Helen Morgan: In a rural area such as my constituency, where the town centres are small and spread out, one of the problems the police have is getting from place to place, partly because they have a shortage of basic kit such as police cars. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not just about community policing, but about resourcing the police with the physical things that they need to get about?
Helen Morgan: Whitchurch in my constituency has not received any levelling-up funding, whether from the levelling-up fund itself, the towns fund or the future high streets fund. Now it has found itself without a civic centre because of dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, so it has lost its library, registry office and driving test centre, which was soon to be reopened following a long...
Helen Morgan: Whitchurch in my constituency has not received any levelling-up funding, whether from the levelling-up fund itself, the towns fund or the future high streets fund. Now it has found itself without a civic centre because of dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, so it has lost its library, registry office and driving test centre, which was soon to be reopened following a long...
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, for which bases his Department plans to buy 176 homes over the next 12 months.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Written Statement of 20 November 2023 entitled Network North: Highways maintenance funding increase, HCWS46, how the £2.2 billion of highways maintenance funding for the Midlands will be spent in each constituency.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, on which bases the 4,000 properties receiving damp and mould mitigation packages are located.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, on which bases the 1,000 properties receiving new kitchens or bathrooms are located.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, on which bases the 1,500 properties receiving boiler or heating upgrades are located.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, what support his Department plans to provide to the 40 per cent of properties which have a damp and mould report raised but which will not have a mitigation package funded.
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Written Statement of 13 November 2023 on Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning, HCWS28, which bases the 423 newly purchased homes for service families are on or near to.
Helen Morgan: The shared rural network is obviously designed to address that issue, but in many cases the equipment that providers have is not shared by other providers. Does the right hon. Member agree that either the equipment needs to be shared by all the main mobile providers or there needs to be rural roaming?
Helen Morgan: I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing her first Westminster Hall debate. She is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that bus services are important not only for getting people to train stations but for preventing social isolation and getting people to school and to the doctors and so on?
Helen Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has provided for bus services in real terms in each of the last five years.
Helen Morgan: I draw hon. Members’ attention to the fact that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am afraid that the autumn statement will have come as a disappointment to many living in my North Shropshire constituency and rural places across Britain. After years of mismanagement, the Conservative Government have left hard-working people to pay for their mistakes. Some elements...
Helen Morgan: I thank the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich for his comments. I am in general agreement with his point about needing to extend the period beyond which a property can be re-marketed, although my view is that 12 months is excessive. If a landlord’s circumstances have changed—for example, if they repossess their house to sell it because they are facing financial hardship but are...
Helen Morgan: I beg to move amendment 132, in clause 10, page 13, line 11, leave out “three” and insert “six”. This amendment would increase the time which must elapse between a landlord taking ownership of a property for the purposes of them or their family occupying it and making the property available to rent from three months to six months.
Helen Morgan: Once again, I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, on which there are two jointly owned properties: a residential property and a holiday let. During our evidence sessions, we heard that experience in Scotland has shown that grounds 1 and 1A are open to abuse by landlords who are simply looking to re-market their property either at a...
Helen Morgan: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman suggests, and I am broadly supportive of it. If we get this right, we should see a stable private rented sector where rents do not go up very much each year; they might fall in some local areas, depending on local circumstances. Does he envisage allowing rents to drop, or does he envisage them always going up by some kind of consumer price...
Helen Morgan: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his well-made point. In Shropshire, citizens advice bureaux sometimes refer people to their MP’s office because they do not have the capacity to deal with the number of issues that are brought to them. The point about the threat is an extremely important one that we need to bear in mind: it will have a strong adverse effect on tenants who are put in that...
Helen Morgan: I welcome the support from Opposition Members, who, I think, have summed up the issue very well. There is an increased threat of eviction even if these cases are not taken to court, because the threat of having notice served in the first place is very frightening for people who do not necessarily have the legal ability to follow that through and oppose it.
