Covid-19: Hospitality Industry

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I thank my co-sponsor of this debate, the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for her excellent opening speech.

The hospitality sector is where we celebrate, mourn, catch up, hold work and community events, raise money for good causes, or just grab a bite when there is no time to cook or when we are travelling. Hounslow borough has 630 hospitality sector businesses—restaurants and cafés, pubs and bars, hotels and many more. Some have been able to open for some of the pandemic, but others—particularly wet-led pubs, wedding caterers, large events venues and party organisers—have been completely closed for the majority of the time. The pandemic has had a huge impact on the whole sector, and many businesses may not reopen.

The pandemic and the uncertain future falls hard on the low-paid, who dominate the hospitality sector, as do the under-25s. Hospitality workers are more likely to have lost their jobs than have been furloughed, so they make up a significant proportion of the skyrocketing number of universal credit claims—there are more than 17,000 claimants in my constituency. Behind each one of our hospitality businesses are many others in the supply chain: from companies that provide towels and cleaning to taxis, musicians, event organisers, wholesale food suppliers and many more—businesses that have missed out on most of the covid relief schemes.

Until a year ago, the hotels in Hounslow and west London, being close to Heathrow, were full to the brim. However, the huge drop in international travel and the travel and tourism sector has had a huge impact, including for a business in Isleworth that makes airline food and has written to me. Again, I urge the Government to provide aviation communities such as Hounslow with the support that they desperately need.

Across the whole hospitality sector we are seeing great, viable businesses that are on the brink or have gone under because of the lack of timely and adequate support. I do wonder whether anyone in the Government has ever run a business anything like the ones that Members are concerned about.

By contrast, I pay tribute to the work done by Hounslow Council to support businesses in the hospitality sector. The council has developed a hospitality reopening safely toolkit; provided face-to-face business support to help with the reviewing and adaptation of premises; run recover and regrow courses online, which have built resilience; and helped to showcase the Shop Safe, Shop Local campaign, which has encouraged people to support our amazing local independent businesses.

I hope the Government will promise to listen to those in the sector and give them a clear and long-term plan, as the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) said. They should bring in many of the other elements described today by Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), so that we can move forward to what are hopefully better days for the sector.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Following on from the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly), I will talk about practicalities.

The Government are forcing councils to increase council tax while simultaneously forcing them to make cuts. They are passing on the responsibility of funding the cost of covid to our local councils, and breaking the promise made to them at the start of the pandemic that they could spend “whatever it takes.” In the next few weeks, councillors in Hounslow and across the country are having to make incredibly hard decisions, on top of the many years of cuts that they have already had to make. In Hounslow, those cuts have meant virtually closing all youth services, and cutting social care when the need for care is growing. These are decisions that no councillor was elected to make, but which are forced on my council, in my constituency, thanks to a roughly 80% reduction over 10 years to the central Government grant, which once made up half of Hounslow’s income.

Even before covid, Hounslow councillors were going have to find £6 million of savings for this coming year, and £12 million for the next. They were—and still are— having to consider further cutting social care provision, as well as so-called back-office roles, which actually have an impact on the frontline, because these are the people who ensure that services change as conditions change; they are usually central to ensuring that the council is efficient, which is something that all taxpayers expect. On top of this, Hounslow has had to fund £20 million of additional spend on covid costs, as well as loss of business rates and other income.

Up to one in three families in Hounslow includes someone working at Heathrow, so job losses have had a massive impact and family incomes have been devastated. The Government’s covid grants have hardly touched the sides of the costs of responding to the community needs caused by covid. Those costs include the community hub to identify and support those who are isolated and vulnerable in order to ensure that they have food, medicines and other support. Hounslow has provided financial support to those who have lost income and, because there has been a devastating loss of income, the council has developed a “cornerstones of recovery” plan, which supports people into alternative work, helps with establishing small businesses and provides community support. But there are also many indirect costs.

Covid will leave a legacy in terms of poverty, employment, homelessness, the education gap and increased demand in social care, which will last for many years to come. The Government should work in partnership with councils and fully support the costs that they have incurred. Instead of hitting families with a triple hammer blow of council tax hikes, pay freezes, and cuts to universal credit and council services, Labour would act to secure our economy, protect our NHS and rebuild our country.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I can tell my hon. Friend that we have written to all those responsible for buildings, including their owners, where remediation has not started to remind them of their responsibilities and our expectation that remediation will begin by the end of the year. My hon. Friend the noble Lord Greenhalgh has convened roundtable meetings with owners and with local authority leaders to address the challenges that they face locally. We have made it clear that, from December, those responsible for buildings where remediation has not started and is not forecast to start by the end of this year will be publicly named. Those are active steps that we are undertaking to remind landlords and owners of their responsibilities.

