe it is more than just a passive virtue; I think it is an active obligation, and I believe that every single one of us can learn more, and do more, to stand together against hatred wherever and whenever it emerges.

Leasehold Reform

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

The issues that colleagues have been raising across the Chamber today are very familiar to my inbox. My constituents have been affected by exactly the same issues, and I want to tell a couple of stories to illustrate them.

Mary told me that she was really lucky to be able to buy and move into her flat in 2013. Since then, her joy has been marred by the failings of the freeholder year after year. Service charges have increased by 33% in five years, with no change in the frankly dire service that is provided. Mary and other residents pay £4,500 a year but must deal with broken lifts that are not fixed for months at a time. Disabled residents have had to move out of the block. The doors to common areas have been left broken, allowing access to anyone and leaving residents vulnerable to antisocial behaviour in common areas and in stairwells. Rough sleepers understandably see this as an opportunity for shelter. We all know just how much rough sleeping has escalated over the past nine years due to austerity, but people sleeping in stairwells is an obvious fire risk, with sleeping people and belongings blocking the stairs.

Mary and her neighbours have no effective way of communicating with the management. She has not been allowed to ask about items on bills that double or triple in cost for no apparent reason. She has not been allowed to hold service providers to account—companies to which the residents pay thousands of pounds a year simply do not do their job. There is a pattern. Mary sees maintenance problems deliberately being left unfixed, because that means that residents pay a second and third time for call-out fees. As leaseholders, she and her neighbours have little power to stop people ripping them off. Three others from Mary’s block have written to me with exactly the same concerns, and one has been dealing with them for 15 years.

Another local leasehold block has cracked and faulty pipework for water and heating. Some flats completely lose water pressure, leaving residents unable to wash, clean or even fill a kettle. Others are roasting in hot weather because the heating is constantly left on in the walls—an appalling waste of energy and residents’ money, and a health risk. The average temperature in one corridor is 30°, and residents can ventilate it only by keeping a fire door open. We all know how dangerous that is. The block goes uncleaned for weeks at a time. Flawed waste disposal means that that rubbish piles up, and the block has not been decorated in years. It is dire.

The management company has a clear responsibility to provide the service, but it ain’t happening. Residents complained more than a year ago, but nothing was done and now we are back in summer when the heating and ventilation problems will again be at their worst. They come to me, but what powers do I have to make the management company behave? I do not have any, because the law is not there. The management company has a clear responsibility to provide these services. These are homes, and flawed laws should not prevent people from working together to keep their blocks clean and safe. Their only option is to write begging letters to a distant hands-off freeholder to ask them to intervene.

Rahima tells me that she feels like a prisoner in her own home because of an extortionate and, frankly, disgusting clause in her leasehold contract that doubles the ground rent. It started at £200 a year, and she was deceived into believing that it would stay that way, but actually it will keep doubling and doubling, eventually reaching £6,400 a year—completely and utterly unaffordable. It could make it impossible for her to remortgage or sell. I could go on and on because, frankly, I have got the case load. All the constituents who have contacted me have seen paltry commitments from this Government, but they are not enough to free residents from the injustice of the leasehold system.

However, I am really proud of Labour’s new proposals. When we get into government, Rahima will not be facing that doubling of ground rent, because we will cap existing ground rents at never more than £250 a year. Mary and her neighbours and many others will gain power over the management of their blocks—no more extortionate opaque service charges, but a clear right to challenge poor services, and a right to come together to buy out the freeholder and establish commonhold ownerships. My constituents need radical solutions, and if this Government will not provide them, our Labour Government will.

Definition of Islamophobia

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

At a primary school a few years back, I met a little girl who told me how scared she had been when she heard about a plane that had flown into the side of a mountain. She was not scared to fly—oh no; she was terrified that the pilot would turn out to be Muslim. I do not want to live in a country where our children are worried about the faith of a person who does wicked things. By the age of eight, she had been so affected by Islamophobia and the racism in and around us all that she had taken on a collective guilt. She felt it keenly. She almost accepted that she personally would be responsible if that pilot shared her religion. What a world.

Despite her age, this little girl knew all about Islamophobia—whichever definition we choose—about racism and about the blaming of people for the real or imaginary sins of another who shares their ethnicity, nationality or religion. She knew that many people were ready to hate her, her family and friends, and could even harm them. She almost felt it would be justified. I do not want to live in a world where our children feel like that.

I remember the fear among my Muslim friends, neighbours and constituents after the 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2017 attacks. That fear is clearly justified. There was a shocking 40% increase in reported religiously motivated hate crimes. One in four Muslims worries about being physically attacked. Several of the most recent Islamophobic attacks have been on children and—appallingly—have been perpetrated by children. In 2017, a group of six boys surrounded a 13-year-old Muslim boy, pushed him to the ground and kicked him again and again in the head. He could have been killed. Later that year, two boys, 10 and 13, were attacked in Manchester by a group led by a boy of 12 evidently filled with hate.

As we know, last year 15-year-old Jamal, a refugee from Syria, was subjected to violence and simulated torture within his own school. We have since learned that his sister has also been viciously attacked, her headscarf being pulled off. The family’s lawyer has now revealed that, because of the trauma she has received in this country—not in Syria—at the hands of Islamophobes, she has attempted suicide. As we know, Jamal’s alleged attacker was 16 and had, according to reports, consumed far-right propaganda on social media. We have allowed Islamophobia to take hold. We have to act to stop it.

The Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge attacks were followed by the clearly Islamophobic terror attack in Finsbury Park. As we know, the perpetrator of that attack was inspired by exactly the same kind of far-right propaganda and rhetoric that was associated with the terrorist murder in Christchurch in March and the terrorist murder of our Labour sisters and brothers in Norway in 2011.

Evil rhetoric has power not just because it causes violence, but because it creates fear and causes children to be afraid because of the faith they hold. We cannot tolerate it for a second. That fear has been on the rise again in my constituency after the heart-wrenching act of terror in Christchurch and the systematic vandalism of mosques in Birmingham. I am proud to say that our mosques in Newham are responding with unity. More than 40 mosque and community leaders attended a meeting last month to recommit to work together to keep our neighbourhoods safe from hate. It was a powerful first step, and I thank Councillors Mas Patel, Hanif Abdulmuhit and Salim Patel for organising it and I thank all the attendees.

I am also really grateful to the Community Security Trust, to Dave Rich and to others who have offered their time, experience and solidarity to the Muslim community in Newham to help with their community safety efforts. My mosque groups have readily accepted that help because, sadly, the CST gained its expertise because Jewish communities have also been so consistently under threat for so long. Its knowledge has been won from pain.

The same poisonous rhetoric that has long targeted our Jewish communities is being used to incite hatred and violence by Islamophobes, racists and fascists, and the rhetoric is sometimes directed at both Jewish and Muslim communities simultaneously by the same people. These hatemongers talk about replacement. They spread lies to present white people in Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand as being under threat. While the Nazi lie was that Jewish people were conspiring to control and replace white people directly, many fascists today weave antisemitism and Islamophobia together. Today’s alt-right say that so-called liberal elites, with Jewish people such as philanthropist George Soros always front and centre, support migrants and multiculturalism because we are trying to replace white people and Christian traditions with people, beliefs and practices that are both foreign and threatening.

The rhetoric about the so-called great replacement is as horrific as it is false. Chillingly, it echoes some of the propaganda that the Nazis used to prepare for the utter horror of the holocaust. Here and now, it is inciting acts of Islamophobic and antisemitic terror. Such racist lies were referred to by the terrorists who attacked synagogues in Pittsburgh last year and in California just last month. If the terrorists’ manifesto is anything to go by, they were equally as influential in inspiring the murder of those 51 innocent worshippers in Christchurch this March. The perpetrator was totally focused on spreading those lies and, to our shame, social media platforms let him do so effectively with the livestream of the atrocity. I struggle to imagine just how terrifying it would have been to be at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch—the shock, the confusion, the fear, the terror. I know that children in my constituency imagine it for themselves when they are at their mosque. It is beyond words.

