Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

There are a suite of options for first-time buyers. They can purchase a home using the Help to Buy scheme. They can take advantage of our shared ownership scheme, whereby, under the new proposals, failings and defects will be fixed by the developer for the first 10 years. As I said, the mortgage guarantee scheme that we announced today allows first-time buyers and others to purchase homes with as little as 5% deposit.

We are determined to ensure that first-time buyers are able to achieve their dream and get on to the property ladder. That is a world away from the campaign that the hon. Lady chairs—the campaign of Sadiq Khan, who promised to build 116,000 homes in London but has thus far managed to deliver only 28,000. I wonder whether that is why the housing pledge, which was at the top of his campaign in 2016, is now second from bottom in 2021. I think that that says a lot about Labour and its priority for housing.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

That was quite staggering. I do not know whether the Minister was listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck). He avoided answering her, and he previously avoided answering my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), so I will give him another go. Will the Minister please tell us what on earth the justification is for allowing new buildings to be built with dangerous cladding and other fire safety defects? What will he do to ensure that the number of first-time buyers moving into homes with dangerous cladding is zero?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me a second go. I point out that she has no policies of her own. We are quite prepared to let her borrow some of ours, because we have a lot of them. We are determined to make sure, through the building safety regime that we will introduce, that we have a world-class building safety programme. We have consulted on the challenge of combustible products, which is a very complicated one, and we will make our announcements on those in due course. But make no mistake, Mr Speaker: we are determined to support buyers, we are determined to get more people on to the property ladder and we are determined to build better-quality homes—things that the Labour party talks about, we are doing.

Vagrancy Act 1824

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Charles.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing this absolutely vital debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on her campaigning work with Crisis and other organisations. They are both absolutely right—indeed, all the hon. Members who are here today seem to have made the same case—that it is time the Vagrancy Act was scrapped. We have covered a lot today, including many of the reasons why that matters and many of the alternatives. I am grateful to colleagues for adopting a cross-party approach to address this topic constructively, and I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.

As others have done, I am going to quote the Secretary of State. When I searched in Hansard for his references to the Act, I landed on his response to a question from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster during the ministerial statement on rough sleeping on 25 February. The Secretary of State said:

“We have reviewed the Vagrancy Act and will be saying more in the weeks ahead. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend. It is my opinion that the Vagrancy Act should be repealed. It is an antiquated piece of legislation whose time has been and gone. We should consider carefully whether better, more modern legislation could be introduced to preserve some aspects of it, but the Act itself, I think, should be consigned to history.”—[Official Report, 25 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 1138.]

That statement contains a lot of what has been covered in the debate today. I would be interested to know whether the Secretary of State met the hon. Lady, but rather than put her on the spot I will ask the Minister if he has any further update for us all.

The Labour party’s position is clear. The next Labour Government will repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824, which criminalises begging and rough sleeping. That is because we believe our priority should be to support, not criminalise, those who are sleeping rough or begging, and to end rough sleeping for good. This Georgian-era legislation is unnecessary—I will explain why shortly—for dealing with genuinely antisocial behaviour, because a number of other civil measures exist in modern legislation, including civil injunctions and various orders.

Crisis, the homelessness charity, says that the Vagrancy Act

“gives the police in England and Wales the power to issue a formal arrest if someone has been offered shelter and continues to sleep on the street.”

The problem is that, as most of us who have spent time with people living on the streets know, there are often very real and genuine reasons why they cannot use any shelter that is available.

Rough sleeping is a criminal offence under section IV of the Act and is defined, in very quaint, 1824 language, as

“wandering abroad and lodging in any Barn or Outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied Building, or in the open Air, or under a Tent, or in any Cart or Waggon...and not giving a good Account of himself or herself”.

I am sure that is etched on the memories of everyone in this debate, but I am sure too that many people we serve would be surprised to hear such antiquated and mostly completely irrelevant language being used to deal with the problem in a 19th-century way—in fact, not even that—when we have 21st-century ways available to us.

The Vagrancy Act 1935 amended the 1824 Act to introduce the condition that an individual can be charged with rough sleeping only if alternative shelter is available. However, as I have said, that fails to account for the lack of knowledge on the part of many or the fears that some have about the alternatives, such as unsafe, overcrowded hostels. According to the homelessness charities, the offence of being in an enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose is also used to challenge rough sleepers.

Interestingly, the number of prosecutions and convictions under section IV of the 1824 Act has declined, to the extent that in 2019 there were 183 prosecutions and 140 convictions, only four of which were for the offence of sleeping out. Convictions for begging under section III have also fallen, although they are higher than those under section IV. In 2019, there were 926 prosecutions and 742 convictions. These are criminal offences whose use is clearly declining, but more importantly, are they solving the problems they were introduced to solve or those that cause them? Do convictions under the Act solve the underlying problems of destitution, rough sleeping, extreme poverty and the other contributory causes of rough sleeping?

Let us look at the underlying problems and take, for instance, the sharp end of poverty, destitution—when someone has literally nothing to live off. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report published last year, which I am sure the Minister is aware of, presents data from 2019 that shows a worsening picture of 2.4 million people, including more than half a million children, destitute at some point in the year, an increase of around a half compared with 2017. Obviously most of them will not end up on the streets, but we do not want there to be destitution either, and if we are to tackle the root causes of rough sleeping, that must be part of it.

Over the last 10 years, wages have fallen in many sectors, jobs have become more insecure and the cost of housing in the private rented sector has increased, with very high rents across the country, particularly in parts of London, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster will know, and the south-east. This is a toxic combination that needs a totally new approach to secure work conditions and decent pay.

Meanwhile, what of the safety net that we all believe anyone who falls on hard times should be able to turn to? I am afraid that, again, in the last 10 years there has been bad news for some people who turn to the state for help. As many have found this year, although the safety net has been there for some, it has not covered everybody. Many people found that it was not there when they needed it, and certainly not to the extent of preventing homelessness and the risk of homelessness. People in the private rented sector in particular have found themselves on the brink of disaster, which is often due to the toxic combination of high rents and insecure wages.

As the chief executive of Crisis has said:

“We understand that councils and the police have to strike a balance between the concerns of local residents and the needs of rough sleepers, and where there’s genuine antisocial activity, it’s only right that they should intervene.”

Homelessness charities therefore understand that, but we know that there are alternatives, such as the range of powers that public bodies have under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which include civil injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance, criminal behaviour orders, community protection notices, dispersal powers and public spaces protection orders. I am sure that the concerns that the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) raised are covered by that Act. Unfortunately, however, the Government do not collate and publish statistics on the use of those powers, or not that I have been able to find. Will the Minister commit to publishing that data, which would be really useful, and any evidence about the impact of those powers? That might help to inform our debate about ending the 1824 Act.

Homeless people, as I think everyone in this debate has said, need help, not punishment—as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, assistance not arrest. Rather than criminalising rough sleepers, Labour would support them, with a real emphasis on the housing-first approach that many have referred to. We agree with Crisis that enforcement measures are not an effective way to engage rough sleepers, and with the other homelessness charities that have been mentioned, which were well listed by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I thank them for their sterling work. Does the Minister also agree with them that it is time we got rid and scrapped the Act?

If we are to prevent homelessness in the first place, even before coronavirus, poverty was rising, and that included in-work poverty, with poor pay and insecure work a primary cause, as well as expensive living costs. It cannot be right that so many people on low incomes are spending more than half their income on rent, particularly when that is so often in low-quality accommodation. A lot of those people are at risk of eviction under section 21 of the Housing Act 2004, which the Government committed to repealing. We had the renters’ reform Bill in the last Queen’s Speech; can the Minister tell us now whether it will be in the next one? Will it get parliamentary time so that we can debate constructively how we will reform the rights of people living in the insecure private rented sector?

