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The debate was chaired by Ann Winterton MP (Congleton, Conservative) and opened by Jon Trickett MP (Hemsworth, Labour). The Minister responding to the debate was Meg Munn MP the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government

Below is my contribution:

11.29 am

Mr. Fabian Hamilton (Leeds, North-East) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing the debate. This is an important time to have such a debate because, as all Members will know, housing is one of the mainstays of an MP's casework. As former members of city councils or local authorities, many of us will know that the issue of housing-often, its inadequacies-was raised in every advice surgery and almost every letter that we received.

We have now had 10 years of a Labour Government who have tried to redress the balance in public housing in relation to what my hon. Friend called the bottom rung of the ladder, if that is the appropriate metaphor. As he clearly pointed out, people still suffer every day because they have either inadequate housing or no housing at all. The severe shortage of public housing available for rent at reasonable cost causes tremendous suffering to the people whom we represent. It is clear from what he said that Yorkshire and the Humber, and especially many of the former mining communities, suffer more than most. Housing was a major issue with which he had to contend when he led Leeds City Council 11 years ago.

I want to draw attention this morning to issues in my constituency of Leeds, North-East that are also relevant to the situation in Leeds city council and the local authority area. I understand that there are now more than 30,000 names on the Leeds city council waiting list, and 2,500 of those, under the current bidding system, have what is called priority extra. That is for people who, whether medically or socially or because they have no housing at all, are at the top of the list; they get priority in any bidding process. Yet the number remains constant.

After the Conservative Governments of 1979 to 1997 introduced the right to buy, many homes that were formerly for rent in the social housing sector were bought. Many people have made them into very nice homes, which will be homes for life. However, as we know, during the 1990s the money that was generated by those sales was not made available to local authorities for the building of new homes. I fear that, in spite of the Labour Government's commitment in the past 10 years, the extra investment and the fact that 
much of that cash has been made available to replace some of the homes, we are now reaping the effect of selling off houses at that time without building new ones.

In some estates in my constituency, such as the Queenshill estate near my constituency office in the Moortown area of Leeds, up to 80 per cent. of the properties that were formerly in the social sector-corporation houses to rent at a reasonable rate-are now privately owned. Those houses have not yet been replaced. In fact, in parts of the constituency, such as the Queenshill and King Alfred's estates, it is necessary to wait for someone to die before a house becomes available to rent. They are very desirable homes, so there is still a huge problem with the people who have been given priority extra but cannot be housed.

On the rare occasion, for example, that a three-bedroomed property on the Queenshill estate becomes available, 300 people will bid for it. That leaves 299 of them very disappointed. It is essential that the local authority should be able to build more affordable housing for rent, because we must solve that increasing problem. I am afraid that there has been no progress in the past nearly three years of control by a coalition of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and the Green party on Leeds City Council.

Jon Trickett: I do not want to stray on to my former territory, but when I examined the reasons for Wakefield's not getting more money for housing expenditure, I was told that, over the past two years at least, Leeds City Council, led by the Tories, Liberals and Greens, underspent its housing allocation but failed to pass that money across to neighbouring areas. What does my hon. Friend make of that?

Mr. Hamilton: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that, for nearly three years, Leeds has been under the political leadership of that strange rainbow coalition, which has not used even the allocations that have been given to it to try to resolve the problem of homelessness and inadequate housing. That is reprehensible.

I want to draw hon. Members' attention to specific cases. The individuals concerned have agreed to their situation being used to illustrate a wider problem. Carmel Flynn is living in a camper van with her 16-year-old daughter. I cannot imagine a mother and daughter, especially a teenager of 16, living so closely in a camper van. Every time she bids for a property, she is refused because someone else has a higher priority. She has priority extra, but it is clearly not extra enough. She has bid, I believe, for 36 houses in the past 12 months, and she has been turned down each time. She is on medication for stress, and her daughter has gone to live with another member of the family; she cannot stand being in a camper van with her mother.

The front-page headline of the Yorkshire Evening Post a few weeks ago was about Daniella Prestwich and Duncan Haigh, a couple with a 12-year-old daughter, Hayley. They have been homeless since May 2006 and have been sleeping in a car. Leeds is one of the leading cities in Europe, as my hon. Friend pointed out, and one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Yet a couple and their 12-year-old are sleeping in a car.

