Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I agree. I am afraid that in some respects the Labour party is seeking headlines in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that control orders are a very serious and very great power used against people who have not been convicted? This is state power against an individual on the basis of suspicion, not evidence or conviction, so it is a serious matter. Does he also agree that TPIMs—despite my reservations about them—are an improvement on control orders and ought to be introduced as soon as practicably reasonable? I do not understand why they should be delayed for a year on the basis of the Olympic games. Presumably other events are approaching in 2013, 2014 and so on that would provide the same opportunity.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. One wonders why, having suggested that 365 days might be appropriate, the Labour party, excluding the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), has not considered other significant events coming down the line for which it might feel that control orders should also be available.

I want to rephrase what I said about the Labour party playing for headlines in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. It might be more appropriate to deploy that argument in relation to the populist policing agenda rather than this serious issue of security.

In conclusion, I think that these amendments are sound, and I am happy to support them. I understand why the Minister has, in response to the Metropolitan police, chosen to extend from 28 to 42 days the transitional period for the implementation of TPIMs, but I hope that he will confirm that there will be scope, subject to security requirements, to allow people subject to TPIMs to undertake work or coursework where appropriate.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which is a very sound one. I hope, and I am sure that the Minister will confirm this when he responds, that because counter-terrorism legislation is so essential, the Government will want to keep it under review, and that if, in future years, there is a need to adjust the measures, appropriate adjustments will be made.

What are the other objections to TPIMs? There is the question of whether there is any difference between reasonable belief and reasonable suspicion. It is my view that the Bill presents a higher evidential hurdle. The courts are aware of that, and they know the difference between those two. That difference is significant.

I acknowledge that TPIMs maintain a system of Executive-imposed measures that do not lie comfortably inside the judicial system. The Bill imposes measures that restrict freedom and human rights. As hon. Members know, those measures include but are not limited to overnight curfews, restrictions on travel, exclusion from certain places and buildings, and restrictions on electronic devices. It has been argued by the Opposition and by Liberty that these measures simply reflect the most offensive aspects of the control order system, but I do not think that that is the case. Clearly, in relation to relocation, internal exile, which the Soviet Union would have been very comfortable with, has gone.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman not have some concerns about the successive non-debate of this issue by Parliament and the fact that a defendant with a two-year TPIM might never know why it was imposed and never have the evidence given to them? All they know is that they have a barrister who does know but is not allowed to tell them and that the judge knows but is not allowed to tell the barrister. Therefore, a circle of secrecy surrounds something that has a major impact on a person’s life, is career-changing, and so on. Is that really right in a liberal democracy?

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman might not be surprised to know that I agree with much of what he says. If my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has an opportunity to speak, he might echo that very same point. That is why the Bill is clearly an improvement on what is in place now, but has scope for further improvement. I am sure that we will return to that in this place and perhaps in the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

I am aware that there have been cases where that has been the outcome.

I am sure that the Minister will want to pick up that matter when he replies. I also hope that this will give him an opportunity to update us on intercept evidence. I understand the difficulties in balancing the operational requirements with the legal requirements and in balancing the scale of benefits with the associated costs, but I hope that he will update the House.

I referred to prosecutions in relation to surveillance evidence. It might be helpful to specify a time frame within which a prosecution must be brought. There may be some scope for moving on that in future debates.

I come now to a couple of subjects that I suspect will not necessarily boost my popularity in certain quarters, but having advocated the importance of voting rights for some prisoners my popularity might not be in the ascendant in any case. It is important to treat in a civilised way those who may wish to inflict death or injury on us in order to expose their barbaric nature. That is why we need clear safeguards for those who are extradited to the UK. If people have suffered torture abroad and are subsequently moved to the UK, on their arrival the UK Government have an important role in assessing any health or mental health implications that should be taken on board. There is also the ongoing issue with regard to the role of the control order review group, which the Government will ensure continues in operation under TPIMs, in reviewing the mental health of people subject to control orders and now to TPIMs. It has that role at present, but from the discussions that I have had with those who have been subject to control orders that have subsequently been quashed it does not seem to be working very effectively.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about people who may have been subject to torture in other jurisdictions. This is a controversial issue, but does he agree that we should not deport people to a jurisdiction that has not signed the UN convention on torture, and that they should remain here until such time as that jurisdiction signs it, rather than the unfortunate arrangements that were made with a number of countries in the past?

