Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stephen Williams and Julie Hilling
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
According to the Homes and Communities Agency, at the end of 2013-14, the average level of rent arrears among larger housing associations was 3.6%, an improvement from 4.1% over the previous quarter.
Julie Hilling
Bolton at Home tells me that its arrears stand at £1.9 million, even though it has a 97% collection rate and has employed an additional 11 people to increase collection and support tenants in financial difficulty. The Minister’s policies are jeopardising his business model on social housing and the ability to build new houses and improve current stock. Can he honestly say that his policies are working?
Stephen Williams
According to the information I have, the number of people affected by the social size criteria has fallen across Bolton, from 3,215 households when the policy started in May 2013 to 2,775 now, so there seems to be some discrepancy in the figures.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stephen Williams and Julie Hilling
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
16. What assessment he has made of the effect of recent changes in local authority spending on youth work budgets.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
Local government accounts for a quarter of all public spending, so it must clearly share the burden of reducing the deficit that this Government are trying to bridge. We expect councils to make sensible savings, such as cutting waste and bureaucracy, not taking the lazy option of cutting front-line services, such as youth work.
Julie Hilling
But youth services up and down the country are being destroyed, even though local authorities have a statutory duty to provide or procure youth work. So what is the Minister doing to ensure that local authorities fulfil their statutory duty?
Stephen Williams
I understand that several local authorities are being innovative in their approach to discharging that statutory duty—for instance, placing their youth service in a social enterprise, where it might be provided more efficiently, or working with volunteers. My Department has a multi-million-pound programme in place via Youth United to find many hundreds of volunteers who are needed to run many of the youth services that flourish in all our constituencies.
Voting Age
Debate between Stephen Williams and Julie Hilling(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Williams
I entirely agree with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. Mercifully, very few people die in modern warfare. Interestingly—I have looked at debates on the matter from around the world—the US originally lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 because of the Vietnam draft. The hon. Lady’s point has therefore been well made in other places.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
People gave many reasons why women should not have the vote, but for many years, women had the vote and were not allowed to go to war. To argue that certain people are not allowed to go into the theatre of war and therefore should not have the vote is somewhat false. Are hon. Members saying that women should not vote on going to war because they are not able to go into theatre?
Stephen Williams
The hon. Lady is right. As a student of psephology and political history, I know that all sorts of peculiar characteristics of the franchise have existed in various parts of the country going back hundreds of years. The debate is on removing another undue restriction on the franchise.
As well as being very well educated, this generation of young people also has the opportunity to be very well informed. For this debate, I reread Hansard from 1968, when the Representation of the People Act 1969 was first debated—I also reread it prior to my debate seven and a half years ago. Members at the time expressed their worry that young people aged 18 were not mature enough to cast independent judgment, and in particular judgment that was independent of their parents or older siblings. As the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) alluded to, those arguments have been advanced every single time the franchise has been altered. Going all the way back to 1832, different excuses have been made why particular sets of the population cannot be trusted with the right to vote. Similar things were said about the rights of women in 1918 and prior to that, and about poor working men.