Deirdre Costigan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. Does the Chancellor agree that four interest rate cuts, three trade deals, two successive quarters of growth and almost 1% of growth announced last week show that our plan for change is working? Does she also agree that it is now essential that this House supports the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill and other efforts to boost growth and put money in the pockets of my constituents in Ealing Southall?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  To drive progress on our growth mission and get the most out of taxpayers’ money, it is vital that Departments work collaboratively and not at odds with each other. Will the Chancellor outline how she is promoting cross-departmental working and planning as part of the spending review?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  Every week in my constituency surgery, families turn up with shocking stories of living in overcrowded rented homes. They show me photos of mould covering the walls, of four bunk beds crammed into one tiny room for the whole family, of the space on the kitchen floor where the parents sleep so the kids can have the sofa. In Southall and West Ealing, I see people sleeping rough in all weathers. That is the human cost of 14 years of the Conservative Government’s ideological decision to halt Labour’s affordable homes programme and to push people into the more expensive and largely unregulated private rented sector. The Conservatives left over 100,000 families in temporary accommodation—the highest figure since records began. The previous Government have a lot to answer for—I will not go through it all now—but we need to start working on solutions. The solution to the housing crisis is simple: we need to build more homes and the energy, transport and public services infrastructure to support them. This Bill will put an end to the previous Government’s dither and delay, and will start to get shovels in the ground and children in Ealing Southall off the living room floor. Labour-run Ealing council already has one of the most ambitious affordable housing programmes in the country, but with more than 5,000 families on the waiting list for a home, it needs more help to make schemes add up financially. I hope that the Minister will consider the specific barriers to building affordable homes in London, and how councils can be supported in that. There is much that can be learned from London, where 98% of planning decisions are already delegated to expert officers. Ealing has one of the best planning teams in the country, which was awarded platinum by Planning magazine. It is the top London borough for on-time decisions on major applications, and has the lowest percentage overturned at appeal, showing that it is getting decisions right. Ealing also has a local plan, based on comprehensive local consultation, which is used to guide good quality planning applications. The Bill will help to spread good practice from places such as Ealing, and ensure that councils across the country can take a more consistent streamlined approach to planning applications and bring back strategic planning as there is in London. I welcome mandatory training for members of the planning committees. We will have to look at that in London, so that it is regionally tailored for the London plan. Ensuring that councils can charge the full cost of planning decisions is welcome—let us have developers paying that, not council tax payers. Finally, the new nature restoration levy will allow for bigger and more effective environmental improvements, such as Ealing’s new regional park. The Conservative party did not believe in affordable homes, but this Bill will back the builders, not the blockers, and again allow us to start building the homes and local services that people need.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Arm’s-Length Bodies (Review) Bill · Hansard source

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  In light of what the hon. Member is saying, will he support Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which takes away Natural England’s power to delay or stop the building of vital infrastructure, including energy and rail infrastructure and the 1.5 million homes that we need in this country?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Unusually, I welcome the motion tabled by the Conservatives because it sets down on the record, loud and clear, that they are no friends of working people, and they are no friends of working women in particular. Their motion calls for an end to Labour’s groundbreaking Employment Rights Bill and would allow bad employers to continue to exploit workers, to sack anyone who objects and to continue paying women less than men. That is not a surprise, of course, because the Leader of the Opposition has already made it clear that she thinks maternity pay has “gone too far” and is “excessive”. Statutory maternity pay is based on earnings, and for most of the leave period it is set at a maximum of £184 a week or 90% of normal pay, whichever is lower. That translates to about £9,500 a year. I do not think many women, or their partners, would think that is excessive. I am at least grateful that the Conservatives are being honest: they could not care less about working people. Earlier, the shadow Chancellor was unable to tell us which bit of the Employment Rights Bill they wanted to get rid of. Well, he should read his own motion—it is written in black and white. Their motion explicitly objects to Labour’s new law to finally make employers put a stop to sexual harassment in the workplace and to take all reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment of staff by customers, contractors and service users. The Conservatives seem to be especially against that in their motion, which is peculiar, because just two years ago they said that they would bring in exactly the same law. What happened? Oh yes, I know: they abandoned working women, broke their promises and left shop workers, office staff and