Covid-19: Emergency Transport and Travel Measures in London Boroughs

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I want to draw her attention to a recent report by the Institute of Race Relations called “The London Clearances”. This report found that regeneration projects are being used to actively dispossess working-class communities and low-income families of their homes. This process, which is commonly known as social cleansing, has mostly been understood as a class issue. However, given the over-representation of black, Asian and ethnic minority communities in social housing and the racialised language used to describe London’s post-war housing estates—for example, in the aftermath of the 2011 riots —I believe this is also very much a race issue. Certainly, constituents of mine have been in touch about the impact this is having on them and the fact that some of the measures have been targeted not towards housing estates in very congested or overcrowded areas but areas that have terraced homes—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry, but interventions by their very nature should be short, and that was very long.

[Dr Huq]

I thank my hon. Friend for a point that deserved to be made at length. She makes the point about the main roads, and those are people too. They feel two-tiered now: their house prices are probably lower, and they feel they have a raw deal because of the constant gridlock forcing everyone there.

At best, this has been a mixed experience. Where these measures work, where there is a need and where there is consultation, they are really good, but if it is felt that they have been illogically plumped somewhere they are not desired, that is a completely different matter. Somebody said to me the other day that a bollard had been put on a very short road that has got only one house on it. He said he did not ask for it and added, “We feel penned in like animals.”