Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

I wonder whether my noble friend, between now and Report, would agree to meet representatives of some of the organisations involved to see whether we can reach some accommodation that, within the structure of the exemption clause, gives them the comfort that they need and avoids the process, which is currently envisaged, of asking for waivers. I know that my noble friend’s heart is in the right place, and I hope that she will be able to give me and others who have spoken in this debate the assurances that we want that she will do what is necessary to prevent these projects from going under.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these two amendments, and I declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation.

I support so many of the arguments that have been made throughout the debates this evening. I am extremely concerned about the impact of the 1% rent reduction on housing associations and their tenants. The federation estimates that the 1% cut year on year will mean a loss of £3.85 billion in rental income over the proposed four-year period. As has already been said, the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned the Government that the result will be 43,000 fewer homes than housing associations would otherwise have been expected to build.

The irony of this is that associations want to build homes, and they will be doing their utmost to manage the cuts and to strive for the efficiencies that the Minister has already referred to, but this is presenting them with an absolutely huge hurdle. It is also ironic—and others have made this point—that the Government, too, are ambitious. Given their ambition, and the urgency of that ambition, to build 1 million more homes over exactly that same four-year period, I agree with others that this policy seems somewhat perverse.

Even more perverse is the impact of the 1% cut on the provision of social housing for the most vulnerable people referred to in these amendments, including those escaping domestic abuse, veterans, people with disabilities and the homeless. All fall under the heading, which the Minister referred to, of specified accommodation. In speaking to these amendments, I want strongly to urge the Government, even if they change nothing else, to change their mind on this issue and to exclude this highly specialised, challenging and much more cost-intensive provision from the rent reduction requirement.

The Government will know that the purpose behind these amendments has support from all corners of the House. Indeed, the letter to the Times, which many of us signed and has already been mentioned, urged just such a reprieve for supported housing. I also believe that the Government did not intend to harm vulnerable people or to increase homelessness, yet that is exactly what this policy will do, and indeed it is already doing it.

Make no mistake: if the Government are to avoid what is likely to be a catastrophe for these very vulnerable people, they need to act now. I cannot overstate the urgency because, in the next few weeks, associations will be sending out thousands of letters about rent levels from 1 April. They will need to know what the position is for supported housing. Indeed, many of them have already discussed plans for closing down these facilities—these homes—because the financial risk would be too great to sustain them. They are making these plans with heavy hearts. These homes are a fundamental part of their social mission and charitable purpose. These are the very people associations were set up to house.

The sector has spoken with one voice on this issue and the message delivered to government could not be clearer. Providers of supported housing are united in their commitment to care and support for these vulnerable groups and equally united in their concern about the impact the rent reduction will have on their ability to develop and provide housing and services for these people in the future. It is worth emphasising that, unless the Government commit to this change, there will inevitably be much greater pressure on the NHS and a rise in homelessness.

On any count, this policy does not make financial sense. If it were excluded from the rent reduction measure, as we urge, it would reduce savings on that policy overall by £93.5 million, but the Homes and Communities Agency has estimated that the provision of specialised housing for vulnerable and older people saves the public purse £640 million—more than six times more. That is real value for money.

The Government have acknowledged that the rent reduction may cause a reduction in service provision, but their proposed solution is no solution at all—neither an organisational waiver, which the Minister referred to in her response to the previous amendment, nor a partial waiver, also mooted, offers a viable solution to a sector-wide problem. Indeed, one of the issues has again been referred to: since these schemes are higher and the margins much tighter, the rent reduction may sometimes push supported housing into deficit while not pushing the whole organisation into financial deficit. They may be abandoned to sustain financial viability. That is an important point that the Government need to take into account. It would certainly be extremely expensive and time-consuming to establish. I do not see how either of these would offer providers the certainty that they need to take the financial risks involved in continuing this provision.

I have had the opportunity to talk to the Minister and I am most grateful to her for engaging with me on this issue. I, like others, very much hope that she can today commit to bringing forward an amendment to address these concerns on Report. Providers stand ready to help the Government find the right way forward, but above all we expect to see the Government commit to what they have promised: to ensure that the provisions in the Bill do not have unintended harmful, even disastrous, consequences for the care and housing of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

[Baroness Manzoor]

I rise just briefly, because I am an optimist and I do not want to delay the Committee further, to say that I totally concur with Amendments 107 and 109—they are one and the same—and the issues surrounding them relating to supported housing. I commend the Government on keeping supported housing out of universal credit and other benefits when they did their calculations. To my mind this is very similar. There needs to be clarity. As I said, I am an optimist; I do not for one minute think that the Government intended for these negative consequences to occur for supported housing where it is particularly needed for young people and people who may be homeless, and where crisis housing and services are needed.