women managers at the mercy of sexual harassers, and they want to do the same today. The other new law in Labour’s Employment Rights Bill that the Conservatives seem to be especially against—it is in their motion, which the shadow Chancellor has not read—is the ending of exploitative zero-hours contracts. Their motion instead supports the continued mistreatment of often low-paid workers who do not know from one week to the next how much work they will get or if they will be able to pay their bills. Let us be clear: sexual harassment can often go hand in hand with exploitative zero-hours contracts. Imagine how difficult it is for a low-paid woman to complain about her manager’s inappropriate sexual behaviour if she relies on him to give her enough hours to feed her family next week. Zero-hours contracts put way too much power in the hands of managers, and, with proper business planning, there is simply no need for them to be forced on workers. In their motion, the Conservatives seem to have confused knowing what people’s hours are in advance with the new right of flexible working, which Labour is also introducing. They claim that those two things are in conflict—of course they are not. People can still have a zero-hours contract if they want to, but if they want guaranteed hours so that they have a secure income for their family, they will be entitled to that. If people want to work part time because they have kids or elderly parents, they will have a new right to flexible working that will allow that. The Conservatives’ motion is not clear on whether they support flexible working, but surely the Leader of the Opposition should understand and embrace Labour’s new right to flexible working, given her reported invention of Kemi mean time, or KMT, to explain being half an hour late for everything. Maybe it is one law for her and another for the workers. In this motion, the Conservatives have squarely and unashamedly set themselves against working people, especially working women, but the British people made a choice on 4 July: they voted for a party that would stand up for working people and keep its promises to outlaw sexual harassment at work and end exploitative zero-hours contracts. That is why Labour will vigorously and vociferously vote down the Conservatives’ attempt to stop those changes today.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q6. Children in Ealing Southall will be sleeping on sofas and living room floors tonight because of 14 years of failure by the Conservatives. Ealing council has joined over 100 councils that are trying to remove the barriers and give those kids a decent home to live in—something Conservative Members do not seem to care about. As part of the Government’s plan for change, will the Prime Minister look at the five solutions put forward by those councils, so that we can secure the future of council housing for those children sleeping on the floor tonight?

• 20 Jan 2025 · Affordable Housing · Hansard source

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  10. What steps she has taken with Cabinet colleagues to increase the supply of affordable housing.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Affordable Housing · Hansard source

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  After 14 years of Conservative Government, Ealing council has thousands of families waiting for a council home and has an affordable housing programme that it does not have the money to deliver. A report from Southwark council released on Sunday found that 71% of councils will have to delay or cancel house building projects. Will the Secretary of State look at ways to finally make local councils’ housing budgets sustainable so that we can build the affordable homes that my constituents in Ealing Southall desperately need?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  A third of people in my constituency live in private rented accommodation. That is already pretty high, and well above the national average of 19%, but in some wards, such as Southall Green, it rises to almost 50% of people living in rented homes. Ealing borough is what is known as super-diverse, with people from all over the world having made it their home. For many of my constituents in Southall, English is a second, third or even fourth language that they sometimes struggle with. That leaves them wide open to abuse by rogue landlords, and under the previous Government there was nothing they could do about it. The Conservatives made promise after promise to renters but never delivered. In hock to vested interests, they reneged on every pledge they made to renters, and some of the amendments tabled by the Opposition today continue to prioritise the needs of bad landlords over those of renters. In 2023, Generation Rent produced a report into renting by the British-Indian community, using data from renters in Southall. The report found that over a third had not received any of the six important documents they were entitled to from their landlord. A third stated that their landlord had threatened them with an unaffordable rent increase. Over half said that their rent had increased in the previous six months, with the average increase being £200 per month, and many were living in damp, overcrowded conditions. The Renters’ Rights Bill will ensure that vulnerable tenants such as those in Ealing Southall are able to go to the housing ombudsman for help. They will also be able to challenge arbitrary evictions and unfair rent rises. I welcome the Government’s amendments today, which strengthen the Bill even further, particularly new clause 13, which will end the astronomical deposits often demanded from tenants in advance. That is a very important change, particularly in Ealing Southall, because where people face low pay and massive rent costs, it will reduce a barrier to them getting into good-quality, safe housing and ensure that we do not continue to see people sleeping on the streets. The previous Government sat back while renters in my constituency were condemned to mouldy flats, huge rent