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

In October, more than 1,000 of my constituents—leaseholders, shared owners, tenants and students—were asked to leave the Paragon Estate in Brentford within seven days because the current owners, Notting Hill Genesis, found significant fire safety and structural issues. They were unrelated to flammable cladding, because that had been removed two years ago. In September 2019, Richmond House in Worcester Park, a four-storey block of only 23 leasehold flats, was destroyed by fire in 11 minutes. Both estates were developed by the Barclay Group, and both had the same significant fire safety defects. The week before last, the Sunday Times said that

“the scandal over building safety spreads far beyond dangerously clad tower blocks”

and could affect 4 million people. What are the Government doing right now to protect all those at risk of dying at home because of failures in the building safety regime?

[Christopher Pincher]

The building safety fund was designed specifically to deal with the removal of unsafe non-ACM cladding where the buildings are over 18 metres and where materials, even before the combustible cladding ban was put in place in 2018 under statutory guidance, should not have been used on high-rise buildings. That fund is available, and, as I have described to the House, it is already being disbursed round the country and will be completed by the end of this financial year. We will continue to work with the financial sector, as I have described, using Michael Wade. We will continue to work with developers to make sure that their responsibility is executed, and support for leaseholders is provided. As for the specifics of the case that the hon. Lady raised, I am not aware of it, but I am happy to discuss it with her outwith the Chamber.

Covid-19 Lockdown: Homelessness and Rough Sleepers

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and it was a pleasure to attend the APPG. I also thank him for his work in this area, for which he is a passionate advocate. Housing First is a great pilot, and we have continued to make sure that we can get individuals through those schemes, even during the pandemic. We are working with those sites to make sure that we can maximise that funding and that pilot to get the data and information. I am very supportive of the Housing First programme, and I would very much like to extend it. That is something that we will be working on in Government. I am committed to making sure that the Homelessness Reduction Act is implemented fully, and we will have further discussions about the funding to be able to deliver on that.

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

A street homelessness reduction programme is not world leading if the numbers sleeping rough on our streets are rising. It is shocking that the number of young people sleeping rough on our streets is now at a record high. What will the Minister do to ensure that homelessness prevention services offer appropriate support to young people with particular needs, such as young prison leavers?

Town and Country Planning

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I rise to oppose these three SIs. The planning system exists specifically to address and balance often conflicting demands: public versus private; local community versus national requirements; environment versus the economy; and financial capital versus human need. Every planning application is judged against clear policies and clear demands, and every planning decision considers quality as well as quantity. It is a transparent and accountable process that enables community involvement. Permitted development rights were introduced to reduce bureaucracy in specific, clearly understood circumstances, but these SIs put a coach and horses through the normal system of judging and determining a proposed development.

I had 30 years of involvement in the town planning system before being elected to this place, and these instruments give me a terrible sense of déjà vu. In 2013, the Government introduced an extension of permitted development rights; then, as now, there was cross-party and cross-sector opposition. Why? Because extending PDR created, and will create, new slums of substandard housing, over which local planning authorities have little or no control and there is little or no opportunity for community input.

Now the Government have come back for more, ignoring the conclusions of their Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Although they have conceded, after a lot of pressure, on minimum light and space standards, there are still major concerns about issues such as neighbour impact, access, parking, play and amenity space, and of course the proposals remove section 106 contributions from larger developments to the community on things such as affordable housing, traffic and transport improvements. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I also share the concerns of my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), and of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) about the implications for leaseholders.

Where is the evidence that these SIs will deliver more homes? There are 318,000 homes granted planning permission between 2011 and 2018 that remain unbuilt. The Government say that these measures will provide affordable housing for younger people, but there is no evidence that suggests they will. In my west London constituency, even a substandard rabbit hutch would still be affordable only to a young person working on a City of London salary who has a chunky deposit from the bank of mum and dad. As usual, families on UK average and below-average incomes remain invisible to Ministers.

