Renters (Reform) Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I join colleagues across the House in welcoming this long-overdue Bill and share their dismay at the delay in implementing a ban on no-fault evictions. Renters have been left with soaring rents and disrepairs, and are at the complete mercy of landlords, powerless under the current system of no-fault evictions to demand fair rents and humane living conditions.

This is a massive housing emergency. Across the country, renters of all ages and backgrounds—from students to families, young couples and single retirees—are struggling to pay their rent, let alone save for a deposit to buy. Only half of private renters have any savings in their name. With a desperate lack of social housing, Liverpool alone has more than 15,000 applicants on the council’s housing register and almost 1,000 households in temporary accommodation. The frontline housing options and homelessness service is seeing nearly 400 new approaches a month. Councils are relying on the private rented sector as the only way to ease the pressures on the system, and renters are left with no viable options.

An entire generation have been betrayed by the Tories, with 13 years of austerity and rising rents, frozen wages and diminishing opportunities. On top of that, they have faced unprecedented challenges caused by the financial crash, recessions, the pandemic and, now, the cost of living crisis. Thirteen years of Tory attacks on workers’ and tenants’ rights have left renters facing soaring insecurity and plummeting conditions. We urgently need the Bill to be passed into law to begin to redress some of the worst impacts of the deregulation.

Nearly five years since the Government proposed to outlaw no-fault evictions and give renters desperately needed protection from exploitative landlords, some 70,000 households have been threatened with homelessness by section 21 notices. Homelessness has skyrocketed during the last year, with the number of households in England who became homeless or were at risk of homelessness up 7% in the year to March. Each day that we delay, 172 families are handed a no-fault eviction notice. We cannot wait for improvements in the courts; renters need protection now.

In my constituency, as across the country, we have increasingly seen private landlords using no-fault evictions to turf out tenants on fixed-term contracts in order to hike up rents in line with soaring market rates. Not content with waiting out one-year or two-year-long contracts to raise rents and bolster profits, landlords are taking advantage of the cost of living crisis to line their pockets while tenants are turfed out with nowhere to go. Citizens Advice has found that a shocking 46% of renters who complain about their conditions receive a section 21 notice within six months. Research by Shelter supports that, with its findings showing that private renters in England who complain about poor conditions are 2.5 times more likely to be handed an eviction notice.

Ending pernicious section 21 evictions is a major step in rebalancing power in favour of tenants, but there are a number of areas where we need to go further to ensure that the Bill’s measures have their intended consequences, as called for by the Renters Reform Coalition of the 20 leading housing organisations. First, we must increase the notice period from two months to at least four months: a move that will drastically reduce the number of people made homeless as a result of evictions. We must also protect renters from eviction for the first two full years of tenancy, not the six months proposed. We must introduce strong safeguards to prevent abuse of the new grounds for eviction, including a financial incentive for tenants to prevent abuse, and a one-year ban on re-letting a property after invoking new landlord circumstances on the grounds for eviction. Courts must be given maximum discretion to identify reasons why an eviction should not take place, and a cap on in-tenancy rent increases in line with inflation and wage growth must be introduced to prevent unaffordable rent increases being used as a way to evict tenants via the back door. Lastly, we need action to raise local housing allowance in line with inflation to prevent renters on benefits from being penalised by rising rents, and local authorities must be given extra financial support to take action on rogue landlords.

Everyone deserves a safe and secure home. The Government must bring the Bill into law immediately, with the additional safeguards that Members have outlined, to deliver desperately needed robust legislation that protects renters.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

This poorly drafted Bill will have far-reaching consequences for the UK’s protection and promotion of human rights overseas. I extend my thanks to the coalition of 70 civil society and justice organisations that have expressed strong concerns about this Bill and how it will outlaw a powerful tactic of dissent and freedom of expression that has been used throughout history to achieve social change.

I rise to oppose this Bill and to support our reasoned amendment that would decline to give it a Second Reading. What is at stake today should deeply concern every Member of this House. The Bill risks significantly undermining support for groups around the world that are facing persecution and international human rights violations. Labour steadfastly supports a negotiated diplomatic settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on two states, and opposes the expansion of illegal settlements, settler violence, evictions and demolitions. But how realistic is that when an Israeli national security Minister has pledged to “crush” Palestinians “one by one”?