The hon. Member for Harrow East said that now is not the time to talk about all the surrounding issues. He is right. We cannot go into them in detail, but it is worth mentioning that as we come out of this crisis getting people into good, secure jobs and secure housing will help prevent the sharp end of homelessness that we want to prevent when we talk about the Vagrancy Act and will also do so much good in the housing industry. If we invest—if we build the homes that we need, install the energy efficiency we need for net zero housing, and retrofit—that will create jobs. If we really want this, we should invest in council and housing association homes and, yes, homes to buy. Across all tenures, we need a mass house building programme that deals with the root causes and the 4.8 million shortfall in the amount of housing that the Minister knows that there is. Will the Minister update us on what work he is doing with his counterparts in other Departments to do that building back, and to ensure that we are building the future that we really need in this country?

Finally, the Act is unnecessary. Between us, we have made that case. The Act criminalises a form of homelessness, and I think that is immoral in this day and age when, as Members across the political spectrum have said, people need assistance, not arresting. The Act does not tackle the root causes—the lack of affordable housing, the shortfall in supply—and does not even deal with the symptoms. It is in fact a symptom of the broken housing system and it does not deal with the health needs mentioned by the hon. Member for Gravesham .

It is high time that the Government followed through on the commitment made by the Secretary of State—I know that he said it was his opinion, and did not commit to it as Government policy, and I hope the Minister will satisfy our curiosity on that. It is high time that we conducted a mass house building programme to create the truly affordable homes we need to buy and to rent, including council houses and housing association homes as well as those in the private sector. It is time that the Government prioritised the prevention of rough sleeping. It is time to bring in reforms to the private rental sector, to those sharp practices that hurt tenants, good landlords and the wider economy as people spend more of their money on poor-quality accommodation, even when they are in good jobs. I know of people who have spent a fortune on poor-quality accommodation in this crisis. It is time to focus on a housing-first approach with support for substance misuse, mental health and employment. It is high time that we got rid of this Act, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles, although I hope I will be forgiven for saying that it is not as much of pleasure as it was to hear your pint of milk speech, of which I am a huge fan.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing the debate, and other Members on their contributions. We clearly have broad consensus across the political spectrum. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) talked about his time serving homeless people. Immediately before I came to Parliament, I worked for YMCA Birmingham, a charity for young homeless people, and, like him, I feel that it is a privilege to serve them and work with them. Common cause indeed.

As has been made clear during the debate, the causes of rough sleeping are complex and multifaceted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, it is critical that we not only provide a bed for individuals but provide support alongside accommodation for those individuals with complex and overlapping needs. Covid-19 has made that reality even more evident. It means that rough sleeping cannot be tackled by one agency alone. Effective multi-agency working has been critical to protect rough sleepers during the pandemic, and we have seen some truly creative and innovative solutions. For example, Bedford Borough Council quickly moved hostel residents into a hotel and provided a covid-safe environment that meant that people were not sharing communal sleeping facilities. It redeployed its rough sleeping team to work directly at the hotel, and staff were able to offer key services, including on substance misuse and health, to provide the holistic support that many Members have said is important. That has resulted in high-level engagement and has really turned around some rough sleepers’ lives in the past 12 months.

We know that this is not just about the initial intervention to bring people in. I again stress that it is critical to provide the right support and intervention that will successfully and sustainably move people away from life on the streets. That is why we have committed £433 million over the course of the Parliament to provide 6,000 vital homes for rough sleepers through the rough sleeping accommodation programme—the largest ever investment of its kind in this country. It is crucial to tackle the root causes of rough sleeping so that we prevent anyone from facing the damage and trauma that they have experienced from falling back into rough sleeping after having been given a helping hand. We are therefore also investing in high-quality support so that the vulnerable people helped through the programme can recover and maintain tenancies.

The data clearly demonstrates that our approach is working well. The rough sleeping statistics published this year showed a 37% fall in the number of people rough sleeping on a single day, compared with the previous year. This is the third year in a row that that number has fallen, which is a fantastic achievement. It is now incumbent on us to sustain the momentum and not just continue to reduce rough sleeping but end it for good.

It would be remiss of me not to briefly highlight the brilliant multi-agency work being pioneered by Westminster City Council and its partners to tackle rough sleeping. I know from conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster and Councillor Rachael Robathan, and simply from walking a few minutes from this building down Victoria Street, that Westminster faces significant and complex homelessness issues. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her exceptional dedication, both as the Member for this constituency and as the previous leader of Westminster City Council, to tackling these issues.

The dedication of the teams in Westminster means not only that beds are provided for those my hon. Friend described as fearful and mistrusting, but that the right support is provided alongside the accommodation. For example, the rough sleeping initiative-funded assessment project at Holly House, run by St Mungo’s, which I had the honour of addressing a few weeks ago, offers rapid initial contact for rough sleepers and provides a quick triage assessment with an offer of accommodation followed by effective follow-up support, ensuring that needs are identified and met. That is a pioneering approach for others to follow.

We are here to talk particularly about repealing and replacing the Vagrancy Act. My hon. Friend and others across the House have been determined advocates of the need to look closely at that legislation. The Government wholeheartedly agree that the time has come to reconsider the Vagrancy Act. As many Members have said, no one should be criminalised simply for not having anywhere to live. As the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said, and as others have quoted, the Act is “antiquated”, and its

“time has been and gone.”—[Official Report, 25 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 1138.]

The Vagrancy Act is quite literally a relic of the 19th century and clearly needs to be replaced to reflect the civilised, compassionate society that this Government are committed to as we build back better. That is why we have committed to review the legislation. The review has, for understandable reasons, been delayed by the pandemic. I fully appreciate that, as the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) said, it was started some time ago, but we have unfortunately been knocked off course since then, partly by a general election, a change of Prime Minister and 12 months of a global pandemic. Clearly, it has not been smooth since then. However, with our world-leading vaccination programme forging ahead and our road map for cautiously easing lockdown restrictions in place, I am determined to take that work forward at pace.

At its heart, the review has been about the experiences of those on the frontline, including the police, local authorities and the homelessness sector, and, most importantly, those with experience of rough sleeping initiatives. It has been crucial to understand the full picture of why the Vagrancy Act is used and what impact any changes to it will have. It is vital that the legislation creates the right environment in which to deliver effective services, enables our police to operate effectively on our streets and engages constructively with vulnerable people. We are currently finalising the conclusions of the review and will announce our position shortly.

Of course, that is only part of the solution. Many of the individuals we have heard about face tremendous challenges, and we must ensure that their individual needs are front and centre in this national endeavour.

I will shortly speak about the support we have invested in making sure that the health needs of rough sleepers are adequately addressed, but I will first speak briefly to the points made so compellingly about what happens when an individual refuses critical care and treatment. Decision making in those situations is covered by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which exists to protect those with a lack of mental capacity and facilitate the expression of their rights and freedoms. When a person who is sleeping rough refuses care and treatment that others, including medical and outreach professionals, see as vital to survival, that is not on its own enough to demonstrate a lack of mental capacity.

We recognise, however, that some people who are sleeping rough lack the relevant mental capacity to make decisions about their care and treatment. In those circumstances, the 2005 Act provides for a best-interest decision to be made by relevant professionals, including those supporting rough sleepers. That is never easy, but it is sometimes necessary. That is why we have previously written to local authorities to remind them of their powers during a period of severe cold weather, and of the need to ensure that outreach teams working alongside mental health services can pre-assess those who choose to remain on the streets and to alert police when mental health may be a factor.

Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster rightly highlighted, the most important thing is to ensure that the root causes of the individual’s health needs are sufficiently supported before it gets to that stage. We know that the health needs of rough sleeping cohorts are significant. A survey published by my Department in December found that 82% of respondents who had slept rough in the last year had a mental health vulnerability, 83% had a physical health need, and 60% had a substance misuse need.

