Gideon Amos MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Apr 2025 · Sewage · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hospitals · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend has mentioned faulty buildings and roofs. In Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton, staff are fainting in temperatures of 30°C in temporary buildings where there is no cooling machinery, while mums are trying to give birth in the same ward. That is completely unacceptable. We need interim funding if the hospital—which was mentioned earlier today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey)—is to survive until 2033, when the promised funding is meant to arrive.

• 23 Apr 2025 · Pension Funds · Hansard source

  More

  My Wellington constituent, Mike, who is a former Midland bank employee, has seen his pension go down in value by 13% because of the failure of HSBC to honour its obligations. He tells me that the state—in other words, the taxpayer—will be making up some of his income as a result. Given the level of profit that my hon. Friend has revealed, is it not totally wrong that the taxpayer is bearing the burden of the obligation that the corporate giant should be paying itself?

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who is doing a great service to his constituents by exposing that problem. In too many constituencies, residents are plagued by rogue developers who provide housing under a freehold tenure, but force residents to accept the estate managers or shared owners of public spaces within the developments. We have heard shocking examples from all over the country, which surely demonstrate the scale of the problem and the need to act. In one block of flats in my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, people have been unable to get repairs for a leaking roof from the owner of a building in Corporation Street—it has been leaking for nine years without being attended to.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right and is championing the issue in his constituency. The companies watching or reading the debate would do well to listen to his words, because they could easily improve their practices right now by introducing a code of practice, as he suggests. Liberal Democrats believe that leasehold tenure should be abolished for all properties, including flats. For too long, homeowners have been exploited by what is ultimately a feudal system. Existing residential leasehold should be converted either to freehold or commonhold, as appropriate, and we urge the Government to introduce legislation to make that happen. On commonhold properties and commercial leaseholds, ground rent should be capped to a nominal fee, so that everyone has a degree of control over their property. Of course, the Conservative Government introduced to Parliament the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act, which received Royal Assent in 2024. However, the secondary legislation, which would give leaseholders rights over their freeholder landlords when it comes to accounts and accountability in general, has failed to be enacted. Crucially, the Act fails to regulate property management agents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) pointed out, there has been widespread agreement about that since the 2019 report chaired by the Cross Bencher Lord Best, supported by the Liberal Democrats in this House and in the other place. We need to see vital improvements to the 2024 Act. I hope the Minister will today confirm when secondary legislation will be introduced, or indeed other legislation on the regulation of property agents. Liberal Democrats want the management of buildings to be professionalised. Building maintenance and safety need to be guaranteed, not dependent on whoever happens to be the freeholder. Nowhere has that been more important in terms of safety than in the entirely avoidable but tragic disaster of Grenfell Tower. Putting profit before safety, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report has found, was one of the chief causes of that fire. Just as profit-driven sign-off in the testing of building materials and in the inspection of buildings needs to be reversed with the ending of both the privatised Building Research Establishment and privatised building inspectors, so too there is surely now a need to regulate property agents—for safety reasons, as much as anything else. Today is also Stephen Lawrence Day. As Stephen was a budding young architect, it is fitting that we are debating regulating building management agents; it would be even more fitting if there was a commitment today to bring legislation forward. Just as leaseholders are charged extortionate amounts while being poorly served by the landlords and estate management companies they employ, too many freeholders of their own homes find themselves beholden to others over whom they have no control in relation to the open spaces and common areas, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) mentioned.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is time for this shocking behaviour to be rectified and for legislation to be introduced. I will continue to work for the residents of the properties in my constituency that I have mentioned, and to get the legislation that we need. Those who suffer from poor management can, of course, be leaseholders or freeholders. There are 4.8 million residential leasehold properties in England, which is equivalent to a fifth of the housing stock. That system is a relic of the feudal period. Its abolition has long been sought by Liberals and Liberal Democrats. The abolition of residential leasehold could be one of the most important carried-forward pieces of business from the last Liberal Government of about 100 years ago, which goes to show how long overdue it is.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  “Daylight robbery” is a good way of putting it. Those staggering increases in charges, with very little notice or warning to residents, are experienced in many of our constituencies, including my own. In my constituency, I am receiving complaints about FirstPort from residents of Parsonage Court in Wellington, and from those of Quantock House, Pavilion Gardens, St George’s Square and Firepool in Taunton. I am also receiving complaints about Cognatum Estates from residents of Cedar Gardens and Fullands Court. These issues are arising in a whole range of properties.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing a debate on residential estate management companies—an important issue for many of us up and down the country, and many of our constituents. My hon. Friend has done a service both to her constituents and to people across the country by exposing, and placing on the record, the scandal of poor management companies. I do not want to denigrate companies that do a good job for the common areas and spaces that they are contracted to look after, but, as we have heard today, Members of Parliament too often hear how far too many companies are fleecing residents, charging rip-off prices and failing to respond to reasonable requests for repairs, information or accounts of how residents’ money is being spent.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend must surely have read the next words of my speech, which urge the Government to make urgent progress on strengthening leaseholders’ rights and on their draft leasehold and commonhold reform Bill. We should, for example, make sure that legislation strengthens leaseholders’ rights to extend their leases, to buy their freeholds, to take over the management of their buildings and to make commonhold the default tenure. We should also regulate ground rents for existing leaseholders, and freeholders too: it is surely time for legislation to enable freeholders to recover ownership and control over public spaces that surround and adjoin their homes, which are held by others for no reason other than to extract maximum payment. A single freeholder among many who exercises control over common areas, such as access roads and green spaces, should no longer be allowed to hold all other homeowners to ransom with ever increasing charges and unreasonable management practices. Back in December last year, my hon. Friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches, led by my hon. Friend for South Devon, were the first to bring the directors of FirstPort to the House to account to MPs for their management. My hon. Friend has blazed a trail for those affected by the appalling management of common areas and public spaces. I return to the issues in my constituency. One resident in Wellington has been unable for over a year to get reasonable adjustments for disabled access to her parking space, even though she is also a cancer sufferer. We have seen now that persuasion on its own is not enough. Just as it is high time for residential leasehold to be brought to an end, it is also time for legislation to enable freeholders of common areas to acquire open spaces and common areas from those who would hold ransom over them. As Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George pointed out, these practices are not business but blackmail.

