Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Mark Field(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mark Field
Perhaps I do not share the great faith in the bureaucratic competence of the Home Office that was expressed by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—
Mark Field
I guessed that that was the case. I was being slightly ironic. One issue with the notion that we could have appeals is that if there was a great emergency and the passports of many dozens or even many hundreds of people were seized, the appeals process would become unwieldy. One hopes that such a situation will not come about. If there was a small number of individuals at any one time, it would be quite manageable, but if there was a large number, that would make it more difficult.
National Policy Statement (Waste Water)
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Mark Field(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mark Field
I accept that there would be an impact, but the use of the word “effluent” in relation to the 39 million cubic metres gives the public and many Members of this House a somewhat misleading impression of the sheer urgency of the need to undertake the project at this time.
It has been asserted that the river has been getting better and will continue to do so, and there is no doubt about that, but a feature of debates on the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill last week and less recently was the number of hon. Members who suggested that the Thames had been getting worse, and will continue to get worse without the tunnel. The hon. Members for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made that statement in part. That claim is not supported by the facts, as regards the immediate future; it is also probably not entirely true as regards the past and present.
I note that the Environment Agency’s website no longer hosts a press release that it issued only 17 months ago, but at that time, it went so far as to describe the Thames as
“the beauty queen of the planet’s waterways.”
That perhaps goes a little too far, even for those who have no desire whatever for a Thames tunnel-type project, but what prompted the comment was real enough: the sustained and continuing improvement of the Thames, which saw it win the international Theiss river prize for outstanding achievement in river management and restoration.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned my contribution last week. Surely there is irrefutable evidence that in the past few years, there have been significant discharges into the Thames, which have damaged the water quality. There is no getting away from that. I welcome all the improvements, including upstream, but the solution has to be a combination of rainwater harvesting, better treatment and, eventually, a Thames tunnel. It will not make the river perfect, but if we do not do all those things, the river quality will continue to deteriorate. That is not what he, I, or anyone in London wants.
Mark Field
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, but there is the issue of the sheer cost of the proposal, and whether we need to go for what is seen as being the only game in town, and take up the Thames Water proposal that we spend £4.1 billion—already a significant increase on the figure originally presented for this project.
It is worth saying that population growth and climate change will not reverse the improvements that have already taken place. Given that a 60% reduction in discharges is on the way, it would take something much more significant to reverse the trend. The NPS identifies two potential factors—population growth and climate change—but neither seems of any great magnitude in relation to this issue. New housing developments are already being built with SUDS and mitigation designed in, and retrofitting will slowly improve the existing housing stock. Moreover, the NPS says that more than 1 billion litres per day of sewage need in England can be saved through water efficiency, but then bizarrely ignores how that can help offset the projected changes in London’s population.
Climate change is cited as producing more “extreme rainfall events” like those of August 2004; that may have an impact, as was discussed in the exchange with the hon. Member for Islington North. That discharge of eight years ago caused the death of many thousands of fish, yet on page 18, the NPS admits that the fish deaths were caused by the Mogden sewage treatment works, which of course have nothing to do with the tunnel, and are already being upgraded. Thames Water was quoted last week as claiming that climate change will produce less rainfall and more droughts, and will require more reservoirs to be constructed, which implies less in the way of combined sewage overflow overall.
Fish kills are already being addressed. Mogden, which is well upstream of the Hammersmith pumping station, is thought to be responsible for both major fish kills mentioned in the policy statement. The other occurred last summer, near Kew. It is reasonable to suppose that the number of fish kills will be significantly lower in future without the Thames tunnel, and before possible alternatives to the tunnel are considered. Thames Water claims that the Lee tunnel will not benefit the higher reaches of the river, but Mogden demonstrates that the whole of the tidal Thames is set to get cleaner.
The tunnel will not significantly alter the appearance of the river. The natural turbidity of the Thames means that the water will never be clear. In fact, an Economics for the Environment Consultancy review of the tideway project options concluded that
“little aesthetic change in the water is to be expected”
from a tunnel. This was endorsed by the Health Protection Agency’s study in 2007, which reported:
“Shortly after discharge, floating matter disseminates relatively quickly, so the plug of sewage effluent moves unnoticed with the ebb and flood of the tide.”