Let us not forget that boycott campaigns have existed right across the political spectrum and have long been used as peaceful and principled tools to fight oppression and injustice. They are a form of protest that should be protected in a democratic society. Last year, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities asked councils to divest from Russia following the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and he clearly recognised councils’ economic importance and that moral considerations should inform what they do, so why can they not be trusted to make their own choices now?

This Bill is so broad and destructive that it will completely prevent public bodies from taking responsible and ethical decisions in relation to human rights abuses in their investment and procurement decisions. Although the Secretary of State argues that there are safeguards in the Bill, he knows they will do nothing to limit the damage this Bill will cause.

I am proud to represent the city of Liverpool, a city that has never faltered in its solidarity with international liberation struggles. In the 1980s, when the African National Congress and South African trade unions were fighting apartheid, as a city we mobilised across the board to support their struggle. Trade unionists organised in Ford factories to smuggle ANC literature in the boots of cars, and seafarers dropped parcels at South African ports. The boycott movement played a significant role in successfully turning the tide on the apartheid Government, at a time when many powerful international Governments, including our own Thatcher-led Government, supported the regime. The importance of international solidarity when waging a struggle such as that against apartheid cannot be underestimated and this rings as true today as it has throughout history. In the words of Nelson Mandela:

“our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.

His words resonate today, with injustices and violations of international humanitarian law across the globe still demanding accountability. Now, as then, international pressure will be key to achieving peace and justice.

Let us be clear: the aim of the Bill is to limit our ability to take action to protest, and the chilling effect that will be created is immeasurable. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the Bill is the so-called “gagging clause”, whereby not only will public officials be prevented from raising the issue of human rights abuses in financial decision making, but it will be illegal for them to refer to the Bill as the reason preventing them from making a financial decision influenced by human rights abuses. For a Government who claim to champion freedom of speech, this is the depths of hypocrisy. It should make Members in all parts of this House seriously consider the impact of their vote today.

Today’s vote is historic and it is up to us to decide which side of history we are on: are we a nation that champions freedom of expression and conscience, one that encourages acts of solidarity with the oppressed, or are we a nation that curbs even the basic right to speak out about violations and abuses of human rights? Vote for the reasoned amendment. Decline to give this Bill a Second Reading.

Leasehold Reform

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

It is already a scandal happening in plain sight. For that reason, I hope that we will hear from the Minister when he responds that the Government will commit to implementing the Lord Best working group recommendations as quickly as possible.

This is a huge problem, but it is almost uniquely ours. Virtually every country in the world apart from England and Wales has either reformed or ended this archaic feudal model. We stand as an outlier. The good news is that we know the answer. It has been clear since we received the Law Commission proposals in 2020 that we need new legislation to end the sale of new private leasehold houses, effective immediately after Royal Assent is given. We need new legislation to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold. Lots of promises have been made to that effect, but there has been little in the way of action.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

rose—

[Lisa Nandy]

I expect we will hear from my hon. Friend exactly what that has meant for her constituents.

[Kim Johnson]

I recently became aware of a situation in my constituency of a freeholder trying to do a lucrative deal to use the block to accommodate people seeking asylum. It tried to evict leaseholders under the pretence of a fire safety eviction plan. The residents rightly say that their sense of security has been fundamentally shaken. What does my hon. Friend think this Government should do to ensure that my constituents and millions of others are not denied the security of their tenures?

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree; if we could just do what we have been promising for a long time, the reality for my hon. Friend’s constituents would be transformed from one of insecurity and anxiety to one of security and the foundation of a decent life. They are lucky to have her as their Member of Parliament to fight on their behalf.

It was in 2002 that the Labour Government introduced commonhold. There were voices even then—some of them in the Chamber today—who urged us to go further and end the injustice altogether. In the decades since, there has been growing recognition on all sides of the House that action is long overdue. In 2017, the Government said that they would legislate to prohibit the creation of new residential long leases on houses, whether newly built or existing freehold houses, other than in exceptional circumstances. That commitment was repeated in the 2019 manifesto and by the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), yet leaseholders were left waiting.

