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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“I will not go into that again, but private landlords there are able to sell property on, forgetting that they are selling not just property but people’s homes, which affects their lives. In London, we see our Mayor caving in to private developers. He wants to maximise luxury flats, which are often sold to overseas buyers. The local fire station in my area has been sold for £28 million, which can only mean luxury flats. That is a scandal, especially with fire response times now more than six minutes in the area. In Bishopsgate in Shoreditch, an area that has not had a social housing unit built in 10 years, the Mayor is again on the drive for a 48-storey tower block with luxury flats. Hackney is building; it is one of the top two councils nationally when it comes to building new homes.”
“A national property developer in the UK employs staff whose job is entirely about arguing with planning departments for additional units of housing and for fewer units of social housing. Those staff members are paid a bonus for every additional unit that they argue up, and for every social unit they argue down. In the process, they tie up days and days of council officers’ time. In one case, nearly a whole year—more than 300 days—of council officers’ time was taken up, because these staff keep coming back, as their income depends on it. I use the word advisedly, but that practice is an immoral way to earn a living, and it is shocking when I consider the impact on my constituents. Recently, we had a battle over the New Era estate.”
“One is about non-domiciled landlords. They do not let slum properties; we do not have that many very, very bad properties in Hackney. However, the appeal of rental yield is what many properties are sold on, off-plan, which means rents go up each year, because the letting agent is on a ticket to increase their profit and that of the overseas landlord, be they in Dubai or Hong Kong. Increasingly, huge swathes of properties are sold overnight off-plan, even when developers have promised the local planning committee that they will not do that. There is no legal constraint on the number of properties that can be sold to someone overseas. I hope that both Front-Bench teams consider looking at this issue. There is a really shocking case that I have come across recently.”
“House prices have gone up 124.9% since 2005, when I was first elected, and the average house price is slightly lower than in Islington, at £606,000. Of course, for new social housing, there is now the edict that most social housing should be 80% of local private rents. In Hackney, that is nonsense; the sums arrived at are not affordable. Tenants, often strangers to each other, are now sharing rooms out of necessity. Then, of course, we have the invidious bedroom tax. On Wenlock Barn estate alone, in Hoxton, 74 households are hit by that tax, and they live in fear about what will happen to them. It is not as if there is available housing of the right size for them, because there is such a squeeze on need; even if they were made to move, there is nowhere for them to move to. I have some specific local concerns.”
“Two adults and a child live in a one-bedroom property. One full-time income and one part-time income brings them in £2,100 a month after tax, and they also have child care costs on top of that. When we compare those figures with the weekly median rent in Hackney, which is £330 a week, it does not take much knowledge of maths to work out that their income does not go very far. I will give another example. Somebody said that a combination of having to pay high fees every time they move, and the fact that they have to move every 12 months due to rent increases and the inability to obtain longer-term tenancies, has seriously hindered their ability to save as well as settle. This issue affects not only private tenants but the community as a whole, because of the churn that we get as a result.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Gray, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I endorse every comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) in her excellent speech, and congratulate her on securing this debate. Housing in my constituency is simply in crisis. In my constituency, more people rent privately—30% of my constituents—than own property, and 44% of my constituents rent social housing. Private rents in Hackney are now at 54% of income, and there is a huge lack of certainty about the length of private tenancies, and about rents, which often increase just because they can be increased. I will give a couple of examples. I have routinely been sending out questionnaires to constituents, because I have so many people contacting me about these issues.”
“We see in London the effects of an untrammelled Tory Administration. Private developers have free reign. There is less affordable housing. Where it is affordable, it is 80% of private rents. That applies to a number of sites, as we have highlighted. Is that the Minister’s ambition if he is in power after the election?”
“Will the Minister outline what conversations he has with Ministers in other Departments? Can he reassure us that they take the issue at least half-seriously? Are they, as I hope, stepping up to the mark to make sure our constituents no longer have to suffer the ignominy of the supposed superfast broadband programme, which is not delivering?”
“Changes are needed to planning law to require landlords to provide what I would describe in simple terms as reasonable access for the installation of technology, particularly on high buildings. That would allow satellite and mobile superfast, for example, to fill the gaps. That might be more challenging in rural areas, and there might be other planning issues to do with rights of way across land, particularly agricultural land. Certainly in urban areas, however, it would be a fairly simple solution. All that it would require would be joined-up Government action and real will, not just on the part of the Minister, who, as the hon. Member for Wells said, always comes to our debates very optimistic about the programme, but on the part of his colleagues in other Departments. They also need to take the matter seriously.”