No one is suggesting that sewage discharge does not matter, but it is a fact that for most people it passes unobserved. The findings of the study for the Thames tunnel make one particular and unsourced claim in the NPS seem somewhat dubious when it refers to
“large quantities of offensive solid material being…deposited on the foreshore”,
whereas the published evidence does not.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith made rather unfair sport of the views of Professor Chris Binnie in the exchange that we had last Wednesday. I shall discuss those views in a moment. Professor Binnie is an expert on water and designed the original Thames tunnel scheme, so his conclusion that only 10% of litter is sewage-derived should be heeded. It follows that if the tunnel can reduce litter deposits by some 10%, 90% of the visible rubbish that swills about the river will remain, whatever happens to the combined sewer overflows. The idea that the appearance of our improving river is causing an international
“reputational risk to the UK”
seems a little far-fetched, and I suspect that a 10% reduction along the lines that I have set out would do little to help.
The health benefits are real, but limited. Again, there must be a balance, given the cost of the project. Recreational users of the Thames would undoubtedly benefit from the tunnel, if not quite as much as is sometimes thought. For example, although gastric infection in rowers runs at 13 cases per thousand rowers per year, that is far lower than the rate in the general population, which is 190 cases per thousand. Likewise, the actor David Walliams’s swim is much touted, but he fell ill long before reaching the tidal stretches of the River Thames.
The Environment Agency has too little regard for the cost. The NPS highlights the curious role that has been given to the Environment Agency, whose sole concern is the environmental impact of the tunnel, with no attempt to weigh that impact against the rising cost. Apparently, the Government
“considers that the need…will have been demonstrated if the Environment Agency has concluded that the project is necessary for environmental reasons”.
That is almost a blank cheque for what constitutes environmental necessity. The agency is understandably fond of large-scale projects. Despite the claim to a purely environmental rationale, however, when pressed on the justification for a £4 billion tunnel in a climate of austerity, when discharges will more than halve anyway, both the Environment Agency and Thames Water hide behind legal arguments about the European directive.
The directive overrides many of the environmental assessments. The NPS admits that
“the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive is the initial driver for the Thames Tunnel.”
In practice, compliance rather than the environment is both the root cause and the benchmark, as this stifles concerns about value. Terms such as “unacceptable” and “necessary” are used ambiguously in both the NPS and Thames Water’s literature. They appear to make an environmental judgment but, under challenge, a legal interpretation is always offered, with dark mutterings about infraction proceedings.
No one has asked the EU. The apparent failure of any of the three parties behind this scheme to approach the Commission is staggering, particularly on the part of the Environment Agency and DEFRA. Without reference to the Commission, DEFRA has disregarded the urban waste water treatment directive’s principle of using the best technical knowledge not entailing excessive cost, and stipulated that only a collection device for combined sewer overflows meets the requirement
“to limit pollution from sewer overflows”.
It seems that the Environment Agency applies its zeal to say no discharges are acceptable, irrespective of cost. That is fine if we factor that into our thinking about that body, but the worry is that DEFRA takes that on board and then applies gold-plating by saying that no discharges are permissible under the directive, and Thames Water applies for a project to which the answer can no longer be no. The huge cost is relevant, not just for all of us who are Thames Water users, but for legal reasons. It was the legal position that prompted Professor Binnie’s reassessment of the need for the tunnel that he had initially recommended, given the work that is already under way and the lessons that have been learned from in-river bubbler systems in the seven years since he chaired the Thames tideway strategic study. His examination of the directive has led him to believe that a tunnel is unnecessary.
What Professor Binnie revealed at the meeting chaired by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), which I think was misreported in the exchanges we heard last week, was the detail of his discussions with DEFRA’s lawyers. His view was that the increased cost of the tunnel has made it disproportionate in the sense of the directive, as exemplified by the Whitburn infraction proceedings. However, the senior DEFRA lawyer stuck relentlessly to the Department’s interpretation. I was not at the meeting, but I understand that Professor Binnie said that on legal matters he felt that ultimately he had to defer to those who ought to know. His understandable reluctance to challenge civil servants is not always shared by the rest of us, and nor should it be.
