Renters’ Rights Bill
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would make the Decent homes standard apply to all homeless temporary accommodation provided under the Housing Act 1996.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
I thought that my amendment was never going to come. Amendment 249 stands in my name, and I am glad to support Amendment 252, to which I have added my name, and Amendments 250 and 251 in this group. I declare my interest as co-owner, with my wife, of one rather modest apartment in the West Midlands, which we let out.
As someone who has chaired a wide range of housing associations, including a large local authority transfer and an arm’s-length management company, I have seen the huge positive impact that the decent homes standard has had since one was first applied to social housing. Not least, it has forced landlords to pay proper attention to their existing stock, rather than focusing all their energies and resources on new developments. Hence, I am delighted that this Bill will, for the first time, extend the standard to much of the private rented stock; it is a sector desperately plagued by underinvestment in repairs, maintenance and stock improvement. One in five privately rented homes does not currently meet the decent homes standard compared to 10% for social housing. More than one in 10 has a category 1 hazard, which is two and a half times the figure for social housing.
My amendment, along with those in the names of other noble Lords that I wish to support in this group, seeks to test whether there is appetite in your Lordships’ House to extend the application of the standard to others whose homes will not be covered as the Bill stands. Amendment 249 would make the decent homes standard apply to all homeless temporary accommodation provided under the Housing Act 1996. Record numbers of individuals, families and children are currently housed in temporary accommodation. Some 117,450 households were in temporary accommodation in March 2024, which was a rise of 12.3%, almost an extra one in eight, from the previous year. Extending the decent homes standard to this large group of people would enable those living in temporary accommodation to expect basic standards from their accommodation.
The very phrase temporary accommodation is something of a misnomer. Many of those who live in such properties are housed there for years at a time. Moreover, the same property may then be used for further so-called temporary tenancies. While I understand that sometimes it may appear better to allow a family to live for a short while in a property that is awaiting imminent major refurbishment or even demolition rather than leave the building empty, this is not what is happening in the vast majority of cases.
I have previously raised in your Lordships’ House the particular plight of children in temporary accommodation. I remember a very good conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, a year or two ago. The figure was then more than 130,000, and it is still rising. They are often housed many miles away from their schools and play friends. Managing an education in such a context is desperately difficult. Some schools in Manchester are already having to put on special provision for children living in temporary accommodation, so imagine what it means to have to do that in a home that does not meet a basic standard of decency. We are failing such children utterly. Alongside families with children, many residents in temporary accommodation have particular vulnerabilities in terms of health and are often not well equipped to advocate for themselves. A national standard will make a huge difference.
My amendment would close a glaring loophole in the current Bill whereby private landlords could escape the decent homes standard by switching to providing temporary accommodation. Allowing the poorest quality homes in our nation simply to move to another form of tenure without doing anything to tackle their condition defeats the whole object of extending the standard at all.
I shall not steal the thunder of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, whose Amendment 250 would extend the standard to accommodation used by HM Armed Forces families, save to remind us that these households, containing those on whom we rely for our nation’s defence, deserve the very best from us.
Amendment 251 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Janke, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford, who cannot be in her place tonight, would extend the standard to accommodation provided for those who have fled war, terror and persecution and are now seeking, lawfully, to rebuild their lives here.
Amendment 252 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, to which I have added my name, would extend the application of the decent homes standard to mobile homes that are rented for residential purposes. I have been a long-term advocate for the rights of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller households, which often experience levels of prejudice beyond that of almost any other ethnic group in our society. They simply seek live a way of life that they have followed for centuries and have long been a vital part of the workforce, especially in rural areas where short-term temporary agricultural workers with high mobility are required at particular points in the seasonal cycle.
These amendments seek to extend to some of our most vulnerable or deserving households a standard that the Bill already agrees is the proper one for most of our citizens. I hope that in responding to the debate the Minister will be able to indicate some movement or at least offer scope for further discussions with us on these important issues ahead of Report.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. In particular, I draw to your attention Amendment 250 in my name which would extend the decent homes standard to accommodation used by service families.
