Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“I think that the Minister was trying to intervene on an intervention. I am glad to see that he at least has some interest in the subject. I shall make a little progress, and then I will take an intervention from him. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not think we are being paranoid about this. What concerns us is that a whole industry has developed on a defective basis over time, and has not been corrected: it continues to function as an industry and to make profits. No one is saying that we are going to wipe the slate clean overnight, but a lot of people have a lot to hide, and I therefore think it particularly important for the Government—who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) said, may have something to hide as well—to be rigorous in shaking this out.”
“I am grateful for that “intervention”. I think that the Minister was using me as a kind of Ouija board to communicate with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North, but that is fine.”
“Returning to the central point, what we all want is the Government to take a comprehensive view of these matters in respect of both existing and new buildings. My understanding is that only a selective number of existing buildings are covered, based on height, use and the type of material used. I ask the Minister to confirm how far their scrutiny goes at the moment, and explain why he thinks it should not go further. The Government did make announcements on new buildings back in October; they talked about high-rise residential buildings, including schools, hospitals, student accommodation and care homes. That excludes certain types of building—such as office buildings, as has been said—and we cannot see why that is the case.”
“I will wait to hear the Minister’s response on that. There are other issues that go beyond fire safety. Some Members took the opportunity to raise them during yesterday’s urgent question, and the Minister commented yesterday that he was quite in favour of ’60s and ’70s buildings coming down per se—a radical solution, which was picked up by Inside Housing . I would give a qualified welcome to that: yes, if they are unsafe, unsuitable or not performing their function, but given the extraordinary housing shortage that this Government have presided over, perhaps the Minister should insist that we get rather more going up than coming down.”
“That is why I say this is a very partial solution. If the Government do not like the LGA, perhaps they should listen to the Association of British Insurers. In all my experience in the time that I have been here, the Government have been the greatest friends of the insurance industry, and that has been mutual, but in the briefing for this debate the ABI says that it “remains concerned over the limitations of the MHCLG ban, including the exclusion of buildings lower than 18m and limiting the ban to only care homes, hospitals and student accommodation. It makes no sense that someone can live in a high-rise residential building to which the ban applied but commute to work every day in an office block covered in combustible material.” That is just common sense, but it comes from an industry body.”
“Absolutely; and if the Minister did not like us quoting commercial companies in this way, perhaps he will listen to the Local Government Association. It continues to strongly urge the Government to ban the use of any combustible materials, including cladding panels, insulation and other materials, on the external walls of high-rise and high-risk buildings—including all hospitals, care homes, schools both residential and non-residential, and offices—of below, as well as above, 18 metres in height. That reinforces my hon. Friend’s point. I understand that the Government are considering height again, but hopefully they will do that quite quickly and come to the conclusion that it is a somewhat arbitrary determinant, because there are other factors, such as means of escape, that can control how easily buildings can be evacuated.”
“On fire safety, the Government have a lot more to say and a lot more action to take, and I hope that the Minister will go some way towards doing that this afternoon by telling us what the Government’s intentions are now in relation to existing cladding systems and any future new buildings, of whatever type.”
“It is about dealing with the system-built blocks of which Ronan Point was an example. Some local authorities, including my own, are dealing with these matters very responsibly. I absolutely agree that residents need to be given certainty, so it is ironic that within a few minutes’ walk of those blocks that were being discussed yesterday there are two estates—the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates—that have been under threat of demolition because of the actions taken by the previous Conservative council, in collusion with the regime at City Hall when the Minister was there. So we can all learn lessons from this.”
“I will quote one more thing that the Minister said yesterday. He said in response to the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands): “It can be extremely debilitating, concerning and worrying for any resident to have the future of their home mired in uncertainty. I hope that he gets the clarity that his residents need.” —[ Official Report , 22 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 137.] He was responding to the right hon. Gentleman about a separate issue, which is being dealt with by the same local authority, Hammersmith and Fulham. I understand that that authority is being extremely responsible in relation to fire safety generally and also in relation to the specific blocks that were mentioned there. Indeed, there is a council meeting tonight to discuss that.”
“I will not be tempted into a wider debate, except to say to the Minister that it depends very much on the circumstances. Sometimes it is a matter of choice, and many high-rise buildings offer very good-quality accommodation and have good space standards. The space standards of the 1960s and 1970s often gave people very good, large accommodation, so I think he needs to be careful before wishing to be an iconoclast in quite the way that he does. I find it deeply troubling that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North has said, there are still probably hundreds of thousands of people around the country living with insecurity. Nobody wants to exacerbate that unnecessarily. The Government must be clear and authoritative in the way that they present their plans to deal with the risks that Grenfell so tragically exposed.”