[Tom Brake]

That is a difficult point to address. I know that there are concerns about how watertight memorandums of understanding are, if that is what the hon. Gentleman is referring to. It is a tough call. I am at risk of making policy on the hoof if I give an instant response. It is a difficult issue and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. Perhaps when the Minister responds he will say whether the UK Government are making progress in drawing up memorandums of understanding with other countries where we believe that the safeguards are sufficient to allow that.

There are some issues around how people subject to TPIMs are dealt with, and what sort of assessment is made, particularly of their mental health, and any torture that they may have experienced in the countries that they come from.

I will support the Government on Second Reading. The Bill is better than its predecessor. Its measures are more targeted, less damaging to individuals subject to TPIMs and more observant of human rights. But it is not perfect and can be improved, and I hope that it will be during its passage here and in the other place.

Housing (London)

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Mr Turner. I apologise for missing the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

[Jeremy Corbyn]

You have heard them before.

[Tom Brake]

Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said that I had perhaps heard some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments before. I was in a meeting with the Peabody Trust and some of its residents to discuss housing, which is why I was late for the debate. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been a passionate and consistent defender of housing under successive Governments, whatever their political colour. Therefore, he is right to say that I have heard him make those comments before in the 13 years since my election to this House. Nevertheless, the fact that I have heard them many times before does not mean that they do not have great merit, and I suspect that I would not differ much from his analysis of the problem in London, albeit that we might have some differences of opinion about possible solutions.

I take a different view about the comments made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), whose proposals seem to exist in a vacuum. His proposals neither take into account the financial environment in which we are operating nor acknowledge that his own Government planned to examine the level of housing benefit being paid to people in London and other parts of the country. I asked him a question about that issue, but he carefully evaded answering it. He failed to acknowledge that issue, when it would have been the decent thing for him to have done.

That brings me to decent homes. The Minister will know that Sutton Housing Partnership, the arm’s length management organisation in my area, has submitted a new bid for decent homes funding. It is a scaled-back bid compared with the bid that was originally proposed. The partnership had secured a limited amount of funding in the first year of the programme from the previous Government, and I hope that, under the new bidding arrangements, it will succeed in securing substantial funding during the lifetime of the programme that it needs to implement to ensure that social housing in the London borough of Sutton benefits from that funding, as it should do. In many respects, social housing in Sutton has not benefited from the substantial programmes that local authorities in other areas have implemented to repair windows, bathrooms, kitchens and the like.

Many parts of my constituency would have benefited from those repair programmes. For example, the St Helier estate was built in the 1930s. It stretches into Mitcham and Morden and into Sutton and Cheam. It requires investment: it would be unfair to say that many of the properties on the estate have not been touched since the 1930s, but many improvements need to be made. I hope that the Minister will be able to say a little about the progress of the programme to improve that estate.

My second point is about the meeting that I have just had with the Peabody Trust and some of its residents on the St Helier estate. What those residents are trying to achieve is very much in keeping with what the Government are trying to do in relation to the big society. In other words, those residents want to take responsibility for the management of their estate. However, the difficulty arises because that estate has a mixture of tenants, shared ownership, residents and leaseholders. Therefore the structure of tenure is very complex, and I acknowledge that.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

I am pleased that we have someone from the Department for Communities and Local Government attached to that programme, who is working with the residents of the estate, because Sutton is one of the vanguard boroughs when it comes to the big society. That person will try to find ways to work through those problems with the support of the Peabody Trust, which is also keen to address them. The residents feel that they will be able greatly to reduce the costs associated with the maintenance of that development—the Beddington Zero Energy Development or BedZED, which many hon. Members will be familiar with—if they are able to achieve some type of voluntary arrangement to manage those properties. As I understand it, a voluntary arrangement is required to work within the complicated tenure structure that exists on the estate.

Another issue that I hope the Minister will respond to is that, as I understand it, housing associations in the UK abide by European regulations when they advertise for contracts in a way that housing associations in other European countries do not. That means that housing associations in the UK face an additional financial burden as a result of following the appropriate EU process for advertising, which housing associations in other EU countries do not have to follow. If it were possible to remove that burden from housing associations in the UK, it would clearly reduce the costs involved from the point of view of tenants, the Government, shared owners and leaseholders. I hope that the Minister is examining that issue.