People sleeping rough often have complex and multifaceted needs, making the requirement for comprehensive wraparound support all the more crucial. That is why we are tackling this head-on, by delivering £52 million in this financial year to provide substance misuse treatment for people who are sleeping rough. That will provide the specialist support that so many of those individuals need to rebuild their lives and move into long-term housing. In addition, the Department of Health and Social Care is investing £30 million in the NHS long-term plan to support specialist mental health services for people sleeping rough.

In his brief contribution, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned that 50 organisations are seeking to see the back of the Vagrancy Act. As I think we have heard this afternoon, there is also cross-party consensus on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster suggested that three-year funding would be appropriate. Unfortunately, that decision is above my pay grade, but I am sure the Chancellor is listening to this debate and will have heard her comments.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) said that we need to address begging, so it is a question not just of repealing the Act, but of considering what is necessary to replace it. Certainly, as he said, there are examples of people for whom begging is a way of earning money to spend on drugs and alcohol. During my time with the YMCA, we found it incredibly frustrating to have people begging outside our establishments. I would go out to them and say, “You’re giving us a bad reputation. We’re here to provide the sort of support that you are conveying that you need. We could find accommodation and support for you.” They would say, “No, I’m quite happy where I am, thank you.” Sometimes, the people we see on the streets are not necessarily there because there is no opportunity for provision and accommodation.

Several hon. Members mentioned the Housing First programme. Obviously, I am a very big fan of that programme in the west midlands, which Andy Street championed from the start of his time as Mayor—pilots are ongoing. Although many hon. Members have, I am sure, seen good work come from that, we need to allow the review to continue so that we can get a detailed summary of what has worked best and then determine how to move forward based on the commitment that the Government made in our manifesto.

The only point that I would mildly take issue with is the one that the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) made about the new asylum legislation. I disagree with her point simply because that legislation is to tackle those who persistently engage in antisocial behaviour but refuse to engage with the support offered to them, so I do not think the Government are being particularly harsh or using legislation in an inappropriate way. I think there would be general consensus among the public that people who behave in that way and refuse to engage with support should be tackled, and should be subject to the law.

The renters reform Bill is clearly an important piece of legislation, but given that we are just coming out of the pandemic, the Government will have to decide which things they need to bring forward in legislation to get the country back on its feet. Again, that is a decision above my pay grade, but it is something that I personally will be pursuing in my ministerial role regardless of the legislative programme.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is very courteous. He says that it is above his pay grade to decide whether that happens, but will he be making the case for the renters reform Bill to be in the Queen’s Speech? That is really what I am asking him to commit to.

[Eddie Hughes]

My job as a junior Minister in the Department is to support the Secretary of State in identifying important legislation that needs to be considered. It is then the job of the Department and the Prime Minister to prioritise things appropriately, based on the collective need of the country.

The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) called for a significant house building programme. Personally, I think the £12 billion that the Government have committed to house building is significant, and we are determined not only to hit the target of 300,000 houses a year, but more importantly to do that across a mix of tenures. Before becoming a Minister, I chaired the all-party parliamentary group on shared ownership housing. It is not just a question of allowing people to have places to rent; many people have the aspiration to buy. It is up to us to try to support those people as well.

It has been a real privilege to take part in a debate that I feel so passionately about, given my professional background before coming to Parliament, but more importantly in which there is such cross-party consensus across the House. I feel confident that in due course we will make significant progress with this legislation.

Household Overcrowding: Covid-19

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair for this debate, Sir Edward, and to follow the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), the SNP spokesperson. First, I send heartfelt congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on initiating this vital debate. He set out eloquently and in clear and moving terms just what is wrong, why it is so relevant to the impact of covid and what we need to do to solve it. He also gave the truly human consequences by reading out a very upsetting letter from one of his young constituents, who is spending years in overcrowded conditions.

I also welcome the characteristically well informed and passionately expressed speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who is such an inspiring campaigning MP, and the speech from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who does such excellent work with the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings.

The English housing survey found that 4% of households in England are overcrowded. That is about 829,000 households—just think how many children that comes to. Overcrowding is more common for renters than owner-occupiers: it affects 1% of owner-occupiers, compared with 9% of social renters and 7% of private renting households. Overcrowding is at the highest rate in both the social rented and the private rented sectors since records began.

From my own constituency, I can give numerous examples of the real hardship—the reality—of overcrowded homes. People have been waiting for years and struggling for so long, and this last year has been truly awful. Covid has exposed the consequences when people do not have decent housing. Living in overcrowded homes hampers people’s ability to self-isolate when they have covid-19, but even before this time, overcrowded housing had been associated with respiratory illness in children. Now, it is so much worse.

The National Housing Federation found that 85% of overcrowded families have seen their mental health negatively affected by the overcrowding. Adults in 81% of overcrowded families—four out of five—have seen their personal relationships negatively affected. And it is no surprise, if we try to imagine that.

The former Children’s Commissioner found that poor housing conditions disrupt children’s education, affect health and wellbeing, and leave children with no safe space to play. That compounds the existing inequality between children who are in overcrowded housing with parents struggling to make ends meet and those who have had plenty of space throughout the crisis and good facilities and whose parents have been able to manage well financially. There has been suffering on all sides, but that inequality and the inability to make up that gap have been devastating for so many families.

The Resolution Foundation reported last July on the impact of housing circumstances on people during this crisis and identified how the risk increases for lower-income and ethnic minority families—often, the working poor. I am sure that the Minister will have read that report, but if he has not, I hope he will.

Increased covid risks for black, Asian and other ethnic minority people are compounded by poor housing. As Baroness Lawrence said in her recent review for Labour, not only are black, Asian and minority ethnic people dying at a disproportionate rate; they are also over-exposed to the virus and more likely to suffer the economic consequences, and that is multiplied, as others have said, by poor housing.

The Government response has been inadequate. The Women and Equalities Committee found a lack of clear guidance for those trying to self-isolate in overcrowded accommodation. That has been remedied just today, but the focus has been entirely on the individual rather than any sort of Government support. High rents in insecure housing, with poor living conditions, put millions of people in debt just when their income fell. Local authorities did all they could to support people in challenging living situations throughout the pandemic. The Government promised to do whatever was necessary—whatever it takes. How often did we hear that phrase? They said they would support councils during the pandemic. I am afraid to say that the Prime Minister has not kept to that promise. His council tax hike is an example of that.

We need a vision for our country. We need a vision that is better than what we had when we went into 2020. It is unacceptable that we came into the pandemic with so many people exposed through overcrowded housing. It would be unforgivable if the Government did not learn from this and rebuild better, but the only references to housing in the Budget speech were about a stamp duty holiday and 95% mortgage schemes. These short-sighted interventions do nothing to build the kind of good quality, truly affordable homes that we need to tackle overcrowding, and also to boost jobs and growth. There was no mention of the massive increases in council housing that we need now to deal with overcrowding. There was nothing about dealing with the crisis in the private rented sector, with so many people struggling with drops in income as a result of the crisis, and nothing to create more truly affordable homes. Proposed changes to permitted development will only make it worse. A Government-sponsored review of permitted development found that it leads to a higher risk of overcrowding—a Government-sponsored review.

As we all know, overcrowding causes both physical and mental health problems. That situation has been getting worse rapidly over the last few years and now we are in a health crisis, so there is also a cost to the NHS—a significant cost. As the Government have failed to deal with the gaps in financial support or the impact of a flawed universal credit system, too many families have been forced into arrears this year. The fear of losing their home and increased debt has pushed many into overcrowded conditions.

Decent, affordable, warm, healthy, net zero carbon homes should not be too much to ask for everyone in this country at any time. Covid has shown up starkly not only that that does not happen, but what happens as a consequence when such homes are treated as optional by the Government.

