Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments introduced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. This has been an example of how good this House is at certain things, with two noble Lords with huge experience in the policy area under consideration—and I understand, in the noble Baroness’s case, a deep understanding of the housing situation in one of our major metropolitan cities, Leeds. We should listen to them with great care; I am sure the Minister will.

Other examples can be given of evidence showing that housing really needs to be included right at the core of all these considerations. A recent initiative by a very experienced retired criminal Queen’s Counsel, Bruce Houlder QC, focused on knife crime. The work that Mr Houlder—a very good friend of mine—is now doing, to some acclaim, demonstrates, among other things, that knife crime becomes a cultural issue in certain housing areas. It requires attention in a Bill such as this.

I want to add something about the Edlington case, which I mentioned earlier. One of the issues that arose in that case, which I included in my report to the Secretary of State, was that housing was not included in the consultative group trying to resolve the florid problems of the two children who became serious offenders. Had it been included, they would have been moved and would not have been allowed to stay in the housing where they were. It was absolutely fundamental as a mistake, and we are now nearly 10 years on.

I hope that the Minister responding to this debate will take on board what has been said and ensure that further consideration is given to these amendments.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to this group of important amendments, and declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, set out the reasons for these amendments, and I fully support them. Those responsible for providing housing have changed over the years, from the time when it was solely the purview of local authorities to now, when it is a mix of elected councils that hold housing stock themselves through to housing associations and registered social landlords providing a mix of accommodation for couples, families and, less frequently, single people living alone.

Whatever their circumstances, tenants all deserve to feel safe in their home and free from violent attack. Women and young people are often the target of violence, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Some of this will be domestic violence; in other cases it will be gang related. Whatever the cause or outcome, it is essential that the housing providers have a robust strategy in place—first, to prevent violence in the first place and, secondly, to deal with the aftermath once it has occurred.

Housing provider co-operation with the police is essential in dealing with violent abuse. Relying on GDPR protection to avoid releasing information is unhelpful at best and, at the other end of the spectrum, borders on ignoring the violent act itself. Of course, this release of information on behalf of the housing providers does not extend to medical professionals, the subject of the previous group of amendments.

Violence is abhorrent and prevents people enjoying the safety they should feel in their home, whether that is a bedsit or a three-bedroom family home. Local authorities will receive complaints about the behaviour of their tenants from neighbours. This might be about noise or anti-social behaviour. In more serious cases, the complaints will be about violence suffered by children and women, and sometimes men, living in a nearby home. It is difficult for local authority housing departments and RSLs to take action on what might be a malicious complaint, but I believe that where a robust serious violence reduction strategy is in place, officers will have the confidence to act before the violence ends in a tragedy, as in the case study the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, mentioned.

I have only one caveat: the Government should ensure that local authorities, whose budgets have been slashed over recent years, have sufficient funding to be able to produce and implement a violence reduction strategy and not be expected to fund additional work on their already overstretched budgets.

Society is becoming immune to the level of violence experienced by some communities. This has to be reversed. A serious violence reduction strategy for each community living in social housing, whoever the provider may be, is a step in the right direction towards raising the profile of the damage that such violence causes and beginning to tackle its reduction. I fully support this group of amendments.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments absolutely; they are practical and in the real world. From my experience as a police and crime commissioner over five years, it is quite clear that serious violence has a huge amount to do with place and a lot to do with housing in those places. If we are to have the partnership that is presumably behind the Government’s proposals on serious violence, it is absolutely essential that housing and those who control it have a vital role; without them, all sorts of disasters will occur.

When I was a police and crime commissioner, I would hear from police officers or citizens day by day about the problems in areas where they lived and the mismatch, sometimes, between those responsible for housing and their ability to talk to the police and get things done, on either side, as quickly as possible. These are very important amendments, and I hope that the Government will listen carefully to them.