My Lords, I preface my remarks by referring noble Lords to my interests in the register: I declare that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. We support the Bill and wish it safe passage through your Lordships’ House. The Opposition Front Bench will not be tabling any amendments and I urge all other noble Lords not to do so.
I very much agree with the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and I associate myself with them. She made important remarks about the data used by DCLG, which I fully endorse. I will look more closely at figures we get from the department on different areas in the future. I pay particular tribute to Crisis, which is the national charity for single homeless people and has supported and championed this legislation. It has worked hard to get the Bill to this point and is to be congratulated that in its 50th year of campaigning for single homeless people it is on the verge of bringing about a major positive change in the law. It is a campaigning organisation that works all year round as
well as providing services to homeless people at Christmas. I also pay tribute to Bob Blackman MP for steering the Bill so ably through the House of Commons.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark highlighted the fantastic work undertaken across the diocese of Southwark by volunteers and voluntary organisations who work to combat the nightmare of homelessness, the physical and mental harm and the constant presence of danger and risk of violence that living on the street brings. The Bill before us today, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to refocus the efforts of local authorities on the prevention of homelessness. It carries new duties for local authorities to intervene at earlier stages to prevent homelessness and to take steps to secure accommodation for those who are homeless. I very much agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who spoke about the emphasis on prevention and the dramatic effect that can have.
Homelessness is something that no civilised society should have to put up with. It is very likely that noble Lords passed homeless people as they travelled to this noble House. They are outside every railway station in the vicinity: Charing Cross, Waterloo and Victoria. They are sleeping in Westminster tube station, near the entrance to the Palace. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, also referred to this. There are people sitting in doorways facing another cold night on the streets, and this has not been the coldest winter we have experienced in recent years. The situation is truly appalling. It is a national disgrace and a personal tragedy for the people who are homeless that we have arrived at this situation.
The situation has got worse since 2010 and the blame for that lies squarely at the Government’s door. According to the Office for National Statistics, local authorities accepted that 14,930 households had been statutorily homeless between 1 July and 3 September 2016. The ONS also reported that the total number of households in temporary accommodation as of 30 September 2016 was 74,630, a 55% increase from the figure of 48,010 on 31 December 2010—a record the Government should be truly ashamed of.
My noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top referred to the welcome measures in the Bill. The new duties in the Bill that will becomes the responsibility of local authorities include: an extended period in which an applicant is to be treated as homeless, increasing from 28 to 56 days; strengthened advice and information obligations on housing authorities to prevent homelessness; and a new duty to assess and agree a personalised plan, which will require a local authority to carry out an assessment of the applicant’s case. The prevention duty will require local authorities to ensure that suitable accommodation does not cease to be available to applicants who are threatened with homelessness. Further, the relief duty requires local authorities to help secure accommodation for all applicants who the authority is satisfied are homeless and eligible for assistance.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made a powerful plea to help veterans who have found themselves homeless after service to their country in some of the most difficult and challenging circumstances imaginable. The specific provisions in the Bill are most welcome in
that respect. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made telling points about the plight of care leavers and I agree wholeheartedly with his comments. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, told the House about the particular plight of people who have been trafficked and have no rights or status and often find themselves on the streets, as well as the risk of British people being taken into slavery after being targeted at soup kitchens. I was not aware that we had become a source of slaves for other countries. That is a truly shocking revelation.
There are problems with the Bill and, of course, they start with the funding. Originally, the funding announced was £48 million, which was allocated on the basis of £38 million in the next financial year and the remainder the following year, and from then on nothing at all—not a penny provided to local authorities. As a result of amendments passed in the Commons, a further £13 million has been allocated to cover the additional new duties. It is important to note that the new money goes with new responsibilities. There has been no increase in the original sum of money to fund the items in the Bill before it was amended. This sum of money is just not enough to fund the new duties that will be placed on local authorities. Local authorities need to be fully funded to provide what will be required of them. London Councils, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark referred to, estimates that in the next financial year £77 million will be spent by local authorities in delivering this new duty in London alone. That is £16 million more in one year than the entire funding so far provided by the Government for England and Wales for two years. We risk a serious funding crisis.
I am aware of the commitments given in the other place by Marcus Jones MP that the legislation will be reviewed within two years. I welcome that and ask the Minister to repeat that assurance in the House today. But I go further and ask the Minister to tell us when the review will happen within the two years. What happens if after only a few months it becomes clear that the Government’s own figures—their allocation of resources—are woefully inadequate? What urgency are the Government going to place on this review to establish what the real costs are and what funding is really needed? These are serious matters, dealing with vulnerable people. Let us be clear: in itself, legislation will not significantly reduce homelessness if it is not properly funded. Without that being addressed, we run the risk of unlawful decisions; repeat homelessness, with damaging consequences for children and families; and a lack of meaningful outcomes for single people at the end of the process. That is good for no one.
The Bill and its possible effects must also be considered in a much broader picture. The fact is that budget reductions in a whole range of areas have an effect here and you cannot change the law in just one area and hope to solve the problem. Let us take local housing allowance as an example. If the freeze in local housing allowance continues until 2020, councils will struggle to pay rents for the cheapest properties in 80% of local authority areas. The noble Lord, Lord Best, set out the problems here and called for the Government to take action; otherwise, the problem will get worse. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop
of Rochester made important remarks concerning the housing supply and housing costs. I agree with him that this well-intentioned Bill must not be allowed to fail due to policy differences in other parts of government. A much wider effort is needed to tackle homelessness across a range of services, properly joined up to deliver the changes we all want to see. To date, we are not seeing that from the Government and that is what they need to focus on to tackle the horror of homelessness.
Looking at the Housing and Planning Act 2016—a truly awful piece of legislation from the Government—the forced sale of high-value council homes is only going to make trying to deal with homelessness more difficult. I support people wanting to own their own home but the ham-fisted measures in that Act are at odds with the aims of this Bill. Those include: the obsession with starter homes; the lack of support for local authorities to build more council homes; and the other obsession, the unaffordable “affordable rent model”, when we should be delivering more social housing. That is the key to a lot of our problems but the Government just do not want to go there. We need an increased supply of housing, especially social housing, with a long-term objective of reducing housing benefit expenditure. But the freezing of local housing allowance by the DWP risks undermining a policy and a measure put forward by the DCLG. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, made telling points about the growth of income inequality. He also referred to cuts to various benefits and the effect they have on homelessness. I agree wholeheartedly with his comments. This is not an example of good government or joined-up thinking. It is an example of a Government using money to alleviate the homelessness they have created.
Homelessness should be eradicated in one of the richest countries on the planet. It can be done and it should be done, but it will not be achieved by the passing of this Bill alone. It is a well-intentioned piece of legislation, which can make a real, positive contribution to ending homelessness, but it will be truly effective only as part of a much wider approach to tackling the problem that cuts across government and is seen as a priority for the Government to deliver on. I hope the Government are going to do that and for that to happen there will need to be a raft of other changes across numerous government departments. I wish the Bill well. It is an important first step. As I said at the start of my remarks, I want the Bill to become law. To assist in that, the Opposition Front Bench will not table any amendments and I urge all noble Lords to do the same. In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his sponsorship of the Bill and look forward to it becoming law in the next few weeks.
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