Debate on the Address

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree) (Lab)]

In responding to the Gracious Speech, I will focus on just a couple of issues. I welcome all new hon. Members to the House. It can be a lonely place at times, but there is always someone on hand to help, so please reach out, and remember: it is a marathon, not a sprint.

Since I was elected in 2019, I have called for far-reaching measures to address the housing crisis and the worsening homelessness emergency. It will reassure the communities that I represent that they now have a Government who understand the scale of that endemic problem and, crucially, are willing to take action to remedy it. I wholeheartedly applaud the commitment to planning reform that will get Britain building again—building the homes that we need now, and on which future generations will rely to get on in life. It is right for any serious Government to be ambitious in that regard.

I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment in her first speech to setting up a taskforce to tackle stalled housing schemes across the country, beginning with a focus on Liverpool central docks. That is a positive sign of things to come. Solving the housing crisis demands that we be bold. Over 14,000 people are on the housing waiting list in Liverpool, so it is imperative that we push the agenda for social and council housing. Homes for social rent must be front and centre of our plans to give every household—every family—the dignity of a home that they can call their own. That would provide a long-term vision to address the burgeoning numbers of households languishing in temporary accommodation, which at the last count shamefully included over 145,000 children.

I ask the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to work with our councils to better regulate the proliferation of houses in multiple occupation in concentrated areas across our cities and towns, particularly in the north of England, where it is common- place for whole communities to be disrupted. In my own constituency of Liverpool Wavertree, some streets have over 50% of houses as HMOs. With that come environmental issues, such as rubbish and noise, and it has ripped the heart out of communities while landlords—the majority not from the city—make massive profits. Year after year during the last Parliament, we heard repeated promises from the previous Government to bring in their Renters (Reform) Bill. However, the last Conservative Administration shamelessly caved in to the landlord lobby on their own Benches, so it falls to this Labour Government to make it happen.

The private rented sector has lost all sense of proportion. Section 21 evictions must be ended: they pile greater pressure on local councils, and I know through my office’s casework that no-fault evictions are worsening the homelessness emergency. I will be urging my colleagues on the Front Bench to make our renters reform Bill as comprehensive a package as possible for a beleaguered generation of renters who have lived the consequences of the cost of living crisis as much as any. The report led by Councillor Cowan, the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, should provide the basis of our plans: a national landlords register to enforce standards, rent stabilisation measures, and a holistic approach that prevents landlords from moving to short-term holiday lets or making a mint from the provision of temporary accommodation. All this will not be easy. The Prime Minister has long talked of smashing the class ceiling, and I very much look forward to supporting him and the Deputy Prime Minister in ensuring that we deliver the bold measures that are required to address the housing and homelessness crisis, and so much more.

As someone who was privileged to be a trade union official before entering this place, and who is still a very proud trade union member—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I am delighted with our plans for workers’ rights and a new deal for working people that is long overdue.

As a proud Liverpool MP, I also want to say how delighted I am that a Labour Government will deliver the long-awaited Hillsborough law. I pay tribute to the resilience of the families who lost loved ones, the survivors and my city as a whole; they have never given up their fight for truth, justice and accountability. Of course, I also pay tribute to my neighbour and right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle), who has spent decades in this place fighting to get that law on to the statute books. That shows what tenacity can deliver.

We have heard much this evening about cross-party work, and it would be remiss of me not to also place on record my thanks to the former right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who will go to the other place, Theresa May. She was pivotal in the Hillsborough inquiry as well, and for that I place my thanks on record. Like so many Scousers, I had family and friends at Hillsborough on that fateful day in April 1989; fortunately, they all came home, but 97 innocent men, women and children did not. This law is a valuable step in obtaining justice for the 97.