Building Safety

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady can see that we are doing a root-and-branch reform of the building safety system, both in the interim and in the long term with the building safety Bill that will come forward as soon as possible. I am working very closely with local authorities, and today of course I have announced £14 million of additional funding that will help to support them to use their existing powers robustly.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is almost 12 years since the tragedy in Atherstone on Stour, in Warwickshire, which resulted in the deaths of four firefighters. Sprinklers were subsequently introduced into legislation. Can the Secretary of State not be more ambitious and ensure that sprinklers are retrofitted to all tower blocks and also insist that they be introduced into schools, so that we do not lose schools, as we did in Scotland the other week?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I think I said earlier, we will always be guided by the safety of residents, but we must be led by the evidence, and the consultation I am launching today will do exactly that. We will consider the appropriate threshold and whether measures need to be applied to other high-risk buildings of different types.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Matt Western Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). I appreciate some of the points that he made, particularly on social housing and on how Stoke is taking on the same challenges that face so many of us.

I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), who is currently not in her place, for securing such an important debate. I am obviously delighted to support her as I, too, put in to speak in the debate.

Clearly, local government faces huge challenges. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, the cuts faced by MHCLG have been far greater than those faced by any other Department. It is our local authorities that have borne the brunt of austerity as, of course, have our communities with the cuts to so many of their services—whether it be the hostels provided for those coming out of prison or the Army or those who are victims of domestic abuse. Certainly, we have seen significant cuts in Warwickshire. We have seen cuts to children’s services; closure of children’s centres; cuts to waste and recycling; cuts to fire and rescue services; cuts to our libraries—and the list goes on.

I want to concentrate the rest of my remarks on social housing. As chair of the Parliamentary Campaign for Council Housing, I have been pressing for more social rented housing since I arrived in Parliament. It is well understood that we are facing a housing emergency: 277,000 people are homeless; 1.1 million households are on waiting lists; and young families spend three times more on housing costs than they did 50 years ago. Just 6,000 social rented homes were built last year. Warwick District Council, which more or less overlaps my constituency, has built just eight social rented properties in the past four years, despite the fact that 2,000 people were on the waiting list.

I have been making my case ever since I arrived in this place, and I regard housing as the No. 1 priority for all of us in this House. We must fix this housing crisis. Shelter reports that 3.1 million homes need to be built in the next 20 years to meet the demand of those at the sharp end of housing need, particularly the younger trapped renters and the older renters, too. Back in the 1950s, in response to Churchill’s challenge, Macmillan, as Housing Minister, built 200,000 council homes. Meeting the housing need will happen only with significant investment in social rented council housing.

It is social housing that is desperately needed. Since 1980, house building in this country has been distorted by various policies, which have resulted in an average of just 25,000 social homes being built a year, compared with 125,000 during the post-war period. That is a loss of 100,000 units per year—4 million in total. The question that I want to put to the Minister is simple: how best can we use that £8.5 billion allocated to housing and planning? That is a significant sum and accounts for 80% of the total MHCLG budget.

This year, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government estimates that it will spend £3.9 billion on affordable homes—although that is often a misnomer. As well as home ownership options such as part-buy, there will also be social rented housing. To put this into context, back in 1953, in one year alone, the then Conservative Government invested £11.35 billion at today’s prices. Clearly, we are not doing enough. From speaking to Members across the House, I have learned that there is widespread support for increasing the budget. Where we differ is the proportion that should be spent on social housing, and there is real clear blue water between us on how that should be funded.

This call for a massive increase in social rented housing is echoed by Shelter. In its report produced by the Social Housing Commission, it concluded that there was a need for 3.1 million homes over a 20-year period, equating to 155,000 homes a year, of which I believe 100,000 at least should be council houses. I proposed that to the House on 13 June, and it was supported. This number is not pie in the sky; it was supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and, indeed, by Baroness Warsi. The only way councils will hit these kinds of numbers is through grant funding direct to councils, ring-fenced for building social rented housing. London Economics estimates that £10.7 billion is needed per year—less in real terms than the figure that was being spent in 1953.

It would be easy to think that the lifting of the local authority borrowing cap will be sufficient to provide the funding needed, but it will not. Don’t get me wrong—the lifting of the cap is very welcome, although long overdue. However, it is estimated to result in only £3.4 billion of investment in building council homes over the next four years. What is fundamentally wrong with the provision of housing is that too much money is being spent on the wrong schemes. The Help to Buy scheme falls within the remit of MHCLG. In my view, this scheme is totally the wrong priority and is simply being used to maintain inflated house prices and the bloated profits of house builders and developers.

This year, the Help to Buy scheme will once more account for the largest share of housing spend at £4.1 billion. The National Audit Office reports that two thirds of this—£2.7 billion—is in effect being used to subsidise homebuyers who could have bought a home without it, and one in 25 of those homebuyers had household incomes of over £100,000. Surely it would be better to use the £4.1 billion to build 40,000 social rented homes instead. Beyond MHCLG, there is of course the massive £21 billion being used on housing benefit annually. Again, surely this budget would be better utilised building social rented housing and realising those assets, rather than fuelling the private rental sector at the taxpayers’ expense.

[Mr Betts]

I have quite a lot of sympathy with my hon. Friend’s point about the Help to Buy scheme, particularly with regard to the NAO report. Does he agree that, whatever different views there might be, the Government should at least do an evaluation of the Help to Buy scheme before they embark on a further phase of it?

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend always makes an important point, and his knowledge of the sector is unsurpassed. He is absolutely right that we should suspend the scheme and think about how the budget should be used urgently to kick-start a social rented programme.

I say all this because of the pressing and urgent crisis of homelessness and rough sleeping. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) gave us an example of what this crisis looks like across our communities, as our housing markets are distorted by developers. Lord Porter put it very well when he said that a good home provides a good chance of good health, good education and good lives. The reality is that, without good homes, we are seeing a huge increase in social and health-related issues, all of which add to the already great burdens faced by our local services and thus our local authorities.

