Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill

Toby Perkins Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I agree: sufficient support should be available across the whole country. Very often, individuals will present with unique circumstances, and legislation cannot provide for each and every eventuality, but making sure that the appropriate training is in place across the country will go some way towards assisting those individuals.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend is saying about the postcode lottery. When I raised that on Second Reading, the Minister said that I was complaining about an issue that did not exist, but it has become clear from subsequent meetings with Women’s Aid that different local authorities are applying very different interpretations of the rights in terms of housing allocations and local connections, so I support her efforts to ensure more consistency across the piece.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and concur with his remarks. Other issues raised by hon. Members have prompted assurances during the Bill’s progress, and I take the Minister at her word and hope the Government live up to her words.

New clause 1 would ensure that cross-border travel does not negatively affect the rights in the Bill. People who flee domestic abuse end up in all parts of the country, but an unevenness in legislation means that domestic abuse victims in the devolved nations are subject to different rights and protections. The new clause seeks to protect the rights of domestic abuse victims countrywide and ensure that travelling from one council area in one country to another in another country does not impede the rights of a domestic abuse victim.

Domestic abuse victims often have little time to plan when fleeing an abusive partner and are unlikely to think that a move to their nearest large town or city might change their circumstances as a victim of domestic abuse, yet that is the reality in places such as Chester and Wrexham. It should be unequivocal that the rights in the Bill travel with the victims. In Committee, the Minister informed me that this matter would be brought up at the devolved Administration roundtable last month in the hope of agreeing a memorandum of understanding between the Administrations.

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[Toby Perkins]

I welcome the reassurance that the Minister has just given us, but the fact is that different local authorities understand the current legislation and their responsibilities to people fleeing domestic violence in different ways, so what possible harm would it do to include amendment 1 so that there would be no cause for any misunderstanding in future?

[Mrs Wheeler]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to entice me down a road that I will not go down. This is parliamentary legislative drafting, and there should be no reason whatsoever for local authorities to misunderstand the situation, which will obviously also be made clear in guidance. However, I thank him for giving me the opportunity to say it again. We will be issuing guidance to assist local authorities to implement the fixed-term tenancy provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. To manage concerns, we can certainly look to ensure that it explains the provisions in this Bill as well, including making it absolutely clear that it applies where the victim is seeking to be re-housed in a different local authority district from the one in which her existing tenancy is situated.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

Again, I stress that this Bill is England-only, but there are such opportunities. There is a local housing rate and then there are discretionary housing payments that can be made above that.

I come to amendment 3, the final amendment. I fully understand the motivation behind this amendment, which would extend the Bill to housing association landlords—this was the point made by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), I believe. However, as I said in Committee, we have some fundamental concerns about this amendment. First and foremost, local authorities and housing associations are very different entities. Housing associations are private, not-for-profit organisations which make a significant contribution to affordable housing supply. I am sure Members will agree that we all want to see more affordable homes built. It is therefore vital that housing associations remain in the private sector, so that they can borrow funding free of public sector spending guidelines, to build the affordable housing we so greatly need. For that reason, we must avoid imposing any unnecessary control that might risk reversing—

[Toby Perkins]

I am listening carefully to what the Minister is saying. It very much stands at odds with the Conservative party policy announced in the run-up to the general election, when it was going to impose right to buy on housing associations. How is it that the Conservative party is so happy to remove thousands of houses from the social rental sector when it comes to right to buy, but when it comes to legislation to protect domestic violence victims, suddenly the Conservatives feel that the private sector should not be touched?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Clearly, what the hon. Gentleman is discussing is outside the scope of this Bill, but we are talking about a voluntary pilot that is starting in the west midlands and we will see where that takes us.

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[Toby Perkins]

I would like to start where the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) finished. I agree entirely about the importance of this Bill, which the Minister herself described as being so important. It behoves all of us to consider why somebody who has been through the appalling domestic violence that many of our constituents have experienced would then be willing potentially to stay in that relationship if their security of housing tenure was in danger of being lost. What does it say to all other housing tenants that something so crucial should be glibly given away by Government in their case? The fact that this Bill is so important makes a really vital point about the need for secure tenancy much more broadly.

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) said that this was a Tory party manifesto commitment. I did not realise there were any Tory party manifesto commitments still standing, so if it was indeed that, I welcome it. I do not remember the part of the general election campaign where the Tories told us that they were going to take away secure tenancies for all other council housing tenants, so I do not entirely understand how they committed to ensure for domestic violence victims something that they had not told everyone else they were going to take away from them.

I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn). On amendment 1, recognising local connections within the Bill is incredibly important. There is real inconsistency not just in the way that different local authorities view their responsibilities towards domestic violence victims but in the provision of refuges. I was shocked to hear from Women’s Aid that Devon County Council not only has no provision for refuges but gives no money towards refuges that Women’s Aid provides. In Chesterfield, we are so well served by the refuges provided by the Elm Foundation that we often provide for domestic violence victims who are coming from other areas. Many of the people who are going to use these services will not be local people. It therefore behoves all local authorities everywhere to make provision on behalf of domestic violence victims.

