Melanie Onn
MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes · Labour · United Kingdom
“That space has been an eyesore since 2016, and another housing association, the council or the charitable sector could easily access it and build much-needed new homes in the town centre, to prevent the doughnut effect of town centres being hollowed out.”
“Of course we need more council homes and social homes, and it is welcome that the Bill makes provision for just that. But for the lack of social housing, we would not see the growth in houses in multiple occupation, which are blighting communities up and down the country.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for supporting me on that point; this is an issue that affects many constituencies across the country. Housing associations are purveyors of social homes, so there needs to be a review of their accountability and the expectations of how well they work with local authorities.”
“Social homes will be the places that provide them with security and comfort in their older years. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me move on to the issue of empty homes—this is not the first time that I have mentioned it to him. There are nearly 2,000 in my constituency.”
“A development of 1,500 properties is proposed for near Weelsby Woods, which is a designated nature corridor in my constituency. Within that, there are no designations of social housing, no suggestion of doctor’s surgeries and no consideration of the potential road congestion.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for very timely and welcome statement. Let me point to a good development in Grimsby—a really good example of town centre housebuilding that is working with local housing associations.”
The complete record
Every one of 609 lines we hold for Melanie Onn, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 13.
“My learning disabled constituent, who also has mental health and substance abuse issues, was placed in poor-quality housing and left without food and heating by a local care provider called Focus. What is the Department doing to ensure that subcontracted social care providers are fit for purpose?”
“Can the Minister tell me of any other publicly funded body that provides a service to 500 people every day that can decide to close that service, as Network Rail has with the Suggitt’s Lane crossing, without any consultation whatsoever?”
“T4. May I ask how many doctors the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency employs, because they seem to think that they know better than my HGV drivers’ doctors when it comes to removing their licences? Too often, this is impacting on the drivers’ livelihoods, and it needs my intervention for the DVLA to take any notice. It should not be like that, should it?”
“I wholeheartedly believe that it should not be the victims who lose their homes, communities, friends, family, social clubs, schools or jobs, and I hope the Minister shares my view.”
“I would not feel so strongly about this issue if people coming to see me about it was not a weekly occurrence, but that is what it is, and they all experience similar housing situations. We have a great refuge service in Great Grimsby run by Women’s Aid, which caters for people across the country, but that is not a permanent home. When victims have done nothing wrong, being forced out of their home feels like further punishment. I hope that in the Domestic Abuse Bill, as well as in the Minister’s remarks, there will be an acceptance that Government should prioritise victims remaining securely in their own homes, with the perpetrator being removed and prevented from interfering with their victims and the wider family.”
“Council homelessness teams do not have sufficient good-quality properties to house people properly and rogue landlords are still getting away with offering poor-quality—and frankly, in this situation, dangerous—properties to incredibly vulnerable people. They are taking advantage: a local authority would be charged a much higher rate to house such people, who would feel they had no other choice. There are feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and failing as a parent, as well as the great impact of the disruption on the lives and education of my constituents’ children. That shows that the Government have a role to play to offer greater resources to close the many, very obvious gaps.”
“The partner of my constituent has gone to ground and constantly changes address so that the mortgage company cannot get hold of him and insist that he sign documentation. That is deeply frustrating for my constituent, because in her eyes she is the victim: she has done everything she can, having done all the right things and having gone to all the right agencies, yet still she will lose out. The housing association procedures do not seem to reflect the reality of people’s lives. In those extraordinary circumstances, there must be some flexibilities in processes and procedures to make sure that people, particularly children, are not at a disadvantage.”
“Government have done some good work to prevent those who are suffering from domestic violence and seeking housing support from being turned away from neighbouring or external local authorities merely because they have no local connection. That is welcome. The Minister will know that I am very aware of the work undertaken to try to tackle rogue landlords and protect those in the private rental sector, but these two cases show that financial coercion as a crime is not fully investigated with the same vigour as other forms of physical abuse. The support is not available. Much more could be done to get the institutions that offer mortgages to provide some breathing space and freeze mortgages until the situation is resolved to ensure that individuals are not punished.”