When the executive member of Leeds City Council with responsibility for the matter, Councillor Les Carter, found out about it, he was furious-not because of the appalling situation of the family, but because they had, after all, been offered a home. What he did not know, or what he was not told-I am being charitable-was that the house was so inadequate and needed so much work, for which the council had the money, although it had not spent it on the property, that the family quite naturally refused to take up the tenancy. Besides that, the property was in an area of the city that they did not know, far from their relatives and other family members. They were right to refuse it. It happened on two occasions.

Councillor Carter was quoted in the press as saying that they were offered adequate accommodation and that they chose to live in a car. Madam Deputy Speaker, no one chooses to live in a car unless the option of living in a car is better than some of the unsavoury homes being offered.

Ann Winterton (in the Chair): Order. May I just mention that the title of Deputy Speaker in Westminster Hall was done away with some time ago? We are bog standard members of the Chairmen's Panel, so the hon. Gentleman should call me by my name.

Mr. Hamilton: There is nothing bog standard about you, Lady Winterton, but thank you for putting me right.
The appalling case that I just outlined was one in which the need, sadly, to use the local press and media to draw attention to the plight of a family resulted in their eventually being adequately housed; it had a nice ending. However, it also drew attention to the plight of many other families who are inadequately housed and sleeping in camper vans or vehicles. That is unacceptable in this day and age and in a city such as Leeds.

There are other examples. Daniella Bastow lives with her mother but sleeps on the sofa. Of course that causes her mother a lot of stress; her mother suffers from kidney disease. Daniella is now suffering from depression, and despite letters from her GP, again, more than 30 bids for one of the houses were turned down within 12 months, even under priority extra. There are many similar cases, such as that of Mrs. Deborah Maskill, who is currently residing with her grandmother, having been violently abused by her husband. She desperately needs rehousing. She has been attacked by her husband since she has been at her grandmother's house. The police have been involved and an injunction has been served, but still she is unsuccessful because, clearly, her priority is not high enough and there is a terrible shortage of appropriate housing.

The figure of 20,000 houses that my hon. Friend mentioned would barely be adequate for Yorkshire and the Humber. In fact, it would be barely adequate for the city of Leeds. We need more housing at an affordable rent, and more social housing. Yes, of course, it is good if, after people are established, they want to move on to the first rung of the ladder of housing that they will buy with a mortgage. However, they must have a roof over their heads before that happens.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has obtained this debate today. The timing is very appropriate because housing is an issue that is often swept under the carpet, 
and ignored by the press and media, except when there is a case such as that of the couple living in the car. We deal with such cases day in, day out, and we deal with the appalling distress that they bring to families and to individuals, but housing is not at the top of our public policy agenda. It should be, we need more homes with affordable rent, and I hope that the Minister can offer us more investment on top of the investment that this Labour Government have already made.

11.40am


The debate was chaired by Mr. Speaker (Michael Martin MP) and opened by David Davis MP (Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative). The Ministers responding to the debate were Rt Hon Dr John Reid MP, Home Secretary and Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP Secretary of State for Transport

Below is my contribution:

4.58pm

Mr. Fabian Hamilton (Leeds, North-East) (Lab): I now know why I like the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) so well, since he spoke so much sense on the subject of prisons, although I cannot agree with him on some of the other subjects that he discussed this 
afternoon. I also agree with many of the points about prisons made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), whose constituency I had the pleasure to visit a few months ago, although I spent most of the time in the prison there, because I am chair of the all-party prisoner health group. That is why I have an interest in prison issues.

This afternoon I want to look at two issues-first immigration, which was touched on by many right hon. and hon. Members. Do we have too much of it? Is it good for society? Does it benefit us economically and socially or is it too expensive and should we put a cap on the numbers allowed to come here? I say to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) and the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), who knows the city of Leeds well, just look at what immigration has done for the city of Leeds; it has been entirely beneficial. My parliamentary colleagues who represent the other seven constituencies in Leeds would certainly agree with that.
In my constituency of Leeds, North-East we have very good racial integration and community relations. Indeed, that is so much the case that our first ever Muslim lord mayor of the city of Leeds recently attended a synagogue service to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the return of Jews to England, and he was roundly applauded for the contribution he has made. That is an example of good community relations.

Through good community relations, we can foster a sense of security and well-being among the whole community, and we can tackle the kind of extremism that bred the suicide bombers, and led to the outrages carried out on the London underground and other parts of the London transport system on 7 July last year, the perpetrators of which, sadly, came from our city. Through excellent community relations, we can try to ensure that that sort of thing does not occur again.