rises and the threat of no-fault evictions, but Ealing’s Labour council took action. It introduced a new selective licensing scheme for private landlords, and these schemes were discussed in Committee. Selective landlord licensing schemes require private landlords to have a licence to rent out properties in designated areas of high deprivation or poor housing conditions. They have to meet certain conditions to obtain the licence, such as providing safe and suitable accommodation, complying with fire safety regulations and managing their properties in a responsible manner. In the absence of action from the previous Government, these schemes have allowed councils such as Ealing to enforce higher standards for renters, as the licensing fees and any fines raised from irresponsible landlords are ringfenced for enforcing standards. In Ealing it has also increased awareness for vulnerable tenants of the minimum standards to be expected in rented accommodation. The previous Government were not big supporters of licensing landlords in this way. They preferred standing up for landlords, rather than standing up for renters. In fact, they changed the law to give the Secretary of State a veto on selective licensing schemes that covered more than 20% of a council area. It looks like the Conservatives still are not big supporters of these schemes, as one of the amendments they tabled in Committee would have removed selective landlord licensing altogether. That would be a massive backwards move, and I am glad the Minister agrees with me. In fact, before Christmas the Minister announced that he would be removing the Conservatives’ veto, and councils will now be able to expand schemes such as the one in Ealing to the whole borough if they want to. I am delighted that the Government have taken fast action on this without waiting for the Bill to pass, and I look forward to more councils with poor housing and high deprivation levels being able to bring in successful licensing schemes such as the one in Ealing. I also welcome the Government amendments, which will give more power to local authorities to enforce renters’ rights and to pay for enforcement and investigation. The Conservatives have proved today that they do not care about renters, and most of the points that they have raised are about protecting bad landlords—although so few of the party’s Members have turned up that I wonder whether they care about anything. By contrast, Labour believes that it is time we rebalanced the power relationship between landlords and tenants so that constituents such as mine know their rights and can enforce them, including the rights to fair rent, to safe homes and to secure tenancies. I welcome the real difference that this Bill and the Government amendments will make to the lives of families in Ealing Southall.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I am sure that the Minister will have more to say on that when she responds. Heat batteries in the UK currently face a significant disadvantage compared with heat pumps as they are not eligible for a grant under the boiler upgrade scheme. I know the Minister is continuing to look at how she can maximise the benefits of the scheme and I hope she will also look at whether new technologies such as heat batteries can also be supported. Unlike heat pumps, heat batteries are not on the list of energy-saving materials that qualify for VAT reductions, so extending VAT relief to heat batteries would help to heat the 20% of homes currently missing out. I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ask him to consider reducing VAT for heat batteries, and I hope the Minister might work with him on that. There are barriers to installing networked ground source heat pumps that use heat batteries, including planning considerations and the need to adopt a street-by-street approach that can upgrade hundreds of homes in one go. The Minister has already committed to changing planning rules for air source heat pumps. I hope that she will consider whether changes also need to be made for networked ground source pumps and that she will include networked heat pumps allied with heat batteries in the forthcoming low-carbon flexibility road map she is working on. To give certainty to British businesses investing in innovative technologies such as heat batteries, we need to ensure that there are consistent heating requirements for new homes being built. The Minister will shortly be bringing forward the new future homes standard to end the scandal of gas boilers still being installed in new homes. I hope the standard will include heat batteries and other emerging technologies.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware of the company he mentions and will talk about it later in my remarks. It is a great example to build on. We need to wean our home heating systems off gas, in the same way that we need to wean the country off gas when it comes to renewable energy. The recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step in the warm homes plan. Heat pumps, which will benefit from some of that money, are a great way to wean us off gas. They use electricity rather than gas, so they can be fed from home-grown energy from our wind and solar farms. Just 1% of UK homes use a heat pump, compared with 60% in Norway. That is a real indictment of the previous Government’s inaction. It is fantastic that this Government are systematically removing barriers to heat pumps. We have increased funding for the boiler upgrade scheme by £30 million this year and will be doubling it from April. We are removing the need for other home upgrades before households can get that funding, and we are changing planning requirements and the 1 metre rule so that heat pumps are easier to install.