Social Housing: Furniture Affordability

Debate between Mims Davies and Paul Maynard

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of furniture affordability and social housing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I am surprised to be starting the debate early—I was taken unawares, but strike while the iron is hot, I always say. I am delighted to be here, partly because this has been a very tricky debate to secure. Every time I go to the Table Office, they rewrite the topic. To get pulled out of the hat, I re-submit it with that same title and it gets rejected, so I have to rewrite the title again. That causes confusion.

Then we had no idea which Department should reply to the debate. Was it the Department for Work and Pensions? Was it the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? Even the Minister did not know, but I am delighted that she has made it here today. Maybe she will enjoy the experience—who knows?

On hearing mention of the term “furniture poverty”, many people say, “What do you mean?” Some Members did so when I walked in the door. Many take it for granted that they have a chair to sit on, a fridge or freezer in which to keep food and a cooker with which to cook it. Far too many people in this country lack such basics. Some 26% of those in social housing lack one or more of the major pieces of furniture in the average household, compared with just 3% of homeowners.

Take something as basic as flooring. In social housing, more than 700,000 people—9% of those in social housing —do not have any flooring. The situation is worsening because of the cost of living crisis. Furniture inflation is running at 35%, which is even higher than food inflation. Appliance inflation is running at 21%. The answer is not to just go down to IKEA to get something cheap, because inflation at IKEA is at 80%.

The problem is not just the cost of furniture. There are some underlying problems. The first is the lack of a savings culture in this country. The average savings of people in my constituency are just £95, and most people in my constituency could not cope with an unexpected bill of even £500. That puts them in a very vulnerable position in the first place. We could have a whole debate just on the lack of a savings culture.

The second reason is the disappearance of cheap and readily available credit for the most deprived in my constituency. The usual financial service providers have withdrawn from that market entirely, leaving people with nowhere to go for credit other than to those who charge very high costs. That causes further financial problems for them.

The final reason is the lack of microinsurance products. The insurance sector has pulled out of allowing people to pay a very small amount to insure a fridge, cooker or any other piece of furniture. People are therefore flooded with large unexpected bills to replace significant items. When faced with that financial impact, they are often tipped over to the more dangerous forms of lending. I can spare the Minister a debate on illegal moneylending, but only because I recently had an Adjournment debate on the subject. Those unexpected bills push many in my constituency into risky doorstep lending. Often they borrow from illegal moneylenders, but sometimes they borrow from friends or family members. That is a type of illegal moneylending that is quite disguised, and it is a real problem.

Furniture poverty is not just about lacking items, but about the associated costs. The charity Turn2us calculates that not having a cooker can add more than £2,000 to the annual expenses that an average family of four face, because it means that they must rely on takeaways, which are becoming increasingly expensive. People who do not have a fridge cannot buy in bulk, store food for the future or plan meals. That leads to further costs, as they must rely on local convenience stores—again, we could have a separate debate on the difference between food prices in convenience stores and in supermarkets. Lacking a washing machine adds about £1,000 to the average bills of a family of four, because they have to go to the launderette to wash their clothes, which they often require for work. Launderettes are a rapidly disappearing phenomenon anyway, and significant energy costs mean that the prices they charge are going up.

There is a vicious, vicious cycle here. Let us take two examples. People may think that a dining table is almost luxury item and not necessary for a household at all—that it is something someone might go to John Lewis for, perhaps. I would argue that if we are talking about social mobility and life chances in my constituency, nothing is more important than the dining table. In smaller houses, that is where children do homework. If they have nowhere to do their homework, their educational performance will decline. There are 2.4 million people in this country who do not have a dining table, so when I hear about social mobility and everyone fretting over how to get more working-class people into Oxford and Cambridge, that is not “life chances” to my constituents. To my constituents, “life chances” means having a dining table as a space to do homework—something as simple as that.

I mentioned flooring earlier. I would love to have an hour-and-a-half debate on flooring. I put the Minister on warning: that is on the way.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

Flooring?

[Paul Maynard]

Flooring, yes—I am about to talk about it. You will learn something. End Furniture Poverty, the charity that has helped me on this topic, is doing a separate piece of work on the issue of flooring, which I will come on to.

Let me share a quote from one individual in social housing. He says:

“It’s cement downstairs and upstairs it’s wood with a lot of nails sticking out. It is a hazard…I have a young child.”

The lack of flooring is perhaps one of the great unknown scandals of 21st-century Britain. When someone enters into a new social housing tenancy and moves into a new flat or property, in all likelihood the social housing provider has ripped out the flooring in advance, often when it is in perfectly good condition. They do so because they believe that that is what they should do with void tenancies, and it means the person moving in is faced with a great bill to replace the flooring. Often it is simply beyond their means and capacity to afford it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mims Davies and Paul Maynard

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

7. For what reason responsibility for the Office for Disability Issues transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Equalities Hub in the Cabinet Office.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)]

The Office for Disability Issues transferred to the Cabinet Office from the Department for Work and Pensions in November 2019. It joined the race disparity unit and the Government Equalities Office to be part of the new Equalities Hub in the Cabinet Office. The new cross-departmental disability unit will work closely with disabled people, and disabled people’s organisations and charities, to rightly bring disabled voices into the heart of Government.

