Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late…”
“My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established.”
“I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology.”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s clampdown on speculation and leaks ahead of the Budget; it is certainly an important step he has taken. On the issue of certainty, the National Wealth Fund is a critical investor in crowding in private investment around the UK. I noted that he has changed the remit.”
“Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), it is important that we talk here and that we have diplomacy, but what practical actions are the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence taking to ensure that there is a review of physical defence and security, so that we send a clear message to t…”
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“Of all people, the Prime Minister, who had the honour—the honour—of serving as the elected Mayor of London, should be aware of that, and shame on him that he is not tackling this head-on. We need much better support for housing generally. I have more private renters in my constituency than I have homeowners and more social housing tenants than both of those combined, and all have real problems. The Government are finally unveiling their renters reform Bill—something we are all keen to see—but just abolishing no-fault evictions is not enough to solve the challenges of where people can live. Those people cannot now live in the private sector and grow a family, because even with no-fault evictions being abolished, if that does eventually happen, that will not make for a stable home, with rents escalating at the whim of the landlord.”
“Constituencies such as Richmond (Yorks), Derbyshire Dales and High Peak, which are respectively the 256th, the 265th and the 202nd most deprived constituencies in the country, are being prioritised over the children in my constituency living in poverty—living in overcrowded conditions and too often sharing a bed with a parent up to their early teens because there is nowhere else for them to sleep—and over the people struggling because of the challenges of the pandemic. Those people need support, and we must make sure—the Government need to hear this—that levelling up is not just about levelling up between different regions of the UK, but in parts of our amazing capital city.”
“It is now biting those who were just about managing—those who are on good incomes, but are hitting huge increases to their fuel bills. We know that the Government’s response to that, from the Klarna Chancellor, has been to lend the money now and people are going to have to pay it back later, further indebting particularly the poorest households. We need much better support for those left behind. The Government talk about levelling up, but in Hackney we do not see much of this levelling-up fund. We are the seventh most deprived local authority area in the country, but in the Government’s approach to levelling up Hackney counts as priority 2.”
“In Hackney South and Shoreditch, as in many constituencies up and down the country, we need real support for the people who have been left behind. We see a huge challenge; one in two children are living in poverty after housing costs are taken into account. In London, 60% of households in poverty are working households, which is an increase from 44% only a few years ago. That is a reflection of the low pay too many workers are paid and the high housing costs in constituencies such as mine. We all know that employment is a huge opportunity, but it is not a route out of poverty on its own for many people in London because of these high living costs. The cost of living crisis is not just hitting those in constituencies such as mine with those high prices, but biting everybody.”
“We finally have the Queen’s Speech, 30 Bills and what the Prime Minister calls “fiscal firepower,” but I cannot see that fiscal firepower in what is being done to support our constituents. I fear that many of those 30 Bills are, as many recent Government policies have been, mere headlines—or, worse, dog-whistle headlines that appeal to a certain section of our electorate but do nothing to solve the real problems that our constituents face. I declare at the outset that I am a leaseholder of a property that is having cladding removed, and I concur completely with the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) about the challenges for that group of people and for leaseholders more generally. It is disappointing that there is still so much work to be done on leasehold reform.”
“The court case was set for two years after that violent attack, and it is no surprise that her partner has repeatedly broken his non-molestation order because he feels that he can get away with it scot-free. That is happening to victims of domestic abuse up and down the country. She has said to me, “I just want to move. I want shot of this. I don’t want to be reliving this, nor do I want my daughter to relive this over the next two years.” If the victims Bill is to mean anything on domestic violence, it needs decent options on alternative housing for victims, because so often that is the break that those people need, but they cannot get it. In my constituency, with such a shortage of housing, that is a huge and ongoing issue.”
“I was pleased that the victims Bill is finally—finally!—perhaps going to appear. It has only been in three manifestos and four Queen’s Speeches. This is a crucial problem. My Committee has looked at the backlog in the criminal courts, and there are many factors behind that, some of which cannot be resolved through legislation. The sheer grind of day-to-day delivery and the governance of decent public services seems alien to the Prime Minister and his Front Bench. That aside, we need the victims Bill to support victims better. For example, a woman in my constituency was violently attacked by her partner in front of her seven-year-old daughter. She went to the police.”
