Lee Anderson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Jan 2025 · Private Rented Sector: Housing Standards · Hansard source

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  During the last Parliament, I visited a family in Stanton Hill in Ashfield who lived in a private rented property. It was disgraceful: the property had damp, electrical problems and flooding. Not only was the property covered by the landlord licensing scheme; the landlord was the leader of Ashfield district council. Will the Secretary of State please remind council leaders that if they or their councillors rent out private properties, they should be held to a higher standard?

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

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  I thank everyone for turning up to the debate. What have we learned in this Chamber? We have learned that the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) should be the housing spokesman for Reform UK. That is probably the main thing. There are plenty of seats over here on our Benches. I have learned, actually, that I have been far too soft on this issue. I am astounded. I first debated it in 2015, as a councillor on Ashfield district council, and I said pretty much the same as what I have said today, but I got booed out of the chamber by the Labour group. It is incredible. They disagreed with everything I said. How things have changed over the over the past 10 years or so. I am disappointed with the attendance in this Chamber today, because this problem touches every single constituency in the United Kingdom. Everyone, every constituency, has a council estate; every constituency has this problem; and every single MP in this House has a lot of casework on this issue. I have the greatest respect for the shadow Minister, and he knows that, but I look at the Conservative Benches behind him and no one has turned up to contribute; I look at the Government Benches and, yes, two Members have turned up, and they made reasonable contributions—but we have a better turnout on our Benches. The point of this place is to change things, and to make people’s lives better, easier and safer. If we cannot do that in this Parliament, what is the point of us being here? I will hold my hands up and apologise for the three strikes policy—far too liberal. I would rather go with the dog-whistle politics of the hon. Member for Mansfield: “one strike and you’re out”. Before I finish, I will just say this to the Minister: the policy is a deterrent. When I say that I do not care where those people live, what I am saying is that, if we have a deterrent where they know they will lose their tenancy, their home, a place to sleep, they will stop that behaviour straight away. I hope, moving forward, that the Government will act on this and make the lives of people on these council estates in Ashfield and all around the country much better. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour.

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

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  Well, yes, I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am not sure we can blame all that crime on council tenants or social housing tenants. I take his point. I am surprised that I have not yet had an intervention from the Government Benches, because I usually get asked, “Where are these nuisance neighbours going to live? Where do we put them?” Well, on the record, hon. Members, I am not bothered where they go, but I have two options for those people. They can either behave themselves and become good tenants, good neighbours, and integrate, or they can do what other people—normal people—do: go and get a job, stop committing crime, work hard, save some money up for a deposit or save enough for a bond, and go and rent privately somewhere. The important thing is that we need a deterrent. When I was a local councillor in Ashfield, we had youths in the local park who were creating mayhem, making fires and attacking people—all sorts of horrible, feral behaviour. The local council and the police had a real problem trying to sort the issue out, but after a bit of an investigation we found that the parents of a lot of the youths who were causing problems lived in social housing on the nearby estate, so we wrote to every single one and said, “If your child carries this on, you are breaching your tenancy agreement and we might have to look at booting you out.” The poor behaviour stopped straightaway—overnight. That is one option that I hope Ministers can look at for social housing tenants with poor behaviour. I believe in the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, where people are given one warning, then another, and on the third warning they are gone. Quite frankly, I am not that interested in where those people go to live. My focus and concern are the decent, hard-working people who put a shift in, have not got much money and rely on social housing. I agree with the 1940s Clement Attlee Government that the allocation of a council house should be based on suitability rather than need. To do that, we need to repeal some laws passed here 40 odd years ago—housing and homelessness legislation—and look at the people who are in priority need. Based on suitability, those who should have priority need are people who will respect the house, be good citizens, go to work and not be a nuisance in their neighbourhood.

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

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  I am astounded that the hon. Member disagrees on this point. Will he now agree to a one-strike-and-out rule?

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

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  The hon. Member is being very generous with his time. He has mentioned women quite a lot in his speech, but let us talk about pensioners. We have this nonsense in Ashfield where there are flats and bungalows that were designed for pensioners and over-65s, but sadly, as some of them die off, the local council, with another brainwave, has started putting nuisances in these flats: druggies, ex-cons—people who live a life of criminality. When they put one of these people in a flat, all their friends and family come to visit, and it is creating problems in flats that were designed just for the over-65s. Does the hon. Member think we should have a policy to stop this straightaway and let these old people live in peace?

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

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  The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. He talks about my history of being in a different party. If I were still in the Conservative party, I would be sat on those empty Conservative Benches today showing that I care about this important issue.

