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Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I beg to move, That the House sit in private.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163), and negatived.
Homelessness Reduction Bill
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 View all Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 27 January 2017 - (27 Jan 2017)
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Restriction on the termination of assured shorthold tenancies—
‘(1) After section 19A of the Housing Act 1988 (Assured shorthold tenancies: post-Housing Act 1996 tenancies) insert—
“Section 19B longer term tenancies
Any assured shorthold tenancy (other than one where the landlord is a private registered provider of social housing) granted on or after April 1, 2018 cannot be terminated by the landlord within thirty six months of being granted other than for the breach of a an express or implied term of the tenancy if the termination would result in the tenant becoming homeless. It is an implied term of such a tenancy that the tenant may terminate the tenancy by giving two months’ written notice to the landlord.”
(2) In Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 (Recovery of possession on expiry or termination of assured shorthold tenancy) insert—
“(4ZAA) In the case of a dwelling-house in England no notice under subsection (4) may be given for thirty six months after the beginning of the tenancy.””
This new clause is an amendment to section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 which would prevent landlords from using the “notice only” grounds for possession for the first three years of the tenancy by private sector landlords where the tenant would become homeless.
New clause 3—Controls on rent increases within a tenancy—
‘(1) After section 23 of the Housing Act 1988 insert—
“Section 23A: rent increase
(1) This section applies to any assured shorthold tenancy granted on or after 1 April 2018 in respect of any property in England other than one granted by a private registered provider of social housing.
(2) It is an implied term of all such tenancies that the rent may only be increased in any year on the anniversary of the commencement of the tenancy and that the rent may increase by no more than the percentage specified by the Office for National Statistics as the Consumer Prices Index figure for the month immediately preceding the proposed increase if there is a significant risk that that tenant would become homeless.
(3) Any term of the tenancy (or any other agreement, whether between the landlord and tenant or any third party) which is inconsistent with subsection (2) is of no effect.
(4) The landlord must serve written notice of the new rent on the tenant and any other party who is responsible for the payment of the rent.
(5) The notice must be in a prescribed form (or substantially to the same effect) and must specify—
(a) the present rent;
(b) the percentage increase proposed; and
(c) the proposed new rent,
together with any other matters or information which may be prescribed.
(6) A person served with such a notice may, within 28 days of being so served, refer it to the appropriate tribunal for a determination as to the validity of the notice and, if necessary, to examine the risk of the tenant becoming homeless.
(7) Should a court or tribunal in any proceedings find that the landlord has received rent in excess of that permitted by this section, it must either—
(a) order that the excess rent be repaid to the tenant (including to any former tenant if the tenancy has come to an end),
(b) order that it stands to the credit of the tenant in respect of future rent which will fall due; or,
(c) set it off against other sums which the tenant owes to the landlord under the tenancy.
(8) The Secretary of State has power to prescribe a form for the purposes of this section and may make different provision for Greater London and the rest of England. The power must be exercised within a reasonable period and, in relation to Greater London if the Mayor of London makes a written request that it be exercised and provides a draft form, must be in the form proposed by the Mayor.
(9) The Secretary of State has power to modify subsection (2) by order and may make different provision for Greater London and the rest of England. Any modification is limited to substituting an increase which is lower than the Consumer Prices Index. That power must be exercised within a reasonable period and, in relation to Greater London if the Mayor of London makes a written request that it be exercised and specifies a particular substitution, must be the substitution specified by the Mayor.
(10) In this section—
“Greater London” shall have the same meaning as in the London Government Act 1963 (c.33)
“Mayor of London” shall have the same meaning as in the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (s.29).””
This new clause concerns rent increases. It provides that it is an implied term of all assured shorthold tenancies granted on or after 1 April 2018, that the rent can only go up once a year and by no more than CPI if there is a significant risk of the tenant as a result of the increase becoming homeless. It requires a notice to be given to the tenant, giving them details of the increase and for a right to appeal that notice to the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The Secretary of State has a power to prescribe a lower increase and must do so in respect of London if the Mayor of London requests it.
Andy Slaughter
It is a pleasure to open today’s proceedings on this important Bill that, if passed, will mark a sea change in the way in which homelessness is treated in this country. This is a rare creature—a private Member’s Bill with a hope of success. I should not tempt fate this early in proceedings, but I cannot see the usual suspects sitting behind the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the promoter of the Bill, so I am already encouraged.
I think that the Bill has support from all parties. Importantly it has the support of the Government; otherwise, I suspect that we would not have got this far. We should not forget the good work that the Communities and Local Government Committee and its Chair have done in support of the Bill. I also pay tribute to the promoter of the Bill, who now knows more about the intricacies of homelessness law than he perhaps ever wanted to.
There are matters still to be resolved but—and I say this advisedly—I hope that, as far as this House is concerned, they can all be resolved this morning. For my part, I do not intend to go on at length. Although certain important matters need to be covered, I hope that in the time we have available today, the Bill will be able to complete all its stages.
Let me be clear from the outset that I do not intend to press new clauses 2 and 3 to a Division. I am hopeful that when the Minister speaks, I will hear words that will encourage me not to press new clause 1. One interesting feature of the Bill has been that we have had constructive discussions about it—outside the Committee, of course; not in it, as that would not be at all appropriate. My last email to the Minister was sent at about 11 pm last night. I appreciate that that might have been past his bedtime and he has not had time to respond, but we are getting where we want to go.
New clause 1 deals with perhaps the central unresolved issue, which relates not to the content of the Bill— we will come to that when we consider the Government’s amendments—but to its implementation and, in particular, whether the resources that the Government have set aside are sufficient. New clauses 2 and 3 are also important because they address what stands behind the Bill—the fact that legislation of itself will not tackle the homelessness crisis. To be fair to the promoter of the Bill, he has at all stages said that that that is the case, and he repeated it in his article that has been published on PoliticsHome.com this morning. I appreciate that, but we cannot look at the Bill in a vacuum; we have to look at the surrounding circumstances. Nothing illustrates that better than the figures on rough sleeping that were released two days ago, which revealed a shocking 16% increase year on year. More than 4,000 people are now sleeping rough on the streets of the UK. One rough sleeper is one too many, and what should alarm the House in particular is the fact this is a crisis that does not need to exist.
Under the previous Labour Government, rough sleeping fell by three quarters, because of direct Government intervention and co-ordination with not only local authorities, but the many fine homelessness charities, which also stand behind the Bill. This crisis is solvable, but the fact that street homelessness has gone up by more than 130% since 2010—under the coalition Government and now under this Government—really should shame the Government. We are here to pass an important Bill, but that does not get them off the hook.
I must strike one small note of discord: we do not want this to become a battle about who is more in favour of the Bill. The promoter’s article mentioned the danger of the Bill being delayed because of our new clauses. There must be a lot of confused pots and kettles out there, given that the Government have tabled 21 complicated amendments that no one would wish to consider on Report—they should have been taken in Committee. I am hopeful that we can deal with them, but the point is that it is not unreasonable or irrational for the Opposition to take a little time to debate important principles.
In Committee, Government Members spoke for two and a half times as long as Opposition Members. I realise that there were one or two more of them, unfortunately—
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Andy Slaughter
In a moment.
We all—even I—must sometimes curb our prolixity, and we were very disciplined in Committee. We withdrew many new clauses and amendments before the Christmas break to speed the passage of the Bill. Even though my colleagues in Committee had huge expertise and a lot to say, we were very disciplined. I wish that I could say the same for the Minister and Government Back Benchers, including the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson).
Michael Tomlinson
It was a great pleasure to serve in Committee with the hon. Gentleman. I am delighted to hear that he is still in favour of the Bill and that it still attracts cross-party support. Today he can rely on my discipline and, I am sure, that of all colleagues to ensure that the Bill goes through.
Andy Slaughter
Excellent. I am sure that those rousing words will be followed by action. That might even be the last we hear from the hon. Gentleman today.
I do not want to labour the point, but we should have been able to get through the Bill in less time, notwithstanding the fact that it is an important and, for a private Member’s Bill, quite long Bill. It is considerably longer than the Bill that we will debate next week, although I suspect our consideration of that one will take rather longer.
It is regrettable that this Bill spent so long in Committee, but we know why it did: the Government were filibustering in order to keep the parliamentary boundaries Bill, which is promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), out of Committee. I am not saying that we do not all play these tricks from time to time; I am just saying that we should not start pointing the finger over who is to blame for delaying the Bill, and instead get on with this now.
I want to deal with the point about money. Right at the beginning of our Committee stage, the Minister said, “I hope to tell you before the end of Committee how much money there will be.” The Government gave a welcome commitment to fund the additional costs fully—there will be substantial additional costs on local authorities, and under the new burdens doctrine, the money has to come from central Government—but we waited week after week with bated breath to find out what money there would be. He kept his promise—just—and at the last moment, some money came forward. It was not a negligible sum: about £48 million over two years. However, that amount must be compared with the sensible estimates from individual local authorities and their collective bodies, such as the Local Government Association and London Councils. For example, while £37 million or £38 million has been set aside for the first year of the Bill’s implementation, London Councils estimates that the cost will be about £160 million. There is therefore a massive disparity in the figures.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Newham Council has looked into the cost of implementation, and thinks that it will be £2.5 million in the first year alone. I am delighted that the Bill has been introduced, but does my hon. Friend honestly believe that the Government will fully compensate councils for the money that they will need to spend?
Andy Slaughter
I am one of nature’s optimists. The Minister is such a reasonable fellow, and so kind-hearted, that I am sure that if he says he wishes to provide the full amount, he means it. Unfortunately, however, the record of the Government as a whole is not one of being particularly kind-hearted, particularly to local government. They have a habit of passing the buck by cutting the budget of the Department for Communities and Local Government, as is clear from the fact that local government cuts have been the biggest of all.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) is absolutely right to be sceptical. That is indeed what we want to hear. There are many figures floating around, but Newham Council knows what it is talking about, because it has one of the most pressing housing needs in the country, some of the poorest communities in the country, and, I am afraid, some of the worst housing in the country, especially in the private rented sector.
These are matters of real concern. All we are asking for is a commitment from the Minister not just to a review, but to a review that will be undertaken at the right time and will be all-encompassing. As I said earlier, the Select Committee has played a key role—its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), is an acknowledged expert, and he has also benefited from the able assistance of Members on both sides—and it, as well as local authorities themselves, should be involved in any review process.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Enfield, like Newham, contains some of the poorest people in the country with the greatest housing need, and obviously we want the Bill to be implemented, but good councils throughout the country are already embarking on the prevention measures specified in the Bill under the current funding settlement, and will welcome the provision of more money to enable them to continue those measures.
Andy Slaughter
I think the best thing to say is that there is a mixed economy among local authorities. Some do very well—some have to do very well because of the pressures on them—and others do less well. Part of the Bill’s purpose is to bring them all up to the same standard. However, the hon. Gentleman’s point cuts both ways. If it is true that Camden Council, for example, is already preventing 80% of those who present themselves from becoming homeless, the savings that are likely to be made—most of which, I understand, will result from an increase in prevention work, which will avoid the need to find alternative accommodation or fund the costs of homelessness in other ways—will be less. The Government rather piously hope that after two years there will be no need for funding, but I do not think anyone believes that, including the Government.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
This is not just a problem in London. In 2015-16, there were more than 1,000 homelessness prevention and relief cases in Wirral as a result of the council’s actions. Does my hon. Friend agree that any new duties that councils will have to take on should be fully funded, both now and in the future?
Andy Slaughter
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. However, the problem is clearly greater in some areas than in others. The precedent for the Bill is legislation passed by the Labour-run Government of Wales, which has already been successful: there have been substantial falls in homelessness. Of course there are parts of Wales where there is a real crisis, as there are in the rest of the United Kingdom, but there are also hotspots, and the big cities, particularly London, are hotspots.
We cannot rely on the example of Wales. It is still possible in many Welsh authorities for accommodation to be made available to people including those who are not in priority need. In London boroughs—and, I suspect, in my hon. Friend’s constituency and many others—that opportunity disappeared years ago, and the reverse is now the case. We spent some time in Committee talking about the disgraceful attitude of Westminster Council, which is sending its homeless people quite literally to Coventry, and I fear that other boroughs are doing exactly the same. That is the difficulty with which we are grappling.
I am not going to labour the point. We want assurances, which we believe new clause 1 would deliver, that the full funding of the Bill’s implementation by local authorities for which my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) has rightly asked will be provided. Yes, the Government have made a start, and, yes, I think that we shall hear more about money today, given that some of the Government amendments will involve additional costs. We are pleased with what has been done so far, but we must have that funding, because otherwise the Bill will fail, and local authorities will be in an even more parlous state.
Let me now deal briefly with new clauses 2 and 3. We could have tabled a great many more new clauses illustrating the same point, which is that the Bill’s provisions cannot be seen in a vacuum. We all welcome the greater concentration on prevention to which the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) referred, and we also welcome the new relief duties requiring local authorities to assist homeless people who are not in priority need. However, the pattern of homelessness is utterly bleak, and that is a perfect storm which, I am afraid, derives from the Government’s own actions or inactions.
The first problem, as the new clauses make clear, is the crisis in the private rented sector. The huge inflation in rents over the past few years has meant that many private landlords take advantage of the “no fault” eviction process for which the Housing Act 1988 provides. They say to people, “You are on benefit, and I can get a higher rent from someone else”, or they simply say, “I want a different tenant and I do not have to give any reason, so off you go.” Provided that the payments are in order, the consequence of that swift process, with no argument to the contrary, is that many thousands of people present themselves to local authorities as homeless. I believe that more than 40% of homelessness cases are caused by private sector evictions, with all the misery that they bring.
Again, however, the problem is not insoluble. The inclusion of new clauses 2 and 3 would make a significant difference. This is a modest proposal. I am suggesting that if there were longer tenancies—three-year tenancies—and if, within the period of those tenancies, there were controls over the levels of rent increases, we would end the present chaotic market in evictions in which landlords bid against each other.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting this point. I will pass over the typo in line four of his new clause 2 and simply ask: does he remember from the Bill Committee that the average length of tenancies was in fact four years, yet in his new clause 2 he refers merely to three years? Does he not accept that there also needs to be a balance, to encourage sufficient landlords?
Andy Slaughter
I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman does when he is not passing over typos, but I am afraid his argument works both ways. If, as the Residential Landlords Association says—this is, I think, the point the hon. Gentleman is making—tenancies are already on average longer than three years, what is the problem with ensuring that that is the case? Good practice suggests that a good landlord wants to keep a tenant for a period of time; that gives stability and continuity, and there are no breaks in tenancy and no additional fees involved. But not all landlords are good landlords, and some are playing this lottery game where they think they can get more money. Unfortunately, we have even had the spectacle of local authorities outbidding each other for tenancies, so desperate are they in this regard. All the hon. Gentleman’s intervention illustrates is how modest and reasonable this proposal is. When the Minister replies, he might want to say what the Government’s thinking on this matter is at the moment.
This is an issue in itself. It is not just an issue about homelessness, but these specific new clauses relate to the risk of homelessness and state that we would achieve the purposes of this Bill—put less pressure on local authorities, and have less need to prevent homelessness—if some landlords were not acting in the manner that they are. That is the purpose of the new clauses. I think they are quite reasonable. I appreciate that, given the time constraints, unless the Government suddenly decide to accept them this morning, it is unlikely that we are going to make progress on them in the course of this Bill, but we will return to this subject time and again until it is resolved.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
There is an extremely high rate of homelessness in Tooting among those aged over 60. I know that Wandsworth Council battles with this greatly day in, day out. Do you agree that it is absolutely unacceptable that we are failing the older members of our society, and that people over 60 need to be taken into account?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Just for good order, would the hon. Lady mind asking the hon. Gentleman to agree, rather than asking the Chair? She should ask whether he agrees, because she does not care whether I agree or not.
Dr Allin-Khan
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely outrageous that residents aged 60 and over have to suffer in this way and that he must do all he can to ensure the Government address this issue?
Andy Slaughter
Absolutely, and I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, also care about homelessness in Tooting. What my hon. Friend illustrates is that we are in new territory. Even though there were big problems, particularly in the private rented sector, 20 or 30 years ago, I doubt that we would then have been talking about homelessness among people of pensionable age. It illustrates how deep this goes in society now that we are worried not just about groups that were at risk in the days of “Cathy Come Home”, but about people who are at a time in their life when they deserve, and should have, stability and security.
I am not keeping to my promise, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will conclude now, but let me just say this. Yes, new clauses 2 and 3 illustrate a clear point, but this is only part of the problem. Alongside that is the issue of housing supply and the terrible record, I am afraid to say, that this Government have on genuinely affordable housing, on allowing councils to build and ensuring that there is specialist housing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Andy Slaughter
Can the Minister not make the point in his own comments? [Interruption.] Very well, I will give way if he wants to intervene.
Mr Jones
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his forbearance in taking my intervention. Does he not welcome the record amount of £3.15 billion that this Government are providing to the Greater London Authority to provide affordable housing in London, which has been welcomed by the London Mayor?
Andy Slaughter
As the shadow London Minister, I welcome everything the London Mayor welcomes. I do not want us to go off on a tangent, but I will just say that we were beginning to make progress; we were beginning to make progress towards the end of the last Labour Government, and the best illustration of that is that under the coalition Government eight out of 10 council homes completed were started under the previous Labour Government. I do not mind the Minister taking credit and talking about the building of additional affordable and social homes, but his Government need to have their own record, not leach off ours.
Ms Buck
I am extremely grateful. While we are on this topic, is my hon. Friend also aware that the Chartered Institute of Housing estimates that 250,000 social homes will be lost as a result of right to buy and other measures between now and 2020, so whatever assurances the Government are giving us about the construction of new affordable housing, they are the equivalent of turning on the taps while leaving the plug out?
Andy Slaughter
Absolutely, and when I mentioned the quality of members on the Committee from my side, I was of course particularly thinking of my hon. Friend—as well as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, and my other hon. Friends on the Committee. I am afraid that they put my feeble efforts to shame, but there it is.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) is absolutely right. We have a crisis in housing supply, we have a crisis in the private rented sector, and we also have—which the Government are directly responsible for through the benefit caps, the freezing of local housing allowance, and the cuts in Supporting People—a manufactured homelessness crisis which we are now seeing reflected in the figures I quoted earlier.
I pay tribute to the Minister for the work he has done on this Bill, as well as to the sponsor, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), and the sincere comments made by Conservative Back Benchers during the course of this Bill, but they cannot put their heads in the sand and look at this Bill in isolation from everything else that is happening—and when they have looked at that, they have to change their policy. I am sure we are going to get the housing White Paper, possibly even this year, but when it comes, we will be looking for those matters to be dealt with, and that is the purpose of these new clauses. Their purpose is to make sure that this Bill functions and that Government policy as a whole functions in relation to homelessness. That is why I would like to hear from the Minister, if not warm support and acceptance of the new clauses, at least what he intends to do in relation to them.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, as always, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). Before I start, may I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of Members’ interests?
We should get back to the fact that this Bill is about reducing homelessness and is entitled the Homelessness Reduction Bill. At some stages during the hon. Gentleman’s rather lengthy speech, I began to wonder whether we were moving off on to the whole policy of housing. I think we should confine ourselves to this Bill, rather than broadening out to the wider aspects. I accept absolutely that one person sleeping rough on our streets at any one time is a disgrace; I have regularly gone on record to say that that is a national disgrace, as, equally, is the fact that we do not know the exact level of homelessness in this country. I start from that principle.
It is of course fair to say that the level of rough sleeping has increased. It is also fair to say that the level of homelessness has increased. However, as the hon. Gentleman will know well, the level of homelessness in this country peaked in 2002-03, when I suspect another party was in government. There was a reduction, which took place as a result of both Government intervention and local authorities taking appropriate action, but, actually, no change in legislation; we should remember that, effectively, legislation on this subject has not changed for 40 years. So we must get back to that particular issue.
Hopefully, we will have more details about the Bill by the time we get to Third Reading, but I will just gently mention that we spent some 15 hours in Committee debating the 13 clauses in this Bill. There were opportunities for amendments. The hon. Gentleman did table amendments, but then withdrew them before we could even debate them. The difference between the amendments that my hon. Friend the Minister will move later and the proposals from the hon. Gentleman is that the Government amendments are a direct consequence of the discussions that we had in Committee. They are designed to improve the Bill and to achieve the outcomes of discussions with housing charities, local government representative bodies, local government generally and the landlords associations. There is therefore a marked difference between those amendments—I accept that there are 21 of them—and the hon. Gentleman’s proposals.
I commend my hon. Friends across the House who served on the Bill Committee for their service. They will be aware that, at the last sitting, the Government made a firm commitment to reviewing the Bill at an appropriate point after implementation. I suggest to the Minister that it would be helpful if he were to repeat that commitment today and to clarify it further, so that no one can be in any doubt of the Government’s willingness to accept the fact that, as we have funding of £48 million over two years—I thank the Minister for that—we hope that that will lead to the provision of all the funding that local authorities will need to carry out their duties under the Bill, which we hope will become an Act in the not too distant future.
As I have said, however, we do not know what level of demand local authorities will experience as a result of the new burdens they will face. We do know that many local authorities are already accepting a prevention duty, and the funding will clearly be welcome to those authorities that are acting in a good and positive way. We could look at the stats from every local authority to see how many people are turning up for help, but we also know that the vast majority of single homeless people will be turned away by their local authority without any help or advice. Now, because of the massive change in the law and in the culture of local authorities, the numbers of people are likely to increase, especially during the first year.
Mr Burrowes
We also know that the Government are wholeheartedly committed to fulfilling the responsibilities outlined in the Bill, including the financial responsibility to provide funding of £48 million. If, beyond the current spending round, additional finances were needed in order to fulfil the duties in the Bill, having taken account of savings, does my hon. Friend agree that that wholehearted commitment should continue and that we would expect the money to be available for that?
Bob Blackman
I think the whole House would expect the Government to recognise that there will be extra cost pressures on local authorities and, given the commitment that they have made, to continue to fund these measures in the years to come.
One of the problems with new clause 1 is that it proposes a review after a fixed period of time, and then that would be it. That is not an acceptable way forward. I want the Government to keep this matter continually under review, and I am sure that the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee and the rest of its members, who are joint sponsors of the Bill, will ensure that the Minister—or whoever is the Minister at the time—continues to have their feet held to the fire.
Bob Blackman
Indeed, but this Minister cannot commit his successor to maintaining a particular position. However, we on the Select Committee will keep this matter under review. We will scrutinise the level of activity and the funding that follows.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I rise to support new clause 1. This is my first speech on this important Bill, so I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on introducing it. He has done so with great persuasion and has performed an important service for us all. I also congratulate both Front-Bench teams on working constructively to bring the Bill to this point.
I support the Bill but, as good as it goes, we will be kidding ourselves today if we leave this House, pat ourselves on the back and believe that the House has done everything that it could to tackle an emergency that is unfolding before our eyes. I chose to speak in today’s debate to reflect the rising concern among my constituents in Leigh—a concern that is shared widely in Greater Manchester—that an increasing number of people can be seen huddling in doorways across the region. People will not just walk on by; they do not accept that things have to be like this. Homelessness and rough sleeping are not inevitable facts of life in 2017. Our society is wealthy enough to ensure that nobody should spend a night without a roof over their head. We need new urgency on both sides of the House to bring forward appropriate action to address the situation.
If there is a problem with the Bill, it is that it goes nowhere near far enough to tackle the scale of the problem. It does not address the wider cross-governmental work that is necessary to provide an appropriate response. Let us take a reality check. The Minister will be aware of the figures that came out this week showing a 16% rise in rough sleeping over the past year—my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) referenced that in his opening remarks. Since 2010, rough sleeping has doubled across England and is increasing at an alarming rate. The problem is even worse in Greater Manchester, with a 41% increase in the past year across the 10 boroughs. According to local officials, that figure does not reflect the full picture. They believe that at least 300 people across Greater Manchester will spend tonight out on the streets. That is simply unacceptable, and I have not heard from the Government what they are doing about that. What are they doing now to help people find warmth and shelter?
As I said, the number of people rough sleeping has doubled, but the Bill will not reverse that trend and our eyes need to be open to that. I support new clause 1, because urgency is crucial in this debate. We need a clear commitment to review what is happening. I take the point of the hon. Member for Harrow East, but we all know that timetables shift after a Minister at the Dispatch Box commits to review something. The civil service will say, “We will review it in the autumn,” and that becomes the winter and then the spring. That is what happens, but it is not good enough. The problem is bigger than that. We need clarity and certainty. There should be a commitment to review how the legislation is working—both whether it is reducing homelessness and whether the Government are giving councils adequate funding.
For the reasons outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) a moment ago, I do not believe that the funding is adequate. I differ from my Front-Bench team here in that I think the review should take place within one year. We need more urgency. Although I expect the Bill to have a modest but welcome impact on homelessness, I believe that an annual review would reveal that it goes nowhere near addressing the scale of the problem and that Government funding for councils is inadequate. We must remember that most of the funding comes next year and then reduces sharply in the year after. In the third year, there is nothing at all. I do not want to wait until the third year to find out whether the legislation is working. The review should be conducted within 12 months.
We need to hear much more from the Government. If they want to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, there must be a cross-Government response. When Labour was in government, we established a rough sleepers unit, bringing together all the Departments with a role to play. I do not see that level of cross-Government working here. In addition to that commitment to work across Government, we need a clear ambition. What is the Government’s ambition on rough sleeping? I am not aware of one. Rough sleeping is increasing at an alarming rate, so what are they going to do about it? Will they reverse that trend? Will they make the same commitment that I have made in Greater Manchester that we should work to eradicate rough sleeping by 2020? [Interruption.] It is all very well the Minister looking the other way and talking to his colleagues, but what is he going to do about rough sleeping now and in the next few years? What is the Government’s ambition? Are they committed to reversing the increase? Will they go further and eliminate rough sleeping? We need to hear about that from the Minister today. I do not want to inject a partisan note into this debate, but we will be doing nobody any favours if we sit here today and think that the Bill, as good as it is, is enough. The Bill will not reverse the looming cuts to housing benefit.
Michael Tomlinson
The right hon. Gentleman admits that he did not sit on the Bill Committee and that he did not contribute on Second Reading. Had he done so, he would have seen the cross-party nature of proceedings. While I am sure that his points are relevant to new clauses 1, 2 and 3, they will not attract the same cross-party support that has to date been the nature of the Bill.
Andy Burnham
I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying. There is cross-party support. I support the Bill—the hon. Member for Harrow East and the Government have my support today—but I am entitled to speak for the people who will be on the streets of Greater Manchester and the hon. Gentleman’s constituency tonight. I am entitled to give them a voice in this House. The Bill will not change their situation or reduce rough sleeping anytime soon, so who is speaking for them? It is unacceptable for the House to debate homelessness in a cosy way without facing the reality that rough sleeping is rising at an alarming rate. What is the Minister doing about that? The House and, more importantly, the people out there on the cold streets deserve an answer.
Ms Buck
I urge my right hon. Friend to pay little regard to the comments of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) because, although he is absolutely correct that there was and is cross-party consensus on the provisions and the culture underpinning the Bill, which we want to see implemented, in Committee and on Second Reading virtually all the comments from Opposition Members have been that the wider context in which homelessness and rough sleeping exist, from universal credit to housing benefit cuts and housing supply, is going in reverse. It is absolutely right that we should draw attention to that.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill focuses solely on the duties of local authorities, and we must remember that those local authorities are operating in the context of massive cuts to their budgets. We need to be honest with ourselves about whether they are going to be able to rise to the extra pressures that the Bill places on them.
As my hon. Friend says, the Bill will do nothing to reverse the cuts to housing benefits that are coming down the line, which many experts believe will make homelessness and rough sleeping worse. The Bill does nothing to reverse cuts to mental health services that are pushing more people out on to the street. The Bill does nothing to reverse the cuts to social care, which are having the same effect. The Bill does nothing to build more affordable housing.
I am sorry if that injects a note that the Minister does not quite like, but tough. I am here to say it because he needs a better response than the Bill. If he thinks this is it, it is simply not good enough. The Bill is a step in the right direction, but I am afraid that that is all it is. In Greater Manchester, working with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) and Councillor Beth Knowles from Manchester City Council, we are committing ourselves and our councils to trying to end rough sleeping. If we can do that at our level, the Government should at least do something at their level.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
The briefing note from Crisis, the housing charity, says:
“Whilst we understand the intention behind these amendments we are very worried that, if pushed to a vote and passed, there would be further amendments in the Houses of Lords, leading to ‘Ping-pong’ between the two Houses. This could result in the Bill failing to receive Royal Assent before the end of the parliamentary session, thus killing the Bill.”
My reading of the briefing note is that Crisis would like the Bill to go through without these new clauses. Does the right hon. Gentleman have a view on that?
Andy Burnham
I have also read the briefing note from Crisis, and the hon. Lady will have seen that Crisis does not believe that the funding allocated to the Bill is adequate to meet the obligations that are being placed on local authorities, nor does it believe that the Bill will do anything to address the wider issue of housing benefits.
However, I accept the hon. Lady’s point. I have not come here today to do anything to disrupt the passage of the Bill. It would help everybody if the Bill contained a commitment to a review so that we all know where we stand and so that there is a degree of urgency about how the House is addressing this issue.
Mr Marcus Jones
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I am slightly disappointed by his approach and by the important time he is taking up. It is a shame that he did not come to make these points on Second Reading. That said, he asked me the very serious question about what the Government are doing to help address the important issue of rough sleeping in Manchester. We have already announced more than £600,000[Official Report, 1 February 2017, Vol. 620, c. 3MC.] for a social impact bond in Greater Manchester to support entrenched rough sleepers who have the most complex needs. Does he not welcome the work that will be done by the Government and the Greater Manchester combined authority?
Andy Burnham
I will welcome every single thing the Minister does to address this problem and, yes, I welcome that funding. What I do not welcome is the alarming rise in rough sleeping on the streets of Greater Manchester. I am sorry if it is inconvenient for the Minister to hear this, but it is clearly right to put those concerns to him.
Lyn Brown
I was not going to say another word because I want the Bill to go through, but I am amazed by the Minister’s chutzpah in moaning about an excellent speech that is relevant and pertinent to the Bill, given that Government Members, week after week after week, talk out excellent Bills. If the Minister does not mind, I would like to listen to what my right hon. Friend has to say because it is actually pertinent, unlike the drivel we normally hear from Government Members week after week after week.
Andy Burnham
The Minister mentioned time. If the Government were making the Bill a priority, perhaps they would make time to debate these issues and to propose their own initiative. Instead, we have a debate on a Friday as a result of a private Member’s Bill. I will welcome anything the Minister does to address the issue, but I do not accept a cosy cross-party debate today when the number of people sleeping rough on our streets is increasing every single week. It is a bigger issue than just patting ourselves on the back. More needs to be done, and the Government need to set out today their ambition to cut rough sleeping in the next few years. That is why I am here today. I fully support the Bill, but let us be honest about what it is: a modest first step.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
It was interesting to listen to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). If I did not know that he represents Leigh, I might have thought that he was standing for some position in Manchester.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on the effective way in which he has secured progress on such a sympathetic Bill on this compelling subject. One would hope that every debate in this place is worthwhile, but few issues are more significant than this Bill, which endeavours to ensure that no one has to endure sleeping rough on the streets of England, that no one has to face the frightening prospect of the lack of a roof over their head if nobody can put them up, and that no one has to be subject to the appalling mental and physical degradation that accompanies homelessness.
It is important to note that homelessness is not the same as rough sleeping, which the right hon. Member for Leigh perhaps misunderstands. We must not dismiss the plight of those who, although they might not be sleeping on the street, are plagued by anxiety and disquiet at that very real possibility. Britain is a developed nation with a strong economy, and I would be so bold as to say that I speak for everyone in this place when I say that it is shameful that so many people in our country are homeless. We must do all that we can to help them.
It is, of course, agonising to see somebody sleeping on the street, and it is even more concerning when we have freezing weather at this time of year, as we have faced in London this week, because a night out on the streets becomes even more unbearable than it is at the best of times. It is not possible to scrutinise the Bill effectively without understanding the complex nature of homelessness and just how extensive the problem is across the country. Quantifying homelessness is, in itself, an extremely difficult task. The way in which homelessness is recorded varies and, even if a unanimous method were both agreed and employed, the number might still be underestimated, as many people often sleep out of sight, moving from place to place.
Indeed, because of the appalling physical abuse to which rough sleepers, particularly women, are subjected, many actively try to leave places where they can be spotted. Despite that difficulty, Government statistics show that 4,134 people slept rough on any one night across England in 2016. Shockingly, that is more than double the number recorded in 2010. In London alone, local agencies report that 8,096 people slept rough in 2015-16, a 6% rise on the previous year.
Andy Burnham
The figures showing the rise since 2010 are shocking. Does the hon. Lady think that her Government are doing enough to tackle rough sleeping?
Pauline Latham
The Government are trying to tackle rough sleeping, which is not an easy subject to address. The fact that they are allowing the Bill to go through shows that they are taking it seriously.
David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)
Members on both sides of the House need to be aware that many people who are sleeping rough, even if they present to a local authority, will find that local authorities do not currently have the power to help them—it is not a question of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that the powers in the Bill will give local authorities the ability to intervene?
Pauline Latham
I am pleased that my hon. Friend made that point, which I can clearly illustrate with a case I dealt with over Christmas. I had to ring a helpline for a family whose rented house had burned down. They had four children. Derbyshire County Council was not interested in the fact that they were homeless and would have to come back from family to homelessness after Christmas, although the parents would have to continue with their jobs and get the children back into school. It was interested only in whether the children were vulnerable and were being abused. That is a clear example of a local authority not being interested in the fact of homelessness. Even when I phoned on Christmas day and several days after that, we could not get Derbyshire County Council to put anything in place for these people because its view was, “Well, they are not homeless. They are staying with friends in Bournemouth,”—or wherever it was—and not that the parents had to come back to Borrowash to get the children back into school and go back to their jobs. There are therefore problems at the moment.
The problem of homelessness is getting worse and the Bill could not be more necessary. Breaking the numbers down, certain groups are at particular risk. In England, women make up 26% of the clients of homelessness services, but as a group they are often much more vulnerable. There are high levels of vulnerability within the female homeless population. Mental ill health, drug and alcohol dependency, a childhood spent in care, experiences of sexual abuse and other traumatic life experiences are all commonplace.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that organisations such as Crisis back the Bill shows that the Government and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) have got this right?
Pauline Latham
I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government are getting it right. They are acting for the benefit of homeless people in this country.
Interviews with homeless women that have been conducted by the fantastic homelessness alleviation charity Crisis, which was cited a few moments ago, show that more than 20% became homeless to escape violence from someone they knew, with 70% of them fleeing violence from a partner. That shows that the Government need the cross-party support that they are getting—or were getting; it seems that that is perhaps not as strong as it was. We need to move forward with the Bill so that it can go successfully to its next stage and become law.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
I am sure that new clauses 2 and 3, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), are well intentioned. New clause 2 would give tenants assurances on their length of tenure and new clause 3 would give assurances on rent increases. However, I am concerned that, rather than helping vulnerable homeless people, they would hinder some of the best work in the Bill.
We know that private landlords are increasingly reluctant to accept benefit claimants—that is certainly the experience of Portsmouth City Council. The Bill represents an effort to change that situation, but new clauses 2 and 3 would frustrate it. Tenants are currently encouraged to remain in occupation until they are evicted by a court order so that they cannot be considered to be voluntarily homeless. That is a stressful and debilitating practice for the tenant, and a disincentive for landlords to take on cases from local authorities. That would be especially true under new clause 2 because it would lock landlords into an unbreakable three-year tenancy agreement if the result of giving notice would be to make the tenant homeless.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the reality is that only around 50% of mortgage lenders lend to buy-to-lets with tenancies of more than one year? The measures might restrict the market even further, so they could cause many more problems than they would fix.
Mrs Drummond
That point was discussed earlier. It would be good if mortgage lenders could extend their offer to three years or even beyond, because we do want long-term tenancies.
New clause 2 would make landlords reluctant to take on anyone who might need local authority help, most of whom would be vulnerable people in receipt of benefits or on low incomes. As Portsmouth and District Private Landlords Association has stressed to me, landlords do not usually evict good and responsible tenants, nor do they want to risk finding bad replacement tenants or to bear the costs of eviction and establishing a new tenancy. But nor do they want their hands to be tied. What if they wanted to sell the rental property or occupy it themselves? New clause 2 makes no provision for that. As a result, it would be a strong disincentive for landlords to take on any tenant who might call on the local authority’s duty to house, if they were given notice.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I will be brief because I recognise that we want to get to the final stages of this excellent Bill by the end of the sitting.
In terms of wider reach, the Bill is of course only a partial solution. The report of the Communities and Local Government Committee on homelessness drew attention to wider issues that need to be addressed. We need to build more homes in this country, particularly more affordable homes, and we need to build more affordable homes to rent. The Committee recognised that housing needs vary in different parts of the country. Different housing markets need a different response, particularly in terms of tenure mix.
We look forward to the housing White Paper, which we understand is coming soon. We hope that it will be published before the end of February, when Ministers will be coming before our Committee to give evidence as part of our inquiry into the capacity of the housebuilding industry. We will be able to pursue further some of the points about the ability to provide the homes that are needed at that time. I hope that, as the Minister for Housing and Planning seems to be indicating, we will see a move away from the idea that starter homes and shared ownership are the total answer to the country’s housing needs.
A lot has been said about longer-term tenancies in the private rented sector. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is absolutely right. When the Select Committee looked at that in the previous Parliament, we supported longer-term tenancies. We want to encourage everyone to move towards them. Within those tenancies, people can get the certainty of an agreed annual rent increase, which is different from having an artificially imposed rent control from outside.
In the here and now, money is absolutely crucial to the Bill’s success. We are getting a little confused about the timings of reviews. From the Select Committee’s point of view, two years on from implementation seems to be a good time to review whether the legislation is working and whether the money available had enabled it to work over the previous two years. I hope that the Minister sees the commitment to a review as a helpful proposal. Alongside the Government, we will review the working of the legislation and the position regarding money. Although there is money in the first year to help local government with start-up costs, after the regulations have been put in place, the Act will probably not be implemented for about a year. We then have a second year with limited funding, and then no funding in the third year, which is probably the second year of operation. I have concerns about that.
I cannot see that there will not be costs to local councils, so I think there is a need for a more immediate review after the Bill is passed, with regard to that third year. If Ministers are looking at a quicker, more immediate review of the finances as soon as the Bill is passed, that would be helpful. The Select Committee would be ready to do an immediate review on that very limited basis, if it would assist the process.
Mr Marcus Jones
It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts).
Right hon. and hon. Members have spoken quite a lot about the whys and wherefores of process, and about who tabled which amendments where and when—which side is more sanctimonious than the other almost springs to mind. I am not going to get into that because the Bill is very much about outcomes for people who are at risk of homelessness and people who have unfortunately become homeless.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). New clause 1 would put on the face of the Bill a statutory requirement for the Secretary of State to review the legislation no earlier than one year and no later than two years after commencement, and would require the review to consider the funding of the provisions. The hon. Gentleman will recall that the question of reviewing the costs of the legislation was raised and discussed at length in Committee, but for the benefit of those who were not there I shall state my commitment very clearly.
I will review the implementation of the legislation, including its resourcing and how it is working in practice, concluding no later than two years after the commencement of its substantive clauses. I will also carry out, in the same timeframe, a post-implementation review of the new burdens to review the robustness of our assessment of the estimated cost to local authorities and the underlying assumptions. As part of both reviews, I would welcome the input and expertise of the Select Committee, and I am happy to discuss how it could be involved. The resources and funding requirements related to the duties I have outlined will also be considered alongside all the other responsibilities of local authorities as part of future spending reviews.
It is important to bear it in mind that the Bill’s provisions will not be implemented on the day it receives Royal Assent, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith acknowledged. We were clear in Committee that the Bill’s successful implementation will depend on working with local government to ensure that resources, guidance and training are in place before its provisions are enacted. For that reason, each measure in the Bill can be commenced independently, once local authorities are ready. Given that fact, a statutory requirement to review, tied to the commencement date of the eventual Act, is unworkable, because the substantive clauses will be commenced at a later date. I also argue that such a statutory requirement is unnecessary given the commitments already in place and the long-standing new burdens assessment procedures.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
First, will my hon. Friend make sure, as he always does, that his civil servants are completely aligned with his objectives? Secondly, I welcome his commitment to work with local authorities; I know that my local authority, Broxbourne, would welcome the chance to discuss these matters with him to ensure that the Bill is successful, as I know it will be. Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his excellent work over the past few months to make sure that today’s proceedings happened and that new legislation comes into effect.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes an important point about working with local authorities, which we are absolutely determined to do during the Bill’s implementation. He knows that I have already met Broxbourne Borough Council to discuss these important issues, and I would certainly be keen to do that again. He also mentioned making sure that my civil servants’ intention is aligned with my own; I can tell him that the civil servants working on the Bill have done an absolutely excellent job in very testing circumstances. Although the Government wanted to introduce legislation, we must acknowledge the fact that the process for this Bill has been different, in that it is a private Member’s Bill that has also been worked on by the Select Committee, and then had input from local government, the Local Government Association and the housing charities. Our civil servants have done a magnificent job of helping us to bring all those groups together to come out with a product that has broad support.
Ms Buck
On the issue of working with local authorities, the Minister will know my concerns, which I raised in Committee, about Westminster City Council’s recent decision to discharge its duty to homeless people mainly outside the local authority, and in some cases as far away as the midlands. His colleague, the Minister for Housing and Planning, told me on “Sunday Politics” last week that Westminster City Council was wrong to do that and that, in the long run, it should be stopped. Will the Minister confirm that today and tell me what he thinks the long run actually means?
Mr Jones
We discussed that issue in some detail in Committee, so I am not going to go into great detail today, but the law is clear on placements out of borough. The Government are absolutely certain that we want that law to be observed, particularly in relation to making sure that councils look at people’s circumstances—such as where children go to school and where people work—before they make any decisions that may affect a particular family.
Andy Burnham
The Minister spoke a moment ago about successful implementation and a review to check that it has been achieved. Part of that success is about the bureaucracy—the successful implementation of the powers and provision of the money required so that local authorities can discharge their functions—but, as new clause 1 says, it is also about the effect the legislation has on actually reducing homelessness. Before he moves on, will he tell us what the Government’s objective is and what test they are setting themselves with respect to reducing both rough sleeping and homelessness by 2020? We can judge then whether they have been successful.
Mr Jones
We have set out a significant determination to reduce both rough sleeping and homelessness in general. Nobody should ever have to spend the night on the street, and it is regrettable that that is currently the case, but the Government are absolutely determined to ensure that nobody has to sleep rough. It is a complex matter, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is well aware. Some of the things we are doing will have a significant impact. For example, there is a challenge in getting people moved from hostel accommodation into an intermediate position, before they are able to go into accommodation of their own. We are bringing forward £100 million for move-on accommodation, for which a bidding process will open very shortly. I hope that, in the spirit of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that the Government are not resting on their laurels and do not see the Bill as the be all and end all to deal with homelessness and rough sleeping, which we take very seriously. We are doing a whole package of things to try to improve the situation for people.
If accepted, under new clause 2 private sector landlords would not be able to rely on the no fault ground for possession, known as section 21, within the first three years of a tenancy, if the termination of a tenancy would result in a tenant becoming homeless. Landlords, and in many cases tenants, welcome the flexibility of the current assured shorthold tenancy regime, which does not lock the parties into long-term commitments, and promotes mobility. Without the certainty that landlords can seek repossession of their property when required, perhaps for their own family to live in, many would be reluctant to let their properties. The unwanted outcome would be landlords withdrawing from the market, which would not help landlords or indeed tenants.
Before assured shorthold tenancies were introduced under the Housing Act 1988, the private rental market was in decline. Regulated rents made being a landlord simply not commercially viable for many property owners, but since 1988 the private rented sector has increased steadily, growing from just over 9% of the market in 1988 to 19% today. The current framework strikes the right balance between the rights of landlords and tenants, and our efforts should be focused on encouraging a voluntary approach to longer tenancies for those who want them.
With those points in mind, I hope that the hon. Member for Hammersmith will follow through on the comments that he made at the start of the debate and withdraw new clause 2.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It is true that, recently, the liberalisation of permitted development rights has released many more properties for rent, which is a very good thing, but does my hon. Friend agree that changes in fiscal policy, buy-to-let, and, in my own area, selective licensing are encouraging more landlords to resist letting properties? This proposal from the Opposition will exacerbate that trend.
Mr Jones
I agree with my hon. Friend. Layering more regulation on to residential landlords will have the net effect of reducing supply. Many of our constituents rely on renting private properties, so we need to be very careful that the balance is right.
Finally, if new clause 3 is enacted, it will introduce rent controls in the private rented sector by compelling landlords to limit rent rises to no more than once a year and by no more than inflation in cases where there is a risk of the tenant becoming homeless as a result of a rent rise. Although I understand the spirit in which this amendment has been tabled, introducing rent controls is fundamentally the wrong approach and is not borne out by evidence. Experience from Britain and around the world shows that rent controls lead to fewer properties on the market and less choice for tenants. Returning to the situation in the 1980s when the private rented sector was in decline will not help landlords or tenants.