“What discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Communities and Local Government on planning rules to make it easier for other technologies to get into urban and rural areas and deliver superfast speeds, where the cable and fibre optics will not deliver? More one-gigabit cities should be an aspiration of both the Government and the Opposition, so that things do not fall apart upon a change of Government. I hope we can be united in our aspiration. We need more collaborations such as that in York between the far-sighted Labour city council and TalkTalk, which wants to roll out superfast in its own way. It is important to give local authorities power over such contracts. More could be done to strengthen the arm of councils that want to follow that lead. We need more competition in the market. That involves planning issues.”
“Perhaps the next time the Prime Minister and Chancellor visit, they will be able to celebrate success, rather than tripping over failures. In South Korea the aim is a national 5G wireless network. We need to look for the same. We should aim for more one-gigabit cities. There is some progress, and some companies are keen on achieving it. I have some questions for the Minister and would welcome answers in writing if he cannot answer now. As part of the approach to improving access to and roll-out of superfast, the Government have put out an advertising programme, which—paraphrasing only slightly—says, “Superfast broadband: it’s coming—would you like it?” I would like to know the cost of the advertising programme, given that the Government have made great play of cutting back on advertising. How are they measuring success?”
“It is second only to silicon valley in terms of the investment going into tech businesses, but broadband speeds, and upload speeds in particular, are very poor. Tech City News does a weekly video round-up, which I recommend to the Minister, as it discusses cutting edge digital technology around the world and in Shoreditch. I have mentioned it before, but it is worth emphasising that the former editor, who has just moved on, says that it would be filmed and taken to his house to be uploaded, because the speeds around Old Street roundabout were too slow, and it took too long. If that is not a national embarrassment I do not know what is. I am always embarrassed to repeat that story in Parliament, as I do not want to dump on my area, but it is time the Government took that seriously.”
“The Public Accounts Committee is now seeing the next phase of rural broadband being rolled out. Some real alternatives are being proposed. Finally, to pick up the point from the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), alternative technologies are being promoted, albeit very late in the day, and only, of course, after the bulk provision has been cherry-picked. The cost envelope for the more difficult-to-reach areas is that much higher, which makes it much harder to deliver services. I said I represent Shoreditch, which is an international hub of tech progress, but we are falling behind. Shoreditch is, frankly, a national embarrassment, when we consider the place it occupies in the world.”
“A resident in the Victoria park area, on the edge of Hackney, near Tower Hamlets, worked from home. However, his broadband service was so poor that he moved out of Hackney to get better coverage. I will not go into the numbers of businesses that have had problems, but I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) about the poor quality of service. It takes a long time to get an Openreach engineer to visit. The Perseverance Works on Hackney road is a consortium—a co-operative, in effect—of businesses, and it took ages to get an engineer to visit it. When an engineer does visit, they do a survey, but it does not seem to belong to the customer, even though they paid for it. It is really difficult to find out exactly what is happening—the lack of transparency about the service is poor, and it really needs to be improved.”
“In particular, we find it unacceptable that, despite Government efforts, there are still urban areas experiencing internet ‘not-spots’, which is hampering universal coverage and the UK’s international competitiveness.” It goes on to say, and I agree, that broadband should be seen as a utility—something that is necessary, just as water and electricity are. A report by Digital Business First says that 10 million UK premises—homes and businesses—are unable to access superfast broadband. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) rightly highlighted, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. A few percentages here and there do not reveal the real trouble and pain that many businesses and residents face. Let me give just a couple of examples.”
“We have frequent visits from the occupants of Nos. 10 and 11 Downing street. The Prime Minister has dubbed my area tech city. There is, therefore, great Government pride in the area, but we have pretty poor broadband. When I complain, I am told, “It’s okay: two thirds of businesses in Shoreditch have a connection.” However, that means that a third of businesses in this critical area do not. The House of Lords Digital Skills Committee has now joined the cacophony on this issue. Given that the Committee is in the other place, it is worth putting on record its very first recommendation, which is about hard infrastructure: “We are concerned about the pace of universal internet coverage and the delivery of superfast broadband.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing the debate. I have been very focused on this issue in the last five years, first as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which has looked in detail at the rural broadband programme and made a number of criticisms of it. I have also been to a series of debates—in fact, so many that I have seen more of the Minister this last fortnight than I have of my husband. That is not a joke, sadly, much as I like the Minister. In my constituency, I have constant complaints from businesses and residents about connection times, speeds, unreliability of service and, of course, cost. I represent one of the most urban areas of the UK. We are a powerhouse for the future of the tech economy.”
