Hilary Benn
MP for Leeds South · Labour · United Kingdom
“As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Irish Government published on 8 June their legislative outline, entitled “The General Scheme of the Legacy of the Troubles Bill 2026”. That is intended to fulfil the commitment that the Irish Government gave in the joint framework to co-operate to the fullest extent possible with the commission.”
“Northern Ireland is a society, as the hon. Gentleman knows better than most, that has been undergoing profound change since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 28 years ago. As the famous lines go, we have a shared history, but not necessarily a shared memory.”
“The right hon. Gentleman raises a really important point, and I am grateful to him for his question. We all have a responsibility—political leaders have a responsibility to call out what was witnessed for what it is and not mince our words, and as I have already indicated, social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that such m…”
“I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that the common travel area, which is more than a century old, is of great benefit to the citizens of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Many people in Northern Ireland live their lives across that border every single day.”
“I do agree with my hon. Friend. The attack on Mr Ogilvie was truly shocking, and there was no justification whatsoever for the racist thuggery we witnessed on the streets of Belfast in the days following.”
“That was, of course, an awful feature of what we saw. One of the things I learned in my discussions was that those from the far right had taken a list of houses in multiple occupation in Belfast—a list that, in the interests of openness, was properly available on the Belfast city council website; the council has now taken it down—and used…”
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“There is clearly a problem here that needs fixing. As the head of Marks & Spencer made clear today, the full checks that are currently being applied on M&S goods going to the Republic are resulting in some consignments being sent back because they have the wrong colour typeface on the form. Mr Norman has said that a veterinary agreement would be “by far the best way of delivering a smooth trade flow.” The Secretary of State just made reference to that. Given that we are, in effect, following EU food standards anyway, because they have not changed since 31 December, is that not the best way forward? I encourage the Secretary of State, if he agrees, not to be too purist about the form of such an agreement, because it would bring huge relief to so many people affected by the current fears and arrangements.”
“I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He made the point a moment ago that the risk of a fatal fire is very low. Can he therefore explain why thousands and thousands of leaseholders are paying for expensive waking watches, having been told by their local fire services that, unless there is a waking watch, the building will be closed down and all of them will have to leave? There is a clear contradiction between those two positions.”
“Offering 15 years instead of six is fine, but useless, because not a single leaseholder I have spoken to will be able to put the money up and take the risk of suing someone when they might lose after seven years and face another bill. They have enough to worry about at the moment. I look forward to working with others on a cross-party basis to support amendments to the Bill, so that finally my leaseholders can look at the Bill when it is finished and say, “Right. We have a plan to deal with this.” Then all our constituents can get on with their lives, because that is what they want and what they deserve.”
“Ministers know—we have told them time and again—that lease- holders do not have the money to pay to fix those defects. If the defects are not fixed, those buildings will remain classed as unsafe. Presumably if they are a serious risk, they will continue to have waking watch and insurance bills, which will drain the accounts of innocent leaseholders. My second point is: where is the plan to manage the most dangerous buildings first? At the moment, the order in which they are fixed depends on the speed with which managing agents and freeholders either pay for it themselves or apply to the building safety fund. We do not actually know the full extent of the problem; there is no comprehensive list.”
“I appreciate—we all do—the money that the Government are putting in, but there are so many other faults in buildings apart from unsafe cladding that replacing the cladding will not make them safe. To take one example, the Richmond House fire was just under two years ago. It was below 18 metres, yet we are told that it was the absence of proper cavity barriers and fire breaks that allowed the fire to spread. I say to Members: watch the video. It is absolutely terrifying. Luckily no one was killed, yet it is precisely fire defects of that sort, which we know are being discovered on countless buildings, that are not covered by the Government’s funding offer, because the Government are funding the removal of dangerous cladding.”