The then Children’s Commissioner wrote to the Secretary of State one year ago:

“The government needs to provide local authorities with the resources to source these homes and combined with a clear expectation that homes need to be sourced quickly. I would like to see this combined with clear messaging to landlords: co-operate or the government will act. It would be a particular disgrace to have closed down apartments – many run by businesses which will be receiving government funds in the next few months – while close by families are homeless. I would urge you to commit that any hotel or property business receiving government support, or wage subsidies, in the next few months will have to commit to housing families at cost. If local authorities are supported by the government with both resourcing and clear messaging I believe we can get these families a decent home to call their own – at least for the next four months.”

Those were the words of Anne Longfield a year ago.

In December, the Woman and Equalities Committee said:

“The guidance that the Government has produced for those in overcrowded housing is substandard. There was no clear guidance in one place from the Government on how to overcome the practical challenges of living in overcrowded, and in some cases multigenerational, accommodation. This continues to be the case nine months after the country first entered lockdown. We recommend that the Government should, within the next four weeks”—

bear in mind, this was in December—

“publish clear, culturally competent guidance with practical recommendations on how to self-isolate for people living in overcrowded, and/or multi-generational, accommodation…We further recommend that the Government by the end of summer 2021 produce a strategy to reduce overcrowding due to its poor health impacts.”

Just today, the Minister has produced guidance on overcrowding and covid. I am not surprised, but I am saddened, to see that the Government’s emphasis is solely on what individuals need to do—individuals forced to live in overcrowded accommodation. That reflects the answers to other parliamentary questions. There is no sign of any Government strategy.

The Confederation of British Industry, the Local Government Association, trade unions, the Church of England, housing and homelessness charities, numerous think-tanks and other specialists all agree that we need massive increases in publicly owned, truly affordable housing. Why do the Government not believe in that? Where was that in the Budget last week? It would boost the economy and give us jobs that we really need—good, secure jobs—as well as dramatically improving living conditions, education and the health of hundreds of thousands of our citizens.

I ask the Minister: why have the Government not taken a public health response to overcrowding in housing? How and when are they going to do so? Does he acknowledge that allowing a large number of people, including children, to live in overcrowded and unhealthy accommodation is detrimental to their health, education and socialisation? Does he agree with the former Children’s Commissioner when she challenged the Secretary of State at the start of the crisis or not? If not, why? If he does, what plans does he have to meet some or all of her recommendations now? It is not too late.

Has the Minister read the briefings from the Resolution Foundation that were published last July? What lessons does he intend to take from them? Has he met the foundation? Has he read the report by the Women and Equalities Committee? Has he discussed it with the Chair? How will he implement the recommendations, and on what timescale? Will he commit to the timescale recommended by the Committee—the end of summer this year—for a clear strategy? Will he consider asking the Office for National Statistics to collect data on overcrowding, because we do not have the data that we really need?

Will the Minister acknowledge that if the Government want to solve that problem, they have to ensure that there is a massive increase in truly affordable and secure council and housing association homes? Will he address directly the young person whom my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham quoted at the start of his speech? Will the Minister explain directly to that young person why the Government have not acted for her so far? My right hon. Friend is correct: now is the time for a moral imperative to ensure that there is decent housing. Everyone should have a decent home. The covid crisis has reinforced that, and the Government must commit to end overcrowding and do it today.

Rough Sleeping

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

The Government promised to bring everyone in, but these figures show that at least 2,688 people spent the pandemic on the streets, and every person on the streets is a policy failure. That figure is likely to be a major underestimation. Figures for London put the true number at more than four times today’s estimate. First, will the Housing Secretary commit to providing a richer and more frequent picture of homelessness and rough sleeping across the country?

Even before the crisis, rough sleeping was a shameful sign of Government failure, and we went into last year with more than twice as many rough sleepers as in 2010. The picture on wider homelessness is even worse. There are a quarter of a million homeless people in England, of whom almost 130,000 are children, and the situation is even worse in SNP-run Scotland, where the number of people in temporary accommodation has reached an all-time high.

Nobody should be sleeping rough, especially during a pandemic, so can the Secretary of State tell the House why he thinks that 2,500 people fell through the gaps and had their health and wellbeing exposed at the height of the pandemic? Is it because the Government refused to suspend “no recourse to public funds”, as Labour has called for? The UK Government have continued to leave local authorities in the impossible situation of having unclear guidance and no funding to help those most at risk. Could it be because the initial commitment to provide councils with “whatever it takes” was abandoned, and they are now being asked to raise council tax to pay for essential services? Could it be because the Government have failed to prevent people from becoming homeless and arriving on the streets during a pandemic?

Councils and local authorities should be rightly congratulated on their hard work—and I do congratulate them—in these extremely challenging circumstances, often despite unclear Government guidance, but there is a real risk that gains made last year will be lost. None of the funding mentioned by the Secretary of State today appears to be new. Meanwhile, the Government have quietly scaled back support for Everyone In, which brought down rough sleeping numbers. There are currently 11,000 people in emergency accommodation. However, the Government have promised only 6,000 new housing units for rough sleepers. What will happen to the other 5,000 people in emergency accommodation right now, or the 26,000 people in move-on accommodation or precarious private rented sector homes where they have no security and face homelessness again when their contracts run out in as little as six or 12 months? The Housing Secretary mentioned his commitment to Housing First, so why did the Government extend the pilots to 2023, rather than just rolling out the approach now?

We cannot return to business as usual. The Government pledged to end rough sleeping for good, but their consistent refusal to address the root causes means that more people will continue to arrive on the streets every day. The Government said this morning that the increase in rough sleepers is likely to be down to people losing their jobs and being unable to pay rent. Unemployment is predicted to soar, with 190,000 private renters set to lose their jobs by the summer, so why have the Government once again frozen local housing allowance, given that 700,000 universal credit claimants already cannot cover their rent?

Will the Minister close the loopholes in the so-called eviction ban, which have resulted in at least 500 people being evicted from their homes over winter? Will he commit to ending section 21, to give people security in their homes and prevent the leading cause of homelessness, as he said he would? Will he commit to providing the additional truly affordable housing that will be essential to finding permanent homes for people in temporary accommodation? Finally, the Government’s former rough sleeping tsar, Louise Casey, has criticised the Government for failing to grasp the scale of the crisis, the consequences for lives and life chances, the urgency of the need and the scope for solving it. The public want this. Will he heed her words?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will try to answer as many of the hon. Lady’s questions as I can. I was sad that she could not be more fulsome in welcoming the achievements that have been made over the past year, because they are not just the achievements of this Government; they are the shared achievements of charities, local councils, volunteers and faith groups across the country. We have worked very productively across party lines with local government. In the remarks I have made and those I will no doubt make in answer to other questions today, I praise the councils that have made tremendous efforts—councils such as Birmingham City Council, which has gone to huge lengths to reduce the number of people sleeping rough. This is and should be an issue that cuts across party lines.

The hon. Lady says that the statistics published today are not her chosen method of measuring rough sleeping. She and others have made that point in the past, but this methodology has existed for well over 10 years. It is the most trusted measure of rough sleeping. It is independently verified by Homeless Link, and it uses a very similar methodology to that used by other developed countries such as Canada and France. I think she refers to the CHAIN—Combined Homelessness and Information Network—which is a different methodology and is not easily comparable. That takes an estimate of the number of individuals sleeping rough over a quarter, rather than on an individual night. I am confident that ours is the best way forward, although I am always open to suggestions on different ways one might choose to measure it. By any account, an enormous step forward has been made over the past year; I have not heard anyone who truly understands this issue dispute that.

The hon. Lady says that Everyone In came to an end and that we have not brought forward further support, but that is not correct. Everyone In is ongoing. As I have said, we now have 37,000 people who would otherwise have been sleeping rough on the streets of this country either already moved into good quality sustainable accommodation, be it in the private rented sector, in move-on accommodation or in social housing, or awaiting that move, with councils working closely on it. All those people also have wraparound care, looking after their mental health and other health issues they might face, to ensure that they can begin to rebuild their lives and become more productive members of society.

