Cold and Damp Homes

Debate between Paul Holmes and Alex Sobel

Thursday 8th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I welcome the Minister to his place and congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing this debate.

It was the English Army officer and playwright Guy du Maurier who wrote that every Englishman’s home is his castle. In that phrase, he summed up the immense feelings of pride and belonging that people should feel about their home. Whether they are homeowners or renters, it should always be the case that everyone in this country—every child, every parent, every pensioner—can live in a home that is warm, dry and safe. I know that all colleagues in this House will agree that that should be the bare minimum.

The hon. Member’s timing in calling this debate is, as usual, perfect—it is almost as good as his timing in arriving at the debate with 30 seconds to spare. Maybe he should think about entering a marathon with sprinting like that—

[Alex Sobel]

This Sunday!

[Paul Holmes]

Good luck to him—I hope he sends his sponsorship details to every Member in the House. He outlined a very important case. Whatever party and constituency we represent, we will all have received the bog-standard response from a housing association or council saying that residents who have damp and mould have had their mould wash put in, and they need to keep their windows open and they need to stop using the tumble dryer indoors.

It is not good enough. All Members in this House need to push harder on the sector, and we need to push harder in raising the concerns of our constituents who have those problems. We must all do better, and there is much more to do.

In that spirit, I refer to the fantastic speech of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). She set out the clear conflict in the social sector between building more homes and ensuring investment to keep standards up in the housing stock. Those concerns have been raised by the sector with me, as shadow Housing Minister. I would not go as far as to say that I agree with the hon. Lady that it is impossible, but it is certainly a lot harder. I myself used to work for the largest housing association in the United Kingdom. We consistently had a line back to the previous Government; we wanted to be ambitious, and we absolutely wanted to commit to making sure that we had decent homes. The issue is that, with homebuilding targets relying on the old profit model, not-for-profit companies get stuck trying to deliver those targets. We need to do better at making sure that the sector is supported.

I am a great fan of the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi). She said that there is still a taboo around social housing. She is absolutely correct. I am proud to have grown up on council estates in New Cross, Bermondsey and then Lewisham. My parents still live in their council house. In all parties, we should express our support for people who live in council housing. For many, it is a great step up and a security blanket. I would be the first to admit that the last Government did not go far enough in supporting the housing and social sector. I am determined to change that, because I was created and grew up in the sector myself.

Every home should be a place of pride, safety and stability. That sense of pride is shattered when people are handed keys to a new home built with shoddy workmanship, incomplete fittings or insufficient insulation, or when people’s homes are not looked after properly, with poor repairs and maintenance regimes of housing associations or private landlords. They need to be supported more. On new builds, the last Government did important work to make new homes fit for the future, including by improving insulation standards, but where insulation is still lacking, we need urgent action. I welcome the new responsibilities given to Ofgem to oversee repairs and remediation in this area.

This debate is not just about building new homes to a suitable standard; it is also vital to legislate for the proper and safe maintenance of the existing and ageing stock. I am pleased that in the last Government we passed the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2024, a landmark piece of legislation that strengthens the powers of the regulator of social housing. The Act introduced Awaab’s law, setting strict limits for social landlords to deal with hazards like damp and mould. The tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak—I used to share an office with his MP, before he left this place, so I saw the tragic case borne out in real time—was caused by prolonged exposure to mould in his home and is a heartbreaking reminder of what can go wrong when we fail to act.

Such a tragedy should never have happened, and we must ensure it never happens again. There must be nowhere for rogue landlords to hide—either private landlords or social landlords. While of course holding this Minister and Government to account, I will continue to work with them to build on the progress we have made in protecting tenants from dangerous living conditions.

Proportional Representation: General Elections

Debate between Paul Holmes and Alex Sobel

Thursday 30th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel]

I am coming to that exact point shortly, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it.

The 2024 general election was a stark illustration of the problems with our voting system, and it is important to understand that it was not a one-off. These problems have been getting worse for decades, and that is set to continue if we keep the system as it is. We have gone from 97% of people voting for Labour or the Conservative party in the 1950s, to just 58% doing so in 2024—a record low. In the first-past-the-post system, that produces hugely volatile and erratic results—electoral chaos theory, as Professor Rob Ford has called it.

Back in the mid-20th century, parties needed close to 50% of the vote to win a majority of seats, but that threshold has been falling to new lows for decades— 39% in 1974, 35% in 2005 and, as I said, one third last year. There is every reason to think that this trend will continue. That a party, even an extreme one, can win a huge majority with less than a third of the vote is not just senseless but dangerous. If we do not address this now, I fear that election results will become even less representative. Governments and MPs will be elected with lower support than ever, and there will be increasingly chaotic and random results. That will drive trust and engagement still lower. That is unsustainable, and I think the Government know it.

Labour’s official policy on first past the post is set out in the final national policy forum document that the party produced in the previous Parliament, which set the policy platform for our manifesto. It stated:

“The flaws in the current voting system are contributing to the distrust and alienation we see in politics.”

I agree, as do almost all the parties on the Opposition Benches. We know that the public agrees—two thirds want the flaws in the voting system to be addressed before the next general election, according to Survation. The long-running British attitudes survey found record majority support for changing to PR, with those who trust politics least the most likely to support change. Are they not the people we need to engage? Just this month, YouGov found that support for PR hit an all-time high, with support for first past the post at an all-time low.

Every single MP in Great Britain has been contacted by constituents in recent days asking them to support PR in this debate. I have received hundreds of emails, even though my name is on the debate. The Prime Minister has made it clear that restoring trust in politics is a key priority, calling the fight for trust

“the battle that defines our age”.

If the Government are to win the battle, they must address our flawed voting system—one they know is driving distrust and alienation in politics, which means that millions of people’s votes do not count, and which most people do not want to continue with. That is why I urge the Government to take this first step by establishing a national commission for electoral reform, as recommended by the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which I chair.

The Government have said that there is no consensus on a new system, but that is exactly why there is a great opportunity to set up a process that begins to build consensus: a national commission to examine the issues that first past the post is causing, and to recommend a fair and democratic alternative.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good case, though one that I fundamentally disagree with, as he will hear later. He has just outlined his own Government’s position on proportional representation. We have already had an answer on that, so where can he go now? On 2 December 2024, when asked by the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), the Deputy Prime Minister said that this Government would not set up a national commission and would not examine proportional representation any further. What does the hon. Gentleman propose to do to make the Government change their mind?

[Alex Sobel]

I have just said that the first step would be for the Government to set up a national commission. This debate is the first step for the APPG to try to persuade the Government to set up that national commission. We are on a journey. Not everything the Government announced at the start of the Parliament is what they are still announcing. Change is possible.

The commission could draw insights from the experience of devolved bodies and other democracies. It could allow citizens, as well as experts, to contribute to evaluating the options and finding a way forward that would command public trust and confidence. None of this need distract from Government’s core mission of delivering their manifesto priorities, but it would demonstrate beyond doubt that they are serious about giving a stronger voice to millions of people who feel increasingly excluded from British politics.