In my view, the cost-benefit analysis is deeply flawed, and there is no better example of flawed DEFRA analysis than the series of cost-benefit analyses that have accompanied the Thames tunnel project. When the cost was initially touted as £1.7 billion, the benefits were judged to be worth around £1.7 billion. Now that the cost has risen to £4.1 billion, with the Lee tunnel and sewage treatment works upgrades already under way, hey presto, the benefits have been judged to have risen to around £4.1 billion. It is either a near miracle of fortuitous recalculation or, as those of us inclined to be more sceptical might think, a somewhat cynical sleight of hand. I think that Professor Binnie is in no doubt about this non-legal point. Using Treasury green book rules and standard, quality-adjusted life year metrics, he calculated the health benefits of the tunnel to be about £2 billion. The NPS means that no independent examination of DEFRA’s figures will take place.
There are no net economic benefits. The economic case for the tunnel on the basis of job creation is starting to be talked up, and I understand that a report on that by Thames Water is imminent. The Minister described the estimated 4,200 jobs only last Wednesday as
“a big win for London”.—[Official Report, 14 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 330.]
Unlike other infrastructure projects, however, the tunnel will do relatively little for the economy once it is complete. Even the boring machines are being bought from Germany —as we speak, the same applies to Crossrail. Although the temporary creation of construction jobs will have some benefit, it would be considerably cheaper to pay 4,000 people an MP’s salary for the duration of the project, and considerably better value to build something else, whether in London or not. I am afraid that the lasting economic impact of the tunnel will be the £80 a year reduction in the disposable income of each and every Thames Water customer for decades to come.
I fear that the poorest will be hardest hit, and this is the debate we will be having in this House in four or five years’ time. We will be talking about those bills, and Thames Water customers will be in the position South West Water customers were in last week when we debated the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill. Sewerage bills are regressive. We have only just debated the pernicious effect of such bills in the south-west, and the rising cost of energy is a cause of great concern across the House. It is not good enough for Thames Water to defend this simply by saying that water bills will rise only towards the average. Together, London and the wider Thames Water sewerage area already have the highest living costs in the country and the pinch will be felt.
There are alternatives, depending on the question. Bubblers are dismissed by the NPS as they are
“not considered to be a sustainable or complete solution in the long-term.”
Of course, the tunnel is not a complete solution, as there would still be discharges—no one disputes that for one minute. The notion of sustainability in the NPS leans heavily on the assumptions about population growth and climate change to which I have already referred. The Cardiff harbour system shows that new options have emerged since the tunnel was first mooted almost a decade ago, including the real-time monitoring of dissolved oxygen levels. I accept that an in-river system is not perfect and would not go as far as the Thames tunnel, but it would cost a fraction of the £4.1 billion price tag now in place. Were it not for the momentum already behind the building of the tunnel and the closed institutional ranks to which I have referred, I think that such a system would be considered, and perhaps it still should be.
The NPS states, somewhat grandly:
“It is inappropriate to ‘do nothing”’
about sewage discharges, but we are not “doing nothing”; we are more than halving the problem. The phrase is redolent of the so-called politician’s fallacy: “We must do something; this is something; therefore, let’s get on and do it.” When civil servants insist once again that the gold-plated option is the only way to meet our obligations under a European directive, we are entitled—obliged, in my view—to be sceptical. When the result could allow a single utility company to profit while the rest of us are hit in the pocket, we can contemplate stronger emotions. The project cries out for proper independent scrutiny, yet the NPS prevents, I fear, any assessment through the planning process of the case for the tunnel.
I have no doubt that there is a problem with sewage discharge in the Thames. More than £1 billion is already being spent to reduce it dramatically, but the Thames tunnel will cost in excess of £4 billion, and the question is whether it represents good value for money.
I am sure that we in this House will return to this issue, but I fear that we will do so on the back of huge increases in water bills for all our constituents, and we will only wish that we had alerted ourselves to the issues now, rather than doing so, as I suspect we will, in many years to come.
Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Mark Field(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn
I missed the first 45 minutes of the speech by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but I have discussed this matter with him before and I am aware of his concerns. He is quite right to raise the financial issues surrounding the Thames tunnel, because they are serious matters.