Voter Identification

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

When I was a student in the hon. Lady’s constituency, one thing I was told by tutors at my college was to look at the detail. The detail on the Oyster card for 18-year-olds is different from that on the over-60s Oyster card. That is identified on the website, and I encourage the Liberal Democrats to look at it.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

My Liverpool, Riverside constituency has some of the most disadvantaged wards in the country and many of my constituents, particularly young people and black people, will not have access to valid ID. The Minister has spoken about the integrity and sanctity of the ballot box. Can he explain how many cases of fraud have been identified, and will he commit to undertake a review after the May elections?

[Lee Rowley]

On the hon. Lady’s final point, absolutely we will review what happens in May. We have already committed to that both in this place and elsewhere. We want to learn from the experience, just as Labour wanted to learn from the engagement at the introduction of this scheme in Northern Ireland in 2003. We will absolutely do that, but if the hon. Lady has concerns about reaching out to communities in Liverpool, I encourage her to speak to her council, which has been given additional money to undertake communications to do that very job.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I can confirm that we will introduce the rental reform Bill in the course of this Parliament. That is a commitment that we have made and are determined to honour. I could not be clearer in saying that I echo the Prime Minister’s words last Wednesday that this is going to happen.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of people registered as homeless.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Andrew Stephenson)]

The total number of people who have been homeless or threatened with homelessness in the last year is 4% lower than pre-covid-19 levels. That shows that our unprecedented action to protect households during the pandemic has worked, as does the fact that rough sleeping levels are now at an eight-year low.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

The data that I have is very different. The cost of living crisis is expected to get worse in the coming months, there was an 11% increase in homelessness between 2021 and 2022, and the number of evictions peaked at nearly 5,000 between April and June this year, up nearly 30% on the previous quarter. What commitments will the Minister give today to ensure that hundreds of thousands of people do not risk losing their homes this winter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dehenna Davison]

My hon. Friend is an incredibly passionate campaigner for Blyth. I am glad to hear that construction will soon begin on that indispensable part of its £20.9-million town deal. I understand that the Energy Central learning hub will provide a range of state-of-the-art industrial training, which all shows the positive difference a Conservative Government, a Conservative council and a Conservative MP working together can make for Blyth residents.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

T7. In Liverpool, 12% of all homelessness applications are a result of domestic abuse. Our self-contained apartments for women and children are constantly at capacity, and plans to double their number are expected to barely touch the sides. What measures will the Minister take to protect survivors of domestic abuse from becoming homeless?

[Andrew Stephenson]

My Department is committed to the delivery of safe accommodation with support for all victims of domestic abuse. That is part of the Government’s overall strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. I would be happy to write to the hon. Lady with more details.

Merseyside: Funding of Local Authorities

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on securing this important debate.

My hon. Friends, the superstars of Merseyside, have spoken eloquently of the funding crisis across Merseyside. The communities we represent have suffered systematic defunding for decades. This latest round of so-called levelling up is just the most recent in an endless stream of broken promises and increasing pressures on poor and working people.

In Liverpool, we have had two thirds of our budget cut over 12 years of Tory austerity. The damage that has done to the service we deliver cannot be understated. I pay tribute to councillors and officers in Liverpool who have worked hard with the ever-shrinking budget to ensure that our council continues to provide the best support possible to those in need in our city, including Granby Sure Start, Windsor Street library, Park Road sports centre and the invaluable citizens support scheme.

Liverpool is rated the third most deprived local authority in England. The deprivation faced by our communities is incredibly stark and increasing at an alarming rate. With in-work poverty at record levels and child poverty sky-rocketing, those we represent are facing a cost of living crisis. There is a triple whammy of soaring energy bills, real-term wage freezes and Tory tax hikes for those least able to bear them. Now, we are expected to fund an eye-watering 50% increase in the wages of the central Government commissioners, while making cuts of £34 million—all at a time when billionaires, bankers and shareholders are seeing their profits soar and their taxes cut. It beggars belief.