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

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  This is more like it. The hon. Gentleman talks about integrating social housing into new housing estates; this is a big problem for me in Ashfield. We have had all these new housing estates and they give about 10% for social housing. Most of the time the tenants who move into social houses on private estates are good tenants, but then we get one, two or maybe three nuisance families who create mayhem for the rest of the people. Bear in mind that people have bought their houses—they are mortgaged. They work seven days a week to pay for their house and next door, in exactly the same built house, is a family who do not go to work. They are smoking weed, causing problems and making peoples’ lives a misery. I have had several cases where people who have actually bought their house have had to move out because the social housing provider has not acted on antisocial behaviour. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we build social houses on new housing estates, all the lets should be sensitive lets and it should be based on suitability rather than need?

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

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  The Minister makes a good point. He speaks passionately about Clement Attlee. What would Clement Attlee think of the state of our welfare state system and social housing today?

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

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  I could not put it any better myself. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is the aspiring, decent, hard-working, working-class families who need a bit of a leg up. They get social housing—a council house—and they want to do the right thing; maybe at one stage they will actually buy the house. They put a shift in: mum and dad go to work, the kids behave themselves, but next door or across the road they have a nuisance family who are completely ruining their lives. That affects their mental health and it is absolutely shocking.

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

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  The hon. Member makes some great points. Does he agree that if we can get it right and stop this horrible nuisance behaviour in social housing, there would be hardly any need for the police to come, thus saving police resources?

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

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered social housing tenants and antisocial behaviour. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Let us imagine a Government who believe that a council house should be a privilege, not a right, and that people have to be of good standing and in full-time employment to secure the keys. Let us imagine a Government who support the idea that a council house should be given on suitability rather than a need for social housing. Let us then imagine that same Government supporting the idea that people should keep their council house in good order: keep it decorated, keep it well maintained, do the garden, empty the bins, and make sure that their families do not cause trouble on the street. There was such a Government who believed in all that: the 1940s Clement Attlee Government. Clement Attlee built over 1 million homes in our great country, and all the things I have just mentioned were beliefs of the Labour Government at the time. But if we fast forward 80 years I think Captain Clem would be turning in his grave after looking at some of the council estates up and down the country, such as Carsic estate, Leamington estate, Coxmoor estate in Ashfield, and estates over in Mansfield such as Bull Farm and Ladybrook, where we have families creating mayhem and misery. People call them “feral families” in my neck of the woods. There are people who cause problems on every single council estate throughout Mansfield and Ashfield, and it is a big problem. In this place we have the power to sort that out. I did try under the last Government, but it fell on deaf ears. Before I came to this place, one of the main complaints that I got—I am sure many hon Members will agree—was about antisocial behaviour on council estates, which destroys and ruins lives. Most of us MPs, I imagine, live in nice houses; we have security, CCTV and panic alarms. Some of us live in nice big posh pads in gated communities—it is all right for us. We do not have to go home each night and put up with horrible, nuisance, criminal behaviour. Let us imagine coming home after a hard day’s work at the factory, as many people in Ashfield do, and all we can hear is swearing, verbal threats, intimidation, shouting, screaming, outrageous noises—sounds a bit like a Labour Cabinet meeting. Joking aside, that is happening in every constituency throughout our great country. Let us imagine that we put up with that behaviour when we get home from a hard day’s graft. We go to bed and the noise continues. We can hear music playing and the idiots from across the road revving their motorbikes up and down the street. We open the bedroom window in the summer and the stench of weed comes wafting in. Then we manage to get a few hours’ sleep. At 6 o’clock the alarm clock goes off and those idiots are just about going to bed, because they have been up all night creating mayhem, causing crime, and being complete nuisances. Yet when we get up in the morning to go to work—to do a shift; to do our seven days to pay our taxes—we are paying for those yobs, those idiots, to live in their social housing. We pay for their rent and benefits, and we wonder why: “Why are we doing this? Why can’t these people live by our rules? Why can’t they integrate? Why can’t they live our way of life?” Many years ago—I am going back about 30 years—Ashfield district council had a brainwave. We had one particular street on the Carsic council estate that was notorious for antisocial behaviour, crime and poor behaviour. The council put all the nuisance tenants on one street. I am not saying that was a solution, but that is what it did. So when anything kicked off with any crime, the police went straight to one street and nine times out of 10 they knew where the culprits were. Then the Labour council had a brainwave: it decided to take every single nuisance family off the street, spread them around the estate and put them on different streets. It thought that was a good idea. It thought that the good behaviour of the surrounding streets would encourage those nuisance tenants to be good tenants, to be good neighbours, to integrate and to respect their neighbours, but the opposite happened. Just a few months after, we realised that every single street on that estate was having problems with antisocial behaviour, so the council had taken the problem from one street and spread it out to every single street on the estate. It was a complete failure, and our police and councillors could do very little about it because they are not backed up by the courts. When we get a nuisance tenant in Ashfield, for example, the courts sometimes carry out a lengthy investigation. They tell the complainants, “Keep a diary,” and give them diary sheets for about two years until they are fed up to the back teeth of filling them out, and eventually they just stop complaining. In 2022, a Government survey showed that 26%—nearly one in three—of social housing tenants suffer from antisocial behaviour. That is a disgrace in this country. A 2018 report by Nottingham Trent University said that social housing tenants are 30% more likely to see antisocial behaviour, crime, drug dealing and so on.

