Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend is a strong advocate for his area; I have dealt with him in a number of Departments, and he stands up for his community on every issue. I am grateful for the work he has done to make sure the Bill overall comes out in a good place, and I know he has also spoken to my colleagues on a number of issues.

On the amendment on childcare, I should emphasise that there is a list of what constitutes infrastructure for the infrastructure levy, and it is a non-exhaustive list, so it will be possible for other items to be included. It is drafted purposefully to give local authorities wide powers to apply the levy to infrastructure that is important and needed in their local area. It contains illustrative examples of what might be included as infrastructure, but in any event the levy will be able to be spent on childcare facilities such as nurseries and pre-schools, as these fall under the definition of

“schools and other educational facilities”

already included in the list.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know the Minister has tried to take account of these concerns, but from what she has just said, it is not the case that childcare would, unless it is connected to a school, be considered part of this. So what amendment 2 does is set out that, whether it is a nursery, a toy library or a childminding setting, if local councils felt that was something that needed to be done, they could work with developers to deliver it. Will she make that commitment, and most importantly will she write it down? It is one thing to make a commitment at the Dispatch Box, but those of us who have dealt with local government know that it needs to be in the guidance and regulations for us to truly declare that childcare is infrastructure.

[Lucy Frazer]

I totally understand the hon. Lady’s points, and it is crucial that children get the support, care and education they deserve. It must be the case that nurseries and pre-schools fall within the definition of

“schools and other educational facilities”,

which is in the list at proposed new section 204N(3)(c). There is also a question about the provision of the care within that: that would not fall within the definition of infrastructure per se, but proposed new section 204N(5) allows regulations to make provision about when local authorities could apply levy money to non-infrastructure items, which could include subsidising the cost of childcare places for parents and carers if this was considered a priority by the local area.

I want to give Members across the House an opportunity to speak in this debate. We believe that our amendments focus on making the planning system, and the systems that interact with it, work better, innovating and improving for the benefit of all our constituents, and I commend them to the House.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I agree and disagree with the hon. Lady. I agree that it is a good first step, and I disagree in the sense that the Government cannot consult for a number of years on what additional measures might be required. We are ultimately talking about local discretion to apply, whether it is use classes or a licensing scheme, but we think that, such is the acute nature of the problem in particular parts of the country, a registration scheme is not enough. We cannot wait until 2024 for additional measures.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend, like me, share the sense of mysticism that I suspect parents around the country will feel about the fact that the Government consider childcare to be a “non-infrastructure item”? The Minister just said that—I hope she misspoke. Parents recognise that, just as we fund roads so they can drive to work, funding childcare helps them get to work. That is why many local authorities do not do deals to invest in childcare and make sure it and childminders are part of our local economies. That is why we need things such as amendment 2.

[Matthew Pennycook]

We believe it is essential that the infrastructure levy is designed and implemented in a way that, first and foremost, ensures local authorities deliver the necessary amount of affordable housing and core infrastructure to support the development of their area. For that reason, we raised concerns in Committee about the possibility that the levy could be spent on non-infrastructure items such as services that are wholly unconnected to the impact of development on communities, without those needs having been met. However, as my hon. Friend knows—as any parent knows—childcare is infrastructure. Given the acute pressure on childcare places in many parts of the country, we agree that there is a case for explicitly making reference to childcare facilities in the list of infrastructure in proposed new section 204N so that local authorities are aware that they can use levy proceeds to fund it as part of developing their areas.

There are a number of useful provisions in the Bill that we support, but we fear that any benefits that might flow from them will ultimately be undermined by others that risk causing serious harm, whether it be to already low levels of affordable housing supply, the status and remit of local planning or important environmental protections. If the legislation before us were only an idiosyncratic mix of the good, the half-baked and the bad—a typically Govian curate’s egg, one might say—that would be disappointing enough. What adds to the frustration we feel is the fact that, in a larger sense, it represents a real missed opportunity to enact the kind of planning reform that is required to meet the multiple challenges that we face as a country: to tackle the housing crisis, to respond to the climate emergency, to address our rapidly degrading natural environment, and to better promote health and wellbeing.

We have a chance today to overhaul the Bill in a number of important respects. We have a chance to rectify the aspects of it that are problematic and enable it to address the vital issues on which it is currently silent, and I urge the House to come together to do so.

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[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 8 to 11 in my name and the names of other hon. Members.

As chair of the national parks all-party parliamentary group, and with a delightful corner of Dartmoor in my constituency, I am pleased to propose these new clauses. As we all know, national parks provide many benefits to nature, climate, heritage and culture. However, they are underpinned by an outdated legislative framework, which prevents them from realising their full potential for people, nature’s recovery, the 30x30 initiative and the Government’s net zero goals.

The Glover review of protected landscapes in 2019 highlighted these issues and put forward a package of recommendations to address them, the majority of which, to be fair, were accepted by the Government in their response to the review. But it is time that we implemented them to make best use of the rich natural heritage that we have been blessed with in our country. The new clauses that I have tabled could act as a vehicle to take forward the Glover review’s recommendations.

National parks play a key role in furthering the Government’s levelling-up mission, particularly in having a positive impact on our health, wellbeing and pride of place. Given this Bill’s focus on environmental matters and the planning system, it provides the perfect opportunity to implement the Glover recommendations to strengthen national parks as planning authorities. We must take this opportunity as these next few years are vital for meeting the commitment to protect 30% of England for nature by 2030, for halting the decline in species abundance and for making progress towards net zero.

New clause 8 delivers on proposal 1 in the Glover review to give national parks a renewed mission to recover biodiversity and nature. Natural England has found that only 26% of the protected habitat area inside national parks is in favourable condition, compared with 39% for England as a whole. The new clause seeks to address this disparity by recognising that we have a role not just in protecting national parks, but in actively strengthening and recovering them. It also delivers on proposal 7 of the Glover review, which proposed a stronger mission to connect all people with our national landscapes.

National parks have invaluable potential to improve people’s connection with nature and our levelling-up goals require that we should all enjoy equal access to nature across the country. During the lockdown, we learnt that, if we did not already know it. Natural England has shown that, if everyone has access to a green space, we could save the NHS more than £2 billion a year.