“It would be great if the council or the housing association had sufficient properties, but when my constituent has asked the housing association to rehouse her in more suitable accommodation, she has been told that she made herself voluntarily homeless, and she has accrued debts as a result of non-payment of rent. I cannot believe that Lincolnshire Housing Partnership, the housing association in question in this case, does not allow a waiver for individuals who have experienced domestic abuse to say that they are leaving a property, particularly when that is done under police advice. I cannot believe that the housing association cannot do more to ensure that people are properly accommodated.”
“Her finances were certainly taken up by doing that, because she received no additional financial support in that situation. She then began sofa- surfing with her family, which has gone on for more than two years since they were advised to move on from that housing association property. The homelessness team has now found my constituent a home, which she has been told is permanent, but after a matter of months the walls are crumbling, the roof and the bathroom leak, the whole house has electrical problems and electricians have assessed it as a tinderbox waiting to go up, and an outbuilding in the garden is so dangerous that the children cannot play out there, and one of them has already injured themselves in it. There is a crisis in the kind of property that local authorities can offer people in such dire situations.”
“On homelessness, for that individual in that first case, getting either another mortgage or private rented accommodation will be very difficult and challenging with a poor credit rating. The second case involves a woman who had been in a very violent relationship with her former partner, with whom she had four children. The partner was in a particular situation, and the police gave my constituent just 48 hours to get out of the family home and remove themselves as far away as possible. The homelessness team put this woman and her four children into emergency bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but that was not entirely suitable. It was a long way from the children’s schools, which made it impossible for the mother to do any work because most of the day was spent taking four children back and forth to school on public transport.”
“As an exercise in domestic abuse, such financial coercion is already legislated for, but the police simply do not seem to have the ability, focus and priorities to investigate such incredibly complex and sensitive situations, and the available avenues left to my constituents are few and far between. I hope that the Minister will meet the Home Office Minister, with whom I have already had a conversation about this particular case, to ensure that we see in the upcoming Domestic Abuse Bill a much greater focus on financial measures and packages, and on the institutions that can better support those in controlling relationships, particularly of a financial nature.”
“This woman has been to every organisation that she can think of, whether it be Women’s Aid, StepChange or her local authority, and has even taken advice from a solicitor on how to extricate herself from this situation. The only response is that she should default on her part of the mortgage payments, which would significantly affect her credit rating, and allow the property to be repossessed and sold by the bank at auction, at a much lower price than if it were sold on the open market. Both she and her partner would lose out, but her former partner could not care less about losing out—all he wants is to ensure that she struggles and that she cannot move any further along.”
“After six years of a relationship—five years as a co-mortgager with the individual—the woman has been left with full responsibility for the mortgage and all the utility bills, as well as associated bills for which her former partner happily took her money for five years, but never actually payed the companies. Her ex-partner will not allow her to remove herself from or seek to close down that mortgage, or make any progress whatever on selling the property, so he retains his control over her life and her ability to move on from the relationship, although she is the one who engages with all the different agencies to try to work out a payment plan for all the debt accrued as a result of that relationship.”
“I wish that that was unusual, but sadly, it is not. I will focus on two of those cases, which have particular links to housing. I thought that the Government response to today’s debate might come from a Home Office Minister, rather than the Minister with responsibility for housing and homelessness, because of the nature of the domestic abuse involved. I trust that the Minister will have close conversations with her Home Office counterpart following the debate. The first case that came before me involved a woman who had experienced severe financial coercive control at the hands of her former partner.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on securing this debate and on all the work that he does with the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which he leads ably, and presumably alone, now that his Conservative counterpart, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), has been promoted. I wish my hon. Friend well for the future of that all-party parliamentary group, which has done some incredibly important work and given Government clear direction on actions that they could take further to reduce homelessness and on additional steps beyond that which they have already done. I wanted to participate in the debate because on Friday, at my regular weekly surgery, three cases of domestic abuse came to me.”
“What are the Government doing to support bioenergy and carbon capture and storage technology to enable the energy estuary of the Humber to become the UK’s first net zero industrial cluster?”