“I believe—I represent Shoreditch, so I would—that good, well-worked-up software that would allow alumni to be tracked and, crucially, give alumni something back in terms of networking, could be very useful. I have been talking to UBS, the bank that sponsors the Bridge Academy in Hackney. There is a real opportunity to be grabbed, but it needs to be fleshed out. I hope the Minister will do so. I have mentioned the issues about grade B maths. Such issues underline the need for clear understanding throughout schools of how early choices can affect careers and damage career options. The Government need to ensure that that is embedded through a set of standards. I have set out my asks. Careers advice is crucial. My young people in Hackney want action. They want to see the best provided to all and I back them in that.”
“That crucial bit in the middle is the broker. When the broker finds a young person with a particular skill, the broker will know how to make the two or three phone calls that will get the young person the connection to the career opportunity that they can really learn from. We also need to see greater stability of funding so that we can be sure there is a career path for good quality careers advisers. I welcomed the Government’s decision to include outcome data as a key part of schools. We still do not have much of an update from the Department for Education on how it is going to work. Many schools in my area feel challenged about how they are going to deal with it.”
“The broker could be the careers adviser, but there could be work placements. Rather than young people just being thrown at work placements that have been brokered by a careers service, they could say, “I want to do this, and I need to know who I can speak to so I can go and do that particular role.” I represent Shoreditch, which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor called “tech city”. It is a hub for future jobs and growth in this country, but most of the jobs in Shoreditch do not exist as such. They do not have job titles, because they are so new and emerging. I can sometimes broker the connections, because of the peculiarity of an MP’s role, where we see a lot of different things. We need to make sure that our teachers and particularly our careers advisers are aware of the opportunities and can make those links.”
“I want to know how we will be monitoring the independent advice and guidance provided directly by schools, because the quality varies enormously, as we have heard. I, too, have a list of asks for the Minister. First, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne described, we want a clearer set of requirements on appropriate and good guidance. We do not have a common set of standards at the moment, and it is vital that we do. It is not fair that a young person going through a school—sometimes a very good school—might have their future completely altered by the lack of quality careers advice. We want a common standard. Crucially, we need really good evaluation of what works and quality control. The key thing is the bit in the middle, which my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe talked about—the broker between businesses and young people.”
“That goes to show that the professional understanding of good, qualified careers advisers makes a difference throughout a school, not just at 14. The Government have thrown money at careers advice. At one level, we should accept the £20 million that has gone to the careers company, but I have serious questions about how that has been tendered and whether it is really best at national level. There is no road map for how the careers company will deliver good quality careers advice throughout our educational establishments. I hope the Minister can give us more information, because we are all desperate to know how that will help people in Hackney, Hartlepool, Scunthorpe and around the country.”
“I echo the point raised by other colleagues that we need good, properly qualified careers advisers. I also echo the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) about ensuring that teenagers make the right choice early on. One of the things that My Big Career has discovered is that many young people are being encouraged, quite rightly and effectively, to get a good GCSE in maths, but for many a C grade was just not enough for the course they wanted to take at university. They needed a B grade, and even many heads of maths did not understand the significance of a B grade for the future career choices of their pupils. Bright, able and capable sixth-formers were finding that that one dropped grade in GCSE maths was limiting their future career options.”
“The charity also offers a results day service, which was so effective last year. Shockingly, it was the first time in Hackney’s history that pupils received a results day service from volunteers trained to go in at 7 o’clock in the morning so that young people who had missed a grade could access discussions with universities. For example, four young people who would not have got on to their nursing degree did so because of that input, which should be standard. That happened because a professional, qualified careers team was there at that point. Young people tell me that they want such advice. For many young people, face-to-face advice is so important because they are just not getting it through other routes. The key thing about My Big Career is the service’s high-level professionalism.”
