Rupa Huq
Main Page: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)Department Debates - View all Rupa Huq's debates with the Home Office
Riot Compensation Bill
Rupa Huq Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Just as everyone from an earlier generation remembers where they were when JFK was assassinated, everyone from Ealing remembers where they were when riots hit our corner of west London, which is known, justifiably, as the queen of the suburbs. [Interruption.] It is, yes, and correctly so.
Footage of the shop front of Helen and Stuart Melville’s Bang & Olufsen franchise on Bond Street in Ealing went viral. It showed rioters trying to smash the glass several times before giving up and scurrying off. Helen, who had had warning through the grapevine, told me recently that, at 5 pm, she was on her way back from Peppa Pig World, when she was given a tip-off that rumours were circulating on Facebook. That shows the modern nature of the 2011 riots. She could not believe it. She thought, “Why Ealing? Why us? I don’t believe this.” The same sentiment of incredulity also hit Ravi and Amrit Khurmy, of Ealing Green local store, who said that the word of mouth was that something might happen.
Both were small businesses into which the proprietors had sunk everything they had, and both, like Ealing itself, were rocked by the 2011 riots. Sadly, the initial prophecies became a reality. Both received a phone call from the company that maintained the alarm system saying, “Something’s up. Can you come?”, and both returned to scenes of destruction and carnage. Mr Melville said it was like something out of a zombie movie: “28days Days” comes to Ealing—is that the one?
Dr Huq
Sorry, I am not into zombie movies. It was Mr Melville’s example. They found cars burning and other such things one does not expect to see in Ealing. Bang & Olufsen closed early, as a precautionary measure, but even so, the glass was shattered and the footage attracted many millions of views on YouTube. Ravi found his store in flames. The London fire brigade was in attendance for 24 hours. It was not just the shop; there were flats above as well.
The Bill attempts to redress some of the imbalances in the current legislation and revamp the compensation provisions, as the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) described. The existing legislation is on the aged side, if that is not too much of an understatement. Very few statutes—very few anything—dating from 1886 continue completely unaltered today. It was a time when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and I think both Lord Salisbury and Gladstone had turns at being Prime Minister that year. A house dating from 1886 would at the very least have needed a bit of updating: a lick of paint, central heating and other mod cons. Riots in the UK are, thankfully, relatively rare, but the legal framework needs to be brought into the 21st century, as the hon. Member for Dudley South said.
A lot of people called the riots of four years ago the social media, high-tech riots. Some commentators even likened them to the contemporaneous Arab spring, which I think is going a bit far—the riots in Tunisia and those countries had a different cause. To pursue the parallel, if we were updating an 1886 house in line with what the legislation needs, we would need several coats of paint, not just a lick of paint, and total rewiring and heating, with a new boiler and radiators. The cumulative effect is that it becomes too much of a job to stick with the existing structure, so we do need new legislation. It makes perfect sense, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing the Bill to the House today, because we need to bring that Victorian legislation kicking and screaming into the present day.
Ealing council’s riot scrutiny panel report from 2012 stated that over 1,000 999 calls were made on 8 August 2011, many of which went unanswered. The report states that there was damage to 100 shops and businesses and that “one supermarket burnt down”—Ealing Green Local, which I referred to. It took 18 months to reopen. It now has half its original footprint and has been rebranded as a SPAR. When the riots happened, I was cowering indoors watching Twitter, but I remember going the next day and seeing an Edwardian turret from the roof structure of that building being lifted away by crane. It was quite surreal.
Ravi outlined what happened in the aftermath and told me what he would like to see in future riot compensation legislation. He said that the insurers had paid out, but that the process was painfully slow. He reckoned that his claim was accelerated somewhat because he knew someone on the inside. That should not be so: we should be a nation above corruption in those things. He pointed out—the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) also made this point—that consequential loss should be covered as well. Ravi said that, at present, compensation covers only fixtures and fittings, whereas he would like loss of earnings to be included.
Ravi’s other point was that the role of the council was relatively limited. Ealing’s report said:
“Feedback on the Council was very positive—the payment of £1,200 was delivered promptly, and the named officer had been in frequent contact with advice and support.”
That is what the council said.
Mr Steve Reed
If Ealing is the queen of the suburbs, Croydon is surely the king. There was another role for councils, in the receipt of riot recovery funds. Croydon council—run by the Conservatives at the time—received more than £20 million from the Greater London Authority, spent half of it in an area that was not affected by the riots and left the rest in a bank until the GLA tried to claim it back. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a bigger role for communities and victims in overseeing how such funding is spent, so that the worst affected areas can recover faster?
