Preet Kaur Gill MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 10 Dec 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Birmingham · Hansard source

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  I know that the Minister, in summing up, will address that point, because he has been proactive in meeting the regulator and the companies tasked with installing this infrastructure. He has already given them a clear indication of where the Government will go next if they do not adhere to the code. I also know that he has met Brsk since the previous debate on the issue; I thank him for that. I was interested to read confirmation that Brsk now has guaranteed access to BT Openreach infrastructure to install broadband lines underground, so why is it not doing so? It is not its business model—that is why it is not doing it. I would be interested to learn from the Minister when that was agreed, because Brsk has not been taking advantage of that in my constituency to date. Some providers are much better at this. I want to ensure that not everybody is painted with the same brush. There are some very good providers. Last year, broadband infrastructure carried out by Pipeline Utilities on behalf of Grain Connect left Willow Avenue in my constituency with some dreadful retarmacking, as well as broken and cracked paving slabs. When I wrote to the organisation about this, it confirmed that the site was inspected, and agreed to replace and relay the broken paving slabs and tarmac. That is exactly how we should be proceeding. My experience with Brsk has been very different. Repeatedly, it will arrive in an area to erect new broadband infrastructure poles without properly consulting residents or me. We have seen that behaviour on Vernon Road, Clarendon Road, Chad Road and Stirling Road. The company’s idea of consultation appears to be to put up a notice stating its intention to put up another pole—in some cases, with little to no consultation period. Sometimes, I am told, a notice has not gone up at all, despite my best efforts and those of my constituents to raise concerns about the siting of the poles. We have been ignored. This means that the infrastructure ends up causing issues that could have been foreseen or avoided if there were proper consultation. Poles have been erected in the middle of pavements, obstructing prams, wheelchairs and people with mobility issues. There have been attempts to erect unsightly poles in front of listed buildings, instead of exploring other options. Some roads are being peppered with poles, even when we are told they are a last resort. It is time for stronger action. Clearly, Brsk is not heeding Government advice. As we all know, since the rules were changed by the previous Government in 2016, there is no requirement for planning permission for poles up to 15 metres in height, and there is no legal requirement for consultation with local residents and businesses. Good practice asks telecoms communications operators to notify the council of their intention to install a pole, as well as to advertise their development proposal within the vicinity of the site, usually via a site notice, but in reality there is no real opportunity to object to an installation. There needs to be a strategy that targets areas of need and uses existing infrastructure. We are all familiar with the fact that the Electronic Communications Code (Conditions and Restrictions) Regulations 2003 require that, among other things, operators must share apparatus where possible, and use underground rather than overground lines where they can—yet that is not happening in practice. I know roads where as many as five or six poles have been erected. It is ugly, disruptive and excessive, and it impacts on house prices. As these issues are a matter for the regulator, Ofcom, I seek the Minister’s clarification on what monitoring of these requirements is being carried out to ensure that network providers collaborate and share network infrastructure, and what action Ofcom has been taking against providers who have been found to not comply. When I wrote to Ofcom, it said its role is “limited to enforcement of the Regulations” and that, under those, “operators have significant flexibility…to put up their own poles.” I know that the Minister has been looking at a revision of the code of practice. We would be grateful if he could say more on that. I also welcome that he has stated that he reserves the right to change the law in this area. It strikes me that stronger adherence to the regulations on sharing infrastructure is one of those rare examples where stronger regulation will actually save companies and consumers money. Surely it is cheaper for companies to co-ordinate with one another over the sharing of infrastructure than to erect new poles every time they need a new node for their network. It is baffling and frustrating that providers such as Brsk have not been more proactive in anticipating the concerns of the public before Ofcom has had to get involved. Fundamentally, my constituents of Birmingham Edgbaston are asking for respect: respect to influence decisions, and to ensure that broadband infrastructure is implemented in a way that respects their local environment, heritage and public interest. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide an update on work to amend and strengthen the code of practice, so that operators respond to and engage in good faith with residents. I would also be keen to hear the outcome of his recent engagement with Brsk, having shared with him my experience of dealing with it, and to understand what more we can do to ensure that providers work together to share infrastructure, and that the requirements under the 2003 regulations are adhered to and enforced. I thank the Minister for his attention and look forward to working with him.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Birmingham · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered telegraph poles in Birmingham. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, and I welcome the Minister to his place. I want to thank him, as I know he has been working extremely hard on the issue by meeting MPs and working with the industry and regulators. The installation of telegraph poles is an issue that has been landing in the inboxes of MPs across the House and from across the country. In view of that, I hope he does not mind my summoning him to Westminster Hall to take more questions. I pay tribute to the many constituents I have worked with on the issue over the past two years, including the residents of Vernon Road, Montague Road in Edgbaston, Chad Road, Clarendon Road, Gravel Bank in Bartley Green, and Perrott’s Folly near the Waterworks tower. In particular, I pay tribute to the campaigning of my constituent Lizzy Jordan, who has left no stone unturned in trying to engage with the provider, Brsk, about which I will say more in a moment. Lizzy and our local residents have been a powerhouse. Last year, we managed to convince Brsk to move a pole in front of Perrott’s Folly and the Waterworks tower. This has a huge significance to our heritage, as the towers inspired JRR Tolkien in “The Lord of the Rings”. We have been pushing Brsk to do right by the residents in our area, but it is exhausting work. Over the past two years, I have engaged with, sent numerous emails to and met Brsk’s west midlands representatives. I joined a resident-led protest against Brsk installing poles outside Perrott’s Folly in my North Edgbaston ward. I have convened and attended a meeting between residents and Brsk about Vernon Road, Clarendon Road and Montague Road. I have written to the last Government and this on several occasions, and submitted evidence ahead of MPs’ roundtables on the issue. I have raised my concerns with Ofcom through letters, and I continue to support my constituents with casework. I think we all agree that it should not take a well-organised community campaign and an active local MP to get a provider to meet its statutory duties, and that is why I have called today’s debate. I want to say that I and the vast majority of my constituents support the roll-out of new broadband infrastructure. The importance of improving broadband speeds and access to the internet should not be underestimated. Nearly all aspects of our everyday lives —education, work, communication, entertainment—are made possible by the continuous expansion and upgrading of telecoms networks. There are significant digital dark spots in my constituency, such as in North Edgbaston and parts of Harborne, Quinton, Edgbaston and Bartley Green especially. In several areas, superfast broadband coverage is among the worst 10% of areas in the UK. According to recently published House of Commons Library data, 3.8% of lines across my constituency do not even have 10 megabits per second download speeds, with notable clusters of poor coverage in the most deprived areas, such as Bartley Green, and I have asked Brsk to focus on that area. I am not quick to forget how damaging the pandemic was for many of our children. Particularly in deprived areas with poor connections, we were unable to access remote learning. I and the vast majority of my constituents understand that the roll-out will provide a boost to our economy and set Britain up for the rest of this digital century. This infrastructure will provide opportunities and lower prices, and it can improve people’s lives, but there are ways of going about it. First, we should focus on areas that do not have coverage, not those that do. As the Minister has himself acknowledged, while the majority of providers are trying to do right by local people by making efforts to consult and not put up poles, some providers in my constituency such as Brsk have occasionally behaved like cowboys by not using existing infrastructure, failing to consult residents with the adequate 28 days’ notice, failing to observe the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 requirements to ensure that pathways are clear and accessible until they are told to do so, failing to secure the right council permits for works, and putting up poles everywhere as the only means to address coverage. Given that Brsk’s business is communications, it is ironic how poor it has been at communicating with its stakeholders. The crux of the issue is that such companies are not exploring alternatives to poles or using existing infrastructure when they can. To give some of many examples—

• 10 Dec 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Birmingham · Hansard source

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  The crux of the issue is that these companies are not exploring alternatives to poles or using existing infrastructure when they can. I will give some of many examples. Freedom of information requests to our local council revealed that Brsk did not need to put up poles on Clarendon Road in my constituency, because it could have utilised existing ducts—but it did so anyway, ignoring that fact. Vernon Road is another example; BT installed full-fibre to St Paul’s school for girls at that location without any requirement for poles, yet a constituent came to my surgery on Friday to tell me that another pole had gone up, with a notice on the council’s planning portal appearing only after the pole had been erected. That is even after the Minister’s meeting with Brsk. I have met Brsk and exchanged exhaustive correspondence on these issues. What has struck me in my dealings with the firm is the lack of policy or strategy for work in my constituency. Poles are supposed to be a last resort, but even where they are not needed, like on Vernon Road, several go up anyway. There are now four on that road. Frequently, when issues are raised, they are not listened to. I asked Brsk for a map of where it is planning to roll out poles in my constituency, and it could not give me one. There is either a plan that it will not share or there really is no strategic focus on where the infrastructure is needed. My constituents have had similar experiences. An elderly constituent wrote to me earlier this year, deeply worried that a Brsk telegraph pole on an adjoining road, installed less than a metre from her back garden fence, was so close that it could easily provide burglars with access to her property. She told me she lives in perpetual fear that her house could be broken into. More importantly, that was avoidable. Had Brsk simply made an effort to engage first with residents about changes in their community, she would not have been left in that situation.