Mr. Peter Lilley MP (Hitchin & Harpenden, Conservative): The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that I had in some way demurred from the notion that immigrants have made a positive contribution. On the contrary, I said that that was the objective of most who want to come here. The question that I posed to him, and to which I would welcome a reply, is: should there be any limit on the number of economic migrants coming here?

Mr. Hamilton: That limit should be determined by the demand for workers-by the number of jobs that are available. If we cannot find enough people-British citizens-to fill vacant posts in our economy, we should welcome as many from abroad as we need. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the right hon. Gentleman is perhaps disagreeing with that.

I want to move on because time is short. I shall give a couple of good examples of the integration and harmonious community relations that our schools have helped to foster. The hon. Member for Stockport(Ann Coffey) touched on that in her contribution when she talked about the good work done by schools in her constituency, and I want to draw attention to a couple of schools in my constituency.
At Carr Manor high school, the head teacher Simon Flowers has fostered a sense of integration and has encouraged communities to work together; the pupils 
who attend his school come from hugely diverse backgrounds. His school has, thankfully, just been rebuilt under the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, and it is absolutely excellent. Another school in the constituency is Allerton Grange high school. Its head teacher, Jean Hertrich, often has to wrestle with community problems, but she fosters a sense of harmony and well-being among the children of many different groups of faiths and backgrounds who attend the school; some of them are the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Our schools play a very important part in ensuring that communities are integrated and feel that they can live together in security.

In his introductory remarks, the Home Secretary said that this Labour Government had made the relief of poverty and deprivation their main targets since they were elected in 1997. One of their success stories has been in tackling homelessness. There have in the past been unacceptable levels of homelessness in many of our cities and inner-city areas; the Government have tackled that, and they have had huge successes. In one area, however, we have not had such success: the destitution of asylum seekers who have failed-who have exhausted their options in the judicial process-and who have not left the country, either because they are too frightened to do so or because they are unable to leave because the country that they would go back to is too insecure or will not have them back.
I want to draw that issue to the attention of Members, particularly Home Office Ministers. In my constituency, as in the rest of the city of Leeds, individuals who belong to Churches or other religious organisations are taking destitute asylum seekers into their own homes and looking after them at their own expense. They are doing that because they can see, as I can see in my advice surgeries each week and at my constituency office, that many people are either still waiting for a decision, and therefore get National Asylum Support Service support, or have exhausted the process and have no further avenue to explore to enable them to remain in Great Britain, and therefore receive no further support. Yet in my opinion, even though that opinion is not shared by the Home Office, they have every good reason to be very frightened of returning to their own country.

I refer to two cases. Karim Bahadori was tortured in his native Iran for being a dissident and speaking out against his Government. Sadly, his story was not believed by Home Office officials. Often stories are not believed because there is no documentary evidence. Yet if frightened dissidents flee from a regime that would kill them, as so many Zimbabweans have done, they do not bring the supporting paperwork. Indeed, Letitia Tarisayi, a Zimbabwean who was to stand for Parliament in Harare as a Movement for Democratic Change candidate, came to Great Britain temporarily, she thought and hoped, to escape the persecution that MDC members faced. She went back to Harare three years ago to find out what had happened to her home, only to discover that it had been bulldozed by Robert Mugabe's Government and that she was on the wanted list. She had to flee back to Great Britain. Of course 

she did not have paperwork. I am sorry to say that her case, although it is still being considered, has initially been refused.

I am sorry that there is no Home Office Minister on the Bench at the moment. I am sure that the Secretary of State for Transport will relay my suggestion to the Home Secretary. A new immigration and asylum Bill is to be drafted and put to the House. It will include further penalties for employers who take on people illegally. We know that that goes on. Many destitute asylum seekers are absolutely desperate for work. They will take a job washing cars by hand for £2 a day. That is criminal, but if they did not get that job, I fear that they would turn to crime.

Why is it that asylum seekers cannot have the right to work? That would give the dignity that work brings. They would earn their own keep, not take state handouts. How many hon. Members have met asylum seekers whose applications have failed, but who say, "Even if I have some way to go before my decision is definite, I do not want handouts from the state"? To allow them to work would do an enormous amount to restore the dignity of people who leave their country in desperation. Let us understand that it takes an awful lot for people to leave their own country and seek asylum in a country such as Great Britain. It takes courage. It takes an awful lot to uproot themselves and sometimes their family to come here and face the hostility not just of the media but often of the authorities.

