Westferry Printworks Development

Debate between Steve Reed and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, and I agree with him. Indeed, the Secretary of State allowed the applicant to reduce the proportion of affordable and social housing in the scheme from the 35% supported by his own advisers to the 21% preferred by Mr Desmond. According to Tower Hamlets Council, that decision saved Mr Desmond a further £106 million. That is a considerable amount of money in total that the Secretary of State saved Mr Desmond—money that would have gone to fund things like schools, libraries, youth clubs or clinics in one of the most deprived communities anywhere in this country.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I represent one of the two Tower Hamlets constituencies. We have the highest child poverty rate in the country and the most overcrowding in the country. Denying that borough a combined total of £150 million is a disgrace. The Secretary of State ought to publish the documents and come clean today.

[Steve Reed]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. If the Secretary of State will agree today to publish the documents, we can all see, with full transparency, what really went on. That is all we are seeking in this debate.

Grenfell Tower Fire

Debate between Steve Reed and Rushanara Ali

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I add my congratulations to those given to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) for her phenomenal leadership on this issue. She represents a constituency where many people feel disenfranchised and voiceless. In this place, she has become their voice and we thank her very much for that.

Days after Grenfell Tower went up in flames and 72 lives were lost, the Prime Minister promised to do everything in her power to keep people safe. That was two years ago and the Government’s record since then has been one of denial, dither and delay, as they failed to act on words that now ring very hollow indeed. Some years before Grenfell, in 2009, there was a fire at Lakanal House in south London that led to the death of six people, including a baby. The inquest reported in 2013 with very clear recommendations. The coroner said that the fire safety regulations and, specifically, part B of the building regulations that cover fire safety, were unclear. That was why unsafe and combustible cladding was being strapped on residential buildings inappropriately. The coroner warned, sadly prophetically, that if the confusion was not put right, more deaths would follow.

The Government were given that warning in 2013, but they did nothing, so three years later, flammable ACM cladding was strapped to the outside of Grenfell Tower. A year after that, it went up in flames and 72 people lost their lives. It could not be more horrific, and I am afraid that Ministers’ responsibility could not be clearer. We are now two years further on and yet the fire safety regulations remain unaltered. The Government could have acted on those regulations after Lakanal House 10 years ago, but they did not. They could have introduced a complete ban on flammable cladding after Grenfell, but they did not. They could have taken immediate action to strip Grenfell-style flammable cladding from every housing block where it existed, but they did not. Why not? Because if they had belatedly acted on the Lakanal House recommendations after the deaths at Grenfell Tower, they would have had to accept that their failure to act earlier had contributed directly to that disaster. Rather than do that, they chose to cover up their earlier inaction with more inaction. If the leaders of a private company had acted in the way that Ministers did, they would find themselves in the dock charged with corporate manslaughter. Ministers should reflect on that.

Last December the Government finally, and belatedly, announced a partial ban on flammable cladding, but a partial ban is not enough. They have proposed a ban on flammable cladding on new buildings over six storeys or 18 metres high, but have excluded hotels and office blocks. I simply cannot understand why. I have written to the Minister asking for the evidence that a hotel or an office block is safer than a block of flats, but he has not provided anything convincing, and I doubt whether he will be able to. Surely people in a hotel where they have never stayed before are less likely to know the fire safety escape routes than they would be at home, in a block of flats with which they are familiar; and if flammable cladding is not safe above six storeys, why would anyone on the fifth or the fourth floor want flammable cladding strapped outside their home?

The Government propose to continue to permit the use of flammable cladding on the majority of schools, care homes and hospitals, because most of them are under 18 metres high. How do the Government think parents will feel, knowing that flammable cladding is still allowed on the outside walls of the school that their child attends every day? No parent I know would tolerate that.

Right now, there are still 60,000 people living in 272 blocks with Grenfell-style cladding. The Government refused all demands to act for nearly two years. They finally performed a welcome U-turn last month and found £200 million to remove and replace flammable ACM cladding on residential blocks, but even that is not enough to pay for the work to be carried out fully. It includes nothing to deal with other types of flammable cladding which could be just as dangerous as ACM, nothing to deal with failing fire safety doors, and nothing to enable sprinklers to be installed in the blocks where they are required. Even after all this time—even after two years—Ministers continue to evade their responsibility to keep people safe.

The best way in which to meet the Lakanal House coroner’s demand for clarity on fire safety rules is to introduce a complete ban on flammable cladding on all buildings where people live or work, and that ban should not only cover new buildings. We must take down flammable cladding wherever it exists, because it is an unacceptable danger to people’s lives. Many European countries have already introduced a complete ban; Scotland is introducing one, and we need one here in England as well.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is completely insane for the Government not to introduce a complete ban? If they are not going to do so, Ministers should guarantee today that there will be no further fatalities. Otherwise they should call for a complete ban, through legislation if necessary.

