Liverpool City Council

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Yes, the report is clear that a major cultural change is required at the council. Mr Caller concludes that that will require radical change both by some members and some officers, and I hope that those steps will now be taken. They are absolutely essential if we are going to restore confidence in the council. That is our objective. I am sure that it is the objective of most reasonable people in the city of Liverpool, and we will be working together to achieve it.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Having served as a local councillor, I have seen the positive difference that local government can make in our communities, despite tough financial circumstances. I know that there will be thousands of councillors and council officers going above and beyond during the pandemic—including in Liverpool—who will be shocked and saddened by the report’s findings and today’s announcement. Would the Secretary of State agree that today’s announcement is the exception, not the norm, for local government, so that we can reassure those from across all our political parties who are standing for election in May and who want to do the right thing by serving their local communities to the best of their abilities?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point; it is one that I made in my opening remarks. This is a rare intervention. Interventions of this nature have been made on only a handful of occasions in the last 20 years. We do so carefully and with a heavy heart, but because it is necessary to ensure that this council can reform and change its ways and that we can ensure that people in Liverpool get the good-quality government that they deserve. This is not a reflection on local government more generally across this country. In fact, we are taking this action to defend the good name of local government across the country, and I pay tribute to officers and councillors the length and breadth of England for the good work they do day in, day out.

Rough Sleeping

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend represents one of the parts of the country where the snapshot showed that only a single individual was sleeping rough on that night in November, so I pay huge tribute to everybody involved in that in Carshalton and Wallington. Like him, I praise the Sutton Night Watch charity. We will be supporting charities and local councils over the course of next year, not least with £750 million of Government funding.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a sitting Luton councillor. We heard earlier that almost 130,000 children were homeless and living in temporary accommodation before the pandemic, and that is almost double what it was a decade ago. Very urban councils such as Luton have no space left to build on, and the so-called duty to co-operate policy has failed to ensure that housing demand was met by neighbouring councils. What does the Secretary of State propose to do to tackle this issue and help councils such as Luton to ensure that good-quality, genuinely affordable social houses can be built for homeless families, which will maintain their community ties?

[Robert Jenrick]

Luton Borough Council’s area has seen a 65% reduction in rough sleeping, according to the numbers that were published today, so I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome the considerable steps forward by her local council and community. She is right to raise the need to build more social and affordable housing. That is why we have the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which I hope that the council and housing associations in her vicinity will participate in. I do not accept that Luton cannot build more homes. There are plenty of imaginative ways in which a community such as Luton could be building more, through urban regeneration, through building upwards and through gentle density.

Building Safety

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The approach that I took when I became Secretary of State was to set a target for us that we would either remediate all buildings or get the workers on site by the end of last year. As I say, with a few exceptions —largely because of the covid-19 pandemic—we achieved that. We have used project managers and consultants to ensure that every single building in that cohort is being individually managed. My Ministers and I have been meeting with the contractors, the leaders of local councils, the chief executives and the residents’ management associations of those buildings regularly to ensure that progress is happening. That work needs to continue and to broaden out to all those buildings that will benefit from today’s announcement.

My hon. Friend is also right to say that today’s announcement will create certainty and confidence for the broader construction sector to come forward and enter the market to do this work. That will create thousands of jobs, and I encourage businesses large and small to take part in this major initiative.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

I am pleased that the Secretary of State wants to tackle rising insurance premiums, but I have spoken to many leaseholders in my constituency of Luton South who have faced the additional costs of interim safety measures, such as waking watch, and of fixing other fire safety issues, which the Secretary of State seemed to push back on. These joined-up financial pressures are pushing many leaseholders near to bankruptcy, so what are the Government doing to help bring down these costs?

[Robert Jenrick]

We are working with the insurance sector, which I think now needs to take a more proportionate, risk-based approach. These might be outliers, but some of the examples I have heard of insurance premiums rising by 1,000% are completely out of kilter with the statistics I gave earlier, that last year only 10 people tragically died in buildings over 11 metres, and only 41 people died in any house fire at all in this country. With respect to waking watch, I think that is a very challenging issue, but we have brought forward our £30 million fund to replace waking watches with high-quality, effective fire alarm systems. That fund is now open, and I encourage any building—perhaps including the one in the hon. Lady’s constituency—to apply for it, get the fire alarm installed and then hopefully reduce those costs quickly.

Covid-19: Funding for Local Authorities

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) on securing this important debate.

Speaking as a sitting councillor on Luton Borough Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I too thank all the officers and workers at Luton Borough Council, and all those working in councils across the country who have shown brilliant leadership and determination throughout our coronavirus response. Their local expertise has been critical to delivering services for our communities, from supporting the roll-out of testing to ensuring that the most vulnerable can access food. It is important to note that they have worked alongside NHS and other public service workers, including the fire and rescue service and the police.