Our service personnel and their families make extraordinary sacrifices for our safety and security. The very least we owe them is decent housing. The current state of service accommodation is, in many cases, unacceptable. Satisfaction levels with both service family accommodation, SFA, and single living accommodation, SLA, fell to their lowest reported levels in 2023 impacting recruitment and retention. The Defence Select Committee reports that one-third of SLA and two-thirds of SFA are in such poor condition that they are essentially no longer fit for purpose. We hear persistent reports of damp and mould, inadequate maintenance and repairs and poor communication.
We cannot discuss the state of military housing without acknowledging the damaging legacy of some past decisions. The sale of 57,400 military homes to Annington Property Ltd in 1996 under the Conservative Government was described as a disastrous fire sale. The deal left the Government trapped paying rent and maintenance costs with no power to plan or make major upgrades. Indeed, the Public Accounts Committee concluded that service families were,
“badly let down for many years”
under the previous housing contracts. The taxpayer was left nearly £8 billion worse off due to that original deal, with money that should have been spent on maintaining homes lost.
The current Labour Government have taken welcome steps. They repurchased 36,000 homes from Annington in January, a deal that is expected to save £230 million a year in rent. A defence housing review was launched in February. A new consumer charter promises measures such as higher move-in standards, more reliable repairs and a named housing officer for every family. It is welcome that the MoD has agreed with the conclusion that the current complaints process is inefficient and that a new, simpler, two-stage process is being devised.
I now come to the “however” bit, I am afraid. The scale of the problem is immense, a result of historic underinvestment over decades. Estimates suggest billions are needed, potentially £2 billion to £2.4 billion for SFA alone, and more than £1.5 billion for SLA. I reassure the Minister that we did our costings in our manifesto and definitely identified funding in some of these areas. While investment plans are being set out, questions remain about whether funding will be sufficient and sustained to address the condition of the entire estate.
Amendment 250 is crucial because it would continue the work of my colleague in the House of Commons, Helen Maguire MP, a former captain in the Royal Military Police who served in both Bosnia and Iraq; it would reinforce the work of the MoD; and it would honour the Kerslake commission. It would ensure that the decent homes standard, which provides a very clear benchmark for acceptable housing quality, was legally applied to service family accommodation.
The amendment goes beyond acknowledging the problem of setting targets. It would establish a right to a decent home for those who serve our nation and their families. They deserve homes fit for heroes, and the amendment would be a vital step towards making that a reality. It would ensure accountability. It would provide service families with the basic standards that they have every right to expect.
I urge the Committee to support the amendment. After all, it is only right that our service personnel and their families live in safe, clean homes that meet basic, dignified standards, especially when they risk their lives to keep us safe. Pride in our Armed Forces must mean pride in how we house them.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender, Lady Whitaker and Lady Coffey, for their amendments on the decent homes standard and standards within the private rented sector. I also thank the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Janke and Lady Scott, for their comments in this group. Let me say how much I agree with the right reverend Prelate’s words about the decent homes standard and how dramatically that has improved homes in the social rented sector.
Amendment 249, tabled by the right reverend Prelate, would remove the power that allows Ministers to specify in regulations what types of temporary homelessness accommodation the decent homes standard will apply to. People living in temporary accommodation deserve a safe and decent home. I therefore agree with the right reverend Prelate’s aim of ensuring that such accommodation meets minimum decency standards. I can confirm that it is the Government’s intention that as much of this sector as possible is covered by the decent homes standard—I feel really strongly about this. I was told by the Mayor of London last week that one in 21 children in London are currently in temporary accommodation; that is probably more than one in each classroom of children. It is absolutely shocking that this is the case. Of course, the long-term answer is our commitment to the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. We have already invested £2 billion in making a start to help towards that situation.