[Paul Maynard]

Ministers will be aware that the DWP is currently preparing a cross-government national disability strategy. At the same time, the DWP has lost the cross-government Office for Disability Issues, as it has been subsumed into the Cabinet Office’s Equalities Hub. Do the Government believe that this will enhance or detract from the eventual national disability strategy? It must surely be to its detriment.

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue and highlighting that it is part of the Cabinet Office’s Equalities Hub. In the meantime, the Department for Work and Pensions is bringing forward a Green Paper in the coming months to see how the welfare system can work with our claimants and people with health conditions. We have already done roundtables and workshops on this. This is a priority for this Government and my Department. Whether it sits in the Cabinet Office or not, it remains a priority that we will work together on.

Southern Rail

Debate between Mims Davies and Paul Maynard

Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend is right to identify the fact that the line will need investment, not just the £20 million that we have already put in, which will support the work of Chris Gibb, but the money to ensure that one of the most overburdened parts of our network is able to properly meet the needs of those who rely on it to get to work, to school and to all the other activities that life depends on in the south-east.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I, too, thank the Minister for the start in terms of compensation for all those who suffer this intolerable situation across the network every day, including all those using the route across to Southampton airport, often travelling to Gatwick airport from Swanwick. Will the Minister confirm that he is looking at the broad-ranging harm caused by these disproportionate, political strikes, which are affecting regional airports as well as local businesses?

[Paul Maynard]

I always recognise the importance of Southampton Airport Parkway in the overall network, both for South West Trains and on the Southern network too. I am always happy to meet individual colleagues with particular concerns, and I will be more than happy to discuss Southampton airport’s needs with my hon. Friend further.

Heathrow (Southern Rail Link)

Debate between Mims Davies and Paul Maynard

Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing this debate on a matter that is of great importance to her constituents. She touched on the subject of surface connectivity to our airports, which is an issue of national importance, and on how public transport can address inequality across the nation and in her constituency.

The hon. Lady’s points raise some eternal truths of both transport and urban policy. Cities with good airport rail links are more productive than those without. The shorter the access time to the airport, the more productive that city is.

Anyone who is here today hoping to discover our decision on airport capacity can move along because there will be no clues—I am no wiser than Opposition Members. Whatever the decision, however, this subject is always at the forefront of my mind because it will ensure the continued growth of our nation as a whole.

It is also clear that there has been a long-suppressed need for improved access to Heathrow from its south. Many passengers still access the airport by road, and uncompetitive rail journey times do not help with that. I used to traverse the hon. Lady’s constituency on many occasions on the 285 bus trying to get to Heathrow, and I took a very circuitous route around the airport perimeter and sundry car parks—it took an awful long time. That does little to encourage a modal shift off the road and on to rail, and it certainly does not do much to improve air quality in her constituency, to which she rightly drew attention.

The feasibility study that Network Rail carried out has to be a key part of how we consider improving southern access to Heathrow, and it is worth just thinking how access to Heathrow has changed over the decades. Just 25 years or so ago, only 20% of Heathrow’s passengers used public transport to get to the airport. The Heathrow Express opened in 1998, following on from the start of the Piccadilly line trains running there in 1977, and so by 2015, more than 40% of passengers were reaching Heathrow by public transport. That is a great step forward, but those people are still not coming from the south of the airport, which is a point the hon. Lady is trying to make.

Such statistics fuel our aspirations to do better and to have a better connected United Kingdom. I recognise that we can and need to do far more. The Government have come to power with a strong infrastructure mandate, particularly regarding rail, where customer numbers have doubled and freight has grown by 75%. More people are travelling by rail than ever before. We are spending £40 billion between 2014 and 2019 to support a larger and more mobile population. The hon. Lady lives somewhere that is a key part of not only her local transport network, but an international transport network. We are under no illusions about what a huge challenge we face in upgrading a network that, in many cases, has not seen improvements since the era of steam engines in the 1950s. We are trying to fit our improvements into a relatively short timeframe, on a network that is used more intensively than ever before. That gives us limited scope for how we put into the network complicated enhancement projects that risk disrupting ongoing rail services for customers in the here and now. We have to bear that in mind, too.

It will not be long until Crossrail opens in full—in 2019—which will bring not just the heart of London’s financial district, but much of east London to within 60 minutes of Heathrow. That will dramatically improve passengers’ experience of train travel, with services carrying up to 72,000 passengers an hour through London during the peak periods. That improvement of surface access will be replicated to both Luton and Gatwick thanks to the Thameslink programme. We are going to be improving substantially surface access across the UK, which is one reason why London TravelWatch has identified southern rail access to Heathrow as a particular gap, which we still need to focus on. That is why Network Rail is developing its proposals on the western rail link into Heathrow, off the Great Western railway. Subject to a satisfactory business case, funding in the next control period and the agreement of acceptable terms with the Heathrow aviation industry, that will also open up new journey opportunities by providing four trains an hour between Reading and Heathrow airport.