“The loss of Novartis from the South Humber bank will lead to 400 job losses. Will the Secretary of State appoint one of his Ministers to a taskforce, to find a new buyer for the site?”
“Nearly 4,000 of my constituents are going to be affected by this decision. I find it absolutely shocking that the Secretary of State, who stood on a 2017 manifesto that promised over-75s that they would keep this benefit—hard-working over-75s who have lived by the rules all their lives and contributed in every way to get this tiny benefit—now says they cannot do so. Does he not think he owes those people more of an explanation than he is giving this House today?”
“The element of childcare provision in her UC was suspended, and because she obviously required that childcare, she ended up with more than £2,000 of debt. Only the fact that her parents could bail her out helped her through that difficult situation, and an intervention from my office subsequently got that money repaid. How can we have a system that drives people into debt? There is undoubtedly a link between the two things. It could be rental debt; a local housing association stated that after the launch of universal credit its rent arrears increased immediately, and that as of June 2018, UC claimants accounted for 40% of its overall rent debt. That cannot be allowed to continue. In 2009-10, 350 people used the local food bank, but recent figures suggest that that number is now 2,525.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this important debate. With the best will in the world, this seems to have become a state-devised system that, by its design, drives people into gross financial hardship. We have heard about the difficulties of the five-week wait, and about the 40% repayment rate on any debt that occurs. We have not talked about the advance up-front costs of childcare payments and the 85% payment that can be obtained through universal credit. My constituent is 21. She is a single parent and has an apprenticeship in a doctor’s surgery. She is paid the lower apprenticeship rate, and takes home just £111 a week. She has to pay her childcare upfront.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does she think that, at the very heart of this, the concern of people in constituencies such as Batley and Spen and Great Grimsby is that quality of life is severely affected as a result of crime, be it violent crime, which has increased in my constituency, or the antisocial behaviour that she has been discussing?”
“Did the Committee not also state in its recommendations that it considered there was merit in applying a public safety test to any diversionary route that may result from the closure of a level crossing? Is the hon. Gentleman aware of whether Network Rail followed that recommendation in this situation?”
“If that is possible for Greenwich residents, why is it not possible for Grimsby and Cleethorpes residents? I think Network Rail hopes to get away with this, but this is a warning. The campaigners, who are here today, are dogged and tenacious. They will not give in. Network Rail might hope for an easy exit, but that will not happen. I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes. I urge the Minister to use his considerable influence on Network Rail to insist on a proper consultation, and to recognise the hard work of campaigners such as Lynn Sayles, Robert Palmer and Councillor Debbie Rodwell, among others, as well as the impact on local businesses, disabled people, families and the elderly, who all rely on this crossing.”
“It holds no records of those. It says it has communicated with local residents and businesses about safety issues. It has no evidence of those letters. How is it possible that a public body can be so utterly incompetent, seek embarrassingly and obviously to pull the wool over the eyes of members of the public, and be in a situation where it not only ignores its own mission statements about accountability but has no transparency whatsoever in its decision making? It has left campaigners, such as those in the Gallery, with just the very expensive route of a judicial review. There is a similar situation with the Angerstein Wharf crossing in Greenwich. Network Rail has had the good grace to listen to the leader of the council, the MP and the community, and to delay the closure of that crossing.”
“If there have been so many near misses that Network Rail considered to be so important, why did it not report them to the RAIB? Network Rail has published various documents about the risk of the crossing, which are completely inconsistent. One gives the crossing a risk status of D2, but another puts it in the extremely low M13 category. The recent risk assessment was produced and published just four days before the closure, but that was months after the hon. Member for Cleethorpes, the leader of the council and I were notified in writing of the decision. What on earth was the point of doing that assessment if Network Rail had no need to do risk assessments in the first place? Network Rail says it has given safety talks to schools. It can provide no evidence of that. It says it participated in local safety events.”