There is, of course, inconsistency between the high-falutin’ intentions in the White Paper about sustainability and quality, and what will actually happen when these SIs are implemented. Speculators and owners will be able to use these regulations to avoid all the normal conditions that are to be expected when someone goes through the normal application process, which are there to address the principles of planning that I listed at the start of my speech, and of course they will avoid community engagement.

If the Government think that we are worried unnecessarily about these issues around standards and that it will all be all right, why do this in the first place, when we have a perfectly adequate planning system? We will see yet more homes that are bad for those living in them now, bad for their neighbours, and bad for those living in them in the future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Rachel Hopkins—I need you to sit down at 6.27 pm.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effect on environmental standards of the Government’s proposed planning reforms.

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

What assessment he has made of the effect on environmental standards of the Government’s proposed planning reforms.

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned in response to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the Government are committed to building not just better and faster but greener. As we consider reforms to our planning system, we are committed to ensuring that they create better outcomes for the environment and that decision making is properly informed by the science. My right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary set out this morning our intention to develop a reform framework for environmental assessment and mitigation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I have every sympathy for the hon. Lady and her concerns in championing her constituents. I would point out that in my quasi-judicial role I cannot discuss individual planning matters, but I will refer her concern to my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary, and of course if she wants to talk to me about a broader range of issues, I would be very happy to do that.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Hounslow Council’s new council housing will no longer have gas boilers installed, only the newest low-energy systems available. Both the leader of Hounslow, Councillor Steve Curran, and community organisation Brentford Voice have said they would like national planning policies to require all new developments to incorporate low-emission energy systems. Will the Housing Secretary’s reforms require all new homes to be zero-carbon and affordable to run, yet still to be warm in winter and cool in summer?

[Christopher Pincher]

We were the first Government in the world to legislate to be zero-carbon by 2050, and we intend to meet that pledge, which is why we have introduced the future homes standard to reduce carbon emissions from homes built after 2025 by between 75% and 80%. I am prepared to listen to and consider all proposals to make us greener and better, and I look forward to hearing those proposals from the hon. Lady.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mr Simon Clarke)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, which is a very good one. As he rightly says, BIDs have a very important role to play in this regeneration. We see them at the heart of the process of making sure that the high street comes back stronger from this pandemic and that we make good progress in making sure that the high street is genuinely fit for the future. That means meeting the needs of modern consumer habits.

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

On the Westferry development, the Secretary of State has just told the House that the Department was advised of the conversation with Richard Desmond at the fundraising dinner before he overruled his own planning inspector to approve the Westferry development, but a whistleblower in the Department says that there is no record of the dinner appearing in official documents. That is potentially a serious breach of the ministerial code, especially as the Secretary of State himself has just admitted that it is a highly contentious application. Will he now confirm when and how he advised the Department of the meeting, given the question of bias that this issue raises?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Lady with her pre-prepared question, but as she will have heard in my answer a few moments ago, the Department was fully informed of my attendance at the event. I discussed with my officials that the applicant had raised the matter. I advised the applicant that I was not able to discuss it, so I think I have answered her question comprehensively.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will write to the hon. Lady with full details on that point and make that letter public. That is a firm commitment to the House this afternoon.

I am conscious that time is pressing. On support for rough sleepers, I want to confirm that the support package is comprehensive and, of course, therefore extends to some of the most vulnerable members of society. Not all of us are so fortunate as to have a stable home in case we are sick, so we are developing a bespoke response and have launched a £3.2 million covid-19 rough sleeping fund. Dame Louise Casey is heading up our rough sleeping response to covid-19, and our aim is to make sure that everyone is protected and is in appropriate accommodation. On the point raised by the hon. Member for Croydon Central, hotels engaged in this process should stay open, and the Department is working closely to ensure that that is the case. We are working intensively across all local authorities in England, and Dame Louise is focusing on high-priority areas, both in and outside London. The hon. Lady raised the issue of Grenfell, and we are absolutely clear that building sites and priority work, where appropriate PHE guidance has been observed, can continue, where the work is genuinely essential. We will be issuing further detail on this point. We want to see the Grenfell issue of cladding continue to be addressed at this time, assuming that safe practice can be followed.