Local government faces huge challenges indeed: the rising costs and numbers related to children’s services; the crisis that is the unsustainable pressure brought by adult social care; the closure of hostels; the cuts to welfare services; and the closure of children’s centres, libraries and fire stations. But I would assert that the desperate need for social rented housing is at the core of so many of the problems we face. To that end, I urge the Minister to reconsider the allocation of budgets, to slash the support for and suspend Help to Buy, to lay claim to the housing benefit budget and to use that money to kick-start the industrial-scale social housing that our society desperately needs.

Social Housing

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that there is a housing crisis with too few genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; further recognises that the number of new social rented homes built in recent years has been too low; notes that the Government has set a target to build 300,000 homes a year, which is unlikely to be achieved without building more social homes; further notes that Shelter’s recent report, A Vision for Social Housing, concluded that 3.1 million new social rented homes need to be built over the next 20 years; and calls on the Government to adopt a target of building 155,000 social rented homes, including at least 100,000 council homes, each year from 2022.

It is an honour to rise to discuss one of the most critical issues facing us, and I thank the Backbench Committee for affording me the opportunity to do this today. Sadly, looking round the Chamber, I see surprisingly few people here to share the debate. I thank those who are here, but I am surprised at how few there are, given the very real and pressing crisis that we face in this country. It is the foremost of all the crises that we face.

The housing market is fundamentally broken, and it is the social housing sector that has been the casualty. As a result, homelessness is up 50% and rough sleeping has risen 160% since 2010. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of people are living in homes that are not fit for human habitation, yet this is the fifth wealthiest country on the planet. Despite that apparent national wealth, we are impoverished by crushing personal debt, large mortgages, high private sector rents, student loans, significant unsecured debt as great as it was in 2007 and stagnant wages that have failed to keep up with the cost of living. It is no wonder that the UN rapporteur has observed us as a country in crisis where the social fabric is not just frayed at the edges but badly torn.

This week marks the second anniversary of the terrible tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, and we are reminded of how recent and current policy on social housing has failed and continues to fail our society, so how is it that the market and the policies that govern that market are not delivering the much-needed housing? The social housing report commissioned by Shelter in January estimates that the UK needs to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next couple of decades. That is the scale of the crisis. If good housing is fundamental to the quality of our lives, why is it not the basis for everything in our society? Lord Porter put it succinctly when he said that, with a housing problem,

“you haven’t just got a housing problem, you’ve got an education problem, you’ve got a health problem, anti-social behaviour problem, whatever.”

It is clear that we need to reset the market and restore the principle that a decent home is a right owed to all, not a privilege for the few.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the market has failed in constituencies such as mine, where it is getting more and more expensive to either rent or buy, and that we therefore need to build council houses to provide security for people and their families, including accessible housing, given that more and more people with disabilities cannot find homes?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, and I will come on to it. I am particularly familiar with his constituency, and I know that many areas of our country have seen high house price inflation, which has priced out young people, a lot of whom would ordinarily want to stay in those communities. This needs to be urgently addressed through social housing.

Twelve months ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a former soldier at one of my Saturday surgeries. He was back in his home town of Warwick, having been discharged from the Army after 10 years’ service. A veteran of several tours, soldier Y found himself searching desperately for a job and a home, and he was not in a good place. He was really struggling. He had he been diagnosed with, and was clearly suffering from, post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldier Y was sofa-surfing. Until relatively recently, it would have been possible for him to access one of the hostels provided by Warwickshire County Council, but the cuts since 2013 have resulted in a huge drop in capacity and places such as Beauchamp House in Warwick are no longer available. I have mentioned soldier Y, but I could have spoken about any of the dozens of people I have met since my election in 2017, all of them desperate for help to resolve their own housing situations.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I would like to thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). I agree with him wholeheartedly about the need for a major council house building programme. The issue I would like to raise is the need for much greater funding for local authorities to build council houses. In my area of Reading, there has been an ambitious programme to build council houses within the limited scope of the funding that is available, but more funding is clearly needed. We have an excess of brownfield land in Reading, a former light industrial town. We have enough brownfield land to build all the houses that are needed until 2036, and I understand from colleagues that many other boroughs, towns and cities around the country face a similar situation in which former industrial land is available but there is no funding to enable the local authorities to build. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should be a priority for this Government?

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes another important point. This is absolutely about the cost of providing housing and land and about how authorities are facilitated to do that. This is the most pressing issue of our time, as I have said, and Government policy should be to help our local authorities. Indeed, at one of the meetings of the parliamentary campaign for council housing, which I co-chair with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, Lord Porter made it clear that, in his view,

“all the bad things in our society stem from bad housing, and the best way to fix any of those problems is to make sure as a fundamental that everybody’s got safe, secure, decent housing.”

I could not agree with him more.

We only have to walk down streets such as the Parade in Leamington Spa—and, I am sure, any of the high streets across the country—to see some of the casualties of this crisis: rough sleepers curled up in our doorways or sitting at street corners crying out for help, asking for loose change, desperately trying to create personal order out of social disorder. Inevitably, there will be an ex-forces person among them, but no matter—they are all one community now. Surely civvy street was not meant to be this uncivilised or, for an ex-soldier, this ungrateful.

To understand how we got here and where we need to go, it is worth briefly considering the past and how times have changed. Had soldier Y been lucky enough to have been returning from the first world war rather than from Afghanistan 100 years on, he would have been greeted by the then Prime Minister’s promise of “homes fit for heroes”. Lloyd George recognised the importance of social provision and knew that because house building would be difficult it was only through subsidies that local authorities would be able to afford to deliver them. His progressive social and local authority approach kick-started the sector and resulted not just in a growth of housing supply but in improved standards in all new homes. It was actually following world war two that the council house really arrived. Enlightened administrators strove to deliver them, and none more so than the Attlee Government, which, despite the ravages of war and the shortage of materials, managed to build more than 1 million new homes to replace many of those that had been destroyed.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

On that point, statistics show that the construction of social housing has fallen 90% since 2010? Under the right-to-buy scheme, houses are not replaced on a one-for-one basis, which has led to a drastic fall in provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at how we can tackle these issues?