That is what the idea of a great replacement has led to over and over again in recent years. The conspiracy theories are obviously false, but we need to take them seriously because they are spreading. The rhetoric is aiding the fascists, whom we have fought and defeated over again, with their mission of terror, division and murder. We have to see the exponents of those ideas for what they are—the polite, young, well-dressed, articulate, nicely spoken ones as well as the skinheads—and we must do everything we can from this House to stop this poison from spreading.

It has never been more important to put solidarity against racist and religious hatred first and foremost. To do that, we must understand what forms it takes and how they are connected and interconnected. I welcome the progress that has been made with establishing a definition for Islamophobia, because we need one. I would probably prefer the simpler one by the Runnymede Trust, but that is frankly irrelevant. We need a working definition, and we should be clear that Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism. However, what I want most of all is action. We need to propose concrete steps today to protect Muslim communities, build solidarity and halt the spread of racist hate, and I hope that we will hear that when the Minister responds.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and then I need to make progress.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend has mentioned children’s services. Clearly, the overspend on children’s services has hit a new high of £800 million—and of £12 million in Newham alone last year—and it is calculated that this funding gap will get to £2 billion by 2020. Is it not a complete and utter nonsense, and unsustainable for councils, to be told that they should be using what little reserves they still have to keep safe our very vulnerable children?

Antisemitism in Modern Society

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

May I just say that I agree with every single word the Secretary of State said? I thought he spoke incredibly powerfully, with great seriousness and with great measurement.

It has always been a mystery to me how anyone can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow human beings, yet here we are again in 2019 debating history’s oldest hatred. I am glad to have the opportunity to express my opposition to this unique evil and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for presiding over the debate today on antisemitism in modern society.

Antisemitism has led to some of the worst crimes in human history: pogroms, massacres, oppression, dispossession and of course the holocaust—the systematic and bureaucratic attempt to erase European Jewry from existence. Thirty years ago, in the summer of 1989, I travelled through the Berlin wall into what was then East Germany and on into Poland, where I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is one day in my life I will never forget as the full scale—the industrial scale—of the atrocities and mass murders that were committed there etched themselves into my consciousness. Never before and never since has the world seen such a cold, calculated and industrialised plan for the murder of an entire people.

That Jew hatred—for that is what antisemitism is—still exists should shock us; that it is on the rise should appal us. Antisemitism is a cancer that finds new ways, as the Secretary of State said, to mutate and to infect our political discourse, and it is not enough to be shocked and appalled; we have to act to stop this disease poisoning our society.

Before I go any further, I pay tribute to the work of the Community Security Trust and Shomrim in the Haredi community. Those organisations are tireless in their defence of the Jewish community and its synagogues, businesses, youth clubs and schools.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

May I also pay tribute to the CST and thank it for the work that it did with us in working out our community cohesion policy? I found it to be an organisation that was very engaged with the wider concerns about racism in our society, and it helped me enormously.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am sure that we all have similar stories to tell about the CST’s work in our constituencies. In my own constituency of Brent North, we have a Jewish community of just under 2,000 people, and we are the home of the Jewish Free School, which is one of the oldest Jewish institutions in the UK and the largest and most academically successful Jewish school in all Europe. I worked with Arnold Wagner and David Lerner to help the school to move from its old home in Camden to the purpose-built facilities in my community. I particularly want to thank the CST for all that it does to keep the pupils and staff there, and in all the other primary schools, safe. I just wish, as we all do, that its work was not necessary.

The CST does more than work on safety. Its work to record and analyse antisemitic hate crime is integral to our understanding of the scale of the problem that faces us. Last year, it recorded 23 antisemitic incidents in my borough of Brent alone, and 1,652 across the country. That makes for sober reading. Antisemitism is at a record high, with a 16% rise in incidents nationwide year on year and 100 incidents every month. This is the lived reality of our Jewish fellow citizens living under the strain of antisemitism. It is appalling—the arson attacks on synagogues, the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, the neo-Nazi graffiti on posters for Holocaust Memorial Day, the vandalising of centres of Jewish life, the physical attacks on Jewish children at their schools or on public transport, swastikas daubed on Jewish homes and antisemitic hate mail sent to Jewish workplaces and schools. These hideous crimes are a warning to us all. We must do better, and we must be better.

That brings me to the issues facing my own party, the Labour party. It was the Labour party that introduced the Race Relations Acts and the Equality Act 2010, and it has put fighting inequality, racism and prejudice at the core of who we are and what we believe in. How can it be that we are struggling so badly to eradicate antisemitism from our own membership? I joined the Labour party because I believed it was quite simply the best vehicle for progressive social change in this country. I still do, but no party has a monopoly on virtue, and in the Labour party we are learning a bitter lesson. For all the strength and passion that we have derived from the mass influx of new members that has seen our party grow to more than 500,000 strong, we have not had adequate procedures in place to react swiftly and decisively to that small minority of members who have expressed sometimes ignorant but often vicious, dangerous and vile antisemitic views.

On behalf of my party, I want to publicly apologise to the Jewish community that we have let them down. We know it and we are trying to do better. We are trying to become the party that we have always aspired to be. We will not stop working until we once again become a safe and welcoming political home for people from the Jewish community, as from every other. The Secretary of State said that we stand here today to say of antisemitism that we reject it. We do. We must.

Rough Sleeping

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to follow my friend the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), alongside whom I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this very important debate.

It is difficult to conduct a debate about rough sleeping without viewing it in the wider context of homelessness. The hon. Gentleman gave a compelling and comprehensive speech; it will not surprise him that I do not agree with all of it, but much of it I do agree with. He referenced a lot of the all-party parliamentary group’s work, and I will try not to repeat too many of the points that he made so eloquently. I also thank the Minister. I know it has not been a very easy 12 months for her, but she has worked very diligently on this issue and I thank her and the Secretary of State for the roles they have played.

Over the past 12 months we have seen a small decrease in rough sleeping, but it is important to point out that that is in the context of increases in London, Birmingham and Manchester in particular, and of figures still showing an increase of 165% since 2010. I welcome the Government’s ambition to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it entirely by 2027, but that is too long. I put it to the Minister that we must be far more ambitious.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I know that the figures are disputed and that the CHAIN—combined homelessness and information network—statistics show differences year to year, but with a decrease of 2% a year it will take until 2052 to deal with rough sleeping in Britain, and that is frankly not good enough.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; I picked up on that point, which the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group, also made. I think it is a little misleading, if I dare say so, on the basis that the past year is the first year in which a number of interventions kicked in, the largest of which is the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, so it is not necessarily correct to say that we will see a 2% decrease; we should see a much sharper decrease this year, next year and the year after. Of course, the key is ensuring that we stay on top of those figures and, through further debates such as this one and through the all-party parliamentary group, we continue to hold the Minister and Secretary of State’s feet to the fire to ensure that those ambitions are met.

However, I think we need to go much further. To tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, it is important that we truly understand it. The hon. Lady mentioned the statistics; the reality is that we do not entirely know, because in nearly all cases they are estimates. We have some reasonably good estimates for London, but for the rest of the country they are often based on a headcount on a single night, at one point of the year. As the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark rightly pointed out, numerous people will come into a town centre of an evening or during the day, because they can beg, and people will be kind and generous. However, because of the danger of violence in the evening, they will actually head out of town to parks and recreational spaces to sleep in tents, so may not be picked up in rough sleeping headcounts.