So my plea is that the Government allow asylum seekers to work from the moment they arrive in the United Kingdom. We could give them a national insurance number, and we would know where they were. They would pay tax and national insurance contributions. They would have to be paid the national minimum wage-something that would give them dignity. It is better than being paid £2 a day for washing cars. It would also go some way to allaying public anxiety about asylum seekers and their cost to the taxpayer. I ask the Minister to consider my proposal, which would do an awful lot to give asylum seekers the dignity that they deserve.

5.09pm



The debate was chaired by Sir Nicholas Winterton MP and opened by the new Chairman of the FAC, Mike Gapes, Labour MP for Ilford South. The Minister responding to the debate was Kim Howells, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office responsible for the Middle East.

Below is my contribution:

3.54pm

Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East, Labour): I welcome this opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee on opening it. He was not present when we drafted the report, which must have made what is already a difficult task more difficult.

All my colleagues on the Committee have pointed out something that remains obvious to all of us involved in the continuing struggle and debate on how we can secure a peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. In whatever Arab or Muslim country that we visit, and we have been to many, one thing rises above everything else in the minds of those to whom we speak-all our interlocutors, whoever they may be: that there must be a just and peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. As other hon. Members have said, after last week's visit to Israel and the occupied territories, that peace seems as elusive-perhaps more so-than ever.
I was one of the Committee members who visited Saudi Arabia and the Gulf last week. Not being content with visiting only those regions, I went to Israel the previous week, at my own expense, to meet a constituent-a holocaust survivor who lives in Leeds. As a child, he was taken from Lodz ghetto in Poland to various concentration camps before being released at the age of 16 at Teresenstadt in May 1945. That man, Arek Hersh, went back to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau for the first time last year. Yorkshire Television recently made a documentary about him. He had a room at the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem dedicated to him for the work that he does to bring the holocaust into sharp focus for the younger generations who simply have no recollection of it. Arek Hersh has done a brilliant job and he was being honoured at Yad Vashem. I wanted to be with him.

Of course, like most politicians, it is not good enough to simply be with a constituent, however far away. I have a long-standing and continuing interest in the future of Israel, and of the Palestinian people. Therefore, I made it my business to meet people with whom I could discuss current issues. I met very different people to those whom my colleagues met last week, and I came away with a slightly more optimistic view, although I am, of course, a realist.

The founders of the state of Israel had high ideals and one has to go back only 30 years to remember the Israel of Golda Meir, of David Ben Gurion, and of the kibbutzim to which so many students of my generation-whether Jewish or not-went during their summer vacations from university or after leaving school. Many still stand for the high ideals on which the state was founded, but not the majority, clearly.

Two weeks ago in Israel, I learned that the seismic shift taking place in politics could, if one is optimistic, and with a fair wind, have a beneficial effect. I am not trying to contradict anything that my colleagues have said. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) said something on which we both agree, namely the effect of the wall that has been built to keep out terrorists and suicide bombers. The barrier has, largely, achieved that aim, although there was an attack just the other day in Netanya, a place to which many British people emigrate and where many of my former Leeds constituents now live. It is clear that the wall is not sufficient and I agree with my hon. Friend that the wall is a blemish on the Israeli state. I understand why it has been built, but I am horrified every time I see it.

We must be clear that the barrier takes the form of a wall around Jerusalem and Qalqilia, which we visited two years ago, but it is, in most parts, a fence and, in most places, it is on the green line. It is significant and it says much about the state of Israel that, just last year, the path of the barrier had to be altered because former members of the Israeli defence forces took their Government to the Israeli supreme court to have that path moved around the eastern part of Jerusalem. That is significant because the rule of law and the legal system was able to change a policy that would disastrously affect Palestinian farmers such as the one whom we met in Qalqilia, to whom my hon. Friend referred. Those people are honestly trying to farm their own land and are being cut off from the land between the village where they live and the land that they farm by the barrier. They are then taking several hours to get across the border simply to go to work and try to earn a living.

I met a number of interesting people while I was briefly in Israel. It was not the intense Foreign Affairs Committee visit with which we on the Committee are familiar. It did not involve meetings from 7 am until very late at night, but I had the chance to talk to some of our diplomats: Simon McDonald, our ambassador in Israel, whom many of us know well, gave me a long and full briefing over lunch in Tel Aviv; and Dr John Jenkins, our expert in East Jerusalem, who has the important job of trying to look after Arab and Palestinian interests on behalf of the British Government. Both those diplomats are experts in their field and can make an important contribution to what should be a road map to peace, but seems to be a road map away from peace-in fact, towards anything but peace.