Where there is that inconsistency of provision, the areas with the greatest provision of refuges end up taking more people on to their council house waiting list and then providing that housing, and so those who are best at providing refuges also see the greatest pressure on their housing services. That is a real disincentive to local authorities in making this provision.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, but he will have heard the Minister say that she will be undertaking the first ever audit of local authority provision. Does he not wonder, as I do, why that has not happened before?

[Toby Perkins]

I welcome the audit, but the question is what happens afterwards. I would like this to be a statutory service with a responsibility on local authorities to provide it. Will there be any move by the Government towards that? Having the information is one thing, but the next thing is what the Government do with it.

On amendment 2, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) made an incredibly powerful point about the bedroom tax, describing the circumstances where domestic violence victims might lose their children and then find that they are moving into a small flat and are told by the family courts that they do not have appropriate accommodation to get their children back. I was not at all convinced by what the Minister said about why the amendment was not relevant. I urge my hon. Friend to press it to a vote, because we cannot talk about straining every sinew and still have a barrier of that kind in the way of domestic violence victims.

There is a broader need for us to recognise the threat to refuges that exists not only because of local authority funding cuts but because of proposed changes to housing benefit. We must look at the impact that that could have on refuge provision. I urge the Government, if they are serious about supporting domestic violence victims, to make every possible representation to the Department for Work and Pensions with regard to implementing those housing benefit changes. I support the Government on this important Bill. However, I urge Members to support all the amendments, particularly amendment 2, because they will add further powers to the Bill.

[Sir Robert Syms]

This is an important Bill. I think that we all heard the passion with which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke about this subject, which really underlined how important it is.

I have sat in this Parliament for a long time, and it has always struck me that short Bills, specifically to the point, are far more powerful in supporting people’s rights than the Bills that we sometimes see, with clause after clause. We know how complex housing issues are, and that is why guidance is the key. We put the right into primary legislation, and then we have the guidance to deal with the problems. Victims of domestic violence are often in a chaotic situation because of the nature of what is happening in the home. The best way of dealing with that is through guidance.

The Department consults very widely on guidance. A vast raft of housing charities and women’s rights charities can give their views, and then we have a Committee upstairs. I must admit that having Committees upstairs that simply note what has been discussed always seems slightly odd, but the consultation gives Members an opportunity to raise a lot of points. Indeed, if the Opposition want to pray against something, it sometimes comes to the Floor of the House for a vote. There are mechanisms for ensuring that the guidance is comprehensive and right and it was probably written by the same experts in the Department who were trying to deal with this difficult and complex problem under the Labour Government.

I have seen the passion that many Members have expressed on this subject, and I understand that because this is about people’s lives, but I also listened very carefully to the Minister. She talked about training; that is good. She talked about audit; that is good. She talked about various money pots; that is good. She talked about pilots, which means that the Department is open-minded about how we should go about solving some of these very important problems. Providing that the pilots and the audit are done properly, we can get a better service to those who face the real and great tragedy of domestic violence and the consequences that has for them, their children and the family.

I think that the Government are on the right track. I understand the passion that people feel about this. However, it is not about what is in the Bill; it is about what is in the guidance. There is a big debate to be had on that, but today we need to get on with supporting the Bill and getting it on to the statute book. I therefore support the Minister in resisting the amendments. Let us consult on the guidance, listen to what the experts want us to do, and have a listening Government who will try to ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose policy that will deal with people who are facing great misery at home because of this problem.

Local Infrastructure (East Midlands)

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley]

I completely agree. House building is important for home ownership and for helping people to rent and put down roots, but also for the economic growth and the jobs that come with house building in the first place.

There is a general consensus that increased house building is needed, both to house our growing population but also, I hope, to fulfil the home ownership aspirations I have talked about.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He made an important point about how long it has been since home ownership kept up with demand. The truth is that home ownership has never kept up with demand, except for those times when Governments have built a significant number of homes. It is not in the interests of the house building industry to satisfy demand. Does he see a greater role for arms of the Government—whether local government or others—in satisfying our housing crisis?

[Lee Rowley]

There is a consensus that more homes need to be built. There are many ways in which they can be built; some will be via state intervention and some will be via increased support for private building. I welcome them all. The reality is that we have to ensure that significant numbers of homes are built, and the Government are committed to that. The output is what is important to me, rather than necessarily the process, so long as the quality of those homes is at the level we want. The hon. Gentleman and I both know from our neighbouring constituencies that many of the problems with house building have come from houses that were poorly designed and built 30, 40 or 50 years ago, which we are now having to spend significant amounts of money rebuilding or renovating as a result.