“Will the Minister address one specific point? We have seen the conversion of a lot of office buildings for residential use, which the Government have been promoting for some time under the permitted development rules. A lot of these conversions are of poor quality and, frankly, the buildings are unsuitable for residential use, but they have been converted anyway. I understand that, if that happens in future, the building regulations will subject converted buildings to the same requirements as new builds, but what about those that have already been converted? Will the Minister look into that specific issue in relation to cladding?”
“In the past year, 186 Palestinian civilians have been killed on the Gaza border and no Israelis. More than 23,000 Palestinian civilians and 16 Israelis have been injured. Should not the focus be on ending the blockade of Gaza and, indeed, the occupation that has gone on since 1987?”
“It is quite extraordinary that the Minister has just said that testing on non-ACM-clad buildings is about to start. There are around 340 high-rise buildings clad with non-ACM combustible materials, and more than 1,000 high-risk buildings. Will he guarantee, now, that those buildings—like Lakanal House, where six people died 10 years ago—will all be tested and treated in the same way as ACM-clad buildings?”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the level of cuts is so extreme that very dramatic steps are being taken? Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College is one of the biggest in the country, but it has cut its A-levels completely. It has also cut back on English for speakers of other languages, because funding has not been available. It is now redeveloping its sites to release land, just to keep itself going. How can we plan for the future of FE, when there is so much uncertainty and so little finance available?”
“Perhaps the Government’s worst betrayal is the 80% cut—100% under the former London Mayor—to funding for social housing when 800,000 people are on waiting lists. My local council and the Mayor of London are doing the best they can to alleviate the conditions I have described, but for real change we need a Labour Government. The Prime Minister’s legacy will be to have ruined this country in half the time it took the Thatcher and Major Governments. Enough is enough. We need a general election and a Labour Government.”
“I estimate that half the people I now see in my surgery have problems that would have made them eligible for legal aid before the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Yesterday, my clinical commissioning group, looking to make £44 million of cuts to its budget, began consulting on reducing opening hours for urgent care centres and GPs. That is not just bad in itself but in direct contradiction to the NHS strategy that calls for an extension of those services to justify the closures of A&Es and emergency beds. For the first time in a generation, we are seeing year-on-year real-terms cuts to school budgets. Inner-city schools do not just educate but give emotional and practical support to families struggling with poverty and poor living standards.”
“They told me that the annual street homelessness count, to be published on 31 January, would show it had doubled in the last year, and they gave me three reasons: universal credit, the increase in no recourse to public funds and tenancy takeover, which is where drug dealers seize the premises of vulnerable tenants. The war on the poor, the hostile environment and a descent into lawlessness are three of the worst consequences of austerity. The cuts in police numbers, especially neighbourhood officer numbers, is putting whole communities at risk. I spent part of new year’s eve at a crime scene in Fulham. An attempted murder led to the arrest of 40 people and the recovery of a number of dangerous weapons.”
“The provocation for this debate was the unprecedented defeat of the central plank of the Government’s policy, which should have led seamlessly to a general election. In the Brexit debate earlier this week, I spoke about the threat that Brexit posed to the prosperity, opportunities and security of my constituents and many of my businesses, but I also represent some of the poorest communities in the UK, and although I am proud of the work it does, I am not proud to have the busiest food bank in London. Last week, I spent an afternoon at one of St Mungo’s homeless hostels in West Kensington talking to residents and staff.”
“If the Prime Minister will neither lead in the interests of the country nor hand over to someone who will, we must ask the public to save us from ourselves, call a people’s vote, and have confidence that this self-harming will end and we will make an informed choice to remain in the European Union.”
“In an increasingly dangerous age for democracy and human rights, when the demagogues are in charge even in the United States, the EU can be a force for rationalism and liberalism. We weaken that struggle, but we also put ourselves at risk, if we abandon our position on the international stage. I do not believe that a majority of the British people voted to make their families poorer, to weaken employment rights, environmental standards and Britain’s place in the world, to alienate 3.5 million of their fellow citizens or to deny to succeeding generations the freedom to travel, live and work freely across our continent.”
“However, there are equally compelling social, cultural and political reasons for wanting to stay part of a great project that has in a few decades transformed one of the most conflicted regions of the world into one of the most harmonious and which gives more opportunities for the next generation than any before. The EU has been an agent for peace, democracy and security within its own expanding borders. Following the collapse of dictatorships in Greece, Portugal and Spain, the EU offered an alternative and more attractive path, as it has for former Warsaw pact countries. This is a job half-finished, however, as recent events in Poland and Hungary have shown. It is one in which the UK has a leading part to play, not one from which we should retreat.”
