Democracy in Bangladesh

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

I agree. Our loved ones were worried, and we did not know that was going on. We are talking about a country that can, at will, shut off the internet so that people cannot communicate with the outside world, or even with each other via phone signal—there was a Digital Security Act that was a bit sinister, and stopped all freedom of speech, thought, expression and assembly. Yes, we must rebuild. The hon. Gentleman made a great point.

The sight of Muhammad Yunus—until recently, the previous regime had tried to lock him up—was baffling but reassuring for many, because he is globally recognised. He was a character on “The Simpsons”; Lisa discovered his microfinance loans to women. Among his friends are the Obamas and the Clintons, and 197 world leaders have signed a memorandum to welcome him to power. He has the in-tray from hell, and a big job to do in repairing democracy. He was here in March, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) organised a meeting for him with the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh, which she then chaired. He is such a modest man; he had 200 different court cases against him, but he did not go on about them—it had to be teased out of him by Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chaired that day. He is known as the banker to the poor.

Nobody saw this coming. Bangladesh is a country of contradictions. It has 175 million people on a land mass the size of England and Wales, and is beset by natural disasters—at the moment, there are the worst floods in 30 years. Youth unemployment is sky high, which partly explains the protests.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on getting this debate. Does she agree that there is also a geopolitical issue surrounding all the changes in Bangladesh? Hitherto, it adopted a credible non-aligned position, supported the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and tried basically to be a promoter of peace in the region. I do not know any more than she does what the outcome of all this will be, but does she agree that the important thing is that Bangladesh remains independent and not aligned with any other bloc? Otherwise, we might end up with the further problem of a cold war in south-east Asia.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I remind Members that interventions should be short. I know that you have all just had a master class in very long interventions, but I am sure that Dr Rupa Huq is about to conclude her remarks, so that the Minister has an opportunity to speak.

Security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq, and I am pleased to introduce this debate on the issue of security, in its widest sense, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am very grateful to many groups and people who have sent me information and advice ahead of it. I am delighted to see the Minister in her place; I congratulate her on her appointment and look forward to her reply. I am not totally aware of how many colleagues wish to speak, but I will try to ensure that my speech is sufficiently short so that everyone is able to get in.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I think we have a fair amount of time. Two Back Benchers wish to speak and then there are the Front Benchers.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Okay.

First of all, the DRC is almost the largest country in Africa and it certainly has the largest amount of unexploited mineral resources. The sale of mineral wealth could have made it an incredibly wealthy place by now, but it is not. It is a desperately poor and divided country. It has been my pleasure to visit the DRC on two occasions: once as an election observer in 2006 and another time on a human rights delegation to Goma and elsewhere in the east of the country, where I met many women victims of rape, which was being used as a weapon of war.

The history of the Congo is long, brutal, sad and complicated. It was not taken as a European colony until the mid-nineteenth century, when Belgium—or rather King Leopold—took over in 1885 as a result of the Congress of Berlin, which divided up Africa in the interests of European powers. The Congolese people were not represented in any way there; they were merely chattels to be fought over by the rival European powers. For the next 20 years, Leopold ran the country as his own personal fiefdom in the most brutal manner possible, and there were the most appalling abuses of human rights, with enforced rubber collectors and enforced miners, as well as the continuation of the slave trade, which had gone on for certainly the previous two centuries.

The atrocities were eventually recognised globally, partly through the work of Sir Roger Casement, a British diplomat who was later executed for his part in the Easter Rising in Ireland, and of E. D. Morel, a shipping clerk in Liverpool who observed what was going on through his company Elder Dempster. The latter eventually became a Labour MP and a Minister in the Labour Government of 1922. Before that, the global objections to Leopold’s excesses were such that the Belgian Parliament effectively nationalised the Congo and took it for itself, and it was then run as a Belgian colony until its independence in 1960. During that time, Belgian mining companies made an enormous amount of money out of the Congo and did not invest very much in its infrastructure other than in railways to take the minerals to the sea and in shipping lines to take other minerals, timber and other products down the rivers. It was very much an exploitative and extractive economy.

