Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to reflect on what we have lost over the last year. For us in this House, it is the scrutiny of the Government, as the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) highlighted, but it is also the direct face-to-face contact with constituents. I have had the privilege of being out on my doorstep surgeries in recent weeks, which has reminded me—not that I needed reminding, but I feel that I should remind the House—of the very real housing challenge that so many of my constituents are facing.
We have a Government who are fuelling demand for housing through things such as stamp duty holidays, but who are doing nowhere near enough to increase supply. There are far too many people in my borough living in seriously overcrowded conditions. I have visited many in recent weeks, some of whom I have known for some time because they have been living in this situation for a very long time. Many have been forced into temporary housing accommodation. Only five or six years ago, they would have been told, “You will be there for six months and then you will get a proper home.”; now they are often there for years at a time. One woman was discharged from hospital with her baby to live in a room with her husband and toddler. Another woman, who works, is living with her seven-year-old, who has been off school and therefore home schooled in a hostel room.
Others are outpriced, such as the Homerton Hospital porter who brings home £1,300 net per calendar month and pays £550 a month for a room in a private rented house. It was £400 until the pandemic hit and his landlady had to put up the rent. He rented a room for himself and his daughter. When the rent went up to £550 a month, he could no longer afford to do that because it would have cost more than £1,000 a month, so they share a room. She is 17 years old. He is embarrassed by this, but there is no prospect of anything else. Although he is a health worker, he has no recourse to public funds because he is, legitimately and properly, going through the immigration system. With his salary he could never afford to rent a property privately in London, and with no recourse to public funds, he would not qualify for housing benefit and certainly not for the scarce social housing that we have. For many people, there is no prospect of renting or owning their own home, with the price of a typical two-bedroom property now at £750,000.
I also want to raise the challenge and cost of childcare, which is always an issue. Co-op providers, which I know from my work as a Labour/Co-op MP, and other childcare providers in Hackney and nationally are now seeing huge absences because of a ping by the app. In some cases self-isolation among staff has increased by a third in the last week alone, so will they be on this little list that the Government keep promising—which, I have just checked, is still not published—of key workers able to go back to work if they have double vaccinations? The impact is not just on the setting and the business or the co-op; the crisis is for children under five who are losing out and are severely affected by this pandemic, and of course it is about the impact on working parents. I pay tribute to the educationalists in my constituency, who have done so much to keep young people educated. We need to make sure that the catch-up is funded and we cannot afford to leave a generation behind. I hope that the Government rethink and come forward with a long-term plan for making sure that our young people are supported to catch up on the education they have had to lose this year.