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. We have seen an absolute crash in the supply of social homes, and I understand that only one is being built for every five we are losing. Those are the tragic numbers that underline this, and they explain why we are seeing so many social crises in our communities.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I should like to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this really important debate. Although there are not many colleagues on the Conservative Benches this afternoon, there is huge support for social housing on this side of the House. He made a point about numbers. Cornwall is not led by a Conservative council, so I am not making a party political point here. When I came to the House in 2010, Cornwall was delivering around 700 social homes each year, but in this past year, according to the Library, the number was 1,437. That is a doubling of the number of social homes available to people in Cornwall, which has a very challenging housing market because it is such a popular place for people to have second homes. Where communities and local authorities work together and innovate, it is possible to use the Government’s policies to meet local housing need.

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I hope that she will make a speech later. Her point is valid and I am sure there are huge pressures in her community and other parts of Cornwall. I have discussed this very issue with many of her colleagues on the Government Benches, and I know that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and Members from Somerset reflect similar views. There is a lot of hardship in our rural communities related to access to and requirement for social housing. What is being done in her constituency is admirable, but it comes down to the ability to borrow and what can be done. She may be referring to provision by housing associations, but I am particularly keen that we should see a rapid ramp up in council housing provision if we are ever to achieve the 300,000-plus figures that everyone mentions.

As I was saying, the achievements of the post-war period were extraordinary, and under the Attlee Government an astonishing 80% of houses built were council houses. Materials were in short supply, but they achieved it. The boom continued under the incoming Conservative Government. In response to Churchill’s challenge, Macmillan who had been appointed Minister for Housing, delivered more than 750,000 council homes in just one year: things had never been so good.

The giddy heights of those years and new social housing developments ended abruptly at the end of the 1970s with the radical policy changes of the incoming Conservative Government, and one of their first moves was to cut public expenditure for housing. Giving council tenants the opportunity to buy the homes they were living in, at a generous discount, was one of the defining policies of the Thatcher era and more than 2 million council tenants took advantage of it.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the first acts of the incoming Conservative Government was to shift housing subsidy away from bricks and mortar and into housing benefit? It was a conscious policy decision and the consequence was not a shortage of money, but the spending of £22 billion a year on personal subsidy instead. As lower-income people are increasingly trapped in the expensive private rented sector, that is set to explode still further. The collapse in social house building is an extremely false economy.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend who is very learned on this topic, and I bow to her knowledge. She is right: what we have seen is a transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. A big chunk of that budget has gone into private pockets, as opposed to into public assets. Changing that is the ambition behind my motion.

That period was a watershed: it developed our unhealthy obsession with housing and a dependence on the fortunes of the private sector to satisfy it. Rising house prices were all the talk in the pub and they became the nation’s conversation, fuelled by the press and an insatiable media seeking feel-good stories and helped along by the Government of the day. House prices seemed an impossibly good driver of the economy. Those who had capital and a good wage could buy a place and, through the sell-off of council houses, those fortunate enough to have access to money could bag a bargain. What was not to like?

Perhaps most striking was the impact on young people who rapidly realised the possibility of ownership was drifting away from them: data shows that at the age of 27, those born in the late 1980s had a home ownership rate of 25%, compared with 33% for those born five years earlier in the decade and 43% for those born 10 years earlier in the late 1970s. With hindsight—perhaps for some of us at the time—the excesses of the heady 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, when access to finance was unlimited and we saw the mass sell-off of council housing, were akin to financial ecstasy, but it would only be a matter of time before the market would go cold turkey. Of course it did, with the credit crunch and the global financial crash of 2007-08. At the core of that financial disaster was over-leveraged debt and bad property debt. Lending had reached unsustainable levels.

We reach the present day, and housing has become simply too expensive—ridiculously so against relatively flat incomes. The average house price in my constituency is £285,000, 20% more than the average in England and Wales. Supply has been constrained for decades, but now the wrong housing is being built in the wrong places, and it is unsustainable. People are increasingly being driven out of the communities that they work in, such as in my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, and that threatens the local economy. Though average salaries are greater than the average for England and Wales, they are only 10% higher, meaning an absolute differential of 10% against the average house price. Put another way, the ratio of house price to wage is 9.2; for England and Wales it is 8.0.

Despite all that, the council has built just eight social homes in the past four years. Soldier Y is not just an individual: he is the victim of a systemic problem in our housing provision—market is no longer the right word. That is why we need to re-set the sector. Yes, the Government have set an ambition of building 300,000 homes, but they are falling way short with just 223,300 built last year, even with the numbers being distorted by the permitted development of office blocks that are often wholly unsuitable to long-term or family accommodation. While 47,000 new affordable homes were delivered in 2017-18, 57% were homes for affordable rent, 23% for shared ownership and just 14% for social rent. For many people, affordable rents are no longer affordable, given that in reality they can be set at up to 80% of market rates.

Most concerning is that the Government have no target for social rented housing. As I said earlier, Shelter’s commission on social housing estimates that 3.1 million homes need to be built in the next 20 years if we are to arrest this crisis. That is an average of 155,000 a year, which would cost only £10.7 billion per year. Just 6,500 homes were built last year, and at that rate only 130,000 would get built over the next 20 years, or just 4%.

We could afford to build those homes. According to Shelter’s report and data provided by the New Economics Foundation, we currently spend £21 billion on housing benefit annually, money that more often than not is going to private landlords. Instead, what we have seen is a massive increase in the private rental sector, insecure tenancies, fees scandals, rogue landlords and too little agency involvement in enforcement among local authorities.