I concur with everything that has been said and will add just one last point: if an organisation is totally on its knees, it will not think about investing for the future or how to improve. If an organisation has to come cap in hand back to the Government to say, “We need to be exempted now”, that will be too late because those services will have been lost for the future. That will invariably have an adverse effect on service standards. People may well end up being homeless. We must not forget that these organisations are there because we need crisis management for these people, whether they are drug users, young people on benefits, women fleeing domestic violence and so forth. I ask the Minister to answer the questions that were put so well by the noble Lord, Lord Best, to clarify whether specific accommodation and supported accommodation will be exempt from the measures in the Bill.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, last week in my capacity as chair of the National Housing Federation, I hosted a briefing on this Bill. One of the speakers was the chief executive of an NHF member organisation, St Mungo’s Broadway. St Mungo’s provides supported housing for about 3,600 people a year. On any one night, about 2,500 people are in its hostels, semi-independent housing or care homes. St Mungo’s provides vital support to help people to gain the skills and confidence to recover from homelessness and to live as independently as possible. The CEO was enormously concerned that, under the Government’s plan to reduce social housing rents as set out in this Bill, it will not be able to deliver for homeless and vulnerable people on anything like the same scale. Taking into account the rental income that it had anticipated over this period, it expects to lose £4 million, and local authority cuts over the same four-year period will mean further falls in income. These cuts will mean that St Mungo’s will have to stop running some of its vital supported housing schemes. Their residents have slept rough, been in prison, have a mental health problem or a significant physical health condition; more than half have a substance-use problem, and their problems often overlap. They need skilled and intensive housing management and support. Who else will provide it if schemes like these are forced to close?

Housing associations up and down the country will face the same dilemma. They are committed to building the homes the country needs and will do all they can to continue with this vital work, but we underestimate at our peril the impact of the 1% rent reduction over the next four years. The result is an estimated loss of more than £3.85 billion in rental income. This will have a significant impact on all associations; it will have a particularly severe impact on the provision of supported housing for vulnerable people, including domestic abuse refuges, homelessness hostels and homes for veterans and people with disabilities. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans—I thought he set out the issues extremely well—and many other noble Lords in this debate today, I am deeply concerned that the rent reduction will result in a serious lack of provision for people with complex problems and high support needs.

I have had numerous examples from all over the country. I will mention just two: Framework in Nottingham estimates losing 240 high support units over the next four years, and Riverside based in Liverpool says that 32 of its 102 supported housing schemes will become loss-making as a result of the rent reduction. As well as this, the policy will add greater cost to the public purse. The Homes and Communities Agency recently estimated that the net financial benefit of specialist housing was about £640 million overall. Excluding specified accommodation from the rent reduction measure would result in a reduction in the overall savings delivered by this policy of around £93.5 million in year 4—over six times less than the savings that specialist housing offers the public.

As others have said, the Government have acknowledged that,

“the rent reduction measures may disproportionately impact on supported housing and may cause a reduction in service provision”.

The Bill was amended in another place to allow the possibility for organisational waivers. But the cost structures used by health, care and support providers are complex, and vary across the sector. The development of a waiver formula that is consistent and fair would be extremely challenging. As my noble friend Lady Andrews and other Members of this House have done already in this debate, I urge the Minister to agree that specified housing—in other words, housing for vulnerable people—should be excluded from the rent reduction requirement. I hope that the House will support this.

There are two other issues I want to touch on: the impact of the rent reduction on stock transfer organisations, and the impact of the benefit cap on housing affordability and temporary accommodation. Stock transfer organisations inherit from local authorities housing stock that needs improvement. They generally start out with a business plan that involves increasing rents in accordance with guidelines set by the regulator, and they use this anticipated revenue to underpin borrowings to undertake the much-needed improvements.

This means that the organisation’s finances are extremely tight in its early years of operation. The rent reduction will cause many of these organisations to struggle to deliver improvements promised to tenants at the time of the transfer. In some cases their financial viability will be put at risk. In regard to the benefit cap, a secure and decent home is often the starting point to help people back into work. The Bill’s proposal to lower the benefit cap to £23,000 in Greater London and £20,000 elsewhere will make housing unaffordable for thousands of families. This affordability challenge is not restricted to families renting in the private rented sector. The NHF’s modelling shows that a couple with three children would not be able to afford the average housing association rent on a three-bed property in any region. In London, families would face a shortfall between benefit and rent of £27.79 per week. The weekly shortfall under a £20,000 cap ranges from £37.40 in Yorkshire and Humberside to £67.35 in the south-east, based on the current rent agreement.

A lower benefit cap will have a particularly significant impact on families living in temporary accommodation. Temporary accommodation is a vital part of the homelessness safety net and is used by local authorities to house people who otherwise would need to be placed in more costly emergency interventions such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation. People placed in temporary accommodation by local authorities have little scope to move to reduce their housing costs, and are likely to be further from the job market. If they are no longer able to keep up with rent payments in temporary housing due to the cap, they may find themselves homeless again, and it is likely that local authorities will struggle to rehouse them. I hope the Minister will agree that people living in temporary accommodation should be treated in a similar way to tenants in supported exempt accommodation and have their housing costs omitted from the calculation of the cap.