So how do we move back towards a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians? We all agree that the only future for Israel is a vibrant, democratic Palestine. That two-states solution, to which my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee referred, is something that both he and I and many others have espoused for many years, and want to see achieved. Can it be achieved? What will the clear favourite to win the election in March next year, Ariel Sharon, a man for whom I have absolutely no time-he destroyed many of the moves that his predecessor, Ehud Barak, tried to make towards a lasting settlement-bring to Israeli politics and more importantly, to that elusive peace process if his Kadima party, the Forward party, wins the largest number of seats?

Even more important than that answer is what the Labour party can do. Is it genuinely newly invigorated by the surprise election of Amir Peretz, and the coalescence of the progressive peace forces around the Labour party? It is very much old Labour, not new Labour. Will Peretz win sufficient seats to be pivotal and to have sufficient influence on Ariel Sharon? I am afraid that we shall have to wait for the election outcome to see. The early indications, according to The Jerusalem Post, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn pointed out, are that Sharon looks set to win. However, Israeli politics are notoriously unpredictable: the Labour party, or another, could achieve a larger number of seats. We will have to wait to see the outcome.
One thing is for sure, however. The Likud party, the former party of Prime Minister Sharon, is divided. The bid for that party's leadership by the former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be, in my opinion, the greatest danger posed towards any possibility of peace. Those of us who have heard Netanyahu in the House and elsewhere, and those of who met him in Israel when he was Prime Minister, will know that he is a man who stands for the concept of "eretz Yisrael"-a greater Israel-that conforms not to our notions of the green line and the 1967 borders, but to a notion of Israel according to the Old Testament, which excludes all Arabs and Palestinians and does not acknowledge their existence at all. That can only be truly dangerous for Israel's future and that of the Palestinian people.

I agree wholeheartedly that the poverty, oppression and day-to-day barriers put in the way of law-abiding Palestinian people will only turn them away from peace, conformity to the law, and an attempt to try to earn a living for themselves. That is increasingly impossible, now that they are going to be excluded from working in Israel itself. However, we must have hope-hope in adversity, as seems clear at present, certainly from the findings of my hon. Friends who were in Israel last week. A situation such as that can never be deemed to be hopeless. One of the factors that may make a difference is the role that diplomacy plays. Mention has been made of the role of the Quartet. When I met Ghassan Khatib, the Minister of Economic Planning-I know my colleagues also met him-I had one hour. He came to the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem where I was staying and we discussed whether there was any hope for lasting peace or a settlement. He is a member of Fatah, of course, and was hopeful that the recent intervention of Condoleezza Rice and the role of the Quartet led by Jim Wolfensohn was a different factor that might make a difference.

I hope that the Government will make a plea to the United States to tell them that, if they put their minds to it, they and only they can have a powerful influence on Israel, whoever is elected to government, to get back on track with the road map and round the table for genuine negotiation. We all know, as do they, that negotiation with a partner is the only road to a lasting peace. The imposition of peace, however unilateral or well meaning, can mean nothing unless the partner is a true partner and will sit down and negotiate properly on equal terms.

I mentioned the role of diplomacy. We are fortunate to have good diplomats in the region; I have mentioned two. We also went to Saudi Arabia. We have there a diplomat who is working for the interests of this country, was the ambassador to Israel and still, even after two years, has a strong reputation: Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. I am told that, now that he is our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, he is often summoned to update King Abdullah on the state of Israeli politics. As our former ambassador in Israel, he has many friends there and keeps up with the day-to-day developments. That can only be beneficial to us.

I want finally to mention the importance of Iran in our war against terror. The Iranians are trying to develop, we think, enriched uranium and plutonium for military grade weapons. It is important that we ensure that that development does not take place. Of course, the Iranians are entitled to civil and peaceful nuclear power, as they claim. It is important that the deal with the Russians to ensure that that enrichment cannot take place goes ahead and that pressure from the Government and those of Germany and France, as well as from Javier Solana on behalf of the EU, is successful. In the end, dialogue and constructive engagement will ensure that countries such as Iran do not develop such weaponry. It is in the interests of everybody in the world, not just the region, that we ensure that they do not.

4:08 pm