However, it is important that I say that the pressures on the supply of temporary accommodation mean it is important that we carefully consider how we apply the standard to this sector. Having this power allows us fully to examine these issues and to consult. That will make sure that we strike the right balance between improving standards and avoiding risks to supply. I am of course very happy to meet the right reverend Prelate on this issue, because we all want the same outcome. For now, however, I ask that he withdraw his amendment.
Amendment 250, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, seeks to bring service family accommodation provided by the Ministry of Defence within the scope of the decent homes standard provisions in the Bill. I certainly agree with her that the conditions of much of the service family accommodation that we inherited were absolutely shameful. I strongly agree that we owe our dedicated military personnel and their families safe and decent homes. However, as the Minister set out when this amendment was debated in the other place, bringing this accommodation within the scope of the enforcement system established by the Bill is not the right way to achieve this. I will explain why.
Our Government are determined to deliver homes fit for heroes. Noble Lords will be aware that the Ministry of Defence has recently completed a landmark deal to bring military housing back into public ownership—the deal that the noble Baroness referred to. This represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide service families with a better standard of accommodation while contributing to our economic growth mission and boosting British housebuilding overall.
Alongside this deal, the MoD has started work on a new defence housing strategy, to be published later this year, to deliver a generational renewal of military housing. In April, the MoD announced a new consumer charter for forces family housing, which will form part of the strategy. The charter will introduce consumer rights for forces families, from essential property information and predictable property standards to access to a robust complaints system.
On standards, the MoD already uses the decent homes standard as a benchmark for service family accommodation. Homes below that standard are not allocated to service personnel and their families. The MoD uses its own higher defence “decent homes plus” as the target standard for service family accommodation. As part of the new strategy, the MoD is reviewing that target standard in line with the recommendations of the excellent Kerslake review that the noble Baroness referred to and the House of Commons Defence Committee.
On the specifics of the amendment, we consider that the approach we are taking in the Bill to apply and enforce decent homes for privately rented homes is just not the right one for service family accommodation. There are particular challenges in bringing accommodation within scope of local authority enforcement, including access to the more than 6,500 homes that are located “behind the wire” on secure sites.
The Government are already taking action to ensure that service personnel and their families have homes of the quality they deserve, as part of our commitment to renewing the contract with the people who serve us. By regaining ownership of military housing, we will now be able to embark on a substantive programme of redevelopment and improvement, which will enhance recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces and, with it, our national security. My right honourable friend John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, has set out his commitment to improved military housing and will report to Parliament later this year, when the defence housing strategy is published. Given this, I hope the noble Baroness will agree that her amendment is not required.
Amendment 251, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, would extend the decent homes standard provisions in the Bill to Home Office asylum accommodation. This would require such accommodation to meet the decent homes standard requirements and increase the scope for enforcement by local authorities. A number of noble Lords raised this issue during the Second Reading debate. Following that debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, mentioned, officials from both my department and the Home Office met London Councils and the Chartered Institute for Housing to discuss their concerns. I can assure the Committee that the Government share the objective of ensuring asylum accommodation is of a good standard. However, I do not consider that this amendment is the right way to achieve this.
There are already robust processes in place in respect of standards for all types of asylum accommodation. The contracts that the Home Office has with accommodation providers explicitly include standards requirements based on the decent homes standard, as well as the Welsh quality homes standard and the Scottish housing quality standard. Those contracts, including the standards requirements, are publicly available to view on the GOV.UK website. There is also a clear complaints process in place. Inspectors inspect the properties on a targeted and rolling basis.
There are also several reasons why the amendment would not be appropriate to bring asylum accommodation within scope of the decent homes standard provisions in the Bill. First, these provisions introduce the decent homes standard for privately rented homes in England only, whereas there is asylum accommodation across the United Kingdom. Accepting this amendment would therefore result in a fragmented system, with different standards requirements and enforcement systems applying depending on where in the United Kingdom the accommodation was based. The Government wish to avoid this.