In the east midlands, the aspiration to own a house, and therefore the need to build more houses, is just as fervent as it is in any other region of our country. That desire is propelled by the fastest growth rates outside London and the south-east, and by an underlying economic and industrial strength, which the region has always been proud of.

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[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is nice to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on his speech and on securing the debate. He is right that many of the issues he raised also apply to my constituency.

The hon. Gentleman focused on the need to achieve more house building starts. I entirely concur. Chesterfield has had huge success in attracting new sites for house building, and I am proud to have seen many new house building starts there over the past few years. The old football ground is now a housing estate, imaginatively called Spire Heights; fortunately the Spireites have a good new ground. The old rugby ground, where I used to run up and down, is now a housing estate called Rugby Drive; we have a very good rugby ground to replace it. The GKN cricket ground is also becoming a new housing estate.

Chesterfield is a very attractive destination for house building sites, but it faces many of the difficulties between residents and developers that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) raised. Interestingly, even on sites where just one or two houses are being built, there are often widespread problems. When it comes to getting planning permission, sometimes it seems more difficult to build two houses than 80 houses. That is a real issue.

It is important that we hold the Government’s feet to the fire on their record on house building. I find it incredible that a Conservative Government are overseeing the lowest number of new people becoming homeowners, as has been the case in recent years. It really is a significant flaw in the Government’s record.

I positively support the opportunity for people to get Help to Buy. A relative of mine is currently going through the process of getting on to the housing ladder through that scheme, and there is some value in it. However, there is a more fundamental issue, which I referred to previously: it is not in the interests of the house building industry for the number of houses being built to meet demand. We all know what happens if there is a shortage of supply—prices go up.

There is also a skills part of this conversation that has not really been referred to yet. At a time when far too many young people are in very insecure work and they do not have huge amounts of skills, it seems a tragedy that we are so short of the people who we need to be trained up in the construction industry. There is a skills part of this whole equation that is missing, and there is certainly a role for Government in that regard.

As a homeowner and mortgage-payer myself, I am not advocating in any way that we should try to orchestrate some kind of collapse in the value of house prices. However, there needs to be a recognition that if the average price of a new home is going to be six or seven times the average wage, it will be increasingly difficult for new people to get into the housing market. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, there will be times when the house building industry is able to meet the level of demand, as it did at times in the early part of this century, but it many cases it will not. There is a role for Government there.

I entirely support people’s aspiration to own a home. I remember unlocking the door for the first time on the day I bought my first home, at the age of 22 or 23. I was a young man on a very modest wage, but I was able to afford a small two-bedroom cottage. It is a magical moment for someone when they buy their first home, so I do not ever want to undermine or underplay people’s aspiration to own their own home. However, at a time when there is so much homelessness and so many people are in insecure accommodation, we should recognise that there is also a real value to people securing their first council house and that council houses can also be a route towards home ownership. That part of the whole equation has also been lost.

In the debate on housing in the main Chamber yesterday, I said that the Government really should look at the issue of right to buy on brand new houses. That is because I know that in Chesterfield there will be a real desire to get more houses built; in a small way, the council are getting houses built. However, there is a real worry that if the council was to make a substantial development and get new people into all those new homes, within three or four years those houses would all be getting bought off and the council would be hundreds of thousands of pounds out of pocket. There is a role for Government in that regard.

Although I support right to buy in general as a principle, if councils were given a moratorium that said that in the case of new homes they did not need to have right to buy for the first however many years, we would actually start to see more houses being built. People would have a choice: they could either take up the opportunity to get a new council house that they recognise would not have the right to buy, or they could stay on the housing list for all the council houses that already exist, which are already massively over-subscribed.

That is something that the Government should think carefully about, as is allowing councils to borrow in order to build. If we are serious about ending the housing crisis but all we are doing is pushing the supply side and trying to make it easier for people to afford a house—even if there is some value in that—simply by effectively providing the deposit, then we will continue to fail to get the number of houses to meet demand. I urge the Government to consider more seriously the steps that can be taken to support councils to do more of this type of thing.

The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire also referred to infrastructure. Again, I do not find myself in disagreement at all with what he said about the need for infrastructure to keep pace with new housing developments. He alluded to a couple of specific infrastructure challenges that both his constituents and mine face on the A61 and the Staveley bypass, and I am very keen to work closely with him on both those issues.

I first came to Chesterfield when I worked at CCS Media, which was slap bang on the A61; it was just inside my constituency and on the border with the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He is absolutely right to say what he did. Right back in 1990, I was sitting in my old Ford Cortina in exactly the kind of traffic jam that he took the Transport Secretary to see 27 years later. He is right to say that these key infrastructure problems exist.

