Homelessness Reduction Bill

Debate between Helen Hayes and Susan Elan Jones

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 28th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

As a sponsor of this vital Bill, I am proud to support it. It is the first major reform of homelessness legislation for 40 years, and it is an opportunity to make a fundamental difference to the lives of thousands of people in England. I thank Members on both sides of the House who have taken time away from their constituencies to support the Bill. We are engaged in a very special process, which I hope will lead to genuine reform.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for choosing to progress this private Member’s Bill, and for his commitment to it. He heard the same evidence as the other members of the Communities and Local Government Committee, and it is entirely to his credit that, as a member of the governing party, he chose not to turn a blind eye and defend the status quo, but to champion vigorously the need for change. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who, as Chair of the Committee, led the inquiry. I also pay tribute to the Committee Clerks and specialists, whose work contributed to an inquiry that was innovative and rigorous, and that was directly and extensively informed by the experience of those who are, or have been, homeless, and those who seek to support them.

Finally, I pay tribute to Crisis, Shelter, St Mungo’s and Homeless Link for the work they do every day to support growing numbers of homeless people, and for the research and evidence that they have provided to underpin this Bill. I mention Crisis in particular, whose mystery shopper research and No One Turned Away campaign helped to expose the inadequacies of the current homelessness legislation.

As a relatively new Opposition Back Bencher, I have found Select Committee work rewarding because it is evidence-based scrutiny. The evidence on homelessness is incontrovertible. Homelessness is increasing, and the current system is not fit for purpose and cannot cope.

This Bill takes that scrutiny a stage further and provides the opportunity to change the law based on the evidence we have received. The prelegislative scrutiny by the Select Committee has strengthened the Bill and allowed the views and concerns of a wide range of stakeholders in this legislation, including councils—my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) raised many of those concerns—to be listened to and understood, and it has enabled the Bill to address some of these concerns. It is a better Bill as a consequence.

It is fitting that we are debating this Bill almost 50 years to the day since the first broadcast of “Cathy Come Home”, which exposed the harsh cruelties of the post-war housing crisis; that coincided with the launch of Shelter and eventually led to the passage of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. That Act created the statutory duty to house people in priority need and to advise those who do not meet the criteria.

The need for this Bill can be summed up by the experience of my constituent, Ros. She is a 69-year-old widow who lived in a privately rented flat for many years. Served with a section 21 notice out of the blue, she was unable to find anywhere else affordable to rent in the local area, and approached her local council for help. Ros came to see me, and I wrote to the council in support of her claim that she was being made homeless through no fault of her own. To my horror and to Ros’s great distress, the current law determined that her age alone did not make her vulnerable, and that the council did not have any duty to house her. She waited for the bailiffs to arrive and then approached the council again. The council gave her a list of organisations that she could call who might be able to provide accommodation. All of them required a referral from the council if Ros was to access the accommodation.

The council acted entirely within the current legislative framework, and in the face of crippling demand on its resources, it had no other choice. Ros spent several months sofa surfing, in great anxiety and uncertainty, before moving into sheltered housing, where I am pleased to say she is now settled. Ros’s situation left me deeply uncomfortable. Her homelessness was absolutely no fault of her own. She could have been my mother or my aunt. In the same circumstances, I would have expected help to be available for one of my relatives, yet there was no obligation to help, which seems too harsh. If the council had a prevention duty, Ros could have been helped before the bailiffs arrived. The sheltered housing, for which she was eligible in any event, might have been found earlier, and her transition could have been managed without the level of anxiety she suffered.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I am afraid that I am not taking interventions because so many other Members want to contribute.

The housing crisis in the UK is unprecedented since the post-war period. Over the past five years, there has been a significant increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. The number of people sleeping rough has doubled since 2010, the number of people accepted by councils as being owed the main homelessness duty increased by 26% between 2009-10 and 2014-15, and the number of people receiving prevention and relief support was up by 33% in the same period. The ending of a private tenancy is now the single biggest cause of new homelessness applications.

The majority of single homeless applicants are not covered by the current homelessness legislation; for them, councils need to provide only basic advice and information. However, there is little detail in the current legislation on how that should be provided, and there is no minimum quality for the information provided. In 2014, Crisis’s mystery shopper exercise found that in 50 of 87 cases, people received inadequate or insufficient help.

Many councils provide a very good service, and I pay tribute to the councils I represent, including Southwark Council, which has recently been recognised as a trailblazer for its prevention work. However, the variability between, and sometimes within, councils is not acceptable. Our Select Committee inquiry heard evidence from several witnesses who had been homeless, including Daisy-May Hudson, who has made a powerful film called “Half Way” about her family’s experience of homelessness. The evidence showed that far too many people feel that when they approach their council for help, they end up feeling like an inconvenience, judged for their circumstances and stripped of their dignity.

There is a strong rationale for a system based on priority need, but in the context of a housing crisis, having priority need as the only criterion means that too many people go unsupported, with harsh consequences. The Homelessness Reduction Bill seeks to ensure that help and support for homeless people is established on a fairer footing, and that the focus of councils’ work on homelessness shifts to prevention. Prevention is important because the costs of homelessness are so high. Recent Crisis research has shown that failing to tackle homelessness early costs the taxpayer between £3,000 and £18,000 for every person in the first year alone. The Government have estimated that the annual gross cost of homelessness to the state is up to £1 billion. Much of that cost is borne by councils through the scandalous costs of nightly-rate temporary accommodation. Ensuring that everything that can be done to maintain someone in their own home is done, or helping people to manage a transition to another stable home, should reduce local authority costs.

The Bill introduces a new prevention duty and a new duty to provide an applicant with 56 days’ help to find alternative suitable accommodation. It broadens the range of people who will be helped, and it makes the help more meaningful. Of course, additional obligations cannot simply be passed on to councils without the resources to fulfil them. I am pleased that the Government support the Bill, but the Bill introduces new burdens on local authorities. The Government must therefore make good on their support by granting local authorities the resources to deliver these new obligations. It is important that we see an announcement in the autumn statement that gives local authorities comfort on this point. We need to be absolutely clear that councils will be funded to meet the new duties.

Finally, we cannot debate the law as it affects homeless people without mentioning the wider housing crisis. We will not solve the scandal of homelessness by creating a new legal framework if the Government’s wider housing policy continues to contribute directly to making the crisis worse. Although I welcome the cross-party commitment to this principled reform of homelessness legislation, I call on the Government: to change their approach to housing more widely; to fund the building of the council homes we urgently need; to stop the forced sale of precious council homes; to reform the private rented sector to give more security of tenure; and to reform the benefits system so that people do not become homeless because the local housing allowance cap on housing benefit does not come close to covering their rent.

In the face of the evidence I have seen in my constituency and in the Select Committee inquiry, we cannot wait for all these measures to be in place before we reform homelessness legislation; the Government must back up their commitment to this legislation with resources. I urge colleagues to support this principled reform, which has the capacity to make support for homeless people fairer and more meaningful, and to enable far more people to be helped when they most need it.