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Birmingham · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for that important point about the business model. There are alternative ways to implement the infrastructure. In areas like his, this activity does not respect the environment, heritage or planning laws, and we end up with poles erected. Some of them do not even have any lines going through them, which just goes to show that the existing infrastructure meant there was no need for that, but, as he says, it is clearly quite a lucrative business model to sell on the new infrastructure.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Public Body Ethnicity Data (Inclusion of Jewish and Sikh Categories) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that, where a public body collects data about ethnicity for the purpose of delivering public services, it must include specific “Sikh” and “Jewish” categories as options for a person’s ethnic group; and for connected purposes. Jews and Sikhs are in the unique position of being considered both ethnic and religious groups under the Equality Act 2010. Sikhs and Jews have been legally recognised as ethnic groups for over 40 years, since the Mandla v . Dowell Lee case in 1983. The Bill would address a fundamental absurdity in the fight against discrimination and inequality, which is that we have not collected ethnicity data on Sikhs and Jews since laws on racial discrimination were first introduced nearly 60 years ago. The Women and Equalities Committee was told in February 2018 that the Government’s race disparity audit had identified around 340 datasets across Government, but found no data on Sikhs. The only data collected on Sikhs and Jews in more recent years is religious data. However, the quality of data collected by public bodies on religion, as opposed to ethnicity, is poor, patchy and incomplete. Religion data is never used by public bodies to make decisions for the purposes of delivering public services. This makes both Jews and Sikhs invisible to policymakers, ignoring the inequality and discrimination that both groups face. That is why a specific Jewish and Sikh ethnic category is needed, and that is what this Bill will create. This is a campaign to end the discrimination that both communities face. I campaigned for a Sikh and Jewish ethnicity tick box to be included in the 2021 census, because we know that for over 30 years, public bodies have been instructed to use the census’s ethnic groups questions to design and deliver services in compliance with equalities legislation. Given that we are talking about protected characteristics, we would expect public bodies to be instructed to routinely collect information on Sikhs and Jews, but they are not. The then Minister with responsibility for equalities, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), wrote this to me last year: “public bodies and decision-makers who think that their decisions may affect discrimination, harassment, or victimisation of Sikhs…should ensure that their compliance with the duty includes considerations of Sikh ethnicity.” However, they do not, because people incorrectly argue, and assume, that data collected on religion is a suitable substitute. Those people do not understand existing practices. Religion data is rarely collected to a good standard. It excludes non-practising Sikhs and Jews, and it is not used by public bodies to monitor and reduce inequalities or provide public services. The latter is key to this argument, because Sikhs and Jews are missing from whole swathes of public data—on education, housing, crime, health, criminal justice, the public sector workforce and the ethnicity pay gap. The Bill would allow public bodies to start systematically collecting data on Sikhs and Jews to address the discrimination and inequalities that they face, which is especially relevant as the Government have made a commitment to requiring ethnicity pay gap reporting. In presenting this Bill, I have the support of a wide range of community organisations, including the Sikh Council, 112 UK gurdwaras and organisations, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Antisemitism Policy Trust and the Community Security Trust. I would like to provide the House with a few examples of why this Bill is so important. The pandemic shone a harsh light on the inequalities between different ethnic groups. Many experts in public health now accept that we were too slow to recognise that some ethnic groups were dying at a far higher rate than others. The Office for National Statistics belatedly started analysing covid-related deaths data by religious group where data was available, a short-term exercise that has since been discontinued. It found that Sikhs died disproportionately from covid even after adjusting for region, population density, area deprivation, household composition, socioeconomic status and a range of other economic indicators. Not only that, but it showed that Sikhs were affected at a very different rate from other predominantly south Asian groups, meaning that analysis using the existing ethnic minority categories would fail to capture any of these inequalities. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has also recognised these arguments. British Jews died at almost twice the rate of the rest of the population, as there is a higher prevalence of certain genetic conditions among Jewish people—for example, of breast cancer in Ashkenazi Jewish women. Collecting better data will help public services to profile and respond to the community better. To address health inequalities, we need to learn from the pandemic, and we need to collect accurate data to ensure better outcomes for both these communities, based on evidence. To give just one example that highlights the absurdity of this system, NHS Blood and Transplant does not collect data on Sikh organ donors or Sikhs requiring an organ transplant, despite the fact that for more than a decade, there has been a policy of encouraging more Sikhs to become donors. NHS Blood and Transplant does not gather the single most important data point that would allow us to improve sign-up rates among this