Renters (Reform) Bill

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Richard Graham

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I will give way to Members if I have time, but please allow me to make my points.

There have been many questions about the ombudsman. We need simplicity and clarity for landlords and tenants. It is important to say that this Bill does not, in itself, establish a new ombudsman. An existing ombudsman could do the job and, again, we are looking at that very carefully to make sure we get the right solution for this vital part of our regulatory reforms.

I am grateful that many Members have welcomed the point about pets, and I agree that we are a nation of animal lovers. Again, this is about reasonableness. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle is exactly right—the circumstances she set out would constitute a reasonable ground for refusal, but we need to look carefully at how this works.

The decent homes standard has been raised again, and it is a key part of our reforms. We must make sure that the new system we introduce means people are living in decent, safe and warm homes. Everyone in this House will be under no illusion about how importantly this Government take this issue, as they can see the work that has been introduced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to tackle these issues, which have laid unresolved for many years. This Government brought in groundbreaking reforms in the social rented sector, and we will do so in the private rented sector to give tenants the same protections.

It is important to note at this point that the vast majority of possession claims do not end up in the courts—only something like 1% of claims go through the courts. In my capacity as Housing Minister, I work closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who is responsible for His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. There is a wide-ranging programme of reform in the court system.

The courts have already made huge improvements. It is worth saying that over 95% of hearings are listed within four to eight weeks of receipt, and of course the ombudsman will encourage the early dispute resolution process, taking a lot of claims out of the courts and freeing up court time for more complex processes. When we bring in this reform, however, it is right that we ensure landlords have confidence in the justice system because, as everybody has pointed out, if we do not have good landlords in this country who have confidence in the systems that underpin the justice system, we will not have the rented homes in every constituency that our country needs.

We have always committed to aligning and synchronising the reform of the private rented sector with the court system; we note that that was a recommendation of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. We do not think that a housing court is the right way to do that; nor is that the view of the sector or of the stakeholders, with whom we have engaged in huge detail. This work remains a priority for our Department and for the Ministry of Justice. We want to see landlords being offered a digital process for possession on all grounds.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

If the Bill’s Second Reading receives widespread support because it will rightly ditch no-fault evictions of tenants without triggering an exodus of private sector landlords, that will in no small part be down to the hard work, for which I am very grateful, of Ministers including my hon. Friend. While she is looking at what is a reasonable speed to resolve antisocial behaviour claims in the courts, will she confirm that it is the Government’s firm intention to fulfil our manifesto commitment and implement the Bill as soon as possible?

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. I can absolutely give him that assurance.

Doctor Training

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Richard Graham

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I strongly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) on laying out the arguments and highlighting the need for more training places for doctors to level up our great country. More training places would be an engine for social mobility, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) pointed out, and level up our rural counties, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) pointed out so well.

I declare an interest in the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch. I have never stopped campaigning on it, and I have been re-elected twice to continue campaigning for the hospital and the healthcare that my constituents deserve. Key to that is training more doctors locally in our wonderful new Three Counties Medical School, which was opened and supported by the Government. That is the obvious route, and I very much welcome the Government funding that has enabled the medical school to open in order to train more doctors locally.

When doctors are trained locally, they want to stay and work locally. In Worcestershire, over the years we have seen a problem where local young people who are training to be doctors do not stay in the county because they have opportunities to work in Birmingham and in larger centres elsewhere. That is great for Birmingham, but not so great for Redditch. Better services for my constituents in Redditch is absolutely what I want—and what they deserve, more to the point—but we need more people to deliver them. We always come back to services being constrained because we lack the workforce to deliver them.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am grateful for the chance to support what my hon. Friend is saying about the Three Counties Medical School. It serves the three counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, building on the partnerships established through the Royal Three Counties Show and the Three Choirs Festival—the country’s oldest festival. Does she agree that it would be great if the Minister could say whether the Government will support the Three Counties Medical School? In the absence of that, does she agree that all 14 Members of Parliament for the three counties should get together with the Minister to pursue that case?

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I strongly agree with him and I hope the Minister will respond. While I am speaking about our three counties, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) who has led the discussions with the health and care trust and other health and care authorities—including Health Education England—to continue to press the case.

The University of Worcester has funded 20 places at the Three Counties Medical School. Unfortunately, we have not been successful in attracting any Government funding from the Minister’s Department. It seems like a missed opportunity. Will the Minister speak to his colleagues in the Department and at NHS England to see what he can do to get the medical school fully funded? I want to give young people in Redditch and Worcestershire opportunities to follow their dreams to practise locally, for the benefit of my constituents.

