Christmas Adjournment

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I smile wryly to myself, as the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) talks about being on a diet. He can look at me and see how it fails after 15 years. Clearly I need to take a leaf out of his book. The cycling in clearly is not working yet, but I live in hope.

There are some very important issues to raise, and I am glad to have the chance in this debate to raise issues affecting my constituency and the country as a whole. One of the key issues affecting many householders in my constituency is unsafe cladding on tower blocks and leasehold properties. In the early ’90s, Hackney demolished a lot of council housing stock in high-rise flats that had not lasted well. Between Birmingham, Glasgow and Hackney, we had more high rises than any other part of the country. We demolished those, but they have been replaced with private sector leasehold properties.

I must declare an interest in that I live in one of those properties. I am affected by the issue of fire-safe cladding, but the developer that built my block is funding its entire removal, so I am not financially affected, which is a blessing for me, but most of my constituents affected by this issue are not in that happy situation.

The Government have announced a total over the past few years of £1.6 billion to remove cladding in the light of the Grenfell tragedy. The first tranche was to remove the same type of cladding as was on Grenfell, and the next tranche was to recognise that other cladding is also unsafe and needs removing. There was, however, no new money in the spending review this year, and that alarms me, because that £1.6 billion was effectively re-announced. That is a little trick I am aware of as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. I say this to be helpful to Members on the Government Benches: beware a figure brandished by a Minister in this House, because usually it is not as simple as they suggest. The £1.6 billion available to remove cladding is exactly that; it has already been announced. We had the cladding fund announced in March just before the pandemic really kicked off, which was £1 billion on top of the £0.6 billion that was previously put forward and had mostly been spent. There have been bids in for the £1 billion, but it is about a 10th of what is needed to replace the cladding.

I have hundreds of constituents—there are thousands up and down the country—who are trapped in homes that are technically valueless and that they cannot sell or get permission to do anything on, even if they are less risky, because they need certain bits of paperwork, such as the infamous EWS1 form. It is clearly a bigger issue than the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government can solve on its own. Its budget alone will not resolve this. It needs a proper cross-Government review of how these people are going to be supported.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind)]

I alert the Government to a not unrelated problem, which is not about fire safety but about the plans to allow extra storeys to be built on top of high-rise blocks. Before the Government announced their plan, it happened to the block in which I live. We had a floor built above us. The builders then declared themselves bankrupt, and all sorts of charges are being levied on the innocent leaseholders who are having to fork out for faults that were not of their own making.

[Meg Hillier]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point and underlines the longer-term need for leasehold reform. I welcome the fact that the Government are committed to doing that. We have obviously had a lot of upheaval this year, but it is something that we all need to work on. Many people now live in leasehold properties and need protection.

We all need to join forces, and I will join forces with whoever, in this House and beyond, to try to persuade the Treasury, and perhaps the Prime Minister too—that is the level of the decision that will have to be made—to provide the funding. There are really only three ways to do it: through finance vehicles, although they can affect mortgages, as we can imagine people having to take out a loan or a charge on their property; as a direct grant, which would cost the taxpayer, but I cannot see much alternative given the fact that this consumer and fire-safety failure is the biggest in a generation; or the sector pays, which I would love to see, but we would have to wait.

I applaud the former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), for getting a ministerial direction for the first tranche of fire-safety money because he knew that it would take so long to track down the owners of properties and that so much legal cost would be involved that it would not be feasible. He recognised that, so I urge the Government to recognise it too, and to come to the rescue of my constituents who are waiting. It is an uncertain year and an uncertain Christmas and, as it stands, there is no further money for the 12 months after March next year.

