David Simmonds MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 10 Sept 2024 · Exempt Supported Accommodation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing today’s debate. I must draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests because, like the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), I am also a member of the LGA’s parliamentary team of vice-presidents. I recall from my work on the Kerslake review into the governance of Birmingham city council that it has the highest proportion of residents needing to access social care during their lifetime of any local authority in England. The level of need is patently particularly acute, which is why one of the five pilots introduced following the “Supported housing: national statement of expectations” in October 2020 was in Birmingham. Anybody with local government experience will be familiar with these challenges, which go back many years. They often result from reforms, such as those in the 1980s with care in the community, those in the late 1990s with the fair access criteria, and the introduction of extra care housing supported living. They all had a high degree of cross-party support based on the idea of improving the level of independence and autonomy that could be provided to people who need extra support through a combination of housing and social care. All Members’ inboxes will contain at least some examples of concern about abuses in the market; some examples where the quality of care provided is not reaching the appropriate standard; and, of course, some examples where the quality of care is exceptional and supports our constituents to enjoy the fullest, most autonomous life and the greatest degree of independence in pursuing their interests. As we have heard, in response to the abuses that were identified in the market, my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), brought forward a private Member’s Bill, which was adopted by the Government and enjoyed cross-party support in the last Parliament, with a view to bringing a clear legislative and regulatory focus to the sector. As we know and have heard in the debate, the combination of challenges around resourcing the implementation of that measure—for example, the ability of local authorities to make good use of feedback from residents who may be extremely vulnerable, and ensuring that that new regulatory environment is enforceable when it sits outside of the planning system to a great degree, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston identified—remains significant. When we consider recent work, it seems that the Minister has a great deal to build on. As has been highlighted, there has been a good degree of cross-party support for improved measures to address the issue, and, following the publication of the “Supported housing: national statement of expectations” and the implementation of the five pilots, an evaluation was published in the last Parliament, around April 2022. A written ministerial statement from the then Minister, Eddie Hughes, set out the future plans and funding aimed at implementing the regulation that those pilots had identified as being necessary. That work led to and fed into the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 and interacted with the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. The issue was also the subject of a Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee inquiry in 2021. The debate and discussion in Parliament has significance only in so far as it can be implemented at a local level. Both the Select Committee inquiry and the learning from those pilots was very clear that local authorities need to have sufficient resource and flexibility to implement it at a local level. I welcome the fact that, in the previous Parliament, the Government provided a £20 million fund to begin ensuring that all local authorities could learn from that and had a degree of resource. However, it is clear from the level of wider need, and in particular, from the emerging evidence of market abuse not just in this sector but in areas such as children’s homes and care homes, where significant rip-off fees are being charged by some providers for a service that is simply inadequate to meet the needs of those residents, that further work is needed. Clearly, the Minister has taken office at a time when the Department has accumulated a high degree of evidence as a result of the pilots, the debates and the work done in the previous Parliament. I hope that that will be enormously useful in ensuring that the expectations set out in that Parliament can be fulfilled. I would like to add my support on this matter. I do not think that this Minister is responsible for planning, but the point that was made about how we support the identification of exempt accommodation through the planning process is important. I think we all recognise that this is a marketplace in which we have a combination of local authority providers, private providers, charities and voluntary organisations, and we do not wish to place undue impediments in the way of those who wish to convert existing buildings—for example, houses in multiple occupation—to provide additional support to residents who may be able to make the most of it. At the same time, in all communities, in order to avoid the problems we have seen—with particular settings, for example, requiring a high degree of police and law enforcement input—there needs to be that earlier identification process. As the Government bring forward their proposed review of the planning system, I hope the Minister and her colleagues will give some consideration to how changing the use classes that relate to exempt accommodation or making that part of a wider review—for example, of change of use of residential accommodation to become children’s homes, houses in multiple occupation, care homes and so on—would enable the earlier identification of sites and input to be gathered from the likes of police and NHS services. That would then influence the planning committee in deciding whether a location was appropriate in order, for example, to avoid the clustering of problem locations. As we have seen in the past with local authorities at the coast, we may find a combination of bail hostels next to children’s homes next to asylum accommodation, all of which can create a very challenging social mix for a local authority and other local authority services to deal with. This has been a very helpful debate. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston. I hope that the Minister will be able to build on the constructive work done in the last Parliament and that we will see that feed into a significant change in the experience of the most vulnerable people, who need to access exempt accommodation, but also in the communities in which it is located and their experience of it in the coming years.