The key to improving affordability and choice for tenants is to build more homes rather than impose rent controls. Our build-to-rent fund has now contracted investment worth £630 million to deliver more than 5,600 high-quality homes specifically for private rent. Our £3.5 billion private rented sector housing guarantee scheme will increase the stream of investment in new private rented sector housing.
We have also established the private rented sector affordability and security working group to explore options to reduce the cost for tenants who access and move within the sector. This group is expected to submit its report to Ministers next month.
I therefore urge the House to agree that new clause 3 is not desirable, and, given the commitment I have made to Opposition Front Benchers, I hope that new clauses 1, 2 and 3 will now be withdrawn.
Andy Slaughter
I thank everyone who has spoken in this debate. I appreciate all the comments that have been made. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for speaking so passionately about the situation in Manchester and the issues of rough sleeping, reminding us that these problems go around the country.
I said in my opening remarks that I would not press new clauses 2 and 3 to a vote, and that is still the case. Their purpose was to try to elicit some positive comments from the Minister, but I think I have failed in that respect. We will return to those matters at an early date. Eviction by private sector landlords is the single greatest immediate cause of homelessness, and it does need to be tackled. We are living not in the world of 1988, but in a very different and less stable climate. I was disappointed by the Minister’s rather wholesale rejection of that issue today, but I hope that we will return to it on a future occasion.
On a more positive note, I said that I hoped not to press new clause 1 to a vote. I am greatly encouraged by what the Minister said, and I thank him both for entering into the spirit of the discussion and the specific words he used. He gave us the comfort that we were looking for in relation to a proper, timely and comprehensive review of the finances behind the Bill. I am particularly pleased that he said that the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and the Select Committee itself will be engaged in that process as well as local government. That is extremely helpful, especially given the time pressures we are under to get these matters sorted out here rather than in the other place. I am sure that the other place will be watching and listening to what the Minister and I have said. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the new clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4
Duty in cases of threatened homelessness
Mr Marcus Jones
I beg to move amendment 1, page 5, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) But the authority may not give notice to the applicant under subsection (5) on the basis that the circumstances in subsection (7)(b) apply if a valid notice has been given to the applicant under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 (orders for possession on expiry or termination of assured shorthold tenancy) that—
(a) will expire within 56 days or has expired, and
(b) is in respect of the only accommodation that is available for the applicant’s occupation.”
This amendment prevents a local housing authority from bringing the duty in section 195(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 4) to an end after 56 days if the applicant has been given a notice under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 that has expired or will within 56 days expire and which is in respect of the only accommodation that is available for the applicant’s occupation.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 2, page 6, line 11, after “accommodation” insert—
“and, on the date of refusal, there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for occupation by the applicant for at least 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed”.
This amendment provides that a local housing authority can only bring the duty in section 195(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 4) to an end on the basis that the applicant has refused an offer of suitable accommodation, if on the date of the refusal there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
Government amendment 3, page 6, line 22, at end insert—
“(9) The duty under subsection (2) can also be brought to an end under sections 193A and 193B (notices in cases of applicant’s deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate).”
This amendment inserts, into section 195 of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 4), a reference to sections 193A and 193B of that Act (inserted by clause 7) under which the duty in section 195(2) can be brought to an end.
Government amendment 4, in clause 5, page 7, line 45, after “accommodation” insert—
“and, on the date of refusal, there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for occupation by the applicant for at least 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed”.
This amendment provides that a local housing authority can only bring the duty in section 189B(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 5) to an end on the basis that the applicant has refused an offer of suitable accommodation, if on the date of the refusal there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
Government amendment 5, page 8, line 9, at end insert—
“(9) The duty under subsection (2) can also be brought to an end under—
(a) section 193ZA (consequences of refusal of final accommodation offer or final Part 6 offer at the initial relief stage), or
(b) sections 193A and 193B (notices in cases of applicant’s deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate).”
This amendment inserts, into section 189B of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 5), references to section 193ZA (inserted by amendment 10), and sections 193A and 193B of that Act (inserted by clause 7), under which the duty in section 189B(2) can be brought to an end.
Government amendment 6, page 8, line 18, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) for subsection (1) substitute—
(1) If the local housing authority have reason to believe that an applicant may be homeless, eligible for assistance and have a priority need, they must secure that accommodation is available for the applicant’s occupation.
(1ZA) In a case in which the local housing authority conclude their inquiries under section 184 and decide that the applicant does not have a priority need—
(a) where the authority decide that they do not owe the applicant a duty under section 189B(2), the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end when the authority notify the applicant of that decision, or
(b) otherwise, the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end upon the authority notifying the applicant of their decision that, upon the duty under section 189B(2) coming to an end, they do not owe the applicant any duty under section 190 or 193.
(1ZB) In any other case, the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end upon the later of—
(a) the duty owed to the applicant under section 189B(2) coming to an end or the authority notifying the applicant that they have decided that they do not owe the applicant a duty under that section, and
(b) the authority notifying the applicant of their decision as to what other duty (if any) they owe to the applicant under the following provisions of this Part upon the duty under section 189B(2) coming to an end.”
See amendment 8. This amendment also makes the circumstances in which the interim duty to provide accommodation under section 188(1) of the Housing Act 1996 comes to an end where the local housing authority decide that the applicant does not have a priority need.
Government amendment 7, page 8, line 26, leave out from “for” to end of line 27 and insert—
“pending a decision of the kind referred to in subsection (1)” substitute “until the later of paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1ZB).”
See amendments 6 and 8.
Government amendment 8, page 8, line 27, at end insert—
“() for subsection (3) substitute—
‘(2A) For the purposes of this section, where the applicant requests a review under section 202(1)(h) of the authority’s decision as to the suitability of accommodation offered to the applicant by way of a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer (within the meaning of section 193ZA), the authority’s duty to the applicant under section 189B(2) is not to be taken to have come to an end under section 193ZA(2) until the decision on the review has been notified to the applicant.
(3) Otherwise, the duty under this section comes to an end in accordance with subsections (1ZA) to (1A), regardless of any review requested by the applicant under section 202.
But the authority may secure that accommodation is available for the applicant’s occupation pending a decision on review.’”
This amendment, together with amendments 6 and 7, ensure that any interim duty of a local housing authority under section 188 of the Housing Act 1996 to accommodate an applicant continues pending the conclusion of a review of the suitability of accommodation offered in a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer under section 193ZA of that Act (inserted by amendment 10).
Government amendment 9, in clause 6, page 11, leave out lines 14 to 16 and insert—
“(3) For the purposes of this section, a local housing authority’s duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) is a function of the authority to secure that accommodation is available for the occupation of a person only if the authority decide to discharge the duty by securing that accommodation is so available.”
This amendment ensures that where a local housing authority decides to discharge their duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clauses 5 and 4, respectively) by actually securing that accommodation is available for occupation by the applicant, sections 206 to 209 of that Act apply. Those sections contain various provisions about how a local housing authority’s housing functions are to be discharged.
Mr Jones
I shall start with amendment 1. At our last Committee sitting on 18 January, I committed to tabling an amendment to clause 4 to ensure that tenants at risk of becoming homeless were sufficiently protected and had access to the required help and support. The Committee agreed amendments to clause 1, so that it now extends the period an applicant is “threatened with homelessness” from 28 to 56 days and clarifies that an applicant is “threatened with homelessness” if they have a valid section 21 eviction notice that expires in 56 days or fewer.
Amendment 1 to clause 4 extends the prevention duty to cover instances where a household that has been served with a valid section 21 notice still remains in the property after receiving 56 days of help from the local housing authority under the prevention duty, and is still at risk of becoming homeless. Specifically, it covers instances where a valid section 21 notice has already expired or will expire in relation to the only accommodation the household has available. The amendment ensures that, in such instances, the prevention duty will continue to operate until such time as the local housing authority brings it to an end for one of the other reasons set out in clause 4, even if the 56 days have passed.
I will also address a related question about other ways of ending a tenancy, which was raised by a number of Members—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson)— during the Committee’s consideration of clause 1. That clause and this amendment address the particular need to clarify the status of an applicant who has been served with a section 21 notice, but, obviously, people can be threatened with homelessness in a number of ways, as was pointed out in Committee, and any eligible applicant who is at risk of being homeless in 56 days or fewer will be entitled to support under the new prevention duty.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Does the Minister agree that it is absolutely fantastic that we are addressing this situation? Given that the leader of the Liberal Democrats is on the front page of my local paper saying that if the Liberal Democrats were elected to the council they would supply more than 1,000 new homes to address homelessness, is the Minister not shocked that not one of them is in the Chamber today?
Mr Jones
I have been shocked at how little input there has been from the Liberal Democrats: not one Liberal Democrat was here on Second Reading—and, as we can see today, they have not appeared on Report. My hon. Friend makes a good point. Although at a local level there may be some suggestion that the Liberal Democrats want to address this important issue, at a national level, they do not appear to be showing a massive interest.
Mr Burrowes
One of the concerns expressed on Second Reading and in Committee, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), relates to councils that seek to ignore statutory guidance and that will recognise someone as homeless only when a bailiff’s notice is served. Shelter has expressed continuing concerns about that issue in respect of clause 1. Can the Minister reassure us that the guidance and prevention duties will mean that councils cannot simply hide and wait for a bailiff’s notice before acting on these vulnerable households at risk of homelessness?
Mr Jones
I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. Furthermore, given how the legislation will now work, it will be in the local authority’s interest to work more quickly with people at risk of becoming homeless. As we discussed many times in Committee, the legislation will very much drive a culture change, so that people are helped far further upstream than they have been to date. We are particularly keen to end some councils’ practice of saying to people, “Just wait for the bailiffs to arrive and then we’ll try to help you.” We want people to be helped far earlier. We do not want them to face a court appearance and a county court judgment; that will not help them to secure accommodation later.
I move on. The remaining amendments in this group relate to the issues that we identified with clause 7 but that we were, unfortunately, unable to address at an earlier stage. We identified a key issue: what is a workable balance between incentives and protections in cases where an applicant refuses a suitable offer of accommodation at the prevention and relief stages? We have been working closely with the local government sector and the homelessness charities to resolve the issue and to develop a way forward; I thank all those who have provided their expertise and support. We will discuss the core amendments to clause 7 in the next group: they are amendments consequential to amendments made to clauses 4, 5 and 6.
Amendments 2 and 4 clarify the circumstances in which the new prevention and relief duties can be brought to an end by a local housing authority. They would require not only that a suitable accommodation offer had been turned down but that accommodation would have been available for at least six months. Clauses 4 and 5 insert new sections 195 and 189B respectively into the Housing Act 1996. Those set out the duties owed to those who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Both clauses have provisions allowing those duties to be brought to an end if a number of circumstances apply.
Amendments 2 and 4 would change new sections 189B and 195 to require that the grounds for giving notice would not only be the refusal of an offer of suitable accommodation but that, on the date when the accommodation was refused, there was a reasonable prospect that it would be available for at least six months or a longer period, not exceeding 12 months, as may be prescribed in regulations. The amendments are relatively simple and ensure consistency with provisions elsewhere in the Bill.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
I do not want to take up much time. In the cross-party spirit of the debate, I give credit to my council and all councillors in the borough of Richmond upon Thames for all the work that is done.
I have a concern about these clauses. Every single homelessness case in my constituency of Twickenham is absolutely unique. I have come across a very small number of cases in which the homeless person has refused suitable accommodation for reasons of their individual situation: they are not sectionable, but the issue is to do with mental health. Will the final accommodation not be a full stop? Will the homeless person be able to come back to ask again for the accommodation?
Mr Jones
I certainly agree that many local authorities across the country work very hard to help homeless people. We hope that the Bill will improve the situation further. On the circumstances that my hon. Friend mentions, I should say that a person could go back to the local authority for a review; there is a safeguard for people in that sense.
Will Quince
Will the Minister confirm my understanding that the Bill incorporates a particular and special safeguard—a full written warning—before any duty is then withdrawn? That is an extra protection to ensure that those facing a termination of duty know exactly what they are getting themselves into.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend has been a diligent member of the Bill Committee, and I thank him for his intervention. He is correct: the Bill provides for a final written warning. Obviously, we want to make sure that people have an incentive to do the right thing and accept an offer of suitable accommodation, but we also need to consider people who present challenges and need a final warning, in some circumstances, to make them think again and take up the offer the local authority has made.
Amendments 3 and 5 insert helpful signposts into clauses 4 and 5 to ensure that they are appropriately cross-referenced with clause 7. Specifically, they insert references to the provisions in clause 7 about ending the prevention and relief duties when an applicant has deliberately and unreasonably refused to co-operate, and to the provisions about ending the relief duty when an applicant has refused a final accommodation offer or a final part 6 offer. That simply means that the ways in which the prevention and relief duties can be ended are easier to see and understand for those reading the clauses.
Amendment 8, along with amendments 6 and 7, deal with the provision of interim accommodation while a local housing authority is helping an applicant to secure accommodation under clause 5. Amendment 6 sets out that, if a local housing authority has reason to believe that an applicant may be homeless, eligible for assistance and in priority need, it must secure interim accommodation. It also sets out how that duty comes to an end.
In cases where the local housing authority has concluded its inquiries under the homelessness legislation and decides that the applicant does not have a priority need, the duty comes to an end in two circumstances: first, if the local housing authority notifies the applicant that the relief duty is not owed; and secondly, if the local housing authority notifies the applicant that, once the relief duty ends, they will not be owed any further duty to accommodate.
Amendment 7 is a technical amendment to the Housing Act 1996 required as a result of amendments 6 and 8. Where an applicant has been provided with interim accommodation and refuses a final offer, they may request a review of the suitability of that offer. Amendment 8 ensures that the duty to secure interim accommodation continues until any review has been concluded and the decision has been notified to the applicant.
Finally in this group, I turn to amendment 9. The duties to applicants under clauses 4 and 5—the prevention and relief duties—are to help the applicant to secure accommodation. In some cases, this will entail the local housing authority securing this accommodation directly, rather than helping the applicant by, for example, providing a deposit guarantee. Amendment 9 provides that, where that is the case, the provisions of sections 206 to 209 of the Housing Act 1996 apply in the same way they would if the local housing authority secured accommodation under the main homelessness duty.
Those sections contain various provisions about how a local housing authority’s housing functions are to be discharged—for example, about how authorities may secure that accommodation is available and how they can require an applicant to pay a reasonable charge for the accommodation. Provisions also cover the requirements relating to placements in and out of district, including notifications to the hosting local housing authority.
I will leave it at that on amendments 1 to 9. I hope that the House will look favourably on them, in the spirit in which proceedings on the Bill have been conducted, and support them.
Andy Slaughter
I must say that, after the 14 hours and seven sittings in Committee that we have heard about, I was somewhat alarmed when the Government tabled 21 amendments on over six pages last week. I have to say that, on my first reading of them, I was not much the wiser as to what was happening. However, one perseveres, as one always does with legislation.
I must say two things. First, I do appreciate the difficulties the Minister and the promoter have had in squaring the circle so that local government, landlords and homelessness charities are all happy about the way the Bill works, rather than about the principles of the Bill, which I think have been agreed. I am also grateful to the Minister for giving us time with his officials to go through in some detail the implication of the amendments and why they are necessary, and I think I speak for my hon. Friends in saying that. It is regrettable that things could not have been done differently, but we are where we are, and the Opposition regard these amendments and the next set, which we will come to in due course, as either necessary or improving of the Bill, so we will not oppose any of them today, and I can be fairly brief in responding.
I have only two concerns to raise. I think we have all struggled with clause 1. When you start debating clause 1 in the sixth session of a Committee, you know that something is awry. There have been real difficulties with getting this operative clause of the Bill correct, and it is still not perfect. Much of the original clause 1 had to be omitted because it created more problems than it resolved. The key point—about extending the duty from 28 to 56 days —is still there, but there are concerns that, notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding the further amendments before us, which will extend that duty beyond the 56 days where necessary, local authorities will be able to continue to drag their feet in some cases. However, everything that has been said on all sides, and the refinements before us, which add to what is in clause 1, certainly show that the spirit of the Bill—I hope the same is true of the letter of the Bill when we come to the codes of guidance—really does require all local authorities to act at an early stage and to deal, particularly in the case of section 21 notices, with homelessness and threatened homelessness at an early stage.
The other point—the Minister may address this when we deal with the subsequent provisions—is what additional costs there are likely to be. There will undoubtedly be cost implications in relation to continuing prevention assistance beyond 56 days and—this is quite proper—to being clear about when interim duties come to an end and continuing them while reviews continue. I would like to hear from the Government not only whether those costs will be fully funded but whether the funds have been calculated. Will we hear about that today? We certainly need to before the Bill leaves both Houses. However, with those two caveats, I can be commendably brief and end my comments there.
Bob Blackman
I am pleased to support these amendments and to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter).
It is fair to say that the amendments have been some time in coming. I commend my hon. Friend the Minister, his officials, the homelessness charities and the landlord associations on assisting us in reaching an appropriate compromise. The hon. Member for Hammersmith pointed out that clause 1 was debated some way into the Committee sittings, as, indeed, was clause 7. By that time, we had passed clauses 4, 5 and 6, and these amendments relate to those clauses.
Clearly, the amendments we made to clause 1 in Committee had consequential impacts, which needed to be reflected in clauses 4, 5 and 6. Those clauses refer to the duty in cases of threatened homelessness, the duties owed to those who are homeless and the duties to help to secure accommodation. So the amendments before us are largely technical and follow up the changes made by the Bill Committee.
The most important aspect of this is that the prevention duty cannot end after 56 days with the individual or family still sitting in their home facing eviction under a section 21 notice under the Housing Act 1988, and with nowhere else to go.
Clause 1 of the original draft Bill was substantially changed before Second Reading, after pre-legislative scrutiny, and was substantially changed again in Committee. That had a consequential, knock-on effect on the other clauses in the Bill, and that is why the amendments are essential.
We have now got to a position with these clauses where we can help to make sure that local housing authorities act at an early stage. We do not want—I think this is true right across the House—a single individual or family to be told by their local housing authority, “Yes, you may be threatened with homelessness. Go back to your home, stay put and wait until the court action follows and the bailiffs arrive.” That is completely against the spirit of the Bill and is against what everyone wants to see. If we get to a point where landlords are taking tenants to court, gaining possession orders and getting bailiffs and county court judgments against tenants, those tenants, who will then be evicted and face huge costs, will be extremely unlikely to get accommodation in the private rented sector ever again.
In correcting this position, we have to end the bad practice followed by some local authorities—by no means all—of telling tenants to go back and stay put. It is important, above all else, that individuals who are faced with homelessness can get help and advice from the word go, once they approach the local housing authority. The clarifications proposed by my hon. Friend the Minister ensure that the local authority is not allowed to end its duty on reaching the technical position where the 56 days has expired. That is a very positive move.
The rest of the amendments in this group reflect the changes that we made to clause 7 in Committee. Once again, they ensure that protections are in place for applicants.
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman says that the protections are in place for applicants. Amendment 2 guarantees a tenancy of at least six months. As I understand it, that is a reduction in the current level, which is at least 12 months. I am not saying that this is necessarily wrong, but I would like him to comment on it. Often, because of the complexity in their life, people at least need security in their tenancy so that they can sort out other problems that they may have. Is six months really long enough? Might it not lead to repeat homelessness as people do not have that longer-term security behind them?
Bob Blackman
This has been discussed during the Select Committee’s homelessness inquiry, in the Bill Committee, and during our debates not only in this place but outside it with the various organisations involved. I am very keen that tenancies should be longer than six months, but I am also mindful of the fact that we do not want to get to a point whereby we reduce the amount of accommodation that could be available for people in this vulnerable group. I am equally certain that we do not want to get to a point, as we could have done during some of the debates, where we have an unrighteous circle, as it were, of people becoming homeless, being put in accommodation by a local authority, their tenancy coming to an end, and back they go to being homeless—it just becomes a repeat cycle. We are all committed to wanting to end that cycle. We do not get the opportunity to change legislation on homelessness very often. As I said, it has been 40 years since such legislation was introduced. We therefore want to put in the minimum standards so that, if necessary, the law can be changed by regulation to increase the period. We want a bare minimum to start with.
Andy Burnham
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I accept that we would see six months as a minimum, but why cap it at 12 months in the amendment? If we want a minimum standard, that is fine, but why put an upper limit on it?
Bob Blackman
The Minister will explain that when he winds up. In certain clauses, there is provision for 12-month tenancies, and during our debates we reduced the position to six months with a cap of 12 months. The right hon. Gentleman should remember, though, that a variety of duties are addressed in the Bill: the relief duty, the prevent duty, and the duty owed to priority-need applicants. The predominant aim has always been not to place priority-need families in a worse position than they would otherwise have been facing.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for introducing this Bill. I have listened to Members on both sides of the House, and the debate has been very collegiate. Will the Minister, and the House, consider the effects on our servicemen who leave the armed forces under the armed forces covenant? Due to problems that they have in certain cases—each one could be unique—would they be seen as a priority under this Bill?
Bob Blackman
If my hon. Friend would like to go through the 18 pages of the Bill, he will find that people leaving the armed forces are specifically mentioned as being owed a duty under it. Under the armed forces covenant, they should already be provided with accommodation and with help and assistance from their relevant local authority, but there is a new duty on the armed forces to refer people who are leaving to the relevant local authority so that they get help and assistance early on rather than having to seek advice separately. Someone who is leaving the armed forces, as a planned move, should be referred to their relevant local authority, which of course may not be where they are currently based as a member of the armed forces.
I am particularly pleased that the Minister has proposed in his amendments that the requirement for interim accommodation is continued until any reviews are completed. One of the key aspects of the Bill, from my perspective, is to make sure that applicants who are facing an absolute crisis point in their lives, many of whom are becoming homeless for the first time ever, are not put in a position whereby they are told by a local authority, “This is what you’re going to have—take it or leave it.” It is absolutely imperative that there is an agreement between the applicant and the local authority. If the local housing authority acts in an unfair way from the perspective of the applicant, there must also be a process whereby they can seek external help or assistance from appropriate charities in order to get a review to make sure that they are given the proper help and advice and end up being in a position to be offered accommodation.
I welcome these amendments and hope the whole House will support them.
Mr Betts
When we discuss a Bill on Report, there are times when we find ourselves dealing with an awful lot of Government amendments and suspect that Ministers are trying, at the last minute, to slide one or two contentious issues past the House under the radar, thinking that people might miss them due to the great complexity of our discussions—[Interruption.] I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) never did that when he was a Minister, as he has just indicated. This, however, is not one of those occasions.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, there has been a great deal of discussion not only in the House, by Members on both sides, but outside it with the charities arguing the case for homeless people, the Local Government Association and landlords, among others, to try to get this right. It is important that we do get it right, even though the process has taken a bit longer than some of us would have wished.
Once again, I pay tribute to the diligence and forbearance of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in trying to get us moving forward in a consensual manner on these issues. As he said, it took us a long time to get to this version of clause 1, which has appeared in many formats. It goes to the heart of the concerns that many of us have about the workings of existing legislation. One of the worst aspects of the way in which homeless families are currently treated—even those who are acknowledged to have a priority need—is that they are told to go away, sit at home and wait for the court to hear their case, and that then the authority may act, once a court order has been made, to deal with their situation. In the very worst cases, they are told, “Wait until the bailiff has arrived and while you are out on the street, we might decide to deal with you as a homeless family.” That situation is not acceptable, so it is important that it changes as a result of this Bill. The hon. Gentleman said that, importantly, the 56-day provision will not end responsibility—the prevention duty continues beyond that time if a family does not yet have settled circumstances.
I had concerns that the specific requirement to deal with homelessness once a section 21 notice had been served, rather than allowing the matter to get to court, which was in a previous version of clause 1, had been taken out. I accept that the requirement for local authorities to exercise the prevention duty means that as soon as a section 21 notice is served and the family provide the local authority with that information, the duty kicks in and the local authority immediately has to seek to resolve the family’s homelessness and look for alternative accommodation for them.
The code of guidance, which was discussed at length in the Bill Committee—I had a discussion about it with the Minister outside the room and then we referred to it in Committee—will be important to make it clear to local authorities how they should treat a family who are subject to a section 21 notice and in priority need. They will need to make sure that they do not get to the court stage before action is taken. It is also important for making sure that an offer acknowledges, as far as possible, an individual family’s circumstances with regard to the schooling of children, the employment of family members, caring responsibilities and so on. Moreover, if a family have to be offered accommodation outside the borough, the receiving borough has to be notified that they are coming. Many of those important issues are in the existing code of guidance, but authorities have not implemented the code or addressed them.
We all hope that the Bill will be enacted before long. The Minister said helpfully in Committee that he will present the code of guidance to Parliament for approval, which is welcome. Our Select Committee has said that we will quickly arrange an evidence session on the code because we want to make sure that it is right. Getting the Act right but having a code of guidance that does not work will leave us no better off; getting both of them right will make the situation much better so that local authorities are able to address the issue of homeless families. I hope that Ministers will welcome that as another way in which the Select Committee can play a constructive role in this private Member’s Bill process by ensuring that the legislation has cross-party support and really works for homeless people.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman—I shall call him my hon. Friend—for giving way. We look forward to the publication of the code of guidance once the Bill is enacted. The Bill also makes provision for issuing statutory codes of practice, so if local authorities fail to live up to both the spirit and the letter of the law, the Secretary of State will have the opportunity to impose on them a requirement to do what we expect them to do.
Mr Betts
That is very helpful. The Select Committee might well want to extend its remit and look at those codes of practice as well to make sure that everything is working. Indeed, the Minister has gone further by saying that he wants local authorities to indicate to the Government how they intend to implement the Bill. Ministers want to work with the LGA to get templates for how elements of the Bill, including giving advice to individuals who are not in priority need, should be implemented. Those are welcome measures and the LGA will want to be thoroughly involved in the process. With those comments about the issues that will need to be addressed once the Bill becomes an Act, I am happy to support the Government amendments.
Mr Marcus Jones
I will start by responding to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). Significant concerns were raised on Second Reading, particularly with regard to the views of the Residential Landlords Association. In keeping with the spirit of the way in which this legislation has been developed, significant work took place to try to resolve that issue so that the Bill would not be put at risk during the parliamentary process. That work was done in conjunction with not just the RLA, but a number of charities and the LGA.
Andy Burnham
On Government amendment 2, which I asked the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) about, why cap the tenancy at 12 months? That seems to encourage local authorities to offer shorter-term tenancies, rather than making standard offers of longer-term tenancies. The Select Committee did not recommend a 12-month cap, so why have the Government inserted such a provision?
Mr Jones
If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will make the points that I was going to make and then I will directly address his point.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith mentioned Shelter’s concerns about clause 1. I assure him that we reached agreement with Shelter and other organisations that the clause would be acceptable before it was drafted and before the amendments were tabled. He also mentioned costs, about which we had a long debate in Committee. I note that he has been reassured by comments today, given his willingness to withdraw new clause 1. I undertook to consider further amendments and, once the Bill has been amended, I will be more than willing to share with the House what the additional costs will be.
I hope that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) will be reassured that there is no upper limit. The reference to 12 months means that the minimum length of tenancy can be increased to 12 months through regulations. Basically, if the rental market changed and we were in a position to change legislation to reflect a 12-month rather than six-month tenancy, that provision would give us the flexibility to do so. It does not put a maximum cap on the tenancy that can be secured. If a local authority is able to secure a three-year tenancy because that is what a landlord is offering, people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness would be able to take up that offer of a longer tenancy. I hope that that reassures him.
I thank my hon. Friend—I nearly went too far. I am not sure that “hon. Friend” would be the right term, bearing in mind that I have another appearance before the Select Committee on Monday, but I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for the part that he has played on the Committee. I thank him and the hon. Member for Hammersmith, as well as other Members, especially the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for the work that they have been willing to do behind the scenes to get the Bill to this point.
The hon. Member for Sheffield South East talked about the code of guidance, and it is critical that we get that right. As he knows, the code of guidance will be updated. The Bill includes a commitment to put that before the House, and we will work with the LGA on that code to ensure that we get it as right as we can. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East pointed out, the Bill contains powers to put in place a code of practice, so the Secretary of State can reinforce any existing legislation through regulations, or introduce new regulations.
There is a positive consensus across the House that the amendments will improve the Bill and make it more workable.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendments made: 2, page 6, line 11, after “accommodation” insert
“and, on the date of refusal, there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for occupation by the applicant for at least 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed”
This amendment provides that a local housing authority can only bring the duty in section 195(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 4) to an end on the basis that the applicant has refused an offer of suitable accommodation, if on the date of the refusal there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
Amendment 3, page 6, line 22, at end insert—
‘(9) The duty under subsection (2) can also be brought to an end under sections 193A and 193B (notices in cases of applicant’s deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate).””—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
This amendment inserts, into section 195 of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 4), a reference to sections 193A and 193B of that Act (inserted by clause 7) under which the duty in section 195(2) can be brought to an end.
Clause 5
Duties owed to those who are homeless
Amendments made: 4, page 7, line 45, after “accommodation” insert
“and, on the date of refusal, there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for occupation by the applicant for at least 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed”
This amendment provides that a local housing authority can only bring the duty in section 189B(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 5) to an end on the basis that the applicant has refused an offer of suitable accommodation, if on the date of the refusal there was a reasonable prospect that suitable accommodation would be available for 6 months or such longer period not exceeding 12 months as may be prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
Amendment 5, page 8, line 9, at end insert—
‘(9) The duty under subsection (2) can also be brought to an end under—
(a) section 193ZA (consequences of refusal of final accommodation offer or final Part 6 offer at the initial relief stage), or
(b) sections 193A and 193B (notices in cases of applicant’s deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate).””
This amendment inserts, into section 189B of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 5), references to section 193ZA (inserted by amendment 10), and sections 193A and 193B of that Act (inserted by clause 7), under which the duty in section 189B(2) can be brought to an end.
Amendment 6, page 8, line 18, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) for subsection (1) substitute—
(1) If the local housing authority have reason to believe that an applicant may be homeless, eligible for assistance and have a priority need, they must secure that accommodation is available for the applicant’s occupation.
(1ZA) In a case in which the local housing authority conclude their inquiries under section 184 and decide that the applicant does not have a priority need—
(a) where the authority decide that they do not owe the applicant a duty under section 189B(2), the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end when the authority notify the applicant of that decision, or
(b) otherwise, the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end upon the authority notifying the applicant of their decision that, upon the duty under section 189B(2) coming to an end, they do not owe the applicant any duty under section 190 or 193.
(1ZB) In any other case, the duty under subsection (1) comes to an end upon the later of—
(a) the duty owed to the applicant under section 189B(2) coming to an end or the authority notifying the applicant that they have decided that they do not owe the applicant a duty under that section, and
(b) the authority notifying the applicant of their decision as to what other duty (if any) they owe to the applicant under the following provisions of this Part upon the duty under section 189B(2) coming to an end.”;”
See amendment 8. This amendment also makes the circumstances in which the interim duty to provide accommodation under section 188(1) of the Housing Act 1996 comes to an end where the local housing authority decide that the applicant does not have a priority need.
Amendment 7, page 8, line 26, leave out from “for” to end of line 27 and insert
““pending a decision of the kind referred to in subsection (1)” substitute “until the later of paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1ZB).”
See amendments 6 and 8.
Amendment 8, page 8, line 27, at end insert “;
() for subsection (3) substitute—
“(2A) For the purposes of this section, where the applicant requests a review under section 202(1)(h) of the authority’s decision as to the suitability of accommodation offered to the applicant by way of a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer (within the meaning of section 193ZA), the authority’s duty to the applicant under section 189B(2) is not to be taken to have come to an end under section 193ZA(2) until the decision on the review has been notified to the applicant.
(3) Otherwise, the duty under this section comes to an end in accordance with subsections (1ZA) to (1A), regardless of any review requested by the applicant under section 202.
But the authority may secure that accommodation is available for the applicant’s occupation pending a decision on review.””.—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
This amendment, together with amendments 6 and 7, ensure that any interim duty of a local housing authority under section 188 of the Housing Act 1996 to accommodate an applicant continues pending the conclusion of a review of the suitability of accommodation offered in a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer under section 193ZA of that Act (inserted by amendment 10).
Clause 6
Duties to help to secure accommodation
Amendment made: 9, page 11, leave out lines 14 to 16 and insert—
‘(3) For the purposes of this section, a local housing authority’s duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) is a function of the authority to secure that accommodation is available for the occupation of a person only if the authority decide to discharge the duty by securing that accommodation is so available.”. —(Mr Marcus Jones.)
This amendment ensures that where a local housing authority decides to discharge their duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clauses 5 and 4, respectively) by actually securing that accommodation is available for occupation by the applicant, sections 206 to 209 of that Act apply. Those sections contain various provisions about how a local housing authority’s housing functions are to be discharged.
Clause 7
Deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate: duty upon giving of notice
Mr Marcus Jones
I beg to move amendment 10, page 11, line 19, at end insert—
193ZA Consequences of refusal of final accommodation offer or final Part 6 offer at the initial relief stage
(1) Subsections (2) and (3) apply where—
(a) a local housing authority owe a duty to an applicant under section 189B(2), and
(b) the applicant, having been informed of the consequences of refusal and of the applicant’s right to request a review of the suitability of the accommodation, refuses—
(i) a final accommodation offer, or
(ii) a final Part 6 offer.
(2) The authority’s duty to the applicant under section 189B(2) comes to an end.
(3) Section 193 (the main housing duty) does not apply.
(4) An offer is a “final accommodation offer” if—
(a) it is an offer of an assured shorthold tenancy made by a private landlord to the applicant in relation to any accommodation which is, or may become, available for the applicant’s occupation,
(b) it is made, with the approval of the authority, in pursuance of arrangements made by the authority in the discharge of their duty under section 189B(2), and
(c) the tenancy being offered is a fixed term tenancy (within the meaning of Part 1 of the Housing Act 1988) for a period of at least 6 months.
(5) A “final Part 6 offer” is an offer of accommodation under Part 6 (allocation of housing) that—
(a) is made in writing by the authority in the discharge of their duty under section 189B(2), and
(b) states that it is a final offer for the purposes of this section.
(6) The authority may not approve a final accommodation offer, or make a final Part 6 offer, unless they are satisfied that the accommodation is suitable for the applicant and that subsection (7) does not apply.
(7) This subsection applies to an applicant if—
(a) the applicant is under contractual or other obligations in respect of the applicant’s existing accommodation, and
(b) the applicant is not able to bring those obligations to an end before being required to take up the offer.”
This amendment provides that a local housing authority’s duty to an applicant under section 189B(2) of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 5) comes to an end, and the applicant does not proceed to the main duty under section 193 of that Act, if the applicant refuses a final offer of an assured shorthold tenancy of at least 6 months or an offer of social housing under Part 6 of that Act. In either case, the offer would have to be of accommodation that is suitable for the applicant.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government Amendment 11, page 11, leave out lines 29 and 30
This amendment, and amendments 12 and 13, limit the grounds on which a notice can be given under new section 193A of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 7), so that it can only be given if the applicant deliberately and unreasonably refuses to take a step that the applicant agreed to take, or that was recorded, under new section 189A of that Act (inserted by clause 3).
Government Amendment 12, page 12, leave out lines 9 to 11
See amendment 11.
Government Amendment 13, page 12, line 16, leave out from “refuse” to “after” in line 17 and insert “to take any such step”
See amendment 11.
Government Amendment 14, page 13, line 16, after “made” insert “by a private landlord”
This amendment, and amendments 15 and 16, make it clear that a final offer of an assured shorthold tenancy would not be made by the local housing authority itself, but rather be made by a private landlord and approved by the authority. A local housing authority cannot grant an assured shorthold tenancy - see sections 1 and 19A of, and paragraph 12 of Schedule 1 to, the Housing Act 1988.
Government Amendment 15, page 13, line 19, leave out “by or”
See amendment 14.
Government Amendment 16, page 13, line 29, leave out from “not” to “unless” in line 30 and insert “approve a final accommodation offer, or make a final Part 6 offer,”
See amendment 14.
Amendment 17, page 13, line 39, after “if” insert “—
(a) section 193ZA(3) disapplies this section, or
(b) ”
This amendment inserts, into section 193 of the Housing Act 1996, a reference to section 193ZA of that Act (inserted by amendment 10), under which section 193 can be disapplied.
Government Amendment 18, in clause 9, page 15, line 6, after “section” insert “193ZA or”
This amendment allows an applicant to request a review of a local housing authority’s decision as to the suitability of accommodation offered to the applicant by way of a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer under section 193ZA of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by amendment 10).
Government Amendment 19, in clause 12, page 17, line 22, after “section” insert “193ZA(6) or”
This amendment applies the provision in article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 (S.I. 2012/2601), about when accommodation is to be regarded as unsuitable, to a decision by a local housing authority as to whether they should approve a final accommodation offer by a private landlord for the purposes of section 193ZA of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by amendment 10).
Government Amendment 20, in clause 12, page 17, line 26, leave out “vulnerable person” and insert
“person who has a priority need”
This amendment applies the provision in article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 (S.I. 2012/2601), about when accommodation is to be regarded as unsuitable, to accommodation secured by a local housing authority, in discharge of their duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) (inserted by clauses 5 and 4, respectively), for all persons who have a priority need rather than just “vulnerable persons”.
Government Amendment 21, in clause 12, page 17, leave out lines 32 to 37
See amendment 20. This amendment removes the definition of “vulnerable person”.
Mr Jones
This is the last set of Government amendments and I am grateful for the forbearance of the House. As I explained on the last group, we identified a number of issues with clause 7 that we were unfortunately unable to resolve in Committee. This group contains the core corrections to clause 7. We have already discussed the related amendments to clauses 4, 5 and 6, and this group also contains related amendments to clauses 9 and 12.
Amendment 10 delivers an important change, and has been laid following extensive discussion with the local government sector and with Crisis and Shelter. It deals with the consequences for applicants of refusing offers of accommodation made by the local housing authority during the relief duty. The Bill already provides that the local housing authority can bring the relief duty to an end if an applicant refuses an offer of suitable accommodation. The applicant can then go on to the main homelessness duty under section 193 of the Housing Act 1996, if they are owed it. We believe it is right that where an applicant is made a suitable offer under the relief duty, they should not be able to move into the main duty by refusing that offer. That is an important part of the balance between rights and responsibilities for applicants. However, it is also essential that, if the offer is intended to be the applicant’s final offer, appropriate safeguards are in place.
Amendment 10 provides that where an applicant refuses an offer and the relief duty is ended, the applicant will not proceed to the main duty, but that will apply only if the offer reaches a particular standard. The offer must be either a final accommodation offer or a final part 6 offer, and the applicant must be informed of the consequences of refusing and of their right to request a review of the suitability of the accommodation. A final part 6 offer is a suitable offer of social housing. A final accommodation offer is an offer of an assured shorthold tenancy with a term of at least six months in the private rented sector.
Amendments 14, 15 and 16 clarify that a final offer of an assured shorthold tenancy made to an applicant who has refused to co-operate will be made by a private landlord. This clarification brings the clause in line with other provisions relating to private rented sector offers in the homelessness legislation.
Amendments 17, 18 and 19 reflect the relevant changes introduced by clause 10 to the relevant parts of the Bill, including providing that the applicant can request a review of the suitability of the accommodation and that appropriate suitability requirements apply.
The last set of amendments to clause 7 relate to another issue we identified during Committee stage. At the moment, clause 7 is drafted in a way that means that the definition of deliberate and unreasonable co-operation is drawn more widely than we intended, covering co-operation with the local housing authority in the exercise of its functions under the prevention and relief duties. Amendments 11, 12 and 13 make it clear that the provisions apply only when the applicant’s refusal to co-operate relates specifically to the steps set out in their personalised plan.
Finally, on amendments 20 and 21, clause 12 amends article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012. Article 3 currently requires that when a local housing authority approves an offer in the private rented sector for those in priority need under the main homelessness duty, additional checks are required to ensure the property is in reasonable physical condition, is safe and is a well-managed property. Those additional checks are extended by clause 12 to those defined as vulnerable persons and to secured accommodation in the private rented sector under the new homelessness prevention and relief duties.
Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee were concerned that the protection did not go wider. In particular, the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) suggested that other types of applicant should be afforded this protection, including families with children and pregnant women. These concerns were echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), for Colchester (Will Quince), for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) and for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan). I have listened carefully, and I am pleased to bring forward amendments 20 and 21 to provide that these additional checks be made in respect of all those with a priority need where the local housing authority secures private rented sector property under the new prevention and relief duties.
In conclusion, this is an unusually long list of amendments for the Report stage of a private Member’s Bill, but I have worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the local government sector and homelessness charities to ensure that the Bill is fit for purpose, and I want again to thank them all for their efforts in putting together what is now a very strong package.
Andy Slaughter
The purpose of the amendments is to clarify and give certainty, where required, to certain provisions in the Bill and, in some cases, to correct drafting or extend the ambit of clauses. We have no problem with any of the amendments, and I am pleased to say, having just reread the briefing from the local government and charities sides, that although one side supports them more than the other, as one would expect, both agree that they should go forward as a package.
Amendment 10 makes it clear when the interim duty comes to an end, about which the LGA and others have been anxious for certainty. Amendments 20 and 21, which the Minister just referred to, were particularly called for by Shelter and in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who led for the Opposition on that part of the Bill. I am pleased the Government have tabled the amendments because they address a key point by providing that all priority need households be included, rather than just those that are vulnerable, which clears up an important omission. One side, in particular, favoured the amendments, but all sides are at least content with them.
Another thing the amendments, particularly amendments 10, 20 and 21, have in common is that they incur costs. The Minister said, slightly coyly, that when the amendments passed, he would return to the matter of costs. I hope that means on Third Reading, because, from what I have heard, I assume the amendments will pass in a few moments. The costs will not be negligible. Obviously, he goes into this with his eyes open, but it would be helpful if we had an update today or at least were told when we will have it. We need to be certain not only about what the Bill means—that it addresses the key points—but that it will be fully funded.
With those comments, I need not prolong the debate, because we have gone through the amendments with the Minister and the officials, and I think we have a pretty keen understanding of why they are necessary and should form part of the Bill.
Bob Blackman
I am delighted to rise for the last time on Report in support of a group of amendments. My hon. Friend the Minister introduced them at length, so I will keep my remarks to the pertinent points. I thank him and the officials for all their work in getting us to the point of these detailed amendments. I am sure that all would agree that it has been a long and almost tortuous journey to identify the different issues with clause 7, but we have worked patiently and appropriately with the LGA, Crisis and, in particular, Shelter to resolve the issues such that everyone now supports the amended clause 7, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) pointed out.
As I said earlier, we did not want a change in the law to put priority-need families in an even worse position than they were already in. We wanted to enable single homeless people, and others who were not currently owed a statutory duty, to be given help and advice and an offer of suitable accommodation. At present, that accommodation will almost certainly be in the private sector, but it is up to local authorities to establish whether they can find a social rented property to provide for such people.
I particularly welcome amendments 20 and 21. As we heard from the Minister, in Committee there were representations—not least from the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who kicked off on the issue—about the scope of what is now clause 12 in relation to the suitability of offers in the private sector. Ideally, local authorities would inspect and approve every single offer to every potential tenant, but during the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill we decided that the cost to them would be beyond what was reasonable. We therefore focused on priority need, and, indeed, vulnerable people. I am delighted that the Minister has found a way of extending the provision to all those people, not least pregnant women.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
We have all managed to make this part of the Bill sound very technical, but it seems to me that what it basically means is that the quality of private rented homes offered to families will improve, which is something that a great many people want to happen. Is that the hon. Gentleman’s understanding as well?
Bob Blackman
Obviously, we do not want families or individuals who are reaching a crisis point in their lives, having become homeless, to be placed in completely unsuitable accommodation, or with rogue landlords who are unsuitable people to be offering accommodation in the first place, and it should be the duty of local authorities to ensure that that does not happen. The amendments will ensure that the current position is corrected for the benefit of society. Ideally, no one would ever be offered unsuitable accommodation, but, as I think we all recognise, that is sometimes the case.
Clause 7 deals with
“an applicant’s deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate”.
A balance needed to be struck. As the Bill’s promoter, I must make it abundantly clear that homeless people will not be able to just turn up to their local housing authority and say, “You have a duty to find me somewhere to live”, and then fold their arms and wait for it to happen. They will have a duty to co-operate with the plan and carry out the actions required under it, and if they fail to do so, the housing authority will be able to terminate its duty. So there are duties on both sides, which must be right.
Equally, however, I do not want applicants to be unfairly penalised for some minor discrepancy. For example, if an applicant missed an appointment because of a need to visit a doctor or hospital, or as a result of some other commitment, it would be unfair and unreasonable for a local authority to penalise that individual. As the Minister has explained, the review process will be tightened to ensure that people receive written notices and are given an opportunity to review any unfair decision. That strikes the right balance, ensuring that applicants can receive a service—help and advice, and an offer in the private or socially rented sector—while also requiring them to take actions themselves.