I know that the Minister cannot take any action on the final issue that I want to discuss, but he might want to comment on it. It is the issue of planning applications, and specifically the speed with which they are processed. From both a job creation point of view and the point of view of providing housing, particularly if that involves converting or extending properties, the quicker that planning applications are processed, the sooner the builders can get on with the work. I have had representations about that issue myself. I had one on Saturday from a local builder, who is waiting for the completion of four planning applications. He said that, apart from holding him and his staff back from doing their jobs, it is having an impact on the people who will occupy those properties or conversions, once they are completed. Those are the specific issues that I want the Minister to respond to.

I conclude by saying that although I did not hear—regrettably—the comments of the hon. Member for Islington North when he opened the debate, I am sure that he made some salient and pertinent points about the importance of trying to address the substantial housing deficit in London and about the potential consequences of the changes to housing benefit, of which I know that hon. Members from all parts of the House are aware. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on those points this morning.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

This afternoon, I feared cutting a rather lonely figure when standing up to argue that we should allow more prisoners to vote. I welcome, therefore, the support of the hon. Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Belfast East (Naomi Long), the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who opened the batting for those supporting voting rights for prisoners, and the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

I am arguing in favour of allowing more prisoners to vote, and the purpose of the intervention that I made on the spokesman for the official Opposition, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was to highlight the fact that a number of prisoners already do have the right to vote. People who are presenting this as a black-and-white issue, or a new departure, where, for the first time, prisoners are to be given the right to vote, are misleading the public, because we know that a group of prisoners already have the right to vote.

The case that I am making is based on two simple principles. The first is that when the European Court of Human Rights finds that UK law contravenes the European convention on human rights—in other words, that UK law is unlawful—the UK Government should address that illegality. Once we start picking and choosing the laws that we believe should apply and those that we can disregard—the pick-and-mix approach, as the Attorney-General put it—where does it end? The Americans know where it ends: in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Even if the ruling makes some feel uncomfortable, what about the other rulings that the Court has made? A couple of Members have referred to those, including in the case of S and Marper, in relation to DNA, and the case of Z and others, in relation to child neglect. I would also mention the case of Al-Saadoon and Mufdhi v. the UK Government in March 2010, when our Government were criticised for failing to obtain assurances from the Iraqi authorities that those men would not face the death penalty there.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman is right about where we would end up with a pick-and-mix solution. I am sure that he is also aware that the case of the Chagos islanders is coming before the ECHR this summer. A decision will come out, and whatever it is, we hope that the Government accept it. If we go down the other road, everything would be open for debate every time there is a Court decision.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He has put on record what I know to be his long-standing interest in the Chagos islands, and I hope that a positive outcome will be secured there.

The second reason why I am speaking in favour of more prisoners being given the right to vote is that it is the appropriate course of action. Prisoners have committed a crime. Their punishment is to lose their liberty. That is fair and just. What is then gained by seeking to inflict civil death on them? In what way does that benefit the victim? Does it increase the chances of rehabilitation? What is the logic behind the ban? We do not remove prisoners’ access to health care, nor do we stop them practising their religion, so why should we impose a blanket ban on prisoners’ right to vote? Surely we have moved on from the Victorian notion of civil death.

Decent Homes

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 27th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Select Committee for the report and pay tribute to Dr Phyllis Starkey, who unfortunately is no longer a Member of the House, for the work she put into chairing the Select Committee in the last Parliament, the quality of the report and the information in it.

Hon. Members will have heard what I said about the way in which the decent homes standard was brought in under conditionality of local authorities. We need to think about that process a bit more for the future because it seems grossly unfair that those authorities, such as Camden, that did not agree to establishing an ALMO or to stop transfers were punished as a result, with the necessary resources coming in much later. I absolutely endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) has said about how Lewisham appears to have been punished because it essentially achieved the right stars on the wrong date. The process is as arbitrary as that. The issue of the date and so on does not make a blind bit of difference. The reality is that somebody living in Islington in a two-bedroom high-rise flat will have achieved decent homes standard, but somebody living in the equivalent in Lewisham probably will not have done. Why not? It is simply unfair. The Labour Government put the money in for both those tenants to achieve the necessary standard. We need to think about that.

Having said that, the Government should think carefully about the long-term implications of the comprehensive spending review, the cuts that have been imposed and the problems that that will build up for future. I was a councillor in Haringey before I became a Member of Parliament. During the 1980s, we started the process of a post-1948 programme and improved properties considerably in both Haringey and Islington, where I became the MP. Gradually, central Government money dried up, and the repairs and capital improvements budgets were cut back and back. We reached a situation where the only repairs being done were in cases where the tenant threatened legal action or took the council to court to require repairs to be done. It was essentially a solicitor’s process. If someone could convince a court or a solicitor somewhere that their case was strong enough, the repairs would be done. It was a ludicrous way of doing things. By the mid-1990s, the repair backlog was absolutely massive, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) pointed out in introducing the report.

The decent homes standard is, by and large, a very big success story in that it has meant that millions of people have now got decent kitchens and bathrooms, roofs that do not leak, new windows that are energy efficient and often new heating systems and many other things. Again, on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East made, the specific inclusion of communal areas and common parts in the decent homes standard programme has meant that whole estates have improved a great deal. The Andover estate in my constituency was not terribly well designed in the first place—as, indeed, many estates all around the country were not—but with intelligence and sympathetic ideas and investment in the common areas, that estate is now far better than it ever was. It has a decent open square area in the middle, better play facilities and good quality security. In return, levels of vandalism and socially divisive issues are much reduced. Investment does pay off.

If a huge backlog of repairs will be building up during the next five years or so, I dread to think what that will do to the self-perception of people living in those areas or, indeed, to the condition of the flats they are living in. Cutting housing repairs and housing capital improvement budgets is a self-defeating prospect. At the lowest level, if one does not clean out the gutters, eventually the roof gets rotten, starts to leak and so it goes on. Money spent on maintenance and repairs is money well spent.

I obviously represent an inner urban area. The make-up of my constituency is the mirror opposite to that of most of the rest of the country—the same would apply to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East—in that about 40% of the stock is council or housing association, about 30% is private rented and about 30% is owner-occupied. The fastest fall is in owner occupations and the fastest rise is in private rented. Within the private rented sector, there are the most incredible levels of demand.

There are also issues with leaseholders, from both housing associations and local authorities—I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) was making—who sometimes feel quite justified in their grievance that the amount of money spent on capital works on a block seems wholly disproportionate to the benefit achieved from it. I never expected to become such an expert on the cost of renting cherry pickers, scaffolding and skips, and on the cost of sink units, windows and all that kind of thing. I do not mind that I am; I am quite happy to develop a knowledge and expertise in that area, but an awful lot of leaseholders have an incredibly close knowledge of such matters and they feel that they are being ripped off. There are all kinds of appeal procedures that cost everyone a great deal of money. Sometimes there needs to be much tighter monitoring of these contracts to ensure that everyone is getting value for money—both the tenants who will not necessarily be intimately aware of the intricate costs and the leaseholders who clearly are aware of the costs because they have a direct interest in them.

[Tom Brake]

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that there are many organisations that contract in that way and that should be put under a degree of scrutiny. For example, the Peabody Trust is in a protracted argument with the residents of BedZED, which it manages. The residents, who are a mix of owners, social tenants and part-rent, part-buy tenants and key workers, have obtained a quote for redecorating the residential block that is a fraction of the amount that Peabody is proposing to pay its contractors, which it will of course pass on to its residents.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That sounds like a depressingly familiar story. Indeed I have had similar relationships with a number of housing associations, including the Peabody Trust, in my own area. There needs to be a Select Committee investigation into the governance, accountability and democracy of housing associations. That would be a very good area to discuss. Having said that, I pay tribute to Islington council for setting up a well-run ALMO and for its attempts to co-ordinate the work of housing associations, the council, building programmes and the community to ensure that we get family-sized housing, which is in the greatest demand.

We also need to consider the standards of management and, where possible, amalgamate the management of housing associations and the council in particular areas. There can be six or eight housing associations operating on one estate, which is not a sensible way in which to run things. Tenants will have six or eight caretakers, six or eight managers and six or eight cleaning contracts. How about just having one? Clearly, there is a need for us to investigate that area as well.

I also want to thank the people who work in housing in my own borough—the caretakers, the cleaners, the repair people and so on. They are not often thanked; they are usually criticised and blamed. The majority of people who work in the public sector do so because they want to. They want to do a good job and to co-ordinate well with the tenants and the local communities. I want to praise them for what they do and the way in which they try to respond to people’s needs.

The Select Committee report says quite a lot about the private rented sector. The history of that sector in this country is a particularly chequered one. The Labour Governments of the ’60s and ’70s sought registration, rent control and a degree of national standards in the private rented sector. The tenor of the Conservative Government of 1979 was against any kind of intervention in anything. The results included a property boom, privatisation, the sale of a lot of council properties and landlords’ freedom to charge whatever they wished. Now, in order to adhere to national law on housing homeless families, local authorities have absolutely no choice but to place those families in the private rented sector. They have a legal obligation to house people. No London council still puts people in bed and breakfasts—as far as I know, anyway. Instead, they put them in the private rented sector, which is expensive, often inadequate and sometimes nowhere near the community from which those families come. The bill is usually paid by housing benefit.

The Government’s solution is to cap housing benefit, which will mean in turn the removal of large numbers of people from central London. That is not a solution. The solution must be to support housing benefit, but it must also involve considering the impact and costs of the private rented sector on our society. Paragraph 162 of the report points out how many private rented properties the UK had in 2007. The number has increased a great deal since then, and I observe that it is increasing even faster at present.

Paragraph 173 is interesting. The Committee took evidence from Professor Tony Crook, professor of housing studies at the university of Sheffield, who discussed the influx of small-scale landlords, the number of buy-to-let mortgages that were granted and the resulting boom in the private rented sector. Shelter wants good-quality conditions in the private sector and is chary of introducing rent controls, as it thinks that that might reduce the number of places available.

I can see Shelter’s point, but it seems to me that we in this country have built in an enormous problem for ourselves. People in my constituency who live in the private rented sector, unless they receive housing benefit, spend the highest proportion of their disposable income on housing—far more than any mortgage payer or social tenant—for the worst conditions and, generally speaking, the worst services and repair levels. The issue is not going to go away, and if my constituency is anything to go by, private tenants will increasingly start to come together and be much more vocal about it.

I support close examination and inspection and the use of building control and legal proceedings to ensure decent homes, decent repairs and decent quality, but we cannot escape considering rent levels in the private sector. It is done to some extent in the United States and to a great extent in Germany and many European countries. I do not see why we should not start considering a similar process in this country. With the best will in the world, even if a Labour Government were spending billions of pounds of capital investment on new housing at present, there would still be a housing problem in five or 10 years’ time, particularly in London. It is an issue whose time has more than come, and a serious examination of it is needed. I hope that the Select Committee is prepared to undertake it.

The Shelter document that I obtained in advance of today’s debate made this point:

“More than £4 billion of taxpayers’ money is spent annually on housing benefit for private renters and this is set to rise to nearly £6.7 billion by 2010/11.”

We do not yet know what the effect of the cap will be, but that is what we are paying at present. It goes on to make a good point:

“The sector doesn’t function well enough. Too many tenants live in terrible conditions…Too many responsible landlords and professional property managers are undercut in the market by slum landlords”.

I understand that point. There are good landlords out there who try to manage things properly, charge reasonable rents and be reasonable people, but then a cut-throat arrives next door and undercuts them or gets rid of them by other means. It is not a nice business in some areas. Shelter says:

“Too many landlords are confused about, or are unaware of, what their obligations are.”

Taxpayers lose a great deal of money every year as a result, so tackling rogue landlords is very important and another issue to which I hope that the Government and the Select Committee will pay attention.

In areas such as mine, housing is the absolute, No. 1, top-of-the-list, key issue. If someone is a council tenant, they have security of tenure—unless the Government’s new proposals under the Localism Bill come in and that security of tenure is under threat.

Housing Need (London)

Debate between Tom Brake and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake]

That is the hon. Lady’s interpretation of the coalition Government’s proposals across a number of policy areas, but it is not one with which I can agree. I agree that we need to guard against the potential impact of the proposed housing benefit changes on migration from central London to outer London boroughs or beyond, but I hope that Opposition Members accept that we are in rather a difficult financial position at the moment. I am keeping a tally of their proposals on how to address that position. They have accepted the need to cut 20% from a number of departmental budgets, including those of the Departments for Work and Pensions and for Communities and Local Government, so we need to hear some sort of explanation. Indeed, the hon. Lady said that housing benefit should be looked at, but presumably not with a view to increasing the funding available. I hope to hear at least an outline of some possible Opposition solutions or improvements to the coalition Government’s proposals. I shall wait and see.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that if we invested in housing with affordable rents, through housing associations and councils, we would immediately cut the housing benefit bill enormously: instead of paying £400 a week, we would pay £120 a week?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I assure him that I understand his point perfectly, but he must be aware, having spoken in many such debates in the past 13 years, that housing in London is in short supply. The previous Government did not manage to resolve the problem, but I hope that the coalition Government will do so.

I want to refer to some of proposals in the coalition programme that will address the issue.