“According to teachers in my constituency, children in years 7 and 8 are having to be taught how to do decent handwriting because they missed those crucial years at primary school. In some areas, pupils in years 7 and 8 are losing out because the qualified teachers are focused on the exam years. We all want our children to succeed, and the Government need to ensure that school funding is properly resolved. That funding has fallen in real terms per pupil by 1.2% for the most deprived fifth of schools, but has increased by nearly 3% for the least deprived fifth of schools. Is that levelling up? It does not look like it to me. The Prime Minister purports to be an intelligent man, and I am sure he can do the maths and work out that that means an awful lot of children are losing out.”
“I am happy to share with anybody in government the figures from schools that have provided them to me, and perhaps we could work together for a solution. It is vital that we pay the cost of catch-up. It is taxpayers’ money well spent to invest in the generation that will be the engine and the entrepreneurs of our future. My constituency may be poor, but there is no poverty of aspiration, and unless we give those children a leg-up and catch-up now, they will not get the advantages they should have. We have seen the complete failure of the tutoring scheme, which the cross-party Public Accounts Committee highlighted as a concern early on. We said, “Where are these tutors who will go in and tutor?”, and of course that contract has been axed. We still need a lot of support.”
“Schools did the best they could, and many did a very good job, but there is a challenge for children who lost out on education, and who, under the Government’s proposals, will go through the system without catching up. I look forward to seeing what is in the Government’s Bill, but I have been talking to schools in my constituency about the cost of their energy bills, which is just one recent crisis. The cost increase on their energy bills means a choice between heating the school and keeping a teacher. It is either having our children freeze in a classroom but being taught by a teacher, or a warm school where children can concentrate on learning but they lose that crucial classroom teacher. That is the stark reality.”
“That does not include those who are overcrowded because there is no space for them, or those with no recourse to public funds who cannot possibly afford to rent privately even though they are working. They could certainly never buy a property and, as we know, rents are very high. We need much better support, and there is no real solution in the Queen’s Speech. Crucially, we need real support for a lost generation. Many people have been badly affected by covid, but I worry particularly about our children who have lost out on two years of education. Hats off to the teachers and schools that kept educating them, but for many children, however well the school did, if they did not have the technology at home and were clustered around one computer and a mobile phone with poor data, that would never be the same as a classroom experience.”
“Every policy so far has fuelled the equity of those who already own their home, rather than giving a real leg-up to wannabe first-time buyers in constituencies such as mine, where—I have said this repeatedly in this House, but I repeat it again—a modern two-bedroom flat will be on the market for about £750,000. That is just for a two-bedroom leasehold flat. As of June last year, the median house price in my constituency was £600,000, but in many parts of it I would struggle to find a property for that price. That is a huge increase—9.1% over the past five years. A house in Hackney costs more than 16 times the average Hackney salary. Hackney has a range of salaries, but there are a lot of people at the poorer end. One in 35 people in my constituency are officially recorded as being homeless or in temporary accommodation.”
“In my constituency, that is in massively short supply in any case, with hundreds—thousands—of families living in massively overcrowded conditions. We have all been on the doorsteps a lot in the last week and it is always a privilege to meet constituents, but when I keep meeting constituents who I knew when their children were toddlers, and whose children, who are now young adults, are still sharing the bedroom—two or three of them—while their parents live in the living room, it is not good enough. There is no hope for those people, because the Government’s proposed Bills will do nothing to enable councils to build that important social rented housing, to give better rights to renters or to provide a proper stepladder for people to purchase their own home.”
“Well, if that is the whole point of it, forgive me, but I cannot see that. I have the privilege of chairing the Public Accounts Committee, in which we have looked at the towns fund and the levelling-up approach, and it is a chaotic policy. It is a headline without proper detail and analysis of how to deliver it. Outside London, only the Bristol area has seen economic growth. This has been a challenge for every Government over many decades now, but the idea that headlines saying it is going to happen mean it will actually be delivered is just for the birds. We see the huge increase in private renters, yet there is no real support for them. Where is the security if people cannot afford to buy their own home and cannot qualify for social rented housing?”