The hon. Lady also says that councils have not got the funding they need for the future, but again that is not correct. We have provided at the spending review a 60% increase in the amount of Government spending on rough sleeping and homelessness services, bringing it to more than £750 million in the next financial year. This is not primarily now an issue about funding; it is an issue about delivery and commitment, and there are wide variances across the country between councils that are grasping that and those that still have more work to do.

The hon. Lady has also in the past argued that we should not take the targeted approach that we did this winter and that we should have more of a scattergun approach across the country. We rejected that advice and decided to focus resources and effort on the places where it was really required. The statistics I am publishing today—both the snapshot and the statistics for December and January—validate that approach, because they show that in some parts of the country, such as Westminster, that extra effort has made all the difference. I praise the individual council leaders we have worked with, again on a cross-party basis, be it Rachael Robathan in Westminster or Georgia Gould in Camden, whose support has been much appreciated. I hope that we can work across party lines over the course of this year. I hope I can work with the hon. Lady, and I see opposite me her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who made a great contribution on this issue when he was the shadow Housing Minister. We want now to move forward to capitalise on the immense efforts and achievements of the past year, and to end rough sleeping once and for all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for his question. We certainly do not wish for any costs to follow the leaseholder through their life, so he is certainly right to assume that the charge will be applied to the building and not to the leaseholder and that, therefore, their credit rating will not be affected by it. He also asked about how the funding mechanism will work. The Chancellor will say more about that at the Budget, so I do not think I should say any more at this point, but we certainly want to ensure that leaseholders are appropriately and properly protected from unforeseen and unfair costs.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

I remind the Minister that, 17 times from the Dispatch Box, the Government have made a commitment to leaseholders that they will not pay. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government announced last week that funding for cladding removal would not include buildings under 18 metres and that those in homes below 18 metres would be forced into life-changing debts to pay for a problem that they did not cause. But 18 metres is a “crude” height limit that

“does not reflect the complexity of the challenge at hand.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 24.]

Those are not my words, Mr Speaker, but the words of the Secretary of State last year, so what has changed?

[Christopher Pincher]

The 18-metre threshold is well established as a reasonable threshold for assessing risk. It has featured in statutory guidance since at least the 1970s. It is used by the National Fire Chiefs Council in its operational guidance; it is used by the Building Research Establishment; it was used by the independent expert panel; and it was used by Dame Judith Hackitt, who, I remind the hon. Lady, said only yesterday in The Sunday Telegraph that our proposals are “sensible”. I hope that, with this advantage, she will read what Dame Judith has said and perhaps reflect on the question that she has asked.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Frankly, I do not think that will be of any comfort to the leaseholders, who were told that they would not be asked to pay and are still living in buildings with flammable cladding and other fire risks. The Housing Minister says that he is taking a risk-based approach, but in the papers today it is alleged that a senior civil servant said in 2018 that the real reason for 18 metres was

“because we haven’t got time to come up with a better number.”

That was two years ago. Whatever the reason, why have the Government not used the time for a proper system of risk prioritisation or even responded to their own call for evidence, which closed a year ago this week?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Lady. We have looked very closely at the evidence, and have always been guided by safety. Safety is our paramount concern. As I say, the Building Research Establishment, the National Fire Chiefs Council, the independent expert panel and Dame Judith herself all say that 18 metres is an appropriate trigger properly to assess the highest risk. Such buildings are four times more likely to result in injury or fatality if they suffer a fire than lower-rise buildings. We have also introduced—as the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), has rightly identified—a mechanism to ensure that people living in lower-rise buildings are able to take advantage of finance to ensure that their homes are remediated, so that the value is properly reascribed to them and those people can get on with living their lives.

Building Safety

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Buying a first home should be a dream come true, but for many it has been a nightmare for years. As a result of Government choices, three and a half years on from the Grenfell tragedy, in which 72 people lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in unsafe homes and many more are unable to move. Today’s announcement is too late for too many. It is a repeat of undelivered promises and backtracks on the key one—that leaseholders should have no costs to pay.

The Chancellor said last March that

“all unsafe combustible cladding will be removed from every private and social residential building above 18 metres high.”—[Official Report, 11 March 2020; Vol. 673, c. 291.]

But that has not happened. Buildings have not been able to access the fund, and £9 out of £10 is still sitting where it was. At every stage, the Government under- estimated the problem, and delays caused it to grow. They still do not know how many buildings are unsafe, where they are and what danger they pose. Until we have answers to those basic questions, the Government will continue to make mistakes, offering piecemeal solutions that have to be updated when they do not deliver.

Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the funding will cover all buildings over 18 metres? What will the consequential be for the devolved Administrations, including Wales? We cannot have a repeat of the first come, first served free-for-all, whereby the most dangerous blocks risk being fixed last. Will the Government set up an independent taskforce, as Labour has asked for, to prioritise buildings according to risk, with powers to get the funds out the door and the ability to go after building owners who fail to get on with the work?

Ministers have now promised 17 times that leaseholders will not bear the cost of fixing a problem that they did not cause. Many will be listening to the Housing Secretary’s remarks today, and the Government have betrayed their promise that leaseholders would not pay for the building safety crisis. As I said, three and a half years on from Grenfell, hundreds of thousands of people cannot sleep at night because their homes are unsafe. The Government have today chosen to pile financial misery on them—this is an injustice.

What does the Housing Secretary say to Julie in Runcorn, who lives in a flat with dangerous high-pressure laminate cladding? Her block is under 18 metres, so she is unable to access the funding promised so far. She lives in the same development as buildings that have the exact same cladding but are over 18 metres, so they will be able to access the fund. Why should this arbitrary 18-metre height limit mean the difference between a safe home and financial ruin? What are the terms of the loans? What will the interest rate be? Will leaseholders be required to pay the interest as well as the main cost? The right hon. Gentleman says that leaseholders will not pay more than £50 a month, but does that stay with the current owners when they move, or with the home so the new owner is forced to pay? How long does this run for? Will it go up by inflation each year? What will the Government do if those homes remain unsellable? How will they ensure that freeholders take up the loans? How will the Government speed up remediation, because the current stalemate cannot continue?

Other properties do not have dangerous cladding but people have been charged thousands of pounds per flat to fix other fire safety issues. What does the Housing Secretary say to them? The Government should focus on securing our economy and rebuilding from covid, not saddling homeowners with further debt. When they have further debt, that means less money for our economic recovery, taking money away from local shops. It reinforces regional imbalances, and it makes young first-time buyers and pensioners pay money they cannot afford. The Government should pursue those responsible fully, to prevent leaseholders and taxpayers from carrying the can.

The Government have announced a levy and a tax, which I welcome, because those responsible should bear the cost, but how much do the Government anticipate the levy will raise? Will they pursue others, such as cladding manufacturers, who are also responsible for putting in the dangerous cladding? The Government have missed every target for removing ACM cladding, and 50,000 people are still living in flats wrapped in it—this is the same cladding as was found on Grenfell Tower—and thousands more have other dangerous cladding. Will the Secretary of State commit today to removing all dangerous cladding by 2022?

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, at least one first-time homeowner, Hayley, has already been made bankrupt before she was even asked to pay for remediation, just from the extra costs. She asked the Government to think about her former neighbours, so when will leaseholders start receiving funding to pay for the round-the-clock fire patrols they are being charged hundreds of pounds each month for? What about the skyrocketing insurance? How will the Government get the market moving? Their last announcement fell to pieces, and the housing market in affected homes is grinding to a halt. I have a simple question: what, on average, does he expect the leaseholder to be paying?