• 2 Sept 2024 · Social Housing Supply · Hansard source

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  The previous Government made new measures available to local authorities to encourage borrowing against the housing revenue account to enable the creation of new council housing. What measures do the Government have in mind to increase the take-up of this approach by our local authorities?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Social Housing Supply · Hansard source

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  We share the ambition of seeing a big increase in the supply of housing, and of social housing in particular. Given that there are around 1.4 million new homes with planning consent already granted in this country, what process led the Government to prioritising the removal of green-belt protections rather than building the homes for which our councils have already given consent?

• 29 Jul 2024 · Public Spending: Inheritance · Hansard source

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  Thank you and welcome to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. The estimates day provisions presented by the Chancellor to the House last week included a capital departmental expenditure limit of £12.655 billion for the Department of Health and Social Care. We know that it included the funds for the new Hillingdon hospital, which was granted planning permission and where work has already started. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer stand by what she told the House in the estimates day debate, on which we all relied when casting our vote? Can she therefore assure my constituents that that hospital project, which was fully budgeted for and where work has already started, will be delivered by this Government?

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  May I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? It is a pleasure to participate in today’s debate on the King’s Speech and to follow the hon. Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker), who is one of many on both sides of the House who gave a warm and positive speech. We welcome that context because, although cross-party there will be much political debate about the contents of the King’s Speech, we all recognise that it is a privilege and an honour to be in this House and to participate in that debate on behalf of our constituents. I thank my constituents in Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner for returning me for my second term as a Member of Parliament. There were a number of things in the King’s Speech that they would wish me to draw attention to, such as the damaging impact of VAT on schools—the taxing of education is of huge concern in my constituency, which has many mainstream and special educational needs independent schools. They would also wish me to mention the loss of green-belt protection and the decision of an incoming Government to prioritise the deregulation of the green belt rather than building the 1.4 million homes that already have planning permission in our country. On the decision to press ahead with GB Energy, those of us with a background in local government know that it is a policy model that brought the cities of Nottingham and Bristol to the very edge of bankruptcy. We will hold the Government to account to ensure that GB Energy does not do to the United Kingdom what the decisions of those Labour councils to press ahead with those projects did to the capacity of local authorities to deliver vital public services, as well as increasing bills for vulnerable households. The main theme of today’s debate is immigration and home affairs. Having served briefly as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Ministry of Justice in the previous Parliament, I welcome the tone of many things that have been said about criminal justice. In particular, I hope to see the new Government continue the commitment, as previously set out, to sentencing reform. All of us, in all parties, wish to see fewer victims of crime. The previous Member for Cheltenham, who received a very warm tribute from his successor the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), set out measures on the use of modern technology and tagging that aimed to ensure that we bring down the rate of reoffending which has long dogged the criminal justice system here in the UK. As a Member of Parliament who proudly represents a suburban constituency in London, I recognise that following the 2014 reforms on shoplifting, which were agreed in partnership with the retail sector, the police and the security industry, it is time to look again at how they work. We welcome the fact that, overall, there was a major reduction in serious crime in particular under the previous Government, but we will be holding the Government to account and Mayor Khan to account for the fact that his neglect of the suburbs has left many of our constituents concerned about the availability of police teams which in theory should be there but all too often seem to be abstracted for other duties. The measures to protect shopworkers need to be part of that context of the reform of how we deal with shoplifting to ensure that anyone who works in retail or owns a business in retail enjoys the protection from our police forces and our criminal law that they rightly deserve. On illegal migration, there is a lot of noise and fuss, but I hope the Government will continue patiently with the work done previously, in particular with the authorities in France. I have met the people doing that work, both here in the UK and on the French side, to bring to justice criminal gangs—the successful prosecutions achieved of those involved in setting up smuggling. I pay tribute to the work of the BBC in shedding light on the complexity of the international gangs, highlighting how often the kingpins seek to find refuge in places such as Iraq, where they are beyond the reach not just of the criminal law in the United Kingdom but in that of Europe too. I hope that when the Government set out that commitment we will see effective measures put in place. I say gently to the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is no longer in his place, that we know from the extensive debates around the ECHR that it stands as no barrier whatever to the deportation of criminals and those who should not be here. We have successfully achieved that in respect of many, many countries. What we need to ensure is that people are no longer putting their lives at risk in the channel. I will finish with a brief word about the NHS. Those who visit Hillingdon hospital and Northwood and Pinner cottage hospital in my constituency will see that work is under way to deliver those projects. I can promise the Government that I will be holding them to account to ensure that those projects are completed.