Local authorities across the country have stepped up, as we know, delivering vital additional support at pace, despite suffering a £15 million cut in core local government funding since 2010. As was mentioned, the National Audit Office has calculated that local authorities have seen Government funding reduced in real terms by almost a half since 2010-11. Austerity has left many councils understaffed and underfunded, with demand for many services, such as adult social care and children’s services, increasing. The pandemic has compounded those existing difficulties through extra costs, lost income and cash-flow pressures.

Since 2010, Luton Borough Council has had £138 million cut from its budget. It tried to mitigate the impact by generating increased income from Luton airport, which it owns, to fund council services. However, covid-19 health restrictions affecting aviation have caused that income to dry up, meaning the council will not receive its forecast £20 million annual dividend and the £9 million donation to our local charity and voluntary sector is at risk.

Although the Government stated that councils would receive the support they need to get through the crisis, and have acknowledged Luton Borough Council’s exceptional circumstances due to the airport, there is a requirement for local councils to set balanced budgets in year, so in the absence of any specific and exceptional Government finance to compensate for loss of commercial income, Luton Borough Council has had no choice but to implement an emergency budget that has made £22 million of in-year cuts. This is affecting our non-statutory services, which are highly valued by local residents. At a time or rising unemployment, 400 jobs will potentially be lost.

I recognise that the Government have made some additional grant support to councils, but it barely scratches the surface of the problem. Without a funding package that considers years of underfunding under a decade of Tory austerity and the instability caused by the pandemic, services in adult social care, public health, homelessness support and children’s services are at risk. The Local Government Association is calling on the Government to provide an additional £8.7 billion in core funding in 2021-22. That consists of £4 billion for the current funding gap to sustain 2019-20 service levels, £1.8 billion to deal with other quantifiable pressures to stabilise the sector, and £2.9 billion for other core funding requirements to help councils improve their core service offer.

We also need a long-term council funding review that begins to rebuild local resilience, as local councils must be at the heart of building back better in our communities. For the sake of our communities across the country, I hope the Minister has been able to persuade the Chancellor to announce a package along those lines in tomorrow’s spending review.

Covid-19 Lockdown: Homelessness and Rough Sleepers

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight again the vital role that our veterans have played in keeping this country safe. I am sure that everyone across this House feels, as I do, a great sadness and deep concern for those veterans who face hard times and are in very difficult circumstances. They have priority when it comes to the reduction of homelessness and will continue to do so. We will continue to work with our colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that those veterans can get access to the support and services that they need to continue with their lives.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

The Children’s Commissioner has raised concern about the almost 130,000 children in England who spent the first lockdown in temporary accommodation, where poor conditions made it difficult to study, play and self-isolate. Why does the Minister think that there has been a 78% increase in homeless children since 2010?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Lady asks about families and children in temporary accommodation.  I, too, have concerns about any families and young people having to live their lives in temporary accommodation. As I have outlined, that is why this Government are investing in the Move On programme and the Next Steps accommodation programme. We are also committed to investing long-term in our housebuilding programme, and in affordable and social rented homes. I totally understand the pressures and challenges for young people in insecure homes, and it is something that this Government and I are determined to resolve.

Chinese and East Asian Communities: Racism during Covid-19

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, on what I believe to be your first occasion in the Chair. I want to congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), for securing this important debate on Chinese and East Asian communities’ experience of racism during the covid-19 pandemic, particularly this week, during National Hate Crime Awareness Week. It is important to take the opportunity to raise the importance of reporting incidents of hate crime when they happen, as that will help prevent them happening to others and help the police and other agencies better understand the extent of hate crime in a local area and, therefore, better respond to it. I hasten to add that all public services must also be properly resourced to do so.

A 2019 House of Commons Library briefing shows that police-recorded hate crime offences have continually risen since 2012-13. The rate of hate crimes against Chinese people between January and March this year was nearly three times that of the previous two years, according to data released by UK police forces to Sky News. The far right is constantly seeking to normalise racist attitudes and behaviours, and we have seen legitimate criticisms of the actions of the Chinese Government being hijacked by those people who want to sow division in society. Moonshot, which specialises in monitoring extremist content online, found that between February and April there was a 300% increase in racist and violent hashtags against China and Chinese people. They analysed more than 600 million tweets, of which 200,000 contained hate speech or anti-Chinese conspiracy theories. I urge the Government to address the horrendous abuse online in the upcoming online harms Bill. Facebook and Twitter must be accountable for what is published on their websites.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that international students who are in the UK, who travel to many of our constituencies, are often subject to very bad racist abuse and that something needs to be done about that as well?