under-represented group. It is shocking. As Amanda Bowman, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, wrote last year: “Imagine you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room and have been asked to fill out a form which, among other questions, asks for your ethnicity…So which box do I tick?” As David Baddiel, the author of “Jews Don’t Count”, has said: “It is othering and alienating” that Jews do not have a distinct ethnic box to reflect their race. Since 7 October, the British Jewish community has faced an appalling rise in antisemitic hate attacks. While the Home Office collects data on religiously motivated antisemitic hate crimes, it does not do so on racially aggravated antisemitism. That is despite instances of racial hate crime outnumbering instances of religiously aggravated hate crime by 10 to one. There is a serious risk that Jewish hate crimes are being undercounted by the Home Office because it does not have its own Jewish ethnic category. In the first half of this year, the Community Security Trust found that the majority of antisemitic incidents that it recorded consisted of “anti-Jewish discourse” linking the victim “to Israel, Palestine, the Hamas terror attack or the subsequent war.” According to Crown Prosecution Service prosecution guidance, hate targeting someone’s real or perceived nationality or national origins, such as a link to Israel, would indicate a racially, not religiously, aggravated offence. The same goes for Sikhs, as is documented in the all-party group on British Sikhs report on anti-Sikh hate. Sikhs are the most visible minority in Britain, yet we do not collect data on racist anti-Sikh hate. The last Government’s hate crime action plan effectively ignored Sikh hate, or the need to define anti-Sikh hate. Herein lies the fundamental problem with focusing on data relating to religion, rather than ethnicity, when it comes to Sikhs and Jews. Religion is not a mandatory field in crime reporting standards that the Home Office sets for police forces, apart from in religiously aggravated hate crime cases. However, police forces are required to record ethnicity, or use ethnic appearance codes that relate to census categories that do not include Sikhs and Jews, despite their recognition in the Equality Act 2010. His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services has produced at least 30 reports since 2017 criticising police forces for the poor recording of data on the ethnicity of victims of crime. Let me give a final example. In October, the chief executive of the UK Jewish film festival warned of the “erasure of British-Jewish culture from national cultural life” by arts bodies, which are of course largely publicly funded. Benjamin Till, a composer who has been nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award, told the Jewish Chronicle that Arts Council England “doesn’t allow Jewish people to identify as anything other than a religion”. He insists that Arts Council England “must accept that Jewishness is a cultural, and…an ethnic identity.” As the all-party group on British Sikhs and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have warned, even on its own merits, using religious questions to capture data on our communities will increasingly become irrelevant. The percentage of Sikhs and Jews who identify with their ethnic group but do not practise their religion is growing. As Britain becomes increasingly secular, we are failing to recognise the other ways in which British Sikhs and Jews face discrimination. Ethnicity data can capture that in ways that religion data does not. As the Board of Deputies of British Jews has said: “We are concerned that until this situation is rectified, many Jewish citizens will not feel fully counted.” A former cabinet member for public health and protection on Sandwell council says that Sikhs and Jews are forgotten when it comes to the design of services because there is no ethnicity data on Jews and Sikhs to inform those decisions. In the rare cases where we do have some data, it exposes glaring inequalities. In 2018, 5.3% of deaths of homeless people in London were of Sikhs, who are 1.3% of London’s general population; and 27% of Sikhs in the UK report that someone in their family has an alcohol addiction. Good quality data saves lives. In the past few years, the Office for National Statistics has come to acknowledge the need to ensure that the ethnicity standard reflects the diversity of the UK population. That surely means it is time to address the injustice facing Sikh and Jewish people. Whatever the future of ethnicity data collection, we must routinely be included in our own right. If we consider our legal status as ethnic groups, we should be included. If we consider the size of our populations, we should be included. If we consider our contribution to Great Britain and society, we should be included. If we consider the specific forms of discrimination and the inequalities we face, we should be included. Our communities are asking for fairness and justice and to be counted as ethnic groups, given that we have been recognised as such in law for more than 40 years. As David Baddiel has argued, “identifying antisemitism as religious intolerance, rather than racism, downgrades its importance, which is what leads to Jews not counting.” The same goes for Sikhs, and it is not just a rhetorical point; it is literally the case that regarding Sikhs and Jews as a religious category means we are not counted. We are not counted when we fill in a form in an NHS waiting room, we are not counted in the census and local councils do not count us in the data they use to monitor and deliver services. It is high time that changed, so I urge Members across the House to allow this Bill to progress today. It is high time that public bodies ended this injustice, and as legislators we must put right this wrong and support them in doing that. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Preet Kaur Gill, Ben Coleman, Jas Athwal, Jon Pearce, David Pinto-Duschinsky, Joani Reid and Alex Sobel present the Bill. Preet Kaur Gill accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the first time; to be read a Second time on Friday 7 March 2025, and to be printed (Bill 142).