In addition, we wish to avoid situations in which requirements to comply with the decent homes standard would mean that certain types of asylum accommodation could no longer be used, even if there was no alternative. For example, we want to end the use of hotels over time, but it is sometimes necessary to meet the legal duty to accommodate destitute asylum seekers. That accommodation might not meet the decent homes standard requirements, such as full-board hotels where there are no kitchen facilities for asylum seekers to use themselves. I appreciate that they are certainly not ideal for families seeking asylum, and they would not meet the decent homes standard. Standards requirements already apply to asylum accommodation, and there are adequate routes of redress for occupants when things do go wrong. I therefore ask the noble Lord not to press this amendment.
Amendment 252, tabled by my noble friend Lady Whitaker, seeks to bring rented mobile homes within the scope of the decent homes standard provisions. While I am sympathetic to the aims of my noble friend, I cannot support this amendment, as the decent homes standard is not suitable for mobile homes. The decent homes standard has been specifically designed to apply to residential buildings. This is integral to the design and operation of the standard. For example, the housing health and safety rating system, the assessment method that underpins parts of the standard, was specifically developed to assess health and safety risks in buildings. As a result, it is not possible to apply and enforce effectively the decent homes standard in respect of types of accommodation that are not buildings. This amendment would therefore not achieve the desired outcome of improving the quality of rented mobile homes. I am, of course, happy to discuss further with her how we might seek to achieve what she has been trying to achieve for many years. Given this, I ask my noble friend not to press her amendment.
Finally, Amendment 252A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, would limit the breadth of the decent homes standard as it applies to the private rented sector. We will be launching a consultation on the content of the decent homes standard for social and privately rented homes in the coming months. We will consider carefully the responses before finalising the detail of the standard. The regulations we will make to implement these requirements will then be subject to parliamentary scrutiny through the affirmative procedure.
I acknowledge that the PRS is a diverse sector with a broad range of differing housing types, and some may have features that, as the noble Baroness rightly pointed out and the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, mentioned, make it very difficult to meet certain aspects of a decent homes standard. We want landlords to take reasonably practicable steps to bring their properties up to standard, but we will not unfairly penalise those who are unable to do so. The legislation we are introducing will therefore provide local councils with a range of enforcement tools to respond to different circumstances. We will publish statutory guidance to support councils in dealing with such issues in a pragmatic and proportionate way that is fair both for tenants and for landlords.
Accepting the amendment would result in different standards applying to different types of PRS homes, which would make it harder for tenants and landlords to understand what requirements apply, and more challenging for local authorities to enforce. As I have stated, the legislation will provide local authorities with flexibility, and we consider that this will provide a more effective and fairer way of dealing with situations when a property cannot realistically meet the standard.
As I am the MHCLG Minister with responsibility for net zero, I have a lot more information on how we intend to operate EPC and the minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector, and I am happy to write to the noble Baroness with a lot more detail rather than take up the Committee’s time tonight. But on that basis, I ask her not to move her amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been characteristically good natured and very well informed, and I am very grateful in particular for the way the Minister has responded to the various amendments in this group.
Because we are going to have a rather late night tonight, I will not say too much at this stage. I wish to respond to some of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I did not speak to her amendment in my introduction because I did not understand it in the form in which it appeared on the Marshalled List; I am very grateful to her now.
I guess I should declare an interest: my daughter lives in a pre-1800 former gamekeeper’s cottage in a very rural part of Devon. She is not a tenant because she managed somehow to negotiate a very favourable mortgage rate with “the bank of mum and dad”, with which I think many of your Lordships will be very familiar—all too familiar, I fear. I understand the complexities of trying to get that cottage up to anything like a decent environmental standard, so I have great sympathy.