On the care system, we are providing £1.6 billion for local authorities’ response to the covid-19 pandemic, to address the additional pressures they are facing. We expect that the majority of that funding will be spent on providing adult social care services, which are going to be required. I can confirm that 26,000 care organisations—care homes, home care and hospices—have each received 300 fluid-repellent masks. Obviously, many more will be needed and we are dramatically ramping up the supply of those. The Army is now involved in making sure that they are distributed across the country as required.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden raised the issue of children’s hospices in her question, and I can confirm that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is working on a support package for charities right now, We are working at pace and hope to bring forward plans shortly, recognising that, as she rightly said, time is of the essence in making sure that these places do not have to close. On children, young people and those who work with them, our priorities are their safety, minimising disruption to everyday life and not unduly impacting on their progression and education. That is why we have asked parents to keep their children at home wherever possible. Schools and all childcare providers have been asked to continue to provide care for a limited number of children: those who are vulnerable; and those whose parents are crucial to the covid-19 response and who cannot be safely cared for at home. We are extremely grateful for the work of teachers, childcare providers and local authorities, and we will continue to monitor closely what is happening on the ground. To be clear, the position is as follows: children should be sent to school only if they have to be because someone’s work is genuinely crucial to our national response. If people are able to keep their children at home, they should do so.

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

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor for raising the point I raised with Treasury Ministers yesterday about child benefit. Surely raising child benefit by at least £10 a week, as recommended by the Child Poverty Action Group, during this time—children are at home and the price of food is going up, as they will not now get free school meals or meals at school—would be quick and easy to do, unlike other schemes which are taking longer to set up?

[Mr Clarke]

I thank the hon. Lady for her suggestion, which will have been heard. I can confirm that free school meals ought to continue to be available during this time. Schools have discretion to make sure they find the appropriate way to do that, but I take her point on board. Costs will be higher for families at a time like this.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Time is short, and other hon. Members have covered many of the issues that I wanted to raise—particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who dealt with the overall issues so well. I just want to say a little about some examples I have encountered.

A man who came to my surgery lives in a relatively new block. He has got a job in Scotland and therefore needed to move from west London, and wanted to sell his flat. He discovered that the people he was going to sell to could not get a mortgage. He has been waiting for months, to-ing and fro-ing between the builders, solicitors and mortgage company to try to find out why there is a delay, because until he gets things sorted out his life is on hold. It appears that the block does not have ACM, but possibly HPL—he is not getting straight answers.

Secondly, the Paragon development jointly built by Berkeley First and Notting Hill housing association some years ago was featured in Private Eye. After many years in which the residents faced damp, Notting Hill Genesis opened up the cavities behind the walls and found a range of problems, including lack of horizontal and vertical barriers—something that other hon. Members have mentioned—and cladding problems in particular. What is worse is that the scaffolding went up over a year ago, and work stopped not long afterwards. Two building companies have gone bust. The residents—the leaseholders; they are shared owners—have been living with their flats exposed to the elements, apart from a sheet of wood, for months. There are also the security issues of having scaffolding outside the windows. There are 700 students living in the other blocks on that estate, who, given the fire in the student block in Bolton, face the same fear.

Finally, there is a large development in my constituency, built by a volume house builder, and three or four of the blocks were transferred under a long lease, or a head lease, to a housing association. It now turns out that the cladding on those blocks is dubious, and possibly ACM. The shared owners and social rent tenants living in those blocks live in fear and uncertainty. The buck is continually passed between the housing association and the developer whose responsibility it is to pay for the problem.

I concur with many of my colleagues here today. The Government must take responsibility for the problem that existed in the first place—the building regulations and the fire regulations that were inadequate, despite warnings from previous fires. Think of the residents, who not only face the costs and cannot sell and move on, but who live in fear that they could be the victims of the next fire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. As I said, MPs from both side of the House are raising these issues. The fire risk of tall buildings with cladding was brought to everybody’s attention after the terrible tragedy of Grenfell Tower. It had not been brought to people’s attention before.

[Ruth Cadbury]

With the deepest respect to the Minister, these issues were raised and recommendations made to the Government at the inquests into both the Lakanal House fire in south London, which took the lives of six residents, and the fire in Southampton, which took the lives of firefighters. Grenfell would not have happened had the recommended building standards been put place.