• 8 Apr 2025 · Easter Adjournment · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to speak in a debate that pays tribute to the memory of Sir David Amess. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), I want to raise an issue that is absolutely filling my email inbox: the collapse of NHS dentistry in Taunton and Wellington, and across Somerset—indeed, across the whole country. In 2022, when I first did a survey on access to NHS dentists in Taunton and Wellington, over half the respondents reported that they were unable to access an NHS dentist. Since then, things have got worse and worse. In the months since the general election last year, I have received hundreds of emails about the issue. It feels like a tidal wave of distress. People are struggling with pain, facing unaffordable bills for private treatment, or simply giving up on dental care altogether. The Government’s announcement of 700,000 extra dental appointments is of course welcome, but as the British Dental Association has pointed out, that amounts to no more than about two extra appointments per NHS dentist per month—and that is only when there is an NHS dentist. In dental deserts like Somerset and my constituency, there are barely any NHS dentists left, so that announcement will not have the effect that we would all like. That is particularly so because the Government’s figures are a real underestimate of the position in Taunton and Wellington. In February, the Government said that one in four people were unable to see an NHS dentist, but as I said, the survey that I carried out in 2022 showed that just over one in two in my constituency could not access NHS dentists, and I am sure that the proportion who cannot access an NHS dentist has only increased. Today I launched a new survey of constituents, schools and local dental practices to expose the real cost. As a result of the collapse in dental services, people—children and eligible adults—are paying for what should be free treatment. The survey was launched at about two o’clock this afternoon, and I am grateful for the fact that we are allowed mobiles in the Chamber, because I was told at the beginning of the debate that there were 50 responses to the survey, but during it, there have been another 16. The issue has clearly hit a nerve, and it really affects people in my constituency. One constituent told me that he had to spend more than £1,000 to get treatment for his child’s dental needs. Treatment for all children should be free on the NHS, but they are not getting it. The entitlement means nothing if there is no NHS dentist to go to. Too many in our area face the choice of paying up or living in pain. Bills often run into hundreds of pounds, which people can ill afford, given the effects of recent months on the cost of living. This is not just about teeth; it is about people’s dignity, their health, and the way they feel about their lives and themselves. I urge the Government not to underestimate the scale of the problem, particularly in areas such as Somerset. We need urgent reform and urgent action. The broken dental contract really needs to be renegotiated, and we need a proper incentive to bring dentists back into the NHS. I hope the Government will look closely at the evidence that my constituents are sending in, and will work with me and others to make the situation better. With that, as we look forward to eating lots of chocolate and being in need of a great many more dental appointments, I wish all my colleagues across the House, and the staff, security and police officers who look after us so well, a very happy Easter.