“I was pleased to see the announcement of a UK Infrastructure Bank, but I am a bit puzzled, because the same Government created the green investment bank and, a few years later, sold it off to the private sector. If the infrastructure bank is to invest in green technologies, that is good—if it works—but why have we had a wasted decade on that opportunity? The Queen’s Speech is not about bringing our country together and supporting people who need that; it is about division. Our Prime Minister has his head in the sand about real life and the real challenges for so many of our constituents in the cost of living and finding a home. There is no direction from the Government, who are flailing around, trying to come up with a list of headlines but unable to govern the country competently in the interests of the people I represent.”
“It is not even clear what will change—businesses and people are confused—and that lack of planning is coming home to roost. He can use the slogans, but we can see through them. He can peruse our Committee’s reports highlighting those concerns on any day he wants. The Queen’s Speech had a whole chunk on divisive issues. The Prime Minister would love me to engage with them now, but I will not give him that satisfaction, because I want real results for the people in my constituency, not flim-flam and cheap headlines on things that he hopes will start culture wars between Members of the House and our voters. Everybody in the House and all our constituents know that the cost of living must be a priority and that levelling up must be a priority.”
“I tell those on a five-year lease, “At the moment, thanks to the Government, that is often the best you’ll get.” But when the rent is as high as we see in the private sector, they worry because they cannot survive without some benefit top-up—if that fits in with the housing benefit cap—so they are stuck in a terrible cycle of never being able to have a permanent home. I want to touch on a couple of other issues that were raised in a lengthy Queen’s Speech. The Prime Minister talks about Brexit being done, but he knows, and I know, that it is not done, is it? It is far from done. There was no planning after the vote in 2016 and there is a very long tail of changes that have been repeatedly delayed. We have seen import controls delayed once again.”
“I will support anything that delivers that housing. I have not had a chance to look at the detail, and I do not think we yet know all of it. Absolutely, if there is a bit of land where nothing is moving, we will look at that as an option for housing, but we cannot fit everything into an inner-city London borough. We need a better balance of housing, and we definitely need more affordable housing. In constituencies such as mine, we need more socially rented housing, because the other options are not real options. People housed in temporary accommodation in boroughs outside my constituency often want to move back.”
“Quite simply, we all know about the cost of living crunch and the increased price of energy bills, and of course the Government have put in certain measures to try to mitigate that, but constituents who live in residential buildings with communal heating systems—also known as heat networks—are not protected by the energy price cap as other energy purchasers are.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the energy price cap and residential buildings with communal heating systems. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I should declare an interest, as I live in a leasehold flat in a block with a communal heat network. I also represent a constituency with one of the highest numbers of multiple dwelling blocks in the UK, a number of which have community heat networks. The problem is very simple. I think I should lay that out, and then I want to lay out what I am asking the Government to do and hope to get a positive response from the Minister.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. About half a million people, as an estimate, live in such blocks—not only new developments such as those that she has highlighted, but some older developments that would take a lot of retrofitting to get individual heating systems in place; but that is not the answer and I will come to that in a moment.”
“But let us be clear: the end user of this is someone living in a home—a flat, an apartment—who benefits from the communal heating system, often arranged for good reason, sometimes in an attempt to provide green energy, but it has actually left individual residents, whether they are homeowners or tenants, in the lurch.”
“Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) referred to will often have wood-chip burners or an equivalent in the basement, or some other source of supply, and they provide heat to the home, but it is purchased for the building and then sold on to an individual. Ofgem, as we know, regulates the supply of gas and electricity but not, at present, the supply of heat. That means that while the supply of gas to a heat network is regulated, the supply of heat from the heat network to homes is not, because Ofgem classifies supplying heat to a heat network as a commercial arrangement, not domestic.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When I get to my asks of the Government, I shall be very clear, as the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady have highlighted, that the issue has been raised in the House before—indeed, it has been raised since 2018. I will get on to the timeline, and my question to the Government is this: we know about this, so why is it taking so long to resolve it? The key issue is quite a simple definitional issue: the energy price cap sets a price limit on domestic supplies of electricity and gas, but not on domestic supplies of heat. So developments of the type that my hon.”