How can it be that Shell has declared a 14-fold increase in profits at the same time as it was announced that the energy price cap is being raised by 54%? The Government-driven rise in council tax in April will further compound these regional inequalities, as the wealthier councils in London and the south-east will be able to raise far more money than councils such as ours in Liverpool. Unless the Government commit significantly more funding to Merseyside and other underfunded areas, they will fail to address the systemic growth in inequality and poverty that is crippling our region.

The financial challenges faced by our communities are growing at an alarming rate. If we are truly to face up to them, cushion the most vulnerable against the worst of the impact and give our communities the long-overdue investment they need and deserve, we need to reverse the cuts of the last decade and provide multi-year settlements for councils in order to provide stability and phase out bid funding culture.

We have been here and seen it all before. Liverpool is no stranger to central Government policies of managed decline—we fought them in the ’70s under Thatcher, and we will fight them today under Boris Johnson. We cannot allow our communities to pay the price. Our local government institutions are already scraping the bottom of the barrel to balance the books. We must reverse the cuts to public services and local government; we need a £15 minimum wage to boost incomes to the lowest earners; and we must reverse cuts to social security and pension payments and reinstate the triple lock.

Building Safety

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his point. I had the chance to chat to Jim Illingworth and other cladding campaigners earlier today and he is absolutely right. I know that my right hon. Friend, as a Birmingham MP, is all too well aware of how many people in that great city are affected by this crisis, and I look forward to working with him and others to resolve it as quickly as possible.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

A retired teacher in my constituency invested in a property in 2015, but just before Christmas, they were issued with a massive bill for £200,000 for an increase in their costs, and remedial work on their property will cost a possible £9 million. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet me and the leaseholders to talk about how the policy change will benefit them?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady and I will make sure that either I or others in my Department have those conversations as quickly as possible.

Building Safety Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

Time and again, we have heard Members across the House relay the nightmares that hundreds of thousands of our constituents are facing—trapped in a building safety crisis that was not of their making, forced to pay astronomical bills, and suffering significant mental health problems and the ever-present fear of living in an unsafe home. In Liverpool, 10% of buildings are still covered in dangerous cladding and there are 30,000 leaseholders in Liverpool, Riverside who are facing bills for things other than cladding to make their homes safe. On top of that, they are facing increasing insurance premiums of up to 500% and are being forced to foot the bill for a situation that they did not create. This will have a particularly serious impact on the social housing sector, with councils and local authorities forced to divert scarce resources in order to address fire safety failures.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has lost more than a third of its funding in the past decade and the same proportion of its firefighters. A decade of Tory austerity and deregulation has created this building safety crisis. Let us call it what it is: a criminal dereliction of responsibility by those in power, who are more concerned with putting money in the pockets of their developer donors than with protecting the people they serve—putting profit before people.

One pensioner living in my constituency told me that he has been sent a bill of nearly £20,000 and has no savings and no way of paying. Two doctors who have worked tirelessly to protect and care for our community throughout the pandemic tell me that the crisis has trapped them in a flat that they cannot sell, unable to start the life that they had planned elsewhere and fearing being faced with a mountain of further debt and/or bankruptcy.

I have asked this before, and I will continue to ask until justice is served and the safety and future of my constituents and the people living in this crisis across the country is secured: can the Minister look me in the eye and tell me how he sleeps at night, knowing that his Government’s deregulation programme has left hundreds of thousands at risk in their homes? I ask him what it will take for this Government to act to fix historic failures, and alleviate the unbearable financial pressures caused by their deregulation and the greed of developers.

It is the Government’s responsibility to assess and identify the buildings that are unsafe, and to make the necessary changes with the utmost urgency. This Bill is not only a missed opportunity, but an absolute betrayal of every single one of the residents who are now at risk in their own homes. The statement issued by the Secretary of State this afternoon does nothing to allay any of the fears of leaseholders; it is entirely inadequate, and it lets those leaseholders down.