We know that the reasons for homelessness and rough sleeping are numerous, varied and complex. I wish it were as simple as saying that the answer is just more money, but money is only part of the answer. To some extent—I err on the side of caution when using this phrase—homelessness is a little like an illness. Successive Governments have thrown huge amounts of money at the problem, which, a bit like a painkiller, has worked in masking the pain but has not actually treated the underlying condition or, even better, actually cured it.

An old adage that works just as well for homelessness and rough sleeping as for anything else is that prevention is always better than cure. We need a two-pronged approach that covers both. In order to prevent homelessness and to help those currently homeless, we have to truly understand them, looking at those numerous, varied and complex reasons and then putting in place timely interventions to address each and every one of them, otherwise we risk regression.

The all-party parliamentary group goes to all parts of the country, and I have seen too many cases, particularly in London and my constituency of Colchester, of rough sleepers who have been through the council system. They have had support and been through temporary accommodation, and in many cases have been given social housing, but for so many reasons that has failed. That is one of the biggest problems, and if we do not address those underlying issues that cause homelessness at the outset, the likelihood of regression is sadly very high.

We need much better data—as I said, we have reasonable data for London but not for the rest of the country—in order to understand those root causes of homelessness and then address them. We know some of the causes. They include poverty, debt, eviction and section 21 notices to end assured shorthold tenancies, which are now the No. 1 cause of homelessness. They also include relationship or marital breakdown, domestic violence, landlords not letting to those in receipt of benefits, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental health issues, leaving prison or care, being LGBTQ—a particularly vulnerable cohort—hospital discharges and leaving our armed forces, which the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark mentioned.

We also have to consider the wider context. In 2017-18, we built 6,463 social homes, yet nearly 1.2 million people are on council housing waiting lists. Successive Governments have not built anywhere near enough social homes.

Local Government Finance

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

That is quite a good record. If the hon. Gentleman looks back, he will find that one of the problems was the lack of regulation of financial institutions, but the Conservatives criticised Labour for regulating too strongly throughout that period.

I will try to be charitable to the Government by saying that I can welcome some elements of the spending review, including an extra £650 million for social care. However, that has to be set against the LGA’s analysis of a £1 billion deficit in both children’s and adult social care, which will rise to £3 billion for each in 2025. I can welcome the fact that the spending power of councils as a whole will not fall in real terms—there is a 2.8% increase in cash terms—but that is spread differently across various authorities, and is cushioned by increases in council tax. Those increases bring in more money in richer areas, of course, and those are the areas that have received the smallest cuts to their grants since 2010. Those two things do not sit well together.

Sheffield has seen a 50% cut in grants since 2010 and major cuts to services. Social care services for both children and adults overspent by £15 million last year and will do so again this year. This is not a local authority out of financial control. It has not yet used its reserves, but next year, for the first time, it is planning to do so. Of course, that can be done for only a limited number of years. Many authorities across the political spectrum are in the same position.

Care is very important, but there are other services to consider. Sheffield and most authorities have done the right thing by concentrating on care, because they have statutory responsibilities to the elderly, children in care and people with disabilities, but National Audit Office figures for cuts to other services since 2010 show that private sector housing has been cut by 60%, that traffic management and road safety has been cut by 60%, that recreation and sport has been cut by 50%, that libraries have been cut by 30%, and that planning and development has been cut by 50%. Those cuts are hitting communities. In the end, it is not councils that are hit by such cuts; it is communities. It has happened in my city, where libraries are having to be staffed by volunteers, grass-cutting is done less often and private sector housing officers are not sufficient to bring selective licensing on the scale that we would like. There are cuts to funding for road safety, with bus routes scrapped, and children’s centres and youth centres closed. That is happening in the constituencies and local authorities of Conservative Members, too. What worries me is that as most people do not have family members in care, they see the other council services: parks, buses, libraries, road maintenance and refuse collection. Those are the services that matter to them, but they are the services that are subject to the biggest cuts of all.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a fabulous speech. I really appreciate what he says about culture and the role of libraries, leisure centres and parks. They are really important for physical and mental health, but people do not appreciate that.

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely right. We hear people start to say, “What is my council doing for me? What am I getting from it? I’m paying a lot more as council tax rises by 6%, but I’m getting a lot less.” We should all worry about the impact on and support for local democracy, and local councils as a whole, if that continues and people think that they are paying money into the system but getting nothing out. There was something very wrong with the announcement of another cut to the public health grant of £80 million in the very week in which the Government promoted their new long-term funding plan for the NHS and said that prevention would be more important in the future. Those two things just do not fit together.

There have been two clear facts since 2010: first, local government has been subject to bigger funding cuts than any other sector of the public realm; and, secondly, within those cuts to local government, the biggest have been in the poorest areas. Those two facts are absolutely clear. Looking ahead, how can we deal with that? First, there has to be a bigger pot of money for local councils in the spending review. The answer is very simple. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has welcomed 75% retention of business rates. It also said that that money should not be used to replace public health and other grants. The money needs to be kept in place and used to help to fund the gap in social care and to reverse some cuts to the other services I have just described. That money needs to be kept in local government, not used to mop up other grants that are going to be cancelled.

On the funding review, there is a question of not just the totality of the money, but how it is distributed. I accept that one area’s fairness will possibly be another area’s unfairness, and we will have different views, but taking deprivation out of the foundation element—taking money away from deprived areas and moving it to others—is very difficult to justify. I say to the Secretary of State that this is a serious exercise. I hope that in the end the Government do not get to a point where they use that mechanism as a way of financially manipulating money into Conservative areas, because that is the suspicion among Labour Members. I accept that this is a difficult and complicated job, but the Government need to be very careful that the process does not become seen as an exercise in financial gerrymandering. That would be very sad for local government, as well as for the people we represent.

There are two challenges for the period ahead. Let us all stand up for local government and ensure that it does better in the next spending review and has a better allocation of resources. Let us then make sure that those resources are fairly delivered. I am sure that we will have a lot more to say about that in the future, but those are the two tests by which I will judge next year’s spending review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Like other Members, I want to remind Ministers what the places that they have cut so savagely actually look like. By next year, Newham will have lost 48% of its grant—£138 million a year. That is a £1,301 cut for every household, which is the second highest cut in the country in what is arguably the second poorest borough in the country.

Conservative Members like to pretend that this is all about population—the number of residents in an area who need council services. How can that be true given that Newham grew by almost a third in the 10 years leading up to 2015? We are already the fourth largest London borough by population, and we are expected to have the second largest population growth in London over the next 22 years as well. We also have the youngest population in the country, with 40% of residents under 25 according to the last census. That obviously massively increases need for children’s and youth services, as well as for local authority school services, public health, welfare assistance and more.

The Government seem to think that the only age group that needs council support is pensioners—through social care. It is absolutely true that social care is in crisis, and that affects my constituents in the same way it affects those of every other Member, but young people need much more support as well, and nothing illustrates that better than the fact that nine of my young constituents were murdered between January 2017 and March last year.

A further change that has increased demand for council services is the huge growth in the proportion of my constituents who have to rent privately. Private rentals have doubled—they made up 23% of the total in 2006 and 46% 10 years later—and private rents are simply extortionate. The lower quartile rent on a two-bed over a chicken shop in Newham is now £1,250 a month. Lower quartile earnings are £1,168 a month, so a month’s full-time pay will not even cover the rent, let alone luxuries such as food, heating, clothes and so on. It cannot be any wonder then that the council recently found that, when housing costs are included, 67% of Newham’s children live in poverty.

Although we do have serious problems locally due to the consequences of right to buy, it is not social housing that has reduced so massively, but owner-occupation. In 2006, owner-occupation represented 47% of local housing but, over 10 years, it has more than halved to just 23%. Homelessness and temporary accommodation are extreme problems in Newham—the situation is the worst in the country. The number of Newham residents in temporary accommodation almost doubled between 2012 and 2017. There are more children in temporary accommodation in the 36 sq km of Newham than there are in the 63,000 sq km of Yorkshire, the south-west, the north-east and the east midlands combined.

