Building Safety

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s passion and commitment on this issue. I trespassed on the House’s patience by speaking for more than 10 minutes, so there were a number of issues that I did not cover. I hope to be able to do so in greater detail at departmental questions and through correspondence. The nub of the matter is that this Government have acted, and are acting, to ensure that social housing tenants get a better deal. The announcement I made last week, while it is only £30 million, is earnest in its intent to ensure that tenants in social homes get money from central Government in order to ensure that they are safe.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My constituents welcome the Secretary of State’s grasp of their problems, but his changes have required some arrangements that were previously in place to be reworked. In the case of Barrier Point in my constituency, the insurers have responded to the delay by increasing the insurance charges for the coming financial year sixfold, as set out in my letter to him dated 13 January. Will the changes that he has announced offer any assistance and relief to them?

[Michael Gove]

They should do. Again, the right hon. Gentleman homes in on something that is very important, as have a number of other colleagues. Developers are stepping up to the plate and accepting their responsibilities, with one or two exceptions, and those developers have to alter their behaviour. It is also the case that lenders, for the most part, have changed their behaviour in order to help people who are trapped by their mortgages—but we have to monitor that behaviour. There are others—and the insurers as well as construction product manufacturers are squarely in our gun sights—who do need to do more. I believe that what we have announced today will help, but there does need to be additional Financial Conduct Authority and Government co-ordinated action. If the right hon. Gentleman has not yet received a response to his letter, I hope to lay out in my response exactly what we will do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

In the Homes for Ukraine scheme, it is left to the individuals involved to sort out matches with hosts for themselves, often through ad hoc Facebook groups. It is not surprising that that has led to reports such as:

“Ukrainian refugees using Facebook groups to seek a safe home in the UK are being put at risk of sexual exploitation”.

Criminal record checks on their own cannot prevent such exploitation. What assurance can the Secretary of State give in respect of the rigour and effectiveness of the separate home checks that are undertaken for the scheme?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important question. I am very grateful to the more than 100,000 UK citizens who have signed up to offer their homes for the scheme. As well as criminal record and police national computer checks before visas are granted, there are vetting and barring and other checks, often conducted by local authorities, at the time that individuals find themselves in homes. I would be more than happy to provide the right hon. Gentleman and others with a full briefing about the processes we undertake.

Building Safety Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

It is a great pleasure to report to the House, to move the Government’s new clauses and to be able listen to the important debate that we will have on the Bill’s remaining stages. Over the past few months, the Bill has been subject to scrutiny and debate not only in Committee but through ongoing debate in this House, in the other place and, indeed, throughout the country.

Only last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities updated the House on our progress in addressing the ongoing issues and protecting leaseholders. We have brought the Bill forward on Report because we are clear that it needs to move forward, but we are conscious that further work needs to be done to it and look forward to working with parties from across the House and with interested parties to ensure that it is further improved in the other place.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the Government intend to table amendments in the other place to implement the statutory protection for leaseholders announced last week by the Secretary of State? By the time that the Bill is debated there, can we expect amendments to have been published so that we can consider them?

Building Safety

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State spell out how the statutory protection he has announced will help leaseholders in developments such as Waterside Park, built by Barratt in my constituency, which does not have a cladding problem, but where apartments have become valueless because of other serious building defects—missing firebreaks and unsafe insulation? How exactly will the statutory protection help them?

[Michael Gove]

I rely on the right hon. Gentleman’s description of the building, but we will talk to Barratt or whoever is the ultimate owner in order to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities, and there are steps that we can take. We will outline what they are when we bring forward appropriate amendments. We will make sure that we test those amendments with him and others to ensure that they meet the need that he has correctly identified. There is still a little bit of legal work to be done to ensure that the amendments are as robust as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I would hate to be a developer facing my hon. Friend. When it comes to these speculative and ill-thought-out planning applications, developers had better put on their armour because she fires truth bullets at them from the hip, and repeatedly. Of course it is vital that we protect our green belt. However, the best protection that any local authority can have is to make sure its plan is properly designed and adopted.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T10. Lease-holders in Kingfisher Court, built by Barratt in my constituency, have just been told that, unlike leaseholders in very similar buildings nearby, their application to the building safety fund has been rejected. They do not know why, and they now face bankruptcy. Can the right hon. Gentleman offer any reassurance that I can take when I meet them later this evening?