Bazalgette and his colleagues who did such fantastic work in the 19th century to create the London sewerage system created a world-class achievement. However, they could never have predicted the way in which London’s population would change, or the great increase in the use of appliances such as washing machines, which use much more water. Those changes have led to an increase in waste, the overflowing of the sewerage system and the pollution of the Thames. Having improved the condition of the river from being foul and putrid to very clean, we are now heading quickly back in the wrong direction. Not so long ago, we were all very proud of the water quality in the Thames; we are not any longer. We see what happens every year when storm drains overflow into the river. We need to think carefully whether the proposed measures are the solution, and whether they are the solution for all time.
Mark Field
I hope that the hon. Gentleman would agree that this is also a reflection of much higher expectations. We rightly have higher expectations in relation to water quality. It would be wrong to suggest that we have gone in totally the wrong direction, although there are problems with water quality. I accept that problems of sewage and effluent in other parts of London, which do not affect my constituency, are a good reason for implementing some improvement, but it does not need to be the all-embracing scheme that is being proposed at the moment.
Social Housing in London
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Mark Field
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of social housing in London.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making it possible for this debate to be held. Social housing in London is obviously a crucial issue. I appreciate that Members outside London are busy with the elections in their communities and therefore cannot take part in the debate.
The points that I want to make are probably incredibly obvious ones about the desperate situation of many people facing housing issues in London. I imagine that any London MP of any party would confirm that housing is the biggest single issue that we all face. The vast majority of our constituency casework is housing-related in some way, and the wider implications for society in London are often housing-related as well.
Housing issues in London are not new. It is the capital city. It has been a very fast-growing city. It had an unenviable reputation in the 18th and 19th centuries of being the fastest-growing city in the world when huge quantities of very poor-quality buildings were thrown up. A whole industry developed of slum landlords. The great social reformers of this country often started their work in the east end of London. I think of Charles Booth, Angela Burdett-Coutts and so many others, who did so much to try to improve the levels of housing stock. In the 19th century, there were serious reforming moves. Housing charities were set up to improve conditions, but they were always in competition with the viciousness of the private sector market, in which excessive rents were charged, with the potential to make huge profits.
How did London’s housing stock ever improve? The answer is a combination of things. There were the campaigns of the great social reformers, there was a growing social consciousness but, above all, there was the development of council housing in the early 20th century. I get very angry when I read in some of the weekend intelligentsia-related newspapers that council housing is a thing of the past, or that council housing models are outdated. Council housing made it possible for millions of people in London and throughout the country to live in decent housing and bring up their children in a safe, secure, affordable environment—something that we all aspire to.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but does he recognise—I see it particularly in my constituency and other inner-London areas—the importance of what has been done by many philanthropists, the most obvious of which is the Peabody Trust, whose house building and flat building programmes have stood the test of time? They remain some of the most exciting and sought-after social housing in many of our constituencies, 120 or 130 years after they were first built.
Jeremy Corbyn
It seems a sad reflection on the great revolutions of 1848 that we should expunge them on the altar of the housing market in 2011. I shall return to council housing in a moment.
There were consistent campaigns and demands for security of tenure for people beyond council housing. Council housing has traditionally provided the most secure form of affordable tenancy and has provided for effective, stable communities. I commend those councils—I choose Camden because my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras was leader of the council—which did a high level of building when they were able to. They also adopted a planning policy that has ensured that there are stable, mixed communities stretching right into the Camden part of central London—working-class communities alongside the business areas of central London. We should be proud of that record in this city, and I would like to see it reflected in all parts of London. The same does not apply in the case of Kensington and Chelsea and—I hesitate to say it with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) present—in Westminster where the policies have been different. I think one should commend boroughs such as Camden.
Mr Field
While I accept that the policies are somewhat different, and I suspect that most of my residents in Westminster are rather glad of that, there is a more serious point to be made. The hon. Gentleman rightly refers to stable, mixed communities. Does he not recognise that the London market has become ever more polarised? London is not just a capital city but a global city. That polarisation means that, for want of a better phrase, the squeezed middle is an ever bigger group in London. There are those who simply cannot afford to get on the ladder even if they are earning multiples of the average weekly wage and there are those who are so impoverished that they can qualify for social housing. In my constituency the Peabody Trust is trying to create a mixed community, by ensuring that there are in those communities, for want of a better term, yuppies—relatively well-off people in their 20s—who may only be short-term tenants, for three or five years, until they are in a position to afford their own home.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Gentleman touches on an important point. In my borough, there are 15,000 names on the list of people who have applied for, and need, council housing, but only 5,000 of those are on the list of those who are able to bid—in other words, to make an application. The number of those who are likely to be successful is probably very small indeed. Single people in London cannot, for the most part, even get on a housing list.