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

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  The Minister is being very generous with his time. He talked about a situation in which somebody might torch somebody’s car, where that is a serious enough offence to lose their tenancy. This has actually happened in Ashfield, all over my constituency. We even had a case where we had a house fire by a nuisance tenant, who still was not evicted. It does not work.

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

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  It is.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

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  The Labour lot over there are banging on about playing politics with this important issue, but the last time I attended a debate on child rape gangs only one Labour Back Bencher turned up. They should hang their heads in shame. Does the Home Secretary agree that we need a specific inquiry into why young British white girls are being systematically raped by men of Pakistani heritage?

• 16 Dec 2024 · United Front Work Department · Hansard source

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  Yang Tengbo is the alleged Chinese spy who has been stalking the corridors of power in our country, rubbing shoulders with royalty, Prime Ministers and business leaders, yet his name was withheld from the great British public. Does the Minister agree that his name was withheld only to avoid embarrassment for previous Prime Ministers and for business leaders, and that that was not in the best interests of the British public?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  A few weeks ago, from that Dispatch Box, the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs said he had been congratulated by a farmer on the introduction of the inheritance tax. I think that farmer must have been a cannabis farmer, because yesterday we had 10,000 farmers on Whitehall protesting against this madcap decision. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that the decision should be thrown in the trash can, along with Rachel from accounts’ CV?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Forests in North America are being chopped down to supply wood to burn at Drax power station, at a cost of £2 million a day in subsidies, while pensioners will perish this winter. Does the Minister agree that it is time to end this net zero madness and admit that fossil fuels are “a gift of the God?”

• 6 Nov 2024 · Personal Statement · Hansard source

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  With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a personal statement, in compliance with the findings of the Independent Expert Panel in its report. I accept the findings of the panel and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in full and without reservation. On 23 November 2023, at the Derby Gate entrance, I was involved in an incident with a security guard. During the incident, I spoke to the complainant in a manner that was totally unacceptable, and which including swearing and other language that goes against the House of Commons bullying and harassment policy. I would like to apologise to the complainant and to the House for my behaviour. Our security staff do an incredible job and should always be treated with the utmost respect. An MP’s behaviour must always be of a higher standard. I give you, Mr Speaker, and the House my firm assurance that I have learnt significant lessons through this process, and a firm undertaking that such behaviour on my part will never happen again.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  The Minister is claiming credit for an increase in deportations of people with no right to be in this country. I want an approximate figure, please, of how many of the 9,400 people who have been sent back since the Labour Government came in arrived here in small boats since 2018?

• 4 Nov 2024 · Budget: Implications for Farming Communities · Hansard source

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  Sam Wilson is a farmer in Ashfield. He is not a rich man; in fact, he has not drawn a wage in the past four years. Will the Minister look me in the eyes and tell me how many farmers he has spoken to in the past few months who agree with this hare-brained scheme?

• 28 Oct 2024 · Social Housing Supply · Hansard source

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  In Ashfield, we have a big problem with nuisance tenants in social housing, who are creating mayhem and upsetting their neighbours and the neighbourhood with crime, antisocial behaviour, drug dealing and so on. Does the Secretary of State agree that these nuisance tenants should be given one chance, and if they cannot behave themselves, they should be evicted and refused access to social housing in the future?

• 23 Oct 2024 · Independent Water Commission · Hansard source

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  The use of storm overflows in places such as Skegby in Ashfield is absolutely disgusting and it pollutes my rivers, so will the Secretary of State commit to giving the water companies a deadline for ending their use?

• 23 Oct 2024 · Police Accountability · Hansard source

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  Sergeant Blake has gone through two years of living hell for simply doing his duty and keeping the British public safe. Will the Home Secretary join us at Reform UK in commending his bravery to send out a clear message to all our brave police officers that this place has their backs?

• 21 Oct 2024 · St Helena: UK Immigration · Hansard source

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  If illegal migrants arriving in St Helena are granted asylum, does that mean they can then apply to come to the UK? If so, does that not create another market for people smugglers?

• 16 Oct 2024 · Steel Industry · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making a great speech and makes a great point. Does he agree that if we are going to go down this road of net zero madness and make our steel more expensive, we should ban steel and steel products from other countries that are made in blast furnaces?