Christmas Adjournment

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point and underlines the longer-term need for leasehold reform. I welcome the fact that the Government are committed to doing that. We have obviously had a lot of upheaval this year, but it is something that we all need to work on. Many people now live in leasehold properties and need protection.

We all need to join forces, and I will join forces with whoever, in this House and beyond, to try to persuade the Treasury, and perhaps the Prime Minister too—that is the level of the decision that will have to be made—to provide the funding. There are really only three ways to do it: through finance vehicles, although they can affect mortgages, as we can imagine people having to take out a loan or a charge on their property; as a direct grant, which would cost the taxpayer, but I cannot see much alternative given the fact that this consumer and fire-safety failure is the biggest in a generation; or the sector pays, which I would love to see, but we would have to wait.

I applaud the former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), for getting a ministerial direction for the first tranche of fire-safety money because he knew that it would take so long to track down the owners of properties and that so much legal cost would be involved that it would not be feasible. He recognised that, so I urge the Government to recognise it too, and to come to the rescue of my constituents who are waiting. It is an uncertain year and an uncertain Christmas and, as it stands, there is no further money for the 12 months after March next year.

Let me touch on the issue of schooling, and particularly the issues relating to covid. It has been a really challenging year for our schools and all the staff working in them, and of course the parents and pupils are affected too. When schools had to stop teaching physically, for the most part, there were not enough laptops. No one would have predicted that we would need quite so many so fast, but the Government continually overpromised and underdelivered on the laptops and other necessary equipment. Many constituents of mine—around a third of them overall, although the number fluctuates, particularly with more people going on to benefits at the moment—are on free school meals. They do not all have access to wi-fi or equipment at home to work on, so pupils have been working on their parents’ mobile phones that are on contract, not on data-rich wi-fi. This has had a real impact: the gap between the richest and poorest students is getting wider in a constituency where for 20 years we have been shrinking that gap. A number of my local schools are in the top 1% in the country.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that to connect to the Government’s Oak National Academy on pay-as-you-go costs something like £37 a day?

[Meg Hillier]

I gasp, because most of my constituents do not have £37 left at the end of the month, let alone to spend every day on wi-fi. It is a real problem. I have poverty in my constituency—people see the trendy side of Shoreditch and Hackney, and there is wealth, but there is also immense poverty—but there is no poverty of ambition and children have been doing very well at school. We need to make sure that the catch-up money is available. The permanent secretary at the Department for Education gave a commitment today that she would do everything in her power, but we know that her power is limited unless funding is available to make sure that the tutoring and catch-up is in place.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

May I take this opportunity to wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and of course all the Members and staff here a very happy Christmas? It has been, as people have said, a truly turbulent year. May I put on the record my gratitude and enormous respect for the extraordinary frontline staff in our country, particularly our medical and care staff, whom history will remember as the pride of our generation?

The service of my constituency and the people who live in it has always been my priority during the 23 years I have had the privilege of representing Mitcham and Morden, but as we have all stayed at home and worked at home, even more of my focus has been local. When the nation searched for PPE, scrambled for tests and desperately secured university places, I am sure that all Members, like me, felt duty-bound to fight loudest for their constituents. I wake up every morning and remember just how lucky I am to have that responsibility

However, I am afraid that there are some things that no Member should bear the burden of responsibility for, including ensuring that the children in their constituency have a meal and an education. This year, my local area has been forced to open an eighth food bank to account for the growing number of people who simply cannot afford to put food on the table. Every week at our Friday morning food bank, the queue grows longer, and more hard-working families tell me that they have lost their jobs, let down by the dither and delay that the Prime Minister has shown at every turn. We have stepped in where the Government have failed.

Meanwhile, when schools closed in March, the Government failed those children who could not continue learning from home without the tools required to log in. The lockdown exposed the digital divide across the UK, with approximately 9% of children—Ofcom estimates their number to be up to an extraordinary 1.78 million—without access to a laptop, desktop or tablet. While the Department for Education promoted its online Oak National Academy, let us be clear that no number of online lessons could benefit those children unable to log in from home.

My community rallied, securing hundreds of devices packed with data for children in some of the most vulnerable families. No child’s education should be dependent on their internet access. Once again, we stepped in where the Government had failed. Many of those families are trapped in temporary accommodation, spending lockdown in cramped rooms with no outside space. Under the Government’s watch, the number of families in temporary accommodation has soared, with 127,240 children destined to wake up on Christmas morning without a permanent place to call home.

I recognise the challenge for any Government in a global crisis, but no matter where we sit in the Chamber, our reaction to yesterday’s news that UNICEF will be feeding hungry children in the UK for the first time in its 70-year history must have been one of shock and shame—shock and shame for the Government, that is, not for UNICEF. I understand that the Leader of House said earlier today that UNICEF “should be ashamed”. He is a proud Catholic. I am too, but I am aware that my religion puts the need for self-awareness and responsibility at the top of its beliefs. If we are to be responsible, the Government should be aware of their failings in regard to vulnerable children and not try to blame the charities attempting to resolve some of those difficulties.

I do not just want to be negative; I also wish to be positive. It is not a silver bullet, but may I raise with the Minister an easy, tangible step forward and ask him to discuss it with his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government? In September 2018, the then Prime Minister announced that a stamp duty surcharge of up to 3% would be imposed on overseas residential property investors and that all the money generated would be used to tackle homelessness. It was expected to raise £140 million. The percentage has changed three times since and is now set to be 2%, meaning that a £40 million loss is due to be implemented in April. Reverting to 3% on overseas properties will not resolve homelessness, but it would make another £40 million available, and help an awful lot of people. Food banks, the digital divide, and homelessness are three issues that arrive as a trio, presenting hardship to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The number of people this hardship impacts continues to soar.

I would like to finish by voicing the case of the millions of people and businesses who remain excluded from Government support through no fault of their own, many of whom, when they can no longer afford to pay their rent or mortgage, could face the difficulties I have described today: hard-working people in my constituency, such as Paul the photographer, Zohra the childminder, and Larry the florist, who this Government continue to overlook. Initially, they were told that it was too complicated to include them in the support schemes, but almost a year on, I am afraid that excuse simply does not wash. The Government have failed enough people this year, but Minister, it is not too late to listen.