This urgent and horrifying crisis is simply awful for the families who have to live with it day by day, but it has also meant fewer people living in Newham for long periods, thereby building up relationships and a sense of community, and far more people feeling constantly insecure. That insecurity in itself has generated yet more need for council services, and I believe that it has contributed to everything from criminal gang activity to mental health crises, and from childhood obesity to elderly loneliness—and even to things like fly-tipping. All these issues have a cost to the council and make it harder for council workers to do their most important jobs for the public.

Can the Government seriously tell me that my constituents have not been harmed by their cuts, and that those cuts have not contributed to the rise in young people being murdered or in fear on my streets? Can they seriously tell me that continuing these cuts over the next year will not deepen that harm? No, they cannot—not honestly. Frankly, the best way that this Government can help my constituents is by getting out of the way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that excellent supplementary question. The straightforward answer is that I would urge all councils that have not applied before to apply to this new fund and we will see what we can do for north-east Lincolnshire.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)]

Local councils will play an important role in supporting communities as we leave the EU, and I am committed to working with them to ensure that they are prepared to respond to any Brexit scenarios. I can therefore confirm that local authorities will receive an extra £56.5 million to help them with their Brexit preparations and to help deliver essential services and keep residents well informed. We also remain in close contact with local councils through our rough sleeping initiative to support some of the most vulnerable in our society and help them to get the support they need.

Yesterday, Members across the House remembered Holocaust Memorial Day. I had the privilege to attend the incredibly moving national commemoration of those who lost their lives in the holocaust and subsequent genocides. Those dark events of the past call on us all to confront racism, bigotry and hatred wherever it may occur and to stand up for tolerance, reconciliation and stronger communities.

[Lyn Brown]

Councils in deprived areas such as mine are desperately scrambling to find the funds to meet their needs while facing almost double the spending cuts of the least-deprived area. The Minister says that this is about population, but London is home to 16% of the population and has suffered 30% of the cuts. This Government still favour wealthy areas over poor ones. Is that because they are mostly Tory areas?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Lady should look at the settlement that we have provided, which involves an extra £1 billion for local government across the board. Indeed, it represents a real-terms increase that is intended to make a real difference to how we support councils to meet pressures and challenges.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) said in his terribly moving speech, this year’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is Torn from Home. As we all know, homes are much more than physical dwellings; they are everything that sustains us. They are our comfort, our security, our family, our friends, our community and our faith. They are the structure that helps us to live rich and meaningful human lives. Home is part of our identity; it is who we are. That is why being torn from home is so utterly traumatic.

Through the 1930s, everything that makes a place a home was stripped away from Jewish people, in Germany and then throughout Europe. It was a gradual, harrowing experience. In ’33, the Nazi Government began the creeping exclusion of Jewish people from public life. Jewish people were no longer protected by the police or courts, and kosher meat was banned. In ’34, Jews were barred from military service, banned from becoming doctors or lawyers and even prevented from being accountants and actors. In ’35, the infamous Nuremberg laws defined Jewish Germans as non-citizens, depriving them of their rights to vote and stand for public office, and legally condemning relationships between Jewish Germans and their non-Jewish neighbours.

Jewish Germans witnessed the destruction of their home with horror. One of them was John Fink, from Berlin. He said:

“The Nazis knew how to torture us…Every few weeks...other laws came. We had... to move...to a so-called ‘Jewish House’ which the Nazis controlled.”

What a terrible demonstration of the difference between a house and a home. The marked-out houses and ghettos were a permanent reminder that John, his family and so many others were now homeless.

The trauma of being torn from home is powerfully illustrated by the story of the St Louis, which sailed on 13 May ’39, carrying 937 passengers towards Cuba. Almost all were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. They had paid the Cuban authorities for their landing cards, but they were turned away on arrival at Havana. The ship anchored there for a week, and then crawled north past Florida. The passengers came close enough to see the lights, but the USA refused them.

Liane Reif-Lehrer, who was only a child at the time, said to a journalist some 50 years later:

“I think it’s...a symbol of what happened. The German government...were trying to show the world that nobody…wanted us”.

And did they not succeed? The Jews were not just made homeless in Germany; they were portrayed as universally homeless—abandoned by everyone and a threat to the homes of all. Being put in that position must have been terrifying. The passengers on board the St Louis knew what they were going back to in Germany. They knew what it would mean to return, even if they did not yet know the sickening scale of the holocaust.

One passenger, Max Loewe, had already been to a concentration camp, and the trauma had completely damaged his mind. He must have felt as though nobody in this world would help him, and the Nazi threat—the terror he had experienced at first hand—was growing all the time. As the boat lingered near Havana, Max became increasingly terrified, believing that there were SS officers on board searching for him. He cut his wrists and jumped overboard into the water where, in full view of all the other passengers, he writhed and screamed. He ended up in a Cuban hospital, but his wife and daughter were not even allowed to leave the ship. I cannot imagine what state he must have been in. He must have felt as though, with no help coming, the only escape for him would be death.

In the wake of America’s refusal to provide refuge, Britain was one of the four states who agreed to take some of the passengers in, and 288 of them, including Max, came here. However, there was a further tragedy. Of the 620 passengers who went on from here to Belgium, France and the Netherlands, 254 were murdered in the holocaust after those countries were invaded.

When we look at people who are seeking refuge in the United Kingdom today, I hope we will pause and remember. I hope that we will recommit ourselves to helping those who are fleeing in terror, torn from their homes and wanting to build a new home here. I hope we will act on the message “Never again”.

Section 21 Evictions

Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris]

The Minister is shaking her head. However, where we have had a landlord licensing scheme in a small defined area, that has proven to be effective. However, that has simply pushed the problem into another area.

The consensus is around a scheme that I believe has worked very effectively both in Liverpool and in Newham in London. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), who has hosted visits from local elected representatives.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

We had very fruitful discussions with a Minister about the need for a private sector blanket ban in Newham. The only bit that the ban does not cover currently is the new build in the Olympic village. That has meant that there has not been anywhere else in Newham for people effectively to fly to, in order to escape even worse conditions. We had a very effective conversation with the Government. I urge my hon. Friend to keep pushing at this issue, because that ban has made a real difference to tenants in my constituency.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful for that intervention; it is really helpful. I think that such a policy will make a difference and we will keep pushing for it. It is not our intention to introduce a blanket ban on private landlords; we simply want to have a scheme whereby the absentee private landlords will behave in a reasonable fashion, including towards their tenants.

In conclusion, I support the abolition of section 21. Abolition would strengthen tenants’ rights. However, until we address the wider housing crisis, for example by building a new generation of social housing properties in the numbers that we did in the 1960s and 1970s, the national housing crisis will worsen. I saw some figures recently that showed that up to 40% of the council houses that were originally built are now in the hands of private landlords and on average the rents are double what they were when they were in the social sector.

Our children will be burdened with high rents or unmanageable mortgage debt, and they will live in insecurity, worried about reporting repairs or poor housing conditions for fear of eviction. Our communities will also be burdened—particularly those in villages such as Horden in my constituency—as properties are mismanaged by absentee private landlords, whose interests seem to lie in making quick profits rather than in engaging with others to make a sustainable community. So I hope that the Minister will listen to the concerns of my constituents and those of Members from all parties in the House, and that she will take the time to examine this issue and consider how she could help to transform and regenerate not only housing but the life opportunities of many people, including those in the communities of Horden and east Durham, who I represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse]

On a point of order, Mr Hollobone. I failed to draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests, and I do so now. I apologise that I failed to do so.

[Lyn Brown]

This might be the time to do mine, too. Thank you, Mr Hollobone.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, more than ever when we have the luxury of time—such a rare event in this place.