Some 30% of people in my constituency are in private rented accommodation. A large number of them are young, single people who pay extraordinarily high rents, although they are not necessarily particularly well paid; they are earning between £18,000 and the low twenty thousands a year. They are probably spending 60% or 70% of their take-home pay on housing. That is an extraordinary figure. I do not have the comparative figures for the rest of Europe, but having talked to friends and colleagues about the issue, London seems to be one of the most expensive places in the world to live, in relation to income levels.
If we do not address the whole problem of the cost and supply of housing, London will become a divided city, and the people who do all the vital jobs in the ambulance service, hospitals, the Post Office, gas, electricity, road maintenance, and street cleaning—the people in all those essential professions—simply will not be able to live in London. It is extraordinary how fast social changes are happening in London. I met a street-sweeper in the borough who commutes in on a 45-minute train journey because he cannot afford to get a place anywhere near the borough. I see Labour colleagues nodding. I suppose that we all support the principle of housing for special grades of workers—priorities for nursing, the police and so on. There is a point to all that, but the real point is the general question of the supply and affordability of housing.
Mr Field
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way. I would like to associate myself with what he just said, and I think many other Conservative MPs with London seats would, too; it is a problem that we all feel acutely. For some years, that stark divide in pockets of inner London has been part and parcel of our concerns on housing, but he is right to say that there has been phenomenally rapid demographic and other change. The phenomenon that he identifies now applies virtually throughout London, including in what might in the past have been regarded as the leafier suburbs of outer London.
Jeremy Corbyn
Absolutely. London is a rapidly changing city, and that is, in many ways, part of the joy and attraction of it, but it falls to local government—to boroughs, the Mayor, and the Greater London authority—and central Government to recognise that if we want London to remain a successful, cohesive, coherent city, we have to address the issue of the provision of social housing in London. Otherwise, we will be looking at a city moving into decline, with greater division. It is a very serious issue.
I think about exploitation, the apocryphal stories of what Rachman did in the 1950s and ’60s in Notting Hill, and what was done by various other appalling people who used the rapidly rising property prices to winkle out tenants so that they could resell the buildings. I am not saying that the problem has quite come back to those levels yet, but excessively expensive private rented accommodation that becomes unaffordable for poorer people leads to landlords not maintaining, supporting, improving or looking after properties, and virtually forcing people out of them so that they can rent them out at a much higher rent. Later, I shall make some points about the need for intervention in the private rented sector, because in many ways, in London there has always been a conflict between the social desires of many people to ensure good-quality, decent housing on the one hand, and the pernicious effect of the property market and rapidly rising property prices on many people across London on the other hand.
On inequality, my borough of Islington commendably established in May last year a fairness commission, which has been taking evidence at very well-attended public meetings in community centres, schools and so on across the borough over the past year. It had a very effective final meeting last week, in which a whole paper was put forward on how public policy issues can be addressed. I quote a short part of the section on housing:
“Ensuring that the allocation process for social housing is transparent and effective is essential for addressing fairness in housing. Islington has more than 12,000 people on the housing register but only 5,000 households whose level of need is sufficient for them to qualify for Choice Based Lettings.”
The paper goes on to make recommendations on improving efficiency, changing the allocation system and under-occupation. That underlines the point about the need for new house building.
There is also a problem about the number of people living in private rented accommodation who are in receipt of housing benefit in London. As I say, 30% of my constituents are in private rented accommodation, and the number is rising fast. The proportion of owner-occupiers is now below 30% and falling. Nationally, the figure is falling a bit; in London, it is falling faster, and in inner London it is falling very fast indeed. In the next five to 10 years, we will probably get to the point where 25% or even 20% of housing in inner-London constituencies will be owner-occupied. The majority of new tenancies are not social tenancies, but private rented tenancies.