The current system for regulating social rents is overly rigid and confusing. Currently rents are fixed by the Government, at either a percentage of the local private rent or the lower social rent level. Because private rents vary hugely across the country and do not rise and fall in proportion to local wages, housing association homes are much less affordable for customers in some places than in others. Surely it makes much more sense for housing associations to be able to set rents that reflect local market conditions and customer circumstances, within an overall envelope set by the Secretary of State. I urge the Government to give housing associations that flexibility.

The Bill will have some significant unintended consequences for the housing of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to look carefully at exempting specified housing from the rent reduction. Will he agree to meet some of the providers of these schemes to hear their concerns first hand?

Health: Neglected Tropical Diseases

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Hayman for introducing this timely debate and for her continued commitment to bringing this important subject to our attention.

The promises made by the pharmaceutical companies, global health organisations and government representatives in the London declaration two years ago were truly admirable. They were intended to be game-changing and I am delighted to hear from my noble friend that the drug donations, research and development funding and co-operation are making real inroads in the attempt to control, eliminate or eradicate the 10 named NTDs by 2020. The promise of the pharmaceutical companies under the London declaration to donate many more drugs, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, was a wonderful step but, as Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said at the time, drug donation is one solution but not the only solution.

In my four minutes, I will stress the importance of our investment in research into NTDs and highlight the work of some of our health-focused universities and their major contribution to development. The UK is a hub of research excellence, with many academics from different institutions all contributing to the fight against NTDs. Their work has global impact and changes the lives of some of the poorest people on the planet. The breadth of UK academic expertise and research in this area is world-leading. It covers anthropology, public health, basic science, epidemiology, clinical medicine, mathematical modelling and operational research.

Two institutions leading the way are Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Together with the Natural History Museum, they last year formed the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research. The centre’s research builds on the long-standing expertise of UK academics in the epidemiology and transmission of NTDs, such as that of Professor Alan Fenwick, whose team, working with ministries of health across sub-Saharan Africa, assisted in the delivery of 100 million treatments in Africa and, indeed, the Middle East during 2013. Other speakers have referred to the research priorities of the centre, including bilharzia and intestinal worms.

Elsewhere in the UK, our universities are well placed for multidisciplinary approaches from the bench to the field. The Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has made major breakthroughs in NTD research, with £10 million of funding from the Wellcome Trust, including more than £8 million for a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. Its teams work across academia, industry and the charitable sector worldwide.

There is always more that needs to be done. For example, there has been very little research into Buruli ulcer, an NTD in the leprosy family which is on WHO’s road map but not included in the London declaration. The exact mode of transmission is still unknown. There is no vaccine for primary prevention, and secondary prevention is based on early detection. WHO says that 80% of cases detected early can be cured with a combination of antibiotics. But early detection and antibiotic treatment require health education at community level, training of health workers and village volunteers, strengthening of health facilities, laboratory confirmation of cases, standardised recording and reporting systems, and monitoring and evaluation of control activities.

I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will agree with me that research remains fundamental to this vital work. Two years on from the London declaration, it is important to remind ourselves that medicines alone will not eradicate the diseases of poverty.

Education: Conservatoires

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for securing this very timely debate, and wish him many enjoyable and spine-tingling musical moments in his new association with Trinity Laban. It is clear from the debate that there are many of us in this House who share his concern over the impact of funding cuts and short-term funding formulas on our conservatoires. As other noble Lords have said, a conservatoire education may be expensive, like medicine or dentistry, but it is part of our cultural lifeblood. I strongly support my noble friend’s call for a long-term funding solution that recognises the legitimate high cost of conservatoire training and places it among mainstream higher education.

At this stage in the debate, it would probably be enough to say amen to all the points that have already been made, but I join our choir tonight to emphasise just two points. I was dismayed to learn that the US federal loan board is withdrawing loan facilities for study at UK institutions that do not offer their own degrees. It questions their legitimacy as listed bodies within the UK higher education sector. It affects a number of conservatoires, including Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Trinity Laban, whose awards are validated by City University, as well as others such as Glasgow School of Art. This has serious implications. The US is an important source of international students for our conservatoires, but these students depend heavily on getting study loans from US federal authorities. Can the Minister say whether the Government can assist in any way in convincing the US to change its position?

Secondly, the closure of post-study work visas, which enabled conservatoire graduates to gain experience as independent artists and performers before returning home, is a further blow. The proposed alternative for graduates on a salary of over £20,000 means little in the music and performing arts sector where, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and others have said, graduates have a portfolio career and are usually paid in one-off performance fees or commissions.

The education and training offered to the world’s most gifted practitioners is of necessity lengthy and expensive. So, in harmony with others in this debate, I ask the Government why these institutions continue to be subject to short-term, make-do-and-mend funding arrangements.