[Michael Gove]

Yes. I take this incredibly seriously. The right hon. Gentleman’s office may have already been in touch with the Department, but if it can be in touch with my private office directly, I will see what we can provide by way of additional information before he sees his constituents later. Whatever information we can provide in the meantime, let us try to make sure we can have a proper conversation about how we can resolve this problem in depth.

Building Safety

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

We learned this month of the anger in Chesham and Amersham over Government housing policy. My constituents who face massive bills for waking watch and to repair defects in their leasehold homes are angry as well. Their anger is well expressed by Liam Halligan in the current issue of The Spectator, which was once edited by the Prime Minister. Liam Halligan’s article explains how the big house builders—Barratt, Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon —have used their excessive profits from the broken housing market to buy off the Tory party with donations in order to successfully maintain the current rigged system. Those firms have built tens of thousands of shoddy, dangerous homes and are now passing the cost of fixing the problem to leaseholders, and the Government are refusing to stop them. And then there is Help to Buy, which The Spectator says is

“a government subsidy focused on new builds which has overwhelmingly gone to the big operators, juicing up both house prices and profits further, while making new homes even less affordable for the majority who are unable to access the scheme.”

All this has been compounded by Tory failure on regulation. In January 2012, David Cameron made it his new year’s resolution—with a frankly chilling phrase, in hindsight—to

“kill off the health and safety culture for good.”

Tory Housing Ministers, seeing growing evidence of the need to tighten fire safety regulation, steadfastly refused to do so; it would have upset the house builders. The upshot was Grenfell Tower. NHBC, the privatised building control provider favoured by house builders because it is easier to satisfy than local authorities, signed off shoddy, defective buildings with minimal inspection, if any. It has been utterly discredited. Far from killing off the health and safety culture, Ministers have had to hand the Health and Safety Executive—the embodiment of that culture, which the Tories fortunately did not manage to “kill off”—the crucial new building safety regulator role.

The Spectator article finishes by pointing out:

“Powerful vested interests benefit mightily from this high-price, low-build-quality gridlock”

and calls for

“a full Competition and Markets Authority inquiry into UK housebuilders”.

Unlike other Members in this debate, I do not want to thank those house builders. Competition is absent from this market. The Government must now finally side with leaseholders and would-be homeowners, and take on not the building products industry, but the house builders.

Employment Rights

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Nobody wants these restrictions to go on a single day longer than they need to. We are in the middle of a frustrating period, with the decision to be made on the 14th of this month. We are looking at the data, and every day that goes by gives us a richer set of data to make the best decision for businesses.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

The case won by the GMB trade union against Uber over the status of its drivers is immensely important, but why are the Government leaving it for these issues to be slugged out, employer by employer, worker group by worker group, in the courts? That is in nobody’s interests, so when will the Government finally bring forward the long-promised employment Bill, which is so urgently needed?

[Paul Scully]

The Uber judgment that the right hon. Gentleman talks about was a landmark judgment. It is important that we reflect on that, but it is important that Uber, primarily, reflects on that and makes sure that workers are getting their rights, because every worker is different. Indeed, Uber contracts have changed over the last few years, and other companies working in the gig economy have different contracts, so it is complicated, but that is the definition of flexibility and dynamism. None the less, he asked about the employment Bill, and as I have said, it will come forward when parliamentary time allows.

Fire Safety Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I want first of all to thank all hon. Members for joining in this crucial debate, because all of us in this House agree that residents deserve to be safe, and to feel safe, in their homes. I want to reiterate in the strongest terms the importance of the Bill as a step along the way to delivering that objective, and the risk that we would create if we were to continue to allow these remediation amendments, however well-intentioned, to delay legislation.

The Bill was introduced over a year ago. We are almost at the point of getting it on the statute book, and it is vital that we remind ourselves of the fundamental purpose of what we are seeking to achieve—to provide much-needed legal clarification of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and direct the update of the fire risk assessments to ensure that they apply to structure, external walls and flat entrance doors. I will give way briefly to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), but I want as many hon. Members to speak as possible.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Ministers have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not bear the costs of the fire cladding scandal. Why is he insisting today that they should?