“Network Rail says there is no public right of way, but it has previously written to members of the public and local authority planners in support of Suggitt’s Lane crossing becoming a right of way. As recently as September 2018, Network Rail confirmed in writing that there were no plans to close the crossing, yet within just three months, without providing any details or timeframe to the public, and without even responding to the former council leader’s concerns, it closed it. After 150 years, despite the fact that more than 500 people a day use the crossing, Network Rail has walked away, saying it has no need to take any account of the impact it has caused to the local community. We heard about the RAIB’s assessment. Is there something in that that we need to consider?”
“The risk is actually worse now that people with bicycles and people with mobility problems have to cross a bridge that is not really suitable for that. In fact, young William, who has joined us in the Gallery, recently fell down that bridge trying to take his bicycle across it. Has Network Rail given that any consideration? I suspect not, because now it has displaced the risk, it has become somebody else’s problem. Having been asked about risk assessments, Network Rail conveniently says there is no need for it to do them because this is not a public access route. However, it drafted factually incorrect risk assessments to support the decision to close the crossing, as the hon. Member for Cleethorpes said.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for generously allowing me a few minutes to add my voice to those of the campaigners who crowdfunded to get here to participate in the debate, such is the strength of their feeling. It is really important to acknowledge that any death on our railways is a tragedy. Of course that must be avoided, so I completely understand the desire to close dangerous level crossings, particularly where there is a real risk to life. However, this issue is not about a genuine risk; it is about a perceived risk. It is about an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist—an attempt that has caused huge disruption and upset to residents across north-east Lincolnshire.”
“What reassurance can the Minister offer to the many apprentices who work at the Scunthorpe plant from my Great Grimsby constituency and to the colleges that arrange those apprenticeships in the event that the Government’s intervention is not sufficient?”
“Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Grimsby Institute’s level 3 enterprise and entrepreneurship group on its strong performance at the UK final of the Young Enterprise Start-up competition that was held in London yesterday? Our colleges play a critical role in delivering skills and qualifications, and they are at the forefront of the biggest reforms to technical education in a generation. When will we get a statement committing to increasing base rate funding for 16 to 19-year-olds by £1,000 so that colleges can meet the challenges that this place puts on them?”
“The Home Secretary is being generous with his time. This week at Killingholme docks a truck with £3 million-worth of cocaine hidden in it was stopped and prevented from coming into the local area. I wonder how many trucks with that amount of drugs get through. He will be well aware that Grimsby suffers from a significant county lines issue. This week, a man was stabbed after drawing out money in the evening, presumably by people wanting drug money. So much in this area is scaring people in smaller towns such as Grimsby; it is not just in the big cities. Is he giving all the attention he could to areas such as Grimsby?”
“I do not know what it is like for colleagues, but my office has found it extremely difficult to get a good standard of response in a timely fashion from prisons. My final point about probation is that at the weekend we saw many reports about how fly-tipping has increased enormously. Locally, dumping in alleyways is a huge issue for residents. Until August last year, our probation service had community payback activity that involved cleaning the alleys. That has now stopped because, apparently, it did not provide a feeling of worth for the individuals. It is private land and the council have no responsibilities over it, but tenants and landlords are not taking responsibility for it. That activity provided a useful public service, and I ask that it be reinstated as a rotational duty for community payback participants.”
“I could get nowhere with those organisations, and it took the Prisons Minister’s intervention to achieve a resolution. In all that time, his family have struggled to get any information out of the prison, and even to get access to their son. His withdrawal from any contact or communication led the prison to tell the family, “Well, he doesn’t want to see you.” The family has therefore had very little information, but now, thankfully, there has been some movement. It should not take intervention by Ministers for basic systems to be in place to reassure family members. When people are put in prison, they are not the only ones who suffer: their families do too, and they have done nothing wrong. Families often feel out of the loop and find it difficult to get any information.”