“Last Saturday, I attended a demonstration at Leeds Dock in which my constituents—leaseholders affected by the scandal—talked about the anxiety, the stress and the potentially crippling financial costs they face if they are asked to pay to fix their homes. They really feel that nothing has changed. Now, had they been able to see Ted Baillieu from Victoria state speak last week, as referred to by the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), they would have been blown away by his direct, no-nonsense approach. Those three words—“find, fix, fund”, and then go after the people who are responsible —should be the guiding light of the Government’s approach. My question to Ministers is: when will we see in the UK the kind of comprehensive approach that we are seeing in Victoria in Australia?”
“If this is about protecting the public finances, why is this area of Government expenditure—the money we spend on getting children into school, or on vaccinating children so they do not die of diseases that our children do not die of—being singled out? I have great admiration for the OBR, but determining the level of our international aid spending is not part of its responsibility. It is the Government’s responsibility, it is a political responsibility, and Ministers should not try to pass the buck on to someone else, especially since the latest OBR forecast makes clear that it is exceedingly unlikely that the two tests would be met in the next five years.”
“It is a very long list, and every one of those things harms our reputation and does not help us to persuade others, because other countries judge us not by what we say, but by what we do. The choice before the House today is a very stark one: do we act to put this right, or do we accept the double lock that has been proposed? I urge the House to reject it, because there is a principle here. What is it about the level of Government spending on helping the world’s poorest people that means that it alone is going to be subject to these tests? No other area of Government expenditure is: just this one.”
“Since Ministers announced that the UK was going to be the only G7 country to cut its aid this year, despite all the other countries facing the same fiscal pressures, there is not one Member of this House who is not now aware of the consequences of the decision that Ministers have taken—a cut of 85% in the support that we give to the United Nations Population Fund to prevent maternal and child death and unwanted pregnancy; a cut of 95% to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, at the very moment when the world is closer than it has ever been to eradicating that dreadful disease; and a cut of 50% in the support we give to the humanitarian mine action programme, which stops people losing their arms, their legs and their lives to unexploded ordnance.”
“It is just the same as it was on the day when the original cut was announced, and the question before us is whether it is right—morally, practically or politically—to break our word to the world’s poorest people. I would argue that it is not: it is wrong in principle and it is harmful in practice, as we have heard from excellent speeches made by Conservative Members. It is not who we are; it is not the country that we should aspire to be; and I ask the House to reject this motion so that we can restore aid to 0.7% and keep the promise that we made to the people of this country and the people of the world.”
“I am afraid that I take a different view of the Government’s consistency from the right hon. Gentleman’s, because they have chosen quite specifically, knowingly and deliberately to break a cast-iron promise to the world’s poorest people that was also contained in that manifesto. As I said in my last contribution on this subject, most of those people probably have no idea that this House made that commitment together, but the Government have chosen to break it, and the choice we are making today is whether we think that is right or wrong. The Chancellor might think that the double lock is a way out of this political problem, but I do not think it is, because the issue before us has not gone away.”
“Yesterday the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee that he was apprehensive about the future of Afghanistan and that the situation was fraught with risks—a sentiment shared by many Afghans, who fear that the gains of which he has spoken so eloquently today, such as girls’ education and democracy, may be lost. After two decades and the sacrifice of so many British lives, whose loss we mourn today and always, why is he so confident that the Taliban will never again allow any part of Afghanistan—because they control some parts already—to be used by terrorist forces, including ISIS, as a base from which to attack this country and others of our allies?”
“The G7 announcement of 1 billion additional vaccine doses for developing countries was, of course, welcome, but the Prime Minister knows that the head of the World Health Organisation says that we need 11 billion doses in total if we are to vaccinate 70% of the world population. Where does the right hon. Gentleman think that the rest of those doses will come from, so that everyone can be safe because everyone is vaccinated?”
“As the Minister has said, for many years there has been widespread international support for a two-state solution, but he will know that a growing number of voices now say that the window on this is closing rapidly, and that if it does, Israel will have to accept full and equal civil rights for all Palestinians. In the light of this, what policy would he encourage the new Government formed this week to pursue?”
“The Prime Minister will sit down opposite the G7 leaders at the end of this week. They are facing exactly the same fiscal pressures as he is, but have the United States, Germany, France, Canada or the other G7 countries cut their aid budgets? No, they have not, because they understand the moral argument.”
