Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Thank you very much for calling me in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. Over the past few days we have been debating the Gracious Speech of our monarch, who has been nobly carrying out this duty for longer than anyone else has been sitting in either House. Over that time, she has been the only constant. Her words and policies have changed with the will of the people who have chosen her scriptwriters through election. It is an extraordinary recognition of the reality of power and duty. Her subjects have the power to force her to read the words, and she dutifully does so, giving us an illusion of constancy in a changing world. That illusion is no trick; it is a vital part of the stability of our nation. It allows continuous innovation without fear, and novelty without revolution. As democrats have always known, the alternative to constant change is not stasis but sudden violence. The earthquake is no alternative to the bicycle. Her Majesty has been providing the constancy that has enabled that change and avoided violence, and we have been blessed to live in a newer, more peaceful Elizabethan age.

Our civic Union, which has grown out of the union of the high kings of Ireland, the tribes of Wales, the clans of Scotland and the kingdoms of England, is another constant. It has provided certainty for 300 years, and those who threaten it should think about the difference between expedient interest and long-term strategy. To lose our nation would be not just a question of currency or governance but a moment of profound disorientation for many, as so many would be left with the question of what is home. That is why I have chosen to speak today on the importance of home.

Across our nation today, almost 100,000 people are living in temporary housing. They are families like ours who are living with the uncertainty that temporary housing ensures. They have narrower windows for decisions, timelines moved from months and years to days and weeks, and injections of transience, not just in geography but in aspiration. This corrodes the ties that bind communities and undermines the ability to invest in the future. Children find it harder to study and make friends, and their results suffer. Adults cannot invest in their own futures, turn jobs into careers or accommodation into homes. At every level, this costs us all. How many Einsteins could not finish their schooling? How many Flemings did not start their education? How many Dysons did not have the time to set aside to innovate?

That is why this emphasis on housing matters, but it is much more than an emphasis on housing; it is an emphasis on community. It is a reversal of the policies that have sadly endured for too long and have slowed down the ability of owners and occupiers to be one and the same. That has stolen energy out of our economy and stability out of our nation. As Jack Airey argued in a Policy Exchange report in 2019, “Building Beautiful Places”, which built on the work of so many others, including of course Sir Roger Scruton, we need to feel at home not just in our home but in our community, our town and our country. How we build what we build builds us up or drags us down. It is profoundly important to remember why we build, not just where.

There are huge examples of successful construction and opportunities where we have seen shared space inspire co-operation and inspire changing, caring atmospheres. We can deepen community and we can intensify co-operation, but it demands that we build on the nature of our community and respect those who are there. When we rebuilt this place, we did not just enrich Pugin but enriched Britain, because the fire that started with the tally sticks destroyed not just an old Parliament but an old world. It brought about a new innovation in currency and a change in our economic future. It removed the restrictions that for many had held back our economy.

This is a time when we need to talk again about those changes, because the Queen’s Speech does not cover the changing nature of currency, the changing nature of the economy, and the innovations that we are seeing online through various forms of cryptocurrencies. I will not, in the few moments I have left, go into why I am going to be bullish on Ether and not Bitcoin, or the nature of the change in the Treasury that is needed to enable innovation that sees the sharing of prosperity on a global basis rather than a local one.

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that we need to ensure that we have local engagement in a digital way in our planning concerns as we go forward?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and neighbour. As she has kindly spoken about digital, I will continue for a moment on why I think the Treasury needs to create a safe space for cryptocurrency development.

Setting the standard for this new economy will shape a new electronic age—a new digital world. Just as our laws—the laws passed in this place and in the old Parliament—created the trading economy that enabled so many to prosper, and created the concepts of individual ownership, corporate responsibility and indeed private responsibility, we now need to see those values injected into new changes. If we do not get this right, these standards will be set by authoritarian Governments with no interest in innovation, or in wild places where there is no regulation and no accountability.

As we come to the end of the Queen’s Speech debate tomorrow, I hope that the Government, and the Treasury in particular, will reflect very hard on the nature of crypto exchanges, because they will fundamentally be the underpinning of a new trading world, and the standards that are set for them will either see us all prosper or see us cut up.

Planning and House Building

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention.

I will now make a few brief points about my constituency. The Government tell rural England that it needs to do its bit, and the Isle of Wight has a story that is similar to many others. Since 1960, the population of our beautiful small Island has grown by 50%—not 15%, but 50%. In the same period, the populations of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Stoke-on-Trent have all declined, not relatively but in absolute terms. The message from many parts of Britain is that we have been doing our bit for decades, and levelling up is about other people now doing theirs. The new standard methodology simply does not make sense for the Island. It is based on local income calculations, but housing demand in my patch, and others, is driven by other factors—in my case, the migration of retirees from across Britain.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, particularly because he emphasises the localism that comes into question. Areas such as the Isle of Wight are distinct. Kent is also distinct. Does he agree that local control exercised by local councillors at county, district and borough level is exactly where this should lie?

[Bob Seely]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend. The good folks who retire to the Isle of Wight use assets. They use cash from house sales, not income, to buy. Therefore, affordability criteria based on income make little sense and artificially inflate our housing need by 70%. Our targets have little to do with our need. The indigenous population of the Isle of Wight is expected to decline by 11,000. Official figures show that all our population growth until 2034 will come from those who are 65-plus, either indigenous or retirees. It is great that we have retirees—don’t get me wrong—and I look forward to being one, one day. However, the demographic imbalance damages our society as well as our economy. For the first time in 50 years, we need the White Paper to prioritise Islanders, young and old, and not primarily to build for a mainland retirement market. I have yet to meet a single Islander who disagrees with that agenda.

We face exceptional housing constraints. We have our own housing industry. As a legal baseline, our housing industry can build 200 to 250 units a year. We have managed 350 units in the past few years—not affordable, and almost all on low-density greenfield estates that damage our tourism economy. The Government might as well be asking us to lead a moon landing programme, for all our ability to deliver either the current targets or the new ones. We are being set up for failure, and like other Members, I find that difficult to accept. If the Minister wishes to build for young Islanders, I will show him where and how to build, and I will tell him what we need. The answer is not low-density greenfield sprawl, or the numbers demanded. The Isle of Wight Council and I are at one on that.

Time prevents me from going into other reasons such as infrastructure, all of which are made worse by the Island’s electricity, sewerage, water supply and hospitals, which are under pressure. In 40 years, we have had a 50% increase in population, and we had have half a mile of dual carriageway, and some cash last year to tinker with the wrong roundabout in Newport. Our 1938 rolling stock on Network Rail will now be upgraded to stock from 1970, which I suppose is modernity of a sort.

Criminal Law

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

There are provisions, which I shall explain in a moment, to make sure that many of the most dangerous offenders serve all of their sentence in jail, but for many offenders the sentence has two parts: the part served in jail and the part supervised on licence following their release from jail. Together, those two parts make up the sentence. Moving the release point to two thirds for the category of offences we are talking about will make sure that more of an offender’s sentence is served in jail and less of it is supervised under licence. For certain categories of serious offender, as my right hon. Friend mentions, there is a legitimate public expectation that more than half the sentence will be served in prison, rather than automatic release happening at the halfway point. As the Minister responsible for sentencing, I get quite a lot of correspondence from the public and from victims of crime asking why some very serious violent and sexual offenders are released at the halfway point, which is what currently happens.

Let me be clear what this debate will not cover. The regulations do not cover serious terrorist offenders, who will be dealt with separately in a piece of primary legislation that we intend to bring forward shortly to honour a manifesto commitment. Nor will we cover the wider issues to do with sentencing, which we will consider via a sentencing White Paper and sentencing Bill later this year.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the timetable that he sees going forward. He knows that I have been campaigning hard for Tony’s law and longer sentences, in honour of Tony Hudgell, a child who was brutally attacked by both of his birth parents and left with severe injuries. When does the Minister think his legislative programme might get to that?

[Chris Philp]

Victims who feel that a sentence is unduly lenient currently have a 28-day period following sentencing to apply under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme to the Attorney General, who can then make a reference to the Court of Appeal. On a review of sentencing more generally, which may well include the tragic case to which my hon. Friend referred, the sentencing White Paper that will come forward a little later this year, followed by a sentencing Bill, will provide my hon. Friend and other colleagues with an opportunity to raise issues that go beyond the matters we are considering today. I will of course listen carefully to this debate, in which colleagues from all parties may raise issues that can feed into the sentencing White Paper.

One topic that the sentencing White Paper will certainly deal with, although we are not dealing with it today, is short custodial sentences, which are not particularly effective at stopping reoffending. The White Paper will address that, and in particular it will make proposals to do more to treat the causes of offending behaviour, particularly drug and alcohol addiction and mental health problems, which are often the cause of high-volume repeat offending. Short custodial sentences do not deal effectively with that cohort of offenders, but that is not the topic of the regulations; it is a matter we will come to in the forthcoming White Paper and sentencing Bill.

Deaths of Homeless People

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I misspoke in my last answer. I should have highlighted that our Housing First programme is also in the west midlands and Liverpool.

The hon. Lady mentions immediate support, and I would point to the £30 million that is going to local authorities this year. I would also point to the £5 million cold weather fund, which I announced in October and which is about providing support now, for this winter, to ensure that we are providing accommodation to more people. The last figures I saw show that the fund is delivering more than 400 extra beds, on top of the additional support that has been provided. That sense of urgency and purpose is one that I entirely hear and understand.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, which my friend, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), was so wise in calling for.

Having spent much of my student years working in homeless shelters in the evenings, I am particularly passionate about this cause. Hearing about it today reminds me of those evenings and of the amount of methadone and substance abuse I saw on our streets. Will the Secretary of State please talk not just about the care the Government are providing but about the care that we, as a community, can provide and about how we can shape ourselves as families, as groups and, indeed, as a society to look after the most vulnerable? This is not just about the state; it is about us as individuals and as communities.

[James Brokenshire]

I absolutely hear my hon. Friend’s point. Of course the Government, local authorities, charities and the voluntary sector all have a key role to play and are doing amazing work. There are things we can do, too. By acting collectively and together, we can provide a solution and answers to the challenges we see.