Sarah Teather: I understand that the Home Secretary has asked officials to carry out a detailed piece of work on the future requirements of the immigration detention estate, in conjunction with her decision to halt the expansion of Campsfield. What is the remit for that work, what is the timetable for it, and will it be made public? Will the Home Secretary direct the officials to look at the international...
Sarah Teather: I have chaired a cross-party inquiry on the issue of immigration detention, and our report was published this morning. The panel’s concern is that if the response to the scandal at Yarl’s Wood focuses only on conditions, it is likely to tackle just symptoms, rather than the underlying causes. The Minister says that the question is about how people are treated in detention, but our...
Sarah Teather: (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will make a statement on the current situation in Nigeria.
Sarah Teather: This weekend saw an inspiring and moving display of international solidarity in the wake of the Paris shootings, but while we were watching the horror unfold in Paris, hundreds or possibly thousands of civilians were slaughtered by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, with very little international attention. While millions poured on to the streets in Europe in a hopeful, defiant march for peace,...
Sarah Teather: How many Syrian refugees have been resettled in the UK under the Government’s vulnerable persons relocation scheme to date.
Sarah Teather: The Minister will no doubt be aware that 2015 has already seen two worrying trends for Syrians fleeing the violence of war: first, an increase in restrictions imposed on those seeking to settle in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon; and secondly, even more refugees boarding boats and taking risky journeys in the Mediterranean. Does he recognise that our unwillingness to offer anything...
Sarah Teather: I have visited both Lebanon and Jordan to see projects supporting Syrian refugees, as outlined in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In talking about numbers, it is worth noting—on a day when the Prime Minister is in Turkey—that Turkey has received more Syrians fleeing the war in the past three days than the number resident in the whole of Europe altogether. Will...
Sarah Teather: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I want to begin by telling the story of one of my constituents. I do not want to give her real name, so I am going to call her Jo. She and her partner had a pretty horrendous year last year and, in spite of the best efforts of our local citizens advice bureau in Brent, it all went from bad to worse. Jo was living in a studio flat with...
Sarah Teather: The hon. Lady is correct to say that there is a power imbalance. I will talk more about this later, but I do not want to skew the power wholly in favour of the tenant either. This has to be about fairness; both landlord and tenant have to be treated well. The landlord needs to know that they can let their property without being exploited by the tenant, and the tenant needs to know that they...
Sarah Teather: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The good landlords are desperate to see the system improve, because they feel that the present situation is damaging their reputation. They do not want rogue landlords in the system; they want them to leave the playing field open to people who are decent and who uphold the law.
Sarah Teather: I am going to try to avoid getting into the wider issues today, partly because I am keen to ensure that we have consensus on the narrow points in my Bill. However, the hon. Gentleman has had this opportunity to make his point and it will appear in Hansard. Also, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) is...
Sarah Teather: I have been assured that the Bill has Government support. Unfortunately, each person in the House will have to follow their own conscience—[Interruption.] I shall leave their consciences pricked and hope that they do the right thing. I have heard about many cases such as Jo’s over the years in Brent, and about many others, where fear of eviction has prevented someone from complaining to a...
Sarah Teather: I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend about that. The fear of eviction has a chilling impact on the sector, and it also hugely damages the reputation of good landlords and the relationship between tenants and their landlords.
Sarah Teather: That can be extremely frustrating, both for MPs and for those in local councils and in citizens advice bureaux, who may see the same problem in the same property over and over again. I want to place on the record my thanks to the citizens advice bureaux in Brent, which have campaigned on this issue for a long time, and to Generation Rent, which has been very supportive. I also wish to pay...
Sarah Teather: Absolutely; the Bill has been carefully drafted to make sure that spurious complaints cannot be a reason to frustrate the eviction process. In addition to the clauses relating to retaliatory eviction, the Bill contains other clauses about simplifying the process for applying for a section 21 notice to make it easier for landlords who are operating entirely legitimately to make sure that they...
Sarah Teather: I am inclined to say that the hon. Gentleman has made his point and move on. I want to stress that the Bill is not an outright attack on section 21. Members of the House will have very different and varied views on the future of section 21. Some will think that it should be touched as little as possible, and others will want to reform it significantly or even get rid of no-fault notices. The...
Sarah Teather: The problem for environmental health officers—I was going to make this point later—is that, as many of them told Citizens Advice for a report in 2007, they know that the consequence of intervening is often that the tenant is evicted. That prevents councils from making full use of the powers available to them. There really is no point having legislation that gives councils powers to...
Sarah Teather: That is a perfectly fair point. Good landlords who make the necessary repairs get very frustrated when rogue landlords who treat their tenants extremely badly undercut them on rent. Before talking about the context of the Bill, I want to thank the many colleagues on both sides of the House who have sponsored the Bill, spoken in favour of it and lobbied the Government to ask them to support...
Sarah Teather: The problem with retaliatory eviction at the moment is that the people who are most likely to fall victim to it are those who have the least agency in being able to help themselves. That relates to my next point, which is on the extent of the problem—how wide it is and who appears to be affected by it. YouGov conducted a survey on behalf of Shelter and British Gas, surveying 4,500 private...
Sarah Teather: There are certainly restrictions on the use of section 21 notices if landlords are not compliant with the tenancy deposit scheme. This is about extending the law by making a similar provision so that a landlord cannot leave their property in a terrible state of disrepair and then, when their tenant tries to get some joy out of them in getting them to repair it, they retaliate by evicting the...