New clause 9 implements two recommendations from the Glover review to give national park authorities a new duty to address climate change and to strengthen the existing duty on public bodies to further national park purposes. The Government have already said that national park management plans should contain

“ambitious goals to increase carbon sequestration”

and

“set out their local response to climate adaptation”.

New clause 10 helps in setting out realistic goals for national park improvement. That would deliver other key elements of proposal 3 in the Glover review, that strengthened management plans should set clear priorities and actions for nature’s recovery and climate in national parks, and that legislation should give public bodies a responsibility to help prepare and implement management plans.

New clause 11 seeks to address Glover’s ambition to increase skills and diversity on national park authority boards. The Government’s response to Glover committed to measures to ensure that boards

“have more flexibility to balance diversity and expertise”

and proposes

“a more merit-based approach”.

So let us get on with it. The new clause would deliver this flexibility, removing the restrictive legislation referred to in the Government’s response, and ensure that boards are better equipped to deliver national park purposes. I am supported in these new clauses by the Better Planning Coalition, representing 27 organisations across the key sectors of the environment, housing, planning, and heritage.

I had a positive meeting last week with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), who is responsible for national park policy. She is committed to working with national parks to bring about the bright new future that Glover anticipates and I hope that those on the Front Bench today will assist her in that vital mission.

[Stella Creasy]

The “Levelling Up” White Paper set out a mission that by 2030 the number of primary school children who were achieving the expected standards in reading, writing and maths would be increased. That cannot be done without investing in early years. We already see the impact of the failure to do that, with children from disadvantaged backgrounds being 11 months behind their peers in terms of development by the time they get to primary school. Investing in early years is what bridges the gap.

We know that our early years sector is in crisis. Since 2019, 500 non-domestic early years childcare settings have closed, 300 in the last year alone. Some 65% of those closures took place this summer. In total, there are 5,500 fewer providers of early years services than there were just a few years ago, and 95% of those providers say that it is the current levels of funding and investment that are driving them out. Crucially, that is happening most in the areas that need that provision most: 15% of closures are happening in deprived areas.

I really hope that the Minister will listen to the case I make today, because it should be a no-brainer. It is not just about seeing children as part of our future and it being worth investing in them as infrastructure. Some 64,000 more women of working age are out of work today than were last year, and 35,000 of them say that caring commitments stop them going to work. I tabled amendment 2, because our economy cannot afford not to realise that childcare is infrastructure. We must realise that making sure people have the right roads and resources to get to work must include ensuring that their children can be cared for.

A report by the Centre for Progressive Policy shows that if women had access to adequate childcare they could increase their earnings from £7.6 billion to £10.9 billion. What would that mean for the Exchequer, which should be here supporting this amendment? The Women’s Budget Group estimates that 1.7 million women are prevented from taking on work for childcare reasons. That costs the economy £28 billion a year. Amendment 2 and unlocking resources for childcare would be a win-win for our economy and for our communities. It would be an investment that would save us money. It is also right that developers should play their part.

Comparing Ofsted and Office for National Statistics data shows that since 2014 the rate of population growth outstrips the growth of the childcare sector in 116 out of 149 local authorities, including 15 of the 20 areas with the highest population growth. The National Childbirth Trust now tells parents to put their not yet born children on the list for childcare providers, because there are not any and getting one is almost impossible.

I see the problem first hand in my local community. The brilliant Walthamstow Toy Library is about to be yet again kicked out of its building because developers want to turn it into flats. Those developers looked completely blank at the idea that they would invest in providing a space for that service because it has such an impact on our local community. That is happening across the country: vital resources that help parents get to work and to develop our children are not getting the funding that they need. The Minister could change that if she would just make it explicit that the provision is not about educational settings. The list that she has now covers nurseries that are attached to schools, but what we are talking about is any form of childcare and revolutionising the funding that is available.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has done an excellent job in highlighting this issue in the context of the debate, but I have some sympathy with the Government’s position on this. Does she recognise that the Department for Education guidance on this matter in November 2019—and it is a DFE matter, not a DLUHC matter—explicitly states that early years and childcare is something that local authorities can use in seeking a section 106 contribution from a developer? It is already in the regulations, which I was not aware of when I put my name to her amendment. Does she also acknowledge that, while we are all sympathetic to her point about maintaining affordable childcare, developer contributions are as a rule capital only for the provision of buildings and facilities, and may not be used for the ongoing support of day-to-day services?

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Member heard the words of the Minister, who called childcare a non-infrastructure item. He will know of examples, as we all do, of councils building in payments for police community support officers or ongoing maintenance as part of a development. If he is right that developers could do this, why oppose writing it into the Bill to put it beyond doubt and make sure that developers and councils know they can do it?

Passing amendment 2 is about saying the words that my party’s Front-Bench spokesperson said and, frankly, the hon. Member’s did not: “Childcare is infrastructure. The mums listening right now who feel invisible do matter. The services that would help them get back to work do matter. Parents are as important to us as potholes.”

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

The hon. Member, the Minister and everyone in the House knows that I have campaigned for and championed changes to childcare policy. The Minister absolutely did not dismiss or dilute the Government’s commitment to changing and supporting childcare. Amendment 2 covers two separate things: childcare facilities, and whether community infrastructure levy funds can be paid for ongoing amounts. It is important to be clear about that.

[Stella Creasy]

I quote back the words of the Minister, who talked explicitly about how non-infrastructure items could include subsidising the cost of childcare. If we subsidise police offices or anti-fly-tipping activities, why would we not subsidise parents to get to work? We have an opportunity—

[Siobhan Baillie]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I am sorry, but I cannot give way, because of the time. The hon. Member will have her say too.

Amendment 2 would put childcare on an equal footing. Why are we making this form of infrastructure second best? Why are we debating the matter when it seems that there is common agreement? We all recognise, if we have dealt with local government, the need to clarify things and put them in legislation. The right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) talked similarly about waste and water infrastructure, and the Minister was happy to confirm that that was covered. We need to give councils a clear line, and that is what I am looking for from the Minister today, because I think she has actually muddied the water somewhat. We must ensure that we write things into legislation so that we put these debates beyond doubt.

