Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this is a short but significant Bill, and from these Benches we welcome it. I thank both the Minister for his introduction and the noble Baroness, who is a redoubtable campaigner—the combination of energy and intellectual rigour cannot be beaten.

The term “secure” in the Title applies more widely than in the technical sense of the type of tenancy. The emotional security of one’s home plays a very big part in most of our lives. When I first became involved in the work of the domestic violence charity Refuge, I was quite shaken by two thoughts: first, what it must be like to distrust the person whom one should most be able to trust and, secondly, what it must be like not to feel safe in one’s own home? As the Minister has said, children as well as partners are affected by insecurity and instability.

It is a pity that we use the term “victims”. It should not imply, although it often does, some sort of passivity in the face of ill-treatment. That is certainly not the case in this context. We must not underestimate the strength needed to leave an abuser and to talk about a situation. This is not done lightly or quickly, so I welcome this legislative response to one housing situation.

I have some questions, which to a considerable extent reflect some of those already asked by the noble Baroness, and one fundamental observation: that this Bill is about the person abused and often her children—“her”, as the noble Baroness said—having to move, and not the abuser having to move. I understand that there will probably be considerable difficulties regarding rights to the tenancy of the abuser and evidence, but I am unhappy about the imbalance that we are recognising here.

I know that my noble friend Lord Shipley will ask why the obligation is on local housing authorities and not on housing associations. I therefore ask the Minister whether the obligation can be satisfied by a local housing authority procuring that a housing association grants an assured tenancy. How does the local housing association fulfil the obligation if it has no stock of its own? Do the Government envisage reciprocal arrangements between authorities—for instance, authority A making some provision for a person from authority B in return for an old-style secure tenancy for someone coming from authority A? I cannot really see how this could work, because, by definition, there will be a problem with housing stock, which is the elephant in the Chamber today.

Are the Government satisfied that the scheme can work if, for reasons of safety, the abused person needs to be in a different location from the abuser—indeed, to be somewhere unknown to the abuser? The noble Baroness raised a particular lacuna. I would ask as well whether the Bill applies if the victim is not a joint tenant of the original housing. I am a little unclear about whether someone leaving a home needs to be in the private sector to escape abuse. I assume not, because under new subsection (2A), one does not leave square one unless the local housing authority is required to grant a secure tenancy.

Can the Minister explain the eligibility a little more fully? As I understand it, not all victims of domestic abuse who do not have children are considered as being in priority need for housing, so does the woman—again, I will assume that it is a woman for the purposes of the debate—have to satisfy priority need for the provisions to apply? Will a victim have to accept whatever housing is offered, however unsatisfactory she considers it?

There is also the question of identifying domestic abuse for the purposes of the legislation. What evidence will be required? The Bill rightly extends to all forms of abuse—I note that the list of types of abuse is not exhaustive—but what level of proof will be required?

Local authority social workers, who have enough on their plates already, will not be unfamiliar with identifying abuse; for our part, we are familiar with training not always being adequate. In our debate last July, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, my noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred, I think to the Minister’s surprise, to the training of police officers in identifying stalking being satisfied by a 25-minute desk exercise. I see possible comparisons here. Is the Minister considering guidance in this connection for housing officers?

I looked back at a report, referred to in that previous debate, into the No Woman Turned Away project, which looked at the position of 404 women with 533 children in the period January 2016 to January 2017. I shall quote from that report, by Women’s Aid:

“Many women, supported by the NWTA caseworkers, faced structural barriers to accessing safety due to inadequate responses from statutory agencies … Social services failed to meet their duty of care towards 37 of the 115 survivors they supported … Several women who were refused help by social services were told that they were not experiencing domestic abuse or that they did not meet the risk threshold for intervention. Local housing teams prevented 78 … survivors from making a valid homeless application. 14 women were told to call the NDVH instead of making a homeless application and 11 cases did not consider the domestic abuse to be a significant risk factor to merit a domestic abuse application, with eight women being told to return to the perpetrator and three women told to come back when the situation got worse ... reasons given for preventing a survivor from making a homeless application”,


included being told to call the helpline, as I have mentioned,

“that the Local Housing Authority did not have the duty to her or her children … being explicitly told that domestic abuse was not the responsibility of the LHA …, or refusing an application and giving no reason at all”.

A number of survivors were told,

“that they needed a local connection in order to apply … or were told to make an application in another borough … Local housing teams prevented 78 … survivors from making an application. Often their understanding of domestic abuse is limited to physical abuse with only partial knowledge of other aspects of abuse or coercive control”.

These are two major areas of concern. What does the Local Government Association have to say about these and other concerns? We might be about to hear the answer from the next speaker: I hope so.

I appreciate that this is one piece in the jigsaw of supporting adults and children who are subjected to domestic abuse. I, too, will not venture into the complicated field of benefits or no benefits—today, at any rate. That will be unavoidable when we get to the wider legislation.

The Minister mentioned regulations. Will those be regulations under the 2016 Act? This Bill seems to provide for regulations only in regard to commencement.

The Bill is not a silver bullet, but it addresses one unintended consequence of the 2016 Act, so my final small but important question is: when is this legislation likely to be brought into effect?