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Playgrounds · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree that we need fair funding for local councils and for playgrounds. Access to play is a fundamental human right. It is written down in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. There should be no argument about it, so it is heartening that the new Labour Government has immediately shown its commitment to play as a human right that cannot be denied to our children. Our changes—in some ways radical—to the national planning policy framework will, for the first time, insist that playgrounds are a consideration in all new developments. It will force developers to provide them, if we can back this up with legislation. In these changes, the Government have demonstrated a renewed commitment to a child’s right to play and their right to be supported through development. I hope this can be followed by a new national play strategy for England—the first since the last Labour Government. Research shows that many playgrounds fail to meet the needs of girls. In one study, 68% of girls said that there was nothing for them to do in the playground. Developers often tick the box by putting in a climbing frame but many girls prefer playground equipment that is social and collaborative: space to chat to their friends—swings are one example. Our future playgrounds must be inclusive, offering facilities for all children, and I hope that will be included in the Minister’s plans. Despite years of funding cuts, Labour-run councils like Ealing, which covers my constituency of Ealing Southall, are leading the charge to transform playgrounds and put children at the heart of local plans. Ealing council has already committed £2 million to renovate a staggering 22 playgrounds across the borough, including Ravenor Park, Spikes Bridge Park, Southall Park and Lammas Park in west Ealing. Ealing has worked with developers, including the developer of the Green Quarter in Southall, to ensure that developer-built playgrounds are publicly accessible. All new projects in Ealing are being assessed to ensure a minimum of 50% inclusive play, and that refurbishments consider the Make Space for Girls guidance. In my former role as deputy leader of Ealing council, I championed “play on the way”, where play features like stepping stones on the grass build-outs at the corner of a street, and a hopscotch marked on the pavement, can even weave play into a child’s walk home from school. What councils need most is secure funding from central Government, so this year’s 3.5% real-terms increase in council funding—that is £69 billion for councils—is a hugely welcome first step. I know we will hear more on this in the upcoming spending review. We need to ensure that councils like Ealing can sustain and expand playgrounds, especially in urban areas, where green and outdoor spaces are more limited. Playgrounds are not just for children; they are investments in the fabric of our society and in our future generations. To continue to achieve this Labour Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, we need to keep pushing forward with our radical plans for play. It is time to reverse the damage of the past and create spaces that truly reflect the vibrant, equitable future that we want for our children.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Rough Sleeping · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Sir Christopher, for your excellent chairing of this debate. I also thank the many hon. Members for their contributions. I regret that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), completely failed to take responsibility for the more than doubling of rough sleeping under the previous Government. He seemed to think it was more important to count rough sleepers than to do anything about them, and he failed to say anything at all about the almost a quarter of a million social homes that were lost under that Government. However, I appreciate his support on looking again at the no recourse to public funds designation and the massive expansion of that, under the previous Government, to 3.3 million people. I thank the Minister very much for her response. I am delighted that the new Government are focusing on social housing, renters’ rights, making work pay, and rebuilding the NHS. I very much appreciate the cross-departmental focus that this Minister is bringing to this issue, and particularly the leadership from the Deputy Prime Minister, who I think will bring the priority we need to rough sleeping. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered the matter of tackling rough sleeping.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree. I will return later to my hon. Friend’s point about making the polluter pay. Currently it is certainly not worth councils’ time or money in many instances to take fly-tippers to court because the fines, and indeed the sentencing, do not act as a deterrent. Some people feel it is okay to leave their rubbish at the end of the street because the council will pick it up. This is a vicious cycle and we need to break it. Secondly, in the small number of cases that do go to court, magistrates do not take the issue seriously enough or understand how fly-tipping blights the life of local communities. The sentencing just is not enough to make people think twice. The criminals who make a pretty penny by offering to take away waste for 20 quid tell the court they are unemployed, so they get away with not having to pay. The waste carrier licensing system is also so lax that it is hard for someone to lose their licence, even if they have broken the rules and been convicted. Thirdly, there is a problem with housing in London. We know that there is not enough of it and that is why this Government have committed to building 1.5 million new homes. Right now, in Ealing Southall, there are people living in overcrowded accommodation, where there is often not enough space for a bin. I have also been told by many of my constituents that tenants sometimes illegally sub-let a room, but insist that the new tenant does not use the rubbish bins so that the landlord does not find out. Finally, there is just too much waste in the first place. As a nation, we are drowning in unnecessary packaging, single-use drink containers, and household items that are difficult and expensive to recycle. We