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  It is my great pleasure to speak in this debate responding to the first Labour Budget in 14 years, delivered by the first ever female Chancellor of the Exchequer. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on making history today. In July, the country elected Labour to fix the foundations of our country and put us on a path towards national renewal, and that is what this Budget does. The Chancellor is not ducking the big decisions or slapping sticking plasters on the problems; instead, she is fronting up to the challenges and taking long-term decisions in the interests of Britain. My constituents voted for change, and with this Budget they will see a Government who are on their side—on the side of working people—pulling up their sleeves to deliver the change that they voted for. I was delighted to see the Prime Minister visit Birmingham earlier this week, where he set out his desire to put our city at the centre of the Government’s plan for growth. Growing our economy is the only sustainable way in which to fund the public services on which we all rely. I thank the Chancellor for the many excellent announcements in her speech. We have already heard a lot of bluster from the Opposition, playing silly games with semantics over the definition of a working person, but it could not be clearer whose side this Government are on. May I remind Conservative Members that the last Parliament was the first in modern history in which living standards fell? They left an economy of high taxes, low growth and low wages. Public services are on the floor, and we have had a “pay more, get less” doom loop of stagnation and decline. Under the Conservatives, the very basics of what one needs to live a good life—a safe and affordable place to live, money in one’s pocket, and the security of strong public services that are there when needed—were all ripped away. First, austerity stripped more than £1 billion from Birmingham over a decade. Then we had the Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal. Finally, they crashed the economy under Liz Truss. The Tory record left us with slow economic growth, nearly 8 million people stuck on NHS waiting lists, a housing crisis, with 24,000 people on Birmingham’s housing register, crumbling schools and hospitals, stagnant wages, rising living costs, and limited job growth, with young people and graduates facing fewer employment opportunities for the jobs of the future. Worse still, under the last Government, people lost faith in the fundamental promise of this country that the next generation should do better than the last. They lost trust that politicians were able to take tough decisions for the long term, and to put the country before their own political skins. The “here today, gone tomorrow” culture of broken promises damaged people’s faith in politics, but with this budget we can begin the patient work of rebuilding our country, because we have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who understand that we were elected to serve. The people of our great country finally have a Government who are prepared to take tough decisions and get on with the job of cleaning up the mess left by the Conservative party. We will invest in our NHS after 14 years of decline. We will make fairer choices on tax, spending and welfare. We will protect working people by not increasing national insurance, the basic, higher and additional rates of income tax, or VAT, just as we promised. We brought a record-breaking £63 billion of private investment into Britain at our international investment summit this month. That is a vote of confidence in this Government. We have £500 million of new investment in battery storage, which will create the jobs of the future in Birmingham. Today, the Chancellor has confirmed a change to the fiscal rules to break the low-investment, low-growth cycle under the previous Government. That is a decision to secure Britain’s long-term future. It will put muscle behind the Government’s industrial strategy so that we can invest in the industries of the future in partnership with the private sector, and create revenue to fund the public services that our constituents expect and deserve. The question has always been whether to invest or decline. The Conservatives can choose decline, but we choose investment. The truth is that the average person in the west midlands is £4,320 poorer than they would have been had the economy grown since 2010 at the same rate it did under the last Labour Government. That is why I heartily welcome the Chancellor’s decision to increase the national minimum wage, which provides a £1,400 boost to full-time equivalent pay for over 45,000 people in Birmingham alone. University Hospitals Birmingham, which is in my constituency, is the largest trust in the country, so I thank the Chancellor for announcing funding to support the delivery of 2 million extra NHS operations, scans and appointments a year in order to cut waiting lists across England. I cannot describe how much that means to not just NHS staff, whose morale has been ground into a fine dust over the last 14 years, but people throughout my constituency. Some of my constituents have died while waiting for treatment, and I know of one child who lost her sight while waiting for an appointment. A healthy economy depends on the health of the country. Under the last Government, nearly 3 million working-age people were out of work or long-term sick—a British record. That is why I am pleased to see the announcement of £240 million for local services, to help people back into work. Skills England will map the jobs that are needed and the pathways to opportunities. Some £30 million will be spent on primary school breakfast clubs, which will help children to get a nutritious start to their day and take the pressure off parents who want to get out to work. The confirmation of £1.8 billion to support the expansion of Government-funded childcare is extremely good news for hundreds of young families in my constituency, especially given that more than half of our children’s centres in Birmingham were closed under the Tories. Families will be far better off with Labour. I appreciate that the Chancellor has had to make some extremely tough choices in this Budget to get the public finances back in order. The £22 billion black hole is the tip of the iceberg after the last 14 years, but it is no less appalling. The OBR has today revealed an absolutely shocking litany of mismanagement and failure, including spending the reserves three times over, wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on the Rwanda gimmick and billions on asylum hotels, propping up failing train companies, and unfunded spending commitments. So will the Conservatives please spare us some of their faux outrage about tax? They raised the tax burden to its highest level since the second world war, they knew full well that public services had to be paid for and they hid the £22 billion black hole from the public. How did they expect to pay for that? They should have some shame, frankly. This Government are fixing the Conservatives’ mess and protecting working people’s payslips as they do it. Our announcements today will make a difference. We are investing billions to get Britain building, making business rates fairer to protect our high streets, giving certainty to business on tax, supporting frontline policing levels, providing funding to local government and £1 billion for SEND provision, protecting the pension triple lock and finding money for potholes—I could go on. Some things will of course take time, but these decisions are the reason we can have confidence that the Britain we are building will be built on something solid, not on sand. With this Budget, this Government have returned stability to our economy. It has reinforced the role of the OBR, and it will make sure that we can never, ever again have a repeat of the reckless mini-Budget that sent mortgages through the roof. We are backing business by releasing investment in sectors with potential to grow, including rail and road, green technology, green hydrogen and gigafactories. We are investing in our public services, including our NHS, early years and affordable housing, to ensure that we are ready to face the challenges of the next decade in an increasingly uncertain world. This is a Budget to deliver on the promise of change. It is a Budget that will fix the foundations of our economy, invest in our future, get the NHS back on its feet and rebuild Britain.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Planning Permission · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and it is much needed. As he said, many of our constituents already have excellent broadband, so telegraph poles should be strategically prioritised in rural areas. In one of my streets alone, there are five poles. I have previously asked the Government how many poles they think is acceptable. Does he agree that this is not the way that providers should behave?