I am grateful to the Minister for his time and forbearance, particularly in respect of that issue, which has occupied a substantial amount of time for all concerned. The compromise that has been reached will improve the Bill yet further and ensure that all people who have a priority need, and indeed those who do not, are secured private rented accommodation under these new homelessness relief duties. It will also ensure that those additional suitability checks will be carried out by the local housing authority to ensure that the property is safe and well managed. On that basis, I trust that all hon. Members will support these and the other amendments that the Minister has brought forward, so that we have a suitable package of measures to present to the other place, it will see the wisdom of our lengthy debates and close scrutiny of these proposals, and view them as a package of measures that together improve the lot of those people who are homeless.
Mr Marcus Jones
I would like to respond to several of the matters raised by colleagues.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned the work with the LGA around amendment 10. He is correct on that, as he is on amendments 20 and 21, in relation to the concerns of the charities, particularly Shelter. He showed that he is extremely sharp when he raised the point about costs and the comments I made earlier about when I would bring forward further details of the additional cost incurred due to amendments that have been made to the Bill this morning. Indeed, my intention was to bring those costs to the House once the Bill had been amended. I will not tease the hon. Gentleman any further. In a few minutes, I hope to be giving further detail on the cost.
Before I conclude, I want to correct one point I made this morning when we dealt with the second group of amendments and I was responding to the points made by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). He raised the issue of the code of guidance and it being put before the House. I inadvertently said that the code of guidance would be put before the House. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recall from all those long Committee sittings that it is in the legislation that the code of practice will come before the House, rather than the code of guidance. However, I will seek to reassure my hon. Friend, or rather the hon. Gentleman—I was straying into risky territory again, there. I want to reassure him by saying that we would certainly welcome his Committee’s involvement in relation to the consultation on the revised code of guidance that will come out of the provisions in the Bill.
Mr Betts
I thank the Minister for that helpful clarification. The Committee will try to play a constructive role in that. We welcome the code of guidance coming to us, and we will as quickly as possible take a look at it and get comments back to him. Equally, if the code of practice is coming to the House, we will probably want to play a role as part of that formal process as well.
Mr Jones
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As ever during this process, he has sought to use a very constructive tone in the debate and has shown pragmatism. We have been able to all work together; that goes for the Opposition Front-Bench team, too. It has not been easy at times, but there has been a pragmatic approach to making sure that we get this legislation into a good place and to the other end of the Corridor, thereby encouraging noble Lords to support not just the amendments dealt with today, but the overall Bill as a significant package towards helping people who are at risk of becoming homeless, or who do indeed become homeless.
Amendment 10 agreed to.
Amendments made: 11, page 11, leave out lines 29 and 30.
This amendment, and amendments 12 and 13, limit the grounds on which a notice can be given under new section 193A of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by clause 7), so that it can only be given if the applicant deliberately and unreasonably refuses to take a step that the applicant agreed to take, or that was recorded, under new section 189A of that Act (inserted by clause 3).
Amendment 12, page 12, leave out lines 9 to 11.
See amendment 11.
Amendment 13, page 12, line 16, leave out from “refuse” to “after” in line 17 and insert—
“to take any such step”.
See amendment 11.
Amendment 14, page 13, line 16, after “made” insert “by a private landlord”.
This amendment, and amendments 15 and 16, make it clear that a final offer of an assured shorthold tenancy would not be made by the local housing authority itself, but rather be made by a private landlord and approved by the authority. A local housing authority cannot grant an assured shorthold tenancy - see sections 1 and 19A of, and paragraph 12 of Schedule 1 to, the Housing Act 1988.
Amendment 15, page 13, line 19, leave out “by or”.
See amendment 14.
Amendment 16, page 13, line 29, leave out from “not” to “unless” in line 30 and insert—
“approve a final accommodation offer, or make a final Part 6 offer,”.
See amendment 14.
Amendment 17, page 13, line 39, after “if” insert “—
(a) section 193ZA(3) disapplies this section, or
(b) ”—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
This amendment inserts, into section 193 of the Housing Act 1996, a reference to section 193ZA of that Act (inserted by amendment 10), under which section 193 can be disapplied.
Clause 9
Reviews
Amendment made: 18, page 15, line 6, after “section” insert “193ZA or”.—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
This amendment allows an applicant to request a review of a local housing authority’s decision as to the suitability of accommodation offered to the applicant by way of a final accommodation offer or a final Part 6 offer under section 193ZA of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by amendment 10).
Clause 12
Suitability of private rented sector accommodation
Amendments made: 19, page 17, line 22 , after “section” insert “193ZA(6) or”.
This amendment applies the provision in article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 (S.I. 2012/2601), about when accommodation is to be regarded as unsuitable, to a decision by a local housing authority as to whether they should approve a final accommodation offer by a private landlord for the purposes of section 193ZA of the Housing Act 1996 (inserted by amendment 10).
Amendment 20, page 17, line 26, leave out “vulnerable person” and insert—
“person who has a priority need”.
This amendment applies the provision in article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 (S.I. 2012/2601), about when accommodation is to be regarded as unsuitable, to accommodation secured by a local housing authority, in discharge of their duty under section 189B(2) or 195(2) (inserted by clauses 5 and 4, respectively), for all persons who have a priority need rather than just “vulnerable persons”.
Amendment 21, page 17, leave out lines 32 to 37.— (Mr Marcus Jones)
See amendment 20. This amendment removes the definition of “vulnerable person”.
Third Reading
Bob Blackman
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This is a very proud moment for me. Reaching this stage of the proceedings has been a long road. When my name was drawn out of the hat and I was No. 2 in the ballot, I needed to consider what issue to take on. I was minded to choose something that would make a difference to thousands of people across the country. Little did I know how much work and effort would be involved in getting a Bill to this stage.
The expert panel was convened by Crisis in the summer of 2015. We then had the Communities and Local Government Select Committee inquiry last summer, to which many of us in the House contributed, plus its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill in September, and finally an unprecedented seven Committee sittings, involving some 15 hours of debate. I think it is fair to say that no private Member’s Bill has ever been so well informed or well scrutinised. Indeed, it is unique among private Member’s Bills in that it has been the subject of a Select Committee inquiry and report and of pre-legislative scrutiny, and that it is the longest such Bill, with 13 clauses and 18 pages of detailed legalese. It will probably also be the most expensive private Member’s Bill, and I look forward to hearing good news in a few minutes’ time from the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) on the funds that could be allocated in addition to the £48 million that he has already set out.
I would like to thank a number of people and organisations who have been instrumental in bringing the Bill to this stage. It is clear that, although I am the promoter and leader of the Bill, this has been a team effort. The contribution of the Select Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), has been invaluable. We could not have got to this stage without their input. In particular, the Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny provides an example that all hon. Members should consider, should they be fortunate in future private Members’ Bill ballots. Select Committee Members continued to offer their expertise to the Bill Committee, and I thank them for their time and constructive support.
I also want to put on record my thanks to all the members of the Bill Committee for their hard work and dedication. They asked constructive questions and scrutinised the proposed legislation in detail. The fact that 21 Government amendments have been tabled and passed today is a direct consequence of all the detailed work that was done to ensure that we got the Bill absolutely right.
The outcome of Bills such as this should not be left to a lottery. The Procedure Committee, on which I have the honour of serving, recommends that the first four private Members’ Bills be subject to a bidding process through the Backbench Business Committee so that well-researched Bills with cross-party support can get to the House without depending on the current lottery procedure.
I thank Crisis, which has supported me from the start and facilitated consultations right across the piece to ensure that the Bill was delivered properly. There has been huge interest from a whole host of groups from across the country. I thank the LGA, individual local authorities, Shelter, St Mungo’s, the National Landlords Association, the Residential Landlords Association and the many others that have written or spoken to me about the Bill. Members from across the House will want to mention the charities and support groups that have provided much-needed help and assistance to rough sleepers and homeless people. The advice, work and challenges that I have received from the people at the sharp end have enabled me to ensure that this strong Bill is in the best possible shape to send to the House of Lords and that, critically, it will have long-lasting impact on people who suffer the crisis of being homeless.
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for supporting and championing the Bill from the outset and for ensuring that we got the Government’s full support. Not only has he devoted a significant amount of his personal and ministerial time, but he secured resources from the officials to ensure that the Bill reached this point. He also followed through on his commitment to fund the new burdens associated with the Bill. The Government will be providing £48 million for local government to implement the new duties in the Bill. We do not know whether that will be sufficient to meet those new duties, but I am delighted that the Minister has committed to review the figure following not only the amendments that we have passed today, but the new burdens that we are placing on local authorities. I thank the Minister and all his officials for their work in getting the Bill to this point.
I want to put on the record my thanks to Martine Martin, my parliamentary assistant. For those who have not had the pleasure of meeting her, she has ensured that the whole process has remained smooth. Her calmness has kept me calm, and I owe her a particular debt of gratitude.
I also thank the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter)—something that is hard to do at times—and the Opposition members of the Bill Committee for ensuring that the Bill was well scrutinised and in good shape ahead of Report today. I thank all the hon. Members who are in the House today to wish Godspeed to the Bill so that it reaches the statute book as fast as possible. Many were here on Second Reading way back on 28 October, when we had some 39 speeches, and many have followed the Bill’s progress with interest, subjecting me to appropriate scrutiny and challenge on the details. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith pointed out earlier, I have rapidly become an expert in homelessness and housing law even though I have no legal background whatsoever.
I thank everyone for their time, effort and dedication, but we must remember that this is a process and that we are implementing a Bill that changes the law for the most vulnerable members of society. We must ensure that people who are sleeping rough or threatened with homelessness get the help and support from local authorities that they need and deserve. I have said from the word go that having one rough sleeper on our streets is a national disgrace; the fact that we have so many is something that we must end. Equally, I have said from the word go that the Bill, which will hopefully become an Act, will not deliver any new housing units, which is part and parcel of a new strategy that I look forward to the Government pursuing. What the Bill will do is change the law and the requirements on local authorities to ensure that they deliver help and advice to vulnerable people who need it at a crisis point in their life.
The Bill will also mean a massive culture change for local authorities, and we should not underestimate how much of a culture change it will be. I passionately believe that people enter public service to help people, not to deny them service. For 40 years, at local authority level we have routinely denied vulnerable people service, help and advice. That has to come to an end. It will be a big shock to most local housing authorities when the Bill becomes law and the various regulations are laid before the House, but the key point is that we are aiming to ensure that, for people who face the prospect of having nowhere to live, we move on from an approach where homelessness is always a crisis to one where local government has the duty and the ability to work with people as early as possible so that they never become homeless by helping them to tackle their housing and welfare issues before the crisis point is reached.
I sincerely hope that our work over the past year will make a significant difference, and I firmly believe it will. I am extremely proud to be standing here today with the support of the whole House in bidding the Bill Godspeed and safe passage through the other place so that it can end homelessness once and for all.
Andy Slaughter
I begin where the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the Bill’s promoter, finished by wishing the Bill every success in completing its passage as it leaves for the other place. I also echo some of his thanks. I thank him for putting extraordinary effort into the Bill. I do not know how long he intends to stay in the House, but I suspect that, whenever he departs, the Bill will be one of the things about which he is most proud—it will be a lasting testament to his work—and I am sure that many of us envy him. Such praise is well deserved because he has had to put time and effort in the Bill. I suspect that he now thinks it was all worth it, but I bet there were times when he doubted that.
Obviously the Bill would not be where it is without the support of the Government, which should be acknowledged, as well as that from the official Opposition and others. The Minister has been particularly assiduous in pushing through the Bill. Although he may or may not reveal this in his speech, he has had difficulty with his colleagues in other Departments. The hon. Member for Harrow East will recognise the Minister’s personal devotion to the Bill, which he will count a success.
I extend my thanks to all Members on both sides of the House who have been involved. I particularly thank the Labour members of the Committee who are sitting behind me: my hon. Friends the Members for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for City of Chester (Christian Matheson). They shared the burden with me in Committee and brought their considerable expertise to our proceedings. I am sure that the Minister and the Bill’s promoter would say the same of Government Members. It has been a good session.
We must also acknowledge the various interest groups involved, not only because they stood up strongly for their interests, but because, in the end, they wanted the Bill to succeed. They include the landlords and charities, but we should not forget local government, because it is local government that will have to execute the provisions of the Bill and on which its burdens fall. It knows more than anybody else the difficulties in dealing with homelessness, given the levels of funding and demand. The officers and councillors who are at the sharp end deserve our thanks. Some do fail—a number of authorities have lamentable records—but many do their very best under difficult circumstances. That is true of my own council and, I am sure, of many others.
The Bill has been a collective effort, and my final mention is to the Communities and Local Government Committee. Its work has formed the bedrock of the Bill and the basis on which it can go forward.
As the hon. Member for Harrow East said, our proceedings have been something of a template for the way in which complex private Member’s Bills can go forward. I, like him, hope that it can be a precedent for a change to just not just the House’s procedures, but the way in which the Government approach private Member’s Bills, It might change the way in which some of our colleagues approach such Bills, but perhaps that is a matter for another day.
As we have discussed the Bill for so long, it is quite easy to gloss over what it does. It does several fundamental things, such as introducing the prevention duty. Although, as we have heard, that is nothing new—the previous Labour Government encouraged that approach through legislation, and it is also encouraged by best practice in local government—the Bill puts the matter clearly and firmly into statute. That is a major change to the way in which homelessness is addressed.
The Bill also extends the relief duty to anybody who is homeless. Although the assistance to be given to those who are non-priority homeless cannot, for reasons of resources, be as comprehensive as it is for those who are priority homeless, that is, again, a significant change.
Let us not forget the duty to co-operate, about which we have had quite an extensive discussion. Perhaps the co-operation that will be required does not go as far as some of us would have liked—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East moved an amendment relating to that in Committee—but local authorities cannot avoid their responsibilities. We know that the homelessness sector and the charities have been working to perfect the way in which they deal with the complex needs of homeless people. Sometimes other institutions do a good job—those in the health service or probation, for example—but we really need everyone to step up to the plate. I am pleased that the duty to co-operate is in the Bill, but I hope we hear more about it as the codes are developed.
With the current pressures on the public sector, it is easy for people to say that these things are just too difficult. The reality is that a number of homeless people have been in mental health units or have just come out of prison. They need assistance, and that cannot come only from homelessness charities and local government. Everybody has to do their bit.
For those three reasons, among others, the Bill is a significant piece of legislation. I will not repeat what I said in the previous debate about what remains to be done, but let me mention just two things. First, when the White Paper is published, I would like to see in chapter 1 a commitment from the Government that is the same as that given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) before Christmas on behalf of a future Labour Government: rough sleeping will be eliminated over a single Parliament. Earlier this week, we saw shocking figures showing that 4,134 people are sleeping rough in England. That is a 16% increase on the previous year, and a 134% increase since 2010. I could not have agreed more with the hon. Member for Harrow East when he said that one person in that situation is one too many, but 4,134 is a national disgrace. Nevertheless, it is a figure that we can manage.
Many other aspects of homelessness are getting much worse over time. Statutorily homeless households have increased by almost 50% since 2010, with the number now standing at just under 60,000. That is a huge problem, and while the difficulties with housing conditions such as overcrowding all need to be tackled, the first step has to be dealing with rough sleeping and the street homeless. I would love to hear from the Minister today that that will happen, but I will look particularly at whether the issue is addressed in the White Paper. I would not say that that would silence us—we will never quite be silenced—but it would be an effective way of dealing with the points that have been made throughout the passage of the Bill when we have said, “Yes, legislation is great and yes, this Bill does some great things, but in itself it is not going to build one more house or house one more person—it is words on a piece of paper.”
I plead with the Minister to do what I have said. I praise the initiative of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne, in taking the lead, but he will be the first person to say congratulations if the Government go ahead with this.
There are so many aspects of the problem that need to be dealt with to start to tackle homelessness that we could think that it is all just too much. I was impressed by the briefing that Shelter sent to us, which highlighted two aspects. It said:
“we consider it inevitable that, to be able to help people under the new duties, councils with significant levels of existing homelessness will require not only additional resources but, more importantly, an adequate supply of accessible, affordable and suitable homes in the social or private rented sectors.”
That is self-evidently true. The two things that are at the top of Shelter’s wish list are:
“Reverse the freeze on Local Housing Allowance rates”;
and an
“indefinite suspension of the forced sale of high value council homes in areas with high levels of homelessness”.
Neither of those is going to solve the problem, and they might not even be the most effective steps that could be taken, but they are the two most obvious ways in which the Government are actively making the situation worse. It is very difficult to accept the Government’s wholehearted support for the Bill when at the same time they are pushing those measures through.
I say that with clear personal knowledge from my own constituency, where, when a Conservative council was in charge for eight years, social homes were regularly sold when they became vacant. Several hundred individual homes were simply sold off at market rates rather than being used to rehouse homeless families. That has created devastating problems, the consequences of which we are still suffering. If we see that replicated on a grand scale throughout the country through the sale of high-value council homes—in my borough it would mean, over time, 50% of council homes being sold off—the homelessness situation is going to become far worse.
Local housing allowance rates are utterly distorting local housing markets and leading to what the Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow East and others have said today that they do not want to see: people being forced out of central London—and out of London and the south-east altogether—and separated entirely from their support networks, their families, their children’s schools and sometimes their jobs.
I am beginning to see another disturbing trend that I hoped never to see recurring. I shall refer to a case that I dealt with in my surgery only last week. Landlords are letting properties at rates that are just within local housing allowances, but they are doing so by letting properties that are unsafe and degrading, with no proper electricity and in danger of collapse. I never thought that I would see those housing conditions in this country.
The Government have to come to terms with the effects that their policies have on individual families living in the private rented sector. I beg them to look again at the freeze on the local housing allowance rate, because it is having a severely detrimental effect on thousands of families around the country.
We wish this good Bill well as it goes through its stages in the other place. We will do what we can to assist to ensure that it is enacted. I still look forward to the Minister’s comments about the extra funding, and I know that people in council finance departments all around the country are hanging on his every word about that. Let us celebrate the Bill today, but let us also be aware of how much we need to do if we are to tackle one of the worst crises in homelessness that we have experienced, certainly in my political lifetime, and one of the worst blights on our society.
Pauline Latham
I rise to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on getting so close with this Bill, and with relative speed. Interestingly, most of our constituents will not understand that it is really hard to get private Members’ Bills to this stage and that very few such Bills make it to the end, so he has done incredibly well. Obviously, as he said earlier, he has had help from an awful lot of people, not least from a couple of Opposition Members whom he has already praised.
Cross-party work to help vulnerable people is one of the most important things that we as Members of Parliament do, and my hon. Friend was fortunate to be drawn high enough up the ballot to be given an opportunity to bring something into law.
Homelessness is a very difficult issue. Not many Members in this Chamber will remember “Cathy Come Home” or even Rachmanism, but it is clear that we have progressed hugely as we no longer see those sorts of problems on our streets and in private rented households today.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) talked about private landlords. I think that that problem is bigger in London than in places such as Mid Derbyshire. Our landlords are better sorted out by the local authorities than they are in London, which is a much harder market on which to focus.
I wish to return to an earlier point, which is that, when women are on the streets, they are one of the most vulnerable groups. Very often, they are on the streets because they have been abused by their partners or their husbands. It is a very difficult situation when a vulnerable young woman—or a woman of any age—is thrown out on to the streets, or chooses to leave, and has to sleep rough. I have experience of that with a family member who, because she was being beaten up very severely, had to run away and sleep on the streets. In the end, she had to go back, because she had nowhere else to go—or so she thought. Eventually, she went back to her family. It was a very difficult situation. It does not matter where in the country vulnerable people are, they depend on the support mechanism to pick them up and help them out. Some people have nowhere to go. That may be due to the fact that they were in care as a child or are mentally ill. As constituency MPs, we know how many mentally ill people there are out there. They write to us on a regular basis on a range of issues because they do not know where else to go. Some of the most vulnerable people become homeless for those and many other reasons.
My hon. Friend talked about all the charities that helped him to prepare for this Bill. I pay tribute to many of the charities that I have worked with over the years in Derby city and Derbyshire. A huge number of people want to help the vulnerable, and I commend them for their work. An organisation called the Padley Centre in Derby helps vulnerable people not only by housing them overnight—and sometimes for extended periods—but by giving them additional skills so that they can eventually get a job as well as housing. Very often, the homeless out on the streets do not have a job because they have missed out on education.
At this time of year, the city centre churches come together so that a different church is open every night or every week; seven churches have participated. In that way, people do not have to sleep out in this really cold weather that we are experiencing at the moment. The initiative has been incredibly successful. Even the cathedral in Derby city has opened its doors to the homeless. Milestone House and Centenary House in Derby work hard with the homeless to support them and give them a roof over their heads. The YMCA, of course, has been going for many years and particularly helps young people, although it also helps others as well.
I am sure that all those organisations will appreciate the Bill’s coming into law. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said that he felt proud standing in the Chamber today talking about his Bill and about having got so close. So he should: he should accept the praise he deserves. His Bill is tackling a problem that many people would like to have addressed but never have. I am pleased that this Conservative Government are supporting him.
Women are more vulnerable when they are out on the streets. There are fewer places where they feel safe to go and ask for help because of the predominance of men. I clearly remember coming across a woman while walking through the centre of Derby after a council meeting. I do not generally give money to beggars on the streets because I would rather contribute to a charity that will help them. But this particular woman came up to me and said, “I’m in the middle of my period. I have no money, so I cannot buy any Tampax.” I had never thought about that, and I decided to give her the money. As every woman will appreciate, it must be very difficult for a woman on the streets to have a period and no money. Perhaps we forget about that. As I say, I did give her the money—whether it went on that or whether she bought drugs I will never know. I hope that it was a genuine call for help from this poor, young woman who looked freezing cold and needed help from people. I hope that the Bill will help such women.
Earlier I mentioned the family from Borrowash who found themselves homeless. They had been in a private rented house that burned down—when they were not there, fortunately. They had no insurance because they are very poor. Both parents work but they have four children and do not have any savings to fall back on. They have received some money through crowdfunding, which has helped them get back on their feet. They are the sort of people who have a problem when they are with private landlords. In such situations, it is, apparently, the landlord’s job to rehouse such families—but if there are no vacant houses, how can they, particularly if four children are involved?
I rang the Derbyshire County Council helpline, but all the people there were interested in was whether the children were being abused or vulnerable. All homeless children are vulnerable, of course, but so were the parents. I did not feel that the mechanisms to help were in place. Eventually, Derby City Council, which I would not normally praise for very much at all, stepped in and helped this couple with their children.
I am delighted that the Bill is to pass into law. I wholeheartedly support it. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and many others have worked incredibly hard to get it on to the statute book and I commend him for his hard work. I support him, this Bill and the Minister.
Mr Betts
This is obviously a time for congratulations, and I shall not disappoint, but we should still remember that, tonight, in this rich country, there will be people sleeping rough on our streets, individuals sleeping on sofas that belong to friends, families trying to live with relatives in overcrowded accommodation, and other families living in unacceptable and inadequate interim accommodation.
We also have to be careful not to give the impression that, as a result of this Bill, all these problems will be resolved. It will make a contribution to solving the homelessness problem, but it will not actually solve it. It will help to reduce homelessness—that is what the title of the Bill says—but it will not, of itself, solve the problem of homelessness.
However, congratulations are due, particularly to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—on this occasion, I will reciprocate and call him my hon. Friend. We should not underestimate the amount of time, sheer hard work and effort that he and his staff have put into bringing the Bill to this stage, as well as the forbearance—there must have been times when he was tearing his hair out. [Interruption.] Yes, it’s the same with my hair. He must have been tearing his hair out at the complexities and at the need to get different competing forces together to take the Bill forward on a consensus basis. There have not necessarily been problems with getting consensus across this House, but there has been a lot of consensus-building to do outside, and everyone does not always see and appreciate that. I express many thanks and congratulations from the whole House, I think, to the hon. Gentleman for what he has done.
The cross-party nature of proceedings extended right through the Bill Committee to all Members. That applied particularly to the Minister—[Interruption.] I thought for a minute that he had gone—that he had given up and left us to it, but he is still there. Throughout, he engaged with all members of the Committee. Where we had issues we needed exploring, he tried to deal with them in the Committee, but also outside—either himself or through his officials. That is really appreciated. Even today, he has suggested ways in which the Select Committee can continue to be involved in the code of practice, the code of guidance and the reviews. That is really constructive and helpful, and it shows a recognition of how the whole House can make a contribution.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who has obviously held the Government to account, and quite rightly, including on some broader issues today. Nevertheless, he has played a constructive and positive role. My hon. Friends the Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who are here with me, also played their role.
I want to say a little about the Select Committee. It is good that, as well as the hon. Member for Harrow East and my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, the hon. Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) has seen this process right the way through. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that he first suggested that the Select Committee look at homelessness as the subject of a report. It was around a year ago that the Committee started taking evidence. Indeed, I have the report here—I carry it around with me at all times, of course—and we had our first hearing on Monday 14 March. It is appropriate that, on that occasion, some of our first witnesses were from Crisis, St Mungo’s and Shelter, and they have certainly been an important part of this whole process, along with other organisations.
As I mentioned on Second Reading, the way in which the Select Committee was involved from the beginning—doing our report and then the pre-legislative scrutiny—has not merely followed precedents, but actually set precedents for the House, and I hope those precedents will be followed on other occasions. That is very important, and the Committee will follow the Bill with a look at the new burdens review the Government are doing, at the code of practice—when it is produced—at the code of guidance and then at the two-year review of how the Act is operating.
Let me finish by saying that the Select Committee’s initial report looked at the wider issues. There is still the issue of the shortage of homes in this country. We are now doing an inquiry into the capacity of the house building industry, and as part of that we hope to ask Ministers questions about the housing White Paper. I think that the permanent secretary said when she came to the Select Committee two weeks ago that it will be available soon, and we hope it will be. The word “soon” has an expandable quality in Government circles, but I certainly hope it will be before the end of March.
Building enough homes, particularly homes that people can afford, or afford to rent, is absolutely crucial in dealing with the problem of homelessness in the long term. I will not go into issues about the sell-off of high-value assets, although it is interesting that the permanent secretary used the word “if” in relation to that when she came to talk to us. Of course, Ministers could not possibly comment, but let us hope that there may be substance to the word “if” on this occasion. We want co-operation in dealing with homelessness. Organisations at the local level—health authorities and others—need to properly engage with councils in tackling homelessness. That is absolutely crucial. It is also important that Government Departments get their act together and understand that the policies of one Department can affect the operation of policy in another.
In our report we drew attention to welfare reform in general terms, and to the particular issue of the withdrawal of housing benefit from 18 to 21-year-olds and how that can affect people. Young people who lose a job should not be put out on the streets or forced out of their home while they try to find another one. We addressed the problems with universal credit and the difficulties that can be created, and already are being created in some parts of the country, in driving up rent arrears. That is a serious potential problem. We hope that Ministers will look at this to see whether, on occasion, payments direct to landlords, where tenants are satisfied that that is appropriate, can help to stop such problems occurring—and stop homelessness occurring, given that one of the major causes is the loss of private rented tenancies, as we heard in evidence.
With just those caveats about issues that we need to look at further, I very much welcome and support this Bill. I am really pleased that we have got to this stage. Once again, I particularly thank the hon. Member for Harrow East for selecting this subject and for operating so consensually and collectively to get the Bill to this stage.
Mr Burrowes
It is a great pleasure to follow a whole litany of speeches rightly paying heartfelt tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I congratulate him and all those who have been involved in this Bill. I am glad that it is a cross-party effort, and also that there has been collaboration across the sectors that he has had to navigate and deal with over the past weeks. I am proud that a Conservative Member of Parliament has led the way on this. It is right that that should be the case. I was pleased to encourage him down this path when he was picking a subject. Everyone, including the Government, wanted to encourage him to take an easier route—a hand-out Bill. That would have involved less effort but would not have addressed a burning injustice—a phrase rightly used by the Prime Minister. Homelessness is a burning injustice, and it is right that my hon. Friend chose it. It was a great pleasure on this occasion, and probably the last occasion, to be a “Whip” on a Bill. [Interruption.] Who knows? We live in interesting and surprising times.
There is a long track record of Conservatives tackling homelessness, not least one of my predecessors from a part of Enfield; there were boundary changes then and we may or may not have boundary changes to come. In 1967, 50 years ago, Iain Macleod helped to found the homeless charity Crisis, to which we pay particular tribute for its great work in supporting this Bill. It is right to pay homage to him for that. Like others, I pay tribute to the other homelessness charities that have been supporting us along the way, particularly Shelter, St Mungo’s, and Centrepoint.
Iain Macleod fought for the first piece of legislation to protect homeless families. It is right and fitting that, 40 years on from the last substantive piece of homelessness legislation, Members across the House acknowledge that this is a good Bill. It will make prevention a statutory and core duty for all councils, which will make a significant difference. Homeless households will no longer have to put up with the current situation. There is some good practice on preventing homelessness, but that will now become the norm across the country.
My council in Enfield will no longer be able to wait for a bailiff eviction notice before it has to help vulnerable people threatened with homelessness. A constituent of mine fled domestic violence and needed help to move to alternative, private sector accommodation that would not be known to her attacker. She and those like her will no longer have to put up with the response she received from the housing officer when she made the call for help. They said, “What do you expect us to do?” She and others like her now know that, under this Bill, there in an expectation and a clear duty of prevention with regard to vulnerable people.
The Bill will also help—this is a particularly challenging case, but I look forward to it being delivered on—an elderly 72-year-old in my constituency who as we speak is in unsafe and unsuitable temporary accommodation. Basically it is a bedsit. The bed is propped up by chunks of wood and cold air comes through big gaps in the windows. There is very little furniture. There is an office chair. He and his wife have serious health needs, but they have been placed in unsuitable accommodation. He told my office manager recently, “My life isn’t worth living because I’ve been sent to a hellhole.” A lot more needs to be done, but I hope that the Bill will help to address the issue of inspections and the private sector, which, sadly, is increasingly a cause of homelessness, so that that does not happen again to that 72-year-old and others like him.
As has been said, the Bill will not end homelessness. There are structural issues, but those are for another day. We need to debate the issues of welfare reform and the local housing allowance; matching housing costs and benefits; the supply of affordable and supported housing; and the forthcoming White Paper. I look forward to the Bill being part of making progress on a cross-Government homelessness strategy.
I welcome the progress that has been made in London and the Mayor’s announcement of a record-breaking £3.15 billion deal for affordable housing, supporting 2,000 places for adults with complex needs. We have spoken about reviews and assessments, but the litmus test for the Bill will be its success in addressing the complex needs of those individuals who visit our constituency surgeries because they are always in and out of the system. The Bill will break that cycle of crisis management. It is about early prevention to help those complex individuals into sustainable housing.
In conclusion, in 1967, Iain Macleod spoke at a candlelit vigil in Hyde Park to raise awareness of homelessness. Sadly, his words continue to resonate 50 years on:
“This is an appeal to help those who no longer have any dignity and self-respect…What we do expect is that you will acknowledge that they are fellow human beings, and that they have nothing left to look forward to…We call upon the talents, ideas and enthusiasm of people from all different prejudices and beliefs in a constructive attempt to tackle this growing urban problem.”
The Bill is a constructive attempt to follow in that spirit of continued and sustained collaboration, with the aim of finishing the race—on a cross-party, cross-Government and, indeed, cross-housing sector basis—to end homelessness.
Ms Buck
There is indeed a cross-party consensus in support of the Bill, as we showed on Second Reading, in Committee and again today. It is a step in the right direction and will, I hope, lead to a significant cultural shift in the way that homelessness is treated, especially—although not exclusively—for single homeless people and those who have traditionally been non-priority need. It is a good thing that we will put into legislation the duties in the Bill to assess and to co-operate and the duties of prevention.
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on introducing the Bill and leading on it in recent months, as well as Members who helped to put it together, with the support of Crisis and the expert panel. We want the Bill to proceed with speed and to bring about a transformation. Although in many cases local authorities have no barrier to carrying out the kinds of duties in the Bill, we know that given recent financial pressures—and, in some cases, for other reasons—local authorities have taken the law literally and tested and challenged it to its outer limit, and beyond in some cases. It will be good to have a legislative framework that will make it harder for some of those bad practices to continue.
It is also true, as my hon. Friends and other hon. Members have said, that the Bill does not exist in isolation. We have already referred to the fact that existing non-statutory duties for the prevention and relief of homelessness, which assist some 100,000 households every year, have not been able to check the remorseless upward trend in homelessness, for those in priority need and non-priority need, and rough sleepers, in recent years. That is because the pressure on resources— in many areas, and by no means exclusively local government—has been a contrary driver to any attempts to bring down homelessness.
Rough sleeping, the sharp edge of homelessness, has leapt by 16% just this year—Westminster, my local authority, is on the frontline with the highest number of rough sleepers. New information that I obtained from the health service last week shows not only a rise in rough sleeping but—terrifyingly—an escalation in the number of rough sleepers for whom mental health problems are the main driver. Since 2010, the number of rough sleepers with serious mental health problems has gone up by 80%. That is a really disturbing figure and reflects something else that is happening across the public services, especially the NHS.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend on her support for the Bill. As I am sure she knows, last Sunday was Homelessness Sunday and I happened to be in her borough, although not her constituency. Attention was drawn to the large number of church-based night shelters of various kinds that operate all over the country to try to meet the rapidly growing need. Will she join me in commending those initiatives for their efforts?
Ms Buck
I am happy to do that. Stunningly good work is being done by volunteers, churches and other faith communities on homelessness. At Christmas I went to the Crisis centre at the City of Westminster College in my constituency and met volunteers, some of whom have been going to Crisis for 20 years to provide the support that is given over the difficult holiday period. We should congratulate those people, whether it is their job or a voluntary commitment, who put so much into helping the homeless.
The fact remains that fundamental problems are pushing in the opposite direction to the Bill. On welfare reform, the House of Commons Library briefing confirms that, this year alone, £2.7 billion less will be spent on housing support than would have been the case on trends from 2010 and that £5 billion has been taken out altogether since 2010. Unfortunately, that puts the £48 million contribution to the Bill into rather alarming context. Of course, the delay in universal credit payments is driving more and more tenants into arrears, which in turn is making private landlords—the default option for many homeless people—less likely to let. I see no signs of that problem reducing. In fact, the trend is likely to go in the opposite direction. The hon. Member for Harrow East said that we should judge the Bill on its merits, and I am happy to do that, but we cannot ignore the wider context.
As the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) reminded us, this is fundamentally about people. It is not just about money and the legal framework; it is fundamentally about those at the sharp end. In the last few weeks, I have dealt with many cases of people either homeless or at risk of homelessness. This week, I heard from a young mother of two children, 20 years resident in my constituency, who was made homeless from the private rented sector. Her sick parents, for whom she provides care, live in the constituency. She had to wait until the bailiffs came before she could be rehoused, and she has now been rehoused in north London, over an hour away from her support network and sharing a single room with her two children. That is the reality of homelessness.
Even more acute was a case that came to me just before Christmas. It goes to the heart of the challenge, particularly of single homelessness. With the House’s permission, I will read a few lines from the letter that came in from a young man who was kicked out of home for reasons that I will not share with the House but which are very profound and difficult and which I understand:
“After I was kicked out, I was forced to live in a friend’s car through the winter of 2016. One night when I was sleeping the car was broken into… the people held a knife to my neck and took everything I owned in the world, even my only shoes. I slept on a park bench in Victoria until a stranger told me about a hostel… I was given a place 3 days later… In the meantime, I went back to sleep at the park, which I found very unfair.”
Unfortunately, at the hostel, he was subject to an attack and robbery, and so the hostel place broke down. When he finally came to me the week before Christmas, he had been sleeping rough for the whole year. His letter finishes:
“I don’t want to be robbed or killed… 2016 has been the worst year of my life. I have wanted to kill myself so many times… You hear about people being killed on the road every day, and I know if I don’t get help, I will be the next to be killed.”
That boy is 19 years old. He will be scarred by that experience for the rest of his life. The mother of the two young children will also be scarred. Homelessness scars people’s lives, even after they have been found somewhere to live. If the Bill can do anything for that 19-year-old boy, I will happily support it, but the test of the Bill, for that mother and her children and for that 19-year-old boy, and indeed for the hon. Member for Harrow East, is whether it can exist in a context of support and financial backing that seeks to deal with the drivers of homelessness, whether housing supply, the failures of universal credit or the impact of welfare reform. If it does not, welcome though the provisions will be, we will unfortunately find ourselves back here again, in a year or two, facing yet more increases in homelessness and yet more individual lives scarred by this terrible scourge of modern life.
Mr Jackson
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who has always been diligent in pursuing the issue of housing in her constituency. I am also delighted to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his wonderful work and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the Bill’s de facto Whip.
Today, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East is a bit of softy—we are being very consensual and cross-party—but, having known him for 20 years as a political bruiser, I know how painful it must have been for him to praise inordinately the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). In the same spirit, however, I echo his remarks. We are all here to help needy and vulnerable people, whom we have the great honour and privilege to represent in the House. I was concerned a few days ago when it appeared that the Opposition were intent on effectively—potentially—wrecking the Bill. I am glad that they resiled from pushing the amendments to a vote, not necessarily because that was indeed their intention, but because when the Bill reached the other place peers might have complicated the issue, thereby endangering the Bill’s viability in the long run. That has not happened, for which I thank the Opposition and, indeed, my hon. Friends.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said earlier that the Bill was in the great Conservative tradition of progressive social change. We look back on public health reform, municipal reform, local government reform and, of course, the housing boom of the 1950s in the Macmillan era, and we see that the Bill demonstrates a similar commitment to encouraging people to make the world a better place.
I think I am fairly unusual in being a Conservative Member of Parliament who is very keen on house building, and who believes that we must tackle the housing crisis at source by building more homes. That does not always happen. I do not decry the motives of my hon. Friends, and other Members, for wanting to protect the residential amenities and quality of life in their own areas, but I think we all accept that if we are to solve the housing crisis in the long term, we must build more homes. I was, I think, a lone voice when, a month or so ago, I argued against some of the more restrictive amendments in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, because in doing so I was arguing against not building more homes.
We look forward greatly to the housing White Paper, and I thank the Minister for the excellent work that he has done with his colleagues. I particularly thank the Department for allocating funds to Peterborough City Council as part of the £48 million homelessness reduction programme. Peterborough has seen an uptick in the number of people presenting themselves as homeless and in the number of rough sleepers living on the streets. The impact of welfare reform has been an issue, as has the large proportion of peripatetic foreign workers from eastern Europe who may lose their jobs very suddenly and be unable to pay their rent. However, as we heard from the hon. Member for Hammersmith, the precipitous termination of housing agreements under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 is also having an impact, and I therefore think that the Bill is extremely timely. I strongly supported it on Second Reading, when I also did some work with charities in my constituency.
While I am at it, let me give a plug to the fantastic work done by the congregation of my own local church, All Saints parish church in Park Road, and to the parochial church council. This winter, All Saints, along with other churches in Peterborough, has participated in an ecumenical initiative to provide a night shelter for some of the more vulnerable people in the city, who would not otherwise have a bed on a very cold night. Those people have been treated with the warmth and human kindness and given the dignity that one would expect from good Christian people pursuing their mission. So I say thank you to Father Greg Roberts and the others for that.
This is the beginning of a journey. The Bill will not end homelessness and rough sleeping. However, we are on that journey, and the good thing about the Bill is that it represents a proactive effort, especially in relation to early intervention and advice. We have to concede that it is not just about dry, arcane legislation; it is about human beings and the problems they are suffering, which mean they are having to take difficult decisions. I therefore urge the Minister to think in a more holistic way around substance misuse and mental health issues as that impacts on people who are homeless. If it is possible to give more support in the course of the secondary legislation of this Bill to assist local authorities, that will be very important indeed.
Another important issue to raise is that for those authorities such as Peterborough, which participated in a large-scale stock transfer some years ago, there just is not the capacity to think ahead in terms of local trends for homelessness. Therefore, they need some expertise and help, and that costs money. But it should not be the case that the first time anyone can receive help is when the bailiffs are knocking on their door.
I welcome in particular the help-to-secure parts of the Bill and of course the individualised plan, because we are talking about individuals, each of whom has a different set of circumstances that have brought them to make the decisions they have made—life sometimes
“happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”,
to quote John Lennon from many years ago. The fact is that that proactive forward-looking advice will be good for the taxpayer, and, more importantly, good for those individuals, particularly individuals with families. That is very important.
On selective licensing, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), who is no longer in her place, made the important point about vulnerable women who are affected by homelessness. Vulnerable women are also affected by very poor quality housing and very poor quality private sector lets. I am honest about saying that I am willing to look at the trade-off of ending slum landlords by reducing some of the provision, because I do not want my constituents living in slums at the whim of rapacious landlords who are milking the taxpayer. That might mean some turbulence in the market, but the duty does not end once we have housed that person; the duty ends when we are convinced that that person or family is in decent accommodation. A number of years ago Cambridgeshire Constabulary looked at crime committed against women in new migrant households—sexual crime, theft and other crimes. So we have, and should have, a much more general duty to people in private accommodation.
May I say a bit about the saga of St Michael’s Gate, on which I had a Westminster Hall debate? This was the ludicrous Alice in Wonderland situation where my local authority was forced to move people who were statutorily homeless and who it had been housing in a Travelodge into a development called St Michael’s Gate. Its landlord, Stef & Philips, had a dubious and morally reprehensible business model which I mentioned earlier, which meant that it served a section 21 notice on 74 of those households and made a number of them statutorily homeless. So it was recycling homelessness. It did that because it was more lucrative for it to cream off the administrative fee for overnight homeless accommodation —and of course those people who were chucked out of St Michael’s Gate have ended up as statutorily homeless. That is a ludicrous situation. I have asked the Local Government Association to look at that in detail, to make sure it can never happen again, or is very unlikely to do so.
That brings me to the key issue of the trend of many local authorities to begin to discharge their homelessness obligations under the Housing Act 1996 by shuffling the most vulnerable people around the country—different authorities are keen to push people to other local housing authorities. There should be at the very least a protocol or concordat in place to make sure that stops, because it is not fair on those people and ultimately it is not fair on the taxpayers.
I warmly welcome this Bill. It is the culmination of an enormous amount of effort and hard work. I particularly welcome clause 2 and the duty to provide advisory services, which was sorely needed, and of course clauses 4 to 6 on homelessness. We have seen the best tradition of the House of Commons today, with people of goodwill and faith coming together in the service of our constituents, sticking up for decent people who want a better life and who have a human right to a roof over their head. It is our job to look after their interests; they are the people we serve. I warmly endorse the Bill and I hope that it will soon receive Royal Assent and become an Act so that it can begin to make a difference to the lives of many needy people.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I welcome the Bill, and I want to add my tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for taking on this subject and for the diligence and commitment he has shown in seeing the Bill through. I also welcome the process of the Bill. I have been pleased to be closely involved from the beginning, taking part in the inquiry as a member of the Select Committee and also serving on the Bill Committee. This is an excellent example of evidence-based legislation.
The Select Committee saw undeniable evidence that the problem of homelessness is increasing at an exponential rate and that the current system is not working. The Bill will play an important role in setting some of that right. This is a principled reform that will set the basis on which homeless people receive support on the right footing. It is right that local authorities should have a responsibility—and indeed a statutory duty—to intervene earlier when residents are threatened with homelessness, to provide help and support and, wherever possible, to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. This is the compassionate thing to do, and it is what a decent society demands, but it is also the cost-effective thing to do. When someone becomes homeless, the personal cost to them and the many different costs to the public sector rise to a level that we simply cannot afford. Money spent propping people up and dealing with a situation that should never have arisen in the first place is not money well spent.
It is also right that more people should be eligible to receive support than is currently the case, and this legislation will help in that regard. We have all had examples in our constituencies of people, usually single people, who common decency demands should receive support but who are not eligible to receive it under the current system. The Bill will help to address that problem. It is also absolutely the case that the culture of work around support for homeless people should change, as well as the practice. The Select Committee saw evidence of significant levels of gatekeeping by local authorities, and of people being treated in ways that are simply unacceptable. They were made to feel that they were somehow to blame for their predicament or that they were a problem or just a statistic. Witnesses described the dehumanising effects of being in the current system, and it is absolutely right that this legislation seeks to change that.
I support the Bill on its own terms and I believe that it will make a significant difference to the nature of the support that homeless people receive. However, we cannot for one minute kid ourselves that by supporting a piece of legislation that has the words “homelessness reduction” in its title we are solving the problem of the housing crisis in this country. I cannot speak about the Bill without speaking in the same breath about the wider context of the housing crisis. This Government’s record on housing is shameful. Under Labour, rough sleeping fell by 75% in 11 years. Under this Government and the coalition Government, it doubled in just five years and it has gone up again by a further 30% in the last year alone. The number of people in temporary accommodation is rising, and the experience in my constituency is that homelessness is becoming more intractable for those who find themselves in that predicament. Individuals and households are in temporary accommodation for longer and it is much harder for them to secure the affordable accommodation they need. That is about the supply of new homes and, more importantly, of secure, high-quality, genuinely affordable homes.