On independence in 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Prime Minister and made a very strong declaration of independence, including at the United Nations, but he was assassinated a few months later. The country then deteriorated into a degree of war, with the involvement of both big powers—the Soviet Union and the United States; it almost became a cold war by proxy. The background is pretty bad all around. There is not time to go into all of the history of the Congo, but I want to set the scene, with that as the background to all of the other Governments since 1961—Mobutu and others: the huge corruption that went with those and, all the time, the continuing poverty of many of the Congolese people.

The country now faces devastating levels of insecurity. Since 1996, some 6 million people have been killed in conflicts in the Congo. Just think about that figure again: 6 million have died since 1996. That is barely mentioned; we would have to dig hard to find any reference to the Congo in most of the world’s media.

Issues of illegal mining and mass displacement continue, with more than 7 million people being displaced in the eastern region alone. There are also endemic diseases such as mpox, malaria, tuberculosis and cholera, and the limited hospitals and health services are overwhelmed. There is food insecurity, malnutrition, gender-based violence, and a lack of access to clean water and necessities. There are very large numbers of refugees, either internally displaced or in Angola or other neighbouring countries.

We are looking at a very serious situation. There are more than 100 armed groups fighting for control of natural resources in the eastern region, most notably the M23 movement—Mouvement du 23 mars—which is financially backed by and has received training from Rwanda and other Governments. More than a third of the children of the Congo have no school to go to.

That is the background, which I wanted to summarise before I go into more detail. I will take a quote from Adam Hochschild’s brilliant book, “King Leopold’s Ghost”:

“On the whole continent, perhaps no nation has had a harder time than the Congo in emerging from the shadow of its past.”

He wrote that some time ago, but it still applies today. We have issues to deal with, with the conflict that got worse and was heightened during the Rwanda genocide of 1994.

Basically, the DRC is both blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources. That includes cobalt, coltan, diamonds, copper, tin and gold, as well as the other, more obvious natural resource of vast amount of timber from one of the world’s largest and most pristine rainforests. I once took a flight from Goma to Kinshasa, and we were flying seemingly for hours just over forest. It is incredibly beautiful—pristine and beautiful—but then we look underneath it and we see the levels of poverty and malnutrition. I think the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin), has probably also taken the same journey and had the same experiences.

The minerals taken from the Congo are the main factor in the present conflict. Congo has 70% of the world’s cobalt reserves. Cobalt is essential to almost every lithium-ion rechargeable battery, such as those used in phones and laptops, as well as in innovations such as solar power, which we see as necessary to deal with climate change. Therefore, our mobile phones and so much else are actually run with minerals that come from the Congo. In fact, much of the western economy simply could not work without the minerals that the Congo is forced to export. The armed rebel groups that have terrorised much of the country are actually usually involved in the mineral trade in some way or another. We have to face up to these issues.

Only two days ago, for example, the Congolese Government buried 200 internally displaced people who had died in various camps around Goma in North Kivu. They died in different circumstances, usually from hunger and diseases, but sometimes from violence. There has been heavy fighting between the Congolese army and the armed groups and the World Health Organisation has now declared mpox an epidemic in Africa.

A brief ceasefire in the summer was extended until August. There are, however, allegations of violations, and the situation in North Kivu remains very volatile indeed. The continuation of the ceasefire agreement signed in Luanda under Angola’s auspices, between the DRC and Rwanda, is significant. I hope the Minister will be able to shed some light on the possibility of that ceasefire being made permanent and of the establishment of an accountable force that could control what is at present a dangerous situation.

The resolution also authorised the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to continue operating in the eastern DRC, where it has been for quite a long time. Although the UN missions in the Congo have a rather chequered history, and are not universally popular there, most people recognise that without a UN mission life would be even worse than it is at present. This is the country that has suffered the worst sexual violence in war of almost any country in the world—a terrible thing to have to say. The number of victims of sexual violence is absolutely huge.

I have never forgotten arriving in Goma on a human rights visit with a colleague from Parliament. We arrived in the evening; it was more or less dark when we got there. We went to a refugee centre that was entirely populated by women who were victims of rape. They said, “Thank you for coming. It is great you are here. You are welcome. Thank you for telling the world about the plight we are in. Can you now give a speech to us?” What on earth can a western European man say to a meeting of 500 or 1,000 women, all of whom were victims of rape and many of whom had been made pregnant because of the rape they had suffered? What can we say to them other than that we want to give them all the support and comfort possible and try to understand the horror of their situation? Rape is being used as a weapon of war.