[Rachel Hopkins]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. With the University of Bedfordshire in my constituency of Luton South, we welcome many international students from China and other East Asian countries. They are welcome in our town and we do not want the rise in hate crime towards East Asian and Chinese people to deter them from coming to the UK to study. It is a great opportunity, so I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point.

We are also increasingly, and sadly, seeing hard-right politicians and movements across the world using racist language. That has been mentioned already. It is a disgrace to hear Donald Trump call coronavirus the Chinese virus or the Chinese plague. However, racism towards East Asian, South-East Asian and Chinese people is not restricted to politicians abroad. It is a disgrace that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), the International Development Secretary, shared a racist meme. Racism is never a joke, and sharing that meme shows the judgment of the individuals running our country.

The Chinese state must be held accountable for its failings and human rights abuses, but the far right is being encouraged by media reporting that has provided ammunition to far-right activists seeking to normalise racism. In Germany, Der Spiegel magazine ran a cover image of a person in a protective red suit and gas mask, under the headline “Made in China”. In the UK, The Economist also ran a front page with an image of the earth wrapped in a face mask adorned with a Chinese flag. The Government must tackle hate crime by making social media and media outlets accountable for how they spread hate or fuel division. We need accurate health messaging that does not discriminate against a community.

Finally, building on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) about role models for young people, my final comments are on the importance of anti-racist education. I am a supporter of the UK’s leading anti-racist education charity Show Racism the Red Card and a member of the all-party parliamentary group for showing racism the red card. This Friday is Wear Red Day and I encourage everybody to show their commitment to anti-racism education and to tackling all forms of racism by wearing red on Friday.

Planning and House Building

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I also speak as a sitting local councillor in my constituency of Luton South, which has many examples of the housing failures of 10 years of Tory rule, most recently brought to my attention by the Luton Community Forum. A lack of genuinely affordable housing and the changes to housing benefit and universal credit for the under-35s have increased the reliance on houses of multiple occupancy. Alongside that, an increase in unfit housing created through permitted development rights means that young people and families alike are living in substandard, overcrowded conditions, and house prices and private rents are unaffordable for many.

So what is the Government’s response? Cutting red tape—or, as I would say, removing regulations and democratic oversight that are there to ensure good-quality, safe homes. As the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects put it:

“Deregulation won’t solve the housing crisis.”

The Government’s “Planning for the Future” White Paper fundamentally misdiagnoses the cause of and the solutions to the housing crisis in this country. Affordable homes are no longer affordable and there are not enough homes being built, particularly for social rent.

In Luton, we have more than 13,000 people on our council house waiting list. Luton Council’s affordable housing document identified an unmet need of around 5,500 affordable dwellings, but there are few brownfield sites left in our town to develop. The duty to co-operate has been more or less ignored by neighbouring authorities.

[Alexander Stafford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Hopkins]

I will not.

Key workers in Luton are struggling to pay rent. The very people we have relied on throughout the pandemic to keep us safe—our nurses, hospital cleaners and care home staff—are going home worried about keeping a roof over their own and their families’ heads. The latest End Child Poverty statistics state that 46% of children in my constituency live in poverty. The Government should be supporting children out of poverty, not consigning them to it. A good-quality, secure home is the foundation for a stable future.

While the planning system needs reform, simply slashing red tape ignores some of the real issues, including the fact that there are no measures to force developers to use unimplemented planning permissions or to tackle land banking, as has been raised by many hon. Members. As the Local Government Association has noted, nine in 10 applications are approved by councils, with more than 1 million homes that were given planning permission over the last decade yet to be built. That must be addressed.

The White Paper’s front-loading of public participation towards involvement only in the development of the local plan and away from individual applications strips local people of their voice in planning applications and removes their ability to formally object to specific developments in their area. It deprives elected councillors and communities of the ability to shape their area and shifts the balance in favour of developer choice instead. If we want to build back better, local people and communities must be at the heart of any regeneration and they should have more say, not less.

Scrapping red tape and extending permitted development rights will lead to the creation of more slum housing that does not meet the needs of local people. My constituents in Luton South desperately need a better plan, one that will build high-quality, genuinely affordable and environmentally sustainable homes. The Government have fallen way short of the mark for a decade as the situation has worsened, and now they have presented the House with a plan that takes local communities further away from planning decisions, while lining the pockets of wealthy developers. The Government need to rethink.

Town and Country Planning

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker. I speak as a local councillor in Luton, and I and many of my constituents have considerable concerns about the impact of permitted development rights on housing in Luton and the Government’s proposed changes that we are debating, which mean the problems will only proliferate. Whether we are talking about a young person trying to get on the housing ladder, a family on the council housing waiting list, or a renter stuck in an unfit flat, the plans to extend permitted development rights will not improve their situation. These statutory instruments, alongside the planning White Paper consultation, amount to a developers’ charter that will give developers increased powers to build poor-quality housing, permanently remove shops from high streets, change the shape of our town centres and build towering extensions, all at odds with the interests of local people.