People face insecurity in the private rented sector, and I urge the Government to take reform of the private rented sector seriously. If someone decides to become a landlord, their primary responsibility should be to their tenant under the terms of the tenancy agreement, but the problem is that far too many people are living under tenancies that are not fit for purpose and do not provide the security that they need. While we wait for new homes to be built, reform of the private rented sector would make a rapid difference to people facing the terrible situation of homelessness. If more people had security in the private rented sector, fewer people would present to our hard-pressed councils’ homelessness departments for help and support. The LHA cap, uncertainty around funding for supported housing, the bedroom tax, the forced sale of council homes and many other aspects of Government housing policy are simply not helping to deliver the secure, affordable homes that we need to solve the problem of homelessness.
Funding for the Bill’s provisions is the second issue that I want to flag up. I welcome the Minister’s assurances about reviewing the funding and how the Bill works in practice. I accept that there are many unknowns about the new burdens that the Bill introduces and that a greater focus on prevention is expected to save councils money, but the Government’s working to date lacks clarity about what councils will be expected to use the funding for. Will it be for additional staffing costs only, or will it enable the provision of additional support to help people bridge a gap if they are finding it difficult to pay their rent for a period of time? Serious doubts exist about whether the funding will be enough.
I am particularly worried on behalf of Lambeth and Southwark Councils about the severe problems and pressure that they face. Some 5,000 children in Lambeth—more than 1,500 households—will spend tonight in temporary accommodation. While the Bill will help the councils to provide more support to families to prevent them from becoming homeless, the system is clogged up to the point of being at a standstill. We all want councils to be provided with sufficient resources to implement the new duties in a way that enables them to be effective. I hope that the Government will use this process of developing legislation in a private Member’s Bill on the basis of evidence through the Select Committee process as a precedent for their approach to housing in the future. They should look at the evidence of where the current system is simply not working and take decisive action on the wider contributors to our housing crisis.
I end by once again offering my congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrow East. I thank Crisis and the other homelessness charities that provided input and supported the Bill. I also thank the Minister for his support and for seeing the Bill through. Finally, I thank my Front-Bench colleagues and the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for their excellent contributions and for scrutinising and pressing the Government on this most important issue.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow so many passionate speakers, not least the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who spoke well and with great knowledge of this issue. I join the tributes to the enormous success of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). In my working life, I was part of the Government machine that produces legislation, so I am in awe at how he has managed to go through the process effectively alone, albeit with the team he outlined earlier.
I am pleased that the Bill has Government support and that funding has been promised, although I hope the Minister was listening carefully to my hon. Friend when he said that more might be necessary. On that note, I thank the Department for Communities and Local Government for the £790,000 that has been given to Oxfordshire under the Government’s homelessness prevention programme to fund the trials of new initiatives on homelessness.
We have heard a great deal about the importance of co-operation and cross-party working, and I make a plug for the cross-party co-operation in Oxfordshire over the past year that has led to good practice in the reduction of homelessness. For example, our district council and charities have been working closely together to reduce the number of rough sleepers in our district by 20%, which shows how well a more holistic approach of the type set out in the Bill can work.
We have seen some great initiatives in the past year, including the production of a pocket guide for the homeless. That might not sound like much, but having all the phone numbers in one place for short-term and long-term solutions to homelessness problems is useful to people whose life is chaotic and who are moving from place to place.
We also have some great local charities. I have seen the Beacon centre at St Mary’s church in Banbury offering friendly but firm advice to some of our rough sleepers, and one of my favourite buildings in my whole constituency is the one that houses the Banbury Young Homelessness Project, which takes a forward-thinking, holistic approach to preventing the causes of homelessness. The project provides counselling and therapy for family groups, and it has a brilliant job club. In 2012, the project won the Queen’s award for voluntary service. I love going there; it is very much like being at home with one’s own teenagers. Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that you will understand and empathise with the fact that the sort of support it provides is almost that of a parent for a group of teens who are uncertain about which way to go, who need a bit of help and encouragement to get through job interviews, and who might not get such support from their family or at home in the way that we hope our own children do.
The Salvation Army has been turning lives around, particularly those of rough sleepers, for many, many years. It helped members of my family who came home from the first world war, and I am impressed by the cutting-edge work it continues to do. It is clear that rough sleepers have very different needs—families at risk of eviction differ greatly from people with drug and alcohol dependencies who have been rough sleeping—and our charities and council, working together, recognise that. I accept that not all are working together so well and that we need the safety net enshrined in the Bill, but it seems right that there should no longer be a double standard of priority need. Anyone who does not have a bed for the night is, of course, a priority.
We have heard a lot this week about difficulties in the Prison Service, and it is right that we draw attention to the link between homelessness and imprisonment. Some 15% of new inmates going into prison for the first time are homeless, and 80% of those previously homeless prisoners reoffend in the first year after release, which compares very badly with a reoffending rate of under 50% for those who were not homeless when they went into prison. Dealing with homelessness will really help in the battle to reduce reoffending, so I add my support to this well-balanced Bill, which will support the homeless without putting undue pressure on councils. I hope that, by working together, claimants and councils will help to reduce the problem of homelessness.
Mrs Drummond
I was pleased to serve on the Bill Committee and to be part of the consideration of a Bill that will make a big difference to many vulnerable people. There are two aspects that I particularly welcome: the extension to 56 days; and the measures on the personal adviser and assessment. I hope that I will no longer have constituents in my surgery who are waiting for the arrival of the bailiffs as that is the only way they can declare themselves homeless under existing rules.
In Portsmouth, the average time spent in temporary accommodation is three to four months. I hope that under the new system created by the Bill, temporary accommodation could become unnecessary for the majority of homelessness cases in my city, saving the local authority money. Removing the threat of a prolonged fight to regain possession will also encourage private landlords to take on benefit claimants referred by the local authority. The measures in the Bill will therefore ease the need for temporary accommodation at both ends of the process. Private landlords will take on more tenants, and those who are given notice will more frequently be found a new tenancy without an interval.
I hope that local authorities will look on the Bill not as a burden, but as an opportunity. Many, including Portsmouth City Council, are already working on the Bill. I hope that it will pass smoothly through the other place and will return to us with few changes, unless they make things dramatically better.
I thank the Minister and his civil servants, and the charities, especially Crisis, for providing excellent briefings. Of course, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in particular for his many hours of hard work to get the Bill through.
Michael Tomlinson
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), with whom I served on the Bill Committee. It is right that we pay great tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—he will be blushing all afternoon, I am sure. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) might be right that this process will be the model of how to get difficult legislation through in a private Member’s Bill. All the praise that has been given is due.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith invited me to exercise iron discipline today. In fact, he invited me not to speak at all, but that would have been a step too far. However, I will exercise discipline, not least because as you will have noted, Madam Deputy Speaker, my Bills appear on the Order Paper at positions 3 and 4. I am sure you will be interested to hear that my speech on Bill No. 4 refers to cricket in some detail, so it would be a shame indeed if we were not to get to that. Pages 3 to 5 of my speech are beautiful prose about cricket, and the House will be disappointed if we do not get to those Bills this afternoon.
I want to sound a note of caution. I was disappointed by one speech this afternoon—that from the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who is no longer in the Chamber. I was disappointed because it sounded more like a campaign speech than points about new clauses 1 to 3. It might be that he misunderstood the situation because he was not here on Second Reading and did not have the benefit of sitting on the Bill Committee. He was wrong when he said that there was a cosy consensus. There is cross-party support for the Bill, but there were robust debates in Committee involving exchanges from both sides to ensure that the Bill got through.
If there was consensus, it was on one fact. I believe that every member of the Bill Committee, and every single individual in the Chamber, shares the same view—my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the hon. Member for Hammersmith have mentioned this—that one person sleeping rough is one person too many. If there is a cosy consensus around that, so be it; I stand guilty as charged.
Moving on from that one sour note, let me say that it was a huge pleasure to serve on the Committee. This was my first private Member’s Bill Committee, and if they are all like that Committee, they will be a pleasure indeed.
We cannot pat ourselves on the back at this stage because there is more work to be done as the Bill goes through the Lords. I agree with the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that this is but one step—it is not the complete answer—and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East made the same point. The Bill is not the whole answer, but it is a big step in the right direction.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
I am delighted to support the Bill and to have served on the Bill Committee. I commend the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has worked tirelessly on the Bill, giving 100% commitment and garnering cross-party support, which is quite an achievement. It is important to note the extent of the involvement and input of local authorities throughout the country, as well as that of national homelessness charities. We should also note the dialogue that each of us has had with our local charities. I am a long-term supporter of a homelessness charity called Doorway in my Chippenham constituency. Its views on the Bill have proved invaluable in giving me a more detailed insight into the exact impact it will have on the ground.
There has been some talk today about what the Bill does not cover, despite, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East pointed out, it being one of the longest ever private Members’ Bills, and perhaps the most expensive. It is important that we emphasise what it does cover. We must remember that while there is much more to be done and the Bill will not do everything that we hope it can achieve—it will not be a cure-all—the existing legislation has not been changed in 40 years, so perhaps this is a monumental step forward.
The key aspect of the Bill is prevention: it does exactly what it says on the tin. Yes, it is true that some local authorities are already going above and beyond, but that is not consistent; in fact, the provision is patchy throughout the country. The Bill will end the atrocious postcode lottery and ensure that one minimum yet high standard is in place throughout the country to address and prevent homelessness. It will give local authorities guidance and create a level playing field, ending the hit-and-miss policy that has gone on for far too long.
Prevention really is the key. Perhaps the most important element of the Bill is the prevention duty that enables local authorities to provide help from 56 days before homelessness, rather than 28, meaning that they will be able to help while there is still time and that action can be taken before complex needs develop any further. That point has been raised with me several times by local charities. It will save local authorities, the NHS and other bodies money in the long run. It will prevent people from getting county court judgments, as has been mentioned, as well as helping with similar issues, and it will ensure that desperate people really do have the opportunity to get back on their feet. It will free up homelessness charities so that they have more time to help effectively.
Above all, however, prevention is the right thing to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said that if one person is sleeping rough on the streets, that is one too many and a national disgrace. I fundamentally agree with him. A key role for all MPs is to create opportunities and help the vulnerable and needy in our society, whatever our party. Surely the Bill goes right to the heart of that. I know that other Members wish to speak, and I never intended to speak for long because I have talked about this issue in the House numerous times. I shall finish by reaffirming my support for the Bill and its intention to prevent homelessness.
David Mackintosh
It is a pleasure to support the private Member’s Bill promoted my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). He deserves congratulation, and it has been a pleasure to work with him.
It is great that the Bill has reached this milestone in the legislative process. Our debates in Committee were thorough and productive, and we were able to analyse every aspect of the Bill, so I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. I am also pleased with the role played by the Select Committee, which played an important part in giving the Bill proper scrutiny, so I thank its Chairman, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts).
Throughout the process, I have always believed that, as others have said, one person who is homeless is one too many, so every opportunity we have to highlight this problem in modern society is helpful. All Members taking part in the debate will be particularly mindful of the human stories behind the statistics, and it is important that we remember the people whom we are trying to help. I put on record my gratitude to the Hope Centre in my constituency, of which I am proud to be patron. The staff there do fantastic work to help homeless people to rebuild their lives.
I express again my wholehearted commitment to the Bill and what it would achieve. Along with many other colleagues, I have said that it will not be the only solution to end homelessness, but it is a crucial step on the path towards helping people who are at risk. I am sure that in the near future the opportunity will arise to make further changes, and I eagerly anticipate the Government’s housing White Paper. The all-party group on ending homelessness will continue to push on these issues. Indeed, just this week we had an informative and helpful session on prison leavers. Last night, I had the pleasure to watch a new documentary called “Slum Britain: 50 Years On”, which was created by Shelter, Channel 5 and ITN. It focuses on the plight of hidden homelessness in our country. At the screening, which was also attended by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), we were able to meet one of the families whom the documentary had followed. We were told of their struggles with their local authority and the seemingly impossible challenges that they faced when trying to access help. Such things remind us why the Bill is so necessary and why it must progress through the House and into the other place. People are looking to us to help them in their most desperate times.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has already thanked the many people who have contributed to this Bill from both sides of the House. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials, colleagues from the Select Committee and the Bill Committee, and the charities that have backed us so strongly, including Crisis, Shelter, St Mungo’s, and Homeless Link. I am glad to give my support to the Bill today.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
I do not want to repeat too many of the comments that have already been made, but I cannot fail to pass on my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his tireless work, drive and dedication on the Bill. I, too, very much hope that the Bill does proceed through this place and becomes an Act. I wish to thank the Minister and his officials, not least for setting aside the £48 million that will go to help local authorities support the implementation of this Bill. I also thank Opposition Members, who have played such a key role in this Bill.
It has been an absolute pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee. It was the first real Bill Committee on which I served. Seeing such consensual cross-party working made me wish that more Bills and private Members’ Bills operated on such a basis.
So many years on from “Cathy Come Home”, there is no doubt that we have become blind to things such as rough sleeping. There is also the problem of the homelessness that we do not see—I am talking about the homeless people who are sofa surfing or who are having to sleep over with a friend. We do not see them because they are not visible on the streets. I am as guilty as anyone else of walking past those who are sleeping in doorways. I do so partly because we are advised by many charities, for all sorts of reasons, not to give money. Occasionally, I will buy sandwiches and other types of food.
Something interesting happened to me just a few weeks ago. I was walking along the road to catch the 91 bus back from the Covent Garden area, and a homeless lady approached me. I thought that she was going to ask for money, but in fact she did not; she asked for a hug, because we had had a chat. She said, “Thank you for talking to me. Thank you for engaging with me like a human being. Thank you for recognising that, just because I am homeless, it does not mean that I am not a person.” We must not forget that we cannot ever lose our humanity.
As many Members from across the Chamber have said today, one person who is sleeping rough, one person who is homeless, one family who is sofa surfing or living in a one-bedroom temporary accommodation unit is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in any country; it is certainly not acceptable in the fifth largest economy in the world. That is why I am so proud to support this Bill. As the Minister knows, our record is not great: we have seen an increase in rough sleeping and in homelessness. I am proud that the Government are now taking action by supporting this Bill, which puts prevention at its very heart. Yes, we must do far more to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping on our streets, but the key must be prevention and ensuring that we interact and engage as early as possible with those who come to us asking for help. That is why I am really proud that this Bill increases to 56 the number of days that we can help someone before they become homeless. That means that we can intervene, engage and help those who rightly seek support at the point at which they know they need help but before they reach crisis.
I support this Bill and hope that it progresses to the next stage. I also hope that all Members across the House will support it fully.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
First, let me apologise for not referring Members earlier to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I, too, wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), because, having piloted two private Members’ Bills through the House in the previous Session of Parliament, I know how much hard work is involved. I wish this Bill every success when it goes through the same stages in the other place.
I wish to put the Cornish perspective to the House, and to say how grateful we will be in Cornwall for the changes that this Bill will introduce. Despite the 49% fall in unemployment in South East Cornwall since 2010 and a strengthening local economy, low incomes remain a challenge across Cornwall. Conversely, as a result of our thriving tourist industry, we have one of the highest proportions of second homes, and that naturally has an impact on housing affordability. Only a strong economy that enables incomes to rise will help everyone to be safe and secure and ensure that those who deserve support and care receive it. Unfortunately, however, homelessness remains a considerable challenge in my constituency and across Cornwall—one played out in the casework that comes across my desk every day. That is why I support the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East: it will refocus the efforts of English authorities to prevent homelessness.
We have heard of cases in which people have had to wait until they have been given a bailiff’s letter before the local authority will consider rehousing them, and the situation is exactly the same in South East Cornwall. There are also considerable difficulties for people seeking alternative accommodation. I often see constituents who feel that they have been let down by the Liberal Democrat, independently led local authority. That is why I pointed out in an intervention that the leader of the Liberal Democrats was selling a message of wanting to provide more houses without there being anybody here from that party to support the Bill. I would not be proud of that, but I am so glad to see so many Government Members here today supporting a Bill genuinely to introduce measures to help homelessness.
I am aware that other Members need to speak, so I will not repeat what other hon. Members have already said. I finish by quoting what Crisis said about the Bill:
“It brings much-needed reform to England’s 40-year-old homelessness legislation.”
I could not agree more. I really applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
I want to add my respect and blessings to the Bill, but first I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
My absolute respect goes to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman); as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, my hon. Friend has surely provided a template for MPs on how to get a private Member’s Bill through and on the tone and thoroughness of work that should go into such a Bill. I give credit to colleagues who have been involved in a lot of work in Committee. I am in awe of their work and it is a pleasure to applaud them now.
I agree with other Members that this is but one part of a whole strategy. In that spirit, I wish to pay tribute to a lot of people in my community. I hope that we do our jobs as MPs and that the Lords will play their part, but local government is also vital. Brian Castle was a housing officer; he has recently retired. I could call him any time during the day or evening if I was concerned about a homeless person in my constituency. He would tell me that day, within hours, what services were being provided and help was being given to that person. That was a great asset for me as an MP.
I also give credit to Colin Kennedy, my previous borough commander. He invited me to go out with the police on a Saturday night-Sunday morning shift. I witnessed how amazing the police are in dealing with people sleeping rough who may not wish to go to A&E. I saw amazing policemen cajole those people, initially against their will, into getting help so that they received the services they needed.
I also pay tribute—this does not happen often—to the Secretary of State for Health, because we are now putting mental health on the agenda. Having psychiatric services in A&E departments, in the triage system, is a vital part of the whole strategy for everyone, and particularly for people who find themselves rough sleeping or homeless. I will not have been the only person in the NHS who treated somebody for an injury and who was then heartbroken to see them walk out of A&E, knowing they had no home to go to.
I also pay tribute to Mia, a young schoolgirl in my constituency who sold amazing cupcakes she had baked to raise money for Streetlink. As she said on her JustGiving page, she smashed it—she smashed her target.
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has also smashed his target. There are some heroes who wear capes, and some heroes who have spider webs drawn on their faces, but today there is a hero wearing a suit, a tie and a little lapel pin saying, “Back the Bill. Reduce Homelessness.” It is a privilege to be here.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
How can I follow that tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)? I have known him for some time now—since before we both came into the House—and he is a very caring man. He is also a good friend to not only me but other colleagues on the Government Benches and on the Opposition Benches as well. I pay tribute to my friend for getting this Bill through; it is well overdue. I thank him so much.
I pay tribute to the Minister for being patient. It has been quite a marathon, but it is good to know that £48 million is going to be available for these new duties—there is an intimation that there could be more, and I hope there is.
I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I have not always seen eye to eye with him, but I more or less agree with everything he said today, and it has been a pleasure to sit here and listen to him speak, from 9.30 am, when we started, to this point.
It is good that we can now even out the playing field for people who are needy—especially people who were in the armed forces, people with mental health issues and people who find themselves on the streets for no other reason than that life has dealt them a bad blow.
We do not have to be reminded of the problem of homelessness; it has been creeping up over the years—I think we can all agree on that. When I leave the House every night, there are people sleeping in the underpass, and it always makes my heart sink to see that.
Even though I have had nothing to do with the proceedings up until this final point, I feel proud to have sat here today and just to look at everybody who has actually worked on everything that has got us through to this point. What we have done today—what you all have done today—in this Chamber is historic and nothing short of miraculous. I just hope that the Bill reaches the statute book as soon as possible.
James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I want to say how pleased I am to be here to see the passage of this very important Bill, particularly as I am sitting just in front of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who put his case, as he did on Second Reading, with passion, with conviction, with real dedication and with real knowledge about this cause.
I also want to thank Crisis and Shelter for all their work behind the scenes and for their public advocacy, and Members have turned up to speak to the Bill and to ensure its passage through the House. I know of the great work that Crisis, in particular, does, because my mum spent Christmas volunteering with it two years ago and had a really fantastic time. I would thoroughly recommend volunteering to all Members of the House.
The Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), were right when they said that legislation alone would not be sufficient to tackle homelessness. We do need legislation, and that is why we are here today—to pass the first significant piece of legislation on homelessness for 40 years. This legislation will, among other things, end the nonsense that I hear time and time again in my advice surgeries, where 40% of the cases I see are about housing: that tenants facing eviction must be made to wait for a bailiff’s notice before receiving homelessness protection from the council.
As well as legislation, to tackle homelessness we need money from the Government and involvement from third sector organisations. Having convened a homelessness summit in Kingston with our many third sector organisations, council officers, the leader of Kingston Council and the lead member for housing, thereby gaining a lot of knowledge of the local processes, practices and needs, I was able to lobby the Government for homelessness funding with, I think, some authority. I am pleased that Kingston is part of a tri-borough homelessness prevention trailblazer area that is to receive £1 million of Government funding to tackle homelessness. This is great news for the Royal Borough of Kingston, which in virtually every funding formula applied by the Government, be it the revenue support grant or the schools funding formula, does not do very well. It was dismissed as a “leafy borough” by the noble Lord Prescott when he sat where my hon. Friend the Minister sits today, but that woefully fails to recognise the fact that it has pockets of social deprivation as bad as those in any other area of London—and yes, it has rough sleeping, which we must tackle.
Third sector organisations are, and have always been, vital in the fight against homelessness and in homelessness prevention. It is notable that many of these are faith-based organisations where people, as part of their worship and devotion, give service to the most needy in their local community. In Kingston, that includes Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness; the Joel Community Project; the YMCA; Churches Together, which offers up churches as night shelters in the winter; and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. I thank all those organisations, and others I have not mentioned, for their work, in collaboration with the council, to tackle homelessness in Kingston. I look forward to working with all of them, and with Kingston’s Conservative council, in implementing the provisions of this Bill, and working out how best to spend the trailblazer funding we have been granted by the Government to end the disgrace of homelessness in Kingston and in our country as a whole.
Victoria Atkins
I join hon. Members on both sides of the House in thanking and congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I think that today we have heard the beginnings of his next general election leaflet, “Hero for Harrow East”.
I very much welcome the Bill’s emphasis on preventing homelessness. It is practical and compassionate, and has the added benefit of being cost-effective. I welcome the fact that the Government have committed £48 million for councils to help them to improve services throughout the country. It is also welcome that the formula will be flexible enough to ensure that the money is directed to the boroughs and districts that need it most. I am very conscious that the House of Commons Library has estimated that there are seven rough sleepers in the entire district of East Lindsey. Although that is a tragedy for each and every one of them, I am, I hope, mature enough to realise that there are other parts of the country where, sadly, the figures are far higher, and I would much rather that the formula is flexible enough to help the areas that most need it.
I end with the words of the very helpful briefing paper from Crisis:
“The Homelessness Reduction Bill could transform the help available to homeless people, and if passed could represent one of the most important developments for homelessness in nearly 40 years.”
If that is not a fantastic sending off for this Bill, I do not know what is. I wish the Bill a speedy legislative journey to its natural home on the statute book—pun properly intended.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), my fellow Home Office Parliamentary Private Secretary. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)— a doughty campaigner who has shown great determination in steering this Bill through this House. I look forward to its receiving Royal Assent in due course and becoming an Act of Parliament.
It has been an absolute pleasure to be here on a couple of Fridays to support this Bill. I have been conscious on both occasions that I did not want to get in the way or detain the House for any length of time, so I have chosen to speak at this point. This Bill shows the real value of private Members’ Bills where it is possible to command support across the House we can really get things done. The process is a useful vehicle to achieve that. It may well be that modifications are needed to the system, but when it works well, it works very well, and this is an example of its value. It is good to see the House working so collegiately, which people out there in the country will think makes a refreshing change.
The issue of prevention is very important. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) put it better than I ever could. Our public services more generally are going to have to focus more on prevention in the years ahead to get things right and to relieve the pressures. The Bill is considered, logical and sensible. It is right to clarify the importance of rights and responsibilities not just for local authorities and public services, but for the individual concerned, and the Bill does that very effectively indeed.
I want to say a few words of thanks to people in my own constituency. The housing departments of both East Northamptonshire Council and Corby Borough Council do a terrific job in making sure that we do not often get to the point where people find themselves homeless. I pay tribute to them for all the work they do, including with me as their local Member of Parliament, and the support they provide to my constituents, to try to get these things right.
I also pay tribute, as many other Members have done, to both Crisis and Shelter for all their efforts, not only on the ground, but in getting the Bill’s provisions right, and for working so constructively with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the Bill Committee members to achieve that.
I also thank those in my constituency who do so much good work to help those who find themselves in the most difficult of circumstances. Over Christmas, Rev. Dennis Binks and his congregation led a delegation on to the streets of Corby and Kettering on many cold winter evenings. They helped a number of people and I am very grateful to them for their efforts. I know that Ministers and everyone else in this House will send their thanks and appreciation to them as well.
There is clearly more to do—I do not think that any Member in this House would dispute that—but this Bill is a significant and important step forward in eradicating homelessness once and for all.
Mr Marcus Jones
I am very pleased and proud to speak in support of the Bill’s Third Reading. Homelessness, as we all know, is a chronic issue with which successive Governments have grappled. Given the complex issues that many people face, no one could claim that tackling homelessness is easy, but, as I and many colleagues have said many times, one person without a home is one too many. Everyone who can help clearly has a duty to do what they can.
Supporting important proposed legislation such as this Bill is what we can do in this House. We have scrutinised and improved the Bill, and we all hope that it will complete its passage without incident and deliver the change that we want to see. Royal Assent is only the start, however, and I want to talk about what the Government will do to make the Bill a success on the ground.
On 17 January, I announced £48 million of funding to local government to meet the new burdens cost associated with the Bill in this spending review period. When I made that announcement, I was clear that the figure of £48 million reflected the Bill as drafted at that time. I committed to updating the new burdens assessment to reflect any changes to our estimates in the light of any further amendments to the Bill on Report. The Government have today made significant amendments to further strengthen the Bill, and I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House are keen to understand their impact on the new burdens cost.
I can confirm that the amendments agreed today are estimated to increase the cost of the Bill by £13 million over the course of this spending review period. That increases the total new burdens cost of the Bill from the £48 million that I had announced, to £61 million. I am pleased to confirm that the Government will meet those costs.
I do not know whether it is true or not, but I suspect that, as several hon. Members have suggested, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has achieved a record in having the private Member’s Bill with the most significant cost implications for Government spending. In that sense, he can consider that he has had a very good outcome.
The final new burdens assessment will be published once the distribution formula for the funding is complete, and when the Bill has completed its passage through the House. As I said in Committee, we will work with local authorities and the Local Government Association to develop a fair distribution model for the funding. That needs to reflect the different need in different areas, reflecting, for instance, the additional pressures and costs faced by many councils in London.
Ahead of implementation, we will work with local housing authorities to ensure that they have the resources and support they need. Key to that is updating the code of guidance, which will be reviewed in co-operation not only with local housing authorities but others with an interest and expertise, such as the homelessness charities and the landlord groups—not to mention the continuing role that the Select Committee will no doubt play in the process. That guidance will be needed by local authorities as they prepare to implement the new duties in the Bill, and as they support their staff to understand the new legislation and undertake the training they will need.
The Government will also have key implementation tasks. We will prepare the regulations setting out which public authorities will be subject to the duty to refer, identifying those authorities and working with them to ensure that they understand their new responsibilities and are ready to play an active role. We will also continue our work to improve the data we collect, so that we can monitor implementation and assess the impact and success of the Bill.
We do not see the Bill as the only way to reduce homelessness. It is an important part of our armoury, but it is not the panacea. The Government have initiated and are working on several other programmes in this area, because we are determined to do as much as we can to tackle the issues of homelessness and rough sleeping.
I want to finish by paying personal tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for all the effort that he has put into the Bill. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with him over many weeks on his Bill. As he mentioned, the time and scrutiny the Bill has been through is unusual, but he has remained calm in the face of some real challenges and has been focused on his final aim, which has been a key factor in getting the Bill this far.
Earlier, I mentioned hon. Members on both sides of the House who have been instrumental in bringing the Bill forward, but I also wish to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who—in the absence of a Government Whip in a private Member’s Bill Committee—acted as Whip and wing man for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. I also wish to thank one of our long-suffering departmental Parliamentary Private Secretaries, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), for the effort that she has put into the process. The other person on the Committee I have not mentioned is my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), who also made an excellent contribution to the debate today.
I also wish to mention Martine Martin, the parliamentary assistant to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. I will not say she kept him in check, but she worked extremely hard and diligently to help him to bring the Bill forward.
Finally, I also thank my officials for doing a tremendous job, the charities, particularly Crisis, Shelter and St Mungo’s, the relevant landlords associations, the LGA and the many individual councils and others in local government. I look forward to the Bill’s enactment. I am sure that my hon. Friend will remain hot on my heels as it is implemented, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on this extremely important issue.
Bob Blackman
With the leave of the House, I rise to say a few thank yous and to wish the Bill Godspeed through the other place.
I would like to thank the no fewer than 20 right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed on Third Reading. This is a complicated Bill with 13 clauses. It was 18 pages long before we agreed the Government amendments today, so I suspect it is now about 20 or 21 pages. It is a comprehensive Bill that attempts to ensure that anyone threatened with homelessness, or who has already reached that crisis point in their life, receives help and advice and a plan for securing accommodation from the local authority. The Bill, which encompasses the whole public sector, will concentrate efforts in the hands of experts so that they can assist those who face this terrible crisis.
I particularly thank hon. Members for their appreciation of me, and I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) that it is national cake day, as well as Holocaust Memorial Day—and we should remember the plight of those individuals too. As for the Bill, the heroes are not in this Chamber; the heroes are those who go out every day to combat homelessness throughout the country—they are the people who deserve the plaudits.
I thank the Minister for his kind remarks, and for the extra money he has managed to stump up—perhaps we should have put his feet to the fire even more. But I will draw a line there. We have done as much as we can, although the Select Committee will be following carefully the implementation and operation of the Bill to make sure that sufficient funding is available and that local authorities are doing their job. I reiterate my thanks to the officials from the Department. I will miss our regular briefings, and the texts and emails requiring my assistance at 11 o’clock at night. I hope that once the Bill is enacted we can work together again in the future.
I would like to commend and thank the charities, particularly Crisis, Shelter and St Mungo’s, as well as the landlords associations, which helped get the Bill to this stage, the LGA and all the local authorities—they, after all, have to implement the Bill. Most importantly, I hope that they plan now for the Bill’s enactment, rather than waiting for it to become a reality. Finally, I wish the Bill Godspeed. I hope that the other place will have observed our proceedings today, as well as our Second Reading debate and all our hours in Committee spent scrutinising the Bill, and that they speed it through their House, so that it might become an Act as fast as possible and start to combat homelessness on our streets straightaway.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Amendment) Bill
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Amendment) Bill View all Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Amendment) Bill Debates Read Hansard Text
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Let me begin by echoing the comments that others have made. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and, indeed, all our colleagues who took part in the debate on the Homelessness Reduction Bill. It was an extremely enjoyable morning.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to present my Bill. It would remove primary schools and nurseries from the scope of the statutory Prevent duty, which requires teachers and others to scrutinise and report on the thoughts and ideas of children in their care and seek out signs of extremism. Although we have only a little time today, Members who take an interest in the important issues addressed in the Bill will be pleased to know that there will be more time to debate them next Wednesday in Westminster Hall.
The Prevent statutory duty was imposed by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 on nearly 600,000 public sector workers in the wake of a proliferation of terror attacks. In fact, the Bill’s Third Reading took place on the day of the horrific Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris on 7 January 2015. It was also taking place in the run-up to the 2015 general election. It would have been a brave politician to oppose those measures at that time. Had I been in this place then, I might well have taken the Government’s word for it that this was a good thing—a benign development to keep our children safe. However, we have now had an opportunity to see how the legislation operates in practice. We have the benefit of hindsight. It is time to evaluate the operation of the Prevent duty, and to determine whether it is working or whether unintended consequences are negating its underlying and worthy objectives.
James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)
Members of the Home Office Committee, of which I am a member, have spoken both to critics of Prevent and to its supporters in the police force. Has my hon. Friend spoken to Prevent co-ordinators and police officers in her own area to establish whether they support the continuation of these measures?
Lucy Allan
The Home Affairs Committee has done an excellent job and has produced an excellent report. If I had time, I would say more about it. I have indeed met Prevent co-ordinators, and I have seen examples of good work being done under the Act. However, I want to concentrate on the unintended consequences, and the impact on certain communities who perceive what could be seen as a benign state intervention as something to be feared. I think that the Government should take that on board.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Given that the hon. Lady has only a few minutes, I am genuinely sorry to intervene on her speech, but may I ask her a very simple question? Does she think that the Prevent strategy as a whole is now damaged, or does she think that there is still hope for it?
Lucy Allan
I know from my preparation for the debate that many members of all our communities are adamantly opposed to Prevent, and for good reason. I hope to say a little about some of the issues that have led them to that conclusion.
The Government naturally have a duty to protect the public, and it is a duty that they are prioritising with the utmost seriousness. Of course it is right to tackle extremism that leads to violence, but the issue becomes a little more delicate when it comes to the suppression of political or religious views that the Government perceive to be too conservative or too extreme. What they see as helpful and benign may seem authoritarian to a person who experiences the intervention, and it has the potential to undermine the very values that we all hold dear and seek to protect.
At its heart, this debate is about the sort of society we want to live in and to what extent we allow the very real terrorist threat we face to interfere with our fundamental freedoms. Since its introduction in 2015, there has been increasing disquiet about the implementation of the statutory duty and the impact upon community cohesion. These concerns have come from many different quarters and I have taken the time to meet with many of these groups—
Business without Debate
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 24 February.
Farriers (Registration) Bill
Bill read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
Statutory Nuisance (Aircraft Noise) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Provision of Cervical Screening
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is no longer in the Chamber. He has worked incredibly hard to gest a very important and much-needed Bill through this House.
I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on women’s health. I am thankful for the opportunity to hold this debate today because this week is Cervical Cancer Prevention Week. The phrasing is important, because cervical cancer is notable for being not only treatable but preventable, under the right screening conditions. The events of this week are all about trying to ensure that those conditions exist for as many women as possible throughout the UK.
I start by acknowledging the invaluable work of Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which I believe is unique in the UK in being dedicated to this issue. I thank it for its work in raising awareness during this week, such as through its #SmearForSmear campaign—there is still plenty of time to take up the offer to do your selfies, gentlemen—in which women, and indeed men, are encouraged to take a selfie with smeared lipstick to raise awareness of smear testing. I look forward to seeing those pictures later.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
That is a fantastic idea. Only this week, I went for my own smear because of the campaign and the highlighting of the issue. All of us might want to join together to do #SmearForSmear, and tweet the pictures after the debate.
Paula Sherriff
I absolutely agree. I definitely expect the Minister, at least, to partake in such activity.
I thank Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust for the work that it does all year round towards the eradication of this disease. It has been my pleasure to work with it, through the auspices of the all-party group, on issues to do with access to cervical screening, and I look forward to doing so again in the future.
I am glad that the Minister is sitting down, as I would also like to break with my habit in this House by giving a word of praise for current Government policy. As almost all cervical cancers are caused by persistent human papillomavirus—HPV—I welcome the Government’s commitment to the HPV vaccination programme, even though I feel that its effect could be amplified with compulsory sex and relationships education in our schools.
Successive Governments have developed a successful cervical screening programme and, to their credit, this Government have maintained it. It is responsible for saving an estimated 5,000 lives a year. That is to be applauded, but it should not be taken for granted. Recent years have seen a drop in cervical screening coverage, and this risks an increase in the incidence of cervical cancer and the danger of further unnecessary deaths when we have been very close to making a breakthrough. We need to be vigilant if we are to maintain the progress we have already made and make up further ground in tackling the disease.
Even with the progress that we have made on screening, some 3,000 people a year are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and an astonishing 890 a year people die of it. The figures for 2015-16 show that the coverage in England sits at 72.7% of eligible women, which is the lowest for 19 years. This is in spite of the so-called Jade Goody effect, when the TV star’s death from cervical cancer in 2009 resulted in 400,000 more women getting screened. Sadly, that effect has now been completely reversed. The numbers of screenings have been falling year on year, and they now stand at 3% lower than they were in 2011. Screening coverage rates across all age groups are falling.
I cannot stress strongly enough how significant and worrying these statistics are. They mean that more than a quarter of women in this country are leaving themselves open to a cancer that can be prevented, but that can easily be fatal if left undetected. As we all know, the general rule of cancer is that early diagnosis leads to a better prognosis, and cervical cancer is no different. The later the diagnosis, the poorer the health outcomes, and the more invasive and personally costly the treatment options. It benefits everyone involved if cervical cancer can be prevented, or detected and treated early.
Let me address one of the groups with the least coverage: young women. Women are invited for smear tests from the age of 25, but new research by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust has shown that more than a quarter of women in the 25 to 29 age bracket are too embarrassed to attend one. Shockingly, the same research also suggested that 70% of young women did not believe that smear tests could reduce a woman’s risk of cervical cancer. Let me be clear: they absolutely can. We know that 75% of cervical cancers can be prevented from developing through regular smear testing, yet more than 220,000 of the 25 to 29-year-olds invited for a test in England in the past year did not attend.
The research found several other causes for concern, including the fact that 24% of young women were unable to recognise a single symptom of cervical cancer, and that only just over half of them recognised that bleeding outside of periods was a symptom. That is the most common symptom of cervical cancer. Additionally, fewer than half knew that smear tests look for pre-cancerous cells, and almost a quarter incorrectly thought that the test was for ovarian cancer.
This problem is not unique to the younger generation. The 25 to 29 age group remains the group with the lowest coverage, but the 45 to 49 age group has seen the fastest decrease in coverage in recent years. Women over 50 display a similar tendency to put off or ignore smear testing, with a third having delayed or not attended their test. A shocking one in 10 have delayed for more than five years. This is particularly disconcerting because women aged 50 to 64 are the most likely to receive an advanced stage diagnosis, with half of those being stage 2 or later. As I mentioned earlier, this means more invasive treatment and risks poorer outcomes.
By far the biggest risk factor in developing cervical cancer is not attending cervical screenings, but Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust has found that attendance declines with age. The charity’s long-term modelling has shown that if screening coverage continues to fall at its current rate, incidences of cervical cancer will have increased by 16% among 60 to 64-year-olds, and by a shocking 85% among 70 to 74-year-olds, by 2040. If screening coverage falls by another 5%, the mortality rate among 60 to 64-year-olds will double.
Age is not the only determining factor of one’s likelihood of being screened. One area of particular concern is that only 78% of black and minority ethnic women knew what a cervical screening test was compared with 91% of white women. This fell to 70% when looking at Asian women alone. Worryingly, only 53% of BAME women thought that screening was a necessary health test. This needs to be addressed, both nationally and within those communities.
The anxieties that all women were found to have about being screened, including embarrassment, worries about taking their clothes off in front of a stranger or discomfort with their body in general, are all heightened in particular ethnic communities with certain cultural norms. I have heard examples of mothers in certain minority ethnic households intercepting NHS screening invitation letters, leading to distress among younger women, who may experience cultural pressure that they should have maintained their virginity. If such factors put young BAME women off getting screened, that exposes them to significant risk of the disease. Particular focus should be paid to ensuring that mothers in those communities appreciate the dangers of cervical cancer, and that such cultural norms are not worth risking their daughters’ lives over.
We must ensure that coverage does not continue to fall. Indeed, it must be raised to an acceptable level, but the current outlook is mixed. A new report by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust for this year’s Cervical Cancer Prevention Week found that local provision is confused. While there is some evidence of best practice among local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, almost half of local authorities and almost two thirds of CCGs in England have not taken steps to increase cervical screening attendance in the past two years. The report also found regional disparities. In Yorkshire and Humber, 65% of CCGs had taken steps to increase screening, compared with just 18% of CCGs in the west midlands and the north-east. Similarly, 78% of local authorities in the north-west have taken action compared with just 33% in the east midlands. Perhaps most shockingly of all, in London, where coverage lags behind the rest of the country at just two thirds of women, 20 out of 32 local authorities reported no activity at all towards increasing screening coverage. That has all the appearance of a postcode lottery. We risk coverage continuing to fall in some areas of England while other areas make progress. Nobody wants a situation in which someone’s likelihood of developing cervical cancer is determined in no small part by the area in which they live. The Government should play their part to ensure that improvement happens across the board.
What can be done? We must seek to make access to cervical cancer screening as easy as possible. Screening takes five minutes and can save a life. Great strides have been made in recent years in making another simple test—blood pressure—available at every opportunity, which has been remarkably successful. There is every reason to expect that we could do the same for cervical cancer screening. However, I fear that the Government have taken a step in the wrong direction in recent years. Cuts to sexual health funding have led to a significant reduction in the provision of cervical screening through sexual health services. Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust found that screening is available to all women through sexual health services in less than a third of areas, which again points to a postcode lottery. That seems like a grave misstep when over a third of women in the 25 to 29 age group expressed a wish to access screening through such services, while one in five women over the age of 50 wanted more flexibly timed access to screening. My GP practice offers cervical screening only every Tuesday morning, making access difficult and deterring many women from going for an appointment. I hope that the Government will look again at how much their cuts to local government funding have affected sexual health services, particularly the accessibility of cervical screening.
We must also move with the times. In addition to the cultural issues about invitation letters that I mentioned earlier, the use of letters is now old fashioned. While I appreciate that many NHS services across the country now use text message reminders, we should ensure that reminders to come in for screening are, to the greatest possible extent, accessible in the format of the patient’s choice, be that text message or email. Digital accessibility is necessary in the modern world. We must also be cautious about the wording of the reminders. It has been brought to my attention that the current NHS literature sent out with reminders reads:
“It is your choice whether to have a cervical screening test or not. This leaflet aims to help you decide.”
I fail to see how that in any way contributes to the aim of urging as many women as possible to attend cervical cancer screening. We already know that far too many women across all age groups and ethnicities are already content to put it off for a potentially dangerous length of time. I implore the NHS to reconsider the wording of the leaflets and to include a greater degree of urgency, because the phrasing will undoubtedly have an effect.
You will note, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I might not have been my usual challenging self this afternoon. Because of the gravity of the issue at hand, I happily recognise where the Government are on the right path. The inclusion of a commitment to increase cervical cancer screening in the 2015 cancer strategy is particularly welcome, as is the Government’s commitment to HPV primary screening, the implementation of which could prevent at least 400 cases of cervical cancer a year.
I will finish by asking several questions of the Government. Will the Minister commit to a national campaign to prioritise an increase in cervical screening attendance? How will the Government encourage co-operation between the different levels of the health service to ensure that we see cervical screening rates rising once again? Will the IT systems for HPV primary screening be up and running as planned, or will we experience unnecessary delays that could result in avoidable diagnoses? Will the Minister look at the quality and outcomes framework incentives for general practitioners to make sure that GP practices are really incentivised to improve cervical screening coverage? Finally, how do the Government intend to address problems with the accessibility of cervical cancer screening among particularly hard-to-reach groups, such as BAME women?
It is not unthinkable that we could see the effective eradication of cervical cancer if we take the necessary action. Although I applaud the Government’s existing programmes and their commitment to tackling cervical cancer, I hope that the Minister will take note of the research from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust—perhaps he will even work with it to identify where there are still gaps in provision—and take that action now.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Just before I call the Minister, I say to the hon. Lady that Jade Goody lived in my constituency. When she died, I wrote to her mother to say that her daughter’s death had not been in vain because it had drawn attention to the situation and had warned generations of women of the action that they must take to protect themselves and give themselves a chance.
I am shocked that the hon. Lady has drawn to the attention of the House this afternoon the fact that that has not been the case. I sincerely hope that her bringing this debate to the House this afternoon and the Minister’s attention to the points she has made—I am sure he is about to address them now—will reverse that situation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)
Thank you for those comments, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) for her constructive speech, which was challenging towards the end. She raised four important points, which I will try to address in my remarks.
I also thank the hon. Lady for her work with the all-party parliamentary group on women’s health to lead the charge on cervical screening. On Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust and the #SmearForSmear campaign, during her remarks I was able to check with both my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), and the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), and we will be delighted to take a selfie with her that we can use for #SmearForSmear. This debate is about asking challenging questions, but it is also about awareness. We will do anything we can to help a charity such as Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust do its job better. Perhaps we can take the selfie together after we finish.
As the hon. Member for Dewsbury said, nine women a day are being diagnosed with cervical cancer and two to three women a day are dying. It is a cancer that is almost entirely preventable through screening although, as she said, the symptoms are hard to detect, which I will cover. She said that the cancer strategy, which is being led by Cally Palmer, covers screening in some detail, including how we will proceed, and addresses the need right across the cancers for clinical commissioning groups to take a consistent approach to survival rates, early diagnosis, 62 day referral-to-treatment times and the whole cancer experience.
One of the things that I always say when we in this place have a debate about cancer is that we spend too much time—I am as guilty, or have been in the past, as any other Member—discussing the bricks and mortar of the health service and not enough thinking about some things that probably matter more to our constituents, such as one-year survival rates for cancer. We should be evaluating and holding our CCGs to account much more often over differential one-year survival rates, because, in the end, they probably matter to more people and have more impact on their lives than perhaps some of the accident and emergency reconfigurations that we discuss.
There is a cervical cancer screening programme, and the hon. Lady made some good points about take-up. She did not talk about the campaign that has been waged in some areas on screening under the age of 25. I do not think that that is something that Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust wants, but I will cover it and the reasons we do not do it.