[Lyn Brown]

If I had known, I would have brought my casework.

[Andy Slaughter]

Settle down, everyone. I do not need to speak for very long, because my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) has done the heavy lifting for us by clearly setting out why section 21 should be banished. She has even persuaded Members from the Government Benches; let us hope that she has persuaded the Minister. I am sure that we will listen carefully to what the Minister has to say on this issue, having heard those arguments.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his speech, because the property market in his constituency is very different from that which we experience in London. Quite rightly, a lot of attention is focused on London because it is a hothouse of a market. Exploitation of tenants for financial reasons has certainly been very much on the increase with house price rises, but he correctly points out that that is a problem across the country. In some ways, we are lucky in London, in that properties tend to be valued and perhaps kept in a better state of repair. What one does not tend to see now, because the properties are such valuable commodities, is whole areas that have fallen into disuse.

On 15 January next year—just over a month’s time—it will be 30 years since the Housing Act 1988 came into effect. Assured shorthold tenancies are now, as was anticipated under the Act, the major form of tenancy in the private sector. That is not something we need to celebrate. I became a councillor in 1986 before the Act came into effect, and that was probably when I first started to get involved in tenancy matters and tenants’ rights, but it was probably not until I became a housing law practitioner from 1993 onwards that I fully understood just how dramatic a change had been wrought on the private rented market. It was quite an audacious piece of legislation. That was appreciated by practitioners and experts—there was quite a lot of fuss about the 1988 Act at the time—but it probably did not register so much with politicians or tenants, although it possibly did with landlords, just what a change we had made.

Perhaps the best way I can illustrate that change is from what I found by googling “protected tenancies”. Most tenancies before the 1988 Act would have been some form of regulated tenancy. That was the case for decades before, but many would have been protected tenancies under the Rent Act 1977. The first thing that came up when I googled “protected tenancies” was the Landlord Law Blog. I read from it not to be sarcastic—perish the thought—but because it gives insight into how landlords view assured shorthold tenancies. The post is titled, “Three ways to recognise a protected tenancy under the Rent Act 1977 (And avoid buying a property with a tenant you can’t evict)”. It states:

“If you work in property, particularly if you are an investor, it is important that you are able to recognise a protected tenancy when you see one.

Why? Because protected tenants have long term security of tenure.

This means that you will not normally be able to evict them if you want vacant possession. Not unless you are able to provide another property for them to live in. And even then, only if it is considered ‘suitable’…The main effects of this are…The tenant can register a ‘fair rent’ which is then the only rent the landlord is allowed to charge…The tenant can normally only be evicted if he is in arrears of rent (sometimes) or if the landlord is able to provide ‘suitable alternative accommodation’, and”—

shock horror!—

“If the tenant has a spouse or family member living with them at the time of their death, they will inherit either another protected tenancy (if they are a spouse) or an assured tenancy (which also has long term security of tenure!)

The effect of all this is that you are stuck with a tenant who you cannot evict and who is usually entitled to pay a rent which is considerably lower than the market rent you could have charged had the property been an AST.

So how can you recognise when a property is being sold with a protected tenant?

Here are three tips for recognising protected tenancies.

1. The property is being sold for a low price…2. No tenancy agreement is available…3. Check the Valuation Office rent register”

to see whether a fair rent has been registered.

What could be worse than for a landlord to end up with a tenant who has protected rights? That was the norm, however, prior to the 1988 Act. Most tenants would have rights of that kind: rights of succession, rights to a fair rent and rights to be shown cause before eviction took place. In many ways, a private sector tenancy had more in common with a social tenancy than with an assured shorthold tenancy now. The irony is that the rights of social tenants have been substantially weakened under Conservative Governments, both in terms of so-called affordable rents, which generally are not affordable, and in terms of the end of lifetime tenancies or fixed-term tenancies. Actually, social tenancies have gravitated towards that lack of security and affordability at the same time as they have declined as part of the housing sector.

I make those observations not to suggest that we simply repeal the 1988 Act and go back to the pre-Act regime, but to point out that it is within living memory —it is within my memory of my time as an elected representative—that that was the norm. Indeed, I am sure that other Members will still have protected tenants coming to them. It is very few now, obviously, because we are 30 years on, but it is usually about landlords trying to get rid of them to maximise the value of the property for sale or rent. The majority of our casework will be for social tenants or private sector tenants who are living in poor conditions or are subject to eviction because they have no security, but it is always interesting to look at the cases of protected tenants.

It puzzles me why we did not notice the fundamental change that the 1988 Act made to the way the housing market operated. One reason, which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North alluded to, is that the private rented market was very different 30 years ago. I suspect that the Government knew what they were doing in legislating to shift the balance of power wholly in favour of landlords. The balance had always been that way to some extent, but then it became massively so. One reason that was not noticed was that the private sector had got itself a bad name, partly for the conditions, but partly because it was no longer seen as desirable as compared with owner-occupation or a social tenancy with a council or a housing association. In 1988, 9% of homes were in the private rented sector in England. That has more than doubled to 20%. That is mainly accounted for by a decline in social tenancies across England. If one looks at London specifically, it is even more dramatic. The best figures I have are census figures. In 1991, 14% of homes were privately rented, and that is now 30%. Again, it has more than doubled. Interestingly, there has been a decline in owner-occupation from 57% to 48% and in social rent from 29% to 22% over that period.

For my borough of Hammersmith, the situation is different again. Again, the most recent figures I can get are census figures from 2011, but I am not sure things have changed much since then. A third of properties are private rented, a third are owner-occupied and a third are social tenancies. There has been a significant decline in owner-occupation and a significant increase in private rented from 23% to 32% over that 20-year period. That is a massive change in how the housing market operates. I suspect therefore that the sort of people who become private tenants now are different, too. I am not saying that having no security of tenure is good for anyone, but when, predominantly, those in private tenancies were those who would have chosen short-term rents—perhaps students or people waiting to buy properties—it was clearly less traumatic to be asked by a landlord to leave in a set period than it is for a family who want to stay and live in that area. Increasingly, it is families who are occupying private rented accommodation.

What has also changed is where someone then goes. One of the worst things that the coalition Government did—I apologise to my Lib Dem friend over there, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), but we have to remember the Liberal Democrats’ complicity in all these matters at all times—was to introduce a duty to permanently discharge into the private sector those in housing need. That means that many families now have no expectation of ever getting a social tenancy. They are therefore at the mercy of a private landlord who may evict them. If they are still in priority need, they will go back to the local authority and ask to be rehoused. Due to benefit cuts and caps, that may be impossible in that area, and they may be moved a long way away. In any case, the process of recycling tenancies and moving on will occur on a regular basis.

[Lyn Brown]

Does my hon. Friend find in his constituency, as I do in mine, that by the time families get their social tenancy or council property they have often waited so long that the children are about to leave home?

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is right. It is almost tormenting people, and these are the people in a preferential situation—in temporary accommodation rather than permanently discharged to the private rented sector. They may have been waiting 10 years, and just as they are getting ready to receive their one offer of accommodation—

[Lyn Brown]

Take it or leave it.

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes, take it or leave it. At that point, one of the children turns 18 and is not in full-time education. Suddenly the family is either told, “You can have a two-bedroom flat rather than the three of four-bedroom property that you need,” or, “Sorry—you’re not in priority need at all any more.” It is extraordinary that whole generations have had to grow up in wholly inadequate housing and temporary accommodation.

My hon. Friend has tempted me to digress, so I will give just one example. Many boroughs and housing associations use the locator scheme, which is the bidding scheme. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not, but something extraordinary happened in my borough. When the Conservatives took control of the council—I am pleased to say only temporarily—they simply abolished the waiting list. Having decided that they did not want to build any more affordable homes—indeed, they started selling off and demolishing the ones that we had—there was obviously a difficulty in rehousing people, so the waiting list and the locator scheme were abolished.