“Those young people made their own connections. The redoubtable Deborah Streatfield decided to set up My Big Career because she is a professional careers adviser working in the private sector and, as well as the private school that employs her, she is often privately commissioned by parents. She realised that the careers advice in many state schools was not of the same standard, so she set up the charity. Happily, I was able to secure office space in Cardinal Pole school in my constituency, which now has an outstanding sixth form. Deborah Streatfield has been offering face-to-face advice, and it is not just her. She has been getting in volunteer careers advisers and, crucially, professionals from business who are trained to give the right kind of professional advice to pupils.”
“When I talk to businesses in the community and head teachers, one of the key things they mention is linking those businesses with individual pupil achievement in the school, as well as giving pupils a view of the world of work. That is more complicated than simply careers advice, but I have always supported embedding business connections in schools, and it is one of the reasons why I am broadly in favour of the academies programme. On careers advice more specifically, I am delighted to have worked from the outset with the charity My Big Career. We found each other because I had been working to encourage professionals in my area to become the family for young people in Hackney who do not have their own connections. I got professionals and sixth-formers into networking events, where they shared notes and found each other.”
“Many of them have come to this country, and perhaps their parents do not have good English. On Monday, I was at the KPMG City academy in my constituency with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). A year 12 pupil told us that she wants to be a doctor but that her mother is a single parent. She said, “I don’t have the connections that some of my friends in the school have.” The school helps to provide her with the connections that help to level the playing field. KPMG and the City of London sponsor the academy, and KPMG helps to provide her with support—other pupils also have mentors through KPMG. Those business links, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, are vital.”
“As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I strongly congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing this debate on a crucial subject. I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country. I can barely walk down the street, and I can certainly never visit a school or educational establishment, without young people directly raising their concerns and demands about the careers services that they want. I am here to speak for them. I completely endorse the comments of most hon. Members who have spoken today. Young people tell me that they want face-to-face guidance when they need it. That is particularly important in my constituency because many young people do not have connections. They do not have parents with understanding and knowledge of the modern world of work.”
“Those of us on the Public Accounts Committee have heard about the industrial scale of this revolving door of people going out of one job and into another with a fat redundancy payment. Does this not show that the Government have lost their grip on what is truly important in the NHS, which is paying front-line clinicians to serve patients?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the big problems is that advertised download speeds are an average, and that they do not take into account the important problem of uploading? That is also a problem for Shoreditch companies, because it slows down their businesses. We need to change the way that speeds are advertised.”
“I am sure that my hon. Friend will be interested to know that the editor of Tech City News, Alex Wood, each week produces a video rounding up the news in Tech City. The connection is so slow that he cannot upload the video from Old street; it has to be sent to his home address to be uploaded. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a national disgrace?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her generosity in giving way. There are alternative forms of technology, but there are barriers to them. We can do two things to help. First, companies should be forced to share their infrastructure—to be fair, BT and Openreach do that in many cases. Secondly, we should change planning regulations to require landlords to ensure that their buildings have the capacity for certain technologies.”
“There is hot competition to challenge the Minister on that. I thank the Minister for his comments, and for the move to reduce the cost of Openreach prices to some of the competitor companies. I say that because one of the issues is the overall cost of superfast broadband, both for businesses and residents. Would he, along with the Department for Communities and Local Government, look into this issue about changing planning, for wayleaves—to gain access across property—and to allow other technologies to be installed on or in buildings, because currently the planning rules make it harder for competitive technologies to enter the market?”
“I appreciate the Minister’s generosity in giving way once more. He suggested that the argument boils down just to cost, but let me be clear that there are still companies in Shoreditch that cannot easily get a physical connection. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury has told me that there are also such companies on her side of the roundabout. Alternative technologies would open up the market, make it more competitive and help drive down the price.”
“I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country, with an increasing number of young private renters—there are more private renters than home owners in the constituency—and people who move frequently drop off the register. I pay tribute to my borough of Hackney, which has put money and time into bringing the register up again. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the cost of doing so is also a problem for local tax payers?”
“I am concerned that the number of people on the electoral register is used as a proxy for local government funding allocations. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a real concern, especially for the poorer constituencies, which are experiencing the greatest drop-off of all?”
“The Secretary of State says that the issue of human trafficking is not his responsibility, but the issue of convictions is, and one of the key challenges is gathering evidence. In my constituency, I often meet victims many years after the trafficking offences have been committed. The Home Office may be responsible for some of these matters, but what is the right hon. Gentleman’s Department doing to improve the evidential chain and ensure that the evidence is there in court to secure convictions?”