Government inaction and delay has caused the building safety crisis to spiral. People cannot continue to live in unsafe, unsellable homes. Homeowners should not face bankruptcy to fix a problem they did not cause. Unfortunately, these proposals will still leave too many people struggling and facing loans, instead of being given justice.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady welcomes many of the proposals we have set out today. This is an unprecedented intervention, and it is one of the most generous, if not the most generous, of its kind anywhere in the world. She asks, importantly, why we have focused on high-rise buildings. We have done so because that is time and again where all the independent expert advice leads us. We must make these judgments on the basis of expert advice. With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I think we need to follow the expert advisers, not her instincts. We are focusing on the buildings over 18 metres, where the work needs to get done, and in those buildings we are ensuring that the leaseholder never pays. We want the building owners to step up and meet the cost, but where that is not possible—in many cases, I am afraid it is not, because the building owners are no longer around—the taxpayer will step in and meet the cost, with the advantage of the levy and the tax to help recoup the costs. That must be the right approach.

The hon. Lady asks whether enough progress has been made. Actually, we have ended 2020 with 95% of buildings over 18 metres with the most dangerous form of cladding—ACM cladding—either having been remediated or with workers on site doing the job. That is 100% of the buildings in the social sector, which is a huge step forward. I pay tribute to everyone who has been part of that over the course of the year, including those keeping the works going during the pandemic, which many politicians, including Labour politicians, asked us not to do. That was the wrong judgment, but we kept those works going.

For lower rise buildings—those of four to six storeys—we are bringing into play this important new financing scheme. That means that those leaseholders who at the moment have impossible costs, causing great worry and strain, will now be able to have the reassurance that those costs will be turned into manageable ones. They will never need to pay more than £50 a month—many will pay far less—and only where the cladding really does need to come off to ensure that the building is safe. That will provide peace of mind to hundreds of thousands of leaseholders, and I think it can be seen as a generous, affordable way forward for the taxpayer.

We have to remember that, when the Prime Minister and I came to office 18 months ago, there was only £200 million of Government money available to support leaseholders in this situation, and that that in itself was the result of incredibly hard work by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). Today, 18 months later, there are many billions of pounds of support in direct Government grant and then billions more, no doubt, in financing scheme funding available to support those leaseholders and to get the situation under control.

Meanwhile, what is happening in other parts of the country? We know that, in Scotland, according to a recent freedom of information request, the Scottish Government have done absolutely nothing. The funding they received from the building safety fund is sat in a bank account in Edinburgh, and they have done nothing with it. I would be interested to know from the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) what the Welsh Government are doing. I do not know. Perhaps she can inform us. The hon. Lady herself came to this late. It was only a week or so ago that she convened the first debate on this in her tenure. She did not offer a plan. She did not show an appreciation of the scale and complexity of the issue. She offered a taskforce, a committee. Empty words, I am afraid, and gestures. That is not good enough.

While the hon. Lady was doing that, the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I were working with the lenders, the insurers, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the leaseholder groups to bring forward what we have announced today, which I hope all fair-minded Members across the House will see as a significant intervention. It does get unsafe cladding off buildings and end the cladding scandal. It does provide reassurance and confidence to leaseholders. It does ensure that the developers and the industry pay their fair share. It does build a world-class building safety regime, and it does enable us now to move forward to reopen and restore confidence in the housing market so that the country can move forward again.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to urgently establish the extent of dangerous cladding and prioritise buildings according to risk; provide upfront funding to ensure cladding remediation can start immediately; protect leaseholders and taxpayers from the cost by pursuing those responsible for the cladding crisis; and update Parliament once a month in the form of a Written Ministerial Statement by the Secretary of State.

Buying your first home is a life-defining moment. It is exciting and scary. It symbolises security, and the time to start a family and build a future, but for so many what was a dream come true has become a nightmare. The Grenfell tragedy shed light on a crisis of building safety in this country, and hundreds of buildings have the same cladding that caused the Grenfell fire to be so deadly. Thousands have other equally dangerous cladding, and even more have other serious fire safety problems, such as combustible insulation, missing fire breaks and faulty fire doors. Millions of homeowners are caught up in the wider building safety crisis caused by the defects and are unable to sell, remortgage or buy a flat, freezing up 16% of the housing market and affecting possibly as many as 11 million people.

It can be easy to get caught up in the vast numbers, but it truly is a human tragedy. Many in this House will have read or heard Hayley’s story. Hayley was a first-time buyer in Leeds. She bought her flat through an affordable housing scheme designed to help people on low incomes take that first step on to the housing ladder. After moving in, Hayley was told that the roof of her building was covered in dangerous cladding similar to that used on Grenfell Tower, and further inspections threw up more problems with brickwork, insulation, balconies and possibly firebreaks.

Every month, Hayley faced an additional £300 in charges for what is called a waking watch—a 24-hour fire safety patrol that gives little confidence but costs dearly. That £300 a month was as much as her mortgage, and she just could not afford it. The terms of her mortgage meant that she could not move or rent our her flat. Facing mounting bills for the repairs, fire alarms and the looming threat of the costs of fixing the building, Hayley declared bankruptcy. A first-time buyer so recently, Hayley would now struggle to take out a loan to buy a car.

However, the crisis is not just affecting those at the beginning of their housing journey. I was written to recently by an elderly constituent who wants to move out of his flat and into a home that better suits his mobility needs. His block does not have dangerous cladding, but misguided advice from the Government means that he cannot get a survey to prove it. His home cannot be mortgaged, so he cannot get a buyer and so he cannot move into a home where he can be comfortable.

The situation is reflected across the country. People are being forced to pay more than they can afford for a problem they did not cause. Some are paying so much that they cannot keep their home: first-time buyers getting on the housing ladder to secure their future; people trying to move up and start a family; people approaching or in retirement wanting somewhere smaller; key workers such as NHS junior doctor Will, also in the media today, working on the covid frontline in Sheffield and facing costs of £52,000, a doubling service charge each month and skyrocketing insurance costs; housing associations, councils and their tenants; and everyone in between.

Everyone in this House, I think, agrees that this intolerable situation must not go on. People cannot continue living in unsafe homes. Leaseholders should not face mounting bills for a crisis they did not cause. Labour’s motion today expresses three simple principles that we hope will receive endorsement from across the House. First, the Government must urgently establish how much unsafe cladding there is, where it is and what danger it poses. It is extraordinary, three and a half years on from Grenfell, that we still do not have such basic information. Immediately after Grenfell, the Government could have done as Victoria in Australia did and set up a taskforce to establish the extent of dangerous cladding, prioritised by risk, and ensured enforcement against those who refuse to undertake the work. We are calling on the Government to do that today.

Many leaseholders are discovering that there is a shortage of engineers and fire safety specialists to carry out inspections and works. The Victoria taskforce manages the supply chain and ensures that it is directed first to the buildings that are most at risk. It has also prioritised safety by ensuring that the highest-risk buildings are fixed first, rather than the first come, first served approach that the UK Government are currently taking.

Secondly, people’s homes should be made safe as soon as possible. Where there is dangerous cladding on buildings or other serious fire safety problems, that must be fixed immediately. All the big players in this crisis have spent the past few years pointing fingers and avoiding responsibility, and the Government have called on building owners to do the right thing, but there is nothing to prevent building owners from passing on costs to leaseholders, and indeed they have a fiduciary duty to do so in many cases. Leaseholders simply cannot afford it, and they simply should not have to. If someone bought a new car that turned out to be dangerous, they would not expect to be told to take out a loan of tens of thousands of pounds to pay for it—often more than the price of the original car—but here we are talking about people’s homes. The stalemate we have now is leaving hundreds of thousands of people stuck in flammable buildings, and the only way to make homes safe is for the Government provide up-front funding to make that happen.

Finally, the cost of the work should not fall on leaseholders or taxpayers. Residents did not cause this crisis. They bought their homes in good faith only to find themselves victim to years of corporate malpractice, Government inaction and a broken leasehold system. Ministers have promised at least 15 times that leaseholders would not bear the cost, but recently the language has shifted to state that they should not bear “unaffordable” costs, and there is talk of loans. Labour’s motion calls on them to reaffirm and put substance behind their original promises to leaseholders.