[Christopher Pincher]

The right hon. Gentleman knows of the very significant amount of public money that we have set aside to remediate those buildings that are the most at risk of fire, where serious injury might take place, and the financial provisions that we have set aside also to help other leaseholders. If we do not resolve the Bill this week, fire assessments will not cover those critical elements of which I spoke, and they may continue to be ignored by less responsible building owners. Moreover, the fire and rescue services will be without the legal certainty that they need to take enforcement action. Ultimately, that will compromise the safety of many people living in multi-occupied residential buildings. Without the clarification provided by the Bill, it will mean delaying implementation, possibly by a year, of a number of measures that will deliver the Grenfell inquiry recommendations.

As I said, I want as many Members as possible to have the opportunity to speak, so I will say no more for the moment until I wind up the debate, save for reiterating two points. First, these remaining amendments, although laudable in their intentions, would be unworkable and an inappropriate means to resolve a problem as highly complex as this. Secondly, the Government share the concerns of leaseholders on remediation costs, and have responded, as the House knows, with unprecedented levels of financial support to the tune of over £5 billion, with further funds from the developer tax, which the Treasury will begin to consult upon imminently, as well as the tall buildings levy. Developers themselves have begun to announce more significant remediation funds.

It is in everyone’s interests to ensure that we do not put at risk the progress that has been made by failing to get the Bill on the statute book by the end of this Session.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak so early in this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I thank their lordships for the tenacity and perseverance they have shown over many months in standing up for all the blameless leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis, including the many thousands who live in one of the more than 70 affected buildings in my constituency.

In seeking last week to persuade their lordships to cease insisting on amendments designed to protect all leaseholders from remediation costs, the Minister for Building Safety argued once again that such provision is unnecessary and that to continue to seek to amend the Bill in such a way would risk its passage in this Session, could increase fire safety risks and might “ultimately cost lives”. Yet it is the very fact that this crisis is already ruining countless lives that led their lordships to insist once again that this place reconsider, and they were entirely right to do so.

[Stephen Timms]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. I wonder whether he has visited claddingscandalmap.co.uk, which maps 450 buildings with 60,000 homes affected by this scandal. It also shows the Members of this House who are voting to force leaseholders to pay towards the costs.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I have seen the site in question, and it brings home—I know he shares my feelings, as his constituency is so close to mine—the fact that certain parts of the country with high numbers of new build properties, including constituencies such as ours, are particularly badly affected. I have tens of thousands of constituents affected.

As welcome as they were, the five-point plan and the additional grant funding that the Government announced on 10 February are still only a partial solution to the cladding crisis, and they consciously and deliberately leave a significant proportion of leaseholders exposed to costs they cannot possibly hope to bear. For significant numbers of leaseholders, that exposure is not some theoretical future risk, but a reality that they are already confronting.

To take just one example, I had a lengthy exchange yesterday with the right-to- manage directors of a small 24-unit building in east Greenwich, Blenheim Court, which requires urgent remediation and is under 18 metres in height. As things stand, not only are the leaseholders in question living with the punishing uncertainty of not knowing if or when their building might be issued with a forced loan of the kind the Government propose, but because they do not have the funds to commence remediation works, they are struggling with myriad secondary costs, including a soaring building insurance premium, which has led their service charges to increase from about £2,500 a year per flat to more than £130,000—I have seen the invoice, and the figure is correct—and there is a very real risk of mass defaults as a result.

Every week that this House fails to act, more leaseholders are placed in similar situations and put at risk of negative equity and bankruptcy. I have absolutely no doubt that the Government will ultimately be forced to bring forward a more comprehensive solution that protects all affected leaseholders from the costs of fixing both cladding and non-cladding building safety defects. Seeking to pass the costs on to even a proportion of them will almost certainly mean that the works simply do not get done. Unless this House is content to follow that path and see many more lives needlessly destroyed in the interim, it must act today and take decisive steps towards resolving this crisis.