Suddenly, 10,000 people were no longer in line to be accommodated at all. Once the borough came to its senses and returned to Labour control, the list was opened again, but what happened created a hiatus of several years in people’s lives that they will never recover. In addition to the long waiting periods that people face in any event, they were not on a waiting list of any kind during perhaps the prime years when their children were growing up and going to secondary school. Again, many of them are languishing in over- crowded accommodation or unsuitable private rented accommodation.

I do not want to paint a rosy picture of the world in the 1980s. I remember some dreadful, terrible private-sector accommodation then, but at least there was sometimes redress. When local authorities were better resourced, there were housing action areas, so we could go mob-handed, if I can put it that way, into a particular ward with environmental health officers and housing advisers. Also, legal aid was still available—actually, they were quite good days now I come to think about it.

If private landlords took the mickey in terms of the conditions their tenants were in or the way in which they treated their tenants, enforcement action could be taken. How different the situation is now, as evidenced by the fact that the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North—the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill—is necessary to give tenants that power, because often local authorities are no longer able to take such action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I know that my hon. Friend is, like me, a great rooter around inside plastic carrier bags when they are brought into her surgery. Often one can find, among many other papers, half a dozen possession notices. Social landlords are better at this—or worse, depending on how one looks at the matter—because they often rather lazily issue notices seeking possession with no intention of pursuing them, the only purpose perhaps being to terrify the tenant. However, private landlords do it as well. They will issue section 21 notices like confetti, either as protective notices, or to try to scare the tenant off or something of that kind.

Although my hon. Friend is right that the advice should always be to stay put, to try to get what legal advice is available and to talk to the local authority housing adviser, one thing that the landlord will say is, “If you don’t go now, there will be costs when, at the end of the two-month period, I issue proceedings, or after that when I issue the bailiff notice, and you’ll have to pay them. It will be several hundred pounds at least, and if you challenge, or attempt to challenge, the action it could be more than that.”

[Lyn Brown]

I hate to extend my hon. Friend’s peroration because I am desperate to get in myself, but he reminds me of a constituency case in which a woman who had learning difficulties, whose son was magnificently supported by a local school, was being terrified by the landlord about her eviction. She left on the date that he told her. The council then had the issue of intentionality, and she has ended up, because she just could not cope with the stress, in a small village outside Bradford, and her little boy is simply not getting support. Had I known that we were going to have a long debate today, I would have brought every single one of those cases to lay before the Minister. Some of the stories that we hear, and know to be true, are just appalling.

[Andy Slaughter]

If my hon. Friend wants to pop back to her office, I can keep things going until she comes back.

[Lyn Brown]

I have no doubt about that.

[Andy Slaughter]

What my hon. Friend says is absolutely true: tenants are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they leave too early, they can be criticised by the local authority; if they leave too late, apart from the cost risk, they may find that time has literally run out. Increasingly, tenants are coming to me and saying that they have been evicted and lost their belongings, which were in the property after the bailiffs arrived, and that they and their children are sleeping on somebody’s floor, sofa-surfing or in wholly inadequate hostel accommodation and being moved on night by night. My council acts as responsibly as it can to try to keep families together and ensure that people are rehoused in the borough or as close to it as possible, but as we all know, schooling, employment, support networks and caring responsibilities are all disrupted by the process—that is very common now.

I hope that nobody here has experienced eviction at first hand, but I am sure we have all met many constituents who have. It is one of the most traumatic things that someone can go through. The humiliation, the cost, the uncertainty, the rejection—the whole process is just appalling, and it is now accelerating as a consequence of simple greed or commercial practice. Unfortunately, with the growth of buy-to-let and temptation in the private rented market, rents are escalating at a huge rate.

Only the other day, we were talking about the difficulty of building affordable homes. I am proud to say that my local authority is now building 1,500 new affordable homes, rather than knocking them down as it did when it was Conservative. However, the rent for a new social rented home is about 20% of the market rate, which means that building it requires a huge subsidy, which is very difficult to obtain. [Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) tutting, but he knows that that will just encourage me.

In 2010, all the support for subsidy for social rented homes was removed, so it is no wonder that there has been a huge decline in availability and more reliance on the private rented sector. There is a fourfold or fivefold discrepancy in rent levels and landlords are being tempted to increase their income substantially simply by evicting tenants and replacing them with others. Alternatively, they may be thinking, “I don’t want to make more of a profit than I make already, but with benefit caps and restrictions on the rent that the tenant can pay”—given London rents, tenants will inevitably be partially reliant on housing benefit, even if they are working full-time—“I cannot afford to rent to them any more, so I’m evicting them.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

In a moment.

I should not look a gift horse in the mouth, because the hon. Member for Cheltenham has come here to be conciliatory and supportive, so I will move on. Although I regard Labour Governments as scrupulously honest, fair and absolutely on the ball in many respects, I agree that there are one or two aspects of housing that past Labour Governments have not got 100% right. Shall we leave it at that?

[Sir Graham Brady in the Chair]

I think there is now a realisation that things have shifted too far in one direction. There is a willingness to look at the issue again and to effect change, whether through rent-to-buy schemes, which are a big part of the Mayor of London’s platform, through longer-term tenancies or through wholesale reform, as has happened in other jurisdictions within the United Kingdom—Scotland is the example that we have used. Labour party policy has moved on beneficially, not least since I was sacked as shadow Minister last year and somebody far more radical and impressive has taken over.

[Lyn Brown]

And less long-winded!

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

We live in hope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am always delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who always makes pertinent and important remarks. To carry on from where he left off, let me say that I hope the Minister hears the plea from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and ensures that when his council asks for powers to improve housing stock and stop tenants being exploited, it will receive the same powers that have been extended to my council. That would be a jolly good thing for the Minister to offer this afternoon. I realise that the civil servants behind her might suggest that she should not act so radically and precipitately, but I genuinely believe that it would be very welcome. It would show that she had listened to the debate, understood it and taken positive action.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for securing the debate. She has already accomplished a huge amount in the fight to secure safe and affordable homes for all, and the debate is an important continuation of that campaign. I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that the housing crisis is more severe in Newham than almost anywhere in the country. We have an enormous shortage of affordable homes, with almost 26,000 households on the council’s waiting list. The average time for a family to wait for a three-bedroom home in Newham at the moment is 13 years, and it has been higher.

I want to deviate slightly from what I was going to say to talk about my family, which was cleared from a slum in West Silvertown in 1963. I was born a little earlier. We moved into a beautiful two-bedroom flat overlooking the dying docks. It was that flat—that secure accommodation —that everything else stemmed from. My mum and dad had stability. They both worked locally, to provide for us. That home, however small and inadequate it was, gave me the ability to study, to build community support and to continue with my education in just two schools. So many children in my constituency do not have those privileges now. They have to move from school to school, or face journeys of more than an hour a day, which their families can ill afford, in order to continue having the same friends and teachers and some stability in their lives.

Instability is creating enormous difficulties for such families, and that will go on for years. Often it means that they are not registered with doctors. Often it means that the children are not fulfilling their potential in education. Often the implications of what has happened to them go on into the future. I could try a Conservative argument: there will be a cost effect for the families and for the state in years to come. Children who do not fulfil their potential at school will not fulfil their potential in a functioning economy. The children and parents who are not getting the primary healthcare they need often go on to cost the NHS more in years to come. It is a false economy not to invest in our families, and if that investment had not been made for me, I would not be here today and my little sister would not be a solicitor. It would not have happened and we would not have been able to accomplish what we have. I want the same for my constituents as was given to me.

