Industrial Strategy

Debate between Eddie Hughes and Eleanor Laing

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I just cannot contain my anger: settle for average? We have some of the best universities on the planet in this country and investment by this Government in some of the most world-leading, cutting-edge technology. I visited Birmingham university and saw its work on quantum computing; it is absolutely world-leading. We are not average at all, and it is so dismissive of this country to say we would settle for average; we are excellent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not making a speech either, but I think the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) has got his point.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Debate between Eddie Hughes and Eleanor Laing

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his wisdom—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Let us take this moment to wish the Speaker’s Chaplain and Mr Speaker a happy birthday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, we will not divide. I shall assume that the entire House wishes to send best wishes to Mr Speaker and to Rose. The matter has now been dealt with.

[Eddie Hughes]

Let me return to the Bill—or nearly, at least. I thank the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for introducing it. In the near future, I shall seek her advice because I have a private Member’s Bill on carbon monoxide safety. I am grateful to Project Shout for helping me to publicise the Bill earlier in the week, and I am grateful for the support of many Government and Opposition Members, particularly the hon. Members for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith), to name but a few. I shall seek some advice on how to take my Bill forward. Thanks to the support of the Members I have mentioned and Project Shout, I secured a meeting yesterday with the new Minister for Housing, who convinced me that the Government will consider my Bill. I shall return to that topic on another day.

Were this speech an essay, I guess it would be entitled “It’s not always easy being a landlord”. I have three separate perspectives: first, I am an accidental landlord; secondly, immediately before I was elected to the House, I was the assistant chief executive of YMCA Birmingham, which is a small housing association; and thirdly, I am currently the chair of the board of Walsall Housing Group, a housing association with 20,000 homes, mostly in Walsall, although the group operates across 18 local authorities.

My personal perspective is that of an accidental landlord. When I married my wife and we bought a house together, she already had a house. She obviously did not have complete faith in the longevity of our relationship, so decided that it was appropriate for her to hang on to her house, just in case things did not turn out for the best, so we have a property that we rent out.

People often inherit a property, but they do not inherit with it any understanding of building or safety regulations, or the knowledge to enable them to keep the property in good condition while they rent it out. Indeed, I think the ridiculous statistic is that something like 95% of landlords in this country have only one property. How do they get the knowledge they need to ensure that they maintain their property appropriately? As the chair of the board of a housing association with some professional experience, I feel that I personally have the knowledge, but there are many other landlords who do not. It is not the tenants’ fault if their landlord does not have sufficient experience to know how to maintain the property, and they should have some means of redress through the law. That is why, as a landlord myself, I am delighted that the Bill will afford tenants the ability to seek redress, should it be necessary.

As I said, immediately before I was elected, I was the assistant chief executive of YMCA Birmingham, which has 300 accommodation units for previously homeless young people, some of whom lead chaotic lives, to say the least. We had a 72-bed direct-access hostel in Northfield that was definitely the ugly sister of our portfolio. I was delighted that, just before I left the YMCA, the Homes and Communities Agency awarded us £800,000 to install some en-suite accommodation, training facilities and better cooking facilities on the ground floor of the hostel. The existing accommodation was passable and clearly legally compliant, but for someone coming straight out of prison or off the street—