I urge Ministers, even at this late stage, to honour their commitments previously given from the Dispatch Box and come forward with a sensible concession. If they do not, I urge MPs from across the House to protect blameless leaseholders and support the amendment in the name of the Lord Bishop of St Albans in the Division Lobby shortly.

Household Overcrowding: Covid-19

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered household overcrowding and the covid-19 outbreak.

Eleven years ago, I was contacted by a family who were very overcrowded. The father, mother, and four daughters aged from one to 10 were living in a one-bedroom council flat. In the four years that they had been applying to move, Newham Council had been unable to provide anything larger. Nine years after that, in 2019, I received a letter from the youngest of the four children, who was by then aged 11 and had a younger sister. There were now five daughters, all still living in the same one-bedroom flat. The letter from the 11-year-old said:

“Since I was born, I have not even had a good day, because all this flat does is bring back bad memories. I sleep on the floor with my two older sisters. Every night when my dad gets up to go to work, he always has to turn on the light so he doesn’t step on us. Due to this, I don’t get enough sleep. I can’t concentrate. I’m so scared, because I want to pass my SATs, but I’ve got no place to revise. I’m falling behind in class, and it is because nobody cares about me. Nobody wants to see me happy. I feel like you don’t care, because if you did, you’d help me. All of my friends invite me to birthday parties. However, I am unable to come, because I feel that if I come, they should be invited to my birthday, but I can’t, because I have no place in my house. I have never got to celebrate anything. Every day, I see my mum cry and it makes me cry.”

The family is still in that flat today. With 27,000 people on Newham Council’s housing waiting list, it is not unusual for families to wait 15 years to be housed, as that one has.

Until the 1990s, the average number of people per household in London had fallen steadily since the end of the 19th century. Now, the number is going up. Nationally, the English housing survey showed overcrowding at the highest rate ever in the social rented sector—it was 9% in 2019-20, just before the pandemic. In both the social and private sectors, the rate has roughly doubled in 20 years. I am sorry to report that in my constituency, the overall rate of overcrowding is the highest in the country, at 27%, according to the 2011 census. It will be a good deal higher than that when the data comes in from the census that is under way at the moment.

Some 34% of all Bangladeshi households are overcrowded. The figure for Pakistani households is 18%, black African 16%, Arab 15% and mixed white and black African 14%. All face high levels of overcrowding, compared with 2% for white British households. Dr Haque, who was the then interim director of the Runnymede Trust, told the Women and Equalities Committee last summer that

“there will always be multigenerational homes where people decide to live with multiple generations—maybe their mothers as well as their grandparents—but they do not ever choose to live in overcrowded housing.”

Recognising those different impacts, the Women and Equalities Committee recommended that, by the end of this summer, the Government produce a strategy to reduce overcrowding. If the Government are serious about addressing racial inequalities in public health, they must tackle overcrowding. I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us whether the strategy that the Committee has called for will be produced by the end of this summer.

We know from studies such as the Marmot review that housing is a social determinant of health. Poor housing can lead to lifelong poor physical and mental health. There is a higher risk of accidents in overcrowded homes, and there is more condensation and mould. Research has established a link between overcrowding and poor child health due to infections and respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. There is consistent evidence of poorer mental health for people in crowded homes—depression, anxiety and stress as a result of living in cramped conditions. Poor quality of sleep is one of the reasons for that. Lack of space to play or study holds back children’s development and education.

Overcrowding is associated with interrupted schooling and behavioural problems at school. It can harm family relationships and lead to fighting and arguments between children. All of that was true before the pandemic, but covid has shone a bright light on all of these problems, and overcrowding has made coping with covid much harder. Transmission within households has spread the virus. In overcrowded households, infection has spread faster. Social distancing and self-isolation can be impossible. The stress of overcrowding—long-term and familiar—has been transformed by the pandemic into a catastrophe.

Last May, Inside Housing magazine published a graph plotting local authorities’ rates of overcrowding against their covid death rates. The correlation is remarkable. Overcrowding might well partly explain the disproportionate mortality rate among ethnic minority groups. Public Health England’s review into why black and ethnic minority groups have been so badly hit by the pandemic identified poor housing and household composition as key factors.

