Building Safety Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Paul Maynard

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 17, which stands in my name.

The Minister, probably more than anybody else in this Parliament, already knows that I have a tendency to fall over. Because I am teetotal, this is not down to drink either. Indeed, I suspect that every single Member here will know someone—a friend, a loved one or a relative—who has had a fall on the stairs. They are a silent killer and claim the lives of over 700 people every year, as well as thousands more who suffer injuries and lose their independence.

Finding a solution to the issue of flammable cladding has proven fiendishly complex, as we know from our time here, but for staircase safety it should be, and indeed is, simple. A British standard already exists that reduces falls by a staggering 60%: British Standard 5395-1. It means that stairs must have a minimum size of “going”—the horizontal surface on which one treads—and a maximum rise in height limiting steepness and providing enough surface area on which to step. Provision of easy-reach handrails is also required for staircases to be compliant. While such staircases hardly look different at all to the naked eye, their impact on preventing falls is remarkable.

British Standard 5395-1 has been in place since 2010 but never enshrined in law as a requirement, so today I am proposing this new clause, alongside the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for whose support I am most grateful. This is the result of ardent campaigning by the UK’s leading accident prevention charity, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, but also, crucially, major players in the housing industry such as the Berkeley Group. Industry wants this regulation. It wants a level playing field where there is one simple rule for all to adhere to. Because I am only calling for the standard to be applied to new-builds, there will be negligible cost and no need for retrofitting.

I can almost hear what the Minister is about to tell me—that it is uncommon to use primary legislation to enshrine such a standard into law. The Government will argue that our focus should be outcome-based rather than legislating on method, but I might point to regulation 7 of the building regulations, on combustible materials, which is in itself descriptive and sets out how the industry must achieve that particular regulation. If the outcome that we are all aiming for is safety of stairs, then the status quo is simply not working, and hundreds of people are dying every year from something that could so easily be prevented: I refer back to the 60% figure. If the Government have some other way to achieve such a reduction in preventable death in the home, then I am all ears, as many people have often pointed out to me. Independent safety campaigners such as RoSPA are confident from the statistics that this simple measure will save more lives than perhaps anything else in the entire Bill.

Genuine low-hanging fruit does not come along very often in politics, and I would like the Minister to grasp it when he sees it. He may not wish to satisfy me by granting me the agreement of the Government to the new clause. He has spent many years working on this with me trying to keep me satisfied and happy, but failed. Now he has his chance to redeem himself after 12 months of horror. Will he at least agree to meet me to discuss how we can take this matter forward? He can make my day by saying, yes, the Government agree. He can give me a minute of happiness and take forward Conservative party harmony, so rare these days, just by agreeing to meet me. I look forward to hearing what he might just have to say.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Just a minute of happiness—very good.

Government's Management of the Economy

Debate between Nigel Evans and Paul Maynard

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con) [V]]

Let us be clear about this debate: it was Labour who failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining, so that when the financial crisis struck, we lacked the resilience we needed as a nation to do what was necessary. Labour spent a decade pretending that it never happened—that it was a global crisis that did not affect us here and was nothing to do with them. But there was no money left, as that famous letter said. Despite having spent the last few weeks campaigning to regulate the “Buy now, pay later” sector, it is clear that Gordon Brown was the founder of the Klarna approach: he spent now and bought now, expecting the British people to be the ones to pay later.

After 2010, the Conservatives did fix the roof, and we now have the financial resilience we need to do what we have had to do to protect jobs and livelihoods as the coronavirus wave broke across our shores. Labour harp on about those they claim have not benefited from a Conservative Government, both before and during the pandemic. However, it would be remiss of me, representing a constituency with so much deprivation, not to observe that it is this Conservative Government who cut income tax by around £1,200 for the average basic rate taxpayer, by lifting the income tax threshold to £12,500. Labour’s approach, of course, was to abolish the 10p rate of income tax. Income inequality, however we measure it, is lower than it was in 2009-10, and a third fewer children live in a workless household. Although there is more to do to tackle in-work poverty, I find it hard to credit that some see this reduction still as a bad thing.

We introduced a national living wage, which raised incomes in areas of low average incomes such as my constituency, and universal credit to address the challenges of seasonal unemployment, which were such a scourge in seaside resorts, and let us not forget that the top 1% in this country pay a greater share of income tax than they did when Labour was in power.

To be fair to the shadow Chancellor, who I believe is that rare thing, a thoughtful politician, I do not think she would deliberately seek to drive the economy over the cliff. However, I fear that she would be too busy rummaging in the glove box for a Labour road map to see what was fast approaching. In her Mais lecture in January, she quoted Gordon Richardson’s 1978 Mais lecture, in which he said:

“We are now at an historical juncture when the conventional methods of economic policy are being tested.”

In trying to apply that to now, she seemed to miss the irony that it was a criticism of precisely the statist solutions that Labour offered in the 1970s and is reheating now.

Like every Opposition day debate so far in this Parliament, this debate has had an air of unreality about it. It is only thanks to Conservative policies that we are in the position we are in to deal with the crisis we face now.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now go to Nadia Whittome. Nadia, can you hear me? We will go to the next speaker and come back.

Local Welfare Assistance Provision (Review)

Debate between Nigel Evans and Paul Maynard

1st reading & 1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con) [V]]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Government to undertake a review of the adequacy of local welfare assistance schemes provided by local authorities.

This Bill would require local councils to publicise their local welfare assistance schemes and account for how they have spent the money allocated to them. It would require the Government to provide support and guidance to councils on best practice, eligibility criteria and scheme design, and would review the impact of the pandemic on the sufficiency of schemes.