What needs to be done? I want to see a radical reconstruction of our communities. In Tuesday’s debate, the Minister suggested that it is a complicated landscape, but I am afraid I have to disagree. We have made it complicated by yielding to market interests and failing to regulate in the interests of our people and our communities. In my view, we need to urgently reform planning, adopting a model similar to that in Germany; resurrect a regional spatial strategy, including for new towns and villages; reform compulsory purchase; scrap the nonsense that is viability, which is a scam exploited by corporate house builders; and ensure a 50% minimum of social housing on all greenfield developments and 80% on all brownfield sites in towns and cities.

We can address the funding though redirecting housing benefit to investment in the assets that come from building new homes. We should stop the sell-off of 50,000 social rented homes a year, and I urge an end to the right to buy. There are so many things we could do. I have talked about funding, and there is also the possibility of using pension funds, whether local authority pension funds or new ones, to support building homes. Birmingham and Greater Manchester are leading the way. On land, we could do so much with the public estate rather than selling it off to the highest bidder.

I am conscious of time and I know that many Opposition Members wish to speak. As I have said, we face a crisis and, to paraphrase Macmillan, the housing market has never been so broken. Homelessness is now 277,000 and 1.1 million are on housing waiting lists, while rough sleeping has risen 165% since 2010. The Government could, and should, deliver 3.1 million social homes over the next 20 years. It is an explicit target of 155,000 social rented homes a year and it is critical that we focus minds on delivering it. That is what my motion seeks to do. Without it, the housing crisis will only get worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

May I start by thanking everyone across the House for their incredibly valuable contributions to what I would agree with the Minister was a constructive and illuminating debate. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) for supporting and sponsoring this debate today.

As we have heard, it is generally understood that housing is particularly important, but that social housing is even more so. We have heard from across the country just how expensive housing can be in so many of our towns and cities. We have heard about multiples of 20 against average income, such is the expense of property—certainly in Cambridge, London and elsewhere.

We have also heard just how popular social housing and council housing can be and about the massive loss of stock we have suffered in recent decades. My hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) gave good examples of what can be done when local authorities have the foresight and the ambition to deliver good-quality social housing. We also heard illustrations from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who described the reality for her constituents and the hardship that they face.

Elsewhere, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) talked about the struggles that people still face incurring the bedroom tax and asked why that tax still had not been cancelled.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted very well the reality for young people in particular and explained what a struggle it is for millennials to get on the housing ladder.

I also thank the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), who highlighted the very positive reality north of the border and described what it had been possible to achieve in delivering housing as a result of being liberated from some of the constraints we have here. He also talked about the challenges and the threats from universal credit and of Help to Buy.

I thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for her excellent summary of the debate. I will not attempt to repeat that, but she rightly highlighted the reality of what has happened, as we find ourselves still reflecting on Grenfell two years on. She talked about all the mistakes that were made with Lakanal and described how people were indifferent and not listening. That case and those arguments have also been well set out in the campaign led by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). I thank the Minister for his summary and for his warm words, and I look forward to working with him in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House recognises that there is a housing crisis with too few genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; further recognises that the number of new social rented homes built in recent years has been too low; notes that the Government has set a target to build 300,000 homes a year, which is unlikely to be achieved without building more social homes; further notes that Shelter’s recent report, A Vision for Social Housing, concluded that 3.1 million new social rented homes need to be built over the next 20 years; and calls on the Government to adopt a target of building 155,000 social rented homes, including at least 100,000 council homes, each year from 2022.

Sikhs: Contribution to the UK

Matt Western Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) for securing this extremely important debate today. I want to start by putting on the record my sincere gratitude for all the support and good will that I have received from the Sikh community in Coventry. Their help and encouragement has been and will always be very much appreciated.

There are many gurdwaras in my constituency and across Coventry. They are not only places of worship, but important community hubs that bring people together and, as anyone who has visited a temple will know, are places of great benevolence, where everyone is welcome and food is shared with the rest of the community. The annual Vaisakhi celebration is firmly woven into our city’s cultural calendar. Thousands of people take part in the Nagar Kirtan—the parade—which starts at the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Parkash in my constituency, and is a joyous and inclusive celebration that is attended and enjoyed by Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike. The event contributes successfully to broadening our city’s cultural life.

Similarly, the Sikh community contributes tremendously to the success of the economy of both Coventry and this country. The Sikh community certainly punches above its weight in this area, with a deserved reputation for having a strong work ethic and being disproportionately successful in business. It is a similar story in our vital public services, where Sikhs make such an invaluable contribution to our armed forces, our NHS and our education sector.

As well as the cultural and economic contribution that the Sikh community makes to our city, there is a significant social contribution, not least to the health and wellbeing of our environment. Sikhs have a strong relationship with the environment, which is an integral part of their faith and identity. That connection with the natural world prompted Coventry’s Sikhs to commit to planting more than 550 trees across the city to mark the 550th anniversary of the birth of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. That fantastic initiative will help to restore nature to our cities, parks and green spaces, and secure a healthy, resilient and sustainable environment that will benefit people and wildlife for generations to come.

That sense of social responsibility does not end with the natural environment. Public service is hugely important to Sikh identity, and helping others is part of their way of life. Sikhs constantly strive to do more and find new ways of contributing to their local community, whether that is through the time they give up or the money they donate to important local charities and projects. I admire and am grateful for their work throughout my city, and I thank the 16,000 Sikhs in Coventry for their social, cultural and economic contributions.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I echo the points that my hon. Friend is making so well. In my constituency, the Sikh community has done a huge job and been at the heart of our community, both commercially and through its public leadership. I place on the record my thanks to Mota Singh, who is standing down as a councillor after 40 years of public service. What a terrific record that has been.