“I hope the Minister can give us assurance not only that this is being looked at, but that we are going to get action sooner rather than later.”
“There must be a creative way that the Government could look at as a stopgap while the more detailed work is done. That also highlights the constant need, which I want to reiterate again, for insulating and retrofitting homes, because some of those heat networks are in quite old buildings and it is a real issue. All of those solutions we would like to see instantly, of course, but my simple ask for the Minister today is that some of the most vulnerable customers need support right now. Someone like me can manage. It is the people who really cannot, and who are going to have to choose between eating and heating—the extra £7 per day highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali)—that are the real concern.”
“It would be for those who are not protected by the energy price cap, to create a level playing field for residents of the same landlord who often have very different energy bills. It could be a dedicated hardship fund; there is precedent for that during the covid pandemic, when local authorities managed similar funds. Although the Public Accounts Committee has not looked into it in full, those funds had quite good assurance procedures to ensure that the money was targeted. I think some has even been returned to the Treasury—not for energy, but for other hardship. There are also existing schemes that could be extended. All individuals have a bill that comes, so there is an easy way of attaching the cost to the household—to the household’s name.”
“It could stretch out for quite a long time to come, but that is not fast enough for those residents who are sorely affected. The Government need to make faster progress. In the meantime, there are a couple of things they might consider. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has considered these things, given that the Government have professed their desire to support households and insulate them against energy bills. The National Housing Federation has called on the Government to provide targeted financial support for housing associations—the 150,000 residents I mentioned earlier—that covers the expected rise in energy bills. We have had a rise in April, but there is an expected rise coming in October as well.”
“He might get a quick win; he can sell it to the business managers in Government as something that he can get through quickly with little opposition, if he does it well. The Government also intend to appoint Ofgem as the heat network’s regulator, and they have already highlighted that Citizens Advice could be the consumer advocacy body. A lot of pieces of the jigsaw are beginning to come together, but we need to know when it is going to happen. I am not alone in asking for regulation: the Heat Trust has called for it to happen; the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, as part of a recent report on decarbonising energy, called for heat networks to be regulated; and, crucially, it is in Ofgem’s forward programme for 2022-23.”
“Here we are in 2022, with energy bills having gone up in April and going up again in October—considerably. In December of last year the Government, as part of their response to the heat network’s market framework consultation, published proposals to regulate the heat network sector. It is a welcome move but it has taken a long while to get there. I am sure that the Minister is aware how pressingly urgent that is for people, particularly those on low incomes who are crippled by the extra costs they are having to pay. The Government tell us that they are committed to introducing legislation in this Parliament, so it would be helpful if the Minister could indicate when that might be—he will get my wholehearted support if it is in the Queen’s Speech.”
“However, that is not universal and clearly it does not always help, because it depends at what point in the market the energy is bought. There are 32 of Peabody’s operational heat networks that cover over 100 homes each, so these are quite large scale. Someone could live in a development next door to a person in another development; one could benefit from the energy price cap while the other, by accident of housing allocation, bought a property with a communal heat network, not realising what the consequences would be. We would not have predicted that the energy prices would have increased so much. Nevertheless, that is the problem now. What has been happening? In 2018 the Competition and Markets Authority conducted a study that concluded that the market should be regulated.”
“The National Housing Federation, which has a lot of these properties in a portfolio of housing associations generally but represents housing associations at a national level, says that around 150,000 of the people affected are housing association residents. These are people on lower income, of course, but we also know that there is a strong correlation particularly between new tenants of social housing and the ability of a household to pay. Peabody, a large landlord in my constituency—obviously it is also a housing association—has 172 operational heat networks across its whole portfolio, and it says that in general the price of energy has increased by over 300% since April 2021. Peabody has managed to mitigate up to a point by buying multi-year deals from its supplier.”