• 7 Apr 2025 · Social Rented Housing · Hansard source

  More

  Despite the announcements referred to earlier, the Building Safety Regulator is now advising applicants to plan for 16 weeks to clear gateway 2. That is holding up a disproportionate number of social homes, including 100 in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), and it is much longer than is required for planning permission. What steps will the Government take to reduce the wait back down to eight weeks, as it was?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  A recent NHS England report laid bare the catalogue of failures that left a patient with a history of violent aggression unconfined, untreated and completely unmedicated for nine months, until he killed Ian Coates and the young friends Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, from Taunton in my constituency. Will the Prime Minister join me and the people of Taunton in paying tribute to the families who have campaigned on this matter? Will he confirm that a public inquiry is to begin? Given the 50% cut to the cost of integrated care boards, will he also confirm that mental health services, both in the community and secure, will not suffer as a result of those cuts?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Access to Dentistry: Somerset · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the dental desert that is Somerset and to how keenly it is felt. Does she agree that many families have to choose between putting food on the table and paying to take their child to the dentist? We can expose the reality of the dental desert through more research, which I will be carrying out in Taunton and Wellington very soon.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  Does my hon. Friend agree that the new clause would help colleges such as Bridgwater and Taunton college, the biggest provider of apprenticeships in England? Will he join me, and other Members, in encouraging those colleges on their path towards awarding their own degrees?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I rise to raise concerns about the new Crown route, and the danger of its being overused by the Government, cutting out opportunities for community involvement. Will people have a right to be heard in the decision-making process for those applications, as they have been when they come to a planning committee or to a public inquiry or other appeal? If the CIL changes in the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025 go ahead, they should attract community infrastructure levy payments. We will welcome that aspect because we need to secure infrastructure, and one of our chief concerns with proposals for development is that funding for infrastructure is frequently not in place—including, for example, the lack of GP surgeries in my constituency. The Liberal Democrats support the CIL aspects of the changes, but I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage will raise some concerns about the Crown route.

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

  More

  It is almost as though my hon. Friend had read a further section of my speech. That is exactly what we need to do in this country to unlock some of those sites.

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

  More

  Does the Minister accept that it would be easier to support this Bill if it did not include clauses that provide the Secretary of State with the power not just to take some decisions away from planning committees, but to take all decisions away from planning committees, because that provision is completely unlimited in its scope?

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

  More

  I was referring to the departmental cuts. If we look at all Departments across Government, including Housing, Health and Education, the cuts were far deeper after 2015.

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

  More

  I come back to what the LGA said: the role councillors play in the planning system is the backbone of that system. That is the way it should remain. Taking decisions out of councillors’ hands is taking decisions out of the hands of local people. Developing and shaping towns or neighbourhoods without the input of the councillors who have that level of trust and local knowledge will make those neighbourhoods and developments poorer and even more likely to fail. Frankly, removing people and their councillors from the system does not mean faster planning, but less democratic planning. It will mean that people are shut out and make them lose faith in the system even more; it will mean more legal challenges and more people who feel shut out from the system. The Bill risks making development not only slower, but worse. There is, of course, another way. Instead of a Bill that shuts people out and shuts them up, silencing voices and failing people on the basic services and infrastructure their communities need, we should look to the great community-led developments of the past, and more recently, from Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities and Hampstead Garden Suburb, to local authority-led new towns such as Milton Keynes, right up to the award-winning schemes often built in partnership with the public and private sector up and down the country right now—developments where nature, people and the economy grow together, not in opposition to each other, as we see in the best places that we all know and enjoy visiting. If we build with the economy and with those who want growth, and for nature by developing with nature and for people by developing with people, we will build the homes, jobs and services that our communities want to see, that our country deserves and that our environment and our planet so desperately need.