The health concerns are serious and getting worse. As Ebola, mpox, covid and others have shown, health concerns are impossible to isolate. If one part of the world suffers from a serious contagious disease, every part of the world is at risk because of the levels of transport and communication we now have. It is in everybody’s interest to provide healthcare and health support to the people of the Congo to get through the epidemics that they are facing. An act of charity it may be; an act of necessity it certainly is.

I turn to the future. Education in the Congo for most children is non-existent. For those who can get to schools, the schools are very limited. For many years the teachers have been paid sometimes, but sometimes not. Most of the education is done via the Church, but many children are simply not receiving any education at all. Again, that is in a country with vast mineral resources through which vast profits are being made all around the world. Those children are not getting an education, and too many become involved in the next thing I will talk about: illegal mining and the export of its products.

Conveniently, the products of the illicit and illegal mining in the Congo miraculously appear in another country, such as Rwanda or somewhere else. Those products are bought by global mining corporations, such as Glencore and others, and then appear on the world market, ending up in our mobile phones and batteries. Children as young as five are often forced to work in brutal conditions. In his very good book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives”, Siddharth Kara writes:

“As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo. All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labour, forced labour, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.”

I advise anyone interested in the Congo to read the two books I have mentioned: Hochschild’s book “King Leopold’s Ghost” and Kara’s book on cobalt.

Al Jazeera recently published an article, “Blood and minerals: Who profits from conflict in DRC?” Its writers managed to speak to miners, a trafficker, an undertaker and a prostitute to understand the way of life in the mineral region. I will read from it. A 16-year-old miner called Inocence walked an hour to the largest coltan mine post in the country. As he was guiding the journalists to the mine post, they encountered several men carrying the body of a miner on a makeshift stretcher. Inocence told journalists,

“Sometimes the mountain caves in. The miners are buried for ever and people forget about them.”

The trafficker later explained that many miners work for 14 hours a day and get paid only about $1. The trafficker collects his merchandise from the miners by the river and goes on to sell the goods, earning around $2,000 a month. Traffickers who buy already screened minerals at the foot of the mine end up multiplying its value when they leave it at the border with Rwanda and Uganda. By the time the coltan arrives in the manufacturing districts of Shanghai, Ciudad Juárez in Mexico or other places around the world, the market price is between $470 and $540 per kilo. So we can see the multiplier effect: a child gets almost nothing to mine those vital products, which end up on the world market where they sell for enormous amounts of money.

Mining companies such as Glencore, which is based in Switzerland, have exploited the conflict for their own benefit. It was recently found guilty under Swiss law of “inadequate organisation” that led to corrupt mining deals, which included the bribing of officials. Public Eye filed a criminal complaint with the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland following the publication of the Paradise papers, which shed new light on the purchase of cobalt and copper mines in the DRC.

Glencore commissioned the services of a businessman, Dan Gertler, who is on the US sanctions list, to secure favourable mining deals. He brought about a staggering price reduction on behalf of Glencore in 2008 during negotiations with Kabila’s Government about the Katanga Mining company, and in 2011 acquired shares in the Mutanda and Kansuki mines from the Congolese state mining company at far below their market value. Four years of investigation by the OAG found that around $26 million had been paid from Swiss bank accounts to a close associate of the then President of the DRC. Glencore ultimately benefited financially from the deals, as the OAG’s judgment states.

Glencore had been ordered to pay $150 million, which is nothing compared with the loss that the Congolese people have suffered. There needs to be much sterner action taken by all Governments globally concerning this horrifying supply chain of vital minerals, which are mined at the expense of the living conditions and poverty of many people in the Congo, and could provide so much in the way of education and so much more for other people in the Congo.