[Colleen Fletcher]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Sikhs contribute so much each and every day across all walks of life, and their culture, diversity, enterprise and values of faith, family, and community help to make our city a more unique, integrated, tolerant and vibrant place to live in, work and visit.

Housing

Matt Western Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing two things. He is quite right that the standard assessment of housing need is meant to be a starting point from which councils assess, plus or minus, what they think they can address, subject to constraints and their other duties in the planning system. That, however, is separate from the Government’s housing deal. We are using the money available for those deals to stimulate ambition. Local authorities should deliver more than would otherwise be delivered in their plan and can justify the need for infrastructure on that basis. We have done successful deals, for example with Oxfordshire, and we are having a number of conversations. Critical to that is stimulating and encouraging every part of the country to play its part in building the homes the next generation needs by being ambitious about their targets.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The Minister talks about being ambitious and setting targets. Does he accept the figure, published by the Shelter commission in January, that we need to build 155,000 social homes a year for the next 20 years?

[Kit Malthouse]

I accept that we need to build a hell of a lot more homes of all types and that is exactly what we are trying to do. We are in the process of creating a situation where everyone who wants to build can build and can seek assistance from the Government to do so, if they are willing to be ambitious—from the private sector to housing associations, councils or anybody who wants to build. We think that this problem is so acute that we cannot be partial about who gets to build the homes.

Housing

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bacon]

Yes, I do, although I could easily get into a long discussion about viability that would consume the rest of this debate, which I cannot do. There are big problems with the whole concept of the way in which we calculate viability. However, I congratulate the Government on helping Cheltenham bring forward what sounds like a very important scheme.

The Right to Build Task Force has been going for two years. We have scraped together £300,000, courtesy of the Nationwide building society’s charitable foundation, the Nationwide Foundation. Over 50 organisations have been helped, of which 60% are local councils, with the rest being community groups, landowners and developers. There is a whole range of examples of its work. Aylesbury Woodlands in Buckinghamshire will have a project where 15% of all the new homes are custom and self-build. Cornwall has an ambition to bring forward up to 1,000 serviced plots across the county. I am looking around for my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), who arranged the meeting we had with the Prime Minister on this very subject and who is a passionate believer in more serviced plots. North Northamptonshire has a plan whereby as many as 10% of homes could be custom and self-built across several different local authorities. There are rural areas such as Eden in Cumbria, which is looking at a range of opportunities for affordable homes for local people. King’s Lynn and North Norfolk, in my own county of Norfolk, has agreed an action plan to drive up delivery across the area with landowners and smaller builders. A lot is going on already, but the thing is that there could be very much more going on.

This is the fundamental point. It is a quote from Andrew Baddeley-Chappell, a former director of Nationwide building society, who is now the chief executive of NaCSBA, while still chairing the Bank of England residential property forum. He has said:

“Custom and Self-build can deliver more and better homes that more people aspire to live in and that communities are happier to see built.”

An exegesis of that would basically cover most of what I want to say.

If we want more homes, we have to build them in a way that people want. At the moment, the problem is that most local people feel they have no say or voice in what gets built, where it gets built, what it looks like, how it performs—its thermal performance and therefore what it costs to run—and, absolutely crucially, who gets the chance to live there. If we change all that, we change the conversation. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the former shadow Secretary of State said, we need to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. Prince Charles put it even better when His Royal Highness referred to BIMBYs—beauty in my backyard. We need to create an environment in which people actually welcome housing. We have reached the tipping point now in that more people want it than do not, because people have begun to realise how serious the crisis is.

As the Minister would expect, I have a small number of specific asks. The first is that we should have more Government support for the taskforce. We have already had some. I persuaded my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), when he was the Housing Secretary, to lend us a civil servant—a qualified planner and career civil servant. He would prefer me not to mention his name, but I will because we are so indebted to him. His name is Mario Wolf, and he directs the work of the taskforce. We are very grateful for the loan of Mario Wolf from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. He has done an enormous amount with very little in the way of resources. I mentioned some of the work earlier.

It is of course true that if we had more Government support, we could do more. The Help to Buy programme, which I will come on to in a moment, has so far spent £10.6 billion, and plans to have spent £22 billion by 2021. In other words, 35,000 times more is spent on subsidising demand than on a scheme to subsidise supply, albeit indirectly by helping to facilitate and increase choice for consumers—except, of course, that the Government are not actually paying for it; Nationwide building society is paying for it. I hope to have a discussion about that with the Minister at some point, because we are of course implementing Government policy. If hon. Members read the housing White Paper, they can see that we are implementing Government policy. If they read the Homes England strategy, it is very clear that the strategy calls for diversification of housing.

The second thing I would like the Minister to consider is a review of the planning guidance on custom and self-build housing—the guidance that supports the revised national planning policy framework—because at the moment it is outdated. Three things need urgent attention. On land allocation, many councils do not even know if they are allowed to allocate land specifically for custom and self-build housing, even though they are, and councils such as Bristol City Council are already doing so.

We also need clarity about what counts. Some local authorities are gaming the system, and in some cases local authorities are not clear what counts towards their legal obligations to provide permissioned plots of land. Some councils are allowing the conversion of holiday lets into private dwellings under the happy delusion that that counts towards meeting their legal obligations under the right to build legislation, and some of them may be in for a rude awakening at some point.

There is also the issue of viability. For as long as one has viability assessments, the Government need to look carefully at how they should work in relation to custom and self-build; they will not necessarily be the same as for market housing. I would be grateful if the Minister engaged with the taskforce on updating the guidance generally, so that it is more fit for purpose.

My third request is about the Planning Inspectorate. It is absolutely imperative that Government planning inspectors properly apply the current provisions of the legislation when they determine planning appeals and when they examine local plans. There is clear evidence that that is not happening as it should—mostly because planning inspectors are unfamiliar with the law in this area, which is still quite new. The obvious answer is to have training for inspectors. The Secretary of State has agreed with me at the Dispatch Box that we should do that, although it has not happened yet. I urge the Minister to pursue that and engage with the taskforce in identifying exactly what training is required.

