UK Community Renewal Fund
Lord Bird Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
As a local authority leader for some of the most deprived parts of the country, I used to look at the index of multiple deprivation very carefully. The borough that I led for six years had some of the most deprived communities, so I understand that, but the purpose of this fund was not to identify those most deprived communities. It focused on what was going to lift economies and therefore provide job opportunities and enable us to thrive us a nation. That was its purpose.
Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, while we are talking about levelling up, is it possible to include the 500,000 people who are behind in their rent and may well be levelling down? We have spoken about this together and the Government have not yet come up with a solution for people who are behind in their rent or mortgage.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
The noble Lord is a champion and a crusader on this, and quite rightly. This is something that we take seriously and have taken particularly seriously during this pandemic, so that we can provide support for people and do not create the rough sleeping and homeless crises of the future. We will continue to work with the noble Lord to come up with practical measures to ensure that we deliver our ambition to end rough sleeping.
Net-Zero Emissions: Planning and Building Regulations
Lord Bird Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, above all, we recognise the need to move away from fossil fuel heating to meet our commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. We are approaching that by continuing to set performance-based standards rather than mandating a solution. We are making progress to achieve that and we will continue to come up with ideas that drive progress in this area.
Lord Bird (CB)
Could we also insist that the Government, as well as putting an enormous effort into zero-emissions reduction, look at all the industries that need to be supported so that they can counter the worst effects of what is happening with the climate?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I think we are well positioned to take that on board, because the number of people in low-carbon industries has increased considerably and we are seeing a reduction in emissions.
Rogue Landlords Register
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I thank my noble friend but the latest data shows that the figure is slightly higher than that: there are 43 entries by 26 local authorities. However, we will consider what we can do to improve access to the database. We currently have no plans to introduce a national tenants database. There are a number of measures we can put in place, such as the referencing scheme, which we think are sufficient.
Lord Bird (CB)
Does the Minister agree with me that the reason why people fall into the hands of rogue landlords is that they are in need? They are often the most desperate people, and do not have a choice. Can we not support the decent landlords by getting them back to profitability as soon as possible—but not by Covid-inspired mass evictions?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
We have taken a balanced approach whereby we have tried to ensure that we do not see the mass evictions the noble Lord refers to. Equally, it is important that we crack down on rogue landlords. We have invested close to £7 million to improve the enforcement powers of local authorities, because those who do overstep the mark need to feel the full force of the law, whether that is the criminal law or housing legislation.
Covid-19: Poverty and Mass Evictions
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for this chance to talk about something which has caused me a lot of sleepless nights. Thirty years ago, I started the Big Issue. In the past 30 years, including through the Covid period, we have been working with in the region of 7,000 to 9,000 homeless people a year. With some notable exceptions, they are people who were socially prepared, almost from birth, to fall into some kind of crisis. The most common thing among them—apart from the fact that a lot of them have depression, drug and drink problems, social problems such as the breakdown of relationships or come from the working poor, the long-term unemployed or broken homes—is that they did very badly at school. We have 7,000 to 9,000 people. It used to be a bit more in the days of Mr Cameron, but it seems to have gone down a bit, which is a good sign because I do not want one vendor of the Big Issue, to be quite honest. Those people have been socially prepared, and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word; I am not blaming anybody. I am just saying that if you meet them you know that their circumstances are often wretched but they come from wretchedness. Often their family are working poor and their grandparents were working poor and all that, so you could say they have been socially engineered to become the army of people who are homeless.
Last year, when in the region of 35,000 people were taken in from the streets it was wonderful—absolutely marvellous. It was enough to make you cry, and I say that with full sincerity. The way that the Government put their arms around homeless people was incredible. I have never known anybody do that in such a large and manifest way. The figures were that something like 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 people were expected but it turned out to be nearer 35,000 people. If you look at the profile of where they come from, you can expect the result that could lead to the streets. As an ex-street person, I was socially prepared from a very early age. This does not mean that everybody born into poverty has to end up as a John Bird sleeping rough and in the prison system and all sorts of things like that, but a majority of people come from that profile.
Covid-19 has introduced us to a much more frightening reality. We have those people—quite a small number in the region of 50,000 to 60,000—who are rough sleepers throughout the United Kingdom but there are in the region of about 250,000 to 300,000 people who fall into what is called homelessness, whether they are sofa surfers, in hostels or temporary accommodation, with a small cohort to be found on the streets. So you could say that there is in the region of about 300,000. I am not one of those persons who is going to stick with any figures because I have heard contradictory figures from all sorts of people and organisations. If you believe some of the figures, you get up to nearly 300,000; if you believe another lot, you would think that it was 500,000. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that you have socially prepared people who have failed at school and failed in many ways. They have all sorts of problems around drink and drugs—a cocktail of problems.
