My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, to which I have added my name. I too pay tribute to Stella Creasy in the other place for her commitment and great foresight, as well as for the support of her team.
As we have heard, the purpose of this chapter is to prevent and reduce serious violence by requiring public authorities to co-operate and develop strategies for tackling this issue. The Government tell us that their aim is to build a public health approach to the reduction of serious violence. That aim is welcome only if we can put in place the right tools to achieve it. What we will keep coming back to throughout today’s debates is that a public health approach works only when it is genuinely focused on prevention and early intervention, and is properly invested in. If not, we will continue simply to treat the symptoms of serious violence, not its causes.
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My noble friend Lord Rosser spoke in the last sitting on the need for an early help strategy to identify children who are at risk. These amendments speak to that same need to identify and react to risks before they escalate and before irreparable harm is caused. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, explained so eloquently, this group of amendments would embed housing and the provision of safe accommodation in this part of the Bill; I pay tribute to his generosity in his approach to these amendments, which are supported by a wide and impressive range of organisations, including Shelter, Crisis, Barnardo’s and the St Giles Trust.
As the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned, I will focus my remarks on Amendment 51. This proposed new clause would amend Section 189(1) of the Housing Act 1996 to add
“a person at risk of serious violence”
to the list of people who have a priority need for housing. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 provided a fundamental step forward in recognising victims fleeing abuse as a priority need for rehousing. This amendment would build on that learning and best practice to provide the same support for families fleeing serious
violence from outside their home, namely gang violence. At the moment, families who urgently need to relocate to move a child or young family member out of harm’s way—that is, away from a risk of serious violence or threat to their life—are finding too often that they cannot access support because they are not recognised as a priority need under Section 189(1).
I think that the Committee will be distressed but, sadly, not surprised by the harrowing details of cases where risk has not been recognised early enough. A serious case review into a 14 year-old boy known as Chris—not his real name—who was shot in a children’s playground in Newham in 2017, found that there were
“clear gaps in risk assessments and risk management”,
including the failure to update the housing manager on the urgent need to relocate Chris out of the area. His mother spoke of how she struggled to get help for housing away from the area where Chris was at risk:
“The most important one for me was housing, to get us out of the area. To be out of the clutches of the gangs so he could continue being a child.”
An offer of accommodation made to his mother was withdrawn shortly before Chris was killed.
When this issue was raised with Ministers in the Commons, the answer given was that this change is not necessary as local councils already have discretion to grant priority need to any person deemed vulnerable. However, in practice, we are being told by organisations working on the ground that this is not translating into support for those who are facing violence. They are falling through the gap. Freedom of information requests have shown that, when asked, only one in four councils has a policy governing how it should determine whether someone at risk of serious violence should be granted priority need. The guidance that authorities are directed to covers only domestic abuse and no other forms of violence.
Similarly, only one in four councils, when asked, could give details of how many applications for priority need they have had in the past three years from people at risk of violence other than domestic abuse. This does not mean that they have had no applications but that they are not being monitored as part of identifying and tackling violence in their local area.
The Government have dedicated a chapter of the Bill to tackling serious violence. This amendment would specifically recognise violence as a reason to relocate a person or household at risk. I do not believe there is any disagreement on the desired outcome—that we want a young person to be moved out of harm’s way before violence escalates or lives are lost—so I wonder why the Government would not prioritise that as part of their action on serious violence. I look forward to the Minister’s response.