“Well, this issue is not going to go away, is it? Why? Because it is about the promise, as we heard in the brilliant speech made by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). It is about the promise we made to people who in all likelihood know nothing of its existence, but whose lives have been changed by our generosity. They are people who have drunk clean water or gone to school and mothers who have seen their babies safely delivered or vaccinated, thanks to the immense generosity of the British people. The question is therefore a very simple one: how can it be right or moral to break this particular promise that we gave in good faith to others? The answer is very simple, too: it is not. It is wrong, and, as we have heard, it is damaging our international reputation.”
“It is not a competition between charity at home and aid abroad. We can, we should, we must do both.”
“One of the people waiting was a girl of about 13 or 14. The well was here and she was standing there—I can remember it to this day. She told me in a very quiet voice that it was her responsibility in her family to get the water every day, because until she did so, she could not go to school. Because the well was closed not just that day, but many days, she was often late for class. That is what this is about: a lack of plentiful, clean water, which all of us here take for granted, meant a lack of education for her and millions of other girls like her. Are we really going to say that it is acceptable to cut our support for clean water? Is anyone actually going to argue that these cuts are popular with the British people? I fundamentally disagree; the British people are much more compassionate than that.”
“Clean water helps girls to go to school, the very thing that the Government say is a priority. As International Development Secretary—the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield talked about his experience—I learned that there are moments when those of who have the privilege to do the job have our minds changed. We learn and we understand, and we realise why something is so important. In this example, I came across a well one day with a lot of people standing around it. I was told that the well was closed. I had never come across a closed well before, but it was explained that because demand for water in that part of the city was so high, after the first rush of buckets was drawn from it in the morning, the well had to be closed so that the water table had time to replenish to allow the well to be reopened.”
“With respect to the hon. Gentleman, that is not the point. We made a promise. I presume he is as committed to keeping promises he makes as the rest of us here in this Chamber. What of the human cost? We heard from the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) in her powerful speech about lives blighted, lives shortened and lives lost. Let me just take one example. How can it be right to cut aid for clean water by 80%? The arguments against doing that are so strong, such as the importance of clean water for hand-washing in a pandemic. There is the fact that the single most important thing we can do if we want to reduce infant mortality, apart from improving immediate postnatal care, is provide clean water, because every day babies and small children die because they drink dirty water.”
“Following the timetable chaos, the fragmentation and three franchise failures on the east coast main line, my constituents already knew that privatisation did not work, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s acknowledgement of that today. However, we know that Transport for the North’s core funding has been cut and that transport spending per head in London is three times larger than it is in Yorkshire and the Humber, so my constituents would like to know what benefit today’s announcement will bring for HS2 phase 2b to Leeds, future investment in Leeds station and getting on with Northern Powerhouse Rail.”
“It is not surprising that we see resistance to new homes if the community knows that no one on its waiting list and no one living locally who is hoping to buy their first home can have any chance of affording them. How many more planning Bills will it take before we come to the realisation that in the end local communities have in every sense to take responsibility? I believe that if we give them all the tools, they will do the job.”
“Community after community can tell the story of sites being identified locally, whereupon the house builders come along and say, “I’m really sorry, that doesn’t work for us, but what about that greenfield site over there?” And even if their planning application is refused, they are pretty confident that they will win on appeal. I cannot think of a system less likely to encourage local communities to take responsibility than one in which the final decision is removed from their hands. That is why local communities should have the power to determine exactly where the new homes are built, what kind of homes are constructed and who gets them.”
“There simply are not enough council houses, so local authorities need the means and the funding to build them. We are never going to have enough homes if we just rely on the volume house builders, because they will build only the number of properties they think they can sell at the price they want to get for them. That is why we have planning permissions unbuilt, which is hardly a sign of a planning system that is working. I read that Ministers are contemplating a “use it or lose it” levy, and I think that is a very sensible idea. Indeed, we proposed it six years ago. Even where local communities come forward to designate sites, they do not have the power to ensure that that is where the new homes are built.”