“If I take SMEs, we are proud to have Charlie Bigham’s at Park Royal, employing 500 people in the UK’s fastest growing ready meals business, and Jascots wine merchants, importing wine for the restaurant trade and employing 50 people in Old Oak. These are very different enterprises with one thing in common: a fear of a chaotic Brexit. Whether it is the need to stockpile drugs, planning for a weaker UK market, offshoring to meet EU licensing rules, higher trading costs, skills and labour shortages or border checks, Brexit is a disaster for UK business. It should not be necessary to go beyond economic arguments in rejecting the Prime Minister’s deal, or no deal or all the halfway houses that will make our country poorer by an act of our own will.”
“Seventy per cent. of my constituents voted remain in June 2016. From my inbox of about 5,000 letters and emails, over 90% take the same view. Indeed, more than 20% of Hammersmith and Fulham residents are EU27 citizens, which is the third largest proportion anywhere in the UK. That helps to make Hammersmith a very good place to live, but also to do business. At Christmas, Novartis announced that it was moving its UK headquarters to the new Imperial College life sciences campus at White City. L’Oréal has its UK and Ireland HQ in Hammersmith Broadway. West London is the European centre of commercial broadcasting.”
“It still provides an excellent public service where it operates, and we are letting down not only the organisation’s staff, but all the customers who rely on post offices across mine and each one of our constituencies.”
“I was struck by the comment from Post Office Ltd to the all-party parliamentary group that this is “a commercial decision for us, not them”, “them” being the public. This is a matter of great concern to the public, and it has not been given proper consultation or publicity. I end by asking the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, a moratorium on the closures and changes. Please can we look again at the network, and have a proper review of services before we proceed in this way? Otherwise we will stumble through this and be back here again in six months to a year facing more closures of Crown post offices, until the network does not exist at all. It is part of our heritage, and part of something that we can be very proud of in this country.”
“I also think that the Communication Workers Union and the staff have been misled, because they have worked in good faith over many years to try to ensure that the business is profitable. That has meant, in some cases, reducing staffing—by agreement and in the proper way, through collective bargaining—in a joint effort and in the belief that the management were sincere in their efforts to ensure that this viable Crown network would survive. All they have actually achieved is to do the dirty work of the Post Office, which now has fewer staff that it has to pass over to WHSmith. That makes it easier to do, but even so, it is relying on money. There has not been a proper public consultation.”
“I would like to know from the Minister what the justification is for paying out quite large sums from the public purse to try to induce members of staff to retire, move on or take redundancy at this point. Presumably that only helps WHSmith, because it does not have to inherit those staff under TUPE conditions. I would like to know what happens to all the equipment in the post offices. Very expensive and often quite new equipment has been fitted there. Is that simply handed over to WHSmith, or are payments made? I would like to know why senior managers in Post Office Ltd have received 7%—in some cases 9%—pay rises this year, given what they are presiding over. The staff have received less than 3%. I feel that I have been misled over what has happened in relation to the post office network in my constituency.”
“Where is the confidence in the services that it provides? There is none. It is all about cutting back. That comes on top of a number of other initiatives that have depleted the network. I know that we are not talking about sub-post offices today, but within the last two to three years I have also had three sub-post offices—two of which were the nearest ones to Shepherd’s Bush Green—close “temporarily”. I think one has been temporarily closed for more than three years now, on the basis that we cannot find anywhere for it to go. Overall, the service that is available is becoming worse, and for those who rely on it, which is still many people, there are longer distances to travel and longer queues to stand in.”
“The terms and conditions are appalling in terms of pensions, holiday and pay. People will be on the minimum wage and could be on half the pay they would have earned as an experienced postal worker working for the Post Office. I am sure that many of the staff at WHSmith try to do a very good job, but as an employer it is appalling. Anyone who does not believe me should follow the Twitter account, @WHS_Carpet, which is a rather tongue-in-cheek look at the extraordinary way in which that business conducts itself. We do not know whether it will have a future. What a risk to take, putting post offices into those stores. I am afraid that Post Office Ltd has shown a contempt for very loyal staff, who have often stayed with it over many years. It has also shown an attitude of defeatism. Where is the leadership?”