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He anticipates what I was going to say about the Ealing example, but he is correct that these decisions should be taken at a local level.
Ravi said that the council was very good initially, but that
“after 18 months their door was closed.”
He also praised police actions after the event, but recognised that their role too was limited. His was a flat with a shop beneath, and both were subject to an arson attack, as in probably the most extreme case, which was in my hon. Friend’s constituency—or was it in Croydon Central?—with the famous picture of the girl jumping out of the burning building.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. We cannot have conversations between Members. If the hon. Gentleman is intervening, that is absolutely fine, but we cannot have a running commentary between Members.
Dr Huq
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will continue.
Now the place is half the size and split into two units, although the takings are thankfully back to normal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North said, further follow-up financial support should be considered at local government level. I have not found any measure proposing that in the Bill, although perhaps I have not looked at it closely enough. Ealing council’s panel report said that larger sums were available in subsequent phases—£157,426 of allocations in total.
I accept that the problem with these sort of events is that they are unforeseeable. Nobody would have guessed on 7 August that this would have happened by 8 August: these things occur out of the blue. We are living in a time when local government budgets are being squeezed like never before, so I would be interested to hear how this Bill fits with local government provision. Ealing is losing £96 million in this parliamentary term.
Clause 8 sets the limits for damages at £1 million, as the hon. Member for Dudley South described. Disappointingly, however, subsection (2) states that the
“compensation must reflect only the loss directly resulting from the damage”
to the property and
“not…any consequential loss resulting from it.”
That is disappointingly short of what Ravi and others said would have made a real difference. Perhaps in extreme cases such as these, an agreement could be reached with the insurers for a limited amount more. It need not all come as a burden to the public purse, as some allowance could be made for special cases.
Mike Wood
I certainly understand the hon. Lady’s point on behalf of her constituent, but will she recognise that the independent reviewer specifically considered the issue and concluded that extending the scope of the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 to cover consequential losses would be a step too far currently and might leave the door open for far greater liabilities?
Dr Huq
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I would feel happy if this issue were addressed to some limited extent. One would expect the Association of British Insurers to be on the side of the insurance industry, but it has found this aspect left wanting in this legislation—it could perhaps be explored at future stages.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I declare an interest as a commercial business owner and property owner. Most insurance companies insure the buildings and the contents separately. That may not be under discussion in this context, but normally claims for buildings damaged through rioting as separate from contents claims.
Dr Huq
I am talking about loss of earnings. The store owner, his wife and two kids had to live off their savings for 18 months. It is an extreme case: 18 months is not the norm, and riots are not the norm. We do not usually expect these occurrences. Let us hope they never happen again.
Helen from Bang & Olufsen remarked that the shop front had not been smashed. The video was shared so many times because people were saying that the rioters had been defeated, along the lines of “Hooray: victory against the rioters”. In the end, she faced a bill of £10,000 for the glass splinters. High-end products were involved, as expensive televisions behind the glass were also damaged. Helen’s point was that a cheque had to be written from the firm’s business account, which caused a problem for cash flow afterwards. She said that she had sunk all her savings into the business, which had been open only for six years, and when it started there was a massive recession. The hit to cash flow to pay the glazier was huge. She suggested that a temporary loan would have been helpful in that instance. It was a frightening time for her: she had a little kid and a second one was on the way.
Mr Steve Reed
It was not just Reeves Corner that was affected. Nine businesses and 40 flats were destroyed in London road, west Croydon. Some of the businesses had to continue to pay mortgages or rents on properties that had been destroyed, which is enough to put businesses or individuals who are not wealthy in severe financial difficulty. Does my hon. Friend agree that riot compensation should apply to those who have suffered serious losses of that kind?
Dr Huq
That is an excellent point. There were the headline cases that got all the attention and went viral, but I believe that the proprietors of many small Asian shops in the London road have been waiting a long time to be compensated. I am not sure whether they have received any compensation yet. We may focus on the headline cases, but these are all tragic stories.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I understand that local authorities have discretion to deem domestic and commercial properties exempt from council tax and/or business rates in the event of, for instance, floods, fires or riots. Authorities are aware of those powers, and should use them to help people.
Dr Huq
I believe that the hon. Gentleman is right, but local authorities live in ever more straitened circumstances, and are trying to do more and more with less and less. I am surprised that the Bill does not mention that, and I should be interested to hear from the Minister what provision will be made for it in future legislation.
Helen also referred to
“just the amount of time it took and the amount of paperwork to submit.”