We do need to increase the quantity of housing, but that should not be at the expense of the quality of housing. I have heard much said about beautiful terraces and crescents. Well, look at what has happened already, and I was very taken by the description from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) of children not being able to play. That happens in my constituency. Children kick a ball down the high street because that is the only place they can go. That is not good enough for the children in my constituency, which is why I am here today.

Bypassing planning permission and section 106 obligations means that local communities are unable to object to inappropriate developments, and developments can escape any contribution to the delivery of affordable housing and local infrastructure needs. In fact, the Local Government Association stated this year that 13,500 affordable homes were lost through office conversions. We are in the midst of a housing crisis, and expanding PDR is not the antidote. Today’s motion demonstrates that the Government do not understand how PDR is impacting on our communities. Reforms are leading to the wrong homes in the wrong places. In Luton, a number of office buildings have been converted into temporary accommodation, housing a variety of individuals with complex needs, within an air quality management area along a four-lane inner ring road. This was allowed only under PDR, and it will only increase if we can then freely expand by two more storeys, and that is not good enough.

The Government should listen to the report that they commissioned, which stated that

“permitted development conversions do seem to create worse quality residential environments than planning permission conversions in relation to a number of factors widely linked to the health, wellbeing and quality of life of future occupiers.”

If they will not listen to their own report, they should listen to the local councillors on Luton Borough Council, from three parties, who all voted unanimously to oppose PDR.

Planning Process: Probity

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Unfortunately, we need to get the question right. The Urgent Question is certainly not about Manchester, and certainly not about that. [Interruption.] I think it is for me to decide. It might be helpful if Members were to go and read what the Urgent Question is about, and then we can link the two. I call Rachel Hopkins.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I speak as a local councillor. We are regularly reminded to abide by our code of conduct, based on the Nolan principles, including integrity, accountability, openness and honesty, and declare personal or pecuniary interests, be them real or perceived, in decision making. With that in mind, is it a coincidence that Mr Desmond made a substantial donation to the Conservative party just days after the Secretary of State rushed through permission for the Westferry development, against the advice of his own planning inspector, and one day before Mr Desmond would have become liable for a £50 million tax bill?

[Christopher Pincher]

I do not know when Mr Desmond made donations or, in this case, payments for tickets to a Conservative party event. I believe he has donated to other political parties, including the Labour party. He is clearly a very generous man. I do not know that, and nor does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, because we have no knowledge of those political donations when we are making planning decisions. My right hon. Friend has laid out very clearly his reasons for his decision, which he has made honestly and fairly. He is mindful, as am I, of his responsibilities according to the ministerial code and MHCLG propriety codes. We will always make decisions fairly, based on their merits and in the interests of the people.

Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I thank my right hon. Friend for those words. She is absolutely right: we should commend our public servants and local authorities hugely for the work they will be doing in the days and weeks ahead, and I would like again to put on the record my thanks to them. If the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) will bear with me, I will touch on his point a little later.

We have already outlined an extensive package of support to combat the effects of this crisis. A lot of the points made by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South and other hon. Members were, rightly, about future funding for local authorities. I completely understand that, and perhaps it is worth addressing that at the start of my remarks.

The Chancellor announced last week that £5 billion would be made available for the public service response, with more to come if and when it is necessary. Let me say right from the start that we know that councils are under considerable financial pressure in responding to this crisis. We know that they will need more financial support from the Government, and we will give them that support. We are still having conversations with the sector—the Local Government Association and councils —to refine exactly what that might look like, but we will outline further steps we intend to take in this area very shortly.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

Local councils do not get their income only from business rates and council tax; we should recognise that, in the context of 10 years of austerity, many have used their trading opportunities to generate income. For example, Luton Council relies on passengers going through our airport to generate income that funds council services. With the massive changes to airlines, that income will drop off. Obviously, that will need to be taken into account in any support offered by the Government.

[Luke Hall]

I thank the hon. Lady for putting that point on the record. She is absolutely right to do so. I very much hope that we will outline imminently the steps that we are looking at taking to support councils further.

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced in the House a series of measures to support communities in response to the crisis. The funding he announced amounted to more than £330 billion of financial support, equivalent to 15% of UK GDP. The £10,000 grants to small businesses that are eligible for small business rate relief and the £25,000 grants to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses operating from smaller premises will no doubt help to alleviate pressure on local businesses across the country, but we understand the pressures that are about to come. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will write to all local authorities in the coming hours to set out how exactly those are to be delivered and the mechanisms by which they can be administered.