have to be honest about fly-tipping. In a Keep Britain Tidy study, one in five people in London admitted that they had fly-tipped themselves—this is often black-sack fly-tipping. It is simply not an excuse that the council is not doing enough because every council in London offers a free kerbside collection for black-sack rubbish. However, people often do not see this as fly-tipping, and it is very difficult to change their behaviour. No amount of education seems to work. Trying to stop people from fly-tipping is a huge challenge. Keep Britain Tidy has piloted a number of schemes, including in Newham, that have had some success, but the schemes often simply move fly-tipping to the next road. Some councils have tried community skips, including my neighbouring authority of Brent. However, despite the council’s hard work, Brent sadly still has the highest fly-tipping rate in London, at 34,000 incidents a year. Although residents like the community skip, it does not stop people from fly-tipping. The recycling charity WRAP has found that there is no evidence at all to link free bulky waste disposal with a reduction in fly-tipping. Even the Conservative Hampshire County Council acknowledged that fly-tipping did not increase when it started to charge for DIY waste. Just as it is clear that there is not one cause of fly-tipping, so it follows that there is not one answer. This is a complex problem that needs a number of different approaches. Crucially, it needs to be led by Government, not by cash-strapped councils. We need a national strategy to combat fly-tipping, which will bring together the Environment Agency, councils, Keep Britain Tidy, waste disposal authorities and other stakeholders to crack this problem once and for all.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. As she has said, Ealing Southall is certainly not a rural area of the country. However, my father’s family are from Tipperary, and they were farmers; I do appreciate, and am well aware, of the cost of fly-tipping to farmers in particular. As it is on private land, they are, in most cases, liable for the costs of removal themselves. It is a massive issue, and I do hope that we will hear from others today on that issue. Certainly, there is more that we can do on reporting because, as I said earlier, the reports that we currently have are only the tip of the iceberg as a lot of communities just do not report. Having gone through the problems and realised that the solutions are complex, what solutions do I feel should be included in the national strategy? To combat the organised criminals, we need a national fly-tip investigation team. Why should environmental crime not be taken as seriously as other types of organised crime? We need national financial investigators who can use proceeds of crime laws to go after the assets of these criminals and hit them in their pockets, where it really hurts. We also need sentencing guidelines to be reviewed so that the courts do not continue to allow fly-tippers to get away with it. We need to reform the waste carrier licensing scheme so that it is worth the paper that it is written on. We need stronger rules for bins when houses are broken up into flats; I am delighted that Ealing council is introducing a new requirement for planning permission for HMOs—houses in multiple occupation. But we need to ensure that waste facilities are rigorously assessed as part of landlord licensing schemes and before permission is given for flat conversions, and that councils have the funding to carry out those inspections.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is certainly right: that, too, is the experience of my constituents in Ealing Southall, where they have very much said that this is an issue of pride in their community. Much research has also been done on what is called the “broken windows syndrome”, in which fly-tipping also encourages crime and antisocial behaviour. My hon. Friend is certainly right in that regard. My residents in Ealing Southall have identified Beaconsfield Road and Bridge Road, along with George Street in Hanwell, as key hotspots, but there many more. In fact, more than a million cases of fly-tipping are recorded every year in this country. Of course, many will not be recorded at all as communities just give up. One third of all fly-tipping takes place in London and eight London authorities were in the top 10 areas with the highest number of fly-tipping incidents in England, according to the most recent statistics. I am afraid to say that all too often it is the poorest areas of the country that are most likely to face such issues. That is due to overcrowded housing and a lack of outside space for bins, which are particular issues in London. There are some great organisations fighting the scourge of fly-tipping. In Ealing, LAGER Can, whose representatives are here today watching the debate, does amazing work in partnership with the council—not just to clear litter, but to clear and report fly-tips. Nationally, Keep Britain Tidy has strenuously campaigned on the issue. The previous Government periodically announced new crackdowns on fly-tipping, but has that made a difference? I do not think my constituents in Ealing Southall noticed any improvements in 14 years of that Government’s supposed crackdowns; in fact, it is clear the problem has got worse. Why did the previous Government fail to get a grip on the issue? First, only about 1% of fly-tips result in a court prosecution. That is because councils lost about two thirds of their funding over 14 years of Tory austerity, so they cannot afford to pay for the detailed and expensive investigations needed to take a fly-tipper to court. Even if they do try to take a fly-tipper to court, the average fine is only about £500, which does not pay the council’s costs. It is much quicker and cheaper for the council to just pick up the fly-tip. That solves the immediate problem, but of course people then start to think, “Well, I can dump my mattress or these few bags of rubbish on the corner because the council will pick them up.”