“It seems that the primary reason for this—I have heard nothing to the contrary from the prison—is his mental health status, not his likelihood of reoffending. The issue of indeterminate sentences is coming up more often. Of course I want to see the public protected, but I had another case in which mental health again has played a huge role in the prisoner’s circumstances. A 15-year-old boy was charged with an offence, then he was sectioned for a month. He was arrested after he came out of hospital and he sat on remand for a year. In 2013, he was sentenced to 220 days with a life licence. Six years later, he is still in custody. He has repeatedly self-harmed. I wrote to the previous Prisons Minister about this case, because of the ping-ponging between Rampton and Humbercare about who would take responsibility for his care.”
“It has the feeling of an impenetrable service and while we all might expect the walls of prisons to be suitably impenetrable, surely Members of Parliament should be able to get to the bottom of an issue and ascertain whether something has gone awry. How can CCTV footage simply have disappeared? It is a source of great frustration to this man, who was sentenced to three years and three months for joint enterprise in a robbery, that he has now been in prison for 11 years, because of indeterminate life-licence sentencing. He says that he cannot wait until the end of the year for another parole hearing, and will take his own life if this continues. I can imagine how he can get to that point—expecting to be in prison for three years but being there for 11.”
“He claimed that he was seriously beaten on four separate occasions during the 14 months he was in HMP Humber. After he complained to the governor, he found that the CCTV of the incidents had gone missing. I have no way to prove whether that story is accurate, and I take with a pinch of salt some of the claims that are made, but how sure is the Secretary of State that incidents and complaints such as that are recorded? Prisoners are immediately less likely to be believed than those who are employed and in a position of trust. Are those instances investigated? My office struggles to get any information out of prisons to fully and properly advise constituents and their families in a timely fashion, so what hope do those who are incarcerated have?”
“We have also accepted that rehabilitation, as well as punishment and public safety, is the purpose of prison. While people are self-harming, they are in absolutely no position to be rehabilitated. I have no doubt that prison officers struggle with monitoring appropriately all the individuals under their watch, due to staffing numbers, high turnover and high sickness levels. However, sadly, I have also had brought to my attention situations where, for whatever reason, officers are involved not in the safeguarding and management of prisoners, but either in ignoring their needs altogether, because they are quiet and compliant, or in assaults against inmates. Another constituent contacted me to tell me about the times he was assaulted by prison officers, who are in a position of authority and great trust.”
“Most recently I had a father and partner of a prisoner come to see me about a young man who is in prison. He has given himself the most appalling injuries, having forced into his arm a pen and two metal bars. That happened while he was in HMP Humber. His injuries were left untreated for so long that by the time he was moved to HMP Hull, which then took him to hospital for the rods to be removed, the hospital was completely unwilling to do that, because there was too great a risk in taking them out. He has been left in a physical condition that means he has repeated infections, fevers and risk of sepsis, because the prison failed to take action at the time. There might be very little public sympathy for that young man, but society has accepted that prison is a remedy for criminal acts.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), and I echo his remarks about the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who has an incredibly impressive knowledge of this subject—I suggest that she is a little wasted on the Back Benches. I want to focus my remarks on the impact of prison on prisoners and their families, and to consider whether prisons are fulfilling the role that we expect of them. I am increasingly receiving communications from constituents who are in prison, or visits from their family members in my surgeries, who are deeply concerned about just how safe prisons are. I have met families with grave concerns about suicide risk, repeated incidents of self-harm, lack of attention to mental health conditions, and issues with education and family support.”
“The point the right hon. Gentleman is making about the volume house builders and their complete disregard, it seems to me, for some of the planning regulations in place has been reflected in my local authority area. In Humberston, Persimmon Homes has cut down about 200 perfectly healthy trees to build its properties without having the proper permissions in place. It will now have to replant all those trees, but they should not have been removed in the first place. Does he agree that there should be much more enforceable action on these big build companies to ensure that they adhere to the rules that are laid down in the first place?”
“Why is the youth obligation failing our young people so badly? More people on the youth obligation are falling out of benefits altogether. They are unable to maintain stability and are unable to go on to seek work.”
“Centrepoint’s evidence to the DWP Committee showed that 96% of the young people it surveyed were not offered a traineeship or work placement if they were still on the youth obligation for six months. Does the Minister think it is worth having a closer look at what more could be done to improve the youth obligation?”