I understand that the Bill would simplify such processes. Claims can, of course, be made online nowadays, although that was obviously not a possibility in 1886. The Kinghan report, to which the hon. Member for Dudley South referred earlier, recommended that the processes should be speeded up, observing that
“none of the police authorities had any experience of claims handling”
or of the demands,
“or the resources to meet it. They also had to cope with legislation written 125 years previously”.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned language difficulties. Those difficulties are compounded by the archaic language to be found in a lexicon that was used in 1886.
The Ealing report commented that the public had been reassured by the fact that shops and businesses remained open—that it was business as usual. I remember passing a hairdresser’s shop where all the glass had been blown out. Presumably the clients were being given blow dries “au naturel”! However, although that “business as usual” spirit was reassuring, we need to help businesses to get back on their feet more quickly.
The Bill contains much that is of merit. Clause 4 creates a new body, the riot claims bureau, which the Minister can direct to delegate decisions on claims that are taken to it by local police authorities. While the hon. Member for Dudley South was speaking, however, it occurred to me that if the police are to decide these matters in the first instance and are also to be liable, it is possible that those roles are too close to each other. The Association of British Insurers has referred to a direct conflict of interests, and, although it may have misunderstood the position, the police certainly should not be both judge and jury. The hon. Gentleman did say, however, that if a case straddled two separate police authorities, the Secretary of State would make the ultimate decision.
The highest bill was run up in London, where policing is devolved, and I believe that the Sony warehouse claim is still being contested. The London Assembly welcomed the Bill in its pre-general election version as recently as March; in 2012, it had produced a report entitled “Picking up the pieces”, which recommended an overhaul of the current Victorian legislation.
The 1886 Act was instituted after the Trafalgar square riots, at a time when there was no provision for motor vehicles. I did a Google search to find out how many people in the country owned cars in 1886, and discovered that it was the year in which Benz trialled the first petrol engine, which had just been invented. The Act places the onus on the police, but as early as 9 August 2011, Rob Garnham, chair of the Association of Police Authorities, warned that
“in a context of cuts the public will see little sense in a shrinking police fund being diverted to pay for criminal damage.”
Touch wood, God forbid, let us hope and pray the frightening disturbances of 2011 never happen again, but we do have a duty to learn from precedent and we need to bring the law on these subjects into the 21st century. We need to defend and protect small businesses. I am a child of small business—that is what my dad did. Small business owners sometimes take enormous risks: they sometimes do not eat to put food on the table for their kids and do not take holidays. They are not even SMEs; they are microbusinesses, and people such as Stuart and Helen, whom I described, and Ravi and Amrit need our support as they are key drivers of regional economies and pillars of our local communities.
It was not just the glass at the Bang & Olufsen franchise in Ealing that shattered; it was also the notion of suburban calm in our area. It shocked me and many other long-standing residents. This Bill is a good start, but there are still little bits and pieces that could be improved, such as the issues of leaving small businesses out of pocket when cash flow is difficult and the speed at which claims can be processed.
Riots in this country are, thankfully, pretty rare. I remember them in my lifetime two or three times. In 1981 it was Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side; then in 2001 it was Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, where we had a very good result for the Labour party last night; and then in 2011 it was Ealing, where I was and where I always thought it would never happen, and other compass points in London—Croydon in the south, Tottenham in the north—and Manchester and Birmingham as well. So we do not know when they are going to happen, but there is a likelihood they will. There is a more than zero probability that in the next 130 years we will see some sort of urban, or suburban, disorder again, so we must never say never.
The 2011 riots were noteworthy for various reasons. Some of the commentary talked about the role and function of social media, and the issues of youth justice and the sentencing process were also raised. Some people saw the looting and violence as spelling the end of society as we know it, while others saw it as solidifying social bonds because of the “broom armies”—the community-led clean-ups that happened the day after. Some of the points that arose are addressed by the legislation: the motives of the perpetrators; whether it was a riot or not; whether it was a consumer orgy or a shopping spree. There is a new definition of riot in this Bill, which I am pleased to see is based on the Public Order Act 1986.
There are still bits and pieces that my residents and businesses would like to see addressed, and I could mention many more such businesses: the Red Lion pub, Santa Maria Pizza, the Hare and Tortoise, Visage Hair, and the Baby Boutique, whose proprietor went on television a lot in the heat of the moment blaming “feral youths”. It has since closed its doors and is now an online business only. Most of the measures they would like to see are here, but one or two could be added at a later stage.
In conclusion, this Bill is a vast improvement on the existing provisions, but if history repeats itself and this little known piece of legislation does have to be dusted down in the next 129 years, we might as well get it right now. On the whole, however, I commend it, and the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for bringing it to the House today.