Severe damp and mould, much more common in overcrowded homes, cause chronic respiratory problems, making people more vulnerable if they contract coronavirus. For children, the onset and worsening of asthma in overcrowded conditions is well documented. For those who have to live, learn and work in one room, the psychological impact of lockdown has been extraordinary. On a video call last month with a family in my constituency —mum, dad and another family with five daughters, this time in a two-bedroom flat—the girls pointed out to me how infeasible it was for them all to study at the same time. That family was clearly teetering on the edge. More people in overcrowded households have reported psychological distress in the lockdown.

Sometimes in Parliament when we talk about the housing crisis, we are referring to young people not being able to buy homes until they are a bit older, and that is a problem. The Government have taken various steps to try to address it by subsidising first-time buyers with starter homes, Help to Buy ISAs and the 95% mortgage announced in the Budget last week, but there was nothing at all to tackle the real housing crisis—people trapped at the bottom end of the rental market with unaffordable rents in overcrowded, poor quality homes. The heart of the problem has been the failure to replenish the social housing stock, so families in social housing are twice as likely to be overcrowded now than they would have been decades ago.

I welcomed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s housing commission report last month, with its ambition and vision. It states:

“A good home is a place…where we feel safe, it enables us to put down roots and belong to a community, it is a place we enjoy living in and which is a delight to come home to.”

That should be what we aim for. The report calls for Government action on a

“coherent, long-term housing strategy, focused on those in greatest need.”

It calls for a long-term housing affordability policy with new housing, greater public subsidy, reinstating capital grants, reducing land prices, a new housing affordability definition in terms of household incomes rather than market rents, and a review of social security to strengthen housing support.

I am old enough—just—to remember the furore in the 1960s over the housing crisis around the television play, “Cathy Come Home”, which was about a family destroyed by inadequate housing. That furore led to the foundation of Shelter and a wave of council house building. We are there again now. Families are being destroyed and lives blighted. The impact during the pandemic in the part of London that I represent was well documented in Anjli Raval’s powerful article, “Inside the ‘Covid Triangle’” in the Financial Times magazine last weekend. We need that moral outrage again and a new wave of investment in council house building. We need an alternative to private renting—a decent home where people can live and plan for their future. We have done it before; we can do it again. Councils are finding creative ways to build, such as the Red Door Ventures initiative in Newham, but we need them on a much bigger scale. The Government need to step up, and after the pandemic we need a new programme to build affordable and secure social homes.

Social security needs to tackle overcrowding. Welfare cuts over the past decade have mostly hit tenants. Freezing local housing allowance means that support is not tied to real rents and families cannot afford homes suitable to their needs. This year, thankfully, local housing allowance has been relinked to the 30th percentile of rents. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the Work and Pensions Committee, which I chair, that that change was permanent. She was unfortunately mistaken. The Chancellor has frozen rates again from next month, and the gap will start to widen all over again. The benefit cap also makes it impossible for families in London to afford the housing they need. Many households have had no benefit at all from higher housing support over the past year, because it has been immediately capped.

The Work and Pensions Committee has recommended maintaining the increases in support provided in the pandemic, including keeping local housing allowance at the 30th percentile, and conducting an annual review of rates to keep them appropriate for each area. The Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community recommended that it be tied to 50% rather than 30%, and that the Government should urgently review the operation of the local housing allowance.

Having seen the impact of household overcrowding during the pandemic, I want to ask the Minister what prospect there is of a new wave of investment in social house building on the scale that we need—or are we going to have to wait again for a Labour Government, for the overcrowding crisis to be addressed? Will he prioritise building affordable family homes with three bedrooms and more? Why have we started down the road of freezing local housing allowance again, after that policy has done so much damage over the past decade, and what response, if any, do the Government plan to make to the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s housing commission?

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

Under no circumstances was I attempting to take credit for that Bill, and I was delighted to be in the House when it became law. I completely endorse it, and I understand the comments of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).

[Stephen Timms]

I thank the Minister for the points that he is making. Can he tell us whether the Government will accept the recommendation of the Women and Equalities Committee and bring forward a strategy to tackle overcrowding by the end of the summer?

