Temporary Accommodation

Debate between Lyn Brown and Bob Blackman

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

The reality is that under universal credit, a tenant can choose to have the rent paid directly to the landlord, and I would certainly recommend that families in this position choose that option. I also believe that the delay in paying universal credit should be reduced from six weeks to four weeks. That is my personal view, which I have advanced to Ministers.

On the question of solutions, I have already mentioned the idea of introducing a rent deposit guarantee project and a help to rent project. Many households face the crisis of not being able to raise a deposit in order to rent a property, and they become homeless as a result. It is estimated that by investing some £31 million a year, we could help 32,000 families in England alone to raise a deposit and secure a property at a rent they could afford. That could save the temporary accommodation budget £1.8 billion over a three-year period. That seems to be a sensible route to follow. What lobbying is the Minister doing of his friends in the Treasury on that issue? That proposal could clearly save money, save a lot of angst and perhaps save lives.

I also want to talk about the rise in rough sleeping. I applaud the Government for setting out the need to halve the number of rough sleepers in this country—and, indeed, to eliminate rough sleeping completely—but the reality is that it is on the rise and we need to take urgent action.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bob Blackman]

I have given way several times already, and I know that many colleagues want to speak in the debate.

Will my hon. Friend the Minister update the House on the question of rough sleepers—in particular, the question of their designation? In London, only about half the rough sleepers are UK citizens; a large number in London and beyond are from outside the United Kingdom. This is a serious problem. People are coming to this country, and they may have been trafficked or whatever: we need to get to the bottom of why they are sleeping rough on our streets today.

These are my asks for the Minister. Bed-and-breakfast accommodation is the most expensive form of temporary accommodation, and its use is on the rise. Obviously, we need to exclude the Grenfell Tower situation, because that involves a very different position, but bed-and-breakfast accommodation is an expensive and unsatisfactory means of accommodating families. The solutions to these issues will be key. It is more than 40 years since we built 250,000 properties in this country. That is the fault of Governments of all persuasions. We clearly need to build 300,000 properties just to deal with the need that exists right now. Will the Minister update us on how we are improving the level of house building in this country, so that we can address the fundamental issue of providing enough homes for the people who want to live in them?

Christmas Adjournment

Debate between Lyn Brown and Bob Blackman

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I honestly cannot answer that question, although I can say that at the different times in my life when I have had internal examinations the pain has varied, and that as I have got older, the examinations have become more painful. I have been told by some women who have had babies—which, sadly, I have failed to do—that they have found the examinations less painful after their pregnancies. However, some have told me that they become more painful with the menopause. Indeed, when my mother had a similar examination, she told me that it had been excruciating, and that was when she was quite old.

I am not sure that there are any research findings out there that would answer the hon. Gentleman’s very sympathetic question—certainly I have not found any—and I think that this is something that we need to know more about. However, a study published by the British Medical Journal in 2009 concluded that a local anaesthetic injection was the best method of pain control for women undergoing hysteroscopies as out-patients.

I have struggled to decide what I need to ask the Government to do in order to ensure that women receive the best possible care and treatment while undergoing this procedure. It is difficult for me to know that, because I am not a medic. However, I do think it is reasonable to ask the Government to use all the influence they have over policy in this area to require the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to work with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to issue authoritative guidelines. I also think the Care Quality Commission may well have a role to play in ensuring that best practice is delivered locally at each hospital.

[Bob Blackman]

I have listened with horror to these terrible experiences suffered by women. Is the hon. Lady aware of any other such treatments to either men or women where anaesthetics are not provided yet people are in such pain on such a general basis? That would clearly be a matter of the whole health service not doing a proper job, compared with a narrow field that we can possibly deal with very quickly.

[Lyn Brown]

I have not heard from others but my guess is that, should this debate be heard outside these walls, we collectively in this Chamber may well hear from our constituents who have endured similar experiences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman]

When we were gathering evidence for our report, the Communities and Local Government Committee went to Berlin, where people have much longer tenancies and where a partnership approach is taken between the tenant and the landlord. That is a much more appropriate way of dealing with these matters. Unfortunately, the use of six-month assured shorthold tenancies has grown in this country, more often than not to protect landlords by giving them the right to evict a tenant and recover the property if they so choose. These concerns clearly need to be addressed. We need longer tenancies that give greater assurance to tenants and place greater responsibility on landlords. It would also be helpful if landlords became members of the housing ombudsman service. In that way, they would be more likely to carry out the necessary work and the tenant would have a means of complaining if that did not happen.