In Newham, like many other places, the social housing stock has declined massively because of right to buy. The council did not see the return from that—the Treasury did—and it has not been able to borrow as cheaply in order to replace the stock. Half of the local homes bought under right to buy are owner-occupied, but the other half—5,000 in Newham—have made their way into the private rented sector, where rents have shot up. Rents in Newham increased by 47% in just five years between 2011 and 2016.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The lack of social housing is at the root of this huge problem. We should not play a blame game here, because the problem has increased under successive Governments. Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is now for all of us to work together to massively rebuild our social housing stock? Otherwise, we will not solve the crisis.

[Lyn Brown]

I am absolutely fully committed to building social housing and ensuring that the people I represent have proper access to it and to stability, because a single mum in my constituency, working full time on low pay with two children, living over a chicken shop, will spend 73% or more of her income on the private sector rent on even a cheap flat like that—73% or more of income, before paying for food, heating, travel or clothes.

Evictions from the private sector are now by far the biggest cause of homelessness in Newham, and homelessness is increasing rapidly. Some 14,611 people are now homeless in Newham, which is one in every 24 residents—the highest rate in the country. I genuinely believe that section 21 is one of the reasons behind the rising rents that have led to such a horrifying level of homelessness in my constituency.

I want to mention one story—I should have taken up the offer from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and nipped back to the office to get a few more. I want to tell hon. Members about Martin, who lives with his wife and two children in a rental property in Newham. The property had not been properly maintained and is not fit for a family to live in. The bathroom had tiles falling off the walls when they used the shower, and the ceiling was at risk of falling in under the weight of water that was sitting in the plaster. In his son’s bedroom, water streamed down the walls and through the ceiling, damaging the laptop that he needed to do his schoolwork. The landlord promised to act because Martin had repeatedly gone back to him in desperation, but the repairs were never done. Instead, Martin and his family were served with a section 21 eviction notice in August this year. He was given absolutely no reason why the family needed to move.

Martin is still in the property, resisting the eviction, with support from the London Renters Union. I pay tribute to the work that that organisation does in supporting many of my constituents who find themselves in similar situations. The family have been faced with illegal tactics from the landlord. He regularly sends his family members and agents to the house to try to make them leave—they try to bully them into leaving. Frankly, if it had been other constituents of mine who I am in regular contact with, that tactic would have worked by now and I would be arguing with my council over intentionality.

Martin believes, as I do, that this is a revenge eviction. By demanding their right to live in a home fit for human habitation, Martin and his family have simply made themselves more trouble than they were worth. The landlord knows that he can rent the property to someone else, probably for a higher figure, and can just sit it out and wait until they start to complain about the conditions, and then he will go through the same cycle again.

It is so distressing for a working family who are on a low income. They have had to fill out a homelessness application to the council. Given their financial circumstances, they may not be able to access any other private accommodation in Newham, because letting agent fees, deposits and rents are quite simply extortionate. Vulnerable and poor families are paying the price for a housing system that unfairly empowers landlords to carry out no-fault evictions. Our councils and our council tax payers are paying the price too. We desperately need to bring homelessness down and improve housing conditions in the private rented sector. For that to happen, section 21 just has to go.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I start by welcoming the Minister back to her place. This is the first time that we have had the opportunity to face each other in recent months, and I am very pleased to see her.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for securing this debate, and for her truly exceptional work to help those who struggle to get a long-term decent home in the private rented sector. She has been absolutely tireless in ensuring that the quality of people’s accommodation is sufficient and suitable for people to live in in the 21st century, and she is so persuasive that the Government supported her private Member’s Bill earlier in the year. I congratulate her on that.

For many of the 4.7 million private rental households in England, the risk of being evicted by a section 21 notice casts a looming shadow of insecurity over their time in the private rental market. In as little as two months after being served a notice, a tenant’s life can be turned around. For the one in four families with kids who live in rented accommodation, that can mean moving their children out of the settled environment of their school, where they have friends and connections. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) eloquently said, that reduces their potential, limits their life chances and impacts on their healthcare and education. She helpfully set out some of the financial ramifications of failing in housing in the first instance, making those families move into new and strange environments. For many, their ability to raise the money for new accommodation, including deposits that can now stretch into thousands of pounds, is simply a pipe dream.

It is no coincidence that the rise of the loss of a private rental tenancy as a reason for statutory homelessness since 2010 has come in parallel with a rise in the use of section 21 eviction processes, and Generation Rent research suggests that more than 200 households a week are being made homeless through section 21 evictions. The use of section 21 has severe impacts on those who face it, yet there is no oversight of its use to ensure that it is justified, fair or proportional.

Nothing sums up better how deeply unjust the application of section 21 can be than the experience of a number of my constituents who were moved on to universal credit this time last year. During the transition to universal credit in my area as part of the pilot roll-out, a property company that housed the vast majority of universal credit tenants—generally at the lower end of the market and in cheaper properties that are not always in the best condition—sent blanket section 21 notices to people in its properties. While the landlord said that it had absolutely no intention to evict tenants who did not fall into arrears, the form 6A that was handed to tenants clearly stated that they were required to leave their property on 15 January. That action by the property company left people and their families facing homelessness just three weeks after Christmas. Those tenants need not have been in significant debt arrears to end up losing their home. Only the Leader of the Opposition’s raising this matter at Prime Minister’s questions brought home to the agents just how unfair and unnecessary their actions were. On first reading, the letter indicated that the information on the form was final, and the full wording of that letter can easily be interpreted as saying that late payment by even one day would result in eviction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned how those possession orders and the letters can literally terrify tenants, which is something that I experienced on a large scale only a year ago. He also commented on tenants being issued with a possession notice and being terrified. If they are deemed to have left the property too early, the local authority considers them to be intentionally homeless. How does that now work with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and the local authority’s duty to prevent homelessness? The two seem to be in conflict, and I shall be grateful if the Minister touches on that in her closing remarks. I am sure that she will absolutely agree that causing families that much stress over Christmas and putting people at risk of homelessness due to Government system changes rather than to individual fault, and when they have no previous rent arrears or a track record of being a bad tenant, is not how we want the eviction process to work in this country in the 21st century, but that is completely legal under section 21.

It is not just the eviction process where section 21 has a devastating effect on tenants in England. Giving landlords the power to play fast and loose with security of tenure creates a power imbalance, which unscrupulous landlords use to intimidate or exploit tenants and to get away with improper and often illegal practices. Some of the most extreme cases of this were made clear in Westminster Hall last week during the debate on sex for rent, which was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). Shelter estimates that this issue affects 100,000 women each year.

When landlords can evict tenants indiscriminately, they can hang the threat of eviction over tenants at any time they see fit. Tenants, who are often unaware of the help that is available to them, and often unaware of their rights and where they can get advice, feel that they have very little right, even if they could afford—particularly in terms of legal support—to challenge whether they had been correctly served with a notice.

[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend spoke about tenants not knowing where to go to receive advice. One of the biggest problems we have in Newham is that there is no longer anywhere for our tenants to go for advice—we do not really have that kind of advice and services. We no longer have legal aid to look after our tenants, and we certainly do not have fully functioning and properly funded citizens advice bureaux or housing rights services, which exacerbates everything and makes it so much worse.