[Eddie Hughes]

The Government are already doing things to tackle overcrowding, not least with our substantial investment in new house building. The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of points in his speech, and I will cover some of them. He asked if we expect a new wave of investment in social house building. We need house building of all tenures, and the Government have demonstrated their commitment to increasing the affordable housing supply. We are investing more than £12 billion in affordable housing over five years—the largest investment for a decade. That includes the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which will provide up to 180,000 homes across the country; and a further £9 billion for the shared ownership and affordable homes programme, running to 2023, which will deliver 250,000 new affordable homes. The affordable homes programme will deliver more than double the social rent of the current programme, with around 32,000 social rented properties due to be delivered

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made a characteristically powerful contribution, as did the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am grateful to them both, and to the Front Benchers.

The real housing crisis is about people trapped at the bottom end of the rental market, paying unaffordable rents in overcrowded, inadequate homes. As we have been reminded, there was absolutely nothing in the Budget to help. It may well be, as it was in the 1960s, that we have to wait for a Labour Government, and for my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) to become the housing Secretary, for us to get the programme of investment that we need.

I would just say to the Minister, as he takes up his role—I know that he is very enthusiastic—

Covid-19: Faith Groups

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this debate. I hope that it will draw attention to the extraordinary scale and value of faith groups’ contributions in response to the pandemic, and that we will consider how to make more of the potential of faith-based groups working alongside local and national Government.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on faith and society, established in 2012. Our aim is to support faith-based contributions to communities, to help make those contributions better known and, where we can, to help remove hurdles to realising their full potential. When we started, we held a series of meetings with faith-based groups contributing to welfare to work, to health and wellbeing and to work with young people—recognising that most youth work in Britain now is undertaken by faith groups—and groups working on international aid.

It quickly became clear from those discussions that the groups often had a problem with their local council. Councils suspected that the groups were only really interested in trying to convert people, or that any service they provided would be biased in favour of their own members. In any case, from the perspective of a hard-pressed council officer, faith groups are difficult: if they work with one of them, will they offend the others? After all, these are rather odd people; they believe in God—far simpler not to get involved with any of them.

As a result, however, communities miss out on really valuable contributions that the groups could be making, so we came up with the idea, which was suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), of a faith covenant. The covenant sets out ground rules for co-operation between faith groups and local councils to make clear what each should expect of the other, to try to build up confidence on both sides and support them to work together.

The first council to draw faith groups in its area together to sign up to the covenant was Birmingham City Council. It happened at Birmingham central library in December 2014, and it was a good start; Birmingham is the biggest local authority in Europe. Another dozen councils have signed up since then, covering between them about 10% of the UK population. FaithAction, the APPG’s secretariat, is increasingly drawing those councils together to network and learn from one another, together with faith groups in their areas.

However, in the last year, things have moved on to a different level. It came home to me that something unusual was happening on the morning of Good Friday last year. While sitting at home going through emails, I found two from constituents saying, “I don’t have any food. What should I do?” We have all become familiar with referring people to food banks over the past 10 years, but I knew that they would all be shut over the Easter weekend, so I did not know how to answer those constituents. But then I found an email from the Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, saying, “If you come across people without food over the holiday weekend, you should email the vicar of Ascension Church, Royal Docks, before 10 in the morning for a food parcel to be delivered later in the day.” I did not have any better ideas, so I gave it a try, and both my constituents received their food parcels.

My local council has never worked in partnership with faith groups before; something unusual was going on. In my constituency, Bonny Downs Baptist Church, Highway Vineyard Church, Ibrahim Mosque, Manor Park Christian Fellowship and City Chapel have all done a superb job, supported by Newham Council. Similar reports started to come in from elsewhere; the Bishop of Durham told me that a lot of the covid emergency response in his diocese was from faith groups.