Let us do this for the sake of our children and our economy, and for all the women sitting at home right now watching the debate because they cannot get the childcare they want to be able to get back to work and pay taxes. This is a cross-party issue, but it will divide the House, and it will send a clear message about whose side we are on when it comes to those parents. The amendment would mean the world to all those parents who are struggling to find affordable childcare places right now. I pay tribute to Pregnant Then Screwed for setting out so clearly the impact that it could have, because investment in childcare pays for itself.

I ask the Minister to rethink her words, to say clearly that childcare is infrastructure, and to write it down in the legislation in the way that she has for water and waste, so that parents and potholes get equal attention from us in this place.

[Chris Grayling]

I rise to talk specifically about new clauses 3 and 5, but first I should make a point on the broader housing issue. My constituency is the smallest borough in my county, and it is the most densely populated part of my county. It was never realistic for the centrally designed targets to apply to an area where we were being asked to increase the housing stock by about 25% to 30%. I praise Ministers for reaching what I believe to be a sensible compromise.

I am very much in favour of new homes in my constituency—I have argued for a number of new developments, and I continue to do so—but house building cannot be simply unrestricted. It cannot be at the level that a formula requires; we must apply common sense. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), in negotiation with the Secretary of State, have come up with a sensible way forward that will deliver extra housing—I passionately believe that we have to have extra homes in my constituency—but in a sustainable way. We must remember that the national planning policy framework requires us to strike the right balance between three things: building new houses, looking after the local economy and looking after the local environment. I believe that what we have on the table now will deliver that.

I turn to the new clauses. On solar power, I have a simple message for Ministers. I cannot understand why we have not reached a point where it is mandatory to put solar panels on the roof of every new building in this country. Although I do not think new clause 3 will take us through the Division Lobbies tonight, I strongly urge Ministers to work across Government to deliver that. When I was Secretary of State for Transport, I argued that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities should insert a requirement for a charging point in every house with off-street parking. I still believe that, but there is really no reason at all not to have solar panels on the roof of every property, whether or not it has parking space. It should be a central part of our future strategy, and I strongly urge Ministers to adopt it.

New clause 5, which I have personally pushed forward, is what I describe as “the hedgehog amendment”—I speak as the parliamentary species champion for the hedgehog—but it is much broader than that. It is about saying that it is simply wrong for a developer to be able to acquire a site and clear it without doing a proper holistic survey of the ecology on that site. It is absolutely vital that, as we are a Government who believe in strengthening biodiversity safeguards in this country, there should be tight rules for developers. They are obliged to do surveys for the presence of bats and newts, but there are a whole range of other vulnerable species that do not fall under that requirement. I want to see very clear legal rules that say, “You buy a site, you survey what is there. If you identify vulnerable species on the site, you have a duty of care to those vulnerable species to relocate them and provide alternative habitats.”

The Government have done good things on biodiversity net gain, but I want to see a situation where a vulnerable species on a site is not likely to be cleared away by a bulldozer. That does happen—there was an horrendous case in the west country recently. About 20 hedgehogs were killed by the reckless clearance of a site. We have all seen it in our constituencies. Developers do it to create the sense of, “Well, it’s a wasted site anyway. We cannot use it again, so you should give us consent to build houses on it.” My new clause provides a way to ensure that does not happen.

I want to pay tribute to the Minister. We have had some very constructive dialogue on this issue and I know she is pretty sympathetic to the aims I have put forward. What I ask of her today—I think she may have a clear sense of how we can go forward—is, in her closing remarks, to set a direction for the Government that will provide the actual protections I am seeking, which will reinforce the work we have already done to protect biodiversity and ensure the particular ability of developers to come in and clear a site is absolutely precluded in law. I wait with interest to hear what the Minister says in winding up. I praise her for what she has done so far on housing and on many other aspects to the Bill. I hope she will also be able to deal with this aspect, the biodiversity issue, in her remarks and as we go forward.

Social Housing Standards

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am really grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising that question and for the way in which she raised it. It does seem to me, on the basis of the facts as we know them, that this family were victims of prejudice, whether unwitting or otherwise. There are other examples, and there have been other examples, of individuals in both the private rented sector and the social rented sector who have been treated with significantly less respect than they deserve because of attitudes that are rooted in prejudice. We all have a responsibility across this House to call that out when it occurs and to ensure that people, whatever their background, are treated with the dignity they deserve as human beings.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let this be the point where no one is ever told again, “Open your windows and the problem will be solved.” May I caution the Secretary of State against relying solely on the housing ombudsman as the best mechanism for our constituents to seek redress? RSLs such as Clarion and London and Quadrant have, when doing repairs, left residents in hotels miles away from where they live. Residents are getting heavily into debt and languishing because the RSLs are not doing the repairs properly. Residents do not have the weeks and months it takes to secure redress. The companies will use their insurance policies to cover the cost of doing the repairs on those properties. Will he give tenants a right to access that money, so we can concentrate the minds of those social landlords to treat those people with the dignity they deserve?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. It is certainly the case that the two RSLs she mentions have failed tenants in the past and she is right to call that out. Her broader point on whether we can give tenants the additional rights she mentions is an interesting one. I commit to working with her to see what more can be done.

Greensill Capital

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The Chancellor has delivered £356 billion-worth of support, I think it is currently, to businesses. He has flexed at every opportunity across Government in devising and designing loan schemes, which are overseen by the British Business Bank, which is overseen, as the single shareholder, by the Secretary of State for BEIS. That is what we should be proud of. The Chancellor is not afraid of anything here. The question is about the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, which is administered by BEIS, and that is why I am here to answer it.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I understand and share my colleagues’ concerns about lobbying, but, like other corporate financial scandals such as Enron, we need to follow the money. We know that it was the German Greensill Bank that made the loans to Sanjeev Gupta and also supported the use of the private jets on which our former Prime Minister made many journeys, and that the bank is now under criminal investigation as many thousands of German people face bankruptcy. What conversations has the Minister had with the German prosecutors about the CLBILS loan scheme, and will they be invited to give evidence to the inquiry?