I am sure that all hon. Members have houses in multiple occupation in their constituencies. When five or more persons form two or more households in a building, it is a requirement for the landlord to register that property as an HMO. Unfortunately, there can be all sorts of issues involved, including whether fire safety standards are being met. It is a fact of life that, under the terms of the Housing Act 1985, the maximum penalty for operating an unlicensed HMO is currently £20,000. In my borough, there are 89 registered HMOs. I encountered a case three weeks ago in which a three-bedroom semi-detached property was found to be housing no fewer than 11 adults, none of whom was connected in a family sense. They were sharing bedrooms and all the other facilities, and they were each paying £160 a week in rent. That was a nice little earner for the landlord. The property was not registered as an HMO. There are now 100 such cases under investigation in Harrow, and I believe that they represent the tip of a very large iceberg.

[Lyn Brown]

I recognise much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Those problems are certainly replicated in Newham. During the last Parliament, I tried to get HMOs reclassified according to the actual occupancy, rather than to the size of the house. Does he agree that such a reclassification would be very helpful?

[Bob Blackman]

I agree completely that that is one remedy we have to take on board.

I cannot speak about what is happening outside London, but in London the charges for HMO applications vary: Harrow council charges £1,200 for an application, which lasts for five years, and then there is an £850 renewal fee; Brent, our near neighbour, charges between £800 and £1,200, depending on the licence length; Ealing charges £970 plus £30 per habitable room; and Lewisham charges £180 per unit of accommodation, up to £1,800. Non-London authorities seem to charge much less. The fee seems to be discretionary and a council could drop it to encourage registrations, thus enabling properties to be examined and tenants to be protected.

As we have seen, we also face a challenge on beds in sheds. The Prime Minister was taken this week to a property in Southall that would have disgraced a third world country, yet a number of individuals were being forced to live in incredible conditions there. The Government have taken some action to try to close down beds in sheds, but often we are talking about illegal immigrants in accommodation tied to a job they are undertaking, which is provided through gangmasters and the equivalent. In addition, service providers such as local authorities and the health service are being forced to provide services without any income coming in; these properties will attract a certain amount of council tax, but not the sort of sum they should, given the number of people living in them.

Last May, £1.8 million was given to nine councils to tackle the problem of beds in shed: Brent, Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Newham, Peterborough, Redbridge, Slough and Southwark were all given money. The trouble is that that addresses only the tip of the iceberg; it does not address all the other boroughs where the problem is occurring. Ealing subsequently stated that it had carried out 4,500 site inspections in a year, in addition to unannounced fortnightly raids, but unfortunately the landlords were running rings around the officers.

In February, a BBC “Inside Out” investigation found two high street estate agents renting out beds in sheds without residential planning permission, including one in Willesden Green, in Brent. Rent payments of £1,000 per month were being taken. It was noted that the owners often claim that these converted buildings are more than four years old and so cannot have planning enforcement taken against them by the local authority.

Some actions have been taken across England on this issue. Slough borough council spent £24,000 on conducting a heat map across the borough during the early hours of the morning. That identified 6,139 properties where it was believed that beds in sheds were operating—that is just in one borough, which shows the extent of the scandal. The hon. Member for West Ham referred to Newham, and the Communities and Local Government Committee has taken evidence about the action that its mayor and council are taking to identify and take enforcement action against the outhouses that are being put up without planning approval. I believe that that work has been extended to tackle other illegal activities by landlords. I understand that over the past year the council has taken 80 enforcement actions on beds in sheds, but a further 230 are still pending against properties in multiple occupation, which shows the extent of the problem in one London borough. We might have extended negotiations with landlords, but it seems as if these rogue landlords, who give other private landlords a bad name, need to have stringent action taken against them.

We must also consider the fire risk. The London fire brigade has estimated that over the past four years there have been 341 fires in buildings that appear to have had people living in them when they should not have been. Those blazes have caused nine deaths and 58 serious injuries.

I have mentioned the fact that illegal immigrants are often in such properties. We might reason why that would be. Migrants who are not here legally are often given low-paid jobs, are paid in cash and have insufficient income to pay the normal rents for accommodation, so they take accommodation from the employer or gangmaster in order to maintain their presence here. They also want to be able to send money home to their families. They are kept in poor conditions, under threat of being reported to the authorities and sent home. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of people traffickers accommodating their victims in illegal structures, particularly in the London borough of Ealing. Furthermore, if the trafficked victims escape and get work as undocumented migrants, they may resort to living in illegal structures anyway because the rents are often lower and more affordable from their low earnings.