The purpose of my debate today is to try to draw attention to the history of the Congo and the plight that many people are suffering at present, and to try to hear what the new UK Government’s view is on this and how we can take matters forward. The UN is involved, endorsing Security Council resolution 2717 in 2023, and experts are concerned that if MONUSCO withdraws, key components of early warning systems of human rights violations will no longer be operational, significantly limiting human rights monitoring, reporting and investigation. The UN has asked the Congolese Government to ensure the consolidation of the handover of security responsibilities in South Kivu. I hope those assurances will be forthcoming.

Lack of logistical and military support for troops and groups to defeat the M23 is hampering efforts. We have huge investment in groups in order to make other people very, very wealthy indeed. The role of the Rwandan Government, in facilitating M23 activities, has also been called into question. What action is going to be taken?

I will conclude with one point and a couple of questions. The UK ambassador to the Congo, James Kariuki, said in a statement to the UN Security Council only a few months ago in April,

“We also emphasise our commitment to a gradual, responsible and sustainable withdrawal. We call on the DRC government, through close coordination with MONUSCO, to assume its protection responsibilities for the civilian population in line with the joint disengagement plan.”

Can the Government elaborate on how they will emphasise this commitment to a sustainable withdrawal? While we have condemned the continued advance of UN-sanctioned M23 forces, external actors must withdraw as well, because they are part of the problem.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It is to the bedevilment of the Congo that so many proxy groups turn up there to benefit from mineral exploitation, and it is the people of the Congo who suffer. Wherever they come from, they are wrong, they should not be there and they should go. I am absolutely clear about that.

I would like to ask some questions of the Government. What relationship do they have with the Rwandan Government, and what pressure are they putting on them? Are they able to increase humanitarian aid to the DRC, particularly in relation to education of both girls and boys? I know that priority was given to girls’ education by the Department for International Development, which is now part of the Foreign Office. I supported that, but I also made the point that if we want the next generation of boys to grow up and not commit the appalling sexual violence of their parents’ generation and previous male generations, they need education as well. It is not just girls who need to be educated but boys too. What support are we able to give to MONUSCO and the important work it does there?

I would like to finish by saying,

“The legacy of injustice can only be erased through the pursuit of truth and reconciliation.”

That is another quote from Adam Hochschild. Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said:

“The insecurity is being fuelled by a seemingly impassable mountain of challenges: from large-scale corruption, to the unbridled race between multiple parties to take control and exploit the country’s wealth of natural resources, to ongoing violent land disputes.”

I will finish at this point, because I think I have taken up too much time, but I hope I managed to set out my concerns about the DRC.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

It is not a question of time; the right hon. Gentleman was completely within his rights, but we do have at least one vote in the House—we think two.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is right. There are lots of enthusiastic volunteers, which is great, but the initiatives need co-ordination and protection. We are dealing with assisting vulnerable people, so we have to be quite clear that the people who are volunteering are responsible and are doing it for all the right motives. All the volunteer groups that I have been in touch with and met are clear about that. They are well organised and responsible in the way that they are doing it, and I thank them for that. All those efforts will help us to overcome the crisis.

It is also necessary to say thank you to those delivering essential public services, especially our national health service staff on the frontline: the medical professionals, healthcare workers, auxiliary staff, administrators, ambulance drivers, paramedics—the whole team in every health facility. They are already very stretched in normal times; now, they are coming under unimaginable pressure and stress at the same time as being vulnerable themselves to contracting coronavirus. We should acknowledge that and say thank you.

We should also say thank you to those in our social care sector, who are so often unrecognised and ignored, and almost always badly paid. They are caring for the most vulnerable people in our society. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) explained earlier, the problem of contracting the virus in a home where people have not been tested only gets worse the longer we delay.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend’s approach and the fact that we should all give a socially distant hug to care workers, and to those in other parts of the economy with precarious employment and housing situations. Does he agree that, against the background of the biggest crisis we will ever know, we need a collective approach, and that policies such as nationalising the railways, providing economic stimulus to kick-start our economy, and free broadband do not look so outlandish after all?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It was not so long ago that I was making lengthy speeches about those subjects, and I am quite prepared to hand a copy of our manifesto over to the Government. They are already being forced to implement a great deal of it because of the crisis and because of the deficiency in public services that we exposed during the election campaign.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution
Friday 20th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Prime Minister, your leader—if I may say so, Mr Speaker—said that workers rights were going to protected. They are not, in this Bill.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Is not the whole point that the withdrawal agreement seems to be diminishing all the time? This is worse than the agreement from the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). There are things that have vanished from the one that we had before the election. It is not only workers’ rights that have been downgraded. It is parliamentarians’ rights, because the legislature’s ability to scrutinise the Executive has been taken away. It is bad for democracy.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Dr Huq]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He makes a very good point: Brexit is painted as dividing our nation, but it has actually united our party in opposition to the Prime Minister’s proposals. It has also united many Conservative Members against her proposals, including two former Brexit Secretaries, the former Foreign Secretary and two former science and higher education Ministers. I wanted to ask the Prime Minister who the new science and higher education Minister is, but she did not take my intervention. Perhaps batting for that sector is incompatible with her Brexit, and indeed any form of Brexit.

Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will be dealing with that point during my speech. I do understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making and the need for urgent action at times, and there are provisions for that in the proposals we are putting forward.

During yesterday’s statement, the Father of the House—the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)— the leader of the Scottish National party and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, as well as of the official Opposition, agreed that Parliament should have been recalled. That is a common position on all sides of the House, absolutely irrespective of our views on the action undertaken in Syria last Saturday morning.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should listen not just to voices inside the Chamber, but to voices outside—the great British public? A woman on the doorstep in Ealing said to me this weekend, “Did we just regain the sovereignty of Parliament to hand it over to a Prime Minister with no majority or, worse still, to Trump?” Did she not have a point?

Housing Supply (London)

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

Yes, I will come on to some of the more noteworthy schemes in the constituency—just hang on in there and I will get to that.

I do not want to brand all private landlords as neo-Rachman rogues. According to the post-2015 election Register of Members’ Financial Interests, 142 MPs declared rental income under the category for land and property in the UK and elsewhere, in which annual rental income that exceeds £10,000 must be declared. That is 22% of MPs—just over one in five. There must be some decent ones among them.

It seems illogical that nine out of every 10 pounds spent on housing in this country goes on housing benefit, including for properties that went into private hands under the right to buy and are now rented back to councils as emergency accommodation to combat homelessness, which we have seen manifested in mushrooming night shelters, soup kitchens and food banks across the capital. Although red tape is often condemned and flexibility championed, I am proud—despite Labour losing the election—to have stood on a platform of reining in the violent price rises that lead to instability for tenants. We also need minimum standards, not only for tenants but for the letting agencies that can charge sky-high fees, in the hundreds of pounds—I have never understood what for; a couple of references, if that.

Renting is no longer just a transitory stage for people in their 20s; it is the new normal, and it is becoming routine for people further up the age scale, including many professionals in my constituency. A new staffer started with me the other day. He is in his 20s and on good money, but he is sharing 12 to a house, with a shared sitting room and kitchen. At that stage of life, “Who Stole My Cheese?” should not be a way of life, and there are older people than him in the same situation.

I am now in my 40s and first bought, pre-boom, in the 90s, but it seems that people a bit younger than me or who were not as quick to buy have missed the boat. That includes people with kids. I see them every day on the school run, and they are quivering at the prospect of the landlord selling off the property any minute, meaning that they will have to move on and find new schooling for their kids. For the people who did not buy, it seems that the generations before have benefited from rising equity and pulled the ladder up behind them.

In his new book, “Injustice”, Professor Danny Dorling says that in 2015, the combined value of houses and flats in the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster is worth more than the entire annual product of Denmark, the world’s 35th largest economy. That is a stark reminder of how London is different, and that applies to the suburbs too. The road where I grew up was not built for rich people. Opposite us lived Mr and Mrs Cotter—this was the ’70s: we did not know people’s first names—a postman and a dinner lady with two kids. Yesterday, I googled our old postcode, W5 1JH. No properties were for sale there, but all the homes on the neighbouring Greystoke estate, which are largely semis, were worth slightly plus or minus £1 million. There is no way that a postie and a dinner lady could afford to live in that road now—indeed, no public sector worker could afford any house in any part of my constituency on the open market.