“The others all want to move elsewhere in the post office network, to those few Crown post offices and other services that remain open. Not one wants to join WHSmith, even though some of the staff at Shepherds Bush have already moved there from other Crown post offices closed in the recent past, including the Acton post office in the seat of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). Why do people not want to work for WHSmith? It is not too difficult to work out. When I looked at the new rosters, sometimes less than half the number of staff will be on duty. I was there just before Christmas, and it is a busy office with queues, yet WHSmith thinks that where five staff are on at the moment, it can manage with two in future. That is bad for the customers and for staff, too.”
“Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) and many others, I pay tribute to the CWU, which has run an effective campaign drawing attention to the issue. The Post Office thought it could get away with it because the public would not notice a change in ownership. The changes were not necessarily, as was the case with Shepherds Bush, about moving the facility, so the Post Office thought there would no apparent change. The CWU has done an excellent job in drawing attention to the matter, because the implications are severe. To take the example of Shepherds Bush, the manager will leave and retire after more than 20 years’ service. She has been excellent. Half the staff are similarly going to take the settlements on offer and go.”
“Most of the elderly and local people who used to use that post office now go to sub-post offices half a mile or a mile away because they are more accessible than where the Crown post office has moved to. None the less, things continued. The one thing we were told was that, despite the disruption and despite moving to a less favourable and less convenient location, the branch would remain a Crown post office. In all the meetings I had with the Post Office—this was only a year ago—it said that the branch would be a Crown post office with all the advantages of that. Guess what? When the wholesale franchising and closure programme was announced last year, we found out that, no, the branch would become franchised and part of the WHSmith network. Like my hon.”
“The Post Office is made an offer it cannot refuse on those terms. That is what happened. The post office closed and moved a five or 10-minute walk away, depending on mobility, to the Westfield shopping centre. As we have heard, the office is hidden away in the back of a WHSmith with no natural daylight. Because it is the largest shopping centre in Europe and has a good footfall, the office has survived and kept its busyness and activity, but with a completely different clientele. I am glad to see that we have the support of the National Pensioners Convention and many disability rights groups in pointing out that it is not just about the facilities in the post office, but about the accessibility.”
“It was a busy branch, made more so by the fact, as is often the case in town centres nowadays, that banks were closing branches and referring people to the post office. We thought it was good. Last year, we were told that the post office had to move because the lease was up on the building and the landlord was redeveloping. Reluctantly, we accepted that. I spent a long time helping to look for another site in the town centre. I spoke to the local shopping centre and we tried to provide something else, but talking to the Post Office is like banging one’s head against a brick wall, because the only deal in town is WHSmith. I do not know what the commercial terms are, but I suspect that the Post Office gets the space for free, or something like that, because WHSmith is so desperate to increase footfall in its pretty lousy shops.”
“In the past few weeks and months, I have had complaints about the service operating there. One by one, we have lost every Crown post office through closure or through their being stuffed into a WHSmith branch. Last year, we had one left, which was the Shepherds Bush post office on Shepherds Bush Green. It is a good site and a dedicated building, and it is quite famous, because one of its frequent customers was the comedian Richard Herring. When he had his Metro column, he used to write about the Shepherds Bush post office and the more eccentric members of the constituency who he used to meet on his almost daily travels there. It was a good, friendly place, and it had wonderful staff with long service there.”
“I will, but in my own manner and style. [ Interruption. ] Do not worry, there is no risk of passion. It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Graham. We have not quite had 48 Members talking about posting letters today, but I hope you feel at home nevertheless. Labour Members are much less fractious, which is helpful. We have had such a high turnout because of the excellent timeliness of the debate. We have had a good debate, and that is thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who always captures the zeitgeist. As a former Hammersmith Broadway councillor, she will know how much we have grievously suffered in Hammersmith and Fulham from the depletion of the post office network. Indeed, the Crown post office in her ex-ward moved some years ago and was franchised into WHSmith.”
“The Secretary of State has mentioned the Piccadilly line upgrade, but he knows that that—and, indeed, Crossrail—is there to cope with existing and future passenger demand, and not Heathrow expansion. Given that we know that Heathrow, as always, will do nothing to cope with the problems that it causes, what will the Government do when there is this massive increase in passengers, a 50% increase in flights and no capacity on those lines to deal with those?”
“On new year’s eve, 40 people were arrested at a flat in Fulham in my constituency, following a serious knife attack nearby. The police told me that the flat had been rented out on an Airbnb-style let and then used for a party that attracted people from a wide area. The Government deregulated Airbnb lets in London; may we have a debate on re-regulating them to stop properties in residential areas being turned into hotels and hostels and, increasingly, becoming the focus of antisocial and violent behaviour?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which as she correctly said stopped using bailiffs to enforce council tax debts from April last year. Collection rates have not gone down since. One council cabinet member said: “We have done this by intervening early with residents who may have trouble paying council tax, speaking to them in a respectful and supportive way to develop a sustainable repayment plan that both protects the council’s income while avoiding forcing people into making bad financial decisions to avoid bailiffs, such as resorting to payday lenders or missing rent payments.” Should not all local authorities and anyone trying to enforce debts adopt that as their philosophy?”