We need something to help raise consumer awareness. Most people would like to commission a project of their own at some point in their lives; 1 million people would like to do that in the next 12 months, yet only 12,000 to 15,000 do. The reason is that it is very difficult to get a serviced plot of land. If getting one were as easy as it is to go into a Ford dealership and buy a Ford Fiesta, far more people would do it.

We are spending a significant amount of public money on housing, but at the moment I am not convinced that we are not simply making the problem worse. Help to Buy will have spent £22 billion by 2021 on helping 360,000 households. If we divide one figure by the other, we get £61,111—that is per household. We should be spending that better. At the moment, we are propping up an oligopoly that performs well financially for itself, with some horrible results, while making itself unpopular with consumers who cannot afford its products.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Bacon]

I am sorry, but I will not give way—only because of the lack of time; I need to leave the Minister a couple of seconds.

What did Adam Smith say?

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

The aim of public expenditure on housing should be to lower barriers to entry and increase choice, so that people can have the houses they want. If we get this right, we can engender a revolution in this country in how housing is done. If we get it wrong, we will pay a high price at the ballot box: almost nobody between the ages of 20 and 40 can easily, at a price a normal person can afford, dream of having their own place, even though 86% of people in this country want to. We need to design and redesign a system that allows them, and everyone else, to achieve their aspirations.

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

My home is heated through a community energy centre. That said, I am talking about how the gas is produced. I am saying that fracked gas is a fossil fuel but that there are renewable gas alternatives that we need to explore and invest in, and which the Government should be prioritising.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate to the House. I appreciate the point the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) is trying to make, but we have been building an unprecedented number of houses in the last few years, and the 15,000 to 18,000 in my constituency will all have gas boilers. They did not have to. They could have been heated by air source heat pumps, for example.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I completely agree. Getting to carbon zero is a massive challenge and we must start today. We must think about how our new houses should be built, because the retrofitting of these properties will cost even more. All Departments need to put their minds to it.

These problems are not unique to Bath or the UK. We know from the United States that fracking operations can result in the contamination of the water table. The effect is wide-ranging. Sometimes people cannot even drink their own tap water because of the health risk. A report in 2016 by the United States Environmental Protection Agency demonstrated exactly how the hydraulic fracturing fluid used to split the bedrock can contaminate groundwater and release gases displaced by it. Communities across the USA have been forced to try to mitigate these problems. We should not even go there. Why should we risk water contamination?

Added to all this is the amount of industrial infrastructure that will scar our countryside if these proposals are pushed through. Giving permitted development rights to shale gas exploration would in effect remove the control that local authorities usually have over the planning process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). For me, the context of this debate is quite simply the deeply worrying issue of climate change. We face a stark choice if we are to avoid extreme and potentially unstoppable change to the climate: do we continue to develop and exploit fossil fuels, or do we leave them in the ground? It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop dangerous climate change if we do not leave fossil fuels, including gas, in the ground. We can and must take a more responsible and sustainable approach, and that is why we need to stop the exploitation of shale gas.

I also want to talk about the issue of local planning, which other Members have spoken about today. There have been test wells in eastern Berkshire and other parts of the south-east, as was mentioned earlier. Many residents in Reading, Woodley and the Thames valley have deep concerns about our local environment. In our area, there is a long history of concern about the effects of noise and pollution from major infrastructure projects such as the expansion of Heathrow and large-scale gravel extraction. The very last thing that residents in our part of England need is a major new environmental threat.

I am conscious of the time, but I just want to add my support for a range of other points that have been made today. In particular, I would like to support and endorse the concerns that have been expressed about the relative weakness of the planning system and about the Government’s policy on energy—particularly renewable energy—and their deeply mistaken policy of cutting the feed-in tariff and not investing in wind power, solar energy and other renewables such as the tidal power project in Swansea bay. These mistaken energy policies stand in stark contrast to the policies of many other Governments, including the last Labour Government.

[Matt Western]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Matt Rodda]

I am afraid I am running out of time.

We have just 12 years left to reduce carbon emissions dramatically. Local communities around the country have serious and substantial concerns about fracking. Given the climate crisis and the need for radical change in energy provision, and given the indisputable local concerns, shale gas exploitation has to stop, and it has to stop now.

Rough Sleeping

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. On a personal level, it is good to see the Housing Minister back in her role. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) not only for securing the debate, but for the great work he has been doing with the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) on the all-party parliamentary group. I have been pleased to attend one or two of its meetings.

Austerity has many faces, but none is more damning than the number of people who are having to live rough on our streets. Across not just our cities, but our towns, the scenes of people sitting on street corners or lying on sleeping bags and mattresses and in bivouacs are probably the most shameful visible manifestation of a Government who that just do not care. One does not have to go far to be made aware of the crisis. As we know, just 2 metres from the entrance to Parliament, we see people trying to survive against the odds. Here we are in Parliament, the supposedly powerful legislative body, and yet we are unable to persuade the Government that halving rough sleeping in five years or solving the issue by 2027 is an acceptable aim. The public believe that the situation is wrong, and the Opposition certainly agree. In fact, I think most of us in this room believe that the Government are showing neither urgency nor ambition in tackling the problem. Perhaps we can persuade them today.

In the past year, two people from the rough sleeping community within the Westminster tube station area have died. On each occasion when such things happen, outrage follows. The Secretary of State claims that it is one death too many, and that collectively we cannot allow it to happen again. However, the fact that people can die so close to this place suggests that there is too much easy rhetoric from Government and not enough real action dedicated to tackling this humanitarian disaster. To restate the oft-quoted fact, we are the sixth richest nation in the world. Let us be clear and honest: rough sleeping did not start with the coalition Government, but the crisis did. The two Governments since have done little to arrest the exponential increase in the numbers of people rough sleeping. Back in 2010, 1,768 people were recorded as rough sleeping. According to the 2018 count, which was published recently, the figure today stands at just under 4,700. That is a rise of 3,000, or 165%, since 2010.

