Domestic Abuse Refuge Spaces

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up an interesting issue. Yes, we talk more about women than men but there are men who are victims of domestic abuse. The problem is that the numbers are smaller so it is difficult to get a lot of refuges across the country. Under the safe accommodation support duty, tier 1 local authorities are required to assess the need for, and provide support for, all victims of domestic abuse, including male victims. The male victims’ organisation that keeps an eye on this is called ManKind and provides expert input into monitoring these duties as part of the domestic abuse safe accommodation national expert steering group, which is chaired by my colleague, Felicity Buchan. The voice of the man who is domestically abused is there at the centre; we ensure that they get the support they need.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that it is important to work upstream with schools to ensure that young men understand what a healthy sexual relationship is, and that young women know—and, indeed, have the confidence—not to accept the early stages of the wrong sort of relationship?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness. Following on from the answer that I gave my noble friend, this is exactly what we should be looking at when considering how to tackle violence against women and girls. That is where the investment into that research goes, and I am sure that some of the work that the noble Baroness talked about will be happening.

Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 21st April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we support this Bill, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, and his colleague Mr Blackman in the House of Commons on its introduction. It is an important attempt to address the shortcomings in the quantity of good-quality supported housing, which is, because of its greater cost, exempt from the usual housing allowance cap.

As the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have pointed out, there are many good providers who run high-quality units with appropriate support for vulnerable people to live in the community. They are to be congratulated on that. However, they and many local authorities are very concerned about the entry into the market of unscrupulous people who buy up properties, divide them into tiny units and let them out to vulnerable people with minimal if any support, because of the profits to be made. This Bill is an attempt to address that by setting minimum standards and providing a licensing and monitoring framework and tools to assess and plan for adequate provision, as well as new planning provisions—all on the advice of an expert national team and after consultation with the sector. It is very comprehensive and seems to cover all the bases.

However, we have been warned that there are issues to be wary of. There is a national shortage of supported housing of all sorts. Margins are tight and the sector is fragile. It would be tragic if these measures were implemented either too quickly or in the wrong way, resulting in the loss to the market of good providers. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, pointed out, it has to be done in a way that does not impact those good providers. I know that the Government support the Bill, so I ask the Minister: how does she plan to protect good providers? Do the Government plan to take initiatives to stimulate the supply of good provision?

Local authorities will be given new duties in order to implement this Bill, and we all know that they are already hard pressed and short of cash. First, they do not always know what they have already got. There is a lack of consistent data on how many providers there are and how many are of poor quality. That is why the Bill makes lots of good common sense, by asking local authorities to assess the need for exempt supported housing in their area over a five-year rolling programme, so that they can then plan and publish a strategy to enable them to fulfil that need. I think we can all agree that planning on the basis of accurate data is always the basis for the success of any plan in the public service.

Secondly, local authorities will also become the licensees for providers. It is obvious that this will require ongoing monitoring and assessment. The detailed guidance should take existing regulations into account to avoid duplication, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, pointed out. There is no doubt that all this will require additional funding, but it will be money well spent. Indeed, all this boils down to questions about funding and timing. Can the Minister say how long will be given for the consultation, whether there will be pilot schemes in a few areas to identify any glitches and develop good practice that can be disseminated across the country, and how much new money will be provided for local authorities to carry out these duties?

These measures are designed to improve the housing conditions of some of the most vulnerable people in society—conditions which have an enormous impact on the quality of their lives. Many of these people do not have a voice or the wherewithal to complain if they are being badly treated. These measures could change all that, if they are implemented well and funded adequately. Headlines will not do. Timely action and adequate cash are needed. Can the noble Baroness assure the House that we will get both of those?

Women and Men: Pay Gap

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I wish a happy International Women’s Day to everybody in the House as well. I said some of the things that the Government are doing in my Answer, but the gender pay gap has fallen from 19.6% to 14.9% over the last decade. More importantly, the percentage of women in employment has gone up from 66.5% to 72.3%. The Government are doing something for women and will continue to do so because they think that it is an extremely important issue.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, what consideration has been given to the possibility that fewer women are being encouraged or equipped to take on the better-paid professions? Much of this goes back to schools, where fewer girls are taking up STEM subjects. What is the Minister going to do about that?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. That is why we are working with schools and encouraging young people to take up STEM subjects in particular. Since 2010, there has been a 31% increase in girls’ entry into STEM A-levels. That is a great success, but there has also been a 34% increase in women being accepted on to full-time STEM undergraduate courses in the UK. I look forward to this increasing, because we need more women in these areas.

