Houses in Multiple Occupation

Adam Jogee Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lee Anderson]

I do agree with the use of article 4 to put HMOs through the planning process. I have forced my local council to do that, but unfortunately it is doing it only in certain areas. I would like to see it being done throughout the constituency.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree with me, and indeed with the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), that the Conservative-run council in Newcastle-under-Lyme should also be applying article 4, sooner rather than later?

[Lee Anderson]

I think it is a matter for local councils to decide. In my constituency, HMOs are a big problem, and I am glad that my council has used article 4 in some areas, although I would like to see it rolled out to the whole constituency.

We have druggies, criminals and other wrong’uns living—sometimes six in one small house—in streets that were once considered good places to live. The decent folk who can afford to leave those streets are leaving, in their droves, but the problem is that the investors—the landlords—then buy up their houses and turn them into HMOs. Other decent people, however, cannot afford to move, and have to stay and put up with a life of misery.

The problem is becoming worse and worse. Labour Front Benchers, and indeed Back Benchers, bang on about emptying the hotels that are full of illegal migrants, and no one wants a hotel full of illegal migrants in their area. Nobody wants young, fighting-age males—400 of them sometimes—from backward cultures that treat our women as second-class citizens roaming our streets, but the hotels are now being emptied. Where are these young men going to go? I will tell you where they are going to go: they are going to go into an HMO on a street near people in this Chamber; near my family, near my friends, near my neighbours. We have had enough of this. We have enough of our own home-grown nuisances in this country without importing even more to live in HMOs.