The hon. Lady mentioned the importance of the enhanced HPV screen that is coming in, asking a question about the IT systems to support that. We are planning that that will be in place—I have confirmed that; I think written questions have been tabled on the issue—by April 2019, when it will be rolled out. That will be in place. I can give her that assurance.
I want to talk a little about the point the hon. Lady made about GP awareness and clinical practice, because, as she said, there is not enough awareness of the symptoms of cervical cancer. It is hard to detect the symptoms, such as abdominal bleeding and its many causes. I will also cover the fact, which she rightly referred to, that the UK is doing a lot in the area of vaccination, which is probably what will achieve the most progress in the future and make the biggest difference in getting rid of this disease, which is, as you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, quite preventable.
On screening, I will start with the good news: we have screened 3 million women a year between the ages of 25 and 49. Every three years, a screening is available. After that, to the age of 64, it is every five years. The view is that, if that screening were not being done, there would be about 5,000 more deaths a year, rather than the 700 to 800 that are happening now.
Although there are few areas of cancer treatment, performance and survival rates on which the UK could say that it is a world leader, the screening figures from the OECD show that we are No. 4 of the 30 OECD countries. We do more screening than countries such as Germany, Denmark and Austria. However, the hon. Lady raised the point, and she is right, that screening rates are going down. They are going down across the world and we do not wholly understand why. We need to do more to get them up, as about 25% of women who are entitled to be screened are not being screened, and that percentage increases for women coming for their first screen at the age of 25 to 29. That is arguably the most important one, but the percentage of those not coming is about 33%.
As the hon. Lady said, the incidence of that is higher among ethnic minority women and among women with learning disabilities. There is a correlation with social deprivation as well. Perhaps that is predictable, but it is nevertheless true.
On the reasons for that, the hon. Lady talked about, perhaps, embarrassment. I think Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust has done some work on that. Some people say that they have no time to go to their GP, or they are scared about what the procedure involves or they think it is not important. We need to do what we can to improve that.
The hon. Lady raised some interesting points about the letter people receive, and she quoted from it. I am told that that correspondence is being reviewed, but it strikes me—she made the point in her speech—that we are all on the same side in this regard. One way forward might be for her and Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust to come and speak to me about some of those suggestions, because they would be pushing at an open door. We can do that in the next few weeks.
We are trying to make the information more accessible, particularly for women with learning difficulties, because there are specific issues there—there are specific issues with their health in general, but particularly with regard to this issue. As the hon. Lady said, a lot of work is going on to target those GP practice areas and understand why they have such high incidence of no-shows. It is somewhat correlated with ethnic minorities, and it might involve some behavioural norms, for the reasons that were mentioned. I should say at this point that the Chancellor gave £650,000 from the tampon tax to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which has used that money to try to understand, behaviourally, why a quarter of women are still not coming forward for screening in spite of a second reminder, and to increase awareness. None of that is to say, though, that there is not more to do. I am happy to speak to her and Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust about it.
From time to time there have been petitions and discussions about lowering the age limit for screening. I was pleased that the hon. Lady did not mention that, because it has been looked at again by the UK National Screening Committee, the World Health Organisation and, indeed, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, and there is agreement that earlier screening would do more harm than good because it is particularly likely to lead to false positives, which would create a pressure for biopsies that are not necessary. Notwithstanding the tragic case of Amber Cliff, the view is that screening that cohort of women earlier not only would not be beneficial—it is not a question of it not being cost-effective—but would actually make things worse. In that cohort of women, about five a year die, so it is particularly important that they understand the symptoms and go to their GP as quickly as possible. I should emphasise that there is no EU or other UK country that screens women under the age of 25. I shall discuss vaccination in more detail in a moment, but it is one of the things that will make a difference to women in that age group, and it will help with the screening no-shows, because we are getting much better uptake numbers for vaccination.
The hon. Lady talked about HPV as a significant indicator of risk. One thing that is being introduced on the back of the normal, historical screening is screening for the virus on the first occasion. If it is present, the woman will be monitored much more closely going forward, because it is a very good indicator of the likelihood of cervical cancer developing. As I said, that programme will be rolled out nationally from April 2019. We are at the forefront of countries that are doing that around the world. I used to work with IT systems, and the hon. Lady is right to continue to ask about this one. The referral system and database will be ready to make that roll-out happen.
The hon. Lady rightly discussed the need for a GP outcomes framework. NHS England has done work to ensure that GP awareness is as high as it should be and that women, particularly those with mid-period bleeding, understand that it is serious and should be investigated and, if necessary, that they should be sent to a gynaecologist.
HPV, which is the indicator of this and other cancers, lends itself to vaccination, and we are one of the first countries in the world to bring in a very high volume of vaccinations of girls aged between 12 and 13. I am pleased to say that, last year, 85% of year 9 girls received the vaccination, which almost entirely takes away the likelihood of cervical cancer developing. That 85% is a higher number than the screening number, and it will help us to catch the people and the areas that have traditionally been hard to reach. Indeed, it is one means that we will use to address the issue of those hard-to-reach groups.
As HPV leads to other cancers, it has been suggested that the vaccination should also be given to boys. That is under discussion now, and we will be making a decision in the next few months. At the moment, only girls are vaccinated.
Let me finish by thanking again the hon. Member for Dewsbury for the points she raised, and for the way in which she did so. This is not a party issue—all of us are against cervical cancer. However, it is right that we challenge the postcode lottery that she mentioned and discuss ways to improve the take up of screening. If the five of us who are in the Chamber can do a selfie at the end of this debate and give it to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust it will perhaps show that, at least, the awareness part has been achieved.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Defence Equipment Plan
(7 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Harriett Baldwin)
I am pleased to place in the Library of the House today the fifth annual summary of the Defence equipment plan. The plan shows the Ministry of Defence (MOD)’s progress in delivering an affordable programme.
The National Audit Office (NAO) is publishing in parallel its independent assessment of the affordability of our equipment plan. Its report notes the size, challenges and financial complexity of the Defence equipment programme. One consequence of the progress we have made to date is the agreement between the NAO and the Department to move from the NAO providing external assurance of the major projects report, to internal, but still independent validation by the MOD’s Cost Assurance & Analysis Service. The NAO also points out where we must continue to improve and refine our work in the future. We will continue to work openly with the NAO to demonstrate the financial robustness and affordability of the equipment plan.
The Government are committed to the Defence budget increasing by 0.5% above inflation each year for the remainder of this Parliament. We are planning to spend £178 billion on equipment and support out to 2025-26, which will provide our Armed Forces with the equipment to deliver Joint Force 2025.
[HCWS442]
NATO Parliamentary Assembly
(7 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I wish to confirm that the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Jamie Reed) will be replaced by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) as a Member of the United Kingdom delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
My right hon. Friend the then Foreign Secretary (Mr Hammond) published the full list of the United Kingdom delegation in his written statement on 23 November 2015.
[HCWS322]
House of Lords
Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL]
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL] 2016-17 View all Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL] 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 16(a) Amendment for Committee (PDF, 51KB) - (25 Jan 2017)
Baroness Massey of Darwen
“Impact of this Act
(1) The Secretary of State must, at a time the Secretary of State considers appropriate, undertake a review of the impact of this Act on disabled children, their families and carers, and the provision of support services.(2) The Secretary of State must make arrangements for a report of the review to be laid before each House of Parliament.”
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, my amendment is very simple. It simply seeks a review of the impact of the Bill on disabled children and their families and carers, and it seeks to ensure that support services are appropriate. I think it is a very sensible amendment; we should be reviewing what we do and taking great care to ensure that disabled people have the support they need. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for giving us the opportunity to discuss his Bill. I am aware of the complexities and sometimes the anguish that surrounds prospective parents making a decision about abortion. I am also aware that the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, has very sensibly consulted on the Bill. I shall not go into disability rights. I have huge respect for people with disabilities and their families, who often achieve brilliantly. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for meeting me this morning to talk about my amendment.
This past week I was at Strasbourg, at the Council of Europe. We discussed new technologies to prevent abnormality in the foetus, often from genetic problems. One of those present supporting further research described the dilemma of parents. He and his wife discovered that she was carrying a child with Down’s syndrome. They decided to allow the pregnancy to continue. My position on abortion is very simple: the final decision is the woman’s choice. I realise that such women now often discuss such a crisis with their partner; sometimes not. That should remain their prerogative. Abortion is not, of course, always linked to disability. The Bill would remove Section 1(1)(d) of the Abortion Act 1967, which allows for an abortion when,
“two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion … that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.
If the Bill were to become law, parents would no longer have the option to end a pregnancy after 24 weeks when faced with a serious antenatal diagnosis, including in those cases where there is no realistic possibility of a pregnancy resulting in the baby surviving after birth. I think that is a real problem.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a very learned body, has addressed the issue of foetal abnormality. Its report provides information to assist doctors and other health professionals in supporting women and their families when an abnormality is diagnosed. Since the last guidance was issued in 1996 there have, as we all know, been great advances in the detection of congenital abnormalities, resulting in early diagnosis and clearer indications for the offer of termination of pregnancy. The law relating to termination of pregnancy has not changed since 1990, although it has been tested in a number of specific cases. The 1967 Act, as amended, sets out the grounds and time limits for termination of pregnancy for foetal abnormality. Interestingly, there is no legal definition of “substantial risk”, or of “serious handicap”. An assessment of the seriousness of a foetal abnormality is considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account all available clinical information.
Bodies have discussed this issue of foetal abnormality endlessly and it is now time to review what has been going on in relation to disabled people. Some may say that I am adopting a very clinical position. I am not. As I said earlier, I recognise that decisions on abortion may cause emotional stress, strain and anguish. My ethical stance, as I said, is that it is a woman’s right to choose. Therefore, I cannot accept many of the precepts of the Bill, much as I respect the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin. My amendment simply seeks rational and objective evidence of the impact on disabled children to allow us to discuss such impact in a more analytical and considered way. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, the idea of having a review of the effect of legislation strikes me as a very good proposition in general, and in particular in relation to this Bill. Obviously, as the noble Baroness has explained, the precise consequences of the Bill, which I congratulate my noble friend on bringing forward, are not very easy to see, because there are overlapping provisions in the Abortion Act which might deal with some aspects at least of the particular circumstances that the noble Baroness referred to. In my judgment, this is a useful amendment and a similar principle might well apply in other legislation as well.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord and welcome the amendment from the noble Baroness. It strikes me that in this 50th anniversary year of the original legislation, which has led to some 8 million abortions, it would be a good thing if something like the amendment moved by the noble Baroness were attached to the original legislation. There is no sunset clause in it and it has never been reviewed, which I find staggering considering that 50 years have passed.
The amendment that the noble Baroness referred to, which was passed in 1990, extended the provisions of the 1967 legislation to enable the abortion of a baby with a disability, right up to and even during birth. As I pointed out at Second Reading in support of the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, this has led in some cases to abortion on grounds such as cleft palate, club foot and harelip. Indeed, 90% of all babies with Down’s syndrome, which the noble Baroness referred to, are now routinely aborted in this country. This is pretty close to eugenics and we need to consider much more deeply the issues that relate to the legislation governing the amendment that has been moved.
I sometimes think that instead of the tramlines on which we often find ourselves, with deeply held views—I respect the position that the noble Baroness takes; it is different from my own but I respect it—we need to go far more deeply into these questions. I am grateful, therefore, to the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for giving us the opportunity to have this debate in your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Stroud (Con)
My Lords, I welcome and support the amendment. At Second Reading I made two points. First, the Bill removes discrimination from our legislation, as set out in Section l(l)(d) of the Abortion Act 1967. Secondly, the Bill’s crucial objective is to address what takes place in the consulting room. A significant number of parents say that they feel very real pressure to have an abortion when what they want is support. The noble Baroness’s amendment addresses that issue. I thank her and congratulate her on her amendment.
In 2015, 929 abortions [see Official Report, 30/1/17; col. 967.] were undertaken in England and Wales after 24 weeks under ground E. There may well be a need for additional support for parents should any of these children be carried to term in the future, rather than terminated within the 24-week timeframe, so this is a welcome addition to a very important Bill. But welcome though it is, it should not be argued that this causes a financial exposure for the Government. The Government are already required to provide for all these families, regardless of the choice they make. Having worked with the Treasury over a number of years, I know the danger is that it could view this as a financial exposure, which is not appropriate for a Private Member’s Bill. My point is that we already have responsibility for these families in caring for them and supporting them in any way and with any choice they make. I welcome the amendment, with that caveat.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, I was unable to be present at Second Reading but my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol spoke on this matter, welcoming the Bill, and I add my support. I also welcome the amendment because I believe that, as others have already said, such a review would be very helpful.
One reason has just been demonstrated, although the noble Baroness would not have known this at the time; that is, the figure she quoted for the number of abortions that took place in this category after 24 weeks is different from the one that I have been supplied with. That said, the number is not hugely different. The point is that a relatively small number of abortions take place in category E after 24 weeks. If I understand it correctly, the noble Baroness’s amendment would apply not just after the 24-week period but to the Act as a whole. That review would be very welcome because we do not know exactly what is going on.
The Bill is primarily about the rights of the disabled. It is really important that we move to recognising that if we believe viability is at 24 weeks, it is 24 weeks for all foetuses and none should be excluded from that. That is why I support the Bill as a whole.
Baroness Gale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Massey for moving this amendment. It has been welcomed across the House, which is a good sign that we can have a really good debate on this. It is a sensible amendment as it asks the Secretary of State to,
“undertake a review of the impact of this Act on disabled children, their families and carers, and the provision of support services”,
with,
“a report of the review to be laid before each House”.
As other noble Lords have said, Acts of Parliament are seldom, if ever, reviewed, so no one knows whether or not they are working. This amendment will ensure that Parliament can at least understand how the Act is working.
My noble friend Lady Hayter said at Second Reading:
“Despite the contribution that disabled people make to national life and their human right to equality of treatment, there are, sadly, still huge hurdles in the way of many of them being able to pursue a full, and indeed fulfilled, life”.
She went on to comment on the lack of adequate resources to meet the additional needs of people with disabilities and made this very important point:
“Of course, all this is not helped by the Government’s welfare reforms”.—[Official Report, 21/10/16; col. 2558.]
There are approximately 12 million people living with disabilities, impairment or limiting long-term illnesses in the UK today. Of these, 5.7 million are of working age, 5.2 million are over 65 and 0.8 million are children. It is recognised that raising a child with disabilities costs up to three times as much as raising a child without disabilities. Twenty-one per cent of children in families with at least one disabled member are in poverty, a significantly higher proportion than the 16% of children in families with no disabled member.
The Government revealed in the Autumn Statement that they had set aside £360 million over six years to ensure that families with a disabled child will receive child disability tax credits in future. However, the payments will be backdated only to April, meaning that individual families may have lost out on entitlements totalling up to £20,000 over the past five years. This is a big loss. The recent UN committee investigation into the rights of disabled people in the UK said that a range of measures introduced since 2010, including the bedroom tax and cuts to disability benefits and social care budgets, had disproportionately and adversely affected disabled children. These are big cuts for people suffering from disabilities. Cuts to the employment support allowance work-related activity group will take more than £1,500 a year away from 500,000 disabled people—this from a fund that was designed to help people stay in or find work. These cuts will reduce support for disabled people by £650 million a year.
An analysis from the TUC found that the Government are years behind schedule on their manifesto commitments to halve the disability employment gap. At their rate of progress, it will take until 2030. The research forecast that by 2020 just over half of disabled people will be in work, which is 11% less than the Government promised. There is no doubt that disabled people are suffering, and will suffer, from the cuts made by government so there is much more to do in this field.
That is why the Labour Party is calling for a complete overhaul of the current system. We are undertaking an intensive consultation exercise, with disabled people at the heart of shaping our approach, through our disability equality roadshow. It is why I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for bringing this important amendment before us, which allows us to highlight the difficulties that people with disabilities have to face now and in the future. Can the Minister take note of the needs of disabled people, which are much greater than those of non-disabled people, to find ways of giving a lot more assistance than they receive at present?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate noble Lords on the quality of debate on this amendment and recognise the broad welcome that it has received from all the speakers. I also join noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Shinkwin for bringing forward the Bill and raising the issue of disability rights and their effect on abortion, and in commending the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on the clarity and conviction with which she made her case today.
Like all issues of conscience, the issue of abortion is one that divides opinions in ways that transcend the usual political boundaries because of the very personal reasons that parliamentarians have for their beliefs. It is for that reason that Governments remain neutral on such issues. The role of government in issues of conscience is to implement the law as decided by Parliament. On that basis, were this amendment to be carried and the Bill passed, the Government would of course carry out the proposed review in order to monitor the impact of the legislation, and we would indeed report to Parliament in due course.
The amendment proposed fits well with the overall determination of successive Governments to improve the lives of disabled people and their families. That has been a cornerstone of the approach of this Government and the previous Conservative-led Government. The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced a new statutory framework for local authorities and clinical commissioning groups to work together to secure services for children and young people who have special educational needs and disabilities. The support available to families includes early intervention programmes that aim to help the child develop, as well as providing support to the family from health visitors, midwives and others.
I also recognise that this amendment would improve the evidence base available for policymakers. There is of course a general desire in this Government to have more evidence-based policy-making, which the amendment would clearly aid. But, in the end, this is an issue of conscience, so noble Lords are free to decide their views according to their ethical or religious beliefs.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, are the Government supportive of the Equality Act?
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in support of my Bill, and I thank sincerely and in good faith the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for her amendment, which I not only accept but welcome as a logical extension to a logical Bill. It is a Bill that brings the law as it currently applies to disability before birth into line with how your Lordships’ House has already ensured that the law applies to disability after birth.
The amendment is about the impact of my Bill. But it is a simple, wonderful truth that I owe your Lordships’ House so much because of the impact of legislation that it has already passed. Without your Lordships’ House, a commitment to disability equality would never have been enshrined in law. Noble Lords will know that noble giants such as Jack Ashley and Alf Morris, with both of whom I had the privilege of working and whose spirits I invoke today, led the fight to outlaw disability discrimination. All my Bill does is to carry on their noble work, because it would allow us to outlaw disability discrimination where it begins—at source before birth. It is simply unfinished business. The amendment would help because it would measure the Bill’s impact on disabled children, their families and carers, and on the provision of support services.
When I think about the incredible role that strong women—women such as my own mother—play in the lives of their disabled children, anything that supports families and carers after birth and, crucially, on diagnosis before birth is welcome. Moreover, it stands to reason that such support services, be they provided by the state, charities, parents’ organisations or disabled people’s organisations, should be included in an impact review so that people can learn and disseminate best practice and, where necessary, ensure that improvements are made.
Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL]
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] 2016-17 View all Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill [HL] 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Cox (CB)
My Lords, I am profoundly grateful to all noble Lords speaking in this debate and to many other noble Lords who have expressed their support for the Bill but are unable to be in their place today. The Bill seeks to address two interrelated issues: the suffering of women oppressed by religiously sanctioned gender discrimination, and a rapidly developing alternative quasi-legal system which undermines the fundamental principle of one law for all.
The Bill is strongly supported by many organisations concerned with the suffering of vulnerable women, including Karma Nirvana, the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, British Arabs Supporting Universal Women’s Rights, the National Secular Society, the Muslim Women’s Advisory Council and the internationally renowned Canadian Muslim scholar Raheel Raza, who describes this Bill as a blessing to help women to achieve their rights.
I am especially grateful for their support because the problems are escalating and the need to find some solutions is ever more urgent. As Theresa May, when Home Secretary, highlighted almost a year ago:
“There is evidence of women being ‘divorced’ under sharia law and left in penury, wives who are forced to return to abusive relationships because sharia councils say a husband has a right to ‘chastise’, and sharia councils giving the testimony of a woman only half the weight of the testimony of a man”.
In a free society, individuals must be able to organise their affairs according to their own principles, religious or otherwise, but we must not condone situations where rulings are applied which are fundamentally incompatible with the laws, values, principles and policies of our country. The courageous Muslim author Dr Ida Lichter wrote to me this week saying:
“Denying our Muslim women the benefits of British justice is tantamount to condescension and marginalisation of an oppressed minority”.
This week, we heard deeply moving and disturbing first-hand accounts during a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on “Honour” Based Abuse. I will give two examples from the meeting, which are merely the tip of a huge iceberg, but they are two too many and we should not be allowing these situations which cause such aguish in this country.
The first is the story of Aala—a pseudonym, of course. She is originally from Pakistan and had an Islamic marriage in the UK. Aala was raped, abused and financially exploited by her husband. Her imam and her husband refused to negotiate an Islamic divorce, claiming that the marriage had never taken place, despite the fact that she had a video recording of the ceremony. She told us, weeping, that she is now so ostracised by her community, both in the UK and in Pakistan, that she feels such shame and loneliness that she has attempted suicide. Secondly, we heard from Fozia, who was sent under false pretences from Britain to Kashmir, where she was threatened at gunpoint into a forced marriage. Returning to the UK, she soon discovered that her new “husband” was entering into another marriage to help him to stay in the UK. When Fozia went to the police with her concern over bigamy, they told her, “We can’t arrest him, because it’s allowed in your religion”.
Such suffering cannot be allowed to continue. Provisions must be introduced to ensure that the operation of sharia law principles in the UK today is not undermining the rights of women and the rule of law. I therefore briefly identify the concerns which the Bill seeks to address. I recognise its provisions cannot solve all the sensitive, complex and collateral issues, but I have been assured by the women whom they seek to help that they would be immensely useful.
First, the Bill seeks to address arbitration tribunals which apply discriminatory rules. The Arbitration Act 1996 allows parties to agree how certain civil disputes, often financial, should be resolved, including according to the law of another legal system. This permits arbitration to operate according to sharia principles. The Bill recognises Muslim arbitration tribunals and will not affect their operation in accordance with the law of the land. However, there is concern that even when these tribunals are operating within the terms of the Arbitration Act, some are practising gender discrimination such as: inequality between men and women regarding access to divorce, whereby the man can just say, “I divorce you”, three times; polygamy, so that a man can marry four wives; child custody, whereby, in the event of a divorce, a father may claim custody of his children, often at the age of seven; inheritance provisions, whereby women and girls receive only half the amount of the legacy given to men and boys; and rules of evidence that provide that the value of a woman’s testimony is deemed to be just half that of a man’s. That is why the Bill seeks to close any loophole that might remain in the Equality Act 2010 and strengthens court powers to set aside rulings based on such discrimination, if the woman is unhappy.
The second concern relates to arbitration tribunals acting outside their remit, for example by deciding cases relating to criminal law, such as those involving domestic violence and grievous bodily harm. The Casey review, commissioned in 2015 by the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary, cited claims that,
“some Sharia Councils have been supporting the values of extremists, condoning wife-beating, ignoring marital rape and allowing forced marriage … we were told that some women were unaware of their legal rights to leave violent husbands and were being pressurised to return to abusive partners or attend reconciliation sessions with their husbands despite legal injunctions in place to protect them from violence”.
The suffering of vulnerable women can be exacerbated by the nature of the closed communities in which they may live, where they are subjected to enormous pressure not to seek outside professional help because that is deemed to bring “shame” on the family or the community. In many cases, women have suffered further difficulties because police, civil authorities and professional personnel have been reluctant to take action that might be deemed to give offence to the leaders of these communities—there are many cases of that.
This relates to the third concern that the Bill seeks to address: the crucial matter of consent, which must be at the heart of both arbitration and mediation. Women may be pressured by their families into going to sharia councils. They may also lack the knowledge essential for informed choice, such as about their rights under British law. Therefore, in terms of court orders arising from mediation or other negotiated agreement, the Bill creates enhanced mechanisms for orders to be set aside if there is evidence that the consent of one party was not genuine.
The fourth concern relates to the estimated 100,000 couples in Britain today who are living in Islamic marriages not recognised by English law. Women in such marriages risk being duped into believing they are married under the law of the land, only to find upon divorce they have few to no rights in terms of finance or property.
The influential Aurat report by the courageous Muslim woman Habiba Jaan described Muslim women’s experiences of marriage in the West Midlands. The majority of women who had a religious-only ceremony were unaware their marriage was not officially recognised by English law. Many were deeply disturbed when they discovered their predicament and said they wished they had known the reality of their situation and its implications.
To try to address aspects of these problems, in November 2013, I moved an amendment to the then Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which would have protected women who are duped into believing they are married under the law of the land only to find upon divorce they have limited rights. I am sorry that the Government rejected the amendment. The Government rejected a similar amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill in November 2016, which would have ensured that any celebrant of a religious marriage had an obligation to ensure that the religious marriage is also legally registered. Others have suggested an amendment to the Marriage Act 1949, requiring all religious and secular marriages to be registered. That may be a suggestion for consideration on another day, for which I would greatly value advice.
In conclusion, it is important to emphasise that the Bill does not specify any particular faith tradition. If women from other faiths experience systematic discrimination, the provisions of the Bill would also be available for them. It is also important to recognise that the Bill does not interfere with the internal theological affairs of faith groups. If a woman with devout convictions accepts religiously sanctioned gender discrimination, the Bill would not inhibit the practice of her faith. But the problems I have highlighted often arise because choice is not informed or genuinely free.
Since the Bill was last debated, evidence of these concerns has increased. So too has the need for urgent action. I hope, therefore, that the Bill will receive a more sympathetic response from the Minister than on previous occasions, when the Government claimed that there is no need for such provisions as all citizens can access and benefit from their rights according to law. The chasm between the de jure situation and the de facto reality is an abyss into which countless women are falling and suffering as a result.
I also hope that the Minister will not use the ongoing Home Office inquiry as an excuse to delay viable legislation, especially in view of the widespread concerns expressed by many organisations about the composition of the review panel, which is chaired and advised by theologians, fails to include non-Muslim experts on Islam, and fails to include human rights experts.
Muslim women are today suffering in this country in ways in which, as I always say, would make the suffragettes turn in their graves. Many of them see the proposals of the Bill as a lifeline, or, as one lady said to me, “a light at the end of the tunnel of darkness and oppression”. The Bill cannot solve all the problems, such as intimidation or the intention—mentioned by many Muslim women—of those who might continue their practices underground. But it would provide some much-needed help and show vulnerable British Muslim women that their concerns are being taken seriously rather than being ignored in the name of “political correctness” and “multiculturalism”. I passionately hope they will not be disappointed again. I beg to move.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her doughty championship of equality and the importance of access to justice. She is a life force on so many issues. This is the third time that I have followed, or rather limped, in her slipstream to support the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill or similar versions, and I do so with pleasure and on the same three grounds that I have before.
First, as a former chair of ACAS, I understand the importance of arbitration and mediation. It was our bread and butter. It relied on the genuine consent of the parties, a clear knowledge of what they were entering into and an understanding that they were equal before the conciliator or arbitrator. Any system which might be seen to misuse these procedures would be a reputational risk for arbitration and mediation in general.
Secondly, we should all be equal under the same laws. I say “should be”, because equal access to justice today is a right which is becoming rather flimsy due to major cuts in legal aid and advice agencies imposed by coalition and Conservative Governments. Nevertheless, equality is a fundamental right.
Thirdly, I feel strongly that women’s equality has to be fought for as vigorously today as in previous generations. Too often, it takes second place to other considerations: it is too sensitive, it might be seen to be anti-religious or anti-Muslim or—my favourite—women have gained all the rights they need and existing laws are sufficient as they stand.
If any women in this country today fail to get justice because they are misled about their rights or are surrounded by family who elevate custom and practice to the status of a right, then we are still a long way off from equal rights for women. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said, the majority of women who marry under sharia law in this country are not aware that this does not give them legal rights under UK law on marriage, which places them at a potential disadvantage.
In the last debate on the subject, reference was made by the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, to the Home Office’s counterextremism strategy, which was published in October 2015 and reported that the Government intended,
“to commission an independent review to understand the extent to which Shari’a is being misused or applied in a way which is incompatible with the law. This is expected to provide an initial report to the Home Secretary in 2016”.
I remember feeling concerned that the issue of women’s rights had been referred to anywhere in the Home Office, let alone the counterextremism strategy. It seemed at the time an insensitive and inappropriate thing to do. Nevertheless, my question to the Minister is: where are we now, 15 months later, on this independent review?
Also in the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, referred to the Law Commission’s preliminary scoping study of marriage in England and Wales. The commission was due to report in December 2015 and we were assured that the Government would be considering the next steps. What progress, if any, is being made?
I would like to say something about custom and practice. It is very influential in all walks of life, for good or not so good. As a former trade unionist and still a strong supporter of trade unionism, I know all about custom and practice. To repeat an example I gave in a previous debate, I turned up to the electricity showrooms on the Chiswick High Road in the late 1960s to take out a hire purchase agreement on an electric fire for our rental accommodation, only to be told that I needed my husband’s signature to take out that agreement. He had even less money than I did but he had the power of the signature. That was custom and practice, and it was only two generations ago. I remember the way in which women subjected to appalling domestic violence could be informed by the police, if they were brave enough to go to the police in the first place, that it was a domestic and they could do nothing. That was custom and practice.
In summing up the last debate, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said:
“Integration requires changes to society, not necessarily changes to the law”.—[Official Report, 23/10/15; col. 904.]
That may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth. There comes a time when something that a society accepted as custom and practice has to be changed by the law in order to make it unacceptable. The Bill is an attempt to say that the law needs to step in, not necessarily to move us forward but to stop us moving backwards.
In conclusion, I really hope the Government will not continue to drift along in the brackish waters of scoping studies, Home Office counterextremism strategies and hoping-it-will-go-away working parties. I look forward to the Minister’s positive response.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, in this country we are privileged to enjoy extensive freedoms, particularly freedom of religion. However, the freedom of religion must accompany the freedom to change one’s religion. It is extremely important that the kind of oppression that comes from the establishments in religion trying to prevent their followers from changing their religion should not be allowed as a matter of law in this country.
The Bill deals with that in what in my judgment is a very effective way, assuming that it became law. First, looking at the provisions of negotiated settlements, it makes it plain that the real consent of both parties is essential for that agreement to stand. That strikes me as fundamental. If a person wants to change their faith or some of its tenets, whether they are a man or woman, they should be absolutely free to do so without any possible restraint. Any attempt to restrain that is in the nature of oppression, which ought to be outlawed so far as possible. Some of these pressures are very subtle and difficult to eliminate or indeed discover or deal with publicly. However, the test put in the clause dealing with negotiated settlement, that the consent must be genuine, is tested by the criteria that are set out. I think that is extremely effective. It is probably as effective as any provision of law could be to deal with these sometimes subtle pressures, particularly on young people.
My second point is about arbitration, which comes first in the Bill. In a sense, arbitration is part of the machinery of our justice system. It is a very distinct procedure from the ordinary court procedure but, if properly carried out under the provisions of our law, it has the effect of becoming binding, just as a court judgment does. The Arbitration Act makes provision for that. There is a need to deal with the pressures that can come under that as a publicly recognised method of enforcement, or of reaching agreement and then enforcing that agreement. In that connection, therefore, the provisions of our ordinary law that apply to everyone else are applied, and the Bill does that in a very balanced way. I am not saying it could not be subject to amendment, but it strikes me as extremely balanced at the moment for dealing with a problem that has been shown to exist in our country in more than one area of religious establishment.
It is important that this matter should be dealt with sooner rather than later. It is easy to put off, but on the whole the urgency of the situation merits action at an early date.
Lord Carey of Clifton (CB)
My Lords, I support the Bill, which was introduced so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I applaud her commitment to those who are oppressed, whether here or abroad.
It is so easy in our country to take for granted our freedom, our equality and our tolerance, but it does not take much knowledge of British history to realise that these values have been hard fought and are comparatively recent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has just said. Some might therefore wonder why it was necessary to enact this Bill when under civil law women are equal to men in every sense and have the same access to the fruits of freedom. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has set out the reasons admirably, but I would like to set out the following thoughts.
It is understandable that new citizens to our country will inevitably bring with them their cultural and religious expectations, and for the most part they are welcome to do so. In so many ways, they can enrich our common cultural life. Sometimes, though, some of those traditions may collide sharply with the resident nation and raise questions about compatibility. Such is the case when it comes to marital relationships when they appear before sharia courts. It is equally understandable that religious traditions will want to order their lives according to their faiths, and that is true for Christianity, Judaism and other traditions. However, we must all conform to standards expected by civil law in its commitment to uphold justice for everyone.
The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, outlined her concern for Muslim women trapped in bad marriages with intimidation and threats whenever they try to free themselves. Parliament exists to clarify the law whenever it is challenged, and it must come to the rescue of those unsure of their rights.
Some might say—this has already been mentioned—that a law such as this is unnecessary. All that the noble Baroness wishes to address is already there in current laws; all we need to do is apply them. That may be objectively true, but whenever there are loopholes, whenever there is confusion, whenever a minority of sharia courts—I am assured it is a minority—exist to trump, which is an interesting word, civil law, we must correct abuses by strengthening existing laws to ensure that Muslim women and other groups have the same rights as men.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for introducing her Private Member’s Bill. She raises important issues affecting the principle of equality before the law, and she has my full support.
The noble Baroness has travelled far and wide, and we are privileged to have her contribution in your Lordships’ House. I have had the opportunity of attending a number of meetings convened by her. I heard at first hand testimonies of courageous women who have suffered unbearable forms of gender discrimination. We must add to this the practice of polygamous marriages and inequality of access to divorce. This is what victims suffer.
There are also child custody policies and matters connected with inheritance laws, so ably described by the noble Baroness. While we enjoy the protection of British laws, these women are drawn into practices that often disadvantage them.
Evidence of this nature, often in the name of faith-based practices, must be considered alien in any civilised society. Since the early days of Commonwealth migration, successive Governments have been proactive and have valued equality and diversity as one of their core values. The evidence is there for all to see. We have introduced legislation and other measures to establish equality of opportunity on grounds of race, disability, gender, age, faith and sexual orientation.
Despite these positive measures, one cannot say that all is well. That could be ascribed to the fact that we have no written constitution and limited guidance in the legal process and available documentation. The fact remains that there is serious divergence in the way an individual faces process and practice, often based on faith interpretations that seriously disadvantage them in access to justice. The Bill therefore demands serious consideration by your Lordships’ House.
There have been a number of developments recently. The latest was the Casey review. This was set up by the Government to consider what could be done to boost opportunity and integration in our most isolated and deprived communities. An area of interest is the examination of practices by different communities and how faith-based problem-solving could disadvantage women and many of the second generation of youngsters born in this country.
An integrated society is possible only if we all subscribe to the law of the land. Debate on community cohesion is useless if we shy away from tackling the very essence of one law for all. Our democracy is based on rules of law, and we all have an opportunity to contribute towards this end.
I do not run away from the fact that, in many parts of the world, there are informal and accepted practices to resolve disputes without recourse to legal process. Many land disputes and family disputes are resolved by involvement of community elders. The crucial point is that, in cases of grievance, all citizens must have access to the law of the land, which must be supreme.
The questions which need to be answered are as follows: do informal processes treat individuals fairly; and, in the matter of gender equality, do informal interventions comply with the law of the land? All the research papers I have read point to the fact that in many cultures, women are not only disadvantaged but discriminated against in the way that faith-based procedures deal with them.
It is time to rebalance this anomaly. So-called laws which have no basis in statute are bad laws and should not be part of our democratic institutions.
Lord Kalms (Non-Afl)
My Lords, when David slung his stone at Goliath’s head, he killed him with one blow and a great victory against tyranny was achieved. Today, the fight for peace and victory is infinitely harder, but David had the right idea, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, with the Bill, for which we are deeply indebted to her: aim for the head, and eliminate a vital organ of the growing poison that seeks to inject itself into our system of democracy and equality.
Yet sharia law need not be evil. It could even be welcome if it remained subservient to the laws and rules of our multicultural society, but being subservient is something that sharia finds very hard to do. Many who believe in sharia believe that it derives its legitimacy from God himself. We should not be surprised if they regard such a law to be superior to the law of man, the law of the land.
However, in a society such as ours, submission to the law of the land is precisely what all other systems of law and belief must accept. The law of this land, the law by which we all abide, is the fundamental basis of our security. In an increasingly diverse society, it is the bedrock of our common freedom, yet it is vulnerable, for the law which serves us so well is not always as carved in stone as some people think. As circumstances change, the law updates to protect every segment of our society, always without prejudice. The powerful and the needy obey it to the letter or are punished.
It is on occasion open for negotiation, and at such moments we must be exceptionally wary about what ideas we allow in. Women in our world enjoy 100% equality. Their word carries equal weight. Those are hard-fought-for principles. But sharia has come to an opposite view, to a degree that is both obscene and inexplicable to the western mind.
How can this country allow such inequality and intolerance, let alone in the name of equality and tolerance? How can this country, which has led the way in equality throughout its history, choose in the 21st century to turn a blind eye to laws which regard women as unequal citizens with an unequal say and an unequal voice?
Today, we are a multicultural society. Christian, Muslim, Jew of any denomination should feel safe, but to feel safe we must know that we are protected by a common law, one which holds back the worst excesses of fundamentalist religions. Our Muslim friends and neighbours, among others, are right to worry about where those excesses lead. Wherever the footprints of sharia lie, violence and oppression follow swiftly behind. It is not benevolent in Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia. In all these places, unspeakable murders are perpetrated. While some in the UK present sharia as an expression of peace, everywhere else it arrives, the people with Kalashnikovs are not far behind.
At this stage of our world’s existence, politicians and scientists are struggling to find the right reaction to this problem. For so long, we have lived in a society where negotiation and compromise are the first steps, but these words—negotiation and compromise—are not in the lexicon of Islamic fundamentalists or those who advocate sharia. As we value the best aspects of our lives in this country, we should make a stand against the unequal and low regard for the value of human life that sharia offers.
Today the West is slow, ponderous, and uncertain. Most of our citizens who are Muslim share our philosophy; they enjoy the benefits that security, equality and entrepreneurship offer. They enjoy life, with its unique joys of family life; they enjoy sharing their festivals and the disciplines of their own faith—but above all they appreciate the climate of tolerance that abounds in great depth within these blessed isles. But these rights are not inevitable, and it is perfectly possible at any stage that a country such as ours, juggling the complexities of a diverse society, can unwittingly fall off the path.
The Bill is a small masterpiece. It isolates a deepening problem and focuses on an issue of greater importance than many people realise. Already many sharia courts have become illegal and unjust by any standards. They are controlled by fundamental Islamists and aim to stand not beneath but above the law of this land.
May I complete my words with a small anecdote? I recently watched a television programme about one Imam, aged about 35, English, erudite, charming and sitting in a beautiful book-lined study, being asked to explain his opinions on some Islam practices which he answered with reassurance and seeming common sense. The final question was deliberately simple. What was the Imam’s views about the treatment of women who are stoned to death for adultery? We waited for a reassuring, 21st-century answer. His reply: “That is our law”.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, I adopt all that has been said so well by previous speakers. I was particularly impressed by my noble friend Lady Donaghy, who from her experience at ACAS spoke so well about the principles of equality, non-discrimination and seeking to protect the vulnerable. In respect of one of her points, I recall that, as a Member of Parliament, I was approached once by some workers who complained that they were being prosecuted because they had stolen construction materials from their place of work. As a sort of lawyer, I knew the Theft Act, brought in by my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan in 1968, and I asked what section of the Act they were going to rely on. They said, “custom and practice”.
When I was approached by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, I felt that I had a three-line whip to come here, because I admire her enormously. I admire her principled persistence, almost along the lines of Wilberforce. I remember the previous attempts to bring in this Bill in 2012, when the government response was at best lukewarm. I recall that in 2015 at least there was shown a greater recognition of the problems, and the then Home Secretary, now Prime Minister, Theresa May, said very clearly where she stood on this matter—and I hope that she might be reminded of that from time to time.
Of course, an inquiry was set up in May 2016, and there was a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry parallel to that in June. I am inclined to withhold my reaction to the inquiry until we see the terms of its conclusions, but I share some the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, about the terms of reference and the members of that inquiry—and, indeed, that they have not gone far enough in either direction.
I recall the last attempt by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, in 2015, so I went to look at the speech that I had made on that occasion and found to my surprise that I agreed with myself. My second thought was that today, in support of the noble Baroness on this all-party matter, I have, alas, nothing startlingly new to say—but I was reassured by the fact that that has never deterred parliamentarians from saying a few words. I shall not repeat what I said—or indeed what Mrs May, the Prime Minister, has said.
I have only two observations. There is a real problem revealed by the research of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox—the danger of a parallel jurisdiction developing in this country, as it creeps into areas of law, and even into the area of criminal law. I also agree with others that this is essentially, if not entirely, a women’s issue, and that there is clear evidence of gender discrimination and coercion of vulnerable women by some—perhaps it is a minority, we do not know—sharia courts. There is the point about the ease of divorce. I was interested to note that, even in Egypt, President Sisi is now seized of this problem; he is trying to ensure that in Egypt, where the Grand Mufti is, women are not disadvantaged by very speedy divorce by the predominant men.
So I fully agree with the objectives of the Bill. Women should be made aware of their rights. For those women who are particularly vulnerable in some of the closed societies that are developing even within our own society, the judiciary should make every effort to ensure that they are aware of their rights and generally prevent a parallel system developing. Yes, we should probably give two cheers for the inquiry and the Home Office report—and yes, we are fully committed to the principles and clauses in the Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who is a great fighter for liberation not just in this country but also, as we have seen, in Burma, South Sudan and elsewhere. I am a great admirer of her work.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have occasionally heard it said that Private Members’ Bills in your Lordships’ House are an opportunity for self-indulgence. If anyone still believes that, they should look at today’s business, in which we have four pieces of legislation, each one of which has the capacity to make an enormous and beneficial difference to people’s lives. We are very privileged to be here on a day such as this—and I feel particularly privileged to be able to stand up in your Lordships' House and support my noble friend’s Bill. She has been a doughty fighter on these issues for many years. I shall freely confess that she persuaded me of the merits of this legislation some years ago and I hope that the House will give full support to her today.
The relationship between religions and the law comes in many shapes and colours on a long scale. At one end of the scale—it was a great privilege to sit next to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey, when he made his speech—we have the established Church, whose compliance with the law is evidenced daily by its presence in this House. Unfortunately, at the other end of the scale, we have cults that impose rigid and often eccentric discipline on their disciples. I certainly do not accuse Islam of that, but it is part of the picture.
The law must be able to intervene when a point on the scale is reached that undermines accepted legal rights—and that is what this debate is about. I do not want to attack any religion. It is wrong to do so; people are entitled to their beliefs. As a lawyer, I certainly do not want to attack the value of arbitration and alternative dispute resolution. In her wonderful speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, gave ample justification for that process, whatever one calls it. If a religious organisation provides alternative dispute resolution and does so fully within the law, we should all welcome it as a very useful process.
If that form of mediation or alternative dispute resolution adds a zone of comfort because all the parties happen to adhere to shared beliefs and views, so much the better. It is no different in degree from them all being members of a good trade union. They share a vision which, one would hope, helps them to agree when they have differed. However, the entry into something that is called a marriage but which is not seen as a marriage by the law undermines rights in a very dangerous way. It removes the legitimate expectations that all the rest of us who have entered into a marriage, or a comparable relationship, enjoy. The use of the term “legitimate expectation” is important in this context because it is recognised by the law that enables people to take legal action against those who have abused their use of administrative action. We call this by the shorthand, “judicial review”.
The consent to a status of, for example, a wife has validity only if there is genuine consent to the consequences of that status. My noble friend’s Bill enables people to acquire those consequences by law, rather than being deprived of them arbitrarily. Where bodies fail to inform an individual of their legal rights, they are failing to fulfil their duty of care to their members. A simple analogy would be the misdescription of goods under trades descriptions legislation. If we buy Chanel perfume and it turns out to be a fake, we are entitled to have our rights enforced. If we marry and it turns out to be a fake, we are surely entitled to the rights of a married person. So where such bodies act contrary to the law, it is a matter for real concern. Where there can be an effect on innocent third parties—for example, children—it is a matter for acute anxiety. My noble friend’s Bill addresses those issues and I applaud it.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who is sitting in a new place. I know that he will bring enormous distinction to the Cross Benches. I also join in the many tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who is a dogged, determined, persistent fighter who could adopt as her motto that of my dear friend Tam Dalyell, who died only yesterday: “the importance of being awkward”. My noble friend is never put off by a brush-off from the Front Bench. Yesterday, I was delighted to see that the Foreign Secretary is beginning to heed some of her wise words on Syria. I very much hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, who is doing a double stint on the Front Bench today, will be welcoming, positive and fully understanding of the importance of the points made on the Bill when he responds.
Less than 48 hours ago, your Lordships’ House had an interesting short debate on the Higher Education Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved an amendment drawing attention to the fact that the student loan system is a barrier to Muslim students attending our universities. He spoke with great eloquence and I was delighted to be able to support him, briefly, as I had on previous occasions. The Government share our recognition of this, because the only subject of real debate on Wednesday was the timing of when a new system would be brought in to help Muslim students by enabling them to feel that they were not transgressing their moral principles. That was entirely defensible, right and proper. It was not a question of sharia law overriding the law of the land. Rather, we were recognising—as we do with the religious feelings of other faiths—that there are certain things that people should be allowed to do. But what they should not be allowed to do is transgress the law of the land, which treats every citizen of this country as equal.