[Mr Reed]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It strikes me as incredibly and frighteningly contradictory to say that flammable cladding cannot be allowed on new buildings, but is fine on buildings where it already exists. If I lived in a block like that, I would be living in fear, and I know that thousands of people are living in those circumstances.

There is still an average of one fire a month in buildings with flammable cladding, and it is only a matter of time before one of those fires is not put out. Let us mark the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster next week, and honour the memory of those who died by making sure that what happened at Grenfell can never happen anywhere ever again.

Communities: Charities and Volunteers

Debate between Steve Reed and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I listened with interest to the Minister’s warm words, but I suspect that we will hear much this afternoon about the gap between the rhetoric and the reality in the Government’s approach to civil society. Ever since they were elected, this Government’s method has been to underfund, undermine and sideline the sector at every opportunity. That is a tragedy, because civil society, including the charities, volunteers and community groups that are part of it, play a critical role in reconnecting the communities that this Government have divided.

There is a real mistrust of politics and politicians in our country, which is not surprising. A decade of austerity has ripped the heart out of communities and seen the destruction of shared community spaces. Good jobs have been lost to automation. Once thriving industrial towns have been left to decline. Inequality has grown wider while the economy has grown bigger, because a few at the top have grown richer at the expense of everyone else.

The politics that did all that needs to change. People want back control over their own lives. It is no longer enough for any group of politicians to stand up and tell people to trust them to have all the answers. Trust cannot be a one-way street. People will not trust politicians until politicians show that they trust people enough to open power up to them directly. We need a new politics that is big enough to meet the challenges of our age and responsive enough to meet the specific needs of every community.

At the heart of that are questions about power. Who has it? Who does not? How do we open it up to everyone? In this digital age, with a world that is changing so fast, it is clear that we cannot solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s thinking. That is where civil society comes in, because it offers a way for people to participate on their own terms. It connects communities so that they can exercise the power that lies latent within them. Community-led organisations are a key part of how we can make our system more responsive and more democratic by rebuilding politics around people and putting real power in people’s hands. It once felt like the Conservative party was on to that with its big society agenda, but it withered before our eyes into a crude attempt to replace paid professionals with unpaid volunteers. Now, the Conservatives do not talk about it at all.

Let us look at how much has vanished under this Government: 428 day centres, 1,000 children’s centres, 600 youth centres, 478 public libraries and countless lunch clubs, befriending services, community centres and voluntary groups. Those places where communities came together to act have all gone.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the cuts in youth services have been particularly devastating? Although the interventions to support the National Citizen Service have been welcomed in many areas, the reality is that the £1 billion or so that has been spent in that arena has not been matched by support in other areas to help young people get on to successor programmes, to meet their needs and to ensure that they have genuine opportunities to take part in positive activities, rather than get caught up in crime and other risks.

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, 600 youth centres have closed, and all the activities that could have gone on in them have been taken away. That is a crying shame.

Sadly, the Government have not finished with that agenda; there is worse to come. Their new so-called fair funding formula will remove deprivation levels from how funding is calculated. It will take even more away from the very poorest and will weaken the very communities in which the need to tackle poverty, youth crime and homelessness is greatest. Communities cannot organise, act or assert their voice if the Government keep ripping away the resources they need to do those very things.

The Government passed a lobbying Act that gags charities and prevents them from campaigning. Ministers individually have put gagging clauses in contracts to silence charities and prevent them from criticising their personal failures as Ministers. The Government have discouraged volunteers in the UK by not recognising their work for national insurance credits. They announced a plan for paid time off work for volunteering, but it fizzled out into absolutely nothing.

We are a month and a half away from Brexit, but the Government have still not told us how they will replace lost EU funding for charities or how the shared prosperity fund will work, despite the fact that the Opposition have been asking about it for months. The Minister trumpets the new funding—she did so this afternoon—but she fails to acknowledge that it is a tiny drop in the ocean, compared with the billions that the Government have cut. They can work out the huge financial value of what they have taken away, but the social value that they have destroyed is incalculable.

Despite the cuts and the Government’s failure to open up power, people are doing amazing things in their communities, and are stepping in to help the victims of Government funding cuts. I pay tribute to the food banks and homeless shelters which, in such a wealthy country, we should never have needed. There is a wonderful, rich, emerging practice of sharing, co-operating, collaborating and participating in this country. People’s ingenuity and the creativity in our communities cannot and will not be beaten back, but it is fragile. It needs support and protection. It is clear that the Conservatives will never offer that, but Labour will.