[Esther McVey]

The Government took immediate action straight after the report. The actions that we took included a comprehensive independent review of building safety, chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt, and we have accepted all the recommendations of her independent review. We will continue to bring forward legislation to deliver an enhanced safety regime for high-rise residential buildings. As we announced last month, we will begin immediately to establish the new building safety regulator—initially in shadow form, pending legislation—which Dame Judith will chair, to oversee the transition to the new regime.

British House Building Industry

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the previous speakers, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) for his excellent speech on leasehold issues. He is such an expert—as ever—because he has such a problem in his area, but that is not unique and we have some of the same issues in London with flatted developments.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for the excellent work that she has been doing on this important issue and for securing this debate. I am not sure whether it is a relief to discuss something other than Brexit, but this is as much, if not more, of a crisis, certainly for those who are affected.

In my maiden speech, I referred to my forebears, who recognised the importance of good-quality housing for people’s wellbeing, lives and, I have to say, their productivity in their factory. My forebears built good-quality, affordable housing until the state took on that responsibility. From the ’40s onwards, Governments of both persuasions built tens of thousands of council homes a year to ensure that the British people were adequately housed, but we have been walking away from that in the last 10 or more years.

For most of my political life, I was a councillor in Hounslow. Even in outer London until about 10 years ago, a family on an ordinary income could afford to buy their own home, so they did not need social rented housing. They did not put additional pressure on council housing. Since house prices have increased, however, people need a household income of £72,000 in Hounslow to buy even a two-bedroom flat, yet the average household income is £40,000.

We need 1.2 million new council and social rented homes in this country because that is the number of households on the housing needs register. That does not count people who are not disabled and working-age adults who have to rent. The number of people in that category has gone up 100% in just over 10 years. Under the right to buy, most councils, including even those that are building housing—Hounslow is building about 400 new council homes a year—are losing council homes faster than they are building them. Right to buy homes are often becoming private rented stock at three times the council rent levels.

Of course, we need house builders to be on our side. As others have mentioned so eloquently, they need to address the leasehold issue. They also need to take responsibility for the shocking faults in many new build properties. There is variation between developers, and they cannot hide behind the fact that there is a skills shortage. There is one and they need to take responsibility for it, but so do the Government, because much of the skills shortage in construction results from the fact that a large proportion of our construction workforce are EU nationals and many are leaving, or are no longer coming in the same numbers because of the uncertainty that has been mentioned many times in this Chamber. They do not feel welcome and do not have security as workers in this country.

I am sure that the Minister will respond with warm and hopeful words, as Ministers always do. The new Government may even intend to do something significant about the housing crisis, although I suspect that they will not be around for long enough to implement anything. I advise them, however, not to fall into having the problems that some previous Ministers have had. This includes the risk of unintended consequences of poorly thought-out policies. I will mention two of them.

Let us have no more schemes, such as Help to Buy, that just give discounts to those who can afford to buy anyway. Let us not rush through planning changes such as those to permitted development rights, which have allowed the appalling chicken coops in old factories and offices, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that that is exactly what we intend to do. How do we enable people to get on the housing ladder and to be homeowners in an array of homes they would like and need? How do we best use housing benefits to enable that to happen? As I have said, we have built more homes in this last year than in every one of the last 31 years. We are correcting a market that has been undeniably not supported for the last 31 years. We are getting it right. We have built more houses. Where we see the misuse of leaseholds, we will get rid of that. We will be supporting people with an array of opportunities.

[Ruth Cadbury]

With due respect to the Minister, I think that the hon. Member for South Norfolk was talking about the housing benefit bill, which is not relevant to people who can buy their own homes. He was saying that that money would be far better spent on building affordable social rent homes for people who will never be able to buy their own homes. Meanwhile, the Help to Buy programme has simply increased the price of flats in London.

[Ms McVey]

I did understand what my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk was talking about. He talked about the £24 billion that was going into housing benefit and asked how we could best use that to help to build more homes, which could include social and council homes. I understand that, but at the same time, we have to ensure that more people can get on the housing ladder.

We are at the start of building 300,000 homes a year. That is not just about the homes; it is about reshaping an industry. At the same time, we want to be a global visionary centre of expertise in building. Let us think about all the jobs that that will provide, if we have the commitment to do it together. That is why we will have a centre of excellence in the north of England to look at the best ways forward for construction and engineering. That is what a determined Conservative party is going to do. We are going to build the right houses, champion home ownership and make a centre of excellence for building.