“Grimsby has had domestic violence provision for more than 40 years. The refuge is run by Denise Farman, who does an excellent job, and women arrive from all across the country to receive support, often with their children in tow. The service is funded only in terms of the property’s rent, through housing benefit. There is no additional funding for any of the other services it provides, including specialist support for the children—everything from swings and play equipment to talking therapies. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is essential to ensure that this funding is ring-fenced, so that the broad provision of these services is available and sustainable for the long term, and they do not have to worry about year-to-year funding gaps or rely on public funding through donations?”
“People come to see their MPs as a last resort when they have been unable to get any kind of resolution through the normal channels. For an issue like this, the normal channels should be easily accessible, not surrounded by a kind of wall of bureaucracy that makes it impossible for individuals to get answers to simple, straightforward and genuine questions. After my office chased Anglian Water for nearly a month, it finally replied to my constituent’s concerns last month—eight months after his original complaint. That is wholly unacceptable.”
“After corresponding with representatives of Anglian Water and visiting the site, my constituent sent a spreadsheet to Anglian Water in July 2018 that recorded all the times he had experienced a bad smell. Anglian’s figures say that there were fewer than 15 odour reports in 2018, but I am fairly sure my constituent had more than 15 entries on his spreadsheet. I am not sure how that recording is done, but I will take it up with Anglian Water. My constituent sent Anglian the spreadsheet in July 2018, having done what it requested him to do, but he attended one of my surgeries in January to seek my help in getting a reply because he had received absolutely nothing from the company—certainly nothing looking like any kind of solution. That is why he found himself visiting his MP to try to resolve the situation.”
“It is not right that my constituents are forced to put up with putrid odours in their homes, which can have a negative effect on their lives. We should take that seriously. I remember talking to two constituents, one of whom had been undergoing some form of cancer treatment. They wanted to make sure their home was properly ventilated, but it became impossible to open their windows, and they were incredibly frustrated about that. Water companies and environmental health departments must make it a key aim to ensure that water plants do not create nuisance smells, and that any reports of a smell emanating from one of their plants is dealt with in a serious and timely manner. Unfortunately, the experience of one of my constituents suggests that that is far from the reality for those suffering from nuisance smells in our area.”
“Given that we are only coming towards the end of April, that is quite a significant number. That leads me to question whether the reporting mechanism for local residents is well known. I suspect that one of the reasons why there were no complaints between 2014 and 2017 is that people were not aware of how they could make complaints. Nuisance smells affect residents’ ability to open their windows on hot days, enjoy their gardens and walk along the River Haven. They make them feel uncomfortable about inviting friends or family to visit their homes. Ultimately, they make our streets and communities far less open and enjoyable, as people choose to stay inside to avoid the odour, try to mask it with air fresheners or avoid the area altogether and go elsewhere.”
“Perhaps, I thought, it might be because of the increasingly warm weather, and it might be coming from the river that runs alongside the area—a very pretty river, now that the Environment Agency has cleared up that space—but it was not coming from there either. The only place it could have been coming from was the water treatment works. Council environmental health officers are obliged to investigate complaints of nuisance smells and take action if they adjudge them to be a statutory nuisance. However, in recent years, there has been an increase in reports of odours from Anglian Water-managed Pyewipe sewage treatment centre. Records that Anglian has shared with me show that there were no reports of odour between 2014 and 2017, which I find remarkable; fewer than 10 reports in 2017; fewer than 15 in 2018; and fewer than five in 2019.”
“I want to talk about some of the issues that my constituents have raised with me, and some of the general problems relating to standards and enforcement in the water treatment industry, which I am sure affect Members from across the House, particularly if they have water treatment works in their constituencies. None of us would want to experience the smell originating from sewage treatment plants, even for a short period. I was knocking on doors in the area only about two or three weeks ago, and the smell was overpowering. People did not want to open their doors, not because I was knocking on them—it is completely the opposite when I knock on their doors—but because of the smell. People are completely fed up with it. It was so noticeable and present that I thought I had perhaps stepped in something unpleasant, but that was not the case.”