Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Barwell and Andy Slaughter
Gavin Barwell
My hon. Friend is right that we need to ensure that, when a tenant behaves antisocially or is in rent arrears, landlords can regain possession, but the fundamental pressure we face at the moment is in giving the increasing number of families in the private rented sector the security they need. Reforming our housing market, increasing supply and bringing in these new build-to-rent schemes that will offer longer tenancies is a key reform.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Labour councils like Newham, Redbridge, Greenwich and my own borough of Hammersmith and Fulham are doing a fantastic job of cracking down on rogue landlords. If the Minister actually cares about private tenants, why is he blocking borough-wide private sector licensing schemes? Is his party still the slum landlord’s friend?
Gavin Barwell
The suggestion that Conservative Members do not care about these issues is as ridiculous as it is insulting. The work of Labour councils to which the shadow Minister refers is often being funded by this Government. He is factually wrong to suggest that this Government are blocking borough-wide selective licensing, and I point out the many reforms that we are introducing—we are banning letting agent fees and insisting on client money protection—that were not in place when the shadow Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), was running this Department.
Homelessness
Debate between Lord Barwell and Andy Slaughter
Andy Slaughter
I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I am not an expert in planning gain in his own local authority area. There are a number of ways of funding affordable homes, and I will come on to one or two of them in a moment. He is right to identify that matter as being the root cause of the problem.
I turn to the Homelessness Reduction Bill, which we were considering in Committee this morning and which the Government pray in aid in their amendment. A number of Members who are on the Bill Committee have mentioned it. That Bill is the brain child of Crisis and is supported by St Mungo’s Broadway, Shelter and the consensus of opinion across the housing sector. Those excellent organisations have been on the frontline against homelessness for decades. Like many Members, I have been proud to work with them in my constituency.
More importantly for the Bill’s chances of making it to the statute book, it has the support of all parties and of the Government, and has been ably promoted by the hon. Member for Harrow East. It is no exaggeration to say that it will make a sea change in homelessness law, both through the emphasis it places on prevention and through the changes that it imposes on local authorities to assist non-priority groups, particularly single people, in finding accommodation.
In promoting the Bill, Crisis is also making the statement that it can no longer be expected to pick up the pieces of the failure of much of the apparatus designed to help the homeless. I welcome the Bill both for the signal that it sends and for the detailed requirements that it places on the Government to tackle this growing crisis, but—this “but” has dominated our discussions on the Bill—legislation alone will not solve the problem. Indeed, it may, in the first instance, make it worse. Let me give three reasons why I say that.
First, local authorities, especially those in metropolitan areas, are struggling to deal with their responsibility to those who are in priority need. Members who have seen the Mayor of London’s briefing—I welcome the Mayor’s personal commitment to tackling London’s housing crisis—will know that the number of households in bed and breakfasts in London has risen by 234% since 2010. The figure is 157% elsewhere. The telling statistic for London Members is this: in 2010, 13% of families were placed outside their local authority area, but that has now almost tripled to 35%. Every one of those families is a tragic story of people displaced from their communities, their schools, their jobs and their family support. If we are not careful, one consequence of putting additional burdens on local authorities for the non-priority homeless when they cannot at the moment cope with the priority homeless is that the latter will suffer.
Secondly, there is a general pressure on local authority budgets, with cuts of 40% to 50% —by far and away the largest in any part of the public sector. Those pressures extend everywhere, and I imagine that tomorrow we will hear quite a lot about that and about social care. Because of those pressures across the board, it is absolutely vital that the measures in the Homelessness Reduction Bill are fully funded. I hear what the Government have said about that, but we are still waiting. The Under-Secretary has promised that we will have details of the funding before the Committee reports. It is important that that pledge is honoured and is not just a paper promise. We must clearly see that the measure will be fully funded, otherwise it simply will not work and local authorities will again carry the can for central Government’s mistakes.
The third and most important issue is the effect of the Government’s general policies on housing and homelessness. In the area of housing finance, the benefit cap has just been further reduced, which has had an attritional effect on my authority and many others. The freeze on local housing allowance, the introduction of the bedroom tax and 45% cuts in the Supporting People budget in the last Parliament are unprecedented cuts, and the net effect is to destabilise the people who are most vulnerable and most at risk of homelessness.
In the private rented sector, rent increases and the ability for private landlords to charge higher rents to make more profit mean that evictions are at a high. Some 40% in London—30% nationally—of people presenting to local authorities cite the serving of a section 21 notice, or the no-fault eviction process. We have heard it argued that as a result we need the Bill to put more responsibility on local authorities, but what about the responsibility of the Government to legislate for longer tenancies and, as we would do, to legislate for rent control to combat rent rises during a tenancy? That would have a much more salutary effect in preventing homelessness.
Andy Slaughter
If the Minister does not mind, I will not give way, as I have only two minutes left, and I do not want to take time away from his colleague the Under-Secretary.
Housing supply is the key issue. We have the lowest social housing build on record. We still face the prospect of the sale of high-value council homes, and a reduction in rent has prevented councils from building new social homes. We have 140,000 fewer council homes than in 2010. Unless that problem is tackled we will never tackle the problem of homelessness.
That is the story of the Homelessness Reduction Bill, but it is also the story of this Government and their attitude not just to homelessness but to the housing crisis generally. They talk about solutions, but their policies have made matters worse. We have been promised cash for the implementation of the Bill and we have been promised wider initiatives in the delayed White Paper, but time is running out for the Government to act. Empty words and empty Bills will not stop children being homeless at Christmas or vulnerable people sleeping on the streets. Tomorrow, the new figures on statutory homelessness will be published, but they are unlikely to bring any comfort to the homeless or to the Government. This is a crisis that the Government have neglected, and have even aggravated with the range of policies that they have pursued. If they are sincere about tackling the problems of homelessness, words will no longer suffice—only action will.