Leaseholders and Cladding

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My right hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for her constituents in Chipping Barnet, and I will do exactly as she advises.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Hundreds of families in Walthamstow have finally managed to get their foot on the property ladder through shared ownership and now, as a result of this crisis, find themselves in properties that are almost worthless and facing huge bills. Will the Minister reconsider the decision to exclude those bills that were incurred before 11 March, because many of those people have already tried to do the right thing and have incurred huge cost to themselves through the remediation works. Surely we should not penalise those people who have tried to act promptly on this matter.

Antisemitism in Modern Society

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

This morning, I saw the reports that I am sure my hon. Friend saw about not just the readmission of Derek Hatton, but the tweets that he mentions, and I wrote to the general secretary of our party and lodged a formal complaint. I understand that action has since been taken in respect of the complaint, and I will be looking out to see precisely what appropriate action is taken in due course. I totally agree that it was a travesty. I think many of us knew for some while that Derek Hatton had applied to rejoin the party, but it was appalling for the news of his readmission to come to public attention on the very day when some members of our party were forced out.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I will in a minute, but I want to make a little progress.

We recognise that social media can be a tremendous tool, enabling a more democratic and open media, but too often it has become the fertile breeding ground for antisemitic trolling and bullying. We have seen that in the horrifying antisemitic and misogynistic abuse targeted at several of our MPs, and I want to speak specifically about the disgraceful treatment of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger). I deeply regret that she has left our party, but I regret most of all the antisemitic abuse that made her feel that it was necessary to do so. I have not always shared her political judgments, but she is a strong and principled woman and a kind and loving person, who has been bullied by antisemites to a point at which most of us would not have had the strength to bear it. I wish that she had stayed to help us defeat the evil in our party, but whichever party we stand for in this Parliament, she should have our unqualified solidarity as she stands against her aggressors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

I thank my hon. Friend for recognising that we have let down the Jewish community. We have lost a very good colleague because we failed to stop what was essentially constructive dismissal. Does he agree that this is not about asking our Jewish members to stay and sort it out? In a movement built on solidarity, it is for us all to act. In this instance, the concern that many of us have is that there are so many cases outstanding, yet time was found to deal with Mr Hatton’s application for readmission. We want to show that we are serious about this, and we must change our priorities and deal with these cases now.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are responsible for dealing with this. She will know there are procedures and committees within the national executive committee that deal with complaints and others that deal with other processes.

Let me be clear that anyone who denies the reality of antisemitism on the left, anyone who thinks that antisemitism is a legitimate part of criticising the political actions of the Israeli Government and anyone who says that complaints about antisemitism are smears on our party is wrong. They do not have the endorsement of the Labour party; they do not have the endorsement of its leader; and they need to take a long, hard look at themselves. They have adopted what Bebel labelled the “socialism of fools.”

Our party must call out this poisonous ideology, which encourages people to place the blame for society’s ills at the feet of the vulnerable and persecuted, whether they be immigrants, the unemployed, refugees or those from a different ethnic or religious background. The Labour party has long fought the dissemination of such false narratives, which we know serve only to divide us and distract us from our common cause of a fairer society.

Antisemitism, with its conspiracy theories, seeks to divide ordinary working people. The lies that it propagates about wealth, power and designs on world domination are as dangerous as they are stupid. Those on the far left who are foolish enough to believe that their antisemitism is a form of anti-elitism or anti-imperialism have no place in the Labour party or any modern political party.

Last year, a major study analysing news stories across the English-speaking world found that, according to every metric, fake news is more popular and more widely consumed than factual, accurate stories. We truly live in an era of fake news and imagined enemies, where explicit abuse hides behind anonymous avatars and where political debate is shaped by memes and viral videos. The rise of fake news is dangerous for us all, but this danger is most acute for the Jewish community and it is felt intensely. There are approximately 170,000 antisemitic online searches each year in the UK alone, but the scale of the challenge must not daunt us or deter us from what needs to be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I congratulate Crisis on its work, as it marks its 50th anniversary. Indeed, I spoke at the recent Crisis conference, where I indicated that I will work with the organisation on furthering its rough-sleeping initiatives, about which I have spoken. I note what it has said about homelessness and will continue to work with it and others.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

16. There are many trends from the 1990s that I would like to bring back to this country—for example, decent indie music—but rough sleeping is not one of them. I pay tribute to the Forest emergency night shelter in Waltham Forest, which helped 109 people in just one borough this past winter. The truth is, though, that the problem continues, and tonight approximately 40 people will sleep rough in a graveyard in Walthamstow. I invite the Secretary of State to come with me to meet those people to understand how he can finally get a grip of this situation and get a roof over their heads.

Windrush

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

In my previous role as Communities Secretary, I obviously had a big role to play—I was privileged to do so—in fighting race and hate crime of all types. In my new role as Home Secretary, I will work very closely with my successor to make sure that we are fully co-ordinated in fighting hate crime and that we look carefully, particularly with regard to anti-Semitism, at what more we can do.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new position, but let me give him some advice: whether the term is “hostile” or “compliant”, it is deeds not words that matter in this place. Three families who came to my surgery at the weekend have Windrush generation family members who have been deported from this country, so he has to be aware that there is a serious issue with deportation. He has told us how many people have called the hotline, but these families could not get through, so will he tell us how many members of staff there are? What will he do specifically to get legal advice to people who have already been deported, so that we can truly have justice for the Windrush generation?

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

The secured tenancies would be applied sensibly in the vast majority of cases, but every time they are applied badly and that barrier is put in place, we create a significant risk of harming individuals and ruining lives. The cost of failure—of falling off that high wire—is extraordinary. The price of avoiding that is to set it out on the face of the Bill, which seems a sensible approach to removing that risk.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is obviously a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, for this incredibly important piece of legislation. I do not think a single member of the Committee can be unaware of how important it is to get these issues right. We will have seen in our constituency surgeries the people for whom the system does not work. I want to start by giving an example of that to explain—[Interruption.] If the Minister has not, she is very lucky, because sadly, in my constituency—

[Mrs Wheeler]

It is a good council.