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

  More

  My hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely right, and that is why the Liberal Democrats were the only party to put in our manifesto the funds needed for Natural England and the Environment Agency to address the challenges she rightly sets out. Lib Dem councils are also granting planning permissions, thousands of them—in my county of Somerset alone, 13,000 homes have permission but remain unbuilt.

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

  More

  There was a significant increase in empty homes being brought back into use under the coalition policies promoted by the Liberal Democrat Ministers. If we look at the figures for the cuts the Government made between 2010 and 2024, we see that those cuts were far deeper after 2015, according to all Departments—the record will bear that out.

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

  More

  If the hon. Gentleman is so interested in our debates, he should please come and join our next party conference. We would be delighted to debate whether our targets should be 150,000 social rent homes per year or 300,000 general needs homes per year. Of course, we need both, and that was the conclusion of our very thoughtful and timely conference debate. I congratulate the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Secretary of State—the Deputy Prime Minister—on lifting that cap, on bringing strategic planning into the Bill and on the changes to national policy statements. I also congratulate them on the new nature restoration fund, where it provides support in relation to issues such as nutrient neutrality. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), that is holding back thousands of homes in Somerset, and we welcome the change. Friends of the Earth has welcomed the nature restoration fund, but points out that it is very unclear how the nature restoration levy will work alongside other regimes. In that respect and many others, the Bill is short on the key principles. It is big on powers for the Secretary of State, but short on how those powers will be exercised. The Bill does not just lack details; it lacks some really big and important principles, including how that will work with other regimes. The funding of the nature restoration levy needs to be up front, so that nature restoration work begins straightaway. We ask the Minister and the Government to enshrine in the Bill the principle that, on each site, development should first no do harm. That principle needs to be guaranteed its place at the top of the hierarchy of mitigation when it comes to protecting our environment.

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

  More

  We shall put that to the test later. We welcome the provisions that allow compulsory acquisition—where there is a compelling case in the public interest, such as to build social housing—to go ahead on the basis of existing use value, not what the owner hopes will be the value in the future, to the detriment of the public purse. That could make a big difference. It would allow councils to assemble land more affordably, and to deliver more social homes. However, councils need to be resourced to carry out such projects. To that end, I am delighted that the proposal to abolish the cap on planning application fees that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) brought forward in her Bill in 2023 is included in this Bill.

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

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

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

  More

  We would support that, as we did in a Westminster Hall debate very recently. We should be hearing such voices in the planning system, not shutting them out of the planning system. On energy infrastructure, we welcome support for battery storage and improving access to the grid. Transmission connections are a huge source of delay—one of the biggest bottlenecks for renewable energy. But if we are to unblock that infrastructure, we need to go much further. All large-scale infrastructure projects, not just electricity transmission, should give people direct community benefit. Whether wind farm, solar farm, battery array or gas-fired power station, those living nearby should benefit through local investment or lower bills. We also support the ambition to streamline planning for major projects, with exceptions on taking category 3 people out of compulsory purchase consultations. Let us note again who the real blockers were on these really big projects. They were not the people. It was nothing to do with local communities or the planning profession—I declare an interest as a member of the planning profession—and it was not councils. It was Ministers who left decisions lying on their desks, wrecking the timescales scrupulously followed by other parties in the process, so let us not blame people for politicians’ failures. There are things to welcome in the Bill, but it hits the wrong target in many important areas, and this is where I must raise some more serious concerns. The detail provided in the changes to national infrastructure projects is good, but it is in real contrast to other areas of the Bill. There are many Henry VIII clauses that give sweeping powers to the Secretary of State and a democratic deficit is becoming a serious concern. For all that we welcome the aim to deliver homes, the Bill takes aim at communities, when we should be encouraging and empowering them to deliver and create the homes and places we want to see. I say again that racking up permissions—we already have a staggering 1.5 million homes without permission—will not ensure a single one gets built. We need to tackle the failure to build out of permissions granted by taking back the land or further limiting the lifetime of permissions. “Use it or lose it” needs to be the message. Unless we deal with the supply chain issues and the lack of skills, we will have even more blockers on development.