“One way that the Minister can help first-time buyers in my constituency is to tackle high rents and insecurity in the private rented sector. Increasingly, there are reports of people who are not couples being forced to share a bedroom because they cannot afford the high rents in London, yet the Minister is being complacent. Is it not time that the Government acted?”
“The question of the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) underlines the complexity of our current polling system. I was proud to be a member of your Commission on Digital Democracy, Mr Speaker, which recommended a move towards online voting. That, of course, would obviate the need for the counts. Will the Electoral Commission spokesman tell us its views on how fast we can move towards delivering on that?”
“When I talk to many young people in Hackney, they all tell me they want actual experience in the workplace with an employer, rather than just talks at school. The Government have thrown a lot of money at this. What is the Secretary of State doing to monitor how effective the money is in getting young people socially mobile and moving onward and upward?”
“The Secretary of State has taken some bold steps to push mobile telephone companies to increase coverage in not spots. However, even in areas such as mine in Shoreditch, with mobile coverage, wi-fi and broadband, there is a real issue about planning permission for buildings that are tall enough to allow other technologies to flourish. Will he update the House on conversations he is having or will be having with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about changing planning permission to allow these other technologies to flourish?”
“Q7. We are seeing a meltdown in emergency care, yet the Prime Minister’s Health Secretary accuses us of whipping up a crisis. Is it not time for some honesty? This Government are simply failing our NHS.”
“Will the Home Secretary update the House on how well the Prevent strategy is working in reaching people at the grass roots who work with young people? Whatever the House does, quite rightly, to protect people’s primary civil liberty—that of life and limb—through new legislation, the security services cannot be everywhere and that network on the ground is most important.”
“The Public Accounts Committee examined this service in Devon and Cornwall and discovered, as it has in other inquiries, a lot of issues associated with cost shunting, because it does not cost 111 when it tells someone they need to go to hospital in an ambulance. So there have been “impressive figures” on the number of people who did not go to A and E as a result of their call, but is the Department monitoring the number of people who are sent to A and E by 111 but should not have been?”
“Three of the world’s top 10 engineering challenges are at Sellafield. As other hon. Members have said, it is a very complex site. Will the Secretary of State ensure that he and his fellow Ministers undertake very complex monitoring to make sure that the value-for-money challenges identified by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee do not slip again? I mean value for money in not just the cost of the contract but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said, the impact on the supply chain, because Sellafield should not deaden the local market, but build it and help it to thrive.”
“I should declare that I chair the all-party group on Nigeria. Although I do not want to play down the evils of Boko Haram, we know that the security forces and the Nigerian police have themselves caused problems while tackling its actions. I know that the Foreign Office has met the Metropolitan police’s Nigerian police forum—there are nearly 900 Nigerian-origin police officers in the Met. Will the Minister update the House on those discussions and on whether there is a role for the Metropolitan police and other police in the UK to help embed human rights policing in Nigeria?”
“The Secretary of State stood up and said that he takes personal responsibility for everything that happens in the NHS. Given that his Government undertook a costly and time-consuming reorganisation, does he now regret that people took their eye off the ball in relation to the highly predictable population shifts that have led to the pressure on A and E?”
“Last spring in my constituency two women were brutally murdered by their partners within a three-week period, one alongside her toddler daughter. In both cases, families, friends and others in the community were aware that abuse was taking place. Is the Solicitor-General content that evidence gathered by the police from others outside the direct situation is being used effectively and passed to the CPS to aid in prosecutions?”
“Entrepreneurs in Shoreditch to whom I speak greatly welcome migration. The Home Secretary’s colleague the Business Secretary came to an event organised by Tech City News to applaud the input of migrants in Shoreditch, so who is right: the Home Secretary or her colleague the Business Secretary?”
“The Secretary of State has accused Opposition Members of political scaremongering. Perhaps I should refer him to the Public Accounts Committee’s report on out-of-hours services, which showed cost-shunting to the ambulance service by out-of-hours providers, and to our recent hearing on A and E, which revealed an incredible waste of public money and a lack of joined-up thinking. That is not scaremongering; those are facts from the National Audit Office being interpreted by Members from all parties.”