“And by the way, where is the alternative accommodation that they can afford? This brings me finally to the planning Bill, which I think will have a rough ride. I do not think it will fix the problem that it is trying to address. Ministers have announced many changes to the planning system in the last decade or so, and all of them have tried in one way or another to remove power from local communities, because it is argued that they are the main obstacle to house building. I think that analysis is wrong. A growing number of people contact me as an MP because they live in unsatisfactory and overcrowded accommodation. They bid with hundreds of others for a council property, they cannot afford to buy and they cannot afford to rent privately.”
“As the moratorium on evictions comes to an end, what is the Government’s plan to stop lots of people being made homeless? I am not aware that there is one. At the beginning of the crisis, the Secretary of State said, as we heard earlier, that “no renter who has lost income due to coronavirus will be forced out of their home”, yet when the Government recently announced that the bailiff-enforced eviction ban would be extended to 31 May, their own press notice said: “This will ensure residents in both the private and social sector can stay in their homes and have enough time to find alternative accommodation”. Those two statements do not square. Either my constituents will be able to stay in their own homes or they will have to find alternative accommodation because they have been evicted. Which is it?”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), rightly pointed out, offering to solve half the problem will not work, because there are other fire safety defects. As the recent fire at New Providence Wharf reminded us, living in an unsafe building is not a theoretical risk; it is an actual risk. I know it is difficult for Ministers, but believe you me it is nothing like the difficulty that our leaseholders are living with. The only solution is to make loan funding available to the blocks to fix all the problems and then to pay back the cost of that loan over the long term by levying the house builders and developers. My second concern in the context of this debate is for all those in rent arrears because of covid.”
“On the cladding crisis, I regret that there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to protect leaseholders from having to pay to fix faults that are not of their making. When the Building Safety Bill comes before us, Ministers will find that amendments are tabled to provide that protection to leaseholders. We are not giving up and there are a growing number of Members of this House, including on the Government Benches, who are determined to do right by our constituents, because they have run out of patience and are running out of time. As their lives remain on hold, their flats remain worthless, they face monthly bills for waking watches and insurance premiums, and the demands are starting to arrive for sums of money that they simply do not have. As the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon.”
“Given that the national infrastructure bank will be based in Leeds, would it not be highly symbolic to start building phase 2b of the eastern leg of HS2 from Leeds southwards? The Secretary of State was quoted recently as saying that he is looking at bringing forward the start date. Would he consider that idea?”
“I really hope that Ministers will take up the idea and finally acknowledge that only a comprehensive plan is going to bring this nightmare to an end.”
“I know that Ministers and officials meet individual groups and organisations regularly, but I think there would be great merit in bringing together representatives of all these groups to establish what we can call a contact group or an action group, so that the Minister and his officials can sit around a table on a regular basis to share information about what is happening and to progress-chase, iron out problems, test out ideas and find answers to the problems for which there is as yet no plan, but which my constituents in Leeds have to live with each and every day and which weigh so heavily upon them, their lives and their sense of whether there is a future that they can look forward to, because, as things stand, there is not one.”
“I have had to use parliamentary questions to try to find out what has been happening in respect of applications to the building safety fund for particular blocks in my constituency. I have to say, the replies I have received have been distinctly unhelpful. A very large range of people is involved: leaseholders of course, freeholders, the fire service, managing agents, building companies, developers, chartered surveyors, local authorities, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, and the Minister’s Department.”
“The uncertainty is not caused by our voting for the Lords amendments; it is the unresolved problem that is causing huge uncertainty. As for his point about drafting complexity, he should give a commitment to go away and draft something and bring it back in the Building Safety Bill, because either his view is that it is complex and no one has drafted anything suitable yet—so go away and draft it—or it is simply a way of trying to resist the idea that leaseholders should not have to pay. In the meantime, I have a practical suggestion to make. All those involved, including MPs, spend a lot of time going back and forth about practical problems in respect of blocks, difficulties, delays, a lack of communication and so forth.”