The noble Baroness mentioned in particular the Church of England’s land. The Church Commissioners, which I chaired in succession to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, until about 15 months ago, currently has a development land portfolio sufficient for about 30,000 homes, and we would like to develop that out to make more homes for people to live in. We recently set up a group that I am now the chair of, the Church Housing Association, which was registered with the regulator about six weeks ago. It is looking to utilise more Church land, particularly land owned by parishes and dioceses, in order to produce more social housing, particularly housing at social rent level, across the country. I am hoping to meet with Homes England and others in the near future to progress that. My own diocese is going through a very determined process of evaluating all parsonages, selling the ones we do not need and investing the money in improving the ones we are going to keep. So I hope the noble Baroness will agree that this is the right way to take these matters forward.
I am very grateful for all that has been said tonight and I look forward to meeting the Minister to further some of the conversations we have had. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(a) in subsection (5)(a), omit “known), and” and insert “unoccupied), or;””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to allow the 24 hours’ notice requirement for an inspection under Section 239 of the Housing Act 2004 to be served solely on the property’s occupier.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, in moving this amendment, I am grateful for the help of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which has worked with local enforcement teams in my diocese to help us get to this amendment.
Local enforcement will be vital to making the intention of the Renters’ Rights Bill a reality, including the extension of the decent homes standard. However, an amendment to the power of entry that councils are going to use to enforce that standard is needed so that negligent or criminal landlords do not get a tip-off of inspections in advance, which would allow them to frustrate that process or to put pressure on the tenant. Enforcement officers would never tip off the proprietor of an off-licence in advance of an under-age mystery shopper trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes but, as currently drafted, this Bill will require enforcement officers to give landlords a 24-hour tip-off for any formal inspection of compliance with the decent homes standard.
The power of entry under the Bill comes from Section 239 of the Housing Act 2004. It is completely appropriate to give notice to the occupier—I mean, it is their home; they are probably the one who made the complaint that led to environmental health officers or enforcement officers wanting to come round to have a look at it—but why on earth do we give the landlord that 24 hours’ notice? Indeed, we know already from what enforcement officers tell us that, where there is a requirement to tip off landlords, it allows criminal landlords to take lawful countermeasures. These include things such as forcibly removing tenants from an overcrowded property, pressuring tenants not to let enforcement officers into their home or taking retaliatory action, which can dissuade tenants from pursuing complaints. They can also prompt them to withdraw complaints; indeed, there is every reason why a tenant may not want the landlord to know that they have made a complaint at this early stage of the process.
Finally, I would urge that focusing the notice requirement on the occupier is consistent with equivalent enforcement legislation. For example, council enforcement officers’ powers of entry under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 include no requirement to give notice to a property’s owner.
Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—I see that she has just left us—I am not a night owl: should it get to midnight and I am still here, these fine ecclesiastical robes will, like Cinderella’s dress, turn to rags. I trust that we can have an effective but brief debate on what is, I think, a simple and clear proposal. I hope that the Minister will agree that this is a timely and sensible amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for this amendment on powers of entry into properties. Of course, there is a fine line here: we are trying to balance landlords’ rights to know what is going on in their properties, especially regarding enforcement, with the rights of the occupiers of the property to be informed when powers of entry are being exercised by enforcement authorities.
The amendment would remove the current requirement for a notice to be provided to both the owner and the occupier of the property before the authority can exercise any power of entry under Section 239 of the Housing Act 2004. This would mean landlords not having to be told that their property is going to be entered for survey or examination. I would argue that the owner of the property should have the right to be informed both that their property will be investigated by enforcement authorities and that the authority will exercise its power of entry into the property. This is the case as things stand now, and I believe that that is how it should remain.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, this has been exactly the brief debate that I was hoping for on this matter. I am very grateful to all noble Lords for exercising restraint. I am particularly grateful to the Minister for her response, and I look forward to continuing those conversations. We have time before the Bill is finalised to get this right, and therefore I beg leave to withdraw.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, Amendment 62 in this group, in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, is also about a particular form of occupational housing. I need to declare an interest: I own one small apartment in the West Midlands which has been let out to a tenant for a long time, but, according to some of the media, that makes me a kind of Rachmanite landlord who is trying to destroy the Bill. I can assure your Lordships that that is the last thing I have in mind.