As other noble Lords have said, the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, with all her experience of ACAS, made a very cogent speech. I believe very strongly in citizenship ceremonies—I have attended one. I hope the noble Baroness would agree that it would be a very good thing if all those becoming British citizens were given a little document which said: this is your law, these are your rights and these are your responsibilities. This is what we are saying today to our Muslim fellow citizens: to the women, these are your rights; and to the men, these are your responsibilities. The law of our land does not allow you to take four wives or to dismiss a wife merely because you want to. The law of the land gives to every woman who enters into a marital relationship fundamental rights that are the equivalent of those enjoyed by every other woman in this country, regardless of religion, ethnicity or racial background.
There was an interjection earlier from a noble Baroness—whose name escapes me for the moment—asking whether the Government believed in equality under the law: of course they do. But if they do, they must, when my noble and learned friend responds to this morning’s debate, show that they do not just believe but that they practise. Setting up commissions and committees is sometimes an extremely good idea and is often a necessary preliminary to legislation—but we have pushed this into the long grass for far too long. There are women in our land today who are suffering; they are being ostracised from their own communities, and that is not acceptable. If someone is a British citizen, he or she has all the rights and duties of a British citizen. That, in effect, is all that this Bill seeks to say, and I very much hope that it will be enacted.
This House is deeply in debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who is a doughty fighter and a wonderfully persistent person. I hope that she will carry on being a thorn in the side of government, where necessary, for as long as she is here—and may that be a very long time.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the courage and determination of my noble friend Lady Cox. Not being as brave as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I would not dare to imply that she is awkward, but there is no doubt whatever that she has been absolutely tireless in bringing the suffering of Muslim women in Britain to the attention of the public.
As one who has lived for many years in Muslim countries, I have every respect for devout individual Muslims. That said, it is surely fundamental that there can be only one law in this country, and furthermore, that institutions operating in Britain should do so in accordance with the rights that people can expect in this country, be they men or women—that is, there must be equality under the law.
The problem in this instance is the growing body of evidence that arbitration by sharia courts in practice discriminates against women in a manner that is frankly unacceptable in British society. That makes it all the more important that any such mediation should be voluntary and not the result of family or community pressure. The strength of those pressures is rather hard to imagine for those of us who belong to the majority community, but it is very clear to anyone who has lived in a Muslim country and seen the way in which women are obliged by pressures of family and tradition to fall in behind their men. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was therefore exactly right to focus on the voluntary nature of any such mediation.
The draft Bill before us tackles these issues in an intelligent and targeted way. It does not interfere with the legitimate mediation services, which are already bound by equality legislation, nor does it interfere with the internal theological affairs of any religious group. However, it addresses a lacuna in our law which, in practice, permits discrimination against women in a manner that is unacceptable, as I have said. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said, we have reached the point when it is time to intervene.
Finally, I was going to draw attention, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has, to the actions of the President of Egypt, a Muslim country, who has said that there must be an end to oral divorces which have been permitted. I find it deeply ironic that the President of a Muslim state feels able to take decisive action to remedy a clear injustice when our own Government apparently will not. I hope the Minister will prove me wrong.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for persevering in bringing this important matter before your Lordships’ House on such a regular basis. I hope that this time the Government will hear what the House is saying loud and clear.
I put my name down to speak in this debate very late yesterday, which is why I was unable to attend the several briefing sessions on the Bill that the noble Baroness held. The reason I put my name down so late was that I had not intended to speak in this debate. I thought that the work I had done in this area until about a decade ago had worn me down sufficiently that I no longer wanted to examine multiculturalism and theology, particularly Islam. However, I looked at the speakers’ list and appreciated that, of the dozen or more Muslim Peers in this House, not a single one had put their head above the parapet. As a liberal, I am afraid I frequently put my head above the parapet, so here I stand.
I turn to what the Bill is not. Many in the Muslim community say that the Bill seeks to target the Muslim community. However, I rebut that claim. This is not an anti-Muslim Bill. It could be argued that it is an anti-Muslim man Bill in that the power which might be restricted if the Bill were to pass would potentially impact on a certain category of Muslim men who are self-selecting in giving themselves powers as religious experts and theologians. Many in this House may not know that there is little religious hierarchy in Sunni Islam since its emphasis as a religion is on individual accountability and a huge amount of consensus in decision-making. That is why I refer to several of these people who sit on sharia councils as self-selecting. I argue that the Bill sets out to help not just Muslim women but all women who face discrimination through theological edicts and culture.
I did some research on this issue in 2008, when a well-respected publication wanted me to write a cover story about the impact of sharia in the United Kingdom. This followed research that had come from the think tank Policy Exchange, which found that significant numbers of Muslims in the UK wanted to be governed by sharia while living here. So I visited mosques which ran sharia councils and read a lot of literature but, most importantly, I spoke to men and women about why they undertook to marry or settle disputes under sharia in any event when other remedies were available. The reason most frequently given to me was that it was an expression of identity, particularly for young women. That was frequently accompanied by another reason—namely, that Jewish people have their own court, so why not us? It has been implied in the House today that there is an assumption that it is mainly newly arrived people who turn to sharia councils to settle their marital disputes. However, I found that this practice was becoming a trend among second, third and fourth-generation women, who were using identity politics as an excuse to define themselves.
A further and more difficult reason was that the young women were coerced by family to undertake this kind of marriage. As we heard when the forced marriage legislation was going through this House, it is very hard for a young person, in a culture which venerates family and community, to go against the perceived wisdom. To say to parents—and indeed to extended family members, as you may well be marrying a cousin—that you are doing so to seek legal protection in the union puts you in the position of effectively saying that you do not trust the other side, and you expect to need legal protection. In other words, you are challenging the bona fides of the other side. How many 17, 18 or 19 year-olds in these communities would be able to do that?
I turn to another aspect under Clause 2, which deals with inheritance. It is true that the treatment of the division of an estate is discriminatory and that this inequality is seldom challenged. My own experience was very different on the demise of my mother. She was highly educated and would have been described as a feminist. She was so troubled by the idea of treating her daughters unequally in Pakistan that she discovered, unusually, that even in that country—a Muslim country— if she made a will setting out a different allocation of assets than that prescribed under sharia, it would be legal. The key was that she had to make a will. She did this, and my late brother, a great liberal and champion of equality, did not demur, even though he was the great loser under that settlement.
The problem here is that if you do not have the strength to challenge the system, which is your family and community, you are unable to seek legal protection. The presumption within the community that the man has greater rights is so entrenched that it is very difficult to assert otherwise. That is why the mere existence of the law on the statute books would make a profound difference to the lives of many women in this country. We should support the Bill on that basis.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, this is the third time in five years that I have spoken in support of my noble friend Lady Cox’s much-needed Bill. It now seems that our system of balloting for precedence in Private Members’ Bills needs revision. This one is so important that it is regrettable that it has come so far down the list. Indeed, obviously that is my opinion of my own Bill, which will be debated today.
I congratulate my noble friend on her persistence and on her renowned dedication to human rights, in particular women’s rights. The issues she has presented, both in this House and in the various evidence sessions she has organised, are so serious that it has led many to question whether the Home Office review into the application of sharia law in England and Wales is sufficiently robust. The inquiry is limited to the application of sharia law as opposed to its place—if any—within the rule of law. The panel does not include human rights experts or non-Muslim experts on Islam, and potentially its deliberations and subsequent consultations might be used to delay reform, the need for which has been so cogently established over the years.
The Bill raises two immensely significant issues with which we grapple in many areas of everyday life. One is the relationship between democracy and religious beliefs, and the second is the extent and meaning of the rule of law. In relation to the clashes, when they occur, between democratically enacted law and religious beliefs, in nearly every case this country’s judges and legislature have sided with the law. Religious beliefs do not excuse murder, or discrimination against women or gay people. Yet occasionally there is a weakening in our system; for example, when people use the phrase “it’s their culture” in order to turn a blind eye to unacceptable practices. We must not go down that route, and it is more vital than ever today to stick to our guns, as Europe sees the mass movement of people of different religions and practices, with the consequent need for integration and for majorities and minorities to live together in peace and respect. If bakers are not allowed to refuse to bake a gay cake, how much more serious an issue and how clear the answer if a religious minority is in breach of our law in an important part of its entire way of life.
In 2015, we all celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. I am well aware that Magna Carta was the product of a sexist, classist and unfree society, as we see it now in retrospect. Only seven decades later, the country turfed out the entire Jewish population for centuries. The symbolism of Magna Carta now as an ideal of the rule of law took centuries to unfold. But in 2015 we celebrated it as the basis of us all being subject to the same system of law, having equal rights to the law and to be treated equally by it. If, as my noble friend says, sharia courts are misrepresenting themselves as courts with legal authority, and if women are being forced to accept the rulings of non-legal courts, that is unacceptable. If there are claims that sharia law takes priority over secular law, or there is a call for the introduction of sharia law in some areas or over some practices, that is not to be tolerated by the rule of law—and exactly the same is true of any other minority religion. The Bill makes that clear by settling the limits of arbitration and stopping discrimination in private courts.
I am especially concerned about the fate of women under attempts to force them into sharia jurisdiction. In our law, the welfare of children is paramount, and their welfare may be seriously jeopardised if Muslim mothers are forced to accept unwise conditions about their upbringing as the price of a religious divorce. English law recognises rape within marriage as a crime, likewise domestic abuse, and those crimes must not be swept under a carpet of a parallel legal system. In English law, marriage, property and the family are not zones into which the law may not intrude—the very opposite, in fact. In the Bill it is made clear that the fundamental principles of equality and respect for the rule of law apply to all, and that religious courts of whatever persuasion have to be subservient to the family, criminal and property law of this country. Access to our courts must be open to all, and communities and marriages should not be conducted outside the law of the land. The Select Committee which is currently considering the Licensing Act 2003 might see fit to bring mosques into that ambit so that they are not licensed unless also licensed to carry out weddings that are recognised in English law. Leaving women bereft of rights under a parallel legal system is not acceptable. This House and the other place must face up to this, and I hope to hear from the Government that they will progress the Bill.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I thank and greatly admire the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her insistence and persistence in fighting for the rights of women under the law. It is interesting that no matter how many times the noble Baroness brings back the issue of mediation and arbitration to your Lordships’ House, so many of your Lordships not only attend but speak, and with increasing eloquence and determination. I shall be very brief today, because so many of the problems have been aired and so many points have been validly made.
The noble Baroness has consistently talked to women —mainly Muslim women—about their severe problems and their oppression under religiously sanctioned gender discrimination in this country. She has written many articles and reports on this subject, talked to many organisations, and has asked Governments to change the law in similar Bills, in 2012-13, 2015-16, and again now. As we know, the Government in 2016 established an independent review into the application of sharia law, which will report in 2017. I hope that it will take account of the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, that many Muslim women,
“are unaware of their legal rights”.
If they are unaware, how can they act?
The noble Baroness’s brilliant 2015 report for the Bow Group, A Parallel World, says it all. She gives numerous examples of discrimination from women and from organisations to illustrate her powerful case. She says in the preface to the report:
“I have sat and wept with those who are oppressed, abused and treated as second class citizens. One Muslim woman told me: ‘I feel betrayed by Britain. I came here to get away from this and the situation is worse here than in the country I escaped from’. This cannot be allowed to continue. Provisions must be introduced to ensure that the operation of Sharia law principles in the UK today is not undermining the rights of women and the rule of law”.
As the noble Baroness has consistently pointed out, she fights incredibly hard for women. Again, she points out:
“The Bill does not interfere in the internal theological affairs of religious groups. In a free society, and in accordance with the hard-fought tradition of freedom of religion and belief, individuals must be able to organise their affairs according to their own principles, whether religious or otherwise. However, attempting to operate a parallel legal jurisdiction and to allow the de facto creation of new legal structures and standards is unacceptable”,
in this country. She is asking for a positive response from the Government. I sincerely hope that she gets it. We shall be watching every move.
Baroness Flather (CB)
My Lords, I am proud to call the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, my very dear friend. She is a bully, you know, and what is so good is that she does her bullying in such a way that you do not mind it—you are pleased to help her. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, on her speech. The speeches related well to each other and set the scene for us.
I am concerned about a number of things. First, I lay the blame squarely at the door of the Government. There is no way that a Government should be allowing a parallel system to affect their citizens. We have first to decide whether the Muslims and the Muslim women are citizens of this country. If they are, they all deserve, and ought to be given, equal treatment. There should not be another system of so-called law which is a religious law—not a law of the land—and which interferes with and decides how people, particularly women and children, are treated.
Through my noble friend Lady Cox I have met women and heard stories about events which you cannot believe are happening in our country. I have come from elsewhere to live in this country and I respect this country. It has never interfered with my belief—I am not a Christian—and the important thing is that I respect its laws and culture.
I want to say something important about the word “culture”. A lot of the people who deal with minority women are told, “This is our culture”, but what does that mean? If they are beaten and chastised, that is their culture. If they are not given any money, that is their culture. If they are not given a divorce, that is their culture. But what is culture? I always imagined that it was something that developed for the good of society—not something that is no better than a social practice. You can have social practices which are appalling or social practices which are wonderful, but you cannot have an appalling culture. Hiding behind something called “culture” is one of the worst things to have come about, particularly when it is cited by social workers and other people who deal with these issues.
According to scholars, sharia law is discriminatory against women in every respect. No matter what we do, it will never provide equality. Therefore, it is our Government’s job to make sure that women are not discriminated against under sharia practice. Pakistan has only just passed a law saying that honour killing is now viewed as murder. It has taken a long time but it came about because a woman burned her daughter. India is now trying to stop multiple marriages, saying that everybody is entitled to marry only one person. Strictly speaking, we do not allow multiple marriages here, but when the Home Affairs Committee tried to tackle that, it discovered that it would cost the Government a huge amount of money to take care of all the so-called non-wives, because under that system there is always a wife, a nanny, a cousin or somebody else to look after the children.
As your Lordships know, when a Muslim man divorces his wife, with great ease, he puts her out on the street. When people ask why he is doing that, he says, “Why does it matter? The Government will look after her. She won’t starve or sleep on the street. I don’t have to worry about that”. As somebody has already stated, fathers are entitled to take children who have reached the age of seven. You can get a British divorce if you have a British marriage, but if you go to Pakistan or any other Islamic country the husband can take the children away because the woman is not divorced in the eyes of Islamic law. I learned this graphically from a woman who had had a British divorce and tried for six years to get a sharia divorce. This is an absolute scandal.
When the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was a Minister, I discussed with him the possibility of at least registering the marriages of all the people who come to live in this country. Their marriages, at least, should be registered and, once they are, questions of bigamy and rights come up. Without that, the women have nothing. Let us get on with it and change things.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, I do not want my noble friend to be bowed down with the compliments she receives in this debate but I would like to put them in context. She has been congratulated many times on her persistence in going to the aid of this particular oppressed minority in our community, and it should be seen in the light of the last decade or two having been spent doing exactly that and in much more perilous and exacting circumstances right round the world. Let that not be overlooked.
The case made by my noble friend is very simple: it is that a large number of people in this country are being misled as to the powers of bodies which adjudicate on how their lives are to be lived in a very fundamental, important and intimate way. Some of them are under a misconception when they arrive in the process; others are given the misconception by the people managing the process. Where an official of any of these bodies is represented as having the power and authority of the English common or statute law, they deliberately mislead and make a false statement, which has damaging consequences—sometimes almost lethally damaging consequences—on the people appearing before them.
My noble friend’s Bill is directed at remedying that by criminalising a false statement with that effect, and the House is definitely very much behind her on that. Personally, I would go further. I think that giving that impression to, or gratuitously leaving it in the mind of, a person using the services of that body by what the lawyers call either suppressio veri or suggestio falsi—in other words, knowingly allowing them to be misled as to the force of what is decided—should itself be a punishable offence.
I want to touch on just one other aspect in this prolific debate, in which so much has been covered, and it is rather a large point made earlier by my noble friend. The Government will be making up their mind on the scale of this phenomenon—there are those who say that it is very small—and will take advice from a body that they appointed to give them that advice. I ask the Government, through my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench—to be sure to assess that advice with very great care in the light of the positions and experience of the people giving it. That is not to question the probity of their advisers; it is simply to recognise that a person’s view is determined to a large extent by the viewpoint from which they take it, and their perceptions are to some extent qualified by their preconceptions. It is very important that none of the evidence should be lost from sight.
I am sorry: I said that I had only one point to make but I have one other. An article in a periodical about law and religion in the UK has suggested that my noble friend is attacking this problem from the wrong end. Rightly, she targets the people who are misleading the clients—if that is the right word—of these courts. The article suggested, with apparent authority, that this was quite wrong and that really the problem was the consent given by the victims. That is a fairly extraordinary assertion from our point of view. It may not be so from the point of view of others who are part of the culture, to which my noble friend Lady Flather referred; but in fact the victims are not fluent in the English language. If the victims were fluent in the English language and familiar with the customs and practices of British society, there might be half a case in that statement, but they are not. Typically, they do not have one word of the English language and therefore are completely unaware of their rights. This Bill will restore to those people rights which have been theirs since they set foot in this country, and I hope that it is accepted by the Government.
Lord Rowe-Beddoe (CB)
My Lords, I am most pleased to support this Bill, which, as has already been said many times around the House, is another example of the indefatigable force that is my noble friend Lady Cox. As we have heard, she is interested not only in this, but in so many things worldwide.
I have been increasingly concerned, as I am sure many of your Lordships have, to learn of the abuses to which some Muslim women—I emphasise “some”—are being subjected while living in our country and, as such, subject to the supremacy of our law. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, mentioned, I was with him this week at a meeting at which we were presented to three ladies who gave us oral statements of what had happened to them. They described the most appalling abuse—“appalling” is a rather mild word. One striking criticism that was left with me, which was inferred from what we heard, was the failure of our police in certain cases to deal properly with such incidents as reported by Muslim women. We can speculate as to why some police may have taken the decision, if indeed they did, not to deal with this properly, but I am sure that this should be investigated and addressed. We can all understand what the possible reasons for it may be, but we must take seriously this apparent disinclination of certain police or police forces to provide appropriate support when abuse is reported.
In most cases, the strength of the abused is enormous, even to make such a complaint. We have to understand that these people live in a different world from ours. To have the courage to come forward and even suggest that they have a complaint to make, and then for it not to be taken seriously, is very depressing. In the interests of time, I shall move on, but so many noble Lords have referred to certain things in this area that I clearly endorse. I want to focus on the fact that we must strengthen the duties of police and social services to ensure that women are made aware of their legal rights under our law. As has been said, so many of them do not even speak our language. It is therefore not an easy task, but it must be addressed. I urge the Government to support the Bill.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Baroness in this very important Bill. I too pay tribute to her persistence in keeping these gross injustices perpetrated against women to the fore. She is the undoubted expert in this area and I urge the Government to implement this Bill as soon as possible. In my opinion, the measures needed to prevent women being treated as chattel go well beyond this modest Bill, but I accept her judgment that the changes she proposes are so reasonable that no fair-minded person, or man or Government, should sensibly oppose them.
I take the view that in commercial transactions, businesses, companies and individuals who are equal can agree any arbitration system that they wish. We know that our English commercial courts are regarded as the finest in the world and are usually the place designated in contracts for dispute resolution. Other contracts may stipulate arbitrators from professional institutes. The key point is that where parties are equals, they can select any system for civil dispute resolution that they like, so long as it is not in breach of a country’s civil or criminal law. I do not pretend for one second to understand the theory of how sharia law should work. But I have read the case studies circulated by the noble Baroness and I am appalled at what is happening in our country today. It is clear that Muslim women are not being treated as equals. I have not heard one word to say that the case studies circulated by the noble Baroness are false or exaggerated, and we can assume that these are not just 30 isolated instances but rather the norm, when male religious leaders ignore national law and decide cases according to their interpretation of religious law.
Here I think we have to judge matters not on what a highly educated, fair imam implementing proper principles from the Koran should in theory do, but on what happens in reality in dozens of sharia courts where less-well-educated and biased judges are imposing their bigoted judgments on women who have no ability to fight back. Where is the justice in all those cases where a woman complains about being repeatedly beaten and the sharia court takes the man’s word for it but asks the woman to produce two witnesses? Where is the justice when a judge laughs at a woman and says, “If he beats you, why did you marry him in the first place?”, or tells a woman that he does not want to hear her side of the story, only the man’s? Where is the justice in that wicked pronouncement that, “the husband was entitled to beat her because she was disobedient”?
The problem we have in this country, and possibly in our parliamentary bubble, is that we respect religious systems of marriage and divorce. Of course people should have the right to go through a form of religious divorce, if they want to. However, we may have made the mistake of assuming that all religious divorces treat women as fairly as they are treated in a UK civil divorce, and that is simply not the case. Any UK divorce judge who behaved in the way or said the things that some sharia judges have would be removed within 24 hours, never allowed into a courtroom again and possibly prosecuted for hate speech—and rightly so. We must remove the blinkers from our eyes that sharia divorces are equal to UK civil divorces. They are not, and women are being ruthlessly discriminated against.
This Bill is modest and seeks to tackle some of the injustices. However, I hope that the Government review of sharia law will go much further. I hope we will see a recommendation that no sharia religious divorces will be valid unless, in every case, a civil court also pronounces on it. That is not part of this Bill, but it is a very serious problem that will have to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Time does not permit me, so I have deleted from my speech all the paragraphs on police failure to act on the actions of Muslim women. Largely, that is because the police do not like to get involved in domestic disputes. Unfortunately, because of that, Muslim women are suffering a great injustice.
I conclude, if I may, by making a practical suggestion to your Lordships. I suspect that after the next Loyal Address, the House of Commons will have one major Bill with which to deal—the so-called great repeal Bill. This House may have very little to do and we may have time on our hands. I suggest to all parties and all groups that we gang up and present the Leader with a suggestion: that this Bill, or one very like it, should be government legislation, starting in this House after the next Loyal Address, when your Lordships will have ample time to get it perfectly correct. I believe that my noble friend’s Bill is absolutely meritorious in its own right and deserves to succeed. The Government should implement it as soon as possible or, if not, take it over as government legislation. Let us get it through this House.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I too would like to compliment my noble friend Lady Cox on her hard work in bringing this important measure before us today, and on her tireless efforts to help vulnerable people across the globe.
Whenever anyone mentions religion in Questions in your Lordships’ House, there is a noticeable air of embarrassment—“Why are we discussing religion? Religion is a wholly private matter”. As a Sikh, I totally disagree. In the Sikh view, the whole aim of religion is to make us better human beings, with a responsibility to help the less fortunate and work for greater fairness and justice for all.
Unfortunately, looking at the way that religions operate and their seemingly meaningless rituals does not always inspire us with confidence. A very real problem is that religious teachings are easy to state—I could put key Sikh teachings on one side of A4—but far more difficult to live by, and instead an undue emphasis is placed on rituals and culture that have nothing to do with the ethical imperatives of religion. To make things worse, leaders of religions have often misused their positions of authority to pursue political power, sometimes by violent means, living in luxurious palaces while countenancing poverty and suffering among those they controlled.
As a result, religion found itself, particularly in the west, banished to the margins of society to quietly contemplate the hereafter, rather than working for the betterment of society. Meanwhile, secular leaders have taken over the business of running society, without interference from religion. But our do-it-yourself society often forgets to place due emphasis on rights, wrongs and responsibility in its decision-making. Let me elaborate on the dangers of this do-it-yourself approach. Whenever I am asked to help with a self-assembly, I throw the instructions to one side, start putting all the pieces together and stand back to admire my handiwork only to find it skewed and ready to fall apart.
I invite noble Lords to stand back and look at society today. We have a record prison population with many repeat offenders—more than 100, some with acute mental problems, took their own lives last year—more people getting divorced, often resulting in family breakdown, with a record number of children being taken into what we euphemistically call “care”. I could go on. An ever-growing proportion of our national budget is now spent on sticking-plaster solutions that ignore the underlying causes of not paying due attention to ethical imperatives for a healthy society.
Logic suggests that we should look again at the guidance for responsible living contained in our different faiths. But unfortunately, guidance in religious books is not always clear and is at times confusing. Ethical teachings are often entwined with questionable or oppressive cultural practices that are at variance with what we today see as fundamental human rights. To be effective, and make the contribution to society that the founders of our religions intended, religions must open themselves to scrutiny and questioning. In speaking in gurdwaras and to Sikh and inter-faith groups, I always urge the questioning of religious teachings, particularly if they seem to be at variance with common sense and human rights. We need to do this to make religion relevant to the world of today.
The mixing of religion with sometimes oppressive culture—the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, referred to this—is a particular problem. The Labour Minister and founder of the health service, Aneurin Bevan, said that whenever he heard the word “culture” he immediately thought of bacteria. Today we know that there are good and bad bacteria. Similarly, there is also good and bad culture—good culture that enhances respect for elders and responsibility towards others. However, there is also oppressive culture that denigrates those of other beliefs, women, or those who simply appear different. The prevailing culture at the time of Guru Nanak, some 500 years ago, in both the West and the East, saw women as lesser beings. It had, bacteria-like, infected and distorted the ethical teachings found in different faiths. Sadly, negative attitudes to women are still all too evident in much of the world today.
The power and hold of negative culture is easy to understand when we look at the Sikh community. Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, was appalled by the way that women were treated in the India of his day. He taught the dignity and complete equality of women. The same teaching was also emphasised by nine succeeding Gurus and is incorporated in our holy scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib. Women can and often do lead Sikh services, and girls are encouraged to enter the professions. The Sikh chaplain to the British armed services is a woman. Yet, despite such clear teachings, some men in the community are still clearly influenced by the more negative culture of the sub-continent.
Negative attitudes to women, all too evident in Islam, have become embedded in religious texts which, as we have heard, give less weightage to the word of a woman, and lesser inheritance rights. There are also particular problems with attitudes to divorce. These negative attitudes prevent Islam from playing its full part in social improvement. I have many Muslim friends and most are happily married and a credit to society. But sharia law and divorce are heavily weighted in favour of men and are at variance with the law of this country. We cannot have a parallel judicial system, particularly one that discriminates against women. We have today heard many examples of the weightage against women in the proceedings of sharia courts and the resulting suffering. We have heard the concerns of our Prime Minister, Theresa May, when as Home Secretary she referred to wives being left in penury and a supposed right of husbands to chastise their wives.
I conclude by complimenting the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who does so much to help women across the world, often in dangerous and perilous circumstances. The proposals in her Bill will not only enhance and help safeguard the position of women in the Islamic community but, importantly, also leave Islam stronger and better able to play its full part in the world of today. It is time for all our religions also to do a little spring cleaning to bring true religious teachings to the fore in helping give ethical direction to society. As a Sikh I strongly support the Bill and hope it goes on to become law.
Viscount Bridgeman (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for permitting me to speak in the gap. Unfortunately, my name was put down for the debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that follows and not this one, for which I must accept responsibility.
Much has been said in this debate about sharia law, but I suggest that in the United Kingdom, particularly England, it is out of control. For one thing, no one from within the Muslim community whom I have spoken to at any level knows how many of these councils exist. May I express a personal view? At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were generations who had grown up knowing nothing but totalitarianism—first the Nazis, followed seamlessly by communists—and many individuals so affected found it initially difficult to adjust to life with western values. Most Islamic immigrants to the United Kingdom come from Pakistan, from a country where power is, I need hardly say, male power, which at every level is all-important. It is understandable that immigrants from that country will seek to exercise power over their communities in this country through the creation of and participation in sharia courts, with frequently little knowledge and experience of the customs and particularly law of this country.
Certainly the interpretation of Muslim law and practice varies widely between councils. Many of the sharia courts represent themselves as courts with legal authority and Muslim women are being coerced into agreeing to go before a so-called sharia court rather than a UK court. That is why Clause 1(4) of the Bill is particularly important in placing a duty on public bodies to ensure that women in polygamous households and, significantly, those who have had a religious but not an English civil marriage, are made aware of their legal position and relevant legal rights under English law.
Two days ago the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, convened a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on “Honour” Based Abuse at which three exceptionally courageous Muslim women gave evidence of the abuse, both mental and physical, to which they had been subjected in the course of their marriages and then break-ups. A number of interesting points emerged from the meeting. The first is that sharia courts appear to have comparatively few British-born members, and I am aware that here I am in conflict with the information received by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, but this can be seen as an encouragement to building up a stable and responsible Muslim population. However, as long as immigration from predominantly Muslim countries continues at a significant level, the danger of sharia councils being filled by members, many of whom have recently arrived in this country and whose activities are in conflict with the law of the land in the United Kingdom, will remain.
The second point that emerged at the meeting was the level of funding of sharia courts that comes from the UK Government. Can the Minister give the House an idea of the nature and extent of this funding and the source within government from which it comes? The third and somewhat disturbing point which came up is the lack of police co-operation experienced by more than one of the witnesses, an issue referred to in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. This may be due to sensitivities to possible racist prejudices or simply a lack of awareness of the extent of the reach of sharia courts. In any case and whatever the cause, the effect of this Bill, if and when as I hope it becomes law, will be significantly reduced if female Muslim victims are unable to count on the support of the police. I hope that the Minister will speak to his colleagues in the Home Office in an effort to ensure that at the national level, the police are made aware of their responsibilities in these inter-Islamic disputes.
Perhaps I may say finally that many tributes have been paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, but I want particularly to emphasise the example she has set and the leadership she has shown in inducing these women, often under great community danger, to come forward and talk to us.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, along with other noble Lords I offer my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, on securing a Second Reading for her Bill today. The noble Baroness is a highly respected Member of your Lordships’ House with an enviable record as a campaigner, a fighter for justice, someone who does not shy away from tackling the big issues and, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, someone who will not be put off by a brush-off from the Front Bench.
The Bill seeks to make provision regarding the application of our equality legislation to arbitration and mediation services. The effect would be to prevent providers of such services doing anything that would constitute discrimination, victimisation or harassment on the grounds of sex. I agree very much with my noble friend Lady Donaghy when she made the point that women have had to fight for equality, so that where women are relying on custom and practice, we have a long way to go. Sometimes the law needs to step in and take action to ensure that matters do not start going backwards.
As we have heard, the Bill seeks to achieve these aims by inserting a new subsection into the Equalities Act 2010 and the Arbitration Act 1996. The 1996 Act allows parties to have their civil disputes arbitrated outside the civil court system, although the court can set aside the decision if the arbitration does not comply with accepted standards of fairness and procedure as set out in the Act itself. With her vast experience as a former chair of ACAS, my noble friend Lady Donaghy talked about the importance of arbitration and the need for both parties to be able to agree freely. I concur with the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about the value of arbitration and its particular value when it is undertaken by a faith group, as well as his words about the rights of citizens to take action where such bodies act contrary to the law of the United Kingdom.
The Bill also seeks to provide important clarification that discrimination includes treating evidence given by men as being of greater value than that given by women. It would also give powers to the court to set aside any order based on a mediation settlement agreement or other negotiated agreement if it believes that, on the evidence before it, one party’s consent was not genuine. There are further provisions in the Bill that place obligations on public bodies to inform individuals who have been married under certain religious practices or those living in polygamous households that they may be without legal protection.
We live in a great country. For all our problems, and they may be few or they may be many, whatever your viewpoint is on particular issues, justice, tolerance, respect for the rule of law and equality are all things that this country both stands for and stands up for. We have the right to campaign, to demonstrate, to have our say and to be treated equally by our fellow citizens, as well as having a fair chance at taking the opportunity to share in and be protected by the law equally, no matter who we are. That is all about being a citizen of the United Kingdom and living in this country.
The Bill does not state that it applies to any one faith or religion. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has made clear to noble Lords, it applies to all faith groups equally. It may be that at certain times the protection of our freedoms that this Bill seeks may be used by a particular faith group more than others. I am very clear that discrimination against women and girls is wrong. Where Muslim women and girls are being discriminated against and denied their rights, that is wrong. It must be challenged, it must be opposed, and Parliament and the Government have a duty to challenge such behaviour and to take action to ensure that such discrimination is ended.
The first way that discrimination is challenged is often when brave people speak out against injustice, which we have seen throughout our own history and across the world. Usually such people are condemned as mad. They are generally abused and may suffer even further discrimination. Then a wider group of people will come around to their view so that they are not as denounced as they had been previously. Finally, often those who doubted in the first place then come forward with their own views so that something becomes the norm and the law is changed. We can see the contrast from where we were during the campaigns for women’s suffrage and where we used to be in respect of gay relationships between consenting adults before the publication of the Wolfenden report, and where we are today, with equal marriage, the acceptance of gay relationships and equality of gay people in respect of their rights and responsibilities. Attitudes have changed, and they should also change in this area.
When we hear shortly from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, I suspect we may be told that the Government are aware of the concerns expressed and that they will continue to consider and review the issue. However, the protections needed are already in place. I hope that I am wrong and that the noble and learned Lord will go further in his remarks today. We will also hear, I am sure, about the independent review of sharia law which was established in May 2016, and that the Government want to receive the report on the review to consider its findings in the light of the evidence and to see whether anything further needs to be done to ensure that everyone, including Muslim women and girls, is provided with the protections they need to ensure that their rights are protected and that they are able to access justice. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will be able to give as full as possible a response to the points which have been raised, in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox.
My noble friend Lord Anderson of Swansea has again spoken in support of moving forward, as indeed he did on the previous attempt to make progress in this area. He said that he fully supports the Bill and the principles behind it. Like me, he supports the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, in her attempts to champion the rights of women and girls and to address the specific problems suffered by some who are unaware of their legal rights.
In conclusion, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this Bill before your Lordships’ House. Having its Second Reading so late in the parliamentary Session means that I am not sure how much further progress it is going to make without the Government’s help and support. This is a problem which needs to be addressed more widely, as the reality is that the vast majority of Private Members’ Bills put forward by noble Lords do not even get a Second Reading, although a great many of them seek to do good work and would make a difference to our lives in this country. We need to review the procedure. In the meantime, however, I look forward to the response of the noble and learned Lord.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, I join all sides of the House in putting on the record my admiration not only for the determination of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, but for the courage of the women to whom she has listened. Without their courage and that of others, we would not be debating this sensitive problem today. I understand the desire of the noble Baroness and her tireless fight to bring this matter out of the shadows and into the light of day. The Government are absolutely clear: we share the concerns raised by noble Lords in the debate that people can suffer because of decisions made by sharia councils in particular, or because the families and communities of coerced persons prevent them from understanding that they are as equal before the law as any Member of this House. These are concerns that the Government take very seriously. We know that any effective proposals to address the problem must come from thoroughly understanding its complexities and source. That is why the Prime Minister, in her previous role as Home Secretary, launched the full, independent sharia review last year, chaired by Professor Mona Siddiqui. That is also why the Government, on the broader problem of opportunity and integration, of which disadvantage to Muslim women is part, commissioned the independent review by Dame Louise Casey, who reported last month. Your Lordships will see that the Government are committed to shining a light on this problem.
Your Lordships will know, too, that women’s experiences of sharia councils and the issue of unregistered marriage are central to the sharia review. The Casey report has framed concerns about these in the broader narrative about how people with different backgrounds can be part of a cohesive society—a point touched on by many noble Lords in the debate. The report found that British Muslims overwhelmingly had a strong sense of belonging to Britain. We should not lose sight of that larger picture.
The Government are absolutely clear too that the authority of the courts in England and Wales is intact. There is and will be no parallel legal system. People are free to live their own lives according to their religious principles and the Government will not prevent them doing so. What there is in sharia and other religious councils is a means for people to seek decisions that will carry weight with their communities. This entire process should be voluntary and free from any form of force, but we have heard today of instances in which it is not. What for some is religious freedom is for others a source of injustice. That is the key to the problem before us. By its nature, of course, this is a problem that is not amenable to any easy solution.
Your Lordships have raised many of the issues that were put to Dame Louise relating to sharia councils and the reasons why some women may have recourse to them. We should always acknowledge that there are Muslim women for whom a religious pronouncement of divorce is important and who freely and knowledgeably choose to go to a sharia council, as followers of other religions may do with their own councils. It is important to acknowledge this: as I have said, the Government have no wish to curb religious freedom. None the less, it is of serious concern to us where women may have recourse to sharia councils because of coercion or lack of awareness of their rights. We appreciate that behind much of this are also the problems of lack of integration, of understanding, of language skills and sometimes of education. The source of that is very much lack of opportunity. The Casey report frames these issues in the contexts of integration, but also, crucially, of opportunity and understanding. That is a context we should never lose sight of.
I assure the House that the Government are taking the findings of the report extremely seriously. Like my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in another place, however, I do not wish to say anything that might prejudge our response to the Casey report in spring this year or, for that matter, to the findings of the independent sharia review.
With that in mind, I turn to the measures in the Bill. As noble Lords are aware, sharia councils are not part of the court system in this country. I noted references to sharia courts on occasion in the debate. We do not recognise the existence of sharia courts. We understand the danger that some sharia councils may purport to perform as courts or hold themselves out as courts, but they have no legal means of enforcing their decisions. Furthermore, the evidence at this stage is that very few sharia councils will carry out arbitration, and then in only very limited circumstances. We appreciate, none the less, that there have been concerns about arbitration by sharia councils in some instances, or about their straying into matters that only a court can adjudicate on. I assure the House that the Government are taking those concerns on board and view them very seriously.
The Government do not consider it necessary to amend the Equality Act 2010, as Part 1 of the Bill proposes, so that it applies to arbitral tribunals. Section 33 of the Arbitration Act 1996 already imposes a duty on arbitral tribunals to act fairly and impartially, and awards can be challenged in the court if this duty is breached or there is any other serious irregularity. Section 142 of the Equality Act 2010 already makes contracts unenforceable if they treat someone in a discriminatory way. That would apply to contracts as a result of mediations that were discriminatory, including any that might be facilitated by religious councils.
The Government still consider that amending the public sector equality duty is neither the best way to address this issue nor an appropriate use of the duty. I am the Government. The duty is broad—deliberately so—and the Government remain concerned that this breadth of application could be undermined if specific requirements were to be separately identified within it.
Part 2 proposes amendments to the Arbitration Act 1996. The existing law already imposes on tribunals a mandatory duty to act fairly and impartially. Where the family court in England and Wales has discretionary powers to make orders, such as in relation to making arrangements for children following the breakdown of a parental relationship, it is not possible to enter into an agreement to be bound by the outcome of an arbitration process, as a court could always override that outcome.
Part 3 proposes amendments to the Family Law Act 1996. It is, however, already the case that contracts cannot be enforced if they are made under duress. In family law cases, a judge will not make an order based on a negotiated agreement unless satisfied that there was genuine consent. Because the family court already has the power to set aside such orders, the Government’s view remains that the amendments proposed are unnecessary in this context.
The Government do not lightly create new offences. Before we might have cause to consider the new criminal offence of falsely claiming legal jurisdiction proposed in Part 4, we would need to consult and to hear compelling evidence that it was genuinely necessary. We would also wish to await the findings of the independent sharia review.
I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, may be disheartened that she has not persuaded the Government that her Bill would be necessary or effective. Our reservations about it remain.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
The noble and learned Lord said that a new criminal offence is unnecessary. Does he not agree that the criminal offence of holding oneself out as a medical practitioner has been extraordinarily effective? Does he not think that there is an extremely strong case not for doing nothing but for providing a similar sort of offence for those who hold themselves out to be a court or tribunal?
Lord Keen of Elie
There are, of course, provisions already in respect of that. We do not propose to do nothing, as I seek and have sought to explain.
As I said, our reservations about the Bill remain. It would be unfortunate for the Government to rush into any legislative change that did not, in the end, turn around the experience of the women whom the noble Baroness seeks to champion.
Lord Cormack
A few moments ago my noble and learned friend gave us a variation on “l’etat c’est moi”. Having listened to the debate, which I trust he has, and having heard persuasive speeches from all parts of the House, will he at least, in his capacity as the Government, which he has proclaimed to us all, agree to meet all of us who have spoken in the debate and have further discussions?
Lord Keen of Elie
I am perfectly prepared, as I represent the Government at the Dispatch Box, to take forward further discussions on this matter. Those discussions could most constructively be held once we have the sharia review available and once we have our response to the Casey report in the spring. The noble Lord might want to contemplate further discussion in that context. We are not seeking to delay; we are seeking to get this right.
We have not left the matter there, either. I do not wish to detract from the immediate focus of today’s debate, but there are other areas in which we are taking matters forward. Many noble Lords have spoken on the issues of understanding, of education and of the appreciation of rights which underpin many of the difficulties that Muslim women face in the context of sharia councils. We are now spending substantial amounts each year on assisting people to integrate into our society, particularly by arranging for the teaching of English. That is but one step, I appreciate—but it is a step in the right direction.
Turning again to the issue of unregistered religious marriage that underlies much of the recourse that women have to sharia councils, I note that there is no consensus on the issue—or, indeed, on sharia councils themselves—even among Muslim women’s groups. Several divergent suggestions have been put forward on the matter of marriage. One, for example, suggests regarding Islamic marriages as void, so that parties can seek financial remedies. Another suggests requiring religious ceremonies to be preceded by a civil ceremony, as in some other jurisdictions. The Casey report emphasised the importance of registration of marriage. All these issues will have to be considered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, moved an amendment a few months ago in Committee on the Policing and Crime Bill. It required celebrants of religious marriages to comply with marriage law and to register the marriage, as well as introducing a criminal offence of failing to meet the requirements. However, as my noble friend Lady Chisholm said in the debate, it is unclear how many unregistered marriages would continue. Marriage is not a straightforward area of law, as these divergent suggestions show, and particular difficulties arise when women are unaware that their marriage has no legal effect.
My noble friend indicated that the Government will consider unregistered religious marriages in light of the sharia review which is expected to report this year. That remains the case. It is clear from Dame Louise Casey’s report that integration, education and understanding are significant in how we address the issues we have been debating today—many noble Lords acknowledged that. We await the Government’s response to the report so that we can take this matter forward.
I turn to particular points made by noble Lords in the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, referred to the continuing fight for women’s equality. I do not intend to engage in a fight with the noble and doughty Baroness, but I see women’s equality—indeed, all aspects of equality—as more than just a goal: it is a journey. As any wise traveller knows, when you are on a journey you constantly and regularly check your progress, your destination and the obstacles in your way. The spikier parts of inequality have been addressed, but the issue has not been resolved, and it will be a continuing journey.
On the question of the independent review, I indicated that that will report this year. As for the Law Commission, we are considering its report in conjunction with that of Dame Louise Casey. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, among many noble Lords, referred to the subtle pressures that are brought to bear on women in the present context and the need to identify the reality of consent. Again, that goes back to the theme of education and understanding, rather than sharp-end legislation. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Carey of Clifton, talked about the need for sharia courts to comply with civil law. I do not even recognise the concept of a sharia court, but I take him to refer to sharia councils—and, yes, they are bound by the rule of law, and the law is there to correct abuse.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, assured us that he agreed with himself—I am sure we all take comfort from that. He talked about the judiciary making women aware of what their rights are. Yes, that is important, but it should be more than just the judiciary: we should all be making an effort, whether it be central government, local government, social services or police forces, to make women aware of their true rights and what their families’ true obligations amount to.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, whom I was pleased to hear from behind me—if perhaps a little too far to the right—also talked about the need to intervene in circumstances where there is an abuse of alternative dispute resolution. Such alternative dispute resolution, as many noble Lords said, is to be welcomed, but it must operate within the law, and we must make that clear.
A question was raised about the extent, if any, of central government funding to sharia courts. Again, I say that I do not recognise the existence of sharia courts. I am not aware of UK government funding to sharia councils. It is possible that there is funding for particular projects carried out by such councils. Although I do not have such details to hand, I undertake to write to my noble friend Lord Bridgeman to confirm such details as we have of any alleged UK funding for sharia councils.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, spoke of all those rights that we enjoy, or that we are at least entitled to enjoy, within the United Kingdom. But those rights also include the right to religious freedom. That is why it is so important to ensure that we do not upset a delicate balance between rights and obligations. That is why the Government will look at this matter with great care in light of the sharia review, the Casey report and the recommendations of the Law Commission.
Lord Blencathra
I think my noble and learned friend has acknowledged that the cases quoted by all noble Lords who have spoken are real and genuine—there is grave injustice there—but he has shot down every suggestion in the noble Baroness’s Bill to deal with them—and he has just said that the Government will look “with great care” following the sharia review. I hope your Lordships will forgive me for being cynical, but that sounds like kicking this into the long grass again. Looking at it “with great care” sounds like rather slow motion. If the sharia review suggests there is a problem, can we have a guarantee that there will be government legislation sooner rather than later?
Lord Keen of Elie
The noble Lord will appreciate that, even at the Dispatch Box, I cannot give guarantees of government legislation.
Lord Keen of Elie
That is beyond my pay grade. However, I challenge the suggestion that I have sought to shoot down the various proposals made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I acknowledge the importance of the issue that she has brought before this House. I acknowledge the importance of us being able to address these issues openly and effectively. I acknowledge the importance of considering whether all persons within the United Kingdom—and they are not required to be British citizens for this purpose—have the protections of the rule of law in the face of coercion or threat, even if it is supposedly religious-based. Therefore, I do not accept that I have sought to shoot down the proposals put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox.
There are aspects of the Bill which we would say are legislatively unnecessary because of existing legislation. There are aspects of the Bill which we would consider need to be thought through with greater care. There are issues here that should be considered in light of the sharia review, which is coming out this year, and in light of the report from Dame Louise Casey, which we received in December, just one month ago—and we intend to do that. We do not intend to head in the direction of any long grass in that context.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
We have not heard any mention of the principles on which the Government rest. Do they at least accept in principle that to give less weight to a woman in any adjudication is wrong?
Lord Keen of Elie
Do I need to repeat that? With the greatest of respect, this Government and certainly I would never consider that there was any basis for such a proposition. I acknowledge the need for equality not just of gender but in all respects. This Government acknowledge the importance of equality not just in respect of gender but in all respects. But in pursuing it we must have regard to the rights of individuals to perform their own religious functions in a way they see fit. But above all of this stands the rule of law and we remain determined to ensure that those who purport to carry out religious functions do so in accordance with the rule of law and with respect for all individuals, whatever their gender or ethnic background.
I assure the noble Baroness that this Government are concerned about the issues that have been raised, understand the seriousness of the issues that have been raised and appreciate the contributions that have been made by your Lordships’ House in addressing these points. I therefore express to her and all noble Lords who have spoken today my sincere appreciation of their contributions on what is not only an important issue but a complex one.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
We have all heard the Minister’s concern, his appreciation and everything else—but can he just tell us what is going to happen next for the Government?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, I thought that I had already explained it. Lest the noble Lord was not in the Chamber at that stage, we are considering the Casey report, which was received in December of last year; we are awaiting the sharia review; and we will bring these materials together in order that we can establish an informed view of the extent of the problem and what the potential solutions may be.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for that. I am very worried now when I hear the word “review”. I tabled a couple of Written Questions asking what “review” means when it is mentioned at the Dispatch Box. I was told in a Written Answer from the Government that there is no definition of a review. The Minister will appreciate that when I hear that word I am very worried about what it actually means. I hear what the Minister says but, equally, I hope that he has heard the concern from all round the House in this debate.
Lord Keen of Elie
I have of course heard the concerns that underpin this Private Member’s Bill. I have of course also understood the depth of feeling and the depth of concern that there is to see these problems addressed.
Baroness Cox
My Lords, I record my very deep gratitude to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, bringing so many distinctive and diverse contributions, with so much experience, professional expertise, compelling arguments and compassion in support of the Bill. I wish I could also thank the Minister for his response. I think the word “brush-off” has been used more than once when referring to the responses I often receive from the Front Bench. Much more importantly, the Minister’s reply will disappoint countless people who are hoping for some effective government action to be taken as a matter of urgency to help alleviate the problems that have been widely documented and highlighted in this debate. It seems that Her Majesty’s Government are living on a different planet of reality from the realities which have been put on the record in this debate. Those realities are widespread and the examples given are just the tip of an iceberg of great suffering. Instead, we have another delay during which countless women will continue to suffer, without any of the very modest remedial measures which the Bill could provide and which they emphasise would be of great help to them. They will be deeply disappointed.
There is much important subsequent business awaiting your Lordships so I will not take up any of the points raised in the debate, although I would wish very much to take up the points raised by the Minister, some of which I fundamentally disagree with. But I greatly look forward to working with all who have shared their concerns and expertise, to continue to seek ways forward in which we may address the serious problems we have discussed today. I give renewed thanks to everyone who has contributed to this debate and supported the Bill.
Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL] 2016-17 View all Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL] 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I ask noble Lords to note the date of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that my Bill seeks to amend. Much has happened in the criminal justice system during the 43 years since then which makes parts of it obsolescent, if not worse, and explains why both the recent Labour and coalition Governments proposed its review. The problem with Private Members’ Bills is that they can really tackle only one issue at a time and depend on being granted time by a Government, if they are to progress beyond Second Reading. So pressing is the need to reform a most important aid to the successful resettlement of prisoners into the community that, following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, whom I salute for his tireless pursuit of reform over many years, and in anticipation of the reforms that Michael Gove, when he was Secretary of State for Justice, was expected to announce, I tabled my Bill last May, acknowledging that it was by no means complete in setting out what needs to be done.
Then, in November last year, Liz Truss, the present Justice Secretary, published Prison Safety and Reform, the first White Paper on prisons since 1991, which she described as,
“a blueprint for the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation”.
On reading this, particularly the part about rehabilitation, I noted these two aspirations:
“We need a fundamental shift in approach so we are focused on preparing offenders for future employment in modern jobs. We need to provide prisoners with skills for which there is a real demand from employers”.
If these aspirations are to have a hope of being realised it is important to ensure that those skills can be employed, which is precisely the purpose of the Act. In consequence, I have completely changed my approach, believing that an essential overhaul could be more speedily achieved if included in the White Paper implementation process, rather than being left to a private Member to tackle small parts separately.
My introduction to my Bill is therefore nothing other than a plea to the Minister to accept my contention, in the hope that amendment of the Act will henceforward be taken on by government. If he does not, I will continue to introduce my proposals in the form of successive Bills, which means years of undue delay. I must apologise to the House for, in my enthusiasm to seize what I saw as a possible opportunity for early achievement of my aim, failing to correct a number of factual errors, particularly in Table A accompanying Clause 1. I am also conscious that, because policy responsibility for criminal record disclosure legislation straddles the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, reform will involve cross-departmental action, which it is beyond the pay grade of a private Member of this House to conduct.
The Act which my Bill seeks to amend was most ably described in 2015 by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, then Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, in his opening remarks in Grand Committee on a report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on the exceptions order to the 1975 Act. He said that,
“the primary legislation concerning the disclosure of criminal convictions and cautions … seeks to help the reintegration into society of offenders who have put their criminal past behind them. It does this by declaring certain convictions, after a specified period, as ‘spent’. Once a conviction has become spent, an individual is not required to declare it when, for example, entering most employment or applying for insurance”.—[Official Report, 9/2/15; col. GC 259.]
The Act was criticised for many years, on the grounds that the length of its rehabilitation periods and the exclusion of prison sentences of over 30 months from its scope did not do enough to rehabilitate offenders. Consequently, following particularly trenchant criticism from the Better Regulation Task Force in 1999, the Labour Government published a review entitled Breaking the Circle in 2002, following which they launched a consultation. In their response to that, published a year later, they said that they planned to publish a draft Bill containing their proposals for pre-legislative scrutiny. However, no draft Bill emerged, the Government claiming that, following the Soham murders, they could not set any timescale for changing the law, which I have always regarded as a lost opportunity.
In his foreword to Breaking the Circle, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, wrote:
“Removing the barriers to employment for ex-offenders must be a key element of any rehabilitation strategy”.
The report examined the,
“actions needed by Government, employers, and the public to support the resettlement efforts of those offenders who wanted to lead law-abiding lives, and to put their past behind them”.
Evidence proved that employment could reduce reoffending by between one-third and one half and that a criminal record seriously diminished employment opportunities.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, had the importance of the Act to any rehabilitation strategy absolutely right, and in 2010 the coalition Government raised the hopes of those of us who sought its reform by including its revision in the consultation document Breaking the Cycle. The Government said that they would review the operation of the Act in line with their announced aim of putting more offenders “on the right path”, by enabling them to
“become law-abiding citizens and contribute to society”,
by finding a job and a home.
Acknowledging that the Act was overly complex and confusing, leading to many people not realising that it applied to them, Breaking the Cycle described it,
“as being inconsistent with contemporary sentencing practice”.
Therefore the Government said that they were taking a fundamental look at the objectives of the Act and at how it could be reformed, which included consideration of broadening its scope so that it covered all offenders who received determinate sentences and reductions to the length of rehabilitation periods.
In the event, there was no mention of the Act in the Government’s response to the consultation. To be fair, however, the Government tabled a new clause to their Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which reformed the Act in two key ways. First, its scope was extended to cover custodial sentences of up to 48 months and, secondly, the length of some of the rehabilitation periods was reduced. Surprisingly, although the remainder of the provisions in the Bill were enacted in March 2013, this clause was not brought into force until a year later.
Since I tabled my Bill, I have been in constant touch with two organisations which have been working on reform of the Act for years: Unlock, in which I should declare an interest as its president, and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which, in March last year, published an outstanding report, Growing Up, Moving On: International Treatment of Childhood Criminal Records. I have also spoken with the Minister for Prisons, Mr Sam Gyimah, and the Minister for Youth Justice, Dr Phillip Lee, encouraging both to adopt reform of the Act as part of the White Paper overhaul process. I have also spoken with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and discussed the errors in table A, which I propose to correct by amendment in Committee.
That will not be the only amendment that I will be tabling. In the context of,
“the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation”’,
my first concern is with the current title of the Act. “Rehabilitation of Offenders” is misleading, because the Act does not say anything about how rehabilitation should be conducted but is all about criminal record disclosure. Why not call it the “Disclosure of Criminal Records Act”? By the same token, I also dislike the term “rehabilitation periods”, as they are better described as “disclosure periods”.
I now move on to the tone of the Bill, if Bills have a tone. The tone of the present legislation has been described as “a licence to lie” for people with convictions. Rather, I believe that it should be that no one released from prison should face a lifetime of disclosure, without the prospect of review. Asking an applicant, or employee, about spent criminal convictions, unless authorised to do so in excepted professions and occupations, should be made an offence. The 48-month spent limit should be removed, with determinate sentences of over four years becoming spent four years from the end of the sentence, as proposed by the Government in their 2003 response to Breaking the Circle. Those serving an indeterminate sentence should be given the opportunity to achieve rehabilitated status through a process of evidence submission to a criminal records tribunal administered by members of the judiciary. As an incentive to desist from crime, anyone recalled to prison would automatically have their disclosure period reset.
On the adult side, three other areas should be looked at. The first is motoring offences, which currently take five years to become spent, leading to such absurdities that an eight-month sentence, for actual bodily harm, will be spent before a fixed penalty notice for speeding. The Ministry of Justice and the Department of Transport say that they are working on this but, since the 2014 LASPO reforms, all has gone quiet. The second is court orders, which currently still have an impact when a conviction becomes spent. An ancillary order, such as a restraining or sexual offence order, can lengthen a rehabilitation period despite not forming part of a sentence. This results in some offences remaining unspent for many years, sometimes indefinitely. Finally, there are compensation orders, which, currently, have to be paid in full before the order is spent. The whole compensation order system is ineffective and riddled with mistakes, with neither courts nor the police maintaining proper records of payment, so why not the same fixed one-year period as fines?
I move on to childhood criminal records. Breaking the Circle contained the following:
“Consideration should be given to the development of criteria to identify young offenders convicted of minor and non-persistent crime so that their records may be wiped clean for the purposes of employment … at age 18”.
I have told the House before that, when inspecting the prisons in Barbados 16 years ago, I found just such a scheme in operation, with only the most serious offences carried forward, and have frequently asked, “If Barbados can, why can’t we?”.
The main change that is needed is to ensure that, at age 18, a child’s custodial sentence qualifies for a procedure leading to the possibility of it becoming spent, except of course life sentences and those for very serious offences. Youth rehabilitation orders should become spent as soon as an order is finished, bringing them in line with referral order periods. Detention and training orders should become spent six months after the order is finished rather than, as now, those of less than six months not being spent for 18 months, and those of over six months not for two years.
It has also been suggested that all under-18 custodial sentences greater than two years but less than four should become spent two years after the end of a sentence, and those greater than four years and less than life—which, currently, can never be spent—seven years after. There should also be consideration of whether it is appropriate that the same threshold for custodial sentences should apply to both children and adults.
Included in the overhaul of the Act should be a review of the accompanying Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions) Order 1975. In particular, the Government should establish an effective system for identifying and stopping ineligible checks, which too many of the 4 million checks each year currently are.
The Ministry of Justice should lay down clear criteria regarding the eligibility of applications. The Disclosure and Barring Service should publish and maintain accurate guidance on its processes. Together, the Government and the DBS should then take action against employers that do not take reasonable steps to ensure that checks they apply for are eligible. Regrettably, although knowingly carrying out an illegal check is a criminal offence under the Police Act 1997, to date there have been no prosecutions as the DBS does not see itself as an enforcement body.
I hope I have made my case for an amendment, amounting to overhaul of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, being adopted by the Government as part of the overhaul of our prisons, rather than apart from that process. Any rehabilitation programme worth its salt should include a disclosure scheme devised specifically to assist the employment process. The ineffectiveness of the existing Act has been compounded by the many changes since 1974, including sentence inflation, that have shifted the way in which offenders are treated by the criminal justice system in both sentencing and rehabilitation, rendering it unfit for purpose. Of course the protection of the public must remain the paramount driver of any assessment of risk, which is why certain types of employment should be excepted from some of the limitations on disclosure. But the scheme, which must be clearly explained to both employers and offenders so that they understand it, should apply retrospectively to all ex-offenders and be backed by a Criminal Records Tribunal. I beg to move.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has explained the Bill in his usual thorough and clear way. It is my great pleasure to support the Bill and the noble Lord’s suggestion that the Government could envelop it in their wider programme of reform.
On 17 March I will stand down at the end of my term as chairman of the Youth Justice Board. That will bring to an end seven years of association with the Ministry of Justice, half of it with the MoJ as Minister here in the Lords and half as chairman of the Youth Justice Board. I say that because the two points I want to make are relevant to each of the jobs I have done.
Looking at the speakers list today, I see I am flanked by four speakers who have been extremely influential as mentors during my time at the MoJ: the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, himself; the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew; the noble Earl, Lord Listowel; and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. I suppose I should add a fifth, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who is now on the Labour Front Bench, although I am not sure she was a mentor during that period; she was more of a menace—in the most constructive way.
One of the things I am most proud of is Section 139 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Unlock described it as positive but not perfect, and of course that is perfectly true. The fact is, though, that the reforms were as much as we could get our coalition partners to agree to. I was deeply influenced in my attempts by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, who had been pressing for more radical reforms. The truth is that my reforms were an exercise in the art of the possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, explained in his introduction, the truth is that over the period both major parties lost enthusiasm for any more radical reform.
However, today gives us an opportunity to test the water to see if there is an appetite in government for further reform. We know the matter is in front of a number of bodies. At present, for instance, the Justice Committee is completing an inquiry into youth criminal records, and it is that particular area that I want to address in my remarks. Its activities follow the recommendation of the Carlile committee on court reform. I hope that my noble friend—I think I can still refer to him as that, although we now seem to be separated by quite a gulf; but not, I hope, in attitudes—will refer to that in his speech, because the Carlile report was an important help to government in charting their way for reform.
It was also a key recommendation in the review conducted by Charlie Taylor into the youth justice system. The Secretary of State is at present considering next steps for youth justice reform. I urge her to keep in mind that the youth justice system is not simply the junior branch of the adult criminal justice system. The Taylor review is clear that we should develop a distinct approach to treating childhood offending. “Children first, offenders second”, is the mantra that Charlie Taylor advocated. It has been the guiding light of the Youth Justice Board both in the community and in the secure estate over the board’s 17 years of existence.
There is a strong case for following the logic of the Taylor report and the Government accepting the Carlile recommendation for the expungement of criminal records at attaining the age of 18, excluding homicide, serial sexual offences and other violent crime. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, explained, this is not woolly liberalism, but sound common sense, as is the continuation of anonymity for young offenders who come before the courts. All the evidence shows that resettlement into a job is the best way to avoid reoffending. I pay tribute to companies such as Timpson, National Grid and many others in the private sector who are willing to take on ex-offenders. The existence of a criminal conviction can undo years of successful rehabilitation work.
The Government are bound to say today that they are awaiting the outcome of a number of cases before the court regarding disclosure, and the findings of the Justice Committee inquiry, but I hope that the noble and learned Lord will acknowledge that the impact of the 1974 Act has been beneficial, but that it now suffers the problems of age and that we need the kind of widespread reform of criminal records advocated by Nacro, Unlock and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice.
About two years ago, I went to Bucharest for a conference on treatment of youth justice, and I was genuinely surprised and shocked—perhaps I should not have been—by the number of colleagues from other parts of Europe who said to me, not in a hostile but in an understanding way, “Of course, we know that yours is a punitive and penal policy towards young offenders, whereas ours is welfare based”.
I hope that we are moving in the direction of a welfare-based approach to young offending. Charlie Taylor is right: they are children first, offenders second. Of course victims have to be protected, but I remind colleagues of the key findings of the report to which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred. It stated:
“This report examines how childhood criminal records”—
those acquired under the age of 18—
“are treated in 16 jurisdictions. Of all the areas we looked at, the system in England and Wales is one of the most punitive. A criminal record acquired by a child in England and Wales can affect that person for longer, and more profoundly, than in any other jurisdiction under consideration … The overall environment is such that a childhood criminal record, even for a relatively minor offence or misdemeanour, can have severe implications during childhood and beyond into adulthood; this can affect an individual’s education, employment and other prospects for years to come”.
That is the wrong that I hope that the Bill moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, begins to right, and I look forward to a positive response from the Minister.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I start by saying how strongly I support the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who has built up an enormous wealth of knowledge about the penal system since he first became involved in it as Chief Inspector of Prisons, and we listen to him with great respect.
Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear me say, after the speech that we have just heard, that it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord McNally, albeit from this distance, rather than sitting next to him these days. Both from the Government Front Bench during the coalition and in his very distinguished period as chair of the Youth Justice Board, he has made an immense contribution. The Youth Justice Board has done a remarkable job in recent years, particularly in helping to reduce the number of young people held in custody.
If I have a slightly adverse comment about the Bill it is that, for my taste, it goes nothing like far enough. I do not believe that there is any really convincing evidence that using criminal records to prevent people obtaining perfectly ordinary jobs after a conviction that comes somewhere in the middle of the criminal calendar does anything other than send them back to prison. My view is that we should be very radical about these matters. There is, of course, cross-party support for being very radical about these matters, and I respectfully remind the noble and learned Lord who will reply to this debate of the contribution made by Michael Gove on these matters. It may be dangerous to cite Michael Gove these days as an argument ad majorem on almost any issue, but it has to be said in a debate like this that Michael Gove showed remarkable commitment to reforming the youth justice system. I believe that Michael Gove and Charlie Taylor, who has already been mentioned, and who produced his excellent report, were committed at the very least to the kinds of proposals that we are hearing now. I hope that the new Lord Chancellor will, within a short time, see that she, too, should support this agenda.
I want to say a few words about youth justice. As has already been mentioned, I had the privilege of chairing an unofficial, all-party parliamentarians group that reported on the youth courts system in June 2014. The group had as one of its members a then Back-Bencher who is now the Solicitor-General, Robert Buckland. As a committed Conservative of long standing, he was as enthusiastic as anybody about the changes that we were suggesting. “Treating children as children” should be a mantra that we keep repeating; it means a great deal more than some similar mantras that we have been hearing in recent times in the political agenda.
I recall in particular one instance, when I was a Member of the other place between 1983 and 1997, a woman who was a teacher came to see me one day at a constituency surgery. She was having a successful career as a teacher, and it was really time for her to move on and look at becoming a head of department in another school. She had a conviction for possession of cannabis while at university for which she had been fined £25. I should say that I do not, but I would not mind betting that quite a few Members of your Lordships’ House of a certain age were fined £20 or £30 for possession of cannabis. I see a few nods around the House, but I shall not name the nodders. She was prevented from obtaining that new job because, when the choice came between her and another person of equal merit, it was that conviction that prevented her obtaining her promotion—she told me so because she had been told so. It seems to me ludicrous that that should still obtain today. She was a person who was not going to get into trouble again; the fact that she did not obtain the job as head of department meant that she would carry on working in her present job—but there are people who are prevented from obtaining employment who, because of a criminal record obtained when they were very young, do not obtain a new job and go on to commit crime and walk round and round and round in that terrible revolving door that is the entrance to a prison.
As we have, alarmingly, been hearing this week, we see in prisons all the worst aspects of a criminal justice system that is built on punishment. Of course there are people who should be locked up, but when I was a young barrister, nearly half a century ago, I was told never to use the word “punishment” in a court room. Now it is used all the time. We are losing integrity by that approach to the criminal justice system. The Bill makes proportionate provisions that would make a significant, if not complete, contribution to people whose lives have started badly but whose potential can be unlocked.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Carlile. Thanks to the report of his important inquiry, we are now beginning to see solicitors and barristers in juvenile courts being trained to work with those clients. For many years now we have sought to ensure that professionals in courts understand child development and the vulnerability of their clients. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his great achievement.
I warmly welcome this Bill, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and particularly the attention it focuses on dealing with the criminal records of young people in a more sensitive way. I stress to the Minister that I hope the Government will look at the criteria for 18 year-olds, particularly as they affect young people from care, who are vastly overrepresented in the juvenile secure estate. The review by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, recognised that far too often in the past we failed to avoid criminalising these young people. In order that they may have a better go at life, and that we can do better for them, I hope the Minister will be prepared to look at these young people in particular.
Many of these young people will become mothers and fathers themselves. Many will have had a very poor start and I am sure we would all want them to have employment and a home to give stability to their children. I attended a National Grid Transco award ceremony where a father who had stuck in employment received an award. It was a moving moment to see his very young child and partner there to celebrate his achievement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for his kind comments. His contribution was, as always, humane, pragmatic and moving. I hope the Minister will pay great attention to his final words in particular. I am grateful to him for his work in heading the Youth Justice Board. It has been particularly difficult because the board has been so successful at reducing the number of children in custody. We are now left with about 1,000 children who are often very troubled and very troubling. The noble Lord has a great and challenging portfolio and he has done a very good job in managing it.
The Bill is timely, at a time when the Prime Minister has recognised that so many people and families in this country have been left behind. Austerity highlights this, but it is a historic problem. We have seen the closure of children’s centres—which are vital for dealing with social disadvantage and for social mobility—and youth services, which are vital for reducing offending. There is a housing crisis; we are approaching the high levels of 2003, with many families staying longer in bed and breakfast than they should do. This affects the mental health of children in those families and their access to education and friends. Child and adolescent mental health services are struggling, having been the Cinderella for a long time, and many libraries have been closed.
Childhood in Britain today is a challenging experience for many young people. One in five will grow up without a father in the home. This is difficult for boys and particularly difficult for girls. They have access to social media. As they become adolescents, they become far more interested in their peers than adults, and they can find all the worst examples of behaviour very easily on the internet. Parents are often torn between their work and their family. There is a growing awareness of the difficulties of adolescence and of the impulsiveness that I think we all recognise. Now the doubting Thomases can look at a brain scan and see why young people can be so impulsive.
I have talked a little about the care experience. There are still many shortcomings in the care system, despite very welcome work by many Governments. Half of young people and children in custody have been in care, as have a quarter of adults. The specialist mental health services for looked-after children have been cut. Foster carers talk of the difficulty of accessing social workers for support. Children’s homes still have very low-qualified staff compared with those on the continent and care leavers receive patchy support.
I will end on a hopeful note. Thanks to the work of Minister Timpson and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, in this House, we are seeing progress. The latest Children and Social Work Bill introduces a new covenant to offer better support to care leavers. I mentioned the National Grid, and Timpson has been mentioned. The Technical and Further Education Bill will provide better vocational options for young people. Much good work is being done. This timely Bill will build on that good work and ensure that 18 year-olds who started life badly and have often had very poor support get a better chance in life so that they can get a job and a home and be good mothers and fathers to their own children. We can break the cycle that is behind this issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, I add my support for this Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.
I have made two previous attempts to reform the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that ultimately received the support of the coalition Government. It is for this reason that I want to put on record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who is now the chairman of the Youth Justice Board. I endorse what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said—namely, that this is probably one of the most successful agencies operating in the criminal justice field today. I also add my thanks to the former Justice Minister, Kenneth Clarke, who was the Secretary of State at the time, for the support that he gave to my measures.
The impact of these measures has helped to shape the lives of thousands of people by directing them away from the criminal justice process. The Bill seeks to extend the protection which the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act provides to former offenders who have served sentences of over four years but have left crime behind them and stayed out of trouble for periods of eight years or more—a long time.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 provided that, after specified rehabilitation periods, ex-offenders do not have to declare spent convictions when they apply for jobs. The Act does not apply to people applying for jobs in sensitive areas of work such as criminal justice agencies, financial institutions and work with young people or vulnerable adults.
Initially, the Act applied only to offenders serving sentences of up to two and a half years. However, following my introduction of a series of Private Members’ Bills to reform the Act, the coalition Government agreed to extend the Act to include offenders who have served sentences of four years or less. Even now, however, many genuinely reformed ex-offenders can never benefit from the Act. More than 7,000 people a year are given sentences of over four years. At present they can never be rehabilitated for the purposes of the Act, however much they do to change their ways and over however long a period. Our provisions are still notably less generous than the rules which apply in many European nations—a point well made by my noble friend Lord McNally. Most European countries typically apply rehabilitation periods to sentences that are longer than four years, and their rehabilitation periods are often significantly shorter than ours.
Since the Act was implemented, sentence lengths in this country have significantly increased. Many offenders who would have received sentences of four years or less in 1974 are receiving sentences of five, six or seven years today. This means that many offenders who would previously have been helped by the Act now find that their offences will never become spent during the whole of their lifetime.
The buffer periods which are proposed in the noble Lord’s Bill would begin after the sentence was completed—including any post-release supervision. The offender would then have to remain crime-free for a buffer period of four years for custodial sentences of four years or more. This would mean that those benefiting from the Bill would have to avoid crime for at least eight years, and in some cases for a much longer period, before the provisions applied to them.
The new provisions would not apply to jobs in sensitive occupations, as I mentioned earlier. However, the provisions of the Bill would further reduce the scope for unfair discrimination against ex-offenders in the job market. Regrettably, such discrimination is still widespread. Surveys of ex-offenders in Nacro projects—I declare my interest as president of that organisation—have shown that 60% have been explicitly refused a job because of their criminal record.
Of course, it is sometimes reasonable to refuse an ex-offender a job because of his record. For example, obviously we must bar offenders with a history of offences against children from working with children. We should bar offenders with a history of offences against elderly people from work caring for elderly people. The Bill would not apply to cases such as these, which are covered by the exceptions to the Act. However, in many cases employers turn down applicants because of offences that have no relevance to the jobs for which they are applying. Unfortunately, the scope for discrimination against ex-offenders is wide, because decisions to employ or refuse people jobs are not made at the top of companies; they are made by a large number of individual managers and personnel staff who usually have had no specific training in how to deal with applications from people with criminal records.
Unfair discrimination against ex-offenders is wrong in principle, because it imposes an additional illegitimate penalty of refusal of employment on people who have already served the judicially ordered punishment for their crime. It also reduces public safety, because an ex-offender’s risk of reoffending is reduced by between a third and a half if he or she gets and keeps a job. The whole community benefits when offending is reduced—and reformed offenders are also helped to avoid returning to wasting their lives in criminal activities.
I conclude by saying that the Bill would enable more people with criminal records to start again with a clean slate after a substantial number of years free of criminal activity. This is a worthy aim, and I am delighted to commend it and to support the Bill.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, as a past trustee for many years of the Koestler Trust, which puts the arts into prisons and encourages prisoners to take up music, painting and writing, I support my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and his important Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill.
One of the most telling results of the work of the Koestler Trust is the bestowal of the gift of hope, the possibility of redemption and the extinguishing of stigma—so, too, with the effects of the “spent” system. We heard yesterday of the appalling rise in the number of suicides in our prisons and we constantly hear about overcrowding and understaffing leading to some prisoners spending 23 hours out of 24 in their cells, denied proper exercise and time in the open air and natural light. These are not statistics of which a civilised society can be proud.
Therefore, while a Conservative Government may well feel that they are pledged to send out a message of strict punishment for criminals, they are in a spot, because they are running out of places to put them. Far better, surely, to take a lead from Norway, where prison is avoided wherever possible and an enormous emphasis on creative rehabilitation has led to a 20% rate of reoffending, as opposed to 60% here, for those with short-term prison sentences, and 70% in America.
Hope can be achieved in a number of ways, but certainly the ability to feel that a debt to society has been paid, to wipe clean a slate and to be rewarded by having an offence and sentence regarded as spent is a vital part of rehabilitation, especially in the young, whose youthful indiscretions might otherwise permanently blight adulthood. I sense all round your Lordships’ House particular concern for this aspect of imprisonment and children.
Artistic endeavour and the prospect of earning respect through good behaviour are linked, and both lead to a more cohesive society inside and outside prison. Freud described creativity as an extension of fantasy, and fantasy as a way of transcending the travails of reality. Furthermore, psychologists such as Viktor Frankl have demonstrated how in, for example, the concentration camps in the Second World War inmates who were able to conjure up a future—that is the important point—through writing, composing or painting had a greater chance of survival. I am not, of course, comparing our prisons to terrible places such as Auschwitz but I think that some of the things that we have learned from—if I may put it this way—humanity in extremis about existential thought and about hope provide useful lessons from which we should and must learn.
Surely it is vital and an attractive prospect for the Government to reduce the pressure in prisons by rewarding those who demonstrate good behaviour and a desire to move on in life. It is not a soft option but common sense to seek to foster a more redemptive criminal justice system.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I rise with some trepidation among the experts taking part in this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for introducing this important Bill.
The process of the rehabilitation of offenders upon completion of a sentence has a dual purpose. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act serves as an extension to custodial, monetary or community sentences by mandating ex-offenders to inform employers and voluntary organisations, when asked—usually during the application process for employment—whether they have any unspent convictions.
For many who have entered the criminal justice system, the Act also provides an opportunity to be relieved of the obligation to declare such information after fixed periods of time. This protection not only incentivises the ex-offender, as we have heard, to remain on the right side of the law; it also provides them with the certain knowledge that, at some point, they will no longer have to identify themselves as a criminal.
Notwithstanding the exceptions for very serious crimes, where offences are never spent, or environments where public safety is paramount and even spent convictions must be disclosed, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is a ray of hope for anyone seeking to make more productive life choices than those of their past. This is extremely important in helping them to reconnect with their families, where their term in imprisonment has caused rifts and stresses, especially where children are concerned. Knowing that they will not always have to carry the stigma but can move forward can be a life saver.
The existing Rehabilitation of Offenders Act provides no opportunity for an ex-offender’s sentence to be spent if a custodial sentence of four years or more is imposed. Although it is widely accepted that custodial sentences are reserved for more serious crimes, it must be said that many offenders in this category are left with little option when any hope of gaining employment is taken away from them.
The 2013 Ministry of Justice analysis of the impact of employment on reoffending following release from custody identified a marked reduction in reoffending when offenders entered employment. They had a job for which they were paid and were, therefore, able to support accommodation and a home—all essential to well-being and self-esteem. When able to maintain employment, the reoffending rate dropped dramatically. Reoffending rates for prisoners released after at least a year in prison dropped from almost 70% to 32% when they were able to maintain employment.
For low-level offenders, the existing Act serves merely as an extension to their sentence. Can you imagine that anyone sentenced to four years in custody for a serious assault at the age of 18 would still have to declare that conviction well into their 60s, even if this was their only custodial sentence? As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, mentioned, at 18, many of us were very different people from those sitting in the Chamber today. I am not suggesting that we were offenders, but we will have taken wrong turnings at some time. We have been lucky enough to move on.
Experience shows that the existing Act will not prevent the dishonest from lying to gain employment. However, it impedes the progress of those who could otherwise lead progressive and law-abiding lives, contributing to the economy through gainful employment. The reduction of the buffer period in the proposed Bill, during which convictions remain unspent, does not reduce the sentence or access to training and support services, neither does it provide an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. The reductions detailed in this Bill will give ex-offenders the opportunity to apply for jobs sooner, earn a wage earlier and pay their own way without the justifiable fear of rejection because of poor life choices.
The criminal justice system in the UK seeks to strike a balance at a time when budgets are increasingly tighter and it costs £37,000 to keep one person in prison for a year. The Government should be making use of all available tools to reduce reoffending and encourage ex-offenders to make better choices for themselves, their families and the wider community. Although I would never argue against the delivery of justice and the provision of security and protection from the most dangerous individuals, we must also recognise that the entire notion of modern, balanced, restorative justice is built on the belief that an individual has the capacity to rehabilitate, to learn to make positive life choices and to become a productive, contributing member of society. I welcome this Bill and sincerely hope that it will eventually pass all its stages and become law.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friends and colleagues are far too kind in giving me this opportunity to respond to a debate in which I think I have agreed with every word that has been spoken from across the House. The debate has been particularly pointed for both the humanity and logic in the contributions from all sides. It is always a particular privilege to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on any issue relating to prison reform and rehabilitation more generally. I must confess that when I was a child, the name Rambo conjured a rather different figure—a bloodthirsty cinema character played by Sylvester Stallone. Years later, when I entered the law, then the Home Office and finally a human rights NGO, the name Rambo was often whispered. I came to realise that it was the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to whom everyone referred. He has an incredible record of holding successive Governments to account on urgent issues—becoming increasingly urgent, I might add—in our penal system. It is in this knowledge that I completely support from this side his call for a Second Reading of this important Bill and everything he is trying to achieve by bringing it forward.
As we have heard, the Bill seeks to reduce rehabilitation periods and is one aspect of vital reform that is necessary to the now completely outdated 1974 Act. Despite commitments from successive Governments to push through reform in this area—we heard about the excellent Breaking the Circle report, produced by the Labour Government in 2002, to which the noble Lord referred in his introduction—we have seen only incremental changes over the years. That Act is now completely inconsistent with contemporary sentencing practice. The result is that, far from allowing reformed individuals the second chance that is promised in the Act, its shortcomings leave many excluded from any prospect of rehabilitation and meaningful employment after they have completed their sentences.
Under the current legislation, as we have heard, the rehabilitation periods—in truth the disclosure periods—are overlong and not based on any real evidence. For those serving sentences of over four years, convictions can never be spent. Individuals are therefore forced to live with the shadow of their convictions, through a lifetime of disclosure and without the prospect of review. In addition, the legal regime relating to criminal record exposure, as laid out in the 1974 Act, is inclusive of children. Children, who find themselves exempt under this Act from the presumption that their spent sentence will not be disclosed, face a very uncertain future of indefinite disclosure, alienated from opportunities in education, employment and housing. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, sentencing inflation over the years has changed and weakened the efficacy of the original 1974 Act regime.
In terms of non-disclosure of convictions, rehabilitation is just one part of a system that is supposed to serve those individuals and the general public. It is an essential tool in reducing crime and ensuring public safety. For our criminal justice system to be effective, it must be reformed in the round. We face a crisis in our prisons. Cuts to public spending under this Government, I am sorry to say, have been at the expense of prison security and public safety. Currently, over 84,000 prisoners are held in just 118 prisons, 75 of which are overcrowded. These 118 prisons are underresourced, understaffed and increasingly, dangerous places of violence. The Secretary of State herself has admitted that rates of violence and self-harm have increased significantly over the past five years, with 6,000 assaults on staff and 105 self-inflicted deaths in the 12 months leading up to June 2016. Since then, we have seen riots in six prisons across the country. It is not surprising in this context that our prisons are failing to deliver rehabilitation and, alongside a privatised probation service, are failing to reduce reoffending.
Against that backdrop, I share the noble Lord’s frustration with the much-anticipated White Paper, Prison Safety and Reform, published in November. Far from being,
“a blueprint for the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation”,
as promised, it lays down only sketchy policy objectives, very little guidance on implementation and even less on cost. The debate today takes place in this wider context and I urge the Government to respond to this Bill. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, intends to initiate a more substantial, cross-departmental review, beginning with criminal records disclosure and ending with the criminal justice system as a whole.
Finally, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his perseverance and courage in bringing this issue back again and again. Yes, ultimately, this is an issue of human rights, but it is also one of sound public policy. He has dedicated so much of his working life to this and I hope to continue to dedicate mine in the same way. I look forward to making contributions to this House and to his campaign.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for bringing this matter back for debate in the House today and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, on what I think is her first contribution to a Bill before this House. The Government share the noble Lord’s support for individuals with criminal records who wish to turn their lives around, and securing a job is often the first step on that journey. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 exists primarily to support the rehabilitation into employment of reformed offenders who have stayed on the right side of the law.
Perhaps I may provide a little background to the 1974 Act and how it can support ex-offenders. Under the Act, following a specified period of time which varies according to the disposal administered or sentence passed, most convictions resulting in custodial sentences of up to and including four years become spent. Where a conviction has become spent, the offender is treated as rehabilitated in respect of that offence and is not obliged to declare it for most purposes. This could include when applying for employment, but also when applying for insurance cover or a bank loan. However, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 lists areas of activity and proceedings which are exceptions to the 1974 Act. This means that the employer or some other relevant body is entitled to ask for and take into account certain details of a person’s spent cautions and convictions. These activities are usually concerned with working with children or other people in vulnerable circumstances, or where sensitive information is handled and there is a risk to the public of an abuse of trust. For example, the exceptions order covers teachers, prison staff, healthcare professionals and employees of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Where an occupation is listed on the exceptions order, an employer is eligible for a standard or enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check that will contain details of certain spent and unspent convictions for the individual in question. Such DBS checks, as they are known, fall under the responsibilities of the Home Office. However, I would like to respond to certain observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Thorough guidance on the DBS application process, eligibility for checks, and the disputes mechanism are available on the DBS website. It also includes a new electronic eligibility tool which can help individuals to check whether a particular role is eligible for a DBS check, so that information is publicly available. The DBS checks are submitted via a registered body which is responsible for confirming that a particular role is eligible for a DBS check, and a statutory code of practice is already in place setting out the obligations that apply to those registered bodies. Should an applicant feel that they have been asked to undertake a DBS check in relation to a role that is not eligible, they can ask the DBS to investigate it. The DBS provides support and guidance for registered bodies and will take steps to suspend, and where necessary cancel, registered bodies that do not comply with the code of practice. So the DBS seeks to assure people that registered bodies are compliant with the existing code of practice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, referred to the 1974 Act as outdated but as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, it was in fact reformed and amended by the rehabilitation provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which came into force in March 2014. As a consequence, a conviction resulting in a custodial sentence of four years or less, unless it is a public protection sentence, may now become spent. Previously, only convictions resulting in custodial sentences of 13 months or less could become spent, so a material change has been made. At the same time the coalition Government also reduced most rehabilitation periods. The present Government believe that these reforms are proportionate and that we have struck the correct balance between protecting the public and helping ex-offenders to put their criminal pasts behind them.
I turn to the specific proposals the noble Lord included in the Bill. First, we do not consider the proposals to amend the rehabilitation periods for offences necessary. It does not appear that the proposed rehabilitation periods take account of the 2014 reforms I just mentioned. As such, the Bill attempts to amend repealed legislation.
The Government have also introduced additional reforms to help improve the opportunities available to those with criminal records. In response to a Court of Appeal judgment in May 2013 we amended the exceptions order to the Act to enable old and minor convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings to be filtered so that they do not automatically appear on a criminal record certificate. It remains the case that cautions and convictions for specified sexual and violent offences, and certain other offences relating to safeguarding vulnerable people, continue to be subject to disclosure, as do the most serious convictions for any offence that resulted in custodial sentences.
For other non-specified offences, however, cautions received as an adult do not need to be disclosed after a period of six years; for a conviction it is 11 years. In other words they are “filtered” out from the relevant certificates. This is dependent on the offence being the only conviction on an individual’s record. This addresses a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, on someone committing an offence in their youth and then finding at the age of 60 that this is necessarily disclosed. There is a filtering policy and process in place that means that such a minor offence that she alluded to cannot be taken into account by an employer. These periods are halved when the individual concerned was aged under 18 years at the time of the relevant offence. Again, youth offending is addressed in that context.
The second area addressed by the noble Lord’s Bill is the specific rehabilitation periods. The Bill would allow community orders to become spent after 12 months or, in the case of young offenders, six months. Such orders may last for up to three years, so this could result in many such orders becoming spent before they have been served. I am sure that was the intention. It may be that the intention is to apply these periods after the relevant period of three years has expired. Again, there is an issue there. Community orders are available for almost all imprisonable offences—obviously in appropriate cases—and it may not always be appropriate for offences resulting in community disposals to become non-disclosable as quickly as the Bill suggests.
As I mentioned, the Government have recently reformed this legislation. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 introduced reforms that commenced in 2014. The Government recognised in the interim that certain forms of sentencing practice had become more severe, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and that as a consequence fewer ex-offenders would benefit from the original provisions of the 1974 Act. That is why the revised rehabilitation periods take account of the punitive weight of the disposal, and hence the likely seriousness of the offending. They also take account of the reoffending data, which show the length of time for which people are most at risk of reoffending. We consider that those amendments, which were accepted by Parliament, bring about the necessary proportionality to the existing legislation.
Thirdly, the noble Lord’s Bill seeks to allow determinate custodial sentences of any length to become spent. I recognise that he would like the current legislation to go further by enabling determinate custodial sentences of any length to become spent, but the Government consider that the present amendments to the Act that came into force in 2014 achieve the correct balance between rehabilitation of offenders and public protection. This is a two-sided coin and these issues have to be balanced. We do not feel there is a case for the law to go further at this stage.
Reference is also made in the Bill to the service justice system. Officials in the Ministry of Defence have highlighted a number of inaccuracies in the draft Bill from an Armed Forces perspective. There are out-of-date references to the service justice system, in that the Bill refers to the Army Act 1955, the RAF Act 1955 and the Navy Discipline Act 1975.
Lord Ramsbotham
Before the Minister goes on, I mentioned that I had met with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and discussed this, so I know that they are there. They were not corrected by me but I know what they are.
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged that the noble Lord knows what they are; I wanted to advise the rest of the House, since other noble Lords may not be as familiar with these matters as the noble Lord has become following his discussions with my noble friend Lord Howe. I am concerned with the underlying thrust of the noble Lord’s Bill, not with matters of minor detail, and I quite appreciate that in the context of a Private Member’s Bill it may often be of assistance to have discussions about how apparently repealed legislation can be removed from a Bill and the Bill improved. I appreciate that. I am not attempting to make some ad hominem observation or criticism of the noble Lord at all; I just want to underline that the proposals made regarding the Armed Forces are skewed.
The point I was coming to is that the Armed Forces Act 2006 removed many forms of disposal that were previously used by the Armed Forces. In fact, the reforms to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 have been adopted by the Armed Forces, so we have the same issues arising both for the Armed Forces and elsewhere.
In summary, the Government understand the noble Lord’s concerns and we are, of course, committed to helping ex-offenders who wish to make a fresh start and put their criminal history behind them. We are desperately anxious to ensure that people do not simply leave the prison gate one day and return another. Despite this, we do not support the noble Lord’s Bill, given the reasons I have already outlined. I note the noble Lord’s views, I understand them and I would welcome the opportunity to engage further with him about how we can increase the support that is available to ex-offenders. We have already made some progress in this area.
I acknowledge that these matters are all interconnected. Rehabilitation, disclosure, opportunity for education within prison, opportunity for employment as people go through the gate from prison—all these things are linked. Since 2016, we have been running a campaign to encourage more businesses to provide training and work opportunities for offenders and ex-offenders. This has been carried out in close collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions See Potential campaign. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, cited a number of instances where employers have come forward. This underlines the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that our prison system has to provide hope and opportunity, not just punishment.
The present campaign emphasises the general advantage to society of securing employment for ex-offenders and thereby reducing reoffending and unemployment. I have other examples, further to those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. Amey, the large engineering firm, is now expressly training offenders and then recruiting ex-offenders into its workforce. Bounce Back is a construction training organisation that employs people on release from prison and, indeed, is now training them in construction skills during their period of imprisonment—albeit some prison governors have become slightly concerned at the sight of prisoners erecting scaffolding in the prison yard. It is important that such skills are made available. I understand the challenges on the present prison estate, which is why that, too, is being addressed at the present time. It is also why we have sought to give further responsibility to individual prison governors to determine how they take forward issues of prison education and prison education funding within their own institutions in order to secure the best outcomes.
It is our hope, now that the matter of education has moved from the Department for Education to the Ministry of Justice, that it can be expanded and improved within the prison estate. But, of course, expanding opportunity within the prison estate can be done only on the foundations of an improved prison estate itself. That is why the Government have made such a commitment to improving the physical prison estate in order to achieve greater and better results so far as recidivism is concerned, so far as opportunity is concerned and so far as the future lives of former offenders are concerned.
We are concerned to turn lives around and we do not wish to see them turned around and back to prison. We wish to see people given the opportunity for employment, given the opportunity for education and given the opportunity to change their lives. At this time we do not consider that the proposals of the Bill are appropriate. Nevertheless, I thank the noble Lord, and indeed all noble Lords, for their contributions to this debate.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part. In particular I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for her kind words, and welcome her to her first appearance on the Front Bench, which I should have done beforehand. Over the years I am sure that many of us came to welcome the briefs that were provided from Liberty when she was directing that organisation. We hope that that tradition will continue and we look forward to many contributions from her in her current position.
I have to say that I am extremely disappointed by the Minister’s response. When I represented the Bill as having been in close contact with a number of organisations—particularly Unlock, of which I am president, which is the national association of ex-offenders and therefore in touch with the difficulties that they are experiencing day after day—they did not put their concerns about the Bill lightly. As I said, these organisations and many of the ex-offenders do not understand all the conditions. The Minister may have mentioned that the DBS had a website, and so on. How many of them have access to that? I also said that employers did not understand, which was why there were so many ineligible requests for disclosure being made by employers. I made a particular plea for a mechanism to deal with that ineligibility, which the Minister did not answer.
