Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in response to the Gracious Speech, and it is a pleasure to follow so many excellent speeches, particularly that of my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). There have been so many speeches from the Opposition Benches, and not very many from the Government Benches. Interestingly, some of those on the Government Benches were not particularly supportive of the Gracious Speech.

This King’s Speech fails to undo the damage of 13 long years of Conservative rule inflicted on this country and most of its people. There are any number of topics that I could have chosen to speak on to illustrate the damage that the Government have done to my constituents’ lives and hopes, and how the Gracious Speech has failed those constituents. However, I have time to cover only one topic: housing. The topic on the Order Paper for today’s debate is opportunity, but we know that opportunity is only possible if someone has a safe, secure and truly affordable home.

Politicians often use the term “housing crisis”, but we are seeing multiple housing crises. There is a crisis in the private rented sector, a crisis for leaseholders—in fact, a crisis for most mortgage holders—a crisis for those entangled with shared ownership, a crisis among housing associations, and a crisis for those with no home and no hope of having a home. There is also a crisis in home building, with far too few homes being built.

What do we see in the King’s Speech to tackle that multi-headed hydra on housing? A ban on no-fault evictions, first promised in 2019, and a weak, watered-down version of leasehold reform. The party of Macmillan, which once built hundreds of thousands of homes for our heroes, has been reduced to banning tents. The once-grand Conservative party has been reduced to declaring war on tent fabric. How does the housing crisis look to my constituents in Hounslow, Isleworth, Osterley, Brentford and Chiswick—those in what we euphemistically call “housing stress”?

I will start with homelessness and homeless families. All the schools in my constituency have a number of homeless children. Can the Education Secretary imagine the impact that has on children and their parents? First, being homeless means having no settled future; not knowing when children will start a new school, or whether they will need to be pulled out just as they have made friends or move on before their next set of key exams. It means no space to do homework for those in overcrowded conditions. It means mothers living in one or two rooms in a big shared house wondering whether it is safe to leave the baby or the toddler alone while going to the toilet or to the kitchen. It means families with three or four children living in a one-bedroom flat or bunking up with friends or relatives, and children sleeping on sofas and sitting on buses for hours to get to and from school.

The housing crisis is a poison; one that is touching so many in west London who are priced out of even being able to rent a home, let alone buy one. Ending no-fault evictions will not help my constituents who do not have a tenancy, or those who do but whose landlord is selling up. How can one expect one’s children to grow up healthy when there is mould in every single corner of one’s home? How can someone look after their own wellbeing when the threat of eviction is hanging over their head and no landlord will rent them a home because they do not earn at least £60,000? The monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat in even the cheapest part of my constituency is £2,000—more than many of my constituents earn. No wonder home ownership is but a distant dream.

We need a multi-pronged approach with a proper programme of house building and a sweeping set of reforms to the current systems, especially in regard to leasehold—perhaps I should call it “fleecehold,” as many of my constituents do. It is a “feudal” practice—not my word, but that of the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—that has left many of my constituents trapped in a serf-like position. He promised me in the Chamber that he would grasp the issue and used rather emotive language about “Applying a vice-like” pressure, yet it appears that his grip has soon weakened. I am sure that the developers and freeholders are relieved about that.

I will give just some examples of the impact on my constituents. One constituent had a 300% increase in building insurance costs despite no change in the building. Another constituent had service charges doubling in a block even though the lifts have been left broken and the intercom out of action. A constituent was unable to move with their partner and children to a bigger home because of a quirk of the Help to Buy system. I could go on. Those problems all stem from the huge flaws in the leasehold system—huge flaws that the Government’s modest set of tiny, limited changes does not start to address.

The shadow of the building safety crisis still hangs over many of my constituents. It has been six years since more than 70 people died in the Grenfell fire, and more than a decade since six people died in the Lakanal House fire. Constituents—mine and others across the country—are still waiting for vital building safety work to begin, despite it being promised months ago for their blocks. Many are not even eligible for support, because their building is less than 12 metres high.

The Government have once again failed leaseholders with the crumbs on offer. No more leasehold houses to be built—big deal. Developers should never have started building leasehold houses in the first place. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) has said what a Labour Government will do: ban the sale of new leasehold flats as well as houses, and fix the mess in the leasehold system to ensure that existing leaseholders can move to commonhold. Commonhold must become the default for flats and render leasehold obsolete, and freehold must be the norm for new houses. Labour would enact the recommendation of the Law Commission’s report. We will do what this Government have failed to do.

The Government’s failure to fix our broken leasehold system is part of a much wider problem: a failure to understand the housing crisis across this country. Once again, the Prime Minister is out of touch with the crisis in the country. This King’s Speech should end the myth that the Conservatives are the party of home ownership. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said, the Prime Minister caved in to the demands of his own Back Benchers and got rid of housing targets. He caved in to pressure from freeholders and dropped real leasehold reform. He caved in to the pressure from private landlords and watered down rental reform—a watered down Government, with a watered down King’s Speech.