“There is FCA regulation in the private sector to some extent, but not in the public sector, as in my hon. Friend’s example. Extraordinarily, the National Audit Office’s recent report found that in many cases Government bodies are worse at fulfilling their duties. Does she agree that the Minister should look particularly at what local authorities and central Government Departments are doing in the area?”
“My clinical commissioning group has to make more than £40 million of cuts in the next 15 months and is proposing to cut GP and urgent care centre opening hours. It also has an £11 million risk thanks to the predatory private “GP at hand” scheme, of which the Secretary of State is a member. We have had GP practices suspended, palliative care beds closed, and our major hospital under threat of demolition for seven years. Will he accept that the self-regarding statement he has just made will be unrecognisable to people who work in and use the NHS, which is reeling from the crisis that his Government have caused?”
“More than 20% of my constituents are EU27 citizens and more than 40% were born outside the UK. I value their contribution to the economic, social and cultural life of Hammersmith, of London and of the UK. I would like to hear the Secretary of State join me in saying that, because the hostile environment fostered by his Government and by the coalition Government has created alienation, fear and distrust for very many migrants.”
“I am most grateful to the Minister. I just wondered whether he would answer the point from my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith). Does the Minister admit that there is no majority in this House for no deal, that that is not going to pass and that, therefore, all he is doing is scaring businesses and scaring 5 million people, the EU citizens living in this country and UK citizens living in UK countries? Is that not political gamesmanship and an appalling way to treat people?”
“When we debated legal aid last month, the Minister was expecting to publish the LASPO review before Christmas. It is already eight months late, so will she tell us the date on which it will now be published? Why are we not getting it until next year? What is the reason for the delay?”
“It is the height of irresponsibility for the Prime Minister to pretend she can win a vote on her deal when every Member of this House, including her, knows she cannot. Nor is there a majority for no deal. When they are both voted down, what next? That question is fundamentally important to the future of this country. If she cannot or will not answer it, she should not be in office.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We discussed this in Committee. Interlocutory case management often has a large bearing on what happens in a case; it can alter what happens in a case and it can alter cost decisions. In their own way, such decisions are as important as purely judicial decisions. The Government’s proposal might be a false economy, so I support what she is saying.”
“The Bill will no doubt be passed today, despite our assertive opposition to it, but we will return to more serious matters on a subsequent occasion. We must subject the Bill to further scrutiny, and the Government must present the House with proposals for legislation to deal with the serious questions of how that digitisation and so-called reform programme is or is not working, and what the cost to our community is of the loss of well-established and vital court facilities.”
“First, how much did the Minister’s Department spend on drawing up that detailed planning brief and marketing it for a purpose which has now gone completely by the board? Secondly, notwithstanding the large capital receipt, does she believe that it is fair recompense for a site on which, apparently, there is to be an 850-bedroom hotel? In fact, two will be built on one site. This shows the folly of the way in which the Government are conducting their programme of investment and disinvestment. When courts are closed, the detriment to communities is obvious, and in the case of Hammersmith magistrates court the closure did not take place for operational reasons; its purpose was purely to generate a capital receipt.”
“Perhaps the Government are rubbing their hands and saying what a valuable contribution that is to the reform agenda. Let me make these points to the Minister, if the Minister will listen. I will wait until I have her attention. A couple of years ago, the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), called me in for a tête-à-tête and showed me a planning brief for what would happen to Hammersmith magistrates court after it was sold. Apparently, it was to become a mixed housing development. The Minister may like to know that it has now been sold to the developers of an 850-bedroom hotel, who are currently awaiting planning consent. I would like the answers to two questions, not necessarily today but at some point.”
“We hear a great deal about the—is it the £1 billion programme of investment in digitisation in the courts? However, the Bill goes nowhere towards addressing this. Nor does it deal with the oft-raised concerns of Members about how that is being funded and about funding through court closures. Let me give one brief example. You will understand why I picked this example, Madam Deputy Speaker. This week I asked the House of Commons Library for a list of court closures since 2010. It gave me a list of 156 courts and buildings that had been closed since then, but one figure stood out. Hammersmith magistrates court accounts for nearly 20% of the entire saving that the Government have made during that time. Some courts have been sold for £1, but Hammersmith magistrates court was sold for £43 million.”