Perhaps surprisingly, my constituency of Warwick and Leamington has had the highest number of rough sleepers per head of population across the west midlands. At present, 12 rough sleepers are officially recorded by the district council, although that figure is disputed by charity and voluntary workers. It would also be disputed by the public, who see so many more people on our streets every day. In 2017, the figure was 21.

One of the primary reasons why we find ourselves in this situation is simply the basic lack of social housing, as we have heard. I elevated that issue here through the parliamentary campaign for council housing, which has cross-party support. Since 1980, successive Governments have failed to deliver enough affordable housing, particularly social housing. To put that into focus, in the financial year 2017-18, the Government delivered just 6,463 social homes, while nearly 1.2 million people are on waiting lists. By way of example, in my constituency, the council has accepted housing developments that have under-delivered social and affordable housing. In the period from 2010 to 2017, only 28% of new homes built in major housing schemes in the area—against a policy of 40%—have been either social or affordable. The lack of housing stock results in the council having to take a harsher line because it is essentially rationing housing, leaving a lot of people in unsustainable situations.

However, the crisis is not just down to a lack of housing, although it is central to the problem, and I will return to that point shortly. Under the Government’s welfare policies, rates for local housing allowances have been frozen for five years from April 2016. The LHA now does not cover rents in more than 90% of areas in England. Then there is the added challenge of having to wait five weeks for universal credit, which has pushed so many people into arrears. Indeed, universal credit has a caused a significant rise in homelessness and rough sleeping.

For many who find themselves living on the streets, the lack of direct and immediate support to address their complex health and welfare needs perpetuates the crisis. In 2017-18, mental health needs were most often cited as the greatest need among people sleeping rough, with 50% of those assessed during the period having a need in that area. Alcohol-related support was the second most prevalent need, at 43%, while 40% of rough sleepers were assessed as having a support need relating to drug dependency. Those needs are compounded by the insecurity of the private rented sector. A significant number of the new rough sleepers—38% of them—recorded their last settled accommodation as private rented housing. Specifically, no-fault evictions are one of the leading causes of homelessness.

We all know of cases from our constituencies, and I hope Members will forgive me if I give just one illustration. A young man in my constituency approached me not so long ago. He has been homeless since October. He resides in a car and has previously had problems with drugs and alcohol, although in prison he received support for them. Since leaving prison, he has been reluctant to go into shared hostel accommodation, because he does not want to be exposed to similar behaviours again. The local council, however, will not allow him a single room in a hostel, because that is not in line with the policy, which is a progression from shared hostel room to single hostel room, to supported housing and then to independent residence. As a result, he continues to sleep rough, because he is adamant that he cannot go into a shared hostel.

A year ago, I called for a summit and brought together all the local agencies and authorities to pose the question of how we could address the issue. The ambition we set was to try to resolve and eliminate rough sleeping within a year. I am pleased to say that the council and other organisations seized on that ambition. Just a few months ago, the local council and its housing team opened William Wallsgrove House, a direct access hostel in Leamington. It provides around-the-clock accommodation, onsite support and referrals for 22 people, all year round.

Although that is positive, over recent years the Labour group on the council has been pressing for a change in the severe weather emergency protocol. Before, someone had to endure three consecutive nights of temperatures of 0 °C before they would be provided with accommodation. Now—many years later, after much pressing and on the insistence of that Labour group—that has been reduced to one night.

What are the solutions? I stress that more social housing is critical. As other Members have mentioned, the evidence from Scandinavia—particularly in Finland, where there is an absence of rough sleepers—shows that the issue can be addressed by a housing-first approach. It is therefore critical that we end the benefits freeze, re-establish the link between housing benefit and local rents, and reform universal credit.

I will end by saying this: as we have heard, a further 600 people died from homelessness in 2017—up 24% since 2013. That is almost two people every day. At the current rates, many thousands of people will die before this Government are defeated. That cannot be acceptable.

Shale Gas Development

Matt Western Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mark Menzies]

I will touch on that further. The situation in Lancashire, particularly with Preston New Road, was slightly more nuanced than that. Officers recommended approval but councillors voted against. The issue is that we are kidding ourselves if we think that those decisions are being taken locally. Overwhelmingly, they are not. They end up being called in by the Planning Inspectorate, and for some of these sites, there is more than one planning inquiry that runs on at enormous expense and is incredibly complicated. The decision is then taken out of local people’s hands. The situation at the moment is fully flawed.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. That is the very heart of it. We have heard evidence in the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee about the arguments for addressing that, picking it up as a piece of national infrastructure and treating it the same, but are we not denuding our local democracy in that process? We try to respect our democracy here, and it is so important, particularly in the current climate, that people are heard locally.

[Mark Menzies]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

Tenant Fees Bill

Matt Western Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

The Bill should therefore create a virtuous circle, higher standards, more trust, better redress, lower costs and, ultimately, better homes for vulnerable tenants, with rogue landlords and agents gradually weeded out and the strong ones not just surviving, but thriving. Those are good aims, but they need good implementation and good review and scrutiny to deliver effectively for my constituents in Gloucester and elsewhere. However, that is the next stage. Today, it is good that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are supporting the Bill, and I urge all Members to do likewise.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I rise not only to endorse the changes made by the Government, but to support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and to welcome the Bill. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee heard wise evidence and counsel from various groups, including landlords’ organisations and local authorities, and it is quite clear that there has been a bit of a wild west for many years in certain parts of country. I am proud to say that I have some excellent, responsible agents in my constituency, but there are the less scrupulous exceptions for whom greater regulation is really needed, so the Bill is timely. I have lived and rented in France, where it was evident just how much tighter and more balanced the legislation was.

To echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby, this is really about rebalancing the relationship between landlord, agent and tenant to make it much more transparent and much fairer. For many years tenants have felt disempowered in that relationship, and over the past 20 years we have seen significant growth in the proportion of people renting privately. That proportion has doubled, and in some parts of the country, such as the north-east, it has increased by 200%. It is important that we get to grips with this, and the Bill moves us a long way in doing that.

In the past week I spoke to a student in my constituency who is facing tenant fees of £595 for one year. In some cases we are witnessing extortion, particularly in sectors with high churn, typically with one-year tenancies. We could have gone further, but I welcome the main part of the Bill.

As has been said in the Chamber, and also by organisations such as Shelter, Citizens Advice and Which?, the default fees could have been more clearly and more extensively defined. As the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, what is reasonable is open to interpretation. We have seen extreme cases involving replacement key costs, for example. I support amendment 3, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby, in those circumstances.

The level of the deposit cap was widely raised with the Select Committee by landlords and others. I would have preferred a four-week maximum, but I understand how we got to where we are. Deposit caps are a particular issue for high-churn tenancies. The idea of passporting, as proposed by the Minister, is a welcome move.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Does he agree with the observation, which has also been made by bodies such as Shelter, that an impact of high deposits is increased homelessness? Homelessness has tripled in my area of the south lakes in the past year, despite our building more council houses. A six-week limit would mean an average deposit of £1,100, which would make a rental property unaffordable for many people.

[Matt Western]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid and pertinent point. High deposits are very much part of the cause of homelessness in many areas, because people feel financially and socially excluded from the private rented sector. As I alluded to at the beginning of my speech, high deposits have made renting privately much more difficult. In the same period we have seen a 20% reduction in social rented properties, which are critical.

I will move on because of time. On the issue of compliance, the Select Committee heard how few authorities, whether it be because of less appetite or because they just do not have the enforcement officers, follow through on enforcement. As we have heard, 93% of authorities have not taken enforcement action against rogue landlords. Of course the shining exception is Newham, which, as the Select Committee heard, accounts for half those enforcement cases.

I urge the Minister to reconsider Labour amendments 1 and 2. If £30,000 is seen as too high a maximum, there should be flexibility for authorities to introduce a more appropriate figure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby said—the hon. Member for Harrow East mentioned that £5,000 is a cost of doing business. That is how this was all done in the past, and we have to break that for the future because of the growth and importance of the private rental sector.

I support and welcome the Bill, but I would just ask for tighter regulation of default fees.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

In the few minutes available to me, I wish to raise a few issues on behalf of my constituents who are involved in this sector, particularly those working for letting agencies. I thank the Minister for seeing me in the Department yesterday, along with the Secretary of State; he has been unfailingly courteous and very well informed. I thank him for listening to me, as he has to others, about some of the concerns I have shared with him on behalf of my constituents.

I had wanted to propose an amendment to cap the fees that letting agents could charge to £300 rather than abolishing these fees entirely, because this proposal directly contradicts the Conservative party’s long-held ethos of being a pro-business, pro-free market party. If these are the measures we are supporting, are we truly a pro-business party? Mr Paul Wallace-Tarry from Belvoir, a letting agents in Shrewsbury, certainly believes we are letting him down by implementing the Bill.

As someone who has rented a property in London for the past 13 years, I am acutely aware of the job that estate agents and letting agents perform. They carry out things ranging from the right-to-rent checks to negotiating contract changes, and from safety checks to organising the tenant move-in. Many times as a tenant I have called upon the agent for help. I believe it is very important to keep the equilibrium correct between the tenant, the landlord and the letting agent, and this Bill may be slightly tipping the balance in favour of the tenant, rather than the landlord.

The Government’s own findings revealed that the mean fee paid by tenants upon moving into their accommodation was £223. However, a ban on tenant fees will lead to rents increasing by around £103 per annum, so industry experts say. For a three-year lease, the tenant would therefore end up paying £309 in total, which is £86 more than the tenant fee. It has also been found that rents could increase by around £82.9 million as a result of the Bill. Clearly the services that the letting agents put in place are being implemented by professionals, and they have to be paid for in some way. The fear is that this will just go on to rents, which are less transparent and accountable than a clear, specific fee.

ARLA Propertymark has found that 90% of letting agents believe that a ban will lead to a rise in rents. Some 60% think that it will lead to lower property quality, and 40% think it will lead to a fall in employment in the medium to long term. If estate agents have to choose between their working relationships with tenants or with landlords, they will side with the landlords, given that there is no financial responsibility or duty of care between them and the tenant. This is what I want to see protected; I want that relationship to be very evenly matched.

I end by simply saying that if the Conservative party understands anything, it is the need to support small business. I feel passionately about the role that small businesses play in our constituencies. I never had the courage to set up my own business. I always worked for large-scale, multinational corporations, knowing that my mortgage would be paid at the end of the month and not having the responsibility of employing people. Many of the people we are talking about today did have the courage to set up their own business. They are entrepreneurs and they are employing professional people, and this is very important. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the extraordinary amount of care and professionalism that many of these letting agencies in Shrewsbury implement on behalf of their constituents. The Conservative party must understand the need to support small business, with less regulation, less red tape and less taxation in order to empower entrepreneurship and empower people to create the wealth we need to fund our public services. This ban is in direct opposition to that.

As I have said already to the shadow Minister, when ARLA Propertymark conducted a survey of all Members of Parliament, a newly elected Labour Member—I would get into a lot of trouble if I named him—told ARLA that he was not interested because he wanted the whole private sector banned, leaving only owner occupiers or social housing. That is the sort of prejudice that we have to deal with, and it is important that the private sector is respected and supported.