Covid-19 has thrown up a completely new group of people. If 2 million people are expected to lose their jobs—we know that the Government are trying to do wonderful things there—and a large amount of people fall into homelessness because of Covid-inspired evictions, you have a completely different group of people. In many senses, it will include middle-class and professional people—people who have had all sorts of support in their lives and should never have become homeless but for the problem of Covid-19. Now, not the socially prepared people—the people I come from; you could say that we kind of half expected it—but people who are not prepared, and whose families and children have fallen into depression, are in this group.
The Government’s response, especially in moving the goalposts, so to speak—that is, moving the eviction ban back to the end of May—has been a series of stopgap actions. We all know that we are in the middle of an emergency; we are not out of it yet. When working in an emergency and trying to move on, saying “We’re going to do this for a bit longer, we’re going to do that for a bit longer” actually undermines the well-being of the people who as yet have not manifested as homeless and presented themselves as such.
We will potentially have hundreds of thousands of homeless people. If we take the 400,000 people living in rented accommodation, not to mention the people who are behind with their mortgages and have had a number of mortgage holidays, and the nearly 400,000 people who are at least nine months behind in their rent—if they pay £1,000 a month, they are £9,000 behind —we could have hundreds of thousands people presenting themselves as Big Issue vendors. I certainly could not handle an enormous amount of people like that.
We have to move beyond the emergency. We have to have a road plan from the Government because it is unnerving people who are caught in this position. We also have to take account of the fact that 60% of people who live in rented accommodation are renting from people who have only one or two flats or houses, and letting is their pension or income. All the big landlords cover the other 40% but it is mainly backbone people in the community and all that.
Today, we have launched a campaign. We are making a film for the 30th anniversary of the Big Issue and it will be about this crisis. We hope the crisis does not happen, but we have to find a way of convincing the Treasury that, for all the money it has spent, if it does not spend money now on preventing people falling into homelessness, the cost could be anywhere between £20,000 and £100,000 per person who does. The cost to the National Health Service if we let hundreds of thousands of people slip into homelessness is untold. So, now is the time for the Government.
I and all the other people working in homelessness prevention will do whatever is necessary to help the Government through this sticky situation. I know, and everybody knows, this is not easy. We have to keep people in their homes, we have to pay their rent or mortgage and we have to support them through the emergency. The emergency might be over in three weeks, it might be over in three months, it might be over in three years, but we have no alternative. Otherwise, the cost will double and treble because it is sometimes four times more expensive to keep people in homelessness than to prevent it. That is what I am asking the Government to do.
I realise that a lot of people will say that we cannot dump this cost on the future generation. I was born in 1946, and I, with many of my contemporaries, finished paying for the Second World War in 2007. Let me tell noble Lords: this is very similar to the Second World War.
Levelling Up
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend is right that the levelling-up fund will operate right across the United Kingdom. It will invest in infrastructure and improve everyday life across the United Kingdom by regenerating town centres and high streets, upgrading local transport and investing in cultural and heritage assets.
Lord Bird (CB)
We know that a commonality among people who suffer poverty is, on most occasions, that they did not do very well at school. This leads to a low-wage economy, low-wage health and low social mobility and opportunity. We are talking about poverty —it is the only reason you would talk about levelling up. If are going to level up and to address poverty, then is this not the chance we have to take to excel with our schools and to put an enormous amount of investment into our children and the children of the next generation?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I completely agree that education is very much the engine of social mobility and addresses the points that were raised. We need to judge our levelling-up agenda against a package of measures that could also support skills development through things such as the new community renewal fund and the UK shared prosperity fund.
No-fault Evictions
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I am not really sure how the Government can solve the issue of rent arrears. We have just discovered the £360 million in rent arrears calculated by Citizens Advice. The most important thing is, where a landlord faces a tenant not paying their rent and where there is a level of egregious rent arrears caused not just by the pandemic, they are able to evict the tenant.
Lord Bird (CB)
Is there not a very simple way of accepting the fact that, if we pay the rent of people in this period, we can look at the knock-on effect at a particular time? For anybody who slips into homelessness, the cost will double, and sometimes treble. We know the evil cost of homelessness, and it would be much more sensible if we said, “Okay, all we are going to do is pay your rent, pay your arrears and spend to save”.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I would argue that the furlough scheme and the support we have given in billions in welfare, in addition to the commitment towards homelessness, which is increasing from £700 million this year to £750 million, is precisely the sort of leadership the Government are providing to support people to remain settled in accommodation and take rough sleepers off our streets.