People who receive or are entitled to housing benefit are suffering grievously because of the Government’s announcement on how they, in their infinite wisdom, will meet the problem of the increasing costs of housing benefit—and those costs are huge. I do not deny people’s right to apply for housing benefit, but there is a public duty to question the cost of that benefit. That duty should fall on the question of how much rent is paid to landlords, rather than result in the punishment of the tenants in the properties.
The London figures show that local housing allowance rates in my borough are £245 a week for one bedroom, £290 a week for two bedrooms, £340 a week for three bedrooms, and £400 a week for four bedrooms. To some people, that sounds an awful lot of money, and it is, but the reality is that many people in desperate housing need are living in private rented accommodation that is paid for by housing benefit. On the anniversary of their application, all those housing benefit payments will be reviewed and—there is not much discretion available to the local authority—housing benefit will be reduced, which causes a terrible problem for the people in receipt of it.
I shall give the example of a constituent whom I know well, but I will not give their name as that would be invidious and wrong. In November 2010, the local housing allowance for the four-bedroom property that they live in was £700 a week. That is to be reduced to £400 a week under the housing benefit changes. There is no way that that family can find the difference. They have lived in the property for a very long time. They have children in local schools, they are very much part of the local community and they have caring responsibilities and all the things that go with that. They will be forced to move, which is damaging to them, the children, and the local community.
Jeremy Corbyn
The cuts in the Budget are even greater than those made by Margaret Thatcher’s Government in the 1980s. I remember very well the points that my hon. Friend made, because at the time, I watched housing demand rise and new build virtually disappear. The only surviving new build for affordable rent was undertaken by housing associations. I was disappointed that the Government who came in in 1997, who invested a great deal in improvements to existing council stock and who did a lot about homelessness and housing rights, did not in the early days do anything like enough to invest in new house building. I hope that that is something that we will not repeat when we return to office in 2015, because I want to see a process of new build.
It is difficult for local authorities to undertake new building at present, but I want to pay tribute to Islington council and James Murray, the executive member for housing, as they have managed, despite all the difficulties, to squeeze £10 million a year out of the council budget to invest in new build for rents at existing levels—not the 80% level. I applaud them for doing so. I want other boroughs to do so, and I want the Mayor of London, whoever it is—this Mayor or, hopefully, Ken Livingstone in future—to use his powers to return to building for social housing need, which has a huge benefit for people across London.
Mr Mark Field
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He is making a thoughtful speech, and I hope that he will forgive me if I return to a point that he made earlier and the general thrust of his concern about the private rented sector. Does he share my worry that one of the difficulties in housing policy, going back to the institution of rent Acts in the first world war, is that too often it has just been an Elastoplast in trying to solve the most recent problem, which has been looked at in a small way? Does he have any thoughts about the huge explosion in the buy-to-let market, which is one reason why there has been an enormous increase in the private rented sector in his constituency? As London is a global capital, a huge amount of foreign money is coming in to buy up large blocks of flats and other properties. Do we need to look at that, and what suggestions can he make about the way forward?
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that extremely valuable point. In London, at one end of the scale, somewhere near Hyde park, there is the world’s most expensive apartment. I cannot remember the exact figure, but it was around £1.5 million for a very small apartment. I checked my own mortgage capability and I did not seem to get anywhere near to it. At the other end of the scale are former council flats or houses that have been bought under right to buy, sometimes with the assistance of fairly disreputable or dodgy people who offer money to help people undertake that, which are then rented out, on housing benefit, at levels 200% to 300% higher than the neighbouring council rent. That makes me extremely angry every time I come across it, because they were built by the taxpayer for people in housing need and now we are allowing someone to make a great deal of profit out of them.
There are a number of ways to try to deal with that. One, which seems worth considering, is that a sitting tenant who buys a former council property under right to buy should be allowed to rent it out only at council rent plus 10%, taking away the incentive to do that. There are other incentives to consider, but we must be serious about this. The new build that councils and housing associations want to undertake at the moment can be funded under the Government’s new regime by doing what Islington is doing, which is scraping around to find what is a modest amount of money compared with the need, but nevertheless welcome, or by raising rents to 80% of market rates and using that for investment in new build, which makes housing association or council places unaffordable for those who desperately need them. As a result, people who are offered a council place will be unable to accept it, particularly if they are in work, which is regrettable. Housing associations are being told to build for sale and for commercial rent, and if they have any money left, to build a bit for social renting.