Jobs and Business

Debate between Steve Reed and Rushanara Ali

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The crux of the matter is that the economy is flatlining and there is no prospect of people having a chance to get a foot on the employment ladder. Such opportunities as are available are too few. We need an economy that can grow and a Government who can act as quickly as possible to boost demand and reverse the trend we have seen. We need more genuine training and employment opportunities, particularly for young people.

I raised with the Business Secretary the issue of graduate unemployment, as this is another pool of talent that is being wasted in our country. I was the first in my family to go to university and many in my constituency are in the same position. They have worked hard, played by the rules and just want to make a contribution.

[Mr Steve Reed]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions likes to claim that his benefits cap is responsible for the number of people moving off benefits into work, yet he does not comment on the fact that roughly the same number of people are moving out of work and on to benefits, with both those aspects being part of the usual cyclical change? His interventions have made not a blind bit of difference to any of that.

[Rushanara Ali]

What can I say? The Secretary of State made some interventions earlier, but they provided very little room for optimism. We need to look at how people’s everyday lives are affected by these issues. As I was saying, in my constituency, graduates, school leavers and those who have left further education just want an opportunity. They want this Government to answer their needs, but that is what is failing. Whatever our political leanings and whichever parties we happen to be in, the critical thing is to get people into work so that they can make their contributions. The fact that that is not happening is the Government’s failure, and they need to take responsibility for it and think again about their policies, which are not working adequately.

Let me deal in more detail with graduate unemployment. In a constituency such as mine, numerous family members are coming out of university, often having been the first in their families to have gained degrees, but they are often struggling to get into work. Despite some major economic opportunities around the City and Canary Wharf, there is a mismatch between people’s potential and their skills and the opportunities to get into those institutions. I believe the Government could do more to support graduates and those leaving further education by making it easier for them to make the transition into those institutions that are traditionally not easy to enter—financial organisations, the creative industries and many other sectors in our city. The cost of graduates being out of work and claiming benefits when they could be making a contribution and lifting their families out of poverty is an example of the missed opportunities. Taking action to deal with that could provide an easy win.

I therefore hope that the Business Secretary will think again about how to get a large number of graduates back into work, as they get very little help when they leave university to make that transition. Graduate unemployment among those from working-class or ethnic minority backgrounds is disproportionately higher than it is for other groups, but it is a real struggle for all graduates. I ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to think about this issue and to highlight in his response whether he has any proposals to deal with it.

I should like the Government to think again about whether they have set the right priorities in giving tax breaks to millionaires at a time when working families are losing so much as a result of the changes that they are making. It is proving incredibly difficult for those families to make ends meet, and to pay for such things as child care and heating. The increasing number of people who are going to food banks in constituencies all over the country shows just how much they are struggling.

It is strange that the Government have stuck to their commitment to give tax breaks to millionaires rather than, for instance, introducing the mansion tax on which the Business Secretary was so keen before the election. I hope that he can persuade his colleagues in the Conservative party to take on board an excellent policy idea, which is supported by both my party and his. It would raise additional revenue and help us to meet some of the vital challenges that we face, especially in relation to getting people back to work.

As some of my hon. Friends have already pointed out, a temporary cut in VAT could help to stimulate the economy. When we were in power, there was evidence that a VAT cut could make a significant difference by boosting consumer demand. We desperately need to establish ways to stimulate demand in the economy. The Government should think again about how to generate growth and create jobs. That is not happening, and it has been not happening for too long, despite the promises that were made in 2010 and despite all the forecasts—which, thanks to the Government’s policies, have turned out to be wrong.

I want to make two points about the impact of unemployment on women in particular. The unemployment figures highlight its disproportionate impact on women, and the position is worsening. The Government’s attempt to water down the powers provided by the Equality Act 2006 is very worrying, given that in the current downturn the impact on ethnic minorities and women is greater than ever before. We need organisations that can ensure that those unequal impacts do not become even worse, and I hope that the Government will think again about their strange decision to water down the powers of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The pay gap between men and women—as well as the fact that women are more likely to lose their jobs and remain out of work—is deeply worrying. I hope that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will tell us what his Department is doing to address the real concern that is felt about the effects of that on women.

The content of Queen’s Speeches is ever-diminishing, and this year’s is particularly disappointing. It is clear that the Government have run out of ideas and energy in just a few years. My constituents, and constituents throughout the country, desperately need a plan for jobs, a plan for growth and a plan for economic recovery, none of which the Government are providing. If they cannot be bothered even to come up with a decent legislative programme in the Queen’s Speech, we have to wonder why the public should trust them to restore our economic future and create jobs and growth. I hope very much that the public will see through the Government and their failure, in these very difficult times, to understand and respond to their needs and to the fact that they are struggling.