Southern access to Heathrow is certainly at a less mature stage of project planning, but it is absolutely part of our considerations for the long-term strategic vision for the railway. As I said, the absence of adequate rail infrastructure in this part of London was a key finding in that London TravelWatch report, and we should not forget that. I am always conscious that when we talk about such infrastructure projects that we tend to focus on economic benefits to the nation as a whole. I certainly hear what the hon. Lady says about the regeneration of Bedfont, Feltham and other areas, and I do not doubt what she has to say for one moment. We have learned that good planning is vital and that before every decision we really have to ask how it will benefit customers. We need to show a clear link to user benefit. These things must be good value for money, affordable and deliverable, but they must also be the right solution. As a Minister, I want to start not by identifying what the output is in terms of a piece of infrastructure or kit, but by understanding properly what the problem is, and what the solutions to it are. After that comes the answer on infrastructure investment, and that was why we were very clear in asking Network Rail in its initial feasibility study to identify whether there was a potential market. That might seem self-evident—to me, it certainly is self-evident—but we need to understand the size of that market, the flows of that market and what success would look like in terms of meeting the needs of that market. Network Rail looked at a range of options, with which the hon. Lady is familiar, and found very clear, strong demand for routes from Richmond and further out into Woking and Surrey, as well as inland from Waterloo.

I heard some of the hon. Lady’s comments about the way in which Network Rail went about this, and she mentioned the “Guide to Rail Investment Process”. It is important to stress at this stage that, in that particular report, Network Rail was trying to define both the scale of demand and how that demand could be met with a series of indicative proposals. I do not think that, at this stage, there is any thought of excluding any one proposal, or even of recommending a particular proposal.

The hon. Lady mentioned the initial industry advice, which is yet to reach Government. Network Rail is part of the rail delivery group that is putting together this industry advice. I know that it has met her and that it is closely liaising with Hounslow Council. Her proposal is now on the industry’s radar, so I have no doubt that it will be under consideration as part of the initial industry advice. There will be a series of options and investment opportunities that Ministers will be able to consider. Once again, this is about defining the problem, the outputs that could solve that problem, and the varying benefits and disbenefits of a whole range of options. I recognise that the council’s presentation has its merits, and that it needs to be included and considered as part of that process. I am sure that the industry will be doing that. I look forward to hearing the initial industry advice before we take our decisions further.

To progress the scheme further, I recognise that additional funding for further development will need to be secured. That will allow Network Rail to develop possible infrastructure solutions and to understand the costs and outputs of the scheme so that funding decisions can be taken. The Wessex route study—the feasibility study—will be taken into account in the initial industry advice, as will the Hounslow scheme, to form a coherent and integrated funding strategy. Businesses such as Heathrow Express, Great Western Railway, MTR Crossrail and TfL are all playing a role in drafting the initial industry advice, but the work is being led by Network Rail, which is helping to form the funding decisions.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

The Minister makes some important points about the reach of southern rail. I am listening intently as Southampton airport is in my constituency. I understand the importance of the Wessex route study and connectivity to Gatwick and Heathrow. In the work that we are doing around new franchises, I would like to see us being really bold about opportunities for Network Rail.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. As a former resident of the royal borough of Richmond upon Thames, I am always conscious that, for many of the residents there, Southampton was often an easier airport to reach than Heathrow, and the journey was actually better value and more convenient. Given the physical gap between the two places, that says a lot about the absence of rail connectivity to Heathrow. I hear what she says in light of the re-franchising that will be occurring.

I am delighted that Hounslow Council has taken the initiative to develop its own proposals and engineering solution. I know that Network Rail has met the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston and the council to take this matter forward, providing more expertise to highlight some of the key risks and issues that will need to be considered, as well as evaluating both journey time and train planning proposals. Any proposals to add trains to a network always involve complicated timetabling challenges that certainly elude my limited brain power in working out what fits where. We should always check whether we can fit things on the network before we start to over-promise what we cannot deliver. None the less, I welcome the work that is going on.

In the event that we can secure additional funding to take this forward to GRIP 1-2, we must consider it alongside other engineering schemes such as—but not limited to—those proposals that are also in the Network Rail feasibility study. We must derive maximum benefit from each and every investment decision that we make. We also have to take stock of what we are doing now to lay the groundwork for future investment. I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware of the work that is about to start at London Waterloo to vastly expand its capacity there, along with longer platforms for longer trains at a number of stations on the Reading line.

Work is not yet due to begin at Feltham, I know, but we are working through the complicated issue of a level crossing there. There will be 30 brand-new trains providing 150 extra carriages, and more Crossrail to come, as I said earlier.

There is a lot of good news in the hon. Lady’s constituency regarding rail investment, but I recognise that there is a particular gap in our network around Heathrow, so I welcome her contribution today. I hope I have reassured her that her proposals are on the Government’s radar and certainly on Network Rail’s radar. I look forward to receiving the initial industry advice and I am sure that once we have wider decisions about south-east airport capacity, this debate will take shape and grow, so I thank the hon. Lady for her time today.

Question put and agreed to.