Lord Keen of Elie
With great respect to the noble Lord, I pointed out that applications for DBS checks have to be made through a registered body, and that those registered bodies are subject to a published code of practice.
Lord Ramsbotham
But I remind the Minister that that is not happening. Even though there is the possibility of prosecuting people for making wrong approaches, it has never happened because the DBS says that it is not an enforcement body. Therefore, there is something missing.
I am very glad for the support for my proposal around the House. What I am suggesting is that in the context of the White Paper, it would be sensible for the Government to look at all aspects of resettlement, including this one. My offer to the Minister is that all those who have raised problems on the outside are more than willing to take part in that process. I hope that their evidence will not be taken lightly, because it has been drawn up over many years. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, the list in Section 139 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, in response to the two consultations, Breaking the Cycle and Breaking the Circle, was all that the coalition Government could get through. There were many others—and, indeed, are many others—and some of them have been lying dormant since 2002. It is time that they were brought forward.
As I gave notice, I intend to table amendments in Committee. In the interim, I hope that the Minister will reconsider his rejection of what is on offer, because the issue is far too serious to be let go with the prospect of annual Bills and annual making progress on small points.
Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill [HL]
Friday 27th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill [HL] 2016-17 View all Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill [HL] 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, this is not the first time that this Bill has been before you, and I assure you that it will not be the last, for it or something similar, for there is a moral, legal and practical imperative for the Government to do something about this area of the law. Unlike the current law, which is widely disliked, criticised and out of date, this Bill would, above all, improve the lot of every child whose future needs are jeopardised by the waste of parental assets in fighting over money.
There has been much publicity recently about the alleged advantages of so-called no-fault divorce, but bitterness and mud-slinging cannot be eradicated from divorce. Mediation and reasonableness can be achieved only when the far more antagonistic and inflammatory law of financial provision and asset splitting is cleaned up. This is what the Bill will do. It is more urgent than ever because legal aid has been removed from this area of the law and there is no prospect of its restoration. Judges and self-representing litigants complain. The judges complain that they have to do the work of lawyers for the couple appearing before them without advocates and with little idea of the law, dragging out hearing times. The ex-spouses complain because they are thrown into a situation where there is no signpost to a fair outcome, at the most stressful time of their lives. They are expected to mediate and negotiate without any pointers. The Law Commission, which has called for reform, compared the current adjudications on maintenance to a bus driver who has been told to drive a bus but not been told where it is going.
The law has been developed by the judges over the last 40 years, almost as if the guiding statutory provision in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 did not exist. In all this time, it has not been thoroughly debated in Parliament, despite the enormous changes in society with same-sex marriage, women reaching equality in work and education, and profoundly different attitudes to divorce and the family. The judges have scrambled to keep up. They have tried manfully to do so, but the result of their swerving from one principle to another, as they carve up assets and income, has been to leave lawyers and divorcing couples less and less able to predict what might be a proper outcome for them. Stories abound about the different views of judges in different parts of the country. Their attitudes may well have been shaped in a different era and according to their own views of their marital roles.
The law that seeps through to the public and into the textbooks inevitably arises from big-money cases that go to the highest courts. These pontifications are not necessarily helpful to low-income families. I am not alone in blushing at the media stories of the divorcing wives of oligarchs who claim, and are awarded, for their alleged needs sums from their husbands such as £2.1 million per annum on travel; £83,000 per annum on cocktail dresses—a sum that would provide 19.7 million water purification tablets for Africa—and £39,000 per annum on watches, which is equivalent to funding a month’s food for 1,695 malnourished children. Meanwhile, the ex-wives of low-income husbands have to struggle along as best they can. This is one of the reasons why the consideration of needs, as the Government will no doubt call for, is regressive and subjective.
This area of law desperately needs public and parliamentary input. Go to any of the blogs about this and see the misery of couples who have spent a fortune on settling and do not understand why their sense of fairness is disregarded. Read the many reports that have tried to reform this area, and you uncover an area of misery, wasteful expense and incomprehension.
The Law Commission reported on this area and backed prenuptial agreements. It said that after a few more years of work, it might end up with a formulaic system for the division of assets on divorce. In the meantime, the Family Justice Council has issued guidance running to 64 pages. The council is a group of family law professionals, not judges or members of the public. Its guidance is opaque and not binding, and it brings into question the role of Parliament. How can it be right in a democracy to leave guidance to unelected, non-judicial people who should be applying the law, not making it? What a statement it amounts to, in relation to the unsatisfactory condition of the law, that Parliament has apparently thrown up its hands in despair. Each year 100,000 children and twice as many adults are adversely affected by this. They call on the Government to do something. The current law has a reputation for putting people off getting married because it is so arbitrary.
At the crux of the issue is the value of judicial discretion in every case versus plain rules, as contained in the Bill. Our divorce judges are doing their best with care, generosity and sensitivity, but the result is uncertainty, expense and unpredictability. The rule of law demands that the law be predictable and certain, all the more so when the Government have removed the prop of legal aid.
A couple of prominent family judges will no doubt say they are opposed to reforming the law to bring in clear and understandable firm rules, but they are the ones whose intricate judgments have aggravated what is already obsolete. Their preference for individual tailor-made solutions is unaffordable. Judicial objections amount to saying that there should be no Marks & Spencer because we all look better in a Savile Row suit tailored in the latest style. A senior judge wrote recently to warn of what he called,
“the crude and amateurish reform of the delicately calibrated law of financial provision following divorce, which is currently attracting some support in the House of Lords”.
That is a very narcissistic comment. It is Parliament’s job to make policy in the interests of the entire country. It is the judges’ job to apply it, not to determine the legislation. That is a reminder of the separation of powers. There are also a few solicitors with a vested interest in no reform because their task of leading couples through the maze of the existing law is very well paid. Happily, the vastly experienced, outstanding family lawyer, the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, who is unable to be in her place this afternoon, is on side and wishes me to emphasise her wholehearted support.
What does the Bill say? It will provide that prenuptial agreements about what might happen to a couple’s money on divorce and how needs arising from the marriage might be met will be binding, subject to the usual contractual rules. At the moment, we have the worst of both worlds. Judges have said that prenups can be binding, but they have applied so many conditions to their validity that couples now spend hundreds of thousands of pounds litigating over whether the prenup is binding, which defeats the purpose. Prenups will not undermine marriage. Those countries which have binding prenups have lower divorce rates than ours. Many a widowed or divorced older person has told me that they would like to marry their companion but fear to do so because if the second marriage ends in death or divorce, the assets from the first marriage which they wish to hand down to their children would end up in the ownership of the second spouse. Binding prenups would give them peace of mind and could also deal with the vexed issue of maintenance.
The substance of the Bill is this: it adopts a system which prevails in most of Europe, the US, and especially our neighbour, Scotland, called the division of post-marital assets. The presumption would be that a fair starting point is the equal division of all the property and pensions acquired by the couple after marriage. Assets owned before marriage, inheritances and gifts would remain in the possession of the owner and not be available for transfer. Thus in a short marriage there would be little to divide but in a long marriage, where the couple started with nothing, everything would be divisible. There is flexibility in the Bill to allow for the home to be retained for the use of, say, a mother with children still in education.
Fortunately, a few months ago a university researcher’s review was published of the Scottish law on which this Bill is very closely modelled and which has been in operation for 30 years. The Scottish law was given the highest praise. The report was called Built to Last and its conclusion was that not a word of the Scottish law should be changed and that it had been,
“successful in achieving one of its aims which was to encourage parties to reach their own agreements about the financial and property consequences of divorce”.
The report quotes an interviewee as saying:
“English law is broken and needs mending: but ours doesn’t … generally speaking, it’s a gem”.
This is the gem the Bill puts before your Lordships and which the public deserve and need. Nor has there been a problem in Scotland with more divorced wives claiming state benefits: claims for ongoing maintenance are diminishing in England and Wales year by year and are nothing but an ongoing source of trouble.
Many noble Lords who are unable to be here this afternoon but are in support, such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, say: “Why do the Government not get on with it? The Bill is so obviously sensible and sooner or later, it will be the law”. I can only hazard a guess that successive Governments are scared of what they see as moral issues—although this law is more practical than moral.
Women want reform, for there is a growing number of wives who are better off than their husbands and resent, even more than men do, having to give what they see as a disproportionate amount of their hard-earned assets to the man who left them. The public desperately want new, clear law. Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.
My proposed law combines autonomy with fairness. It will give divorcing wives entitlement and end the practice of treating them as supplicants for a discretionary allocation. It will protect the family business and the working wife. It has the potential to save millions in litigation costs. It will provide a good starting point for mediation and negotiation. It will restore some dignity, clarity and reasonableness to family law. The proposals are firmly based in the successful laws of other countries and on the reports of reform organisations here.
Divorce means divorce. The Bill will provide couples with a White Paper for a fair deal and a smooth transition to a single life. No more negotiations without a plan; no more hard exits. Will the Government recognise the problems and take action? I beg to move.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, first, I refer to my entry in the Members’ register of interests as a practising lawyer—but not, I must emphasise to the noble Baroness who has just spoken, a divorce lawyer in recent times, so my vested interest does not extend to the things that she suggested a lot of lawyers might be thinking about in discussing this matter. I am here to urge some caution, based on my own experience, not only as a practising lawyer who has had contact with family law matters but also as a former Home Office Minister aware of the effect of legislation and the importance of considering it and sometimes protecting oneself from it.
This is a very interesting subject and we need just perhaps to be slightly historical—not hysterical, but historical. Before 1857, the whole issue of divorce was entirely in the hands of the Church and it was not until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 that it was possible to have divorce in the secular courts. Indeed, all the matters relating to financial provision and the like had to take a much lower position in the considerations that followed. It was not until 1937 that a further Matrimonial Causes Act was introduced, which in context allowed other grounds, and very strict grounds for adultery, to be used for the separation of parties in divorce actions.
I remember in 1969, when I was an articled clerk, the Divorce Reform Act. My old law lecturer, Bernard Passingham at Guildford, wrote the best book on the subject. We dealt with remaining divorces only on grounds of irretrievable breakdown, with no fault on either side—no fault in terms of the legislators, perhaps, but not necessarily reflected in the views of couples who were coming to divorce.
The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, wishes to repeal Section 25(2), is in my view an important piece of legislation, which I believe in general has been very successful. There are of course well-known cases where there have been areas of despair—concern that abuse has taken place and so on—but I still believe that the wideness and flexibility of that Act is its most important aspect, along with its consideration of the needs of a child or children to be most important. I fear that the proposals by the noble Baroness will to some extent take away the priority of our need to consider children.
In 2004 Lord Justice Thorpe, in a case called G v G, said that, using the width of discretion available to him under Section 25, the judge could balance conduct against the shortness of marriage, adding in a wife’s contribution and essentially having flexibility in determining financial matters. Indeed the 2014 Law Commission, to which the noble Baroness has referred, made this statement in the context of the financial settlements:
“The objective is, and should be, to enable the parties to make a transition to independence, in a way that takes account of the choices made within the marriage or civil partnership, its length, the parties’ ongoing shared responsibilities (for example, for any children), the need for a home and the standard of living during the relationship. We think this is what, for the most part, the courts are doing anyway”.
Despite concerns in some areas, I believe it is important that we maintain that flexibility. I therefore fear the rigidity of these proposals and the danger that the repeal of this part of that Act would not serve the purposes of giving extra flexibility.
I shall refer, if I may, to prenuptial agreements, which are also part of the noble Baroness’s proposals. There are concerns regarding these agreements, which have grown in number extensively over the last few years. Yes, they are often a good idea, but it is important that we follow the terms that were referred to—there are other speakers in the Chamber today who will have much better knowledge of the Supreme Court than I do—in October 2010 in the case of Radmacher v Granatino, when it was said that prenuptial agreements are fine but there has to be a set of principles to have them drawn up in a proper manner if they are going to be upheld in the courts. That covered a number of things but it also included whether the terms of the agreement meet everyone’s needs, including those of the children.
I come back to children in my remarks because I think that they are important. This is what worries me in scrutinising these proposals: we have to be sure that the priority of children remains. Nothing—no deals, no agreements—must get in the way of the consideration of children, who are the ones, despite the suffering of the parties themselves, who suffer the most in society. Our duty is to protect them.
Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the Bill. I shall be brief partly because time is limited but also because the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has explained so clearly and cogently the case for her Bill. Having said that, I cannot resist making one comment on the interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate.
The Bill that became the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 was opposed in the other place by Mr Gladstone on the very proper ground that it discriminated against wives as compared with husbands as to the grounds for divorce. It was opposed by Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford in this House because he did not approve of divorce. The question of financial provision did not arise in 1857, because the property of every married woman, unless protected by equity, had vested in her husband on marriage. That continued to be the position until the Married Women’s Property Act 1882.
Returning to the Bill, I shall be brief, but I emphasise the uncertainty of outcome under the present law. It depends on the exercise of a very wide judicial question, depending on a number of factors between which there is no hierarchy established by statute. Such a wide discretion is not, and cannot be, exercised in a uniform and predictable way. That has been confirmed in the latest reports from the Law Commission. It cites well-documented fieldwork which shows variation between different judges, different groups of courts and different regions of the country.
It is true that, from time to time, general guidance to judges has been given by the court of last resort. That is now the Supreme Court; before 2009, it was, of course, this House acting in its judicial capacity. Inevitably, the cases that go to the court of last resort, cases that are sufficiently robust in terms of money to stand two appeals, are very much the exception. They are the biggest of the so-called big money cases and are by no means typical of the problems of ordinary married couples.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, civil legal aid is no longer available for divorce, except where children are concerned or in cases of domestic violence. The costs of legal advice and representation and court fees—which I emphasise—rise inexorably. The court’s discretion as to how the costs are to be borne is a further uncertainty in the matter. Of course, the judge’s discretion, both as to the order he makes and the order he makes on costs, must be exercised judicially, but judicial exercise of discretion still gives great room for unpredictable outcomes.
The financial outcome is so unpredictable in contested cases that it is hard—I would go so far as to say impossible—for judges to give confident advice on the outcome. That makes expensive contested proceedings more likely, because the parties cannot be advised sensibly what would be a proper settlement. Divorce is often traumatic enough without the whole family’s resources being depleted by swingeing legal costs.
The Bill would authorise antenuptial settlements, subject to appropriate safeguards. There are appropriate safeguards, but I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, is of the view that it is desirable that those safeguards should not be too complicated or too many, because the more grounds there are for challenging an antenuptial settlement, the more there will again be expensive contested proceedings. In the absence of such agreement, it would introduce new rules similar to those which are working very well in Scotland. The new rules would limit judicial discretion and make the outcome more predictable, reducing the volume of contested proceedings. The principle is made very clear in the Bill that the needs and rights of children of the marriage will always, as before, continue to take priority. I commend the Bill to your Lordships’ House.
Lord Dykes (CB)
My Lords, I must deliberately exercise great care after speeches by three considerable legal experts at the beginning of this debate. I speak very much as a layman—but declaring none the less a personal interest in having experienced divorce proceedings that ended in 2001. I have no complaint, by the way, about the proceedings, which were entirely satisfactory, but I noted even then, when there was a very low degree of contention and a high degree of amicability, the gradually amassing cost of the proceedings because of endless discussions of assets and other matters, which led the lawyers themselves to say that it was about time that we exercised control over the rise in the amounts of money involved. In this case, fortunately, there was no actual hardship or difficulty in those costs—none the less, that is one of the realities of these matters. Again, in the reverse sense, extra costs arise from the arbitrariness of different judges’ deliberations—and I make no criticism of individual judges, as it is a very difficult job for them.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on introducing the Bill and wish her well with it. She herself was chairman of the Bar Standards Board from 2009 to 2014, so has considerable knowledge and legal expertise in all matters of law and not just in divorce.
We have reached a crucial stage whereby the haphazard nature of the press reports about proceedings, the huge amounts of money involved, and lots of Sturm und Drang and drama mean that rationalisation and modernisation is long overdue. If you take the rising amounts of money, for all sorts of reasons, with the devastating blow of the removal of legal aid, you have a cocktail of real difficulties, which is unfair on modern society in Britain. I add my expression of support to what the noble Baroness said about the system in Scotland, where they provide a good example of moderate, sensible law-making in comparison, sometimes, with English or British law-making, in quite a variety of fields. But here again, too, the comments of people interviewed on the Scottish law and how it was working were extremely encouraging.
I was grateful for the excellent House of Lords briefing document on this Bill. I note that Resolution, an illustrious body that we often study very closely, commented on this issue, saying:
“Divorce law relating to finances is complex and difficult to understand. Outcomes can be difficult to predict, even for legal professionals. Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which determines how money is divided up on divorce, has fundamentally remained unchanged for the last 40 years”.
That is 40 years in a rapidly changing society—I think that that really is unacceptable. I hope that there will be enormous encouragement today, including, I hope, a positive response from the Minister when she comes to reply.
In one paragraph of the excellent briefing document from the sponsors and supporters of the Bill, I note the excellent summary, which describes the Bill and its qualities. It says that if the Bill is enacted, the result should be better opportunities for mediation, less need to go to court, reduced trauma for children—a very important point that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, mentioned lower costs and an easier time for litigants in person and a fairer outcome, recognising partnership in marriage. For the first time, it would recognise equality of spouses, rather than subjecting their claims to the view taken by a judge. Above all, it would be the result of democratic debate in Parliament, and take account of public opinion and the need for certainty in law.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other supporters of the Bill in Committee will look closely at Clause 3, and the excellent points that she made on the quality of prenuptial agreements. Subsection (1)(d) needs to be made absolutely watertight in its description to avoid the kind of difficulties there have been in the past.
Over the years we have all heard the music hall jokes about marriage and divorce. I particularly like the very cynical New York joke which I heard some years ago: marriage is like a banquet where you start with the pudding and work backwards. In this case, we need to repair some of the damage in society that has come from divorces—sometimes they are needless, sometimes unavoidable. Sometimes people avoid marriage altogether for all sorts of modern reasons—no one can complain about that. I hope that this time there will be a more positive government response. We go through this rather sad process of knowledgeable Members of this House putting up extra Bills, particularly on Fridays. We then expect the inevitable government reaction that we heard twice today from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, who was unable to accept any suggestions at all. I hope that the newly-appointed Minister on duty will be more positive in this case.
I first got into the House of Commons years ago. In 1972, although I was a PPS in Edward Heath’s Government, I was still allowed to put forward a Private Member’s Bill because I came number two in the ballot. I introduced a Bill to control and govern the movement and parking of heavy juggernaut lorries which were becoming a menace in Britain at the time. It was pure “Yes Minister”. Right at the beginning, a senior civil servant said that under no circumstances could they even begin to consider such an idiotic and ridiculous Bill. Nine weeks later, the same person phoned me to say: “Now that we have looked at the text again and have our own components to put in to your excellent Bill, we propose to proceed with it”. They did so, and it became the Dykes Act governing the movement of heavy lorries. That was a sweeping change, and I would not expect a drama of that magnitude to take place today. None the less, the Bill deserves the support, not just of the House but of the Government.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the Bill in the name of my noble friend Lady Deech, who has committed a great deal of endeavour, energy and her formidable intellect to devising it. Very good reasons for supporting the Bill have been given by other noble Lords and, especially, by my noble friend in her opening speech. As my noble friend Lord Dykes has just said, the issue is the depletion of assets. We should think about the assets of people of moderate or nearly no wealth. For divorcing couples of that kind, the loss of assets in costs means that there is often very little left, much to the prejudice of the children. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, that they are an important part of the picture.
When I was a young barrister—though not for the last 30 or 35 years—I used to do divorce cases. In those days, there was actually a degree of certainty about the money. It was not fair, because there was what we called the two-thirds/one-third rule. I am sure your Lordships can guess who got the two-thirds and who got the one. However, at least there was certainty and very little argument over money in most cases. Also, in those days we did not have the huge oligarch cases on the regular basis that we see now. The celebrated cases then mostly involved Members of your Lordships’ House. However, in those days we did not have any certainty about children. As a barrister, I was involved in some painful and distressing cases—and I do not distress easily in my professional role—about who should have what was then called custody and access to the children. In one case in which I appeared the father killed the two children a year after he received a settlement over them which he did not like. We have much more certainty today about arrangements for children. There are presumptions about natural parenthood which inform the courts and there are not such great battles over children, though I certainly do not suggest that there are none.
Now it is the other way round. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, illustrated, one of the problems is that the appeal cases—the precedents which lawyers read and on which they advise their clients—often involve vast sums of money and have no real relationship to the ordinary divorcing couple. This Bill seeks to address the position of the ordinary divorcing couple by inserting some certainties into the picture, which I applaud.
The Bill also seeks to give particular status to prenuptial settlements. There is a degree of dislike among young people of prenuptial settlements as they suggest that they do not have absolute confidence in each other. When some of them are divorced years later, the suggestion is that they should have had less confidence in each other. If it is a true relationship, the creation of a prenuptial settlement should not break it asunder. If it does, it tells them something. Therefore, I do not think that we have anything to fear from prenuptial or, indeed, post-nuptial settlements as long as they are conducted fairly. This deliciously short Bill puts those principles into statutory form and produces greater certainty for people who unfortunately, having married, find that they can no longer remain married to one another. Therefore, I hope that your Lordships will support my noble friend’s Bill.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
My Lords, I join in warmly supporting my noble friend’s Bill and her efforts to reform and bring more certainty to the financial provisions in Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
I was encouraged by the recent publication, just two Fridays ago on 13 January, of the report by the Ministry of Justice on the implementation of Law Commission proposals. I note that the Family Justice Council has developed and introduced financial guidance for separating couples and unrepresented litigants. I also note that the Ministry of Justice is working to develop an online tool, supported by formulae, to assist separating couples and clarify how to make financial arrangements on divorce. I had hoped that the publication would give a clearer commitment to legalise a binding form of prenuptial agreement. I hope that the Minister will give us some guidance on whether this may be forthcoming in the future.
I speak from a personal background of having specialised in family law in South Africa, where I practised as an attorney under the Corpus Juris Civilis—Roman Dutch law—which is very similar to Scottish law, where antenuptial agreements are binding and where there is a clear framework for the determination of financial settlements. As all speakers have mentioned today, this Bill is to a large degree crafted on Scottish law. For that reason, I warmly support it as it is far more efficient, less expensive and less stressful for children.
Clearly, there is a need to provide clearly defined guidelines for divorcing couples and move away from the precedent of largely judge-made law, which bears little resemblance to the statute, which frankly is outdated. Even though the divorce rate continues to fall, almost a third of the 110,000 divorces in England and Wales every year go to court for financial orders. That overloads the divorce courts, causing lengthy delays, stress and, again, excessive costs. I entirely agree with my noble friend that long drawn-out divorces are highly detrimental to children. As my noble friend Lord Carlile mentioned, hard-earned family assets are often lost as a result of the litigation costs.
I therefore wholeheartedly support Clause 3, which makes pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements binding, as long as both parties receive independent legal advice and make full disclosure. I also agree that there is no evidence that marriage breakdown is encouraged by pre-nuptial or post-nuptial agreements. If enacted, an added benefit of the Bill would be to provide better opportunities for mediation, which we all support. I am grateful for the useful research note that we received from the Library, in which reference was made to the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who expressed concerns in Committee on my noble friend’s similar Bill that:
“The Government are not convinced that the certainty that the Bill and these amendments intend to provide would not come at too great a cost in rigidity”.—[Official Report, 21/11/14; col. 629.]
I am sure that when the Bill, I hope, comes to Committee, there may be scope to amend Clause 5(1)(c), for example.
In conclusion, I congratulate my noble friend on her tenacity in promoting the Bill and wish it a speedy passage through your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, I support the Bill brought forward by my noble friend Lady Deech.
It is important to remember that no one enters a marriage expecting to get divorced. At the time of marriage most people are deeply in love, and the last thing on their mind is how to settle the division of assets during the emotionally charged process of a divorce. Therefore, to encourage pre-nuptial settlements seems an eminently sensible idea. Other noble Lords have outlined some of the challenges experienced by couples when trying to reach fair and just financial settlements for both parties. This is particularly difficult when one party does not wish to get divorced.
We now have non-binding Guidance on “Financial Needs” on Divorce, which was published in June 2016, but it remains complicated. My noble friend Lady Deech has argued that we have largely judge-made law, with the exercise of wide judicial discretion, which, though careful and sensitive, leads to unpredictability and uncertainty and often militates against mediation and out-of-court settlements. Legal aid is no longer available for this area of law and many parties, particularly those of lower means, are often left unrepresented, with no straightforward set of principles to assist them in dividing assets and income. This frequently results in long, drawn-out procedures, which are certainly costly in emotional terms, and which in turn can result in stress, not only for the two parties involved in the divorce but for any children who are involved, particularly if for financial reasons their two parents still have to live under the same roof. It should be noted that many organisations, including the Centre for Social Justice, have made the case for reform.
David Davis recently said in the other House in relation to the Brexit process—a form of divorce—that information to be provided in new legislation should be “straightforward”. The Bill has just that merit: the man or woman in the street could easily understand the principles it contains. Many noble and learned Lords have spoken in this debate. I, of course, have no experience of the law but understand the aims of the Bill. To continue for a moment with the Brexit theme, the four nations of the UK will need to work more closely together, while maintaining their national identities and delegated powers. I have been involved in two company mergers, one in the NHS and the other in a housing association, and the principle of taking the best from each party to build the new organisations was adopted by both boards. In each case, this was successful. The Bill relies on the proven efficacy of Scottish jurisdiction, which would administer a simpler and more certain law in England and Wales—indeed, it has been described as a gem. I believe that adopting the Bill, which is largely modelled on Scottish legislation, to provide similar certainty in all marriages and civil partnerships in England and Wales would lead to advantages and be a positive benefit.
If the Bill is passed, it is likely to shorten the period of negotiation relating to financial matters during any divorce and result more quickly in stability for the families involved. It will reduce lengthy bitter discussions about the division of wealth and provide a swifter, straightforward approach to the financial division of assets in divorce. It may well also reduce some of the harmful effects of prolonged exposure to parental disharmony that some children experience—it will be no surprise to noble Lords that there is evidence that prolonged periods of parental argument can be extremely detrimental to children’s mental health. I would hope that that would, in turn, reduce at least some of the anxiety and depression in young people in families where divorce is occurring. I therefore see nothing but merit in the Bill, the principles of which I fully support.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the Bill of my noble friend Lady Deech. She set out the case for it in her usual eloquent and systematic way, and she has almost certainly said all that really needs to be said. I will take only a few minutes of the House’s time to reinforce some of the points that she made.
I have been close to too many divorces which have tragically gone to court. The reason for the courts becoming involved has seemed to be, time and again, that each side has, perfectly reasonably, come to a completely different conclusion about their rights to their property. The Bill would greatly reduce the number of contested cases, as others have said, and that must be in everyone’s interests—and most particularly in the interests of children, who inevitably suffer months, if not years, of instability that could be avoided. Also, importantly, these contested cases lead to much greater animosity between the parents than would otherwise be the case. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind and in the minds of most other people that really poor relationships between children’s divorced parents are always far more detrimental than any financial settlement could compensate for.
Reform in this area has become more pressing as divorce has become more commonplace, as my noble friend Lady Deech pointed out. There are 110,000 divorces a year, involving about 500,000 people, including children. Help for those suffering individuals must surely be a priority. Our Prime Minister has said that her priority is to help ordinary people who are going through great difficulties in life. I cannot think of many people who are going through more difficulties in life than the children of a divorcing couple.
A major concern is the loss of legal aid to this area of the law and the growing number of people with modest means representing themselves in court—50,000 in 2013, as we know from the Library briefing. This, in the context of a lack of clarity in the law, leads to endless adjournments and delays as the litigants and judges struggle to find a way towards a solution. My noble friend referred to the careful and sensitive exercise of judicial discretion in these situations, and I think that that is perhaps the only point on which I might disagree with her. In my experience, judges in the lower courts struggle terribly to deal with the conflicting accounts and mountains of paper, and there is no question that on occasion they come to erroneous decisions. These then have to be sorted out in the appeal court—and, again, an appeal means yet more months of delay and yet more waiting around and uncertainty.
An important reform in this Bill is that prenuptial agreements would be binding on the conditions set out, as my noble friend Lady Deech made clear. In my view, this alone could achieve a significant reduction in cases reaching the courts, to the benefit of all.
I have to say I find it extremely difficult to understand the conclusion of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, that somehow confusion and uncertainty are a help to the children involved.
The fact that a very similar law has been in place in Scotland for some years and is operating successfully simply reinforces the argument that the Bill should be given government time to reach the statute book. There is no need for a pilot and no need for concerns about unintended consequences; we know that the Bill would work.
At a time when government takes the views of the public exceptionally seriously, it is of note that, in this case, 72% of those asked in a YouGov poll supported the proposal that the courts should recognise prenuptial agreements. Perhaps the Minister would like to comment on the public support for such a reform and on whether the Government have a response to this that is different from their response to the Brexit vote.
Lord Stone of Blackheath (Lab)
My Lords, I rise for one minute to mention something personal in support of the Bill. My son, Daniel Stone, spent a lot of time and effort to qualify as a lawyer specialising in family law. After a few years of practice, with great courage and much regret, and after long conversations with myself, he decided to leave the profession. His reason was that he was upset and distressed to find that the divorce laws lacked compassion and fairness. It was too costly and complex a process, in which many people were unable to find satisfactory, equitable settlements. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and applaud her for bringing this Bill to the House so that we can begin to address these issues.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on bringing forward her Bill and securing a Second Reading. The Bill proposes to amend Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and replace it with a series of principles that would apply in the determination of applications for orders in divorce, including prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements.
I am not a lawyer, so I have come to the Bill as a lay person. I looked at what marriage is: it is, of course, an agreement by which two people enter into a certain legal relationship with each other that creates and imposes mutual rights and duties. However, when you look carefully, it is a contract—a very special contract—that comes into force if special formalities are observed and, apart from death, can be set aside or terminated only by a court of competent jurisdiction. People enter into this contract because they love each other, want to be with each other and want to make a life together, possibly with children.
Marriage as an institution is something that Members on these Benches fully support. We believe that it is one of the bedrocks of stable relationships and society. We are very proud on these Benches that we introduced civil partnerships for gay people some years ago, and that we fully supported the then coalition Government, in the last Parliament, when they decided to introduce equal marriage for gay people. We did that because we agreed with the Government that marriage is an important institution and that gay people have the right to be treated exactly the same, and to enjoy the same benefits and to face the same challenges in the society of which they are equal members. It is something that I very much wish was on the statute book in Northern Ireland.
I then looked at what exactly divorce means. It is, of course, the termination of a marital union and the cancelling and/or reorganising of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage. I found it interesting that, with amendments over time, we are using an Act that, although ground-breaking at the time, came on to the statute book 44 years ago. That may not be long in terms of legislation, but divorce is a live issue affecting thousands of people every year, either as divorcing spouses or as their children. I reflected on how different the UK is today from 1973. On these Benches we welcome the Bill and believe that it is timely. I give my support to the Bill.
Clause 2 provides that either party subject to proceedings for divorce may apply to a court for an order in relation to matrimonial property only. Legislating on an approach to the division of assets would certainly provide greater certainty for separating couples, and we want to see some safeguard to make sure that the economically weaker spouse is protected.
Clause 3 would make prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements binding on the parties, subject to a number of exceptions and safeguards. Binding agreements could provide couples deciding to marry with the ability to plan with more certainty. I can see the argument that it would bring into full view the potential costs to each party, that significant money could be saved in lawyer and court costs and that it could take some of the hostility and bitterness out of the process for the divorcing parties.
I also understand that in many other jurisdictions, as we have heard, prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements are very common and that in many such cases they have much lower divorce rates. We should examine carefully the proposals and test the competing arguments that on the one hand it would undermine marriage and on the other that it would strengthen it. Clauses 4 and 5 propose that the net value of the matrimonial property is shared fairly between the parties. The proposals seek to limit costly litigation by providing a process for asset division. They seek to remove or certainly limit the role that the court plays in deciding the appropriate division of assets and maintenance.
The Bill seeks to deal with important issues and to find solutions to situations that are far from satisfactory at present. I have highlighted some of those issues. I believe that if the Government are fair and reasonable, the Bill could make progress through your Lordships’ House. As an Opposition, we are happy to support it. I should say that I am not a lawyer and I have no interest in the Bill. I am happily married and have never been divorced—and I am not looking to get divorced. I was getting a few funny looks this week when I sat at the kitchen table reading papers on divorce.
In closing, I bring to noble Lords’ attention that, although it is not proposed here, there is nothing in the rules of the House to prevent the Bill going to a Grand Committee in the Moses Room rather than coming to the Floor of the House and disappearing, never to be seen again. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, said in an earlier debate, many Private Members’ Bills do a lot of good and we need to find a way to move them on.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for introducing the Bill and for enabling the House to once again debate the important issue of financial provision on divorce. We take this issue very seriously. I want to reassure all noble Lords who have spoken today that I have had good discussions with my colleague in another place, Sir Oliver Heald QC MP, the Minister responsible, concerning progress and plans for an all-encompassing reform of private family law.
The Bill has a very commendable aim of seeking to assist divorcing couples and civil partners undergoing separation in resolving disputes over the division of property and periodical payments or “maintenance”. The Government agree that there is scope for greater clarity and certainty concerning the law and the court’s practice in this important area, but we wish to identify ways to achieve this that do not cause hardship and undermine fairness, which, I say with great respect, this Bill would be likely to do. Clarity and predictability must be balanced with the need for flexibility, with the possibility that flexibility can sometimes bring fairness that certainty precludes.
We also recognise that the law cannot be based on a one-size-fits-all approach that does not cover the uncertainties that life presents. The law must have the breadth to meet the various circumstances in which divorcing couples find themselves at the end of a marriage. There is also a need to take into account the fact that aggrieved individuals are likely to be the most vocal, and that the evidence base in this area is sometimes anecdotal, including in relation to how, why and at what stage settlements are reached.
The Bill seeks radically to change the law of financial provision on divorce and differs substantially from, and goes much further than, the recommendations made in 2014 by the Law Commission concerning matrimonial property agreements and clarifying the approach to financial needs on divorce. Those recommendations were made after wide public consultation which included a public attitude survey. The coalition Government provided a preliminary response to the Law Commission stating that further careful consideration would be given to its proposals in the next Parliament. That Government took forward one of the proposals in the report by funding guidance for separating couples, Sorting Out Finances on Divorce, to help make the law and the court’s practice on financial needs and arrangements more understandable and accessible.
That guidance was published in September 2015 by the Family Justice Council and is being promoted in a number of ways including online and through advice agencies. It provides information about financial settlements for couples who are getting divorced or ending a civil partnership, including matters such as maintenance, housing and pensions, as well as the type of orders a judge is likely to make. The original Family Justice Council guidance is on the judiciary.gov.uk website and a simplified, plain English version of it is available on the Advicenow website, which is a charity dedicated to ensuring that people are aware of their legal rights. It also contains advice for unrepresented litigants—this I think is particularly important—to make use of in court by giving concise and easy to understand information about the law.
In respect of that I would refer, as did the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, to a note from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, dated 27 January which does indeed make reference to guidance. However, that guidance is actually for the judiciary. For anyone else it is somewhat complicated in that a lot needs to be considered in the law. What I am talking about is known as a “survival guide” which responds to much of what noble Lords have been talking about in the debate in terms of providing simple and straightforward references to what people can do in different circumstances. It is incredibly easy to understand and helps couples to sort out their financial affairs without asking the court to decide. It explains consent orders, the process for mediation and the fact that people can access legal assistance for that. It also explains what happens if couples cannot agree and have to go to court. I commend the guidance to all noble Lords.
The corresponding guidance for judges, which is strongly endorsed by the President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, followed in June last year. The president has described the guide as providing a “succinct summary of the law” and a “useful tool” for the judiciary in relation to making orders to meet financial needs following divorce and the dissolution of civil partnerships.
The Government are also looking at other ways to make the law more easily understandable. We want to make the best use of technology to equip individuals with the information they need to resolve the disputes that often arise following divorce. We are investigating current practice in financial disputes with the aim of developing a tool, again referenced by the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, to help separating couples sort out financial disagreements. The development of this tool will assist couples in resolving financial disputes without going through the courts.
The Government recognise that when disputes go to court, that only increases the acrimony and tension which often arise in such circumstances, and we are therefore considering how to provide improved information and signposting so that more people are made aware of how mediation can help in dispute resolution. We strongly believe that agreements are more long-lasting and sustainable when individuals are able to make decisions for themselves without the intervention of the court. I think that all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate would agree with that. Mediation is generally considered to be a more cost-effective way of resolving disputes than going to court and must be considered before a person can apply to the court for a financial order unless there is evidence of domestic violence or another exemption applies. It can help separating couples make their own financial arrangements and reduce tension when individuals are faced with making difficult decisions about their money and property at such a stressful time.
The Government are also considering the Law Commission’s recommendation to introduce qualifying nuptial agreements which would make prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements legally binding, subject to certain protections. These agreements, unlike those proposed in the Bill, could not be used to enable one party to contract out of responsibility to provide for the other party’s financial needs.
The other recommendations in the report are currently under consideration by the Government as part of developing our plans for wider private family law reform, and we will announce our response in due course. Our reforms will be underpinned by the Government’s ambition to enable people to resolve their disputes in a way that is just, affordable and transparent. I want to reiterate that the Law Commission’s proposals are based on extensive consultation, which this Bill’s far more radical proposals are not. The likely effects of the Bill’s proposals are also far less clear.
I will very briefly outline the current law of financial provision on divorce. The majority of couples resolve the financial consequences of divorce by agreement, but where this is not possible the court has a wide discretion to decide how their property and income should be distributed, guided by case law and the fundamental principles of financial provision set out in Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. This includes consideration of the circumstances of the parties and any children in their care, and concepts of fairness and needs. Importantly, the Act requires that the first consideration of the court is the welfare of any child of the family aged under 18.
Other factors in Section 25 include: the income and earning capacity of the parties; contributions made to maintaining the home and the children; the financial needs and obligations of the parties; the age of each party and the duration of the marriage; any physical or mental disability suffered by either party; the conduct of the parties, if it is such that it would be inequitable to disregard it; and any benefits that the parties will lose as a result of the divorce or dissolution.
The first of the main provisions in the noble Baroness’s Bill is that prenuptial and post-nuptial matrimonial property agreements should be binding upon couples on divorce, except in very limited circumstances. The Government are concerned that this does not take adequate account of the needs of parties following divorce, which may have changed since the agreement was made. For example, if the matrimonial property agreement was a valid contract but left one party destitute, we believe it would nevertheless be binding under the Bill. We are currently considering proposals from the Law Commission on binding nuptial agreements with safeguards not present in the Bill. We would wish to consider these more fully within the context of the broader private family law reforms before committing to legislate to make agreements enforceable.
The second provision is that, subject to certain exceptions, matrimonial property—defined essentially as all property obtained during the marriage, except that obtained by a gift, inheritance or succession—should be divided equally between the parties. This would also be potentially unfair and could cause extreme hardship, particularly for lower-income families and for families with children, where the matrimonial home might need to be retained for the children to have a home. A straight division of matrimonial property would not necessarily work in the best interests of the children, who would face the trauma not only of divorcing parents but of their family home having to be sold. All noble Lords have spoken about the needs and priorities of children. This is something we take very seriously and must retain. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate urged caution, particularly concerning the priority of children and the possibility of that priority being at risk. I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who suggested that he was in that way against certainty, that this is more about the priorities of children and the need to be flexible.
I am aware, and welcome the fact, that the Bill has been amended to remove its previous proposal that, although the court should have regard to provision for children, it would not have to make the needs of minor children its first consideration, as the law requires it to do currently. While this softens the Bill somewhat it remains unclear what the effect would be on the provisions overall and the extent to which they could be overridden to ensure that the needs of children were adequately met. As I have said, the lack of flexibility for the court of course remains in cases where children are not the primary consideration.
Support for a “sharing principle” appears to have, in the main, developed out of the “big money” cases, referenced so eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. It is seen as unfair that one party would receive a surplus of high-value net property that had been accumulated together over many years. In the vast majority of divorces, financial provision is about meeting needs. Generally, people do not leave a marriage equally—one partner generally has better employment prospects and caring responsibilities are often distributed unevenly. Under the current law, distribution of assets is usually weighted to make up for this. For example, assets may have to be distributed unequally to reflect the fact that one of the parties may not be able to secure a mortgage due to age or ill health. A 50:50 presumptive split of property would generally benefit the person with better ongoing employment prospects or earning capacity and fewer caring responsibilities. This is likely to disproportionately negatively affect women.
The third major provision is that periodical payments for spousal maintenance should be for a maximum period of five years, subject to narrow exceptions. While only one in 10 divorces in England and Wales ends up with periodical payments of spousal maintenance, a five-year limit would not take account of need in the way the current system does and could cause hardship for many couples, and for women in particular. While the Bill gives the court the power to make exceptions to the five-year limit, it nonetheless introduces a presumption against continuing financial support after divorce. The current law recognises the risk that one of the parties in a divorce might not have reached a financial position where they no longer need financial support after five years.
The Law Commission has concluded that, although the courts are given a wide discretion, in practice, financial orders and other financial settlements tend to lead the parties to financial independence in the majority of cases, although the time needed to achieve this will vary according to the circumstances of the parties involved. Having to adjust to a new financial reality may take longer than five years; for example, for a woman who put aside her career because of the competing demands of raising children. We believe, therefore, that it is better for the court to retain the discretion to provide as it thinks best to meet the circumstances of each individual family.
The Bill also provides that the court should not consider the conduct of the parties unless it affects the financial position of either party or it would be unfair not to consider it. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 already provides for the court to consider conduct if it would be unfair not to take it into account. The Government believe that this provision is adequate and should be retained. I appreciate the noble Baroness’s desire to ensure that financial division on divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership is made simpler, so that people will more easily be able to estimate what they are likely to receive. In turn, people would be better able to negotiate with each other and couples should be more confident to enter into agreements determining what they would receive on divorce. I say again that this “survival guide”—so well named—contains examples of what couples might receive in different circumstances. It helps to manage expectations, which is an enormous assistance, but we agree that this is not enough.
The Government recognise that more needs to be done to help divorcing couples reach agreement. The Government, as I have said, are considering the Law Commission’s report on matrimonial property agreements and other financial arrangements on divorce and will respond formally in due course in the context of our wider plans for family law and system reform. The Government will not oppose the Bill receiving its Second Reading today but we have concerns about its approach; that it could cause hardship to many families; and that its proposals, which would radically change the law in this area, have not been subject to public consultation. We believe that we are already considering many of the issues raised by the noble Baroness’s Bill and how these might be addressed as part of a wider approach to family private law reform. Finally, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.
Baroness Deech
My Lords, I thank everyone who has stayed here on Friday afternoon to support the Bill, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, who has helped me throughout this very long process. I assure noble Lords, particularly the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, that children do, indeed, have priority in the Bill. There is nothing in it to change the existing law about children. Indeed, I wish as much attention were paid to extracting maintenance from unwilling fathers as is paid to other elements of family law. We have a very bad track record there. This law would not change it; indeed, it would extend the age up to which you have to house your children to 21 rather than 18, given that so many of our children are at university until that age. It allows for a house to be retained for the housing of children where this is necessary.
Secondly, the law I am putting forward is by no means experimental. It has been acted on with great success in Scotland for 30 years. There is nothing more that needs to be learned about it. I suspect that the Government are fearful of an increase in ex-wives going on welfare. This has not actually happened in other countries.
If the Government really want to tackle the problem of the damage and cost of family breakdown, which is the price we pay for the pursuit of liberty and happiness, we could cut the cost by making better efforts to extract child support from fathers and investing in affordable childcare to help women back into work. As it is, although I am very pleased that the Government are taking this seriously and are making some moves, the Minister’s reply speaks only of applying sticking plasters to an ill patient who is bed-blocking, who really needs be cured and booted out. The principles underlying the old law remain but they are not just and mediation is difficult because there is no direction, sense of justice, certainty or feeling of fairness at the end. I think the Minister knows and the House knows that reform will come sooner or later.
Luckily, I have no interest in this. I have never been divorced and I have never earned anything from family law, but I claim a distant relationship to the late Leo Abse MP, who fought for years to reform divorce law and succeeded in the end.
There is one other serious issue I would like to raise. This Government risk becoming a do-nothing Government. It is quite striking that widespread expertise in the three Bills that have been before us today—years of expertise, not just from me as an academic but from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others—has been swept aside. We all say that this House earns its place in the British constitution because it contains expertise and experience. Do the Government not risk undermining the contribution and reputation of this House when not just today but in the Higher Education and Research Bill—with dozens of vice-chancellors and professors and experts—our comments have just been stonewalled? The Government need to listen to this House if they value it and its place in our constitution, which is what we have all said, and yet the expertise is being dismissed by—dare I say it?—ministries that may know less about the topics than the people who have spoken in the various Bills today and this week.
Constitutionally, I do not think that I am able to ask for the Bill to be referred to a Grand Committee. I therefore end by asking the House to give it a Second Reading.