Neither should the taxpayer carry the burden. The Government should pursue the dodgy developers, cowboy builders and manufacturers of flammable cladding through legal action—that is the “polluter pays” principle. Where laws need to be changed to make that easier, we should do so. There is precedent for that in Australia. Many councils and social landlords are being stung for the cost of the remediation. The Government have set them two impossible tasks: build to the building targets they have set, and at the same time carry out expensive fire remediation without passing on the costs to hard-pressed tenants. That must also change.

I am a Member of Her Majesty’s Opposition, but I am not here to score party political points. We know that at least 34 Conservative MPs agree that leaseholders should not pay for these costs, and I am sure there are many more who have not yet said so publicly. I commend in particular the work of the hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) on the Fire Safety Bill. Their amendments sought to protect leaseholders and push the Government to take action. We have tabled our own amendments that build on theirs and fill in some gaps, but the Government have not said when the Fire Safety Bill will come back, and the end of this parliamentary Session is rumoured to be fast approaching.

The Government may say that Opposition day motions are not binding, but it is up to them if they choose not to be bound by the sovereign will of the country’s elected representatives in this House. Many people remember that when the Labour Government were defeated on an Opposition day motion on Gurkhas, they honoured the will of Parliament and changed the policy the very next day. I ask the Government to heed the will of this House.

Further delay and inaction is not an option. Building insurance will continue to skyrocket and the unaffordable cost of waking watch security guards will continue. On top of all that, the colossal cost for fixing buildings will fall on leaseholders. People will go broke. Mortgages risk going into negative equity on a massive scale as more and more flats become literally valueless. We need a solution to this crisis that fixes buildings and ensures that those responsible pay.

I pay tribute to the absolutely inspiring cladding campaigners. I have met some in my constituency of Bristol West and others from across the country along with my colleague, the excellent shadow Minister for housing and housing safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). Those residents just want to get on with their lives. It is a tribute to all of them that they keep campaigning. So many MPs tried to get on to the speaking list today that they could not all get on. I commend colleagues for standing up for lease-holders, whether they are able to speak today or not.

There is cross-party consensus—agreement across both Houses and across the country—that we should put the needs of those first-time buyers, key workers and pensioners first. I am not asking Members to vote with the Opposition; I am asking them to vote with their constituents to show that they will always put their interests first. If Members agree with what is in the motion, they should vote for it. It is as simple as that.

[Mr Speaker]

I remind Back Benchers that there will be a three-minute limit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are committed to abolishing no-fault evictions under section 21. Obviously, we have already taken some action. Last week, for example, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State increased the ban on evictions for a further six weeks. We have also introduced six months’ notice, which means that people who receive an order now will find that it will not go through the courts until July. We are committed to making sure that we protect anybody who is suffering homelessness. That has been borne out by the level of investment that we have put into the sector during the pandemic. We will keep all these measures under review.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

Millions of hard-working people are excluded from every covid scheme—newly self-employed or employed, small business owners, people with mixed employment, even some on maternity or paternity leave who have lost work because of covid but have little or no Government support. The Government’s own stats show that hundreds of thousands have fallen behind on rent. A loophole in the new evictions rules means that anyone with more than six months in arrears is at risk of eviction. When the Secretary of State said that no one should lose their home because of coronavirus, did he or did he not mean that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he has done in this area, along with a number of his colleagues representing London constituencies. I have corresponded with the Mayor of London, directing him that in the forthcoming London plan there now be a tall buildings policy for London, which will ensure that every borough can determine if and where tall buildings should be built. We have no objection to tall buildings. London needs more housing, and that includes good-quality tall buildings, but it is fair for communities to decide where that should be focused. It may be in areas where there are existing clusters of tall buildings, such as Nine Elms or Canary Wharf, or it might be around transport infrastructure in other parts of the city, but we should be able to protect the character and feel of outer London and those parts of the suburbs that my hon. Friend represents, which deserve that added level of protection.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]]

Hard-working young people saving up for their own home have been let down by successive Tory Governments, and this Government are missing their own target of increasing to 300,000 the number of homes built per year by the mid-2020s. The stamp duty holiday pushed prices out of reach of first-time buyers, and the first homes scheme built literally no homes. So what does the Secretary of State say to the young people whose dream of home ownership he has so badly let down?

[Robert Jenrick]

Let us remember that the last Labour Government left house building in this country at its lowest ever level in peacetime—the lowest since the 1920s. The statistics that we published at the end of last year show that this Government are building more homes than any Government has built for almost 40 years, and were it not for covid, we would have built more homes than any Government since that in which Harold Macmillan was Housing Secretary many years ago.

We will keep on building more homes. We will keep on investing in homes through the affordable homes programme and more investment in brownfield land, and we will keep on bringing forward ambitious planning reforms to free up the planning system, to support small builders and entrepreneurs and to create and sustain jobs for the brickies, the plumbers and the self-employed people the length and breadth of the country who need a Conservative Government to be on their side. I would respectfully ask the hon. Lady to back us. She and her colleagues have voted against every single one of those measures since the pandemic. People across this country need those measures to get this country building and support jobs.

Winter Homelessness Support

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Miller. I commend the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on her commitment to ending homelessness and on the skills and knowledge evident in her speech. We have had a thorough and impassioned debate, rightly so, but I hardly know where to start. We have had these debates before and I am sure the Minister can already guess some of the things I am going to say—but I think they bear repetition.

Government MPs made my point for me when they called for better funding for mental health and for drug and alcohol addiction services. The fact that those services are lacking and that we need to fund them is a sign of what has happened over the last 10 years. It is also an illustration of the fact that acts have consequences. When Governments take decisions in—let’s just pick a year at random—2010, the consequences can be felt 10 years on. They still are. They are outside the door here and they are on the streets of Bristol, Rochester and Strood and Westminster. They are on the streets in all our constituencies, but they are also—it is related—in temporary accommodation across the country. The two things are related; it should not be either/or.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) said, living in temporary accommodation is a bad way to live. It is bad for children and it is bad for children’s education. Across the country today, 130,000 children will be living in a place where there is not only usually nowhere suitable to cook a safe, healthy meal, let alone a celebratory one, but where there is no way to do homework, where there is no wi-fi signal, where they will fall behind in school. That will hurt us all.

That child who is falling behind in school because of their time in temporary accommodation could be the child that develops a cure for cancer, or comes up with some radical way of improving environmental cleanliness, or something—anything. We are going to lose out on their potential, because they are falling behind because they are homeless. That is a consequence of Government decision making.

I will touch briefly on rough sleeping and then on other forms of homelessness. First, I have some questions for the Minister. How much exactly of the Protect programme and the cold weather fund has made it out of the door, as of today? As I understand it, although the £15 million Protect programme was announced and a £10 million cold weather fund was announced, on Monday only £9.8 million of the Protect programme had been allocated. Why not the rest of the money—the other £5.2 million?

Have councils actually got the cold weather fund in their hands? It is cold already. The Government worked well with councils and charities in March to bring everybody in, but it is colder now and there is less money, and my council and councillors across the country are telling us of their struggle to keep going.

Rough sleeping is the tip of an iceberg; I know the Minister will expect me to say this, but I believe it to be true—it is the sharp end of a broken housing system with escalating private rents, widening inequality of income and people in insecure jobs who get into difficulties the minute disaster strikes because they have never been able to save money because their income is so unstable.

There is a chronic lack of supply. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) mentioned, there is no way of solving homelessness without addressing supply and, equally, there is no way of addressing supply without addressing social housing—truly affordable housing, council housing or housing association housing, with support. The system we have at the moment is being exploited in cities across the country, where exempt accommodation, although sometimes run very well, is often run badly. It is paid for from the public purse. This is not just an issue of morality. There is also the issue of cost.