I seem to remember housing associations being founded on the principle of self-help to provide secure, good-quality accommodation for people in housing need. I am now being told by their chief executives that they are in a bind, which I understand and which is not of their making, and have to go down the road of becoming essentially house-building companies, where there might be the equivalent of a section 106 add-on with a bit of social housing at the end of it. That will not solve London’s housing problems.
Mr Mark Field
The issue in London today is: what is housing need? I know it sounds absurd—the hon. Gentleman was one of the first to ridicule the current Mayor of London when he talked about people on £60,000 a year being in housing need—but this is part of the problem. Many people working in our constituencies simply cannot afford to live anywhere near, not even central London, but London as a whole, and have to commute long distances despite earning multiples of the average. They surely also have a housing need, and it is that housing need in the modern day that many of our social housing providers are trying to recognise in balancing their responsibilities to ensure that we have proper community cohesion within central London.
Jeremy Corbyn
Obviously people on what are seen as relatively high incomes do have housing needs and are paying, as I outlined earlier, incredibly high levels of rent in order to survive, as a result of which they cannot save and therefore, even if they wanted to get into the owner-occupied market, simply could not do so. A young couple or single person in London earning £25,000 a year and paying £500 a week for a flat has only a limited ability to save and so will stay in the private rented sector for a very long time, if not for ever. People who do buy into the owner-occupied market usually rely on modest levels of inheritance to put down the deposit to do so. We are making housing unattainable for people on relatively high incomes, as the hon. Gentleman points out.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Mark Field(13 years ago)
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Mr Field
The hon. Gentleman might not be quite as much of a royalist and a monarchist as I am, but he will appreciate that that is not what I am saying. However, there was a focus on trying for this thing, although the wheels of the law take a while to turn—there are a number of lawyers in the House, including, either side of me in the Chamber, some rather more distinguished lawyers than I ever was in my brief legal career. I understand that there will be no further legal proceedings on the matter until considerably after 29 April.
Jeremy Corbyn
It occurs to me that the people in Parliament square might actually be awaiting the royal wedding and have got themselves a good place from which to see it. They have got there early. We should commend them for their enterprise in being there so far ahead of the date.
Mr Field
Indeed, one has heard those words before. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) is a relative newcomer to the House, but I fear that we have been having this debate for many years. As we all know, the workability, or otherwise, of legislation often does not become apparent until well after an Act has been placed on the statute book.
It is essential that we do our best, and we must protect the right to protest. I appreciate that Parliament square is a special place for protest, and I would be very loth to see the perhaps spurious ground of security being used to prevent legitimate, high-profile protest on days when debates were taking place in the House of Commons on high-profile legislation. This encampment, however, does disturb some local residents. That certainly happened when the Tamils were here in great numbers in 2009, and many residents wrote to me to say that their sleep was being disturbed.
We need to strike a balance. Either we have to solve this problem or we have to move on, because there is now a sense that we are powerless. Parliament and all the authorities are becoming a laughing stock. This should be a tremendous site for millions of tourists to visit from across the globe. Parliament is the most iconic building in the United Kingdom, and having that eyesore here is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will take on board some of the very valid comments that have been made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, but I also hope that we will move hastily towards getting a workable provision on to the statute book to ensure that that eyesore becomes a thing of the past.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am sorry that I missed the earlier part of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) for the measured way in which he has represented his constituents in the debate. He is fortunate to represent this constituency, but he also recognises that this area is a centre of national life and that there are bound to be demonstrations here. One should thank him for that.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington for tabling the amendment and for his consistency in standing up for civil liberties and the right to protest. We have debated Parliament square on many occasions. Indeed, a Select Committee once took it upon itself to examine the issue, and the former Member for Macclesfield, Sir Nicholas Winterton, invited me to give evidence. The Committee sat in due deliberation for several weeks discussing Parliament square. I gave my evidence, and the former Member for Macclesfield questioned me at some length. I think the House is beginning to get the flavour of the occasion. A report was duly prepared and legislation was duly proposed. That legislation was duly carried, and duly challenged in the courts.