“The Minister knows that this problem is not going to go away. Whether it is the Fire Safety Bill today or in the Building Safety Bill, we will keep returning to this. He knows that because what has been done so far is insufficient. He knows it because, as things stand, the length of time it is likely to take to sort this out will be too long for many leaseholders to be able to continue to bear the costs that they are paying at the moment and to contemplate the future costs that hang over them. And the Government know it because, as they said right at the beginning of this crisis—we intend to hold them to this promise—it is not right that leaseholders should be asked to bear the costs of something they were not responsible for. I really do not understand the Minister’s argument.”
“In conclusion, can I assure the Minister that the growing number of MPs who support the Lords amendment are not going anywhere, and that is because our constituents have nowhere else to go?”
“Leaseholders in shared ownership properties are in a particular bind. The building safety fund is moving too slowly. There is a shortage of companies who can, or will, do the work. There is total uncertainty as to what is meant to happen when we know that there are other works that have to be done to make buildings safe but for which the Government are not prepared, so far, to offer funding. I find it very hard to believe that Ministers do not understand that the remedy they have come forward with so far is patently insufficient, or that, without a comprehensive plan, leaseholders will, month by month and year by year, inevitably face financial collapse because of the huge burden of costs being put on their shoulders.”
“So I ask the Minister: what are people in this situation meant to do? Sadly, we know that the Government do not have an answer to this, or indeed to the mental and emotional torment that these people are being put through. That is why this amendment is needed, and needed now. Even taking account of the Government funding already announced, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership estimates that about two thirds of the total cost will still fall on leaseholders: the very people whom the Government say should not pay. The Association of Residential Managing Agents estimates that the average remediation bill will be about £50,000 a flat and that insurance costs have risen by 400%. The Government estimate that the average cost of a waking watch outside London is over £2,100 a year for each flat.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). Here we are again debating a Lords amendment to protect leaseholders from having to pay to fix construction defects and unsafe cladding that never were and never should be their responsibility, and yet Ministers continue to resist, even though they have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not have to bear the cost. The trouble with this endless debate is that the clock is ticking and innocent leaseholders continue to face unreasonable costs as bills now start to arrive demanding sums of money that they simply do not possess. One constituent wrote to me last week enclosing a photograph of the bill he has just been sent, for £27,000. Another thinks that their bill will be £40,000. They obviously cannot remortgage their flats.”
“Converting UK homes to zero carbon heating will be a huge task. Does the COP President believe that heat pumps can adequately replace all gas boilers? If there is a need for supplementary heating, what form does he think it should take?”
“However, of one thing we can be sure. All the comments, all the recollections, all the stories that have been told about the Duke of Edinburgh in the past few days will surely be a great comfort to the royal family, as they would be to anyone who has lost a loved one—and oh, how many of our citizens have experienced such a loss in the last year. Why? Because when someone close to us dies, to know that their life was well lived, to know that it had meaning, and to know that they will be remembered is perhaps the greatest comfort of all. May he rest in peace.”
“As we have watched the tributes and the newsreels about his life, we have inevitably reflected upon our own lives, upon what has changed and what that has meant as we ourselves have got older. This is, after all, the human condition. As the American baseball player Satchel Paige wisely observed: “Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” I suspect that the Duke would have agreed with that sentiment. As we all express our condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and the royal family on their loss, we should also remember that the passing of a public figure is, for the family that loved him, also a deeply felt private loss. There is the public mourning, but there is also the private grief, which is very personal, and it can be difficult to endure amid all the public attention.”
“The Duke was, as are we all, a product of the age in which he was born and of his upbringing. When he was born in 1921, Queen Victoria had died only 20 years previously and Lloyd George was Prime Minister. It was another era. As we sometimes wrestle with our past and how we should come to terms with it, we cannot forget that fundamental truth about how each one of us is shaped. Nor can we truly understand the person without also understanding the age in which they lived, as the Duke of Edinburgh always sought to do, and he lived for a very long time. Even if we did not know all that he was doing, he was ever present our lives, as he was that constant strength to Her Majesty the Queen.”