“My hon. Friend highlights another important point, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members—that of course the individual, the resident, gets a bill that is directly related to their property, to their energy use, so it is very personal, yet that is seen as a commercial supply and clearly it is not; it is about someone living in their home. One of my constituents, based in the East Wick and Sweetwater development, has their heat supplied via a heating network from East London Energy. From April, this month, East London Energy is increasing its usage fee by 103%, and other Londoners on heat networks are reported to see price increases of over 700% in the worst cases.”
“I would just point out to the Minister that, while any support on energy bills is welcome, and band A to D households are the focus, many people caught by this issue in my constituency, and I am sure in his, are living in properties in significantly higher council tax bands, but that does not mean necessarily that they are wealthy households by any means.”
“The fact that local authorities are expected to use the hardship fund to support households is an important point, because that will be an extra drain on local authority budgets in constituencies and boroughs where lots of residents live in such properties. I undertake to do some more number-crunching in my constituency.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship—hours have passed between the beginning and the end of the debate. In many respects, the Minister summed up the feeling of colleagues present. It is instructive that a lot of London MPs were present for the debate. For all the talk about levelling up and about other areas of the country being poor, the cost of living in London is very high, and those on average incomes who live in properties with energy supplied by a heat network are doubly hit by the challenges of energy prices. I am pleased that the Minister has reiterated that the Government are going ahead with long-term change. I am keen, and will continue to push, for additional support to be provided to those consumers because of the extremely large increases in their bills.”
“I see that my hon. Friend is nodding. I think we will come back to the Minister on that, because that money should be distributed in a way that recognises that those households and vulnerable customers are hit hard by the additional high costs and really need support right now. I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), for their responses, and I thank all colleagues who have been supportive, including those who were unable to attend today. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the energy price cap and residential buildings with communal heating systems.”
“The permanent secretary at the Home Office concluded that he could not tell whether this was value for money, but on every number and every question of cost, the Home Secretary has failed to answer. Can she answer the point made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)? If this deters certain people from crossing, surely the people traffickers and smugglers will just load the dinghies up with women and children and make sure that they get their money somehow; it does not break the business model.”
“My right hon. Friend raises a critical point. Does he agree that it is about time the Home Office looked at some of the restrictions on family members joining? They are still being asked to take the English language test. For a woman in Afghanistan, trying to do that under the Taliban is very challenging.”
“I should perhaps repeat that for those who think I may have slipped a nought into the wrong place: £750,000. I suspect that that would buy someone significantly more in the Black Country. It means that even rich MPs would struggle to get on the housing ladder, and it is impossible—it is out of the reach—for those living in overcrowded housing or the private renters who want to put down roots.”
“It is good that the Government are looking at this, but there is a lot of hope out there, and I wait to see what the Government will deliver to make sure that tenants have far more rights, better rights and easier routes to redress. For many tenants, the idea of taking their landlord to court and going through such a process is too costly and time-consuming, and many people do not even get past the first hurdle. It is important that landlords remember that they are in the business of letting homes, and it is the homes bit that is too often forgotten. There are serious concerns about house prices in Hackney South and Shoreditch, as well as in Hackney as a whole, and indeed in London. It is now pretty much impossible for anyone on the average wage to buy. A typical two-bedroom modern flat will be marketed at £750,000.”
“There really is no prospect for them, and there is no prospect for those in overcrowded social housing of moving in. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at changing some of the rules for renting privately, because as well as the barriers of cost, there are huge barriers for those who rent privately. More people rent privately in Hackney than live in their own owned housing, and more people rent in social housing than both of those combined. The private rented sector is growing and significant, and those people have very few rights. Recently, the Public Accounts Committee looked into this and, frankly, it is a dog’s breakfast.”
“I have seen families with toddlers who have grown into teenagers and young adults while they have been unable to move out. Young adults are not able to start in their own home, and why not? Because even if they could find somewhere to rent privately, the rent levels in the private rented sector are enormously high. As of September last year, the median monthly rent in Hackney is £1,600, but for a one-bedroom apartment it is £1,350 a month and for a three-bedroom apartment it is £2,220 a month. That is completely out of the reach of most working people, and even well-paid key workers struggle on that basis. This is causing a crisis for families, but also for many of our services because people have to travel a long way in to work, particularly in our schools and our heath service.”