Local authorities, as we all know, play a key role in providing a local welfare safety net, and they have made a superhuman effort in recent months during the pandemic to make this a success. They are well placed for this role; they already have existing financial relationships with their residents, such as through council tax collection, and they have a wealth of data about those residents. Combined with other forms of financial support that they provide through council tax reduction schemes and discretionary housing payments, a well-funded and administrated local welfare assistance scheme means that local authorities can act as a first point of call for individuals in need. By running an effective scheme, they can also act as a central hub for signposting to voluntary sector organisations that can offer additional support.

We must note the scale of need at the moment, even before the pandemic. With so many in often unfurnished private rented properties, it is no wonder that more than 1 million people are lacking a cooker, fridge freezer or washing machine. It is also no wonder that so many find themselves turning to food banks and other forms of emergency food aid. Many of those being helped are people experiencing sudden, unexpected and traumatic change in their daily lives; some are fleeing domestic violence, whereas there are others whose financial precariousness sees them quickly lose both job and accommodation, with many finding themselves in communities with high levels of transience and insecure tenancies.

Let us think about some of the underlying statistics: low-income families have an average of only £95 in savings; and some 40% of those aged 20 to 29 have no savings at all. These sorts of situations reinforce the so-called “poverty premium”—that is a phrase I dislike—which is increasingly prevalent. For example, where someone has no cooker it may mean that they spend more on costly takeaway meals if they are “time poor”. Having no washing machine might mean someone paying £4 down the launderette, and £3 for the dryer, rather than 25p for an average home wash. Local welfare assistance schemes, importantly, offer timely support, but it should be a wider challenge to policymakers to find ways to incentivise small or even tiny amounts of saving to improve financial resilience over time.

The Government have recognised the value of local support for families and individuals facing a financial crisis during the covid-19 pandemic. The £63 million emergency assistance grant over the summer and the £170 million covid winter grant scheme, which ends in the spring, have enabled local authorities to scale up their offer in response to increased demand. The short-term funding has been a welcome boost to council provision, although the effectiveness of delivery has probably been dependent, to some degree, on the existing mechanisms authorities had in place prior to covid-19; there is some evidence in respect of local authorities that already had a robust LWAS in place. There has already been a commitment to review this, and the Government need to make sure they publish their emergency assistance grant review as soon as possible, to make a helpful contribution to understanding the effectiveness of local welfare provision as a whole.

Political debate often focuses on the adequacy of Government funding, and much argument occurred over the replacement of the social fund in 2013. Views will differ across the House on the adequacy or otherwise of the £120 million allocated under the most recent local government funding settlement, but I hope we can find some consensus on the fact that it is worrying that, as charity Turn2us has found, only 39% of what has been allocated has been spent on the intended purpose of providing local welfare assistance. The Children’s Society found that, pre-pandemic, 23 of 157 upper tier local authorities no longer ran LWAS; a further 16 spent less than 10% of what was allocated to them; and only six operated the full wraparound service that represents best practice—I do, however, suspect that more will do so now, post-pandemic.

If ring-fencing is not Government policy any more, there should at least be transparency and accountability as to how councils choose to spend the money allocated to them for this purpose. Without that, it is hard to assess the adequacy or otherwise of government spending. There needs to be much clearer guidance on what best practice looks like. There should be a focus on how schemes are promoted, with a simple pathway to help that is not dependent solely on access to IT, or restricted by onerous residency requirements that deter those fleeing domestic violence, for example, or an obligation to exhaust all other charitable means of support first, which builds delay into what is already a household emergency. There needs to be better co-ordination with third sector bodies, which may provide many similar services, so as to avoid unnecessary duplication. That would also improve support for individuals and families through better joint working that focuses on crisis prevention rather than intervention after the fact, which is just what we do here in Blackpool. We should not dismiss cash as a potential solution, even if vouchers or other restrictive payment mechanisms somehow seem easier for providers. Better data collection and monitoring would then help the Department for Work and Pensions properly understand levels of actual need and better target funding.

We need clearer advice, best practice and guidance from the Department to share with local authorities, but we also need better co-ordination among third sector funders to exploit economies of scale and start to build strong links with local government and to forge corporate partnerships to deliver those economies of scale that will make the funding go as far as it possibly can. From professional bodies such as Perennial, who care for those in the horticultural sector, and religious groups such as St Vincent de Paul or Quaker Social Action home care, to very local groups such as the Foxton Dispensary and the Blackpool Ladies’ Sick Poor Association in my own area, there are myriad providers out there. The Association of Charitable Organisations counts some 800 in this field alone. The overlapping tapestry of voluntary support is highly creditable to our nation’s sense of collective endeavour, but together they can achieve so much more as part of a wraparound best practice model that in turn reduces longer-term costs for councils and social housing providers.

I know that the Minister is not present, but I hope that he may see a copy of the speech at some point, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss his plans for the future of local welfare assistance services. I am grateful for the assistance of Turn2Us, in particular, in having thought up the detail of this proposal, but also to the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Society and the Local Government Association, whose quantitative research has formed a compelling evidence base on the issue.

I am sure that all Members across the House can cite examples in their constituencies of families and individuals who, in the current crisis, have been confronted by unexpected challenges in which caseworkers have had to work amazingly hard to find solutions that work for them. An effective network of local welfare assistance schemes should be one of many legacies that emerge from this time of national emergency as we seek to build back better.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I have been given no indication that anybody intends to oppose the ten-minute rule Bill, so I intend to put the question.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Paul Maynard, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Stephen Timms, Robert Halfon, Caroline Lucas, Peter Aldous, Jason McCartney, Andrew Selous, Gary Sambrook and Simon Fell present the Bill.

Paul Maynard accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 251).