• 17 Oct 2024 · Telegraph Poles: Planning Permission · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 10 Sept 2024 · Exempt Supported Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for saying that, because I was going to ask her to touch on the national minimum standards. Can she give us a timeline? My worry is that the funding is ending in March 2025 and councils do not have the operating guidelines they need. There are also all the issues she raised in terms of making sure that councils understand how many units they have—let us not forget that Birmingham has the most units in the whole country, which is why I was encouraged that the previous Government included it in the pilot. I think the pilot has produced an evidence base showing why this issue is important: we will save money in the long run, whereas at the moment the taxpayer is almost paying twice. Unless the council intervenes and closes some of these properties, where support is not being provided, it will continue to be extracted from wider council services, which these providers are not paying into. Local government is no doubt listening to this debate, so I urge the Minister to give us a clear indication of what the timeline looks like.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Exempt Supported Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered exempt supported accommodation. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I am pleased to have secured this debate on exempt supported accommodation. I start with thanks to a number of people with whom I have worked during the course of this campaign: Jane Haynes at Birmingham Live , Birmingham City Council, the Local Government Association, the HMO Action Group in Birmingham, my local police, and the many residents I have worked with over the years, including my constituents on Carisbrooke Road and Fountain Road. Since my election in 2017, issues with exempt supported accommodation has been a long-running problem in parts of my Birmingham Edgbaston constituency. I have called this debate because, after years of inaction and stalled progress under the previous Government, I am keen now to see fit-for-purpose regulations introduced to finally deal with this issue. Ministers have been left with no shortage of housing challenges by the previous Administration, whether it is the failure to build enough houses, homelessness, cladding removal or years of inaction on renters’ rights. Exempt accommodation reform should have pride of place among the new Government’s packed agenda, because there is a great deal on the line for vulnerable residents in communities such as mine. As I am sure the Minister knows, Birmingham has the most units of non-commissioned exempt accommodation in the country, with nearly 28,000 exempt claims across more than 9,000 properties. Exempt accommodation is a type of supported accommodation often used for people with very few housing options, such as prison leavers, rough sleepers, those experiencing substance misuse issues, and so on. It is exempt from the local housing allowance cap because an element of care, support and supervision is supposed to be provided to claimants—although often it is not. As a result, organisations that provide this type of accommodation can charge very high rates, and that has unfortunately led to unscrupulous providers coming into the market. It has had the unintended consequence of distorting the local housing market in Birmingham, given the buying up of family homes to be converted into exempt provision. Quality concerns are rife among the properties, and in recent years several of the city’s largest providers have been issued regulatory notices by the Regulator of Social Housing. Over the past few years, I have worked closely with providers, residents, the police and community groups with on-the-ground experience to get to the bottom of why the sector has almost trebled in our city since 2018, and why so much of the accommodation is substandard and poorly managed. The causes are multifaceted and complex, but it is the view of me and my constituents that the new regulations to be introduced by the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 are well overdue. My closest experience of the sector was in 2021, working with the council, police and community to shut down Saif Lodge in my constituency, which had become infamous in the area as an epicentre of crime. It was the first case in the country of an exempt property being shut down, after residents and I presented extensive evidence of incidents of prostitution, drug dealing, aggression and other antisocial behaviour. We found vulnerable residents with substance abuse and mental health issues being let down by filthy, cramped, poor-quality accommodation, and a dire lack of support. I had been aware of some of the issues of Saif Lodge since I was elected, but after my constituents alerted me to the shocking rise in crime surrounding the property I carried out a spot check with the police to see for myself what was actually happening. I was shocked by what I found: housed there were 25 men and women, including ex-offenders, with several issues ranging from addiction and substance misuse to mental health problems. There was just one solitary support worker on duty, who told me that the hostel was manned only on weekdays, with residents otherwise left to their own devices. The conditions were utterly substandard: cold, filthy and cramped. The downstairs toilet was broken, flooded and left unfixed; the smell was hair-raising. Access to the property was via a code that was regularly shared with strangers who were always in and out. The communal spaces were in a state. It is no wonder that residents were frequently found spilling out and loitering outside. It was not a place where any of us could happily live, let alone get a life back on track following a crisis. As part of the campaign, I set up an exempt campaign group with residents, and conducted a number of spot checks of such properties in my constituency. Through that work, and working with the council, MPs, providers and community groups across Birmingham, I got to see up close how poor much of the provision can be across my constituency and Birmingham city. In the case of Saif Lodge, we were successful in securing an order for it to be shut down. Good, we might think—but substantial time and resources went into the campaign. It took more than a year to see it through, and it is only one example among many across Birmingham that have been letting people down. That is why councils and the police need powers to address the ongoing concerns in the exempt sector. Saif Lodge was a symptom—a feature of the system, not a bug. It is telling that since Saif Lodge was boarded up it has been found to have been turned into a cannabis farm housing marijuana with a street value stretching into the hundreds of millions of pounds. The owners even applied to change the use of the property to provide support for women and children. Clearly, they should never be allowed to provide any supported accommodation. I have always contended that organised crime has been attracted