“During lockdown, in fact, a woman was living in one with her seven-year-old daughter and was working while her daughter was home-schooling in the same room. That was not uncommon. Those who are lucky enough to have access to a council tenancy or a private temporary tenancy are often living in very overcrowded conditions. In council properties, often one family lives in the living room and another in the bedroom. Families with many children often live in a one-bedroom flat or, as in the case of a woman I spoke to the other day, her four children have bunk beds in one bedroom and she sleeps in the living room. This is a real challenge. We talk about levelling up and there is also talk about the covid divide, with many communities or individuals being in even more difficult circumstances than others, but this is endemic.”
“Today I will talk about housing, homelessness and all the housing issues in Hackney. Everybody in Hackney has a different housing issue; we have a huge range of challenges that are different for different sectors. Homelessness and overcrowding are immense in my constituency. We often talk here, particularly at the moment, about the cost of living, but the real cost for many of my constituents is that they do not have a stable home to live in. As of June 2020, we had more than 8,000 households in temporary accommodation, which accounts for roughly one in 35 residents in the borough. The expenditure on temporary accommodation has increasingly gone up. Families are now typically living in hostels for three years or more.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), who does have to educate certain senior figures in the civil service about where and what the Black Country is, but that has given them a very good indication. My word to them is that if they mug up on those sorts of things, I am not sure that he will give them an easier ride at the Public Accounts Committee, but it might mean that they have a slightly smoother route through and certainly fewer demands for visits to the Black Country as a result, although I am sure they are always pleased to visit. I declare an interest that I am a leaseholder of a building with cladding, although I am not being required to pay for its replacement thanks to the developer stepping up, and I am the landlord of a private rented property.”
“Perhaps we need to introduce proper training into our schools on people’s rights when they are stopped by a police officer. We have policing by consent, but we need to equip our young people so that they know what consent they have given and that they can acquiesce politely while knowing their rights and that the Met should treat them politely, too. We need strong, new leadership—all power to the elbows of those recruiting that—to change the culture in the Met, and that needs to happen now.”
“We need somebody who can drive that culture change through and, dare I say, consider whether they might split the Metropolitan police by separating the counter-terrorism function from the day-to-day policing of London. It has got too big—it has grown like Topsy—and that is one of the contributing factors. I cannot express enough to the Minister how triggering the treatment of Child Q has been, particularly but not only to black women in my constituency—black men, too—who have gone through real difficulties and had terrible handling by the police back in the day, and their children are still being stopped and searched far more often than their white counterparts. The anger is palpable and the hurt is real. Much more needs to be done in the short term.”
“One developer told me recently that, for one development alone, the insurance premium has gone up from £50,000 to £400,000 a year. Those are enormous costs for ordinary people, not all of whom are wealthy; indeed, many live in shared ownership accommodation but are caught in leasehold properties. Finally, I turn to the Metropolitan police, where we have seen a horrendous set of issues in the last few months and year. Child Q is a Hackney child, and she was degraded by the experience she had to suffer. However, it is not just about Child Q; there is a wider set of issues, including misogyny at Charing Cross police station. There is a culture issue in the Met. We have an opportunity—I look to the Minister on this—because the Home Secretary along with the Mayor of London will appoint the new commissioner of the Metropolitan police.”
“There may be differences between such landlords and investment landlords, but that is a real concern. It was their home that they wanted to live in, and they just cannot sell it because of the EWS1 form and the cladding. I keep getting constituents writing to me saying, “The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities promised that we would not have to pay a penny.” All power to the Secretary of State’s elbow to get developers to pay and to get the problem sorted out, but we need to see the concrete proposals on how that will happen, because, at the moment, leaseholders are still on the hook and still cannot sell their properties. Their lives are on hold while they are forking out huge amounts of money on extra insurance, and some still on waking watch—that is still happening.”