Over the summer, with support from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, the Trussell Trust and the Good Faith partnership, the all-party group commissioned the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London to research those council-faith group partnerships. Questionnaires were sent to all 408 UK local authorities and 48% of them filled them in and returned them. Fifty-five in-depth interviews with council leaders and faith-based projects were conducted across 10 local authority areas. Our report, “Keeping the Faith” was published in November, and I thank Professors Chris Baker and Adam Dinham of Goldsmiths and Greg Smith and the research team for all their work. They found a big increase in the number and the depth of partnerships between local authorities and faith groups. More than two thirds of the councils surveyed reported an increase in partnership working with faith groups and 91% described their experience with faith groups as “very positive” or “positive”. It has become clear that what anecdotally appeared to us to be happening when the pandemic began is a reality across the country.

Faith groups and faith-based organisations have been integral to the civil society response to the pandemic, opening up buildings and food banks, running networks, sharing information, befriending, collecting, cooking and delivering food and providing volunteers. Across the UK, nearly 60% of councils have been working with church-based food banks during the pandemic; 24% have been working with mosque-based food banks; 11% have worked with food banks in Gurdwaras, and 10% with food banks in Hindu temples. Suddenly what our all-party group had been promoting had come about.

It has been a very positive experience for councils. One council officer told the researchers:

“My personal admiration for faith groups has gone through the roof, just in terms of their commitment there. We as a local authority didn’t know what we were getting into. And they have got involved with smiles on their faces and they’ve done it professionally.”

The researchers put to the councils a list of characteristics and asked them to characterise their experience of their partnerships “to a great extent”, “to some extent”, “not very much”, “not at all” or “don’t know”. Positive characteristics scored very highly. On

“Adding value because of their longstanding presence in the local community”,

60% of councils said that was the case to a great extent. On

“Improving access to hard to reach groups”,

40% said that that was the case to a great extent and another 39% said that that was the case to some extent.

The researchers also asked about negative aspects that are said to characterise faith groups. Asked about:

“Expressing socially conservative views which sit uneasily with our equalities obligations”,

2% of councils said that that was the case to a great extent. On

“Causing us concern about the possibility of proselytization in the context of partnership working”,

only 1% felt that that was the case. Those old fears of the pitfalls of working with faith groups simply did not materialise last year. Almost all the councils want to build on those new partnerships in future.

The report recommended that the Government appoint a faiths commissioner, working across government, to help faith groups relate to government and to make the fullest contribution that they can. We would like Ministers to encourage nationwide adoption of our faith covenant and of a framework that reflects shared values to foster trust and promote effective collaboration. We would like support from the Minister’s Department to go to each UK local authority, with examples of good faith group partnerships, to build an understanding of what works well in practice. We have proposed a new faiths advisory council, chaired by the new faiths commissioner and attended by Ministers and senior civil servants to look strategically at how faith groups can best help in post-covid Britain.

I would like to thank the House of Commons digital engagement team led by Ben Pearson. Last Friday, it issued a call for evidence ahead of this debate. They had 235 responses reporting how churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and Baha’is have fostered community spirit, provided pastoral support and delivered key services. Canon Hilary Barber of Halifax wrote that the local authority has commissioned faith communities to run food banks and night shelters and is working jointly to promote protecting the NHS and uptake of the vaccine.

Amarjit Singh Atwal, in the east midlands, wrote:

“The community established a food bank”

for

“rough sleepers. Before the pandemic it was an average of 80 meals a week. During the pandemic this increased to 300 per week. The community also provided PPE to the local health trust.”

Nick, from Christians Against Poverty, wrote of supporting

“families with debt problems over the last year, albeit by telephone rather than face to face…working successfully to get families debt free.”

I pay tribute to John Kirkby, the remarkable founder of Christians Against Poverty, who announced yesterday that he is to step down after 25 years.

I hope the Minister will join me in thanking faith groups for their efforts in supporting communities during the pandemic. I welcome his responses on behalf of his Department to the recommendations in our report—appointing a faith commissioner, promoting the faith covenant, developing and distributing a toolkit, and establishing a faiths advisory council. There is still a widely held view that religious faith is on the way out, irrelevant, maybe harmful to community wellbeing. The reality is that in this decade, and as has become so clear in the past year, it has been the faith groups that, uniquely, have had both the motivation and the resources to step forward and help. Those have not been found anywhere else. We need to learn the lesson from that and enable faith groups and faith-based organisations to make their full contribution in the years ahead.