This is about people who live in tied accommodation. As a Church of England bishop, I live in what I suppose we should call a tied palace rather than a tied cottage, but it is accommodation that I inhabit only for as long as I exercise my current office. That is the situation for the vast majority of stipendiary Church of England clergy, many other ministers of religion, and also for farm workers and estate workers who are required, for the better performance of their duties, to live where they actually work. It is a category that is accepted by HMRC, in terms of taxation legislation, as a special form of tenure. A large proportion of those who live in tied accommodation do not have the capacity during their working lives to save up and be able to provide for themselves in retirement, when they eventually have to move out of their tied dwelling.
I will not benefit from the amendment I am proposing to your Lordships today, because I will be able to accommodate myself by other means, but the Church of England Pensions Board lets out 50 or so properties each year—that is the average over the last few years—to retiring clergy, or sometimes to the spouse or surviving civil partner of a member of the clergy who has died in office, usually at about 60% of what the market rent would normally be in those circumstances. These properties are made available for clergy to look at any time up to about five years before they retire. The importance of that is we know that when people retire and move out of tied accommodation, they need time to think about where they are going to live, what sort of community they will want to settle in and put down roots in, because it is probably where they will stay for the rest of their lives.
At the moment, what the pensions board is able to do, and what other landlords who are used to accommodating people in tied accommodation can do, is to reserve a property for some period of time in advance and let it out in the meantime, but that will not be possible if the Bill passes in its present form. All that my amendment seeks to do is to make a small change that will allow an extra ground for granting possession where it is to accommodate somebody who is moving out of tied accommodation and the person who is providing their accommodation in retirement is somebody who is closely connected with who they were working for. It may be a former employer. In the case of clergy, who are officeholders rather than employees —a bit like police officers, we are officeholders—it will be an appropriate charity that provides accommodation in retirement.
This would make very little difference to the availability of rented housing overall—it would not make it impossible for other people to find properties to rent—but, as we have already heard several times today, there are people who wish to rent for a shorter period of time. It would be known that these properties will be subject to that clawback when the person who has earmarked them retires. If this amendment is not accepted, I fear that what will happen is that properties will simply lie empty for several years until the member of the clergy or the farm worker is ready to retire into them, and thus take properties away from the rented market, which I do not think is the aim of the Bill at all. I think this is a rather modest, quite niche measure, which would affect only particular categories of labourer, but for them it would make a huge difference to be able to identify where they are going to live when they retire a few years ahead of retirement and to know that that property will be available for them on the day of their retirement.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I will speak briefly from these Benches, in part to spare my noble friend’s voice—I assure noble Lords that no wine has been taken this evening.
I will stress something that is beginning to cause confusion on these Benches: the suggestion that an assured shorthold tenancy is in some way secure. It has been well documented over many years that huge insecurity is attached to an assured shorthold tenancy. Everything that we have learned about the huge turnover has for so many tenants been attached to the fact that ASTs are sometimes down to six months. A periodic tenancy—which has no end—is surely more secure than these fragile assured shorthold tenancies, which are often for only six months and cause huge insecurity for so many tenants. For that reason, these Benches are extremely concerned about the current direction of travel.
Holocaust Memorial Day
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(3 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I will begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, who sadly is not able to be in his place today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, reminded us just a few minutes ago in her excellent speech, Ian is the son of a Holocaust survivor. It was he who helped me understand the significance of this day, long before either he or myself were Members of your Lordships’ House.
Unlike my present diocese of Manchester, Dudley, where I was then the bishop and the noble Lord, Lord Austin, was an MP, did not have a very large Jewish population. Nevertheless, at his instigation, every year we sent two young people from Dudley College of Technology to Auschwitz. They reported back to our annual Holocaust Memorial Day event that was held in the college, where they told very moving stories of what they had seen and how it had made them feel. Their witness, alongside the testimony of Holocaust survivors, helped inspire young people who were born almost half a century after the Holocaust to understand why we today must be constantly on the vigil against those voices that seