Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) [V]]

The Queen’s Speech claims:

“Measures will be brought forward to ensure that children have the best start in life, prioritising their early years.”

Let me measure that against the situation in Rochdale. The awful fact is that in some wards in Rochdale, one in five children live in a home below the poverty line. In fact, those are the most advantaged wards, because as many as half the children in some wards live in homes below the poverty line, which is a scandal in modern Britain. It is heartbreaking for those families and those children because we know that poverty leads to ill health, less adequate education and all the things that are consequent on them. It is not simply lack of money, but lack of hope and ambition. There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech that remedies that, and nothing that says that schools in areas such as mine will have extra funding to cope with that disadvantage.

We are in an almost bizarre situation. Most of those homes will be dependent on universal credit. The £20 cut in universal credit is a bitter blow to those families—it is unreasonable and unfair. It will take about £12 million out of the Rochdale local economy every year. That is not levelling up; it is the levelling down that we have seen over the past 10 years-plus, as Rochdale Borough Council has had to cut £185 million from its budget. The lack of adequate funding has an impact on social care: there is not enough of it and not enough guarantee of its quality. We waited for this Queen’s Speech to tell us what would happen to social care, and we heard nothing at all.

Social care is just one of many areas that are missing from the Queen’s Speech, such as fire and rehire. Ministers made promises and said it was a disgrace, but we have seen large national companies such as British Airways and British Gas using fire and rehire tactics. Locally in the north-west, the bus company Go North West is threatening to fire and rehire its employees; fortunately, because they had the protection of a big union, Unite the union, they were able to fight off that challenge through industrial action, but many employees do not have that opportunity. That kind of bullying in our workforce is shameful to Britain and shameful to a Government who say that it is wrong but do nothing about it.

As in many other aspects of life, there are things that are missing, but the biggest challenge that we face in the long run, of course, is climate change. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State’s speech on housing. Of the 30 million houses in Britain today, most will still be around by 2050 when we have to be carbon neutral, but I did not hear any plan from him to fund the retrofitting of existing homes. In towns such as Rochdale, probably half the houses are pre-first world war terraced houses in need of retrofitting. Many of the post-first world war houses will be the same. There was nothing in the Gracious Speech or in the Secretary of State’s comments saying where the money will come from to make that kind of retrofitting difference. This is now a crisis.

I say to the Secretary of State of state that it is time for the Government to go beyond words. I have read the housing White Paper that says what can be done. We know what can be done. What we want to know now is what will be done. Do the Government have the policies? Do they have the insistence that we will make that change?