Covid-19: “Everybody In” Scheme
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I would point to the Statement I made on local government finance, where we saw core spending power increasing by 4.5%. The derogation to London around no recourse to public funds has been widened to the rest of the country, so that local authorities can show the local leadership required to safeguard communities, including rough sleepers with no recourse to public funds.
Lord Bird (CB) [V]
I commend the Government on their last efforts, which I was involved in. It was a wonderful opportunity to be told about the policy and the work that was going on. Unfortunately, in spite of what the Minister has said, there is no sense of policy, in the sense of all things being joined up and co-ordinated. I have received no information in the same way that I was kept up to speed on the last occasion. There is a sense that “We did it last time but we’re not doing it again this time.” The Government really need to be selling this and pushing it forward, so that we can understand when it is working and when it is not.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, there is no greater salesman than the noble Lord, Lord Bird, but I would point out that we are backing up a commitment to end rough sleeping and to tackle homelessness with more cash. The total amount set in the current financial year is a little over £700 million; next year, we have committed £750 million towards wider homelessness duties and to end rough sleeping. That commitment is an increasing amount of money for this endeavour.
Covid-19 Lockdown: Homelessness and Rough Sleepers
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, that was a succession of questions. There is no doubt that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is a phenomenal force of nature. I watched how she took the troubled families programme and developed a fantastic resolve at all levels of government, and in the social and charitable sectors, to ensure that everyone worked together to tackle the malaise of the families who require a huge amount of support from the state—and then with the integration programme. We have really benefited from her work. However, we do see leadership from Ministers, including the Secretary of State, and a resolve to do something at all levels of government. We will build on that. As for the removal of Section 21, that is a manifesto commitment, and we will introduce legislation to deliver a better deal for renters, including repealing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, as a priority, once the urgency of responding to this dreadful pandemic has passed. I will write to the noble Baroness on the other matters.
Lord Bird (CB)
I do not know whether the Minister has read the Lancet report showing that the work done in the first lockdown led to a saving of 266 lives, that more than 1,000 people were prevented from ending up in hospital, and about 350 from ending up in intensive care. This is prevention. I have been working for the last 30 years to try to get successive Governments working on prevention—on stopping homelessness happening—because when people slip into homelessness, they die. I thank the Government for their efforts in the previous period, but I am also asking loads of questions. Where are the answers for this next period? More than anything, I want to know what we are going to do about stopping circa 200,000 people slipping into the treacle of homelessness because of their inability to pay their rent or mortgage.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point about focusing on prevention. In all areas of public policy, we want to prevent things happening in the first place. In healthcare, for example, rather than just letting the disease get worse and then responding, we want to prevent it happening in the first place. That is why the money going towards ending rough sleeping—the £700 million that has been committed and continues to be spent—is a part of the wider package for tackling homelessness. There is an absolute resolve to deal with the issues that the noble Lord raises. We will continue to focus on prevention and also on the response to those who are on the streets.
Housing: Rent, Evictions and Covid-19
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, we are seeking to get this balance right. I thank my noble friend for raising the importance of protecting the interests of landlords in the relationship between landlord and tenant.
Lord Bird (CB) [V]
My Lords, if we take the bigger issue behind the discussion about evictions, Britain is the only one of the G7 countries that is removing support during the period of Covid-19, ending it at the end of this year. Can we not take a leaf out of the IMF’s recommendation that we spend, spend, spend and keep the receipts? Will the Minister ask Mr Boris Johnson to save our children and our children’s children from homelessness and degradation? This Government have a responsibility if only to follow what other G7 countries are doing. Those countries are carrying on their support way beyond the period at which this Government are stopping.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, this Government are spending to a considerable and unprecedented degree. We must remember that, at the end of this pandemic, it will be our children and our children’s children who will pay back the debt.
Housing: Rent and Covid-19
Lord Bird Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, there is no obvious indication of discrimination against people who require housing support, housing benefit or universal credit. As noble Lords know, the increase in the housing benefit bill is substantial, but I will write to the noble Baroness on the matter.
Lord Bird (CB) [V]
We should congratulate Shelter on outlining that 60% of people in the rented sector are only one paycheque away from falling into arrears. That is the kind of information we need to work on. I suggest that the Minister speak to the Government. If we are to have a Cockaigne, as suggested by Boris Johnson at the party conference recently, we need to support people who will fall into evictions because of Covid-19. The only way to do that is for the Government to pay now, rather than later, when these people slip into homelessness.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I just point out that as a Minister, I am part of the Government and I will always try to respond as such. We do not see an eviction epidemic. We are fully behind the noble Lord’s mission to end homelessness, as he knows, and we will invest in that endeavour.