[Stella Creasy]

I do not think this is about good councils; it is about how we deal with domestic violence cases in this country. Still too often, we require the victim to put the pieces of her escape route together. I say “her”, and I recognise that men are victims as well, but it is overwhelmingly women who we ask to try to work through a system based on service provision rather than their needs.

I want to give the Minister an example—which I hope will explain why Opposition Members are concerned about future-proofing this legislation—of one of the cases I dealt with in Walthamstow, near the boundary with Redbridge, because in London the difference between 33 boroughs can be the difference between life and death. It is the example of a woman whose secure tenancy was ruined because her abusive partner set fire to their flat. She fled to Redbridge, but as soon as she left the borough, a mere 10 minutes by car, everything fell apart for her. Suddenly, she was simply someone from another borough seeking housing, not a victim of domestic violence—as he stood on the balcony of the property that she had managed to find, tapping on the window and telling her that he had found her.

We could not keep that woman safe. I took to calling the borough commanders in my borough and in Redbridge every single day about her, because we could not get housing and could not get the police forces to work together, merely because they were 10 minutes apart by road. They were two different boroughs and two different housing departments. She started getting chased for her council tax and rent arrears on a property that was a burnt-out shell. If she had gone back to that property, he could have found her there, too. Every single day, that woman was on my conscience, all because bureaucracy could not see the victim, only the housing service and the policing requirements. The police in Redbridge said to her, “Close your windows, then he can’t knock on the windows,” not understanding what was going on, because we did not put the victim first.

The challenge is that that case is not unusual. It is not about London boroughs or co-ordination; it is simply that there are two different housing departments, one of which recognises that there might be a domestic violence case, while the other simply sees somebody whose postcode is in the wrong district.

I share the Minister’s desire to get secured tenancies right. She says that is already written into the legislation, but why not make it certain that it can be beyond a degree of reasonable doubt with any housing authority? That way, when MPs are faced with somebody who has come from a mere 10 minutes away, who is desperate for help, in fear of their life and has made that difficult decision to leave, there is no doubt that they will be housed. There should not be a point at which a housing officer says, “I’m sorry, this postcode isn’t in our borough and therefore this person is not our responsibility. They need to go back into the system.”

We have all seen the person who does not leave—the person who recognises that bureaucracy is going to be another hurdle and who, with everything else going on their life, does not want to take the risk. Each of us has had that conversation with that resident, pleading with them to talk to the independent sexual violence adviser and not go back. All too often, it has been a housing officer who has not understood their obligations and said to them, “I’m sorry, if you leave, you’re making yourself intentionally homeless.” That is the phrase we have to deal with, and that is why amendment 5 is so important. It changes the conversation and says that if someone is recognised as a victim of domestic violence—I appreciate that we also need to get some later clauses and amendments right—that person is more likely to get help.

The Minister does not look impressed. There are countless examples that I am sure other Members will give her. That is the lived reality of trying to get this right. We all want the best councils, the best police services, the best healthcare providers, the best social workers and the best MASH—multi-agency safeguarding hub—teams, who do not say, “Well, for the needs of the child we’ll try to keep the family together,” even though they have had perpetrators who put their partners into hospital and near death. The lived reality of trying to deal with these situations means that we have to make sure the legislation is belt and braces. Even if the Minister thinks the point is covered, I urge her to include it, to put it beyond reasonable doubt, because those cases, such as the person who moved between Redbridge and Waltham Forest, are not unusual.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Rosindell. I also welcome the Bill. As somebody who worked in the field for many years, it is revelatory to see this put into law. I am really pleased and feel that we are constantly surging forward, and 99% of the time that is done on a completely cross-party basis, with total consensus. When I first started working in domestic abuse services, that was not something I necessarily would have said or experienced, but times are changing. I am very pleased to say that this is no longer the bastion of noisy feminists such as myself; it is everybody’s business, which is great to see.

The concerns on this side of the Committee stem from memories of how localisation under new welfare rules after the 2010 general election changed the way that people moved across boundaries. It was not a willing Government, or even the Opposition, who changed the ruling about whether people could cross borders and seek tenancies; it was a woman who lived in the refuge where I worked and the Child Poverty Action Group. They took the case to court, on a judicial review, to stop local councils—in this instance Sandwell Council—being able to say, “You have to have lived in a local authority area for five years before you can have access to the housing list and be put on priority.”

It was not even five years ago that that was the case. Councils all over the country—certainly Birmingham and Sandwell—were saying, “Unless you have a link to this local authority area, you cannot come and live here,” regardless. There was no exemption for victims of domestic abuse. Thanks to brilliant victims of domestic abuse and brilliant charities that support them, that was overturned. Councils were told by the courts, not by any Government policy, that they had to allow victims of domestic abuse to be exempt from those rules. I had some personal issues with that, which I raised with my council in a public forum—when I was told by the then MP for Birmingham, Yardley, in a moment of horrendous dogwhistling, that I was trying to encourage anybody to come and claim benefits in Birmingham—so I have some form on arguing for this issue.

What we are trying to get across in the amendment is that that cannot happen again—that there should be no room for the Child Poverty Action Group and local authorities to have to go up against each other with individual victims’ cases. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow has said, there will be cases that come to light where there is difficulty, and we do not want the courts to have to be the place that makes the right decision.

We should remember there are lots of local authorities that are rubbish on this. We are living in a total postcode lottery. I remember a mantra where I used to work was, “Don’t get raped in Dudley,” because there were no services for rape victims in Dudley. We had to somehow give them a postcode for another area, so that we did not turn away children who had been raped, for example. Not all councils are brilliant on this stuff. It seems like a painfully political point to make, but the Prime Minister’s own council, where her seat is, does not fund a single refuge bed. There is good and bad—

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We should not accept that this is the best that we can do. If we can do more, let us do more. Let us aim a little higher. I expect the Minister to draw my attention to the revised homelessness code of practice for local authorities but, again, this is about the practice on the ground of the concepts that we have in this place. It is about ensuring that our intentions here are delivered on the ground in the way that we intend.