“I particularly enjoyed the story that when he discovered that the Parliament of Ghana had only 200 Members, he quipped, I trust with a smile on his face, “That is about the right number. We have 650 and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.” How one describes that or any of his other more famous comments—he certainly said what he thought—requires us to understand from whence they and he came. In over 70 years of public service in which carried out with distinction the role of first consort, a job without a description, he went into countless rooms and was introduced to countless lines of people, all of whom were waiting for him to say something. Which one of us would be able to do that for over seven decades without, on occasion, saying something that we might later come to regret—or, in the Duke’s case, probably not?”
“I must confess that, like many people, there are things I have learned in the last few days about the life of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, that I did not previously know. They include the difficult circumstances of his early life, his mother’s bravery in hiding a Jewish family from the Germans in Greece during the war, for which she is remembered at Yad Vashem as one of the righteous among the nations, and just how deep and long-standing was his personal commitment to wildlife and nature conservation, which was in many ways, as others have said, ahead of its time. We were all aware, however, that the Duke of Edinburgh was famous for his plain speaking.”
“So, let us do the right thing today to protect leaseholders, and then the Government can turn their attention to finding an answer that will actually work. At a time when people are getting bills to the tune, as I have just said, of £71,000 through the letterbox, to stand up and say, “I’m really sorry, but this isn’t the right legislation” demonstrates a failure to understand the nightmare that so many of the people we represent are living through.”
“But that is the one thing that leaseholders do not have, because, as we have heard, they are paying bills that they cannot afford. Even worse, the bills are now starting to arrive on their doormats demanding payment to fix the cladding. One recent example was a demand for £71,000. It might as well be for £1 million, because there is no prospect of leaseholders being able to find that kind of money. So the longer this goes on, the more likely we are to see leaseholders becoming bankrupt. What are the local authorities going to do when they turn up at their door and say, “I’m homeless; I need somewhere to stay”? And make no mistake: the anger that leaseholders are feeling at the moment will be something else again when they find themselves being made homeless through no fault of their own.”
“I do not really understand that. Can the Minister say whether, if the works the Government are prepared to fund through the scheme are completed, the buildings in question will be declared safe so that the waking watch and insurance costs disappear even if the other fire safety defects have not been fixed? Time, however, is not on our side, because we know how long making all of these homes safe is going to take, even if all the necessary funding had already been identified. There are detailed inspections to be done, tenders have to be put together, firms found who are willing to do the work, and scaffolding and building materials have to be ordered before the work can even begin. So, given the scale of this, it is going to take a long time.”
“I will be supporting the amendment moved by the Bishop of St Albans, because in circumstances where leaseholders are beset by worry, fear and uncertainty, it will provide them with the reassurance that they will not have to pay to fix a problem for which they are not responsible. It will also make the Government realise that they have to come forward with a different solution. There are two problems here: the first is dangerous cladding and the second is other fire safety defects, which have been discovered in building after building. The Government appear to be in the position where the funding they have announced will pay for the remediation of missing fire cavity barriers where they are integral to the replacement of dangerous cladding, but not where they are not—in other words, where they are elsewhere in the building.”
“Together, we face unprecedented challenges—a pandemic, an economic crisis, the threat of dangerous climate change—but I believe that we can and will best respond to them not through separation, but as one country, one Union, one United Kingdom.”
“Given the problems we see on the border between the UK and the EU, how could it possibly be in the economic interest of Scotland—or, indeed, of England—to establish that same customs and single market border from the Solway firth to just north of Berwick-upon-Tweed? Both arguments create bitter division. Opinion in Scotland is very divided on independence; be wary of the untold consequences of small margins and do not make assumptions. Opinion polls move, but there is only one true indicator of the settled will of the Scottish people, and that is the outcome of the 2014 referendum. I do not decry anyone’s right to continue to argue their cause in the face of that settled will, but I do question the wisdom of doing so, especially now.”