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have a personal understanding of that situation, particularly in Newham, because my mum used to work for Community Links, which suffered huge cuts in 2012, resulting in her redundancy. That was precisely the organisation that provided that kind of detailed advice, support and casework to individuals in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

When landlords can evict tenants indiscriminately, tenants do not feel empowered or that they have sufficient knowledge or support. When they think that they have a very slim chance of winning a legal case where a threat is made with no written evidence, they just think, “What on earth is the point?” and look for somewhere else to live, which can often be far out of the area, particularly in London. If a landlord is seeking to move somebody on because they want to receive a higher rent—we know that is the case due to the demand in the city—it can be impossible for people to find similar accommodation in their locality and local community. Landlords can use the threat of section 21 eviction to pressure tenants into sex, and too often they can carry out the threat of eviction, as there are no clear checks that would allow a tenant to challenge an unfair and punitive eviction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North was absolutely right to talk about the private rented sector as the only housing option available to people, now that the ability to buy is so far out of so many people’s reach. She was also right to talk about how different the private rented sector is from the way that it used to be perceived. We are approaching 5 million people in the private rented sector who will be there for the long term—who will be in that sector, even if not temporary accommodation, for many years. Surely it is right that when circumstances change, we should acknowledge and accept that and say, “Yes, let’s change the policy accordingly—it has to reflect modern times.”

We need a new system of evictions in England, with proper checks and balances to prevent abuse. We know that there are numerous valid reasons why a landlord needs to evict a tenant. None of us wants to do away with a landlord’s right to evict bad tenants, sell their property or move back in, if need be, but it surely cannot be beyond our capabilities to draw up a new system that reflects that while protecting tenants. It is a case only of whether there is the will to do it. Some landlords use section 21 to carry out evictions because the current section 8 process is too slow and complex to evict bad tenants, but we do not need a no-fault eviction process to allow landlords to reclaim their properties legitimately. It is easy to prove that a tenant is in rent arrears or has caused significant damage to a property, easy to prove that you are in the process of selling a rented property, and easy to prove that you have genuinely reclaimed a property for self-use and not to rent commercially to another tenant. So simplifying section 8 and putting in a proper system that means landlords must give a valid reason for eviction—I say again—should not be beyond the means of the Government. If we create a system that provides better checks and balances, there seems to be no reason at all to keep a no-fault eviction clause that causes so much hurt for thousands of tenants around the country.

Before I finish, I want to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) deserves a visit from the Government. I hope the Minister will rapidly flick through her diary to find an available date to go and look at how integral security of housing, quality of housing, availability and affordability are to people’s wellbeing and strength in his local community. A visit would be greatly appreciated.

If the Minister recognises that we have to root out bad and exploitative landlords; that we need to try to professionalise the private rented sector; that we want to tackle discrimination of renters and improve communities by ensuring that people feel invested in their properties as homes and not somebody else’s investment; and that the private rented sector is a valued and necessary part of the housing mix in this country while we wait for councils to be able to start building more social homes, hopefully she will agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North has proposed today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

Fortunately, as we have so much time, I have an extremely long speech and the hon. Gentleman might be stunned to hear what I have to say. Or he may not.

Growing numbers of tenants are families or older people and the Government are firmly committed to helping them. The measures announced in the housing White Paper mean that most tenants in the build-to-rent sector are now being offered tenancies of a minimum of three years. We recently consulted on overcoming the barriers to longer tenancies in the private rented sector. We sought views on a three-year longer tenancy model with a six-month break clause and asked for views on its viability and how it can be implemented. The consultation closed at the end of August and we are now analysing responses.

A three-year tenancy is one option. However, we have not made any policy decisions regarding tenancy length, whether to change the legislation on section 21 evictions or how our proposed model could be implemented. We are considering the consultation responses fully before making any policy decisions and will set out next steps shortly. In the meantime, for tenants who want a longer tenancy, we have published a model tenancy agreement that landlords and tenants can choose to use as the basis for longer, family-friendly tenancies. We have also published “How to Rent” and “How to Let” guides for tenants and landlords to support them in understanding their rights and responsibilities.

To answer some of the points made by the hon. Members for Westminster North and for Easington (Grahame Morris), the Government recognise the important role that private landlords play in supporting the UK economy and in providing homes to millions of people across the country. We recognise that in order to continue to offer housing, landlords need the flexibility to be able to get their property back quickly when circumstances change. Without those assurances, landlords would be less willing to enter and stay in the market, which does not help tenants.

We recognise that some landlords have concerns about the section 8 eviction process and instead use the section 21 accelerated procedure. We are keen to understand those concerns, and last month, on 13 November, we launched a call for evidence to better understand the experience of courts and tribunal service users in property cases. The call for evidence seeks views from members of the judiciary, landlords and tenants on the private landlord possession action process in the county court and the case for structural changes, such as an extension to the remit of the property tribunal or a new housing court.

There have been calls from hon. Members here today to abolish section 21 evictions. As I have said, we have not yet made any firm policy decisions on whether to legislate to alter the provisions set out in section 21. We first want to consider carefully the responses to the call for evidence on user experience of the courts.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; she knows that I have a soft spot for her. What will I say to Martin about what she has offered this afternoon? Can I say that she is considering getting rid of section 21, or that his rights will be enhanced by the Government’s future actions? What advice would she like me to give to Martin?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am sure that the hon. Lady has espoused the brilliance of the licensing scheme in Newham and the brilliance of her council. Perhaps her council should have gone round to the flat to deal with the dreadful situation that she has enlightened us with today.

[Lyn Brown]

We will talk about it outside.

[Mrs Wheeler]

We will indeed; I would be delighted to have that conversation.

As I stressed at the start of my speech, property is a valuable asset and landlords may need to gain possession quickly for various reasons, perhaps because they wish to sell the property, or to enable them or a family member to move in. As I said, there is a clear legal protection for tenants, and a clear process that landlords must follow when carrying out a section 21 eviction.

I appreciated hearing what the hon. Member for Easington had to say about selective licensing and borough-wide licensing, and about enforcement of property standards. Selective licensing is meant to be a targeted tool that can deliver improved standards and safety in the private rented sector for areas suffering serious problems. It can be used at local authorities’ discretion, but where it covers more than 20% of the private rented stock, confirmation by the Secretary of State is required. That is to ensure that local authorities focus their activity on the worst areas and avoid an adverse impact on good landlords. Local authorities have an array of powers at their disposal for enforcing property standards. We expect them to use those to maximum effect and have set up a £2 million fund to help them kick-start enforcement and share best practice. Having said all that, the offer that I would like to make to the hon. Gentleman is that my officials will contact his local authority to talk about an application for licensing.

The 2016-17 English housing survey found that only a tenth of private tenants, when asked about their most recent move, said that they were asked to leave or were given notice by their landlord. There were 1.1 million moves into and within the private rented sector in 2016-17, with private renters making up a larger proportion of movers compared with other tenures. However, there has been an overall decrease in the number of private landlord possession cases since 2014. In England and Wales there were 20,590 private landlord possession cases in 2016-17. That shows that only a small percentage of moves in the sector end in the courts. Of course, where that does happen it can have a devastating impact on the tenants involved. The Government acknowledge that the end of an assured tenancy in the private rented sector can cause homelessness.

I want to make it clear that we have one of the strongest safety nets in the world to prevent homelessness, and we recently strengthened it through the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. The Act came into force in April and brought in a new prevention duty, extending the period for which an applicant is “threatened with homelessness” from 28 days to 56 days. That will ensure that those served with a valid section 21 notice that is due to expire will be classed as threatened with homelessness and supported until their situation is resolved—to answer a question that was put during the debate—with no gap between prevention and relief duties, if they have nowhere else to go. If the landlord intends to seek possession and there is no defence to the application, the local housing authority must take reasonable steps to prevent a person’s homelessness. Local authorities must work with applicants to develop personalised housing plans, tailored to the needs and circumstances of the household.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the Minister for her further explanation of the point about the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. Can she confirm that, were someone to leave their property early, having received the possession notice, and were they to attend the local authority, they would be deemed homeless, and not intentionally homeless, and given the same support as someone who was homeless as a result of another set of circumstances?

[Lyn Brown]

No, she cannot.

[Mrs Wheeler]

The hon. Lady says from a sedentary position that I cannot. The absolute truth is that the person must go to the local authority as soon as they get the section 21 notice, and the local authority then has a duty to help them.