Liverpool City Council

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The report that we have laid today makes two specific recommendations with regard to Liverpool City Council, as I outlined earlier, first recommending that we move as swiftly as possible to whole-council elections, and secondly recommending single-member wards. That recommendation will, subject to the views of those who come forward over the coming weeks, be implemented, but I agree that it has wider application. A thread that we have seen in a number of failed councils has been a lack of scrutiny and accountability for members where they have been in multi-member wards and where having elections time and again in thirds has led to a lack of scrutiny and a lack of focus in the council. I would like to see more councils take note of these recommendations and implement them.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I am a very proud Scouser, but listening to the Secretary of State read the contents of this damning report makes me angry, as it will the whole city when the report is made public. But we are a resilient city, and we will fight back from this. The city deserves a well-run council, with stronger, more transparent governance procedures, that is more able to manage public finances. Important steps have been made to right the wrongs at the council by the current chief executive, Tony Reeves, and the acting Mayor. Can the Secretary of State confirm the timetable for the proposed intervention by commissioners? Will that be reviewed and monitored, and reduced if progress is made at speed? What role will the chief executive and the elected councillors who have supported our community so well during this crisis play in rebuilding the public’s trust?

[Robert Jenrick]

Like her fellow Liverpool colleagues, I thank the hon. Lady for the way in which spoke. The timetable for the period ahead is that the report is now available for members of the public, colleagues in Parliament and the council to review and consider at length. The council has until 24 May to revert to me with comments and representations. We have chosen a longer than normal period, reflecting the fact that the local elections will now take place, to give the new council and the newly elected Mayor the time after the local elections have concluded to meet to consider this and make those representations to me. Once those representations have been made, I will consider them carefully and decide whether to proceed with the proposal that I have outlined today or to change it in any way, and I will then revert to the House with my final decision. If that is to appoint commissioners, we will set out the process and the names of the individuals I have chosen.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I pay tribute to Liverpool’s long-established Jewish community, and to two former residents: Maurice Eschwege and his daughter Vera Goltschmitt. As a young child, Maurice moved from Germany to Liverpool, where he grew up. He married Isabella Annoni, an Italian Catholic, and they had three children: Vera, Alexander and Muriel. Maurice ran a jewellers and pawnbrokers business on Lime Street. He was a pillar of the community and served as a justice of the peace. He was twice elected as a Labour councillor for the St Anne’s ward of the city in the 1920s.

When his wife Isabella died, Maurice moved to Paris to live with his daughter Vera and her husband. After the war broke out, Maurice was transported to a German camp—he never returned. Vera, her husband and their youngest son Alain were all transported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered alongside millions of others—Jews, Slavic peoples, Roma and Sinti communities, black, disabled and LGBT people and political opponents, who all perished at the hands of the Nazis. Today, we remember them, and in their stories we seek to learn the lessons of the past.

We recognise that the forces that drove this evil were pervasive and widespread: Governments and politicians throughout Europe—even in the UK—made antisemitism acceptable through their statements and actions, especially when denying safety to refugees. Today, as our Government lock asylum seekers in inhumane conditions in military bases and close the door on unaccompanied child refugees, it is clear that we still have much to learn.

Today, we must recognise that genocide does not begin with the death camp, but is what happens when we allow discrimination, racism and hatred to go unchecked—when we allow politicians and the media to divide us and govern through hatred. We a collective promise to reinforce our commitment to fighting the rise of racism and those political forces who would take us back to some of the darkest times of European history; and to take a stand against the normalisation and institutionalisation of discrimination and hatred in our own country and across the world.

As we take this opportunity to remember the millions who lost their lives in the holocaust, we remember prior genocides in the Congo, Kenya and South Africa, and we remember subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. But we have to redouble our fight against ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya, the Uyghur and the Kashmiris. Today, in the memory of all those whose lives were unjustly taken, we pledge our solidarity with oppressed peoples across the world and promise to carry forward the flame of resistance against hatred, racism and bigotry. In remembering the true horrors of fascism and the victims of all acts of genocide across the globe, we stand together, united—a light in the darkness—to say, “Never again.”