Andrew Cooper MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 8 Jan 2025 · Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  Well, I disagree. It is important to look at this holistically and consider the wider support system we need to put in place when we place people in social housing in the first place. Finally, we cannot overlook the importance of visible neighbourhood policing, which was disregarded and diminished under the previous Government. A strong police presence in our communities can serve as both a deterrent to antisocial behaviour and a reassurance to residents. It fosters trust and collaboration between law enforcement and the community, creating a safer environment for everyone. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to provide 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers. I hope the Minister can provide an update on the provision of those officers throughout the country, and particularly in Cheshire constabulary in my local police force area. We must advocate for stronger strategic partnerships between local authorities, housing providers and law enforcement agencies to ensure that our communities are resilient to the threat of antisocial behaviour. Again, I hope the Minister can outline the importance of a multi-agency approach to tackling these problems, and tell us what steps are being taken to promote such collaborative working. It is clear that addressing antisocial behaviour requires a multifaceted approach. I believe that by providing holistic support to vulnerable tenants, advocating for better planning policies and enhancing neighbourhood policing, we can create safer, more harmonious communities for all.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. Antisocial behaviour affects the very fabric of our neighbourhoods. The problem not only impacts the lives and wellbeing of those directly involved but reverberates throughout our communities, creating an environment of fear, discomfort and division. Ultimately, it serves to undermine the sense of community and safety that we all strive to preserve. The motion refers to social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour, which is clearly what the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) wishes to focus on, but it is important to give context. ASB occurs in all types of housing and in many other settings. As a councillor, some of the most serious ASB that I dealt with related to neighbour disputes in owner-occupied and private rented housing, along with problems in our town centre, none of which were caused by social housing tenants. Not a day goes by when my casework mailbag does not highlight another example of a family in desperate need of more appropriate affordable housing—which we need to get on and build. Well designed, well managed social housing has an important role to play in that. That said, social housing providers are in a unique position, in that they are well placed to tackle ASB when it occurs and they can influence factors such as estate design and tenant support to try to prevent it from occurring in the first place. In my local area—which you will be aware of, Ms McVey—I have witnessed at first hand the problems posed by poorly designed and badly planned section 106 affordable housing. There are schemes where properties have been designed without proper outdoor spaces, or where properties have been clustered together for the convenience of the house builder, rather than prioritising good estate management. With the explosion in homelessness that has occurred over the last 14 years, combined with the systematic dismantling of local government, support services for dealing with addiction issues have been overstretched. In some cases, the clustering of vulnerable individuals without effective support has led to significant antisocial behaviour that directly affects the neighbouring homeowners and the broader community. On top of that, it also diminishes the potential for recovery and stability for the people themselves. This is not a sustainable situation. To effectively tackle these problems we must advocate for a holistic approach to support. It is crucial that social housing providers and councils work together to provide tenants who are grappling with addiction not only the necessary resources to address their challenges but comprehensive wraparound support systems to help them to maintain their tenancies and transform their lives. We cannot simply place individuals in homes without equipping them with the tools they need to thrive. The funding for homelessness prevention that the Government announced just before Christmas is the first step to tackling the problem. Changes to the planning system are also needed to deal with this issue. Section 106 affordable homes are vital in tackling the housing crisis, but it is just not good enough to include social housing providers in the design only at the last minute. It is vital that affordable homes are thoughtfully integrated throughout new housing developments, rather than clustered together in one corner.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Trial of Lucy Letby · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. Primary school children, who typically wear polo shirts, need five days’ worth, plus PE kit. This measure will make an enormous difference. Although it has been great to see organisations such as the Winsford Uniform Exchange in my constituency grow and provide people with lower-cost and greener alternatives, bringing costs down for families is absolutely the right priority. The measures on breakfast clubs and school uniforms may be the two most visible in the Bill, and I hope that they will be part of the Government’s lasting legacy of supporting all children to achieve and thrive. The Bill covers a vast array of measures across the spectrum of children’s social care and schools policy, as we have discussed this afternoon. I will focus my comments predominantly on the schools side, although I want to take a moment to say something about the single unique identifier for children. In Lord Laming’s report on the death of Victoria Climbié in 2000, he recommended that the Government explore the safeguarding benefits of a national children’s database—effectively a single unique identifier—to address poor communication and data sharing between agencies. In report after case after report after case, the issue of weak multidisciplinary working continues to arise. The measure proposed in this Bill, alongside the clarification of the legal basis for information sharing and the creation of multi-agency child protection teams, will undoubtedly help, but they are the start of the story, not the end. The success of this measure will be in ensuring that the single unique identifier is consistently captured in reforming working practices so that information sharing is part of the culture, and in making it clear that local authority boundaries, health authority boundaries, police authority boundaries and, in my part of the world, national boundaries are not a barrier to good safeguarding practice, which has become more important as children travel further to appropriate education or care settings. I want to cover the reforms that the Bill makes to academies in the minute or so that I have left. I am not ideological about the academy system. I have seen multi-academy trusts that provide an outstanding level of support for their schools; equally, I have seen MATs that have not worked and that have provided local leaders with few levers to push for improvements on behalf of their communities. The reality is that the previous Government left us with a school system that has become increasingly fragmented and lacks coherence at local, regional and national levels. The governance model is rarely the key determinant of whether a school will provide good outcomes for children; as someone once said, this is about standards, not structures. On that basis, many of the reforms proposed in the Bill are entirely sensible, such as the requirement to teach the national curriculum, the requirement to employ qualified teachers, and giving the schools adjudicator the final say on admission numbers. All of these measures will get us closer to some consistency and common standards across the sector. I will leave it there. I just want to say that this legislation—

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  This Bill is a landmark piece of legislation that not only demonstrates ambition but takes tangible action to keep children safe, improve educational standards and make families better off. Like many of us here, I got into politics to improve the life chances of children in my community and to make it a reality that, regardless of someone’s background or circumstances, the only ceiling on their potential is their talent and your determination, so I am delighted to see the Government bring forward this Bill, which begins the work of breaking down barriers to opportunity for our children. As anyone who has been involved in our schools or who has read any of the academic evidence on the subject will know, that starts with a full stomach at the beginning of the day, which breakfast clubs deliver. They help with attention span and cognitive performance, and they give parents greater flexibility to earn during their working hours. Strengthening the law to set out a specific number of branded school uniform items is an important step in the right direction, and I hope we will go further in due course.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman talks about putting power into teachers’ hands. Is he aware of the number of teachers who have been so radicalised by the Conservatives’ reforms that they now surround me on the Labour Benches?