I thank everybody in Redditch who works for the NHS, across the whole healthcare system. GPs, doctors in different services, mental health providers and nurses are all part of the effort. Social care is also a vital ingredient. We have a great story to tell in Redditch. The Alexandra is a fantastic hospital. It is receiving record levels of Government investment thanks to this Government and previous ones, and the efforts of current and previous Health Secretaries. That investment will see expansion into innovative services and lifesaving treatments, such as robotic surgery for people with prostate conditions, as well as diagnostics and other innovations. The hospital has a bright future ahead of it.

I want to continue campaigning to enable the hospital to deliver services for everybody who lives in Redditch, which is a growing town. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) also made that point. When new residents come in, they expect local healthcare to be there. I am looking forward to the Minister’s update on the NHS workforce plan, which I am sure is the route to solving this conundrum.

HMICFRS Recommendations

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Richard Graham

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I want to be clear that we completely support the need for specialist RASSO training in all police forces. We are working with our partners in policing through the National Policing Board, through all the work taking place in the rape review and through the additional funding resource that we have put into the police to enable them to train officers to investigate and tackle these crimes. Labour is right to say that this is a specialist area; we need to get it right, so we agree that forces need that specialism.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I agree with many things that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), said, especially her comment that we cannot just leave it up to women and girls to resolve the violence against them, but it was rather ironic that she made that comment to a Chamber in which there were about 15 male Conservative MPs and not a single male Labour MP behind her, which was disappointing.

I congratulate the Minister on accepting all the recommendations in the report, which builds on the good work already done on FGM and particularly on spiking; last night’s announcement was very important to me and to many in this House. At last night’s event, Deputy Chief Constable Blyth and others, including Nick Gazzard of the Hollie Gazzard Trust in Gloucester, brought together people who really care about the issue. Does the Minister agree that we must keep it high up the agenda?

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Richard Graham

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The remark made by the shadow Chancellor earlier that the public—all our constituents—would have to pay zero extra to fund the widespread nationalisation of all the utility companies, the train companies and anything else was really quite extraordinary. To be honest, I would be surprised if somebody did not raise that on a point of order in terms of misleading the House and the nation, because clearly those figures are a mile away from what independent analysts have calculated.

[Rachel Maclean]

Has the shadow Chancellor not been on record stating that it does not matter if his sums do not add up, and that it is largely irrelevant, which demonstrates my hon. Friend’s point?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As she knows well, the truth of the last Labour Government—during their 13 years—was that although they promised no more boom and bust, they gave us the biggest bust in peacetime history as a result of wildly overspending. I am afraid the net result of that is, as always, that the poorest feel the effects worst. In my constituency of Gloucester, 6,000 people lost their jobs during the great recession under Labour. Only since the Conservative Government came back have we seen employment rise sharply and youth unemployment and unemployment fall sharply.

The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Richard Graham

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Let me start by welcoming my near neighbour and old friend the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), back to his place on the Front Bench.

Today there was a fantastic opportunity for the Opposition to hold a debate on one of a range of very topical issues, many of which arise this week: the future of NATO, the way forward for the western Balkans, our security partnership with the United States, or the revised economic growth figures and the potential impact on savers and borrowers.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Or the World cup.

[Richard Graham]

Or, indeed, the World cup. Unfortunately, however, the Opposition chose none of those issues, and have fallen rather than risen to the occasion by tabling a motion containing two censures and a personal attack, in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, in relation to something for which the Secretary of State has already apologised.

I am here today for a straightforward reason: to remind the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood)—who is not paying a huge amount of attention—that it is a mistake for the Opposition to throw stones from very fragile glass houses. Let me explain why. On 11 October last year, the Leader of the Opposition said, at Parliament’s peak moment, during Prime Minister’s Question Time:

“The last Labour Government lifted a million children out of poverty. Gloucester City Homes has evicted one in eight of all of its tenants because of universal credit. The Prime Minister talks about helping the poorest, but the reality is a very, very different story.”—[Official Report, 11 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 324.]

Let me remind the House that the reality was indeed a very, very different story. The actual figure was not one in eight—which would have meant 650 out of 5,200 tenants in my constituency—but a total of eight, one of whom had left the property 18 months earlier and another of whom had left the country. That is a very, very different story indeed. It would have been fitting for the Leader of the Opposition to apologise, and to have expressed some form of recognition that he had slandered the city of Gloucester, Gloucester City Homes—which is an excellent housing association—and, indeed, all of us who try to engage in a rational, measured, objective debate on universal credit, which is what we did in the Select Committee when I was on it. My point is that we should avoid these motions of censure, stop criticising people personally, and focus on the facts.

Before I run out of time, let me offer some recommendations to the Secretary of State. First, the trusted partner programme is working very well, and housing associations such as Gloucester City Homes benefit from it. Please may we have more of it for more housing associations? Secondly, the Secretary of State is right to focus on debt, and I should love to know more about why people go on to universal credit with so many debts.