[Adam Holloway]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am very aware of time, because I know the Minister has a lot to say. I will continue, if the hon. Member will allow; he has intervened on various speakers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) rightly highlighted the number of people who die while homeless. Pioneering work in my city of Bristol by the journalist Michael Yong showed the humanity behind every one of those stories as well as, I am afraid to say, showing that they were preventable deaths. A policy failure lay behind almost every case.

Too often homelessness, particularly street homelessness, is seen as a sad but inevitable fact of life or a moral failing on the part of the person who is homeless, and it is neither. It is a consequence of decisions taken by Governments. It can go up, but it can also go down. We must make it go down and end it. I am talking about not just street homelessness, but making sure that the underlying causes of wider homelessness are tackled.

Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I want to start by saying to the Minister that in this room she has some of the best housing campaigners anywhere in the House. She has people with expertise, knowledge, passion and dedication—none more so than my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who has brought this debate to the Minister’s and to our attention, as she has throughout her time in this place.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Ms Brown) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) set out in chilling terms both the cost and the brutal reality of life in temporary accommodation. My hon. Friends the Members for Neath (Christina Rees), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), and for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), have shown, as always, their determination and attention to detail in showing how their constituents need to be treated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who was instrumental in introducing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, described today the spiralling rents and the impact of no recourse to public funds that still trap people in homelessness, despite that Act. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) highlighted how that is not only a problem for London, but across the country. So too did Government Members. We have heard them today calling for more social housing and for attention to rough sleeping. I respectfully say to the Minister that there is a lot of knowledge in this room, and I really hope she will commit to taking away every single suggestion and every bit of the passion and dedication shown by hon. Members across this room in order to prevent homelessness.

To prevent a crisis of the use of temporary accommodation, we have to start by saying that it is a civilised nation’s moral failing to have anyone on the streets and anyone in so-called temporary accommodation for anything other than what could genuinely be called temporary. It is a moral failing that we have misused both the words “temporary” and “affordable” to such an extent that people such as the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, who actually works in the NHS, is not able to find accommodation at a price she can afford.

Other hon. Members have given us statistics and facts and also case studies. I made a resolution when I first came to the House never to repeat what others have already said better, but the Minister needs to heed what has been said here today. By autumn 2019, despite the Homelessness Reduction Act, homeless households had increased in number to 87,410. By June 2020 there were considerably more, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said, and that included 127,240 children in temporary accommodation—where they will not get anywhere decent to eat, play, do homework and study, or have anything approaching a family life. As so many Members have said, temporary does not seem to mean temporary. That is a moral failing, which I will say again at least once before the end of my remarks.

The public also need to know that despite the fact that councils are spending £1.19 billion on this temporary accommodation, people are living in the conditions hon. Members have described, with damp, roofs falling in, rodents and poor access to public services. As the National Audit Office has said, the cost to other public services of people living in such poor temporary accommodation includes the cost to the health service, admissions to hospital and admissions to out-patients. There are also the costs to the policing and justice systems when people fall into extreme difficulties through no fault of their own because they do not have the money to pay. The Department does not have a thorough system for assessing the additional costs and therefore does not currently know the full and true cost of homelessness in temporary accommodation and otherwise. It is therefore unable to quantify the benefit to us all of reducing homelessness. That must change.

The Children’s Commissioner this year concluded that living in a B&B has never been appropriate for a child but that the problems have been amplified during covid-19. We have to stop using covid-19 as any sort of cover for any of what is happening. It should have the opposite effect. Spending time in a B&B during covid-19 is bad for everyone. It is bad for health and education, and it is increasing inequality. I make no apology for speaking very much from the heart.

The Government showed earlier this year that political will makes a difference. The Everyone In call made a difference. It brought people in off the streets, and gave them somewhere warm, safe and dry to live. Then, however, things unfortunately went backwards, and councils that were told, “You will have whatever it takes,” found that that did not happen. Unfortunately—I repeatedly asked the Department for accurate figures—people who came on to the streets after Everyone In were frequently not included.

The situation for people with no recourse to public funds remained obscure and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham showed in his brilliant work on the Liaison Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee, which he so ably chairs, that affected a huge number of children and families, as well as single people. They were hard-working people who had done their best and were contributing to this country, and through no fault of their own they had a sudden catastrophic drop in income and got no help. My right hon. Friend had to explain that to the Prime Minister. I know that that is not true of the Minister, and that she understands what no recourse to public funds means. I hope that she will address the issue.

To solve the problem, as I said, we need to accept that it is a moral failing and that it is fixable. There should be some hope. We got hope today from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and I want the Minister to spread some hope as well today—I hope she will be able to do that—by saying, “Yes, it is a failing, but, yes, it is fixable,” because it has been demonstrated time and again that political will can provide answers to really difficult problems. We need to focus not just on the after-effects and what happens when people end up in temporary accommodation, but on prevention. There must be a relentless focus on increasing the supply and the true—not pretend—affordability of high-quality, warm, safe, dry, healthy net zero homes.

Ultimately, everyone in this Chamber, wherever in the country they represent and whatever political party they are in, knows that we have a chronic problem with the shortage of truly safe and affordable homes. That must be solved, and it is solvable, because in building back better—the language we are all using at the moment—there is scope to do that.

An example of where the Government could have done better was the long-awaited social housing White Paper, which was published without any commitment to building more social housing. I know that the reason for the White Paper was the Grenfell tragedy, and it was right that the Government committed to a great deal in it—to things that had to be there—but the lack of a commitment to building more social housing was duly noted.

I will write to the Minister with the questions that I have—there are a lot. However, I should like her to try to answer at least some of them now, if she can. I shall try to sum them up. How will the Minister represent to other Departments the need for additional support, such as Housing First to deal with homelessness, and other additional support, such as outlawing section 21 of the Housing Act 1988—the so-called no-fault evictions provision? Why not do that now? The Opposition have said that we would work with the Government to do that now, under emergency legislation.

Where is the renters reform Bill that the Government promised in the Queen’s Speech? When is it coming? What steps will the Minister take to reform and reduce the use of temporary accommodation, so that it is really temporary and is not used for the 14 years and more that some of my hon. Friends have talked about today? By what date does she hope to have eliminated—not reduced, but eliminated—the use of bed and breakfasts for anything other than extremely short emergencies, and never for families with children? Will she ensure that there is Housing First nationwide, as Conservative Members have asked for? Will she commit to high standards on quality and length of stay for temporary accommodation?

Will the Minister recommend to the Department for Work and Pensions that, for instance, local housing allowances increase to the average, at least for the life of this crisis, and that the mortgage interest loan scheme is brought forward earlier so that people are not waiting nine long months before they can get help? Will she consider the examples of what the Welsh Labour Government are doing to prevent homelessness during this crisis, which my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) mentioned? Will she commit to ensuring that her Department has good and accurate data on the full cost of homelessness to not only individuals and their families but public services and public health? Will the Minister explain to the constituents of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and to those of colleagues elsewhere in the Chamber, what she will do to deal with the quality of temporary accommodation, as described? Finally, will she commit to talking to her colleagues, so that they commit to ending the use of expensive, unsuitable and downright unsafe temporary accommodation, to solving the underlying problem of supply by building and retrofitting truly affordable, secure, safe homes, and to fighting to ensure that everybody has somewhere safe and affordable to live?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelly Tolhurst]

As I have outlined, we have a lot of opportunities to look at how much further we can go and for further intervention. As I have said many times since I have been in this role, I am open-minded and I will look at ways in which we can tackle the issue that we face. However, I must emphasise that I do not recognise the characterisation that this Government are not moving forward. We are taking great steps in tackling those issues. We are announcing funding and talking about the biggest house building project in decades. I believe that we are taking our responsibilities incredibly seriously.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

The Minister is being incredibly generous in giving way. Does she accept that whatever is ahead in future decades, her party has been in charge for the past decade, so they must take some responsibility for how we have ended up where we are today? [Interruption.]