The other day, I met our local chief superintendent, who told me that 60% of Met officers now live outside the M25, far removed from the communities they serve. Every school I visit locally tells me that it can get young teachers in to train, but as soon as they want to settle and put down roots, they are lost to Slough or beyond, because housing in west London is too prohibitively costly for them to stay.

The current Mayor of London, the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), is notable by his absence—where is he when you need him? I have had my brushes with him, it must be said, but it was he who claimed that not only property prices but benefit changes in this city were causing “Kosovo-style social cleansing”. Those are not my words; they are his. What steps is the Minister taking to reverse the trend of a growing proportion of London’s key workforce, be they in public services or other employment, being left behind and pushed out?

In an attempt to bring down the housing benefit bill, last week’s Budget effected a raid on housing associations and registered social landlords, whose properties look set to be sold off and whose revenues will be raided, stopping them from building more houses. The little social housing that we have will dwindle, and the policy is being funded by the sale of the so-called most expensive social housing properties in those boroughs. Were that to happen, it would lead to the total decimation of all housing stock in most of zone 1.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that my borough of Islington has a good record of building new council houses to a high standard? We have just completed an excellent development on Caledonian Road of 25 first-rate flats. If the Government’s policy goes through, they will all be sold and not one person on the housing waiting list or in housing need will get them. They will just be sold on to the private market and rented out privately. Does she agree that that is a scandal?

[Dr Huq]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It sounds like good things are being done in Islington, but they are being stifled by central Government. If only everywhere could be like Islington. With his leadership bid, maybe we could roll out the Islington model more widely.

A residential research report from JLL states that a fifth of women and a third of men aged from 20 to 34 are still living in their parent’s homes in London. They have been termed “the boomerang generation”, and there is academic research showing that this is causing redefined roles between adults and identities and intergenerational conflict, because it creates a dependence model. Before becoming an MP, I was a lecturer at Kingston University, and a lot of people among the student body there were not even boomeranging away from the parental home to boomerang back to it. The combination of tuition fees and the economic slowdown means that they do not even leave to pursue their education in the first place, so we are starting to resemble France, where people tend to stay local for university. Lord Kerslake has stated that

“Londoners are missing out on opportunities: delaying having families, being forced to rent for longer and many are locked out of home ownership completely.”

Housing is not just about bricks and mortar; it is about resilient, ideally mixed communities, and its affordability is key to unlocking this city’s full potential.

I was asked earlier about developments in my constituency. On the eastern edge is Old Oak, the super-development zone that we are promised, with 24,000 dwellings coming on stream, but most of these properties will be out of reach for most of my constituents. Can the Minister say what is being done to change the definition of affordability from the current Mayor of London’s reckoning of it as a whopping 80% of market rate?

The word “crisis” tends to be one of the most overused in politics, but right here, right now in this city, it is justified. It is not hyperbole; it is reality. London’s population is set to expand to 10 million in the next 15 years. The suburbs were once seen as the solution to our social ills—combining the convenience of city working with the values of a rural idyll; positioned between concrete jungle and village green—but even these districts at the edge of our city are now suffering with out-of-control house prices, and they are spawning these unsafe beds in sheds. The saying was meant to be that an Englishman’s home is his castle, not his shed—leaving aside the implied sexism of that phrase.

Only a massive house building programme can solve the problem, and that is something that, I will admit, successive Governments have failed to undertake. The coalition Administration concentrated on developer-led, private homes, rather than social housing and mixed communities. The cuts to tax relief for landlords in the Budget sounded laudable, but what happened to the promised neo-garden city movement? I do not hear so much about that anymore.

We need to ensure that we do not lose people to Slough, Milton Keynes and Luton. We need to reverse the brain drain away to other global cities, which will see this city hollowed out by all the Old Oaks of this world and other developments in my constituency. Indeed, there is one by the railway tracks at Ealing Broadway—Dickens Yard—where new two-bedroom flats cost £1.2 million. Needless to say, the lights are always off, because absentee purchasers snap them up as investment vehicles rather than as a roof above their head. I imagine that the Minister will say, “It’s all devolved in London,” but will he agree to include in his next housing Bill a power to let councils ban overseas and off-plan sales, to ensure that first-time buyers in London at least have a chance?