Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Hussein-Ece and Lord Empey

Monday 23rd January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I thank the noble Countess for the intervention, but because of the grouping I had thought that this was like a Second Reading and I am trying to address the issue of housing—the subject of the amendment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, that the grouping is unfortunate.

The point that I am trying to get to is: it will not be possible to change the welfare system without upsetting some group or other in our community. I therefore believe that if we put the amendment in the Bill, the Minister and the Government, including their successors, will be hidebound by it. However, the Minister has also heard the widespread view in the House that we are confronted with an area of concern, particularly when children are likely to be moved from their homes, lose their schools and all that goes with that. Secondary legislation is the right place in which to put this issue but, if we believe we can go through a process of changing the welfare system and not affect a particular group in the community, we are misleading it as well as ourselves.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, I also came to the Chamber intending not to speak but to listen carefully to the arguments. I feel moved to speak because of my personal experience as a local councillor in inner city areas such as Islington and Hackney, where homelessness and poverty have gone hand in hand and where over several decades we have seen the decline of affordable housing that ordinary families can rent. The two previous Governments have to take responsibility for not building enough affordable housing. That is the fact of the matter and the elephant in the room that is not being addressed.

It therefore pains me when I hear people around this Chamber, whom I respect, saying, for example, that families are moving to upmarket areas such as Hampstead in order to live in a better area. I have never seen evidence of that. When families through no fault of their own lose their home, which might be because it has been repossessed or they have been unable to keep up with the mortgage payments, they naturally present themselves to the local authority. The local authority has to take a view in making an assessment of such families and, if the family is not dysfunctional enough, if the children or either parent do not have enough of a disability or they do not have enough points—because it is all done on a points system—there is not much that the local authority can do. Very often, those families or individuals are directed to the private sector. Local homelessness departments will usually give them a list of estate agents where they can go to find somewhere. Often, families who have lost their homes will end up in the private sector. The private sector has filled the gap, certainly where I come from in Islington, between the unaffordable private homes and social housing. It has taken up the slack there. Of course, prices have shot up because of demand. That is not the fault of people who have become unintentionally homeless.

I hear my noble friend saying that 76 per cent of the public support a cap. I do not think that anyone in your Lordships' House would disagree that there should be some form of cap and that it should not be an open-ended provision. It is the implementation, how this will work, that is worrying many of us here. We should not force out families from areas such as mine. People often think that Islington is a very rich area full of wealthy people, which it is, but it has the third-highest level of child poverty. We have the extremes: very rich people and very poor people. The very rich live in the houses that have become increasingly unaffordable for most people, and the rest live in social housing, apart from some in the middle who live in private accommodation. I want to live in a mixed community. I do not want to live in a Paris-style ghetto. I do not want ghettos such as in Paris, where the poorer families have been forced into the doughnut outside the city. We should support mixed communities. We want our children to have a healthy outlook and mix with people from all different backgrounds.