As I omitted to mention in response to the previous intervention by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we have a situation where rents go up and services go down. That is true in Labour authorities all over the country. I call them “so-called housing associations”; I was always opposed to them and I never supported the arm’s length management organisation. Please, I prefer council housing, where the tenants get to elect their landlord and can unelect them if they are doing a poor job. The whole wheeze was to push the ownership of the houses to so-called associations that are, in effect, only private companies. The privatisation of council houses that the taxpayer paid for and the people collectively owned is at the root of the problem.
In Rochdale, we have a particular problem that killed little Awaab. We have a borough-wide housing association, Rochdale Boroughwide, that is not fit for purpose. It is there at the grace and favour of a Labour council, whose relationship with it is intricate and intimate. Even though I am under parliamentary privilege, I will not go much further than that—intimate and intricate. Until recently, nobody could challenge them. It was a one-party state—a Labour one-party state—with a revolving door between the Labour party, the council and the housing association.
But this is not only in Rochdale. As the hon. Member for Shipley (Sir Philip Davies), who I am proud to personally call a friend—not politically, of course, but we were good neighbours for quite some time—has pointed out, damp houses are a problem for all of us. They are dangerous—these houses can kill. We all know the old saw that a stitch in time saves nine. How much more obvious does this need to be? If we fix those 3.5 million inadequate homes—households in which families are living—what would we save in health service costs, in social care costs? How many fewer ambulances would be called out if there were not hazards in houses that could be, and should be, easily fixed by the landlord? How many hospital beds are taken up by people with bronchial and associated problems, because they are living in a damp house?
I was born in a slum—in an attic. There was just one room, with a sloping roof. I was horrifying my children this very morning, telling them how I had to sleep in a drawer. They thought that my mother pushed in the drawer at night. If that were the case, I would not be here now. I know how things were in the bad, bad old days. Everything is relative, I accept that. Now I live a good life, and I assume that the Minister does, too. But empathy requires us to take a walk in the other person’s shoes, particularly when we represent them; particularly when their votes are the reason that we are here. We are supposed to be their voice. I invite the Minister to take a walk with me metaphorically this evening, but literally sometime soon in my constituency, and to see the way that thousands of people are living in poverty—fuel poverty, housing poverty and hazardous houses. I did not even know the concept of a hazardous house—there was not much room for hazards in our one-room attic. But I now go into houses in Rochdale and see things that could kill somebody—but for the grace of God—any day of the week.