[Stella Creasy]

It feels like the most helpful thing that many of us can do for the Minister today is to try to give her some examples of the things that we have been dealing with, so that she understands why these amendments have been tabled. I appreciate and understand that she has what she considers to be a fantastic local authority. Sadly, for many of us—not through a lack of wanting to get services right—the reality is that services are not right.

It is worth remembering that there is no actual requirement for a housing officer to understand what domestic violence is. There is no requirement for them to know why it matters to have, for example, a confidential space in which women can come forward and tell people what has been happening.

Many of the things that the Minister talks about assume that the initial conversation, whereby somebody discloses that they are a victim of domestic violence, happens in such a way that there will not be a culture of disbelief. Sadly, my experience of working with victims of domestic violence in my local area, which I do not think is unique, is that they are often not believed, or that barriers are often put up that affect their ability to access services.

That is why training and getting housing officers to recognise that they are often the frontline is necessary. For example, we could train every single housing officer to ask why somebody needs repeated repairs—“Why does that door keep getting broken? Why does that window keep getting broken?”—because the answer is often not that it was an accident but that somebody has been violent in that household, which is very hard for people to admit.

It is frightening how many people in my local area, when turning up at housing authorities and housing offices presenting as victims of domestic violence, have been turned away or told that they would say that because that is how to get a house. That is the culture we have to deal with. I will give the Minister some examples of real cases from my local housing authority which, like many others, has a massive waiting list and is housing people in Luton and Bedford—well out of the area—because it does not have access to housing. It is trying to build more housing in difficult circumstances but, like many others, it still has not got it right when it comes to dealing with victims of domestic violence. The Bill is intended to get that right, and if the Minister wants to do so we have to deal with the reality of how these services are offered and why training would make a difference.

For example, one woman attended the housing authority on six different occasions before she was assisted. It started when she was heavily pregnant and continued with her attending with a newborn baby. The baby was three days old during one visit, and she was made to wait all day without being seen. The woman was homeless and was sleeping with the baby for more than five months in a single bed in a room that she shared with three adults in a friend’s property.

Another woman with two autistic children was provided with temporary accommodation—one room in a shared property. One woman had six children and was refused assistance. The authority insisted that she obtain a court order against her husband and request a panic alarm from the police, despite her being a high-risk victim who did not feel safe staying at her address. Additionally, the woman had a 16-year-old child who required 24/7 care, which was not taken into consideration. Another woman was discouraged from making a housing application when it was stated that she would only be provided with housing in faraway areas, such as Birmingham, which is a very long way from Walthamstow. Other women have had problems because they do not speak English as a first language.

As I said in my first contribution, we ask victims to navigate this system, rather than having a system that understands that domestic violence is far too prevalent in our society, and that offering housing and safe refuge is therefore one of the most important things that we can do. Training would fundamentally change that culture.

I am ashamed that there is not a safe space for women in my local authority to say, “This has happened to me; can I talk to somebody about it?” I am ashamed that housing officers query whether somebody is saying that they are a victim of domestic violence as a way to get a house, as if anybody would go through the shame of having to admit that. I am ashamed that housing officers and social care workers very often do not work together, even though a social services officer might have first seen the signs that something was not right in that family.

Training is absolutely crucial to put domestic violence at the forefront of people’s minds, rather than it being one of the tests that they might have to set to see whether somebody is eligible for housing. I am sure that the Minister wants the Bill to change that tick-box culture, but sadly, without that new culture, it is not going to change; all this will be is another set of obligations. If we truly want to keep victims of domestic violence safe, we have to change root and branch the way in which decisions are made.

The Minister might have a fantastic local authority, but I would love to hear from her local service providers whether they think that it gets it right every single time; whether every woman, when she first has the confidence to say, “This happened to me; I need to be somewhere safe” gets the right response. Training is a crucial part of that—getting people to think about how they deal with somebody who is disclosing trauma. These are victims of trauma, which is not easy to deal with. Any Member who has had somebody come in to their constituency surgery to talk about their experiences knows that. Sadly, for my local authority, the examples I gave were provided by independent sexual violence advisers. Those are the most serious cases of domestic violence.

One challenge we face is that, too often, we wait until something escalates before we intervene. In the past eight or nine years, we have begun to recognise that we do not want to do that, which is good. Concepts such as coercive control have become part of our conversations: we recognise that we can spot the signs when somebody is in a toxic relationship and we can intervene. However, that is not the reality on the ground. I know we are going to discuss later the questions about evidence—people having to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these things are happening to them. The problem is that they are having to prove that to people who are not expert enough to be able to understand what they are being shown. Giving them training would start to change that conversation. Again, I say to the Minister: think of this legislation as a belt-and-braces measure. If, one day, somebody walks into her constituency surgery and this has not been got right, she will realise why belt and braces matter.

[Alex Norris]

Like the Minister, I have a very good local authority. I have long admired the housing officers there, who are exceptionally skilled people. When they open that door in the morning, when they open their emails or answer the phone, they never quite know what they are going to get. It could be somebody suffering domestic abuse, as we are talking about today; someone with drug or alcohol abuse issues, or mental or physical health challenges; or someone does not speak English as their first language. They face all sorts of challenges, they have to be very adaptable to meet the different needs of the people who require their services, and they have to do that against a difficult backdrop. These officers can face hard councillors, which many of us in the Committee were, who prosecute the case for their resident because they want to get them the best deal, and have to balance that because there are five other hard councillors that morning trying to do the same thing.

I believe fundamentally in the best in people—I think that is a strength, but some say it is a weakness. However, I acknowledge that there is still dishonesty, and we have to be able to pick through. We know from our casework that what a case looks like might not be so when we dig into it. We ask our housing officers to be extraordinary generalists—multi-skilled and aware of many different things, at a time when local authorities are under unprecedented pressure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby says, the first budgets to go are those for training, because they are not the immediate frontline services of the day. As a result we are giving our housing officers a difficult challenge, asking them to do more while others are asking them to do it with less. We are sending a real signal that we value their work by putting it on the face of the Bill.

