Homelessness Reduction Bill

Lord Bird Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I am pleased to support the Homelessness Reduction Bill. In the 25 years that I have been involved with the Big Issue I have rarely seen the word reduction—or even prevention—used in relation to homelessness. Reduction and prevention are, of course, not the same. Prevention is a science that we have not yet arrived at. The elements that make up homelessness are not yet defined adequately and scientifically enough so that we can begin the process of dismantling it even before it manifests itself.

What is so interesting about Mr Blackman’s Bill and the work of my noble friend Lord Best is that at last we have before us a mechanism for embracing that beautiful word “prevention”. But we have to go even further and start preventing in the schoolroom and in the ghetto, and we have to prevent people being bullied and pushed out because they are gay, black or Gypsies, or because their mum and dad have problems with drink and drugs. I look forward to that process beginning not just in this House but in the other place. We have to fall in love completely with the idea of social transformation. I shall not talk too much because your Lordships are all incredibly eloquent and have all the facts and figures before you.

I am reminded of that wonderful song by Ian Dury, which I will not sing: “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever”—I will say “Bar stewards” rather than the word he used. Listening to the right reverend Prelates, the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, and everyone else, it is clear that we are all able to intervene in the lives of the poor and come up with some very astute observations and methodologies, but prevention is where we need to start.

I started the Big Issue 25 years ago with a man called Gordon Roddick, who, as your Lordships know, started the Body Shop with his wife. The Big Issue was a business response to a social crisis. We wanted to prevent people continuously falling into trouble. We did not look at what the 501—there are now over 2,000—homelessness organisations in London were doing; we said that we were going to stop people falling back into crime again and again, as that just complicated the problems.

What is so beautiful about the Bill is that it will prevent quite a number of people ending up selling the Big Issue. I thank Mr Blackman and my noble friend Lord Best for that because we have too many people doing that. But the real politics will be preventing Johnny, who is now three years old, living a disfranchised life and becoming a Big Issue vendor or a drug user in 20 years’ time. That is the big issue—that is where we have to move on to—and I am glad that we have started the process of dealing with prevention, bringing it forward in this House and out into the world, so that we can make progress on it.

Noble Lords will forgive me for stopping for a drink of water—I was out with a number of homeless people last night and got to bed very late.

I have developed something called PECC, which I have mentioned before. It stands for prevention, emergency, coping and cure. When you look at the vast amount of money that we spend socially on emergency and coping and at the very small amount we spend on prevention or cure, you can see that we live in a topsy-turvy world. Mr Blackman’s Homelessness Reduction Bill is a step in the direction of making “prevention, prevention, prevention” the best course that we can all follow. I am glad that he is following the work of the Big Issue. I am not saying that we are the great leaders—we are still learning—but now we really do need to move the argument on and become vitalised by the wonderful idea of stopping children becoming homeless 20 years after the seeds of discontent and problems enter their lives.

I declare an interest. I was homeless at the age of five because my mum and dad were enemies of the rent man when there was no Crisis, Shelter or SHAC, or all the other 501 or 2,000 organisations that there are now. We have to start defining the causes of homelessness. Some of it is self-perpetuating and some of it is to do with not being able to budget, but a lot of it is to do with the fact that the mechanisms that lead to you receiving a Section 21 notice can drive you into homelessness—an area where you need not be. That is the beauty and magnificence of this Bill. I am so pleased that we are debating it today and I am 150% behind it. God bless you all.

Homelessness

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the question of homelessness and rough sleeping is a complex one. The noble Lord is right that the number of rough sleepers has gone up in the past six years—that is absolutely true—but the number of homeless people has halved since 2003, and more than halved since its peak. As I said, during this Parliament we have committed £550 million to tackling rough sleeping and homelessness over the next four years.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Could the Government look at the enormous problems around empty homes? There are probably about 250,000 empty homes in Britain today, and if we put effort into doing something about that we might find that the housing problem shrank a bit. There used to be a wonderful organisation called the Empty Homes Agency that kept the Government on their toes. I suggest that we return to looking at these ways—as well as all others—of solving that problem.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I pay tribute to what the noble Lord does in the area of homelessness. He really knows what he is talking about. I will take that idea away for consideration. In the housing White Paper, to be published shortly, there will be discussion of these issues. However, I applaud what he has done and welcome that particular initiative, which we will look at.

Homelessness

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that there is a sum of money— £100 million in this Parliament—to help vulnerable people to move on from hostels and refuges into low-cost permanent accommodation. We are pursuing that with a vengeance, with a view to getting those unacceptable numbers down.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

If the Government are not looking into hidden homelessness, could they look into the predictability of homelessness? There is a situation whereby people are coming out of care, out of the Army and out of prisons. It would be a very interesting exercise to head off homelessness before it becomes entrenched in the lives of our young people.

Homelessness

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for raising the issue of homelessness and ask the Government to put their mind to the problem. It is something that every Government in the last 25 years since I started the Big Issue have dealt with; every Government have had their favourites and particular twists on the situation of homelessness. I declare an interest in that I am a person who makes a living out of homelessness; if it was not for the homeless, I might well be homeless. Twenty-five years ago, I started something to help the thousands of homeless people who were sleeping in the West End of London. We are not back there. If you listened to politicians in opposition today you would think that we had arrived there already, but you must be aware of the fact that we could arrive there—so it is a very good idea for us to enter the fray again and say, “Let’s not return to 1991”.

One of the reasons why there were so many homeless people in 1991 was that at the end of the Thatcher Administration the social security laws had been changed and children of parents on social security from the ages 16 to 17 were refused social security. So social security was withdrawn, and the noble Lord, Lord—sorry, I have forgotten your name, forgive me.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Young.

[Lord Bird]

When the noble Lord, Lord Young, was Sir George Young, as he will remember, there were thousands of young people filling our streets, because of the change in government policy. When I look at what has happened with homelessness over the years, I am probably in a minority, in that I do not believe that Governments are capable of making major changes by one policy followed by another and another. In a way, that is avoiding the major issue, which in Britain today is the fact that we fail 30% of our children in school—and those 30% of our children become 70% to 80% of our prison population and become 60%, 70% or 80% of the people on social security. You get a situation where families are broken, where our children are not given places of safety, where social security is not used as a place of security, and so what happens is you produce another generation of people who become homeless.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, says that we could all be homeless—we could be—but the chances are that, if you were failed at school, if your parents are on social security, if you live in a council flat on social security, you are more likely not to go to university and you will in fact have to rely on the university of the streets or the university of the social security office. Most of the people I have worked with over the past 25 years, 95% of them—with some notable exceptions, such as the man who went to school with Prince Charles—come from the same social background as those people who were failed in school.

After 25 years of the Big Issue, I have come into the House of Lords to help to dismantle poverty, not to make the poor comfortable, not to parry with the Government over this, that and the other; I have come into the House of Lords to find methods of changing the way in which we produce another generation of people. I am sorry, but all my knowledge leads to the fact that we spend £19 billion a year on education when we should actually be spending £50 billion a year on education. We should be breaking open the issue of those 30% of children who will go on to fill our prisons, our hostels, our streets and our social security queues.