Homelessness Reduction Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests in this matter. I chair an organisation called Changing Lives, which is active in this area of work and based in the north-east of England, although we work way beyond the north-east. I am also involved with Lloyds Bank Foundation. We fund a number of small charities which work with the homeless.

I am delighted to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, Bob Blackman, and those charities, particularly Crisis and St Mungo’s, who have been driving the changes in the Bill. I am also delighted to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. When I was responsible for tackling rough sleepers between 1997 and 2001, far too many were ex-service people. It was clear that that was not something that the Armed Forces had been thinking about before discharge, particularly for squaddies who had struggled a bit before they got into the Armed Forces and might find life difficult once they left. We had a particular programme for that. The Ministry of Defence Minister with responsibility for veterans used to come to all our planning meetings on tackling rough sleeping, and the head of the Rough Sleepers Unit, as it then was, went especially to Catterick to work with the Army on how it could use preventive methods before a problem arose. I know that, since then, lots more work has been done. I was always grateful that we could engage actively with the Ministry of Defence to consider those issues.

The Bill is very important. It will put on the statute book measures to help to tackle homelessness. Prevention and advice for all, including the single homeless, is very important; the Bill provides new support to those who are not entitled to assistance under current legislation, particularly the single homeless, which is the area in which I have the most knowledge and experience. Inevitably, services have grown up to tackle single homelessness but, too often, they pick people up when they are already sleeping rough and facing a whole range of problems.

The new prevention duty in the Bill, which extends to 56 days the period for someone being threatened with homelessness, is also very sensible. It will give local authorities time to plan and work with landlords and others to try to ensure that eviction does not take place, as well as introduce measures to deal with the family or individual if it comes to pass. The new duty on other public bodies that encounter those threatened with homelessness or who are homeless to refer them to local authority homeless teams is also important. When I was Minister for social exclusion in 2007-08, we mapped those individuals with multiple needs in one London borough and, unsurprisingly, found that they would turn up at a range of organisations from A&E to mental health services, from addiction services to the police, as well as the homeless services. Most of them were without long-term accommodation, but no service took overall responsibility. It was out of that scoping work that we developed the programme that we called ACE—government is really good at all these acronyms; it stood for adults with chronic exclusion, if I remember rightly—to find more effective ways to work with people in a more holistic way. That work has subsequently been taken up by the Big Lottery, which is funding about 12 programmes around the country called Fulfilling Lives that are about helping local services to address the needs of the most excluded in a more holistic way. The charity which I chair is running one of those programmes.

The Bill will not solve this, but it will at least mean that agencies talk to one another about accommodation needs. Most of us could give horrendous examples of people who are in need but are turned away because they have not turned up at the right service that day. We have to change the way in which services deal with someone who is homeless, addicted or whatever and treat them as a whole person, recognising that they have to bring together the services that they are going to need.

I welcome the Bill and will work for its speedy passage. But—there is bound to be a but—in terms of the scandalous rise in homelessness and rough sleeping in recent years I find it modest. Its provisions will be important, but much more needs to be done in a structural way. Homelessness has not risen because the Bill was not in place: it has done so because of decisions that have been taken, many of which the noble Lord, Lord Best, spoke about. These need to be addressed in order to ensure that homelessness really is a thing of the past. Are Ministers asking themselves about the effect on homelessness of the withdrawal from some local authorities of the fund for supported housing and supporting people who are vulnerable in housing? Three authorities in the north-east have now withdrawn the fund since the Government increased cuts to local authorities and stopped ring-fencing it. Our experience is that many people are now being pushed into the city areas because the services they had been used to in their own local authorities are simply not available any more. This rise in homelessness in the cities is putting real pressure on them.

Are Ministers asking themselves what effect the changes in local housing allowance will have on the availability of rented accommodation to those who are struggling? Not all of them will be seen as vulnerable, but many will be struggling because rent levels are becoming so high and landlords will pull out of offering housing to those who depend on public support. Why are so many housing associations pulling out of supported accommodation and asking the voluntary sector to take over those responsibilities? I am a bit scared by the number of housing associations that are coming to the charity I chair saying: “We are going to pull out of this because we cannot afford to do it. Will you take it on”? The Government tell me that I have to be absolutely sure that the board which I lead appreciates the challenges of funding and does not undertake things if it does not know it will be able to fund them, so I am a bit anxious. We spent some time last Friday looking at this. Our chief executive is always enthusiastic and optimistic, which is great, but we had to say to him that there has to be very good due diligence. If the housing association is saying it cannot afford to do it, will we be able to?

We also know that the market will not step into much of this work. When the funding was earmarked in George Osborne’s last Budget, all the money allocated to voluntary, not-for-profit organisations for bringing empty homes back into use was put for developers to use. Surprise, surprise, the programme virtually stopped. It was suspended by the Homes and Communities Agency in terms of giving grants to not-for-profit organisations, in the hope that developers would take this on. However, this was not their priority or what they wanted to do, so the HCA has now reinserted and ring-fenced some money and reopened that programme. However, this has slowed down my organisation’s work of recovering and bringing back into use empty homes, which our service users help to refurbish and then move into. That affects our business model, but we will try to get into it again. We have been developing this area of housing partly because we know that enabling the single homeless—even those with multiple needs—to go straight into independent tenancies works, if they are properly supported. That is another reason why I am asking the Government to keep an eye on what is happening to the supported housing fund. If that is withdrawn, people who are put into independent tenancies will struggle.

It is also because local authorities are saying to us that they are finding it more and more difficult to meet the cost of hostel provision. They are sort of giving us warning that this area may have to go, in the cuts that they see coming down the road. My own local authority has just announced another £65 million of cuts for this year. They know that more will come next year. With an ageing population in the county of Durham, more and more money has to go to social care. This is not part of that priority, so hostels will begin to be more difficult to fund effectively. That is why we need more independent housing for the most vulnerable, but that is also becoming hugely challenging. I know that the Government have been exploring social investment bonds to deal with some of this, but I urge caution. Experience of these bonds has so far led all the charities that I am talking to to approach them with caution because they are proving exceptionally difficult to develop. Even though the strength of the SIB is that it will be there for six or eight years, it is challenging for charities, particularly smaller ones, to get involved in this.

In this period of local government cuts, the extra money is welcome, but is it going to be enough? I support others who are saying that the two-year review of the Bill will be very important. I hope that in that time the Government will look honestly at what it costs to prevent someone becoming homeless and really keep an eye on it so that it is kept at a level that ensures local authorities can develop. I hope this is not just a move to put all the blame on to local authorities. I am sure that it is not; I am not that cynical. However, we have to demonstrate that that is the case.

The Bill is welcome and, as I say, I enthusiastically support it. However, it will not be sufficient to end homelessness. I have raised some issues. Other Members have raised and will raise others. I hope that the Government recognise that there is very wide support across this House to tackle homelessness and, indeed, to end it. I believe that we can virtually end homelessness. From my period in government, I know what needs to be done about rough sleeping and what you can do to bring the number down to many fewer people than is the case at present. Many people in this House have experience of both historic developments and current activity. If the Government are wise, they will harness that experience—dare I say expertise, or are we still saying that we do not need expertise? I hope not. I hope that the Government will harness the expertise and the experience in this House to tackle homelessness in that more holistic way which is essential if we want to get anywhere near ending it.