Risk is an issue that weaves throughout the Bill and will do so throughout the next domestic abuse Bill, later in the Session. When I was in local government and had responsibility for domestic abuse services, it was not the women who were considered high risk who gave me the most anxiety, although of course those cases are really serious. Those women get the very intense, immediate support, wrapped round them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there is some comfort in that. My concern was about those who were low and medium risk—cases that might escalate quickly, but one cannot know which ones might do so, or they would be classified as higher risk. The only mitigation against those fast-escalating, low and medium risk cases is to make every contact with people count. Someone might directly speak about their situation, or we can try to read other cues that give us a clue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow said. That only works if, with every single contact, that person is skilled enough to read those cues. To give them a fair chance, we need to give them proper training. Putting that on the face of the Bill would send a strong signal.

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[Jess Phillips]

I was about to say something really rude and ask why a dog does something: because it can. It is a bit like anything, just putting stamps on letters—it seems stamps are really expensive in certain GPs’ surgeries. That is happening not just in cases of domestic violence, but in cases of disability. There are a lot of agencies that are potentially under reasonable strain and kicking back against that reasonable strain, because they are in a culture where belief, proof and evidence matter so much. There is an awful lot of call on GP surgeries and hospitals—primary care and secondary care—and all sorts of agencies to help individuals to prove that they are not lying about the fits that they have or about their husband bashing them about, so there is strain in the system.

We are calling on the Government to make it very clear that what is happening is totally unacceptable, whether in cases of this type or in cases involving legal aid. As I said, I still have to write to the Legal Aid Agency every single week to say, “Why have you not helped this woman? She has given you proof. Why have you not listened to her?” That must not be the case under a Government who I know really care about this issue and would not want women to be disbelieved. Unfortunately, our bureaucracy is not currently on side.

[Stella Creasy]

What price is a bruise? That is the question that we are asking ourselves today. The Minister might have cases; I have cases of constituents who have managed to disclose to a healthcare professional what has happened to them. The healthcare professional has seen the evidence of the bruises and still the practice wants 50 quid to write a letter to confirm that. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar screws up his face, and I can well understand why. It is shameful.

We wrote to our local clinical commissioning group to try to find out about charges, about why doctors are charging people, and the answer that we got back is very simple—it is not about dogs, which may disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. GPs charge for non-NHS work, and that is what this work is; it is private. It is in the same category as providing a certificate to allow someone to go skateboarding at seven months pregnant or giving people a certificate that they might need for work. Actually, it is not in the same category. This is about risk. One thing that I think all of us would like to see society doing when it comes to things such as domestic violence is moving away from challenging victims to prove what has happened to them towards understanding risk and how we prevent it. That is the way we will save a lot of money if nothing else. It is also the way we will stop people dying.

When it comes to providing evidence and having paperwork to prove what has happened, let us just think for a second about how humiliating it is for people not to be believed when they say, “This has happened to me.” They summon up the courage to admit that someone they love has turned out to be a monster, and our housing officers say, “Well, I don’t believe you, so I need evidence. Is there someone who can verify your claims? Is there someone whom we consider to be trustworthy? Obviously, by default, you are not trustworthy, because you are after something.” The person turns to their doctor, and their doctor charges them, so this is indeed the question: what price is a bruise? What price is the evidence for something that someone has admitted has happened to them?

We know how hard it is to tell someone, when people are asking for help, what has happened. Often people disclose in healthcare environments, or they might disclose to other agencies. This is not just about the cost of doctors. In my list of cases, which I am happy to share with the Minister, the cost of interpreters is an issue. Who pays for someone to come and explain? If women do not have English as a first language and want to say what has happened to them, finding someone they trust and who can explain that to housing officers is impossible. I find that, even with the independent sexual violence advisers who are working with them: they have to pay for these services because they are not provided by housing. If people are presented with evidence, they have to act, and if they are presented with evidence that meets their standard test, they have to act.

Something that we are now seeing in my local authority area, which I am extremely worried about, is that even when women are scraping together the money to pay for the paperwork to meet the tests—they are not trusted to explain what has happened to them, so a third party has to verify it—it is still challenged. Then they have to find the money for a lawyer, because they need someone to fight their case. In my local authority area, there is no independent legal housing service, so they have to try to find and pay for someone themselves. Every single step of the way, a financial barrier is put in place, and these are not women who have access to independent means. They have often been saving up money—money that they do not themselves have control of—to try to get out of the situation; they might have small children. One woman was trying to get evidence that her partner had Asperger’s, because the local authority said: “Well, Asperger’s doesn’t make you an abuser”. No, he was an abuser who had Asperger’s, but the evidence was part of the case that she was trying to put in place.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

I am sure we can all agree that we are not at ease with the idea of charging a fee to a victim of abuse who is seeking evidence of that abuse. The issue was raised when the Bill was debated in the Lords, and it was discussed on Second Reading in the Commons, particularly in relation to the medical profession.

As I understand the matter, the provision of notes or letters of evidence of abuse falls outside a GP’s NHS contract, and therefore a fee can be charged. Negotiations for the 2018-19 contracts are currently going on, and the Minister for Faith, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, who took the Bill through the Lords, has written to the Department of Health and Social Care to raise the concerns that arose among peers about this issue during the Bill’s passage through the Lords. As I said to hon. Members on Second Reading, I shall inform the House when we have a response to that letter.

It is, however, important to remember that victims of abuse may seek evidence from a wide variety of sources—not just GP letters or notes—as set out in the homelessness code of guidance. As part of the variety of evidence that can be supplied, an individual, as a data subject, can ask to be provided with their medical records.

[Stella Creasy]

One of the things about this country is that we do not own our medical records. When constituents of mine have tried to do as the Minister describes, doctors have been able to say no. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care owns all our medical data and therefore access can be refused.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Lady. Forgive me; I was not quite clear. From 25 May, the general data protection regulation becomes directly applicable and a data subject cannot be charged a fee except where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where requests are made for further copies of the same information. In that case, the fee must be reasonable and based on the administrative cost of providing the information. In the first instance, a person will be able to ask for their medical records from 25 May.