to the sector, and this situation has reinforced my suspicions that some people are targeting it for all the wrong reasons. With the regulations Parliament agreed to last year, that must change. In the previous Parliament I campaigned strongly for a new regulatory regime to be introduced to clamp down on poor-quality exempt provision. That regime should include the introduction of minimum standards of support; changes to housing benefit regulations to include a definition of the minimum standards of care, support and supervision; and new powers for local authorities to manage their local supported housing market better and ensure that rogue landlords cannot exploit the system. I was pleased to see many of my recommendations in the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee’s excellent report on this issue. Some were subsequently translated into law in the Support Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which requires local authorities to review and develop strategies to deal with exempt accommodation in their areas. It also gives the Secretary of State power to introduce national support standards and consider a new planning use class for exempt provision, and give councils powers to create local licensing schemes. It is an important piece of legislation to clamp down on those private providers that have opened large buildings that purport to provide support for people but are at best accommodation, and at worst dangerous places to live for the vulnerable people placed there. A year since the Act was passed with cross-party support, we still do not have the operating regulations or even the consultation promised by the previous Government. A consultation on the regulations was first promised in early 2024; it was delayed to March, and then delayed again by the general election. I would therefore be grateful to the Minister if she would set out the new timelines for when she intends to begin consultation and lay the new regulations. After the previous Government’s failure to get on with this matter, I know that councils will be listening closely to this debate, seeking more clarity on what to expect over the coming year. The delays have left councils with few means to challenge poor providers other than through housing benefit claims, which are of course problematic for residents. They have also left councils that are in receipt of funding through the supported housing improvement programme facing a cliff edge in support. With funding due to end in March 2025, a gap in funding between SHIP funding and new burdens funding for the Act could mean that many councils have to let go of skilled staff members, which I am sure the Minister would agree would be completely unsatisfactory. Birmingham city council used its funding for a programme of inspections of exempt accommodation in the city, and what it found is genuinely shocking. It discovered more than 10,000 category 1 and 2 health and safety hazards in exempt properties since 2020, 97% of which have now been removed. In that time, thousands of support plan reviews have been completed and overpaid housing benefit of more than £7.23 million has been reclaimed. I am sure the Minister will agree that the SHIP funding has been a valuable investment, and I seek her reassurance that it will continue while we await the new regulations. What is most revealing is what the inspections programme has revealed about the state of the sector and why regulation is sorely needed. Through its work, the council has seen an increase in social issues around community safety and poor-quality support. It decommissioned 73 properties and reviewed over 2,000 support plans for adult social care. Some 88 adult safeguarding reviews were initiated, and more than 2,600 claims were cancelled due to the care, support or supervision failing to meet the council’s more-than-minimal threshold. That really is saying something considering how weakly it is defined through the so-called more-than-minimal test. I remember that when I visited Saif Lodge I talked to the security guard and asked whether they were the support worker. They were not, but if a resident asked them for support, they said they would simply make a phone call to refer the resident or signpost them to a service. That was their version of care, support and supervision. That is what the uncapped housing benefit was paying for while the property’s owners raked in the profit. In addition, the council states that, from inspections, it has logged thousands of community safety incidents connected to such properties. There have been more than 1,700 investigations, leading to 544 evictions and 48 arrests. A key concern of mine is how people are referred to and placed in the properties. Members can imagine the chaos when it comes to assessing compatible residents and placing them together. Indeed, many residents are not properly assessed at all. I have heard cases of vulnerable women being put with men who have serious issues, and alarming cases of women being assaulted in the properties. That is why the regulations are so important: clear operating guidelines are needed for councils now. Despite the good work done through the supported housing improvement programme, for which I give the previous Government credit, until we have regulations councils will remain unequipped to enforce the minimum standards of care, support and supervision that vulnerable residents need and deserve. In turn, I have no doubt that regulation will improve the levels of antisocial behaviour and other forms of crime that have sprung up around some of the exempt provision in my constituency and caused considerable grief for the residents of Fountain Road, Gillott Road and other roads leading off Hagley Road. I think everyone in the supported housing sector, councils and my constituents will welcome clarity from the Minister. Let me move on to some specific questions. I remember a meeting in 2022 at which Government officials remarked that they were too light on data to get on with reform at that point. I found that a startling admission, and I sincerely hope it is not the case now. The Government previously committed to improving the data that they collect on the sector; will the Minister provide an update on that work? Will she also update us on the progress she has made on developing national support standards, including in respect of what constitutes a minimal level of care, support and supervision? It is vital that such regulations are put on the statute book. I am sure the Minister is aware that, in the absence of the promised regulations due to the aforementioned delayed, some councils are pre-emptively setting their own standards. From their point of view, they will prepare the sector for the introduction of new standards, but from the supported sector’s perspective, they risk creating policy inconsistency that may have negative consequences for smaller providers that are otherwise doing a very good job. Does the Minister agree that the repeated delays to the consultation on and development of the regulations promised by the previous Government have created a lot of uncertainty, which