[Lyn Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words about Newham. The action that the council has taken over the past couple of years has been important and effective in probably saving lives. We had a death in a shed from a fire way back before 2010. Local schools tell me anecdotally that people who are here legally and who have status are not necessarily aware of their rights. People who have come from abroad and are living here on very low incomes are exploited by the unscrupulous landlords he has been talking about.

[Bob Blackman]

Clearly, as the hon. Lady says, people who are here legally and have the proper status are often not aware of their complete rights and therefore are exploited by unscrupulous individuals acting as landlords.

One of the consequences of the changes in housing benefit has been to encourage young people under the age of 35 to go into shared accommodation because that is the only rate of housing benefit they will qualify for. I welcome that as a move towards ensuring that accommodation is used properly, but as more and more people share housing in the private rented sector, there is the unfortunate consequence of overuse and overcrowding of such properties.

Under the right circumstances a local authority may be able to force a landlord to repay rent or housing benefits if an HMO is unlicensed. Unfortunately, it appears that this is not well known among the public or even among London authorities or councils outside London. If it were known about, it would immediately dissuade landlords from taking in vulnerable people on benefits and exploiting them.

What do we do about the problem? It is up to local authorities to enforce the rules. If a landlord is operating an HMO—I have written to my council about a huge number of properties that I suspect are HMOs but are unlicensed—appropriate and stringent enforcement action needs to be taken to fine the landlord and to make sure that the properties are brought up to a decent standard. A clear attitude should be adopted towards rogue landlords who give good landlords a terrible name.

Proper advice needs to be given to people who rent properties so that they understand their rights, what they can demand and what they can take on. There should be accreditation and licensing for private landlords, particularly those that choose to operate HMOs. It should be for Government and the Department to ensure that tenants and landlords are educated about their rights and responsibilities.

There is hope on the horizon. There was a case in which a landlord, who happens to live in my constituency, was operating a property empire in the neighbouring borough of Brent, where he put 28 flats into four houses. He was prosecuted and ordered to pay £303,112 under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. This demonstrates that local authorities can use their power to stop rogue landlords in their tracks and take appropriate action. Rogue landlords will listen to only one thing: losing their income and assets. We must ensure that the people living in those properties are given decent facilities to live in.

Home Affairs and Justice

Debate between Lyn Brown and Bob Blackman

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

The issue of appeals is interesting. My caseload is similar to that of many other Members. When people are forced to lodge an appeal, it is almost always the case that they have failed to put the relevant information on the application in the first place. If people got their applications right, they would not need to appeal because they would be admitted rather than refused. The clear solution is to have proper advice and a proper process. People gaining permission to come to the UK before they get anywhere near booking flights is the way forward.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I, too, have a large immigration caseload. One of the biggest problems that my constituents face is getting good quality, affordable legal advice so that they can progress their claims. However, the Government have taken away funding for legal advice for those who are seeking to remain in this country, some of whom have been here for more than 10 years and whose children are established in schools. Families are being ripped away from the places that they know. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we are to have a firm immigration policy, it needs to be fair? Fairness means that there is access to proper legal advice.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I agree that it was disgraceful of the Labour Government to leave people for 10 years or more not knowing whether they had a legal right to stay in this country. I have inherited such cases in my constituency. The backlog of cases that had to be dealt with by the incoming Government was immense. There are sharp lawyers—actually, they are not sharp lawyers, but lawyers who are sharp at taking people’s money off them—who, when they have no case whatsoever, will charge people enormous sums of money to write short letters on their behalf. The lawyers who really annoy me are the ones who take money off my constituents and then write to me as their client’s MP asking me to do their job for them. I take the view that immigration rules need to be firm, fair and understood. The previous Government left people waiting, without solving their problems. [Interruption.] I am conscious of time, so I will not take any further interventions on that subject.

I am pleased that we will reform the position on defamation. Many of us who have been involved in public life for a long time know that going through the High Court when one has been defamed is not a cheap option. Anything that reforms that process has to be good.

I think that opening up the courts for television, if it is used in the right way, will quickly lose its novelty. I also think that it will help to get rid of the fear that people have of going to court, either as a witness or because of some other involvement in a civil case. We will get to a position quickly where people understand what really goes on in the British courts before they experience it. That is to be welcomed.

Overall, this is a strong Queen’s Speech, particularly in the area of home affairs. It has started a process that we want to see, and it will deliver a safer and more prosperous Britain for everyone who lives here.