The previous Government made a massive investment in junction 29A, which was a really welcome and positive step in generating hundreds of jobs out of Markham Vale. However, it is a shame that the work on the development of that junction did not continue through to include work at the Stavely bypass, which it should have done.

The Government need to be held to account on infrastructure spending. They came to power in 2010, at a time when all kinds of pressures were slowing the economy down. However, one of their first decisions—I still remember the former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, and the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, standing up to speak—was to cancel all the infrastructure spending. What we saw was two or three years in which all infrastructure spending was slowed down, and although the rhetoric changed from 2012 and 2013 onwards, the level of infrastructure spending in the period between 2010 and 2015 was pitiful. There is a real need for infrastructure, including transport infrastructure, and also for Government intervention in making sure that the people with skills are available, to make construction affordable and to get more houses and more civil engineering projects built.

I will also take up the point that the hon. Gentleman raised about the level of spending in the east midlands. In Chesterfield, we are slightly unusual in that we consider ourselves—I certainly do—to be northern but Derbyshire. The Government consider us to be from the east midlands, but, as I say, I think people in Chesterfield consider themselves more northern than east midlands.

Whatever people consider themselves, the truth is that the east midlands has been massively overlooked in terms of the spending. The hon. Gentleman referred to the amount of spending on both house building and transport. It is true that when someone from the east midlands comes down to London, they meet people who have 10 times more spent on their transport than people in the east midlands do.

There are a number of reasons for that. Part of it is that the east midlands does not fit neatly into successive Governments’ views about how to regenerate areas. I apologise in advance to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North, but we are not a region where the cities dominate and where it is all about the cities. Actually, we are a region of small towns and villages, predominantly—much as Nottingham and Derby might like to think that they are the spoke in the centre of our wheel, they are not entirely.

I remember being at an event where we got east midlands council leaders together. Up on the top table, as was always the case, were the leaders of Nottingham City Council and Derby City Council, and sitting quite a way back from them was the leader of Derbyshire County Council. Of course, the leader of Derbyshire County Council has far more constituents than either of the other two, given the size of that authority. Nevertheless, successive Governments have seen the cities as the way to regenerate regions. There needs to be much more understanding both of the role that towns play and of the make-up of the east midlands. I entirely endorse the point made by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire about the need for greater infrastructure spending in the east midlands.

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to emphasise the importance of small and medium-sized towns, but I urge him not to forget Lincoln, Northampton and Leicester as key cities of our region, alongside Nottingham and Derby.

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[Toby Perkins]

I have no intention of forgetting anything. I was perhaps more Chesterfield-focused but, yes, it is important to remember those cities. We should also remember that the surrounding area of Chesterfield, with north-east Derbyshire and Bolsover, is a fairly coherent unit that is basically the same size as Derby city but does not have anything like the same sort of focus.

I want to pose a challenge regarding the desire for politicians to get together. There was a real opportunity with devolution. The Government spoke about it strongly in 2015 but my sense is that it has been petering out since the 2017 election. I was disappointed that Chesterfield did not join the Sheffield city region. There was a coherent unit there that had a long-standing track record of attracting infrastructure spending and there was some real dishonesty about the debate on the whole matter. Notwithstanding that, there is no replacement Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire deal, and I think that exactly what I saw in the run-up to 2015 is what I have seen since: petty political infighting, meaning that our area is unable to punch to its weight, let alone above it. I urge all political leaders to get together to ensure that we get a devolution deal for the north-east midlands.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire on securing the debate and raising many important points. Our area really needs to start performing to its potential.

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

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Lady for mentioning Solace, which has a very good reputation across London. It is quite right that it should get a namecheck in this place.

The Bill will do two things. First, it will ensure that if victims of domestic abuse who have a lifetime social tenancy need to flee their current home to escape abuse, they will be granted a new tenancy and retain their lifetime tenancy in their new social home. It will also apply to lifetime tenants who, having fled their homes, may be considered to have lost their security of tenure, or may have lost their lifetime tenancy altogether before they are rehoused. The Bill will specifically protect all lifetime social tenants in such circumstances, whether they have a secure local authority tenancy, or an assured tenancy with a private registered provider of social housing —a housing association.

Secondly, the Bill will ensure that victims of domestic abuse who are joint lifetime tenants and want to remain in their home after the abuser has left or has been removed can be granted a new lifetime tenancy after the joint tenancy has ended. We have Baroness Lister of Burtersett to thank for her persistence in ensuring that the Bill should be extended to apply to that situation as well. The provisions will apply to all local authorities in England, and not only when the tenant is a victim of domestic abuse, but when a member of the household, such as a child, has suffered domestic abuse. The definition of domestic abuse has deliberately been drawn widely to apply not just to those who have suffered physical abuse and violence, but to victims of psychological, sexual, financial and emotional abuse.