Let me touch on the issue of schooling, and particularly the issues relating to covid. It has been a really challenging year for our schools and all the staff working in them, and of course the parents and pupils are affected too. When schools had to stop teaching physically, for the most part, there were not enough laptops. No one would have predicted that we would need quite so many so fast, but the Government continually overpromised and underdelivered on the laptops and other necessary equipment. Many constituents of mine—around a third of them overall, although the number fluctuates, particularly with more people going on to benefits at the moment—are on free school meals. They do not all have access to wi-fi or equipment at home to work on, so pupils have been working on their parents’ mobile phones that are on contract, not on data-rich wi-fi. This has had a real impact: the gap between the richest and poorest students is getting wider in a constituency where for 20 years we have been shrinking that gap. A number of my local schools are in the top 1% in the country.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that to connect to the Government’s Oak National Academy on pay-as-you-go costs something like £37 a day?

[Meg Hillier]

I gasp, because most of my constituents do not have £37 left at the end of the month, let alone to spend every day on wi-fi. It is a real problem. I have poverty in my constituency—people see the trendy side of Shoreditch and Hackney, and there is wealth, but there is also immense poverty—but there is no poverty of ambition and children have been doing very well at school. We need to make sure that the catch-up money is available. The permanent secretary at the Department for Education gave a commitment today that she would do everything in her power, but we know that her power is limited unless funding is available to make sure that the tutoring and catch-up is in place.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Will the hon. Lady support the campaign that I have been working on alongside the IT provider Cuckoo, which is calling on the Treasury to look at defining broadband as an essential item and reducing VAT on it to 5%? We are led to believe that that would save on average £70 per household, which is a small but still significant saving for many families.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman and I sing from the same hymn sheet: broadband needs to be seen as an essential service. The Public Accounts Committee has looked at the idea. Government after Government have not quite got there with getting broadband fully rolled out, but it is vital. It is heartening that during the height of the pandemic broadband did hold up for those who had it; my particular concern is for the people who do not have it.

The exams fiasco this year has really hit young people hard. The Government need to be really clear about their plans for next year. My key ask of the Government is that information is clear and timely. We have seen too many Saturday-night or Friday-night announcements from No. 10 Downing Street about what will happen in schools on the next school day. That does not leave enough time for headteachers and school leaders to plan and makes it impossible for parents, especially if they are working. We should remember that many parents will not earn money if they do not go to work: they do not get the luxury of paid leave, parental leave or employment that they can do from home, although that is hard enough for people with children at home.

There seems to be a real gap between Whitehall and the centre of Government and the reality on the ground for parents, pupils and teachers. The Government really have to get a grip on this issue. Only this morning, the permanent secretary was unable to tell the Public Accounts Committee what would happen in schools on 4 or 5 January. While we were in Committee, it was being laid out by various journalists who had clearly been briefed, but we were not able to get answers from the very top civil servant. That is ludicrous. That was a chance for parliamentarians of all parties—admittedly, a small group of us on the Public Accounts Committee—to ask direct questions. It seems that, as it stands, we will not have that opportunity today, on the last day that Parliament sits. We need earlier decisions and clarity on decisions and, crucially, school leaders need to be involved, because the logistics are vital.

I want to touch on some of the issues with tier 3 and covid. What concerns me, as I see Manchester and Leicester still in tier 3, is whether there is any understanding of the route out. My constituency, in London, went into tier 3 at fast pace on Tuesday night, and that followed a 10 o’clock curfew for hospitality, which hit my constituency very badly. When I challenged Ministers and the Prime Minister on the rationale behind the 10 o’clock curfew, I got the impression that it was rather subjective, which was very much proved by the introduction of an 11 o’clock curfew later. The Government should give some trust to the businesses in my patch; they are well run, well organised and can manage to run a very controlled environment inside if they are given the opportunity. We have also seen a huge impact on the creative industries, particularly the forgotten freelancers. I have a large number of them in my constituency, many of whom have not received a penny since March. They are living on fresh air, and it is unacceptable. We need a clear route map out of tier 3, and I look forward to that.

My final point is about Brexit. What a shambles. We are here today on 17 December. The Government—the Prime Minister, indeed—offered and promised an oven-ready deal. As I stand here today, we do not even have a cold turkey coming out of the negotiations. The Public Accounts Committee has 13 times now, in different reports, raised concerns about preparedness. With 14 days to go, it will be a miracle if anyone is prepared for the chaos that could ensue.