Domestic Abuse Refuge Spaces

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I certainly agree with the noble Baroness’s last point. Since 2021, my department has committed £507 million to local authorities for the delivery of new duties. This year, £127.3 million will cover the estimated cost of unmet need to support victims and their children in safe accommodation. There is an issue with the Women’s Aid estimate because it includes the costs of all other services, including funds that already exist, so there is a slight disconnect there. The Government have also put in place—this is quite important—support for charities that look after victims and do a lot of work. I thank them for all the work they do, particularly with specific groups of women who need extra support. The Government are supporting them, particularly through the cost of living crisis; for example, with their energy costs.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what the government can do further in partnership with local authorities to assist those victims of violence who have no recourse to public funds or have insecure immigration status? As she will know, both those things can be used by perpetrators to coerce and control their victims.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

In April 2021, the Home Office provided £1.4 million of support for a migrant victims scheme to provide the support that the noble Baroness talks about because they have no recourse to public funds. A pilot has been run by Southall Black Sisters and their delivery partners, providing a really good wraparound support service for migrant victims of domestic abuse; this has included offering them sustenance, helping them, counselling them and giving them legal advice. During the pilot, the scheme supported 425 migrant victims. We have allocated another £1.4 million this year to continue to fund this pilot; we are going to take on board the lessons learned by Southall Black Sisters.

Building a Co-operative Union (Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee Report)

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am proud of our report. As a committee, we have worked extremely well together. Much of this is down to our excellent staff and, of course, our chair, my noble friend Lady Andrews. Her patience, intellectual rigour and wicked sense of humour have ensured that we have produced a report that honestly scrutinises the Government’s work so far in co-ordinating key policy areas across the UK post Brexit. I say “work so far” because, in our conclusions, we have found the Government wanting on several fronts—despite welcome, regular updates from the Minister, Chloe Smith, at a time that has been challenging for her personally.

As my noble friend Lady Andrews said, we need to ensure that the common frameworks have not become orphaned in the latest reshuffle when it comes to ministerial oversight. Because common frameworks play such a vital role in the practical, day-to-day co-ordination of policy, as Members have said, in 32 areas of the UK’s new internal market, our list of recommendations needs to be taken really seriously by government. Indeed, the Government’s initial response to our report has been encouraging, but the delays in finalising common frameworks have now become very noticeable to stakeholders, to experts and to us in our job as scrutineers.

It is not as if our current post-Brexit economy and internal market are running so smoothly that complacency on common frameworks can be the order of the day. Many of us are bewildered about how quickly our modern, relatively well-oiled supply chains and labour market access—going back decades—have ground to a halt in the last few weeks. The Army being drafted in and competition law being suspended is not a good look for Team GB.

The committee believes that, as well as delays, there has been a lack of transparency in the development of common frameworks, with parliamentary scrutiny across the four nations being, at best, an afterthought and, at worst, an inconvenience. Stakeholder engagement has been inadequate and, at times, bizarre, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, highlighted. The quality of some departments’ output has also been unacceptable to the committee, as our chair has said. The Cabinet Office, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has just referred, has taken a co-ordinating interest up to now, but sees future framework monitoring placed in individual government departments. That way lies either inaction or turf wars. We would far rather see in the future the four devolved Administrations issuing regular updates to their legislatures and publishing reviews of the frameworks.

A serious concern of the committee has been how the frameworks interact with the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. Yet, until very recently, there has been a backlog of frameworks in front of the Northern Ireland Executive, and therefore a delay in the scrutinising work of the Northern Ireland Assembly. We have asked how the dynamic alignment with the EU in the protocol will work with common frameworks not only now but in the future. We have not had very satisfactory answers.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, has been bringing the kettle to the boil, shall we say, on the future of the protocol. In September, speaking to the British-Irish Association, he said that

“we need to see substantial … change”

in three areas:

“movement of goods into Northern Ireland, the standards for goods within Northern Ireland, and the governance arrangements for regulating this”.

Since then, we have had his Lisbon speech on the same theme but going much further. How does the Minister intend to deal with the effective management of common frameworks that intersect with the protocol in these coming uncertain months?

Before I close, I welcome the Dunlop report and am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, in his place. We see common frameworks, in their capacity as voluntary agreements, as a great opportunity to strengthen relations across the devolved Administrations. Those relations certainly need strengthening if the union is to hold. The prospect of the House of Lords playing a new and useful role as a neutral forum for receiving the views of the devolved Administrations and bringing about closer interparliamentary co-operation is one we could all roll up our sleeves for.

Local Government: Economy

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My Lords, it should be noted that so far the grant scheme has gone to some 804,000 business premises. The spread of the economy for those who are self-employed, as well as small businesses, is quite considerable at this stage. I know, as a former local authority leader, that economic development is very important, not just for large businesses but for the small and medium-sized enterprises that are the backbone of this economy.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

While co-ordination between local and national government is essential for our recovery, are the Government also looking to be part of the European Union’s €750 billion stimulus and recovery package, which, as the Minister will know, has a regional and local dimension?

Housing for the Homeless

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is right that local and national Government took speedy action to take many off the streets at the start of this Covid emergency. Rough sleepers of all people would have got the roughest end of this pandemic. I welcome the announcement of a dedicated fund of £3.2 million, on restoring local housing allowance rates, on halting possession proceedings and of course on the appointment of Dame Louise Casey. However, local authorities are still taking homelessness applications, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, and life after Covid could include a substantial increase in new cases. This must be the time, as the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said, for a new beginning, and I ask the Minister: what permanent housing is being planned for the thousands of rough sleepers invited in at the beginning of the emergency? Do they agree with Crisis and others that we really need to lift LHA rates permanently to cover average rents? Do the Government also agree that building far more social housing is now essential?