The Bill delivers on a commitment the Government made to the House during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. We committed to ensuring that when local authorities move to fixed-term tenancies, the regulations that specify when they may grant a further lifetime tenancy would make that mandatory for victims of domestic abuse. Primary legislation is necessary for us to deliver on that commitment, and I am very pleased to be introducing it today.

I should make it clear that the Bill does not create a new requirement for local authorities to rehouse lifetime tenants who are the victims of domestic abuse, and does not require local authorities to grant a further tenancy to victims in their own homes after the perpetrator has left. However, it ensures that when a lifetime tenant is rehoused in those circumstances, or when a victim is granted a new tenancy in his or her home after the previous tenancy has ended, the victim does not lose security of tenure. The purpose is to remove an impediment that could prevent victims from leaving their abusive situations, or from taking steps to secure their safety in their current social homes. The Government are absolutely committed to supporting victims of domestic abuse.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

That support for victims of domestic violence is incredibly important. Will the Minister say a little more about allocations policy, which seems to be applied very inconsistently in different local authority areas? If a victim of domestic violence moves from one area to a hostel in another local authority area, should that local authority have a responsibility for the tenant who is fleeing domestic violence?

[Mrs Wheeler]

The average stay in a hostel or refuge can be up to four and a half or five months, so a local connection is created. Most local authorities that deal on a workaday basis with people who need to be rehoused from refuges take the view that domestic abuse is one of the highest priorities when it comes to the reallocation of premises. I think that there needs to be a full and frank discussion about which is the best place for a family to move to, and the best place may be where the family have been for the last four and a half months.

[Toby Perkins]

It is true that some local authorities take the view that the Minister describes, but would it not be better if central Government made the rules clear? Allowing people who are fleeing domestic violence to stay in hostels for an extended length of time simply in order to develop a local connection is the wrong approach. Do the Government plan to put in statute the rights of victims of domestic violence in respect of future allocations?

[Mrs Wheeler]

That is a very good question, but I do not think there is the problem that the hon. Gentleman thinks there is. I have certainly never known that to be the case.

As I have said, the Government are absolutely committed to supporting victims of domestic abuse, which is why we have invested £33.5 million in supporting them since 2014. However, we want to go further. We are carrying out a fundamental review of the commissioning and funding of domestic abuse services, which will conclude this summer. I look forward to updating the House on its progress later in the year. We will also announce details of further significant funding for domestic abuse services as early as possible in the new financial year. It will be open to all local areas to bid for a share.

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[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is an honour to make a brief contribution to this debate on a much needed and welcome Bill, which I am glad has cross-party support and which I support fully. When I was practising at the Bar, I came across many people. As many Members who have also practised in that field will realise, one of the most common emotions encountered there is fear. Sometimes that is people’s fear of the consequences of things they have done, but unquestionably the most moving is people’s fear as a result of what has happened to them or what may happen to them in the future.

Victims of domestic violence have some of the most terribly moving stories, and the issue of control runs through the whole domestic violence situation. Sometimes we are talking about control of things as basic as who can be spoken to or the control of money or of what somebody does, but there can be no greater control than the control of where somebody lives. When someone is suffering from abuse and needs to leave that relationship, the extra fear and worry of where they and perhaps their children are going to go adds a whole other layer. I will always remember the people I met who were in precisely that situation, which is why I am so pleased that the Government are introducing this much needed and welcome Bill.

I entirely support the Bill, as it is essential that when those tenants are leaving lifetime tenancies, they are able to be rehoused in the same sort of accommodation as soon as possible. The policies vary in district councils across the country. My local authority of West Oxfordshire grants special case status if accommodation is unsuitable because the continued occupation of the property is likely to lead to violence, but we must go much further, so that anybody who has to leave understands and knows that they will also have that lifetime tenancy.

I am glad that, statistically, domestic violence appears to be falling, but clearly one incident is far too many and we must do everything possible to assist those who are in that situation. I am also glad that the Government are providing £100 million of funding to tackle violence against women and girls, including £17 million for the transformation fund.

I want to say a word or two about social housing, because it is important that we do have social housing available. I am glad this Government have been building more council housing since 2010 than we saw built over the previous years of the Labour Government. I am not saying that just to make a party political point; I am simply saying that we have to have that social housing in order to ensure that if there is a family break-up for reasons of domestic violence, we have the property available for someone to go to and that that will remain the case.

[Toby Perkins]

On the amount of council housing that there is, a tiny amount is being built and that has been the case for many years, including under the previous Labour Government. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a huge number of councils would love to get building more houses but simply say, “We can’t risk building new houses only to have them bought off us under right to buy within three years”? Would he support some kind of moratorium so that for brand new houses built by councils there would not be a right to buy for perhaps 20 or 25 years, so that more councils are encouraged to build houses?

