Easter Adjournment — House of Commons, 2022-03-31
Topic: Housing
Margaret Olivia Hillier (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am proud of the fact that, under the current Mayor of London, we have seen 11,000 council housing and social housing starts, and the mayor of Hackney has made it a key priority. However, for pretty much every council house built, authorities have to build a private house for sale at the rates I have mentioned in order to cross-subsidise. This crisis has been looming for some time, but it is just getting worse, and we do need to see more supply. Every Budget—when we see the Chancellor at the Dispatch Box—fuels house prices, which one could say is a dividend for homeowners, but it is absolutely terrible for those trying to get out of private renting and get on to the ladder or for those who need that social housing so desperately. This is a really serious concern, and we need to see a big step change on this issue The other big housing issue is of course cladding. We have at least 93 buildings in Hackney classed as high risk for cladding, but many more with small amounts of cladding need their wretched EWS1 form, and this is proving really difficult. We have so many families who need to move because of the size of their family but who cannot do so because they cannot sell. I recently met a group of residents who have had to move for their job, but they have had to let their property. Although the Government keep making promises about support for leaseholders, they are now saying that they will not help those landlords. However, they are landlords because they could not sell, not because they chose to be. There may be differences between such landlords and investment landlords, but that is a real concern. It was their home that they wanted to live in, and they just cannot sell it because of the EWS1 form and the cladding I keep getting constituents writing to me saying, "The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities promised that we would not have to pay a penny." All power to the Secretary of State’s elbow to get developers to pay and to get the problem sorted out, but we need to see the concrete proposals on how that will happen, because, at the moment, leaseholders are still on the hook and still cannot sell their properties. Their lives are on hold while they are forking out huge amounts of money on extra insurance, and some still on waking watch—that is still happening. One developer told me recently that, for one development alone, the insurance premium has gone up from £50,000 to £400,000 a year. Those are enormous costs for ordinary people, not all of whom are wealthy; indeed, many live in shared ownership accommodation but are caught in leasehold properties Finally, I turn to the Metropolitan police, where we have seen a horrendous set of issues in the last few months and year. Child Q is a Hackney child, and she was degraded by the experience she had to suffer. However, it is not just about Child Q; there is a wider set of issues, including misogyny at Charing Cross police station. There is a culture issue in the Met. We have an opportunity—I look to the Minister on this—because the Home Secretary along with the Mayor of London will appoint the new commissioner of the Metropolitan police. We need somebody who can drive that culture change through and, dare I say, consider whether they might split the Metropolitan police by separating the counter-terrorism function from the day-to-day policing of London. It has got too big—it has grown like Topsy—and that is one of the contributing factors I cannot express enough to the Minister how triggering the treatment of Child Q has been, particularly but not only to black women in my constituency—black men, too—who have gone through real difficulties and had terrible handling by the police back in the day, and their children are still being stopped and searched far more often than their white counterparts. The anger is palpable and the hurt is real. Much more needs to be done in the short term. Perhaps we need to introduce proper training into our schools on people’s rights when they are stopped by a police officer. We have policing by consent, but we need to equip our young people so that they know what consent they have given and that they can acquiesce politely while knowing their rights and that the Met should treat them politely, too. We need strong, new leadership—all power to the elbows of those recruiting that—to change the culture in the Met, and that needs to happen now.