In addition, the British Medical Association advises GPs that where they intend to make a charge for providing a letter as evidence, they should inform the patient before doing so. The amendment has been introduced to deal specifically with GP charges, but it is widely drawn and, as a blanket prohibition, would apply across the public and private sector. I do not believe that regulating parts of the private sector is appropriate in the circumstances in question, or that it is a matter for the Bill.

For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Great Grimsby to withdraw the amendment.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

I am responding to the hon. Lady’s amendment, so I suppose that is a question for her. I do appreciate the motivation behind the amendment, which is to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are treated on the same basis, whether the landlord of the new property is a local authority or a housing association. However, I cannot accept the amendment for a number of reasons.

In the first place, local authorities and housing associations are very different entities, which are subject to different drivers and challenges. Local authorities are public sector organisations. When schedule 7 to the Housing and Planning Act 2016 comes into force, local authorities will generally be required to give fixed-term tenancies and will be able to grant lifetime tenancies only in limited circumstances specified in legislation or regulations.

Housing associations are private not-for-profit bodies. They will continue to have the freedom, as now, to offer lifetime tenancies wherever they consider them appropriate. The purpose of housing associations is to provide and manage homes for people in housing need. The vast majority are charities with charitable objectives that require them to put tenants at the heart of everything they do.

We would expect housing associations to take their responsibilities for people fleeing domestic violence very seriously. As some hon. Members may know, the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance was set up, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said, by two leading housing associations, Peabody and Gentoo, together with Standing Together Against Domestic Violence, a UK charity bringing communities together to end domestic abuse. The alliance’s stated mission is to improve the housing sector’s response to domestic abuse through the introduction and adoption of an established set of standards and an accreditation process.

I am sure hon. Members will agree that housing associations play a critical role in delivering the affordable homes that we need. That includes providing a home for people fleeing domestic abuse.

[Stella Creasy]

Many of us pay tribute to the work that Peabody, and particularly Gudrun Burnet, has done on this. Sadly, I have to say to her that not every housing association lives up to the standards that she just articulated. Many of them, including some in my area, seem to act as private landlords that are given public commissions. Why would we penalise those tenants, who have been allocated to those housing associations by local authorities, by not giving them the equal protection that we see organisations such as Peabody offering?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s comments. I have asked for guidance, and for clarification I will read it out so that we all know what we are talking about. Where council properties are moved over to an arm’s length management organisation—ALMO—that is included. These rules do not apply to separate housing associations, but they apply to ALMOs. That is crucial, because that will affect a lot of people across the country.

That includes providing a home for people fleeing domestic abuse, but we can only do that if there are the homes to put them in. It is vital that we ensure that housing associations remain in the private sector, so that they are able to borrow funding free of public sector spending guidelines. We must also avoid imposing any unnecessary controls that might risk reversing the Office for National Statistics classification of housing associations as private sector organisations.

The amendment would also require housing associations to offer secure tenancies. As I have explained, since 1989, housing associations have granted assured tenancies under the Housing Act 1988, except in very limited circumstances—for example, when dealing with a tenant who has an old-style secure tenancy. The rights of assured and secure tenancies are very different. For example, secure tenants have a statutory right to improve their property, and to be compensated for those improvements in certain circumstances.

The amendment would require private sector landlords to operate two different systems, which would be an unnecessary burden over and above the very limited circumstances in which they still manage pre-1989 tenancies. It would introduce unnecessary additional costs, which would introduce an element of confusion for tenants and would risk the re-classification of housing associations, as I stated earlier.

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister has not answered my question.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am sorry about that. For the reasons I have given, I invite the hon. Member for Great Grimsby to withdraw the amendment.

Integrated Communities

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

It sounds like the hon. Lady welcomes the fact that Peterborough is one of the pilot areas, which is good to hear. We started work with Peterborough a while back and it is very keen to work with the Department. We have been working with Peterborough on ideas and it is clear that each initiative that it puts in place will have to be properly funded, and we look forward to working together on that basis.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the money being given to my borough, the Borough of Waltham Forest. Had the Secretary of State had the courtesy of giving me more than an hour’s notice this morning, I would have happily joined him on his visit to my constituency to meet the women and, indeed, men of Walthamstow, where we have a strong track record of community engagement. I am sure that our community would have told him that we reject the dog-whistle politics that sees integration as a one-way street and that, as a community that has received the “punish a Muslim” letters, we have stood together to say that this is not in our name. But we would also have told him that the challenge to integration in our borough is not just about being able to speak the same language; it is also about having the time to put down roots and get to know each other—something that spiralling rents and house prices put at risk. Will he commit to tracking what impact churn and housing tenure have on integration, and will he join us all in looking at how we can have longer and more secure tenancies to give people the opportunity to know that good neighbours can become good friends?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I can give the hon. Lady that assurance. First, let me apologise. It is completely unacceptable and wrong if she only got one hour’s notice of my visit this morning. I was hoping to see her there, but I now know why that was not possible. I assure her that I was very impressed by what I saw at the Queens Road learning centre, where I met the council leaders responsible for the programme. I would like to see more of that activity across the country, not just in Waltham Forest and the pilot areas. She is right about helping people to put down roots and learn from other members of their community. As an example, as well as the ESOL classes I saw at the Queens Road learning centre, there was a group called “community chat”, which is designed to help people not just to learn English, but to make friends and make them more comfortable in their local community.

Public Service Delivery: Northamptonshire

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend, as a former councillor himself, will be very familiar with these issues. Obviously, the details of individual contracts will be a matter for the individual officer concerned, but nothing in the inspection process itself should change any of those contracts as of today.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister boasts of a settlement given to local government. Northamptonshire’s accounts show that in the next five years it will owe £240 million to private finance initiative schemes, of which £77 million is interest alone, paid to shareholders. Does he therefore agree that it is time for a windfall tax on the excessive profits of these companies, so that we can put the money where it is needed—in our public services, not in the pockets of these legal loan sharks?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Lady talks about funding for Northamptonshire. Let me tell the House the numbers. Northamptonshire will be receiving a £30 million increase in core spending power for the forthcoming year. That represents an over-3% increase in its total budget, comparing favourably with the national average of 1.5%. On top of that, Northamptonshire will have access to its business rates retention, which on its current trajectory will include another £4 million of additional resources available.