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that interesting point, although I do not agree with him on it. Right to buy has been a great engine of social mobility. I believe the statistic is that more than 85% of people would like to buy and own their own home, and we ought to facilitate that in any way we can. We have to enable the building of more social and affordable housing, of all tenures—that is the way forward. In my area, West Oxfordshire District Council is being innovative in working with local landowners and providing some of its own money to help with affordability issues. That is the way forward to address that particular issue.

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[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I rise to speak briefly on this Bill. Like other colleagues, I welcome the limited but important steps that the Bill takes to ensure that one thing that victims of domestic violence do not have to consider when facing choices about their housing is whether they will lose their secure tenancy. It is important that this is clarified for victims of domestic violence. We all feel strongly about them and we all wish to protect their interests at what we know is an incredibly difficult time.

The debate has raised a couple of other issues on which I wish to touch. More broadly, there is the point about how well we, in this place and as a society, support victims of domestic violence with regard to housing and some of the other issues that have been raised today. Importantly, I am very conscious of the fact that there should be security for victims of domestic violence, who have often been left with absolutely no security—no financial security—and in psychological turmoil, as well as with the physical scars that have come from the situation from which they are fleeing.

The earlier exchange that I had with the Minister raised some important questions about the allocations policy for victims of domestic violence. In her response, she talked about the fact that, when it comes to victims who have moved into refuges, many authorities will consider that, because they are often there for four or five months, they have developed a local connection and will then consider that they should be allocated a property. From my perspective, the minute that someone flees domestic violence, we should recognise that the circumstances that they face are different. Often they need to escape their local connections, because it is those local connections—the wider family unit—that they are escaping from. Therefore, it is crucial that they can get to a place where they do not know anyone and where they do not have those local connections.

The Minister said that I was talking about something that did not really exist, but when I visited the Elm Foundation, an important domestic violence refuge in my constituency, precisely that issue was raised. The staff said that they faced different circumstances depending on which local authority they were dealing with. That is why I believe that it would be useful for the Government to clarify more broadly that we do not operate a postcode lottery here and that the rights of domestic violence victims should be the same wherever they live in the country. There should also be a recognition that once someone finds refuge in a hostel and is accepted by that hostel, a local connection should be established immediately at that point. They should not be stuck in the hostel for a long period to establish some kind of local connection. The moment that they and their family unit are ready to move on from the hostel, they should be accepted by that local authority area as having a local connection.

It is impossible to separate the needs of domestic violence victims in our social housing environment from the wider crisis that exists around social housing, homelessness and pressures on local authorities. That is why I took up the point that the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) raised about right to buy. I very much support the right to buy. In its broader context, it plays an incredibly important role. My sister has just moved into a council house and is delighted to know that she is one of the last to get a secure tenancy and is delighted to know that there may be an opportunity in the future for her to take over the ownership of that property. However, an exemption should be put in place for brand new council houses. In Chesterfield, we have about 9,500 to 10,000 council houses, and a council that is very enthusiastic about taking up the opportunity to build more council houses. However, it also says that it would be unaffordable for it to build a new estate of the size that Chesterfield Borough Council used to build in the past, because, within three years, it would be vulnerable, as a large number of those houses would have been bought by tenants.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the system would only really work if we replaced like for like? If a social house has been lost through right to buy, we should replace it. That requires large Government subsidies. The fact that those are not forthcoming means that we are losing large numbers of social homes.

[Toby Perkins]

I partly agree with the hon. Lady. A big flaw in the original right to buy policy was that the same number of houses were not replaced. That was a deliberate political decision. I do not think that Mrs Thatcher wanted to see large numbers of tenants in council houses. She introduced the policy with a view to reducing the number of council house tenants. Like with so many other policies, she wanted to reduce people’s dependence on the state, because she thought there was a political purpose for doing so. Therefore, there was a flaw in the original policy.

I would certainly like to see more council houses being built and some kind of link between the number being built and the number being sold off. To an extent, these are two different questions. There is one question about whether we replace the number of council houses. Some Members want to see more council houses built, but we should have a specific exemption from the right to buy on brand new properties, so that those council houses could regenerate the money for local authorities before they are expected to sell them. Councils would then be more enthusiastic about building more council houses.

If we head back to the 1980s when the Thatcher Government introduced the right to buy, we can see that a very reasonable point was being made at the time. It was that local authorities had built these houses and that families had lived in them for 30 or 40 years and had spent in rent far more than they would ever have spent if they had bought their houses in the first place. Therefore, it was perfectly reasonable for them to say, “Well, look, I have already paid for this house many times over.” Getting a discount when they bought their houses seems very reasonable, and I support that entirely.

None the less, if we want local authorities to build more council houses in any substantial way—there is a real need for that now—a moratorium should be introduced. I will encourage my colleagues on the Front Bench to develop this as Labour party policy. In those early years, councils could build the required number of houses, giving domestic violence victims and others the opportunity to move into them—I say this without in any way wanting to undermine the value of the right to buy as a policy more generally—and that is how we will achieve the council house building that we need.

I very much welcome this Bill, but we cannot discuss the impact of policy on domestic violence victims in the round until we address issues such as housing allocation for domestic violence victims and the shortage of council and social housing more generally. Notwithstanding that, this Bill is a welcome step forward that I look forward to supporting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mrs Wheeler]

No, I will not—I have to move on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) brought up the matter of domestic violence as a priority for Essex police. I am very grateful for that. Councils have been given large amounts to help them to support people in this regard, and training on domestic abuse has been provided from that funding pot.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) mentioned GPs charging for letters. The provision of notes or letters as evidence falls outside a GP’s NHS contract, so a fee can currently be charged. This issue was raised in the Lords, as we heard, and Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth has already written to the Department of Health and Social Care about it. While we await a response, it is important to note that GP contract negotiations for 2018-19 are still ongoing and negotiations for the 2019-20 contract begin in April. We look forward to receiving the details of that response.

We have had a very good debate. There is cross-party support for the Bill. I am grateful to everybody who has been involved in the debate and hope that I have dealt with the points that have been raised. I commend the Bill to the House and look forward to discussing it further during its later stages.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this debate. The contributions have been excellent. I often meet constituents who bemoan the quality of our debates. I always tell them, “Don’t bother watching on Wednesday lunch time. Switch on the BBC Parliament channel on a Thursday or Tuesday afternoon and you’ll get an entirely different impression.”

What has been interesting is how many of the issues that have been raised on both sides of the House have parallels. Listening to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), I was struck by how statist their solutions appear, which I strongly encourage. I remember two or three years ago when my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) first mooted the idea of seizing land off developers who are not getting on with building. It was seen as positively communist. It appears that, all the way from Doncaster to Grantham, the centre ground of politics really is shifting. I encourage much of that.

It is important to recognise that Governments can free space for the private sector to develop, but the rules of the game are the rules of the game at the moment. Given those rules, it is useless for us to come to this place and complain that developers do not build houses from which they cannot make a profit. We need to understand that. If we rely entirely on the private sector, we will get houses built and developed in areas where those houses will be profitable. London authorities will build houses at an amazing rate, but nothing like the same numbers will be built in towns in the north, where there has not been the same sort of investment in infrastructure and where a variety of other things have not been done. We will not see anything like the same numbers built and we will not get them built on brownfield sites.

In Chesterfield in 2005-06, a housing development was being built on the old Bryan Donkin site. The developer went bust about a third of the way through the development. That huge brownfield site remained unbuilt for the next seven or eight years. Therefore, there is no point our coming to this place to bemoan the fact that developers, which are companies that are ultimately there to make a profit, are not building on sites on which they will not make a profit.

What has been lacking from this debate is the sense that housing and planning are just one part of this whole thing. We need to talk about skills because, if there are not enough trained people in the construction industry to get more sites built, there will be an impact on the cost of labour, which will have an impact on the number of houses that are built.

Transport is incredibly important. The north has huge potential, but we need to improve the transport infrastructure. When 10 times more is spent on transport infrastructure in London than on transport infrastructure in other parts of the country, it is unsurprising that everyone wants to move into London, where they can move about easily, and not into areas where they cannot move around so easily.

There has been a lot of talk about the green belt and that is sometimes misleading. Whenever I fly over Britain during the day while travelling overseas, I look down and see that Britain is a green and pleasant land—I fly over field after field before coming to a town or city. If we are to build these houses, the public sector needs to have a role because the public sector can build even in times when building is not profitable.

I would like to see the Government address the issue of right to buy. I am not against right to buy, but unless councils can borrow and know that they can build new houses without the prospect of having to sell them at a discount three years later, local authorities will not build those houses. Local authorities have a role to play in this and I would like the Government to recognise that.

I would like this debate to recognise the importance of transport and local infrastructure. We have heard about the objections in many areas to developments, but often when people are objecting they are concerned about the impact on schools, roads and local health services. Infrastructure needs to be a part of all this discussion, as do skills; we need a much wider debate.

In the final minute available, while touching on the planning issue, I also wish to discuss the issue of Traveller sites. In Chesterfield, we have a local plan, which is currently under consultation. The council has identified two sites for Travellers already in Chesterfield, but it has been told it needs to identify two more. There is a huge amount of public concern about that. Four sites in my constituency—in Grangewood, Newbold and Inkersall—have been consulted on and I know there are two such sites in the constituency of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley). The pressure that is going on councils is unfair. There is also pressure on constituents, who are, for understandable reasons—I would be concerned for exactly the same reasons—very concerned about this. If we are going to see local authorities put in control of their areas, we do not need to see them forced to have such sites, as is currently happening in Chesterfield.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

That proposal sounds sensible. I am not familiar with the detail, but given what my hon. Friend sets out, it sounds like the local authority is focusing on demand. We will need significantly more of that if we are to meet demand in London.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury put his finger on it when he spoke about housing demand. Clearly, compared with the situation when I was younger, we are much tougher with the loans that people can take out. When we look at what happened to the financial system after the banks made unwise lending decisions, such practice is probably very sensible, but it does make it more difficult for younger people to purchase houses. I welcome what the Government have done on the finance side of the argument, and two things are particularly welcome. The Help to Buy equity loan scheme is helping a significant number of young people who can afford a mortgage to be able to finance their deposit. It is not true to say, as some people do, that that only deals with the demand side of the equation, because it is of course only used for buying new houses. If we look at how house builders operate, we see that they build houses as they sell them. If we make it possible for a first-time buyer to purchase a home through the Help to Buy equity loan scheme, the house builder will then build more houses on that estate, as I have seen clearly in my constituency. Such practice helps on the demand side, which in turn generates housing supply.

I also welcome the introduction of the lifetime individual savings account, which enables younger people to save for a pension or a home, but I have one policy suggestion for the Minister. I am very supportive of our auto-enrolment policy to ensure that everybody saves for a pension, so will he consider whether we could apply auto-enrolment to lifetime ISAs? A young person going into the labour market would then find that their savings and their employer’s contributions would go into a lifetime ISA—at least that would be an option—so that the money could be used to fund either a pension or a home. If someone is a homeowner when they retire, they will not need such a significant pension, because they will not be paying rent on the home that they own. I think that that sensible proposal might make younger people keener to save for a deposit, because they would find it more affordable, so I urge the Minister to consider the suggestion.

I am grateful that the Government have said so much recently about the northern powerhouse. Given the location of my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury, I also welcome what the Secretary of State for Wales did with the Severn growth summit to encourage the development of what we might call a western powerhouse to create another centre of gravity for developing economic growth in Wales and the west country. It seems to me that one of the real problems is that we will not deal with the housing crisis simply by building more homes. London, for example, has high levels of immigration—23% of Londoners are non-UK born residents, and 156,000 migrants moved to London in 2016. Having listened to colleagues’ concerns about excessive house building in London, I argue that we cannot build our way out of the problem. A longer- term solution is to generate progress in the northern powerhouse—in transport infrastructure and development in that part of the country—and then generate development in what I might call the western powerhouse in the west of the country and Wales. We could also look at things such as the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford growth corridor, so that we actually see economic development spread more equitably across the United Kingdom. That would mean that rather than feeling the pressure to move to London, or to get a job or create a new business there, young people in many parts of the country would feel able to stay in their home towns and cities, or indeed to move to Manchester and the great cities of the north. That will happen if we create a powerhouse that is globally competitive, as London is.

[Toby Perkins]

I am much happier with where the right hon. Gentleman is finishing his speech than I was with his position six or seven minutes ago. It seems that London has doubled in size during my lifetime, but the major cities of the north have hardly changed. If the message that the Government get today is that we need continually to expand the size of London, I agree entirely that we will not build our way out of this problem, as we will just continue to feed that demand. The solution has to be investment in infrastructure and skills all around the country, not just focused on London.

[Mr Harper]

I am glad that I have cheered up the hon. Gentleman as my remarks have developed, and I hope that I have had that effect on at least one or two other colleagues. He is right that that is the answer. There is a regional housing problem in the United Kingdom. House prices in London and its surrounding areas are massively out of kilter with the rest of the country, and we can deal with some of that by building houses. We do need to increase the density of house building in London, so I welcomed what the Government said yesterday about building upwards, and having slightly increased housing densities and slightly higher rise properties—not massive, but perhaps with more storeys than a traditional two-storey property—but we also need to spread economic growth across the country.

People with housing challenges who live in London should be as supportive of investment in the northern powerhouse and other parts of the country—and in creating a great, globally competitive city in the north—as people who live in the north. Such investment would result in us sharing economic growth more equitably across the country. That is how we deal with the housing challenges that we face more fairly and equitably, and it would also help the whole country’s economic growth and make us more globally competitive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

We are certainly looking at that as part of our wider strategy, which I have already described. I am very happy to write to my hon. Friend about its particular impact on his constituency.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

T8. I find the level of rough sleeping in Chesterfield and across the country deeply humiliating as an MP, and it infuriates and disgusts my constituents. When Ministers walk past people living in sleeping bags, do they believe that it is the halving of councils’ Supporting People budget or the £5 billion cut to housing benefit that is most responsible for this national scar on our society?

[Sajid Javid]

We have made it an absolute priority in government to help to fight rough sleeping and homelessness. We have committed to halving it by the end of this Parliament and to eliminating it completely by 2027. I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, but I hope that he agrees that this issue is not a party political football, and we should all work together across the House to deal with the issue.