The Herculean parliamentary effort to remove Brian Haw and non-existent protestors from Parliament square succeeded in being passed into law—and the only person unaffected by it was Brian Haw, because he successfully challenged the legislation on the basis that he was a pre-existing resident of Parliament square. One has to pay tribute to Brian Haw for making legal history by doing nothing more than taking up residence in Parliament square. Parliament made itself look a total ass during the whole process, sitting in all due majesty, but having no effect whatever on what Parliament wanted to achieve. We should thank Brian Haw for that. I know he has not been well recently, and I am sure all Members will join me in wishing him well in his recovery. He has shown courage, principle and determination. Not everybody agrees with him, but I think we have to respect it when somebody is prepared to give up such a long period of their life for a cause. Let us all respect it and admire it.
We should also recognise something about the importance of this building and this area of London. The previous Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, had a plan for reducing traffic in Trafalgar square. He succeeded by closing the north side to through traffic and wanted to carry out a similar plan for Parliament square. I am not sure which side of Parliament square was due to be closed, but we should think about this. I feel constantly sorry for the number of visitors arriving to see Parliament. Because of the size of the building, the difficulty of ensuring its security and so forth, the number of people who get in is much smaller than the number who would like to get in. I realise that we are slowly changing that, which is welcome, but most people have to spend most of their time fighting traffic lights and motor traffic simply to see the building. We should invite the Mayor to revisit the whole question of traffic planning, traffic layout, widening pavements and reducing traffic through the square so that everyone can see a very fine and very beautiful building, and enjoy the experience. It is possible to spend some time seeing other national assemblies and Parliaments around the world without having to dodge traffic—I am thinking of the United States, Sweden and a number of other places.
History often turns on itself on these occasions. This country is very good at the incorporatist view of history, as I put it. It is ironic, and many visitors do not always appreciate it, that Oliver Cromwell has a statue outside Parliament, while further up the road is a statue of Charles I and, indeed, not so far away, one of Charles II. They are all part of our history, and they should all be remembered and commemorated for what they did. Many people are vilified for their protests, yet commemorated later. Why do we have a plaque in St Stephen’s entrance to Marjory Hume, who chained herself to a statue there? The statue was damaged during the removal of her chains, when she was there demanding votes for women. Downstairs we have a plaque to Emily Wilding Davison, who locked herself in the broom cupboard to protest about the census of 1911 and in support of voting rights for women. Many other examples of people who have participated in protest outside this building and in this area have become part of our history and part of the road towards what one hopes will be a more democratic society.
Attitudes have changed quite a lot. The Sessional Orders used to be enforced extremely rigorously so that whenever the House was sitting no procession was allowed within a mile of Parliament. The police then relented slightly and changed their attitude. As I recall it, the first time they relented was when General Pinochet was in this country—detained in luxury in Virginia Water. “El Pikete”, as it was known, the Chilean picket that dogged him all the time, had a candle-lit event overnight in Parliament square. It was approved by the police and was an iconic and memorable event; it was part of our history that Pinochet was here. The Stop the War protest took over the square on 18 March 2003. When we debated Trident, the CND protest was here, and others have drawn attention to protests by Tamils, by pig farmers, by the Countryside Alliance and by the pro-hunting lobby—all kinds of people have demonstrated in Parliament square. We are a national Parliament. We are supposed to be the focus of political debate. I think that we make ourselves look more than a little ridiculous if we go to enormous lengths to stop people demonstrating outside Parliament. It is part of a democratic tradition, and it is part of our life.
Mr Field
May I clarify what I said? I did not say that there should be no protests, but the permanence of the encampment means that all the paraphernalia of the barricades is there permanently, which is clearly not compatible with a world heritage site under UNESCO rules. I was trying to draw a contrast between that and large-scale demonstrations on, perhaps, half a dozen days a year relating to debates that are taking place in the House.
Jeremy Corbyn
I was not trying to put words into the hon. Member’s mouth. The agreement of the police to the anti-Pinochet demonstration some years ago showed sensitivity, intelligence and involvement on their part. If we approach the issue in a co-operative way, recognising the right to protest, rather than immediately reaching for the law and the barricades and confiscating equipment, we may proceed a bit further down the road.