New Homes Commitment

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there is a real commitment to build more social housing, including more affordable housing. As the noble Baroness knows, the programme is for some £11.5 billion, with a target of double the number of social rented homes in this particular grant period than the previous one. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill recognises that, in order to get the housing, we need the infrastructure in place and must ensure that neighbourhoods have mixed communities at their heart. That is what the Bill is planning to do.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us that all the new houses will be built with a high level of insulation, the quality of which is properly inspected, and will not be fitted with gas boilers but will be heated by renewable energy?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise that in order to meet our net-zero commitment we need to implement the future homes standard, which comes in, I believe, in 2025. Building regulations will reflect that ambition to ensure that we build not only more homes but more sustainable homes that use heat pumps and other devices to meet that target.

High-rise Buildings: Evacuation of Disabled Residents

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

This is the real issue, which is why I think the noble Baroness raised the importance of evacuation lifts and having means of exiting a building in that very case. We need to recognise that fire and rescue services need to work as fast as possible to respond and contain the fire. Above all, we need to keep all residents in that building safe.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Did I understand the Minister to say in a previous answer, that in the absence of PEEPs, in the case of a fire, it could be up to family and friends to get a disabled person out?

Rogue Landlords Register

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The report that my noble friend refers to provides valuable insights, highlighting illegal evictions and behaviours by the most criminal and irresponsible landlords and agents. Such reports will be very helpful in developing our proposed reforms. We will be publishing the White Paper in the autumn and continuing to work with these stakeholders, who have valuable knowledge in these matters.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare that I have recently let one property. Generation Rent, in its report published today, recommends a national regulator for standards in the private rented sector that has responsibility for overseeing the sector and ensuring that enforcement measures work effectively. This would include a national register of landlords. Will the Government please consider this proposal, which is also supported by Shelter and other bodies?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that we build back fairer and to improving the relationship between landlords and tenants. We will certainly consider the policy ideas put forward by Generation Rent as part of our commitment to that reform.

Inclusive Society

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for introducing this debate, which promises to be important and wide-ranging. As she said, to ensure a more equal society we need to build back better and learn lessons from the pandemic. I will raise four issues where there is great potential to do just that.

First, we need to build back greener. It is clear that, in coming years, there will be a demand for large numbers of new jobs in industries contributing to reaching our goal of zero carbon by 2050. This has already begun and must only accelerate—indeed, the sooner the better, as it is cheaper to act now than later. But there are thousands of workers, many of them young, in industries such as retail and hospitality, which may never reopen. Is this not an opportunity for a massive retraining programme to help equip us to tackle climate change while offering sustainable, well-paid jobs to those who have been hit hardest by the pandemic? Do the Government have a strategy to achieve this change of direction?

Secondly, the evidence that health inequalities have contributed to Covid-19 deaths is strong, and obesity has been a major factor in susceptibility to serious disease and death. The Government have published their obesity strategy but there is much more to do. I would like to see the Government mobilising the food industry to reduce the obesogenic environment which surrounds us. During the pandemic behaviour scientists have worked on the most effective messaging, both in content and delivery, to persuade us to adjust our behaviour to protect ourselves and others from the virus. I would like to see these advisers given the task of developing the messages which will help people reach and maintain a healthy weight in order to avoid non-infectious diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, and to build resistance to future infectious diseases such as Covid-19.

There is a lot more to health inequality than obesity. Poverty is a factor as people are forced to choose cheap, high-calorie, less nutritious food when money is tight. We have seen children going hungry during the pandemic, relying on the goodness of local people and food banks. Will the Government ensure that they respond positively to the forthcoming food strategy to ensure that we are no longer a country in which children do not get enough nutritious food?

My third point is also about children. Abused or neglected children will struggle to achieve their potential in life. During the pandemic, social workers who monitor children at risk have had to do so remotely. Recently the Government laid a statutory instrument to extend this arrangement until September. This is undesirable—remote monitoring is much less effective, and we know that there has been an increase in child abuse during the stress of the pandemic—and entirely unnecessary. If you can go to a pub for a pint, why can you not meet a child at risk face to face in the open now and indoors as restrictions are lifted? Will the Government please withdraw this SI?

Finally, during the pandemic local councils were able to take homeless people off the street using empty hotels and student accommodation. Valuable lessons were learned. In tackling the many problems of homeless people, such as substance misuse, poverty and ill health, it has long been known, and it was reinforced during the pandemic, that getting them into stable housing is a very effective first step. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have to provide a sustainable solution to the problem of homelessness, learning the lessons from the pandemic?

No-fault Evictions

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I will have to respond to the noble Baroness in writing on the point about the housing board.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, campaigners have asked for a coronavirus home retention scheme of £750 million in support to be made available to help renters in arrears, recover loss of income and avoid rent debt. Have the Government conducted a cost-benefit analysis comparing such a fund with the potential cost of making many families homeless because of rent arrears?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am not specifically aware of such a cost-benefit analysis, but we will certainly look into that as we develop policy in this area.