is ultimately unhelpful to the good providers of supported housing in the sector and the residents they protect? It is welcome that Birmingham city council has its own quality standards scheme, but without regulations it can only be voluntary, and thus only 45% of providers currently engage with it. That is a huge challenge to all of us who want to drive up standards in the sector and do not want a continuation of the race to the bottom that we have seen over the past 14 years. I seek the Minister’s view on creating a new planning use class for exempt accommodation, to help councils to identify exempt provision at an earlier stage and therefore better manage it in parts of the city where exempt accommodation is already saturated. That is part of the problem with crime hotspots in my patch, which have an incredibly negative impact on my constituents who live in them. I am sure the Minister agrees that the Government’s commitment to restore community policing will help in that respect. My constituents know keenly the value of a local officer who knows the community. We need to see more of our officers on our streets. New regulations to tackle poor provision in the exempt accommodation sector are desperately overdue. Birmingham now has an excess of 28,000 exempt units, and the number continues to grow. Since reforms to the supported housing system were shelved in 2018, the exempt accommodation sector has ballooned. A freedom of information request from Crisis revealed a 62% increased from 2016 to 2021, so the longer we delay, the greater the challenge when new regulation inevitably comes. Over the past decade, too many bad landlords have been getting into the sector for precisely the wrong reasons. They have exploited under-regulation, a Conservative housing crisis and an epidemic of unmet need after years of council cuts. There are fantastic providers that also operate in Birmingham that try to do the right thing, but they are being undermined by those seeking to profiteer and short-change vulnerable people in their care. That is bad for the supported housing sector as a whole. My one ask of the Minister today is for her to make sure that the new Government get on with the urgent task of reform after the previous Government dithered and delayed, and to ask whether she can set out a refreshed timeline today. Survivors of domestic violence, prison leavers, care leavers and people with mental health and substance abuse issues deserve a supported housing system that supports their transition to happier, more independent lives; our communities in Birmingham deserve neighbourhoods that are peaceful and safe, not epicentres of antisocial behaviour; and the taxpayer deserves to know that their money is going to support people who need it and is not lining the pockets of rogue landlords. I thank the Minister in advance for her response to the debate.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Exempt Supported Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I thank the Opposition spokespersons —the hon. Members for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) and for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) —for their very thoughtful contributions in this debate. It is really good to see consensus on the introduction of these regulations and I hope we can work together to get this right. There was a lot of cross-party consensus and joining-up previously in understanding both the issue within the exempt provision and what is really required. Fundamentally, it is about how this can be implemented in practice by councils—that is where the difference is going to be felt. I am really encouraged by the Minister’s response and I hope that we can keep in close contact following this debate on the progress that the new Government are making on this issue. I really look forward to her statement in the House on the timeline and the commitments. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) rightly included a number of recommendations in the Bill he brought to the House, and I am sure that local government will want to voice other things they are finding more widely. I thought that Birmingham’s response was quite telling on both the SHIP funding and being able to have a team that can go out and do the inspections—I know the Minister has talked about that more broadly. The findings are concerning—the very fact that the council has been able to recoup £7.23 million in housing benefit overpayments makes it clear that much more joining-up is needed between the DWP and housing. We must be good at how we do that, how we have the advisory board there to support some of the thinking and how we implement that practically. There are councils that do this better, but I think simply the size of Birmingham is the challenge. It is sad and shocking that a lot of people who cannot be placed elsewhere are being placed in Birmingham. They are vulnerable people and, even more worryingly, they do not have local links, which makes a difference to the level of exploitation—someone’s level of vulnerability increases as a result. We have to think about where we place people, especially if they already have good links in areas that they know and with services that they know. Otherwise, we are just shifting the problem from one place to another, exacerbating the issue of resources and services in Birmingham more broadly. The Minister is welcome to visit Birmingham city council and our city to see some of the exempt accommodation at first hand. I think that that would help her to get a sense of what the new regulations will need to look like. She could meet the organisations. As she has mentioned, there are lots of good providers and good provision. It is important to get the balance right. Equally, lots of providers are exploiting the situation. The very fact that the Regulator of Social Housing has had to intervene tells us the state of the situation. This is about protecting the small providers. No one wants to see endless bureaucracy; however, regulations are important. We already have HMO licensing schemes, for example, and we are able to manage and ensure that certain areas do not become saturated, which can simply blight them. Residential accommodation in residential streets should be exactly that—somewhere people feel safe and secure, and not wondering who lives next door, worried about the level of antisocial behaviour or crime, which does spill out on to the streets. That is exactly what my constituents had to deal with. It should not have taken more than a year and a half of my resource, and the residents, the council and the police working together to build the case and the evidence to take the cases to court. A lot of the providers can pay for good legal advice and representation, and councils just do not have the capacity to be challenged constantly when they are trying to put in place necessary measures. Only through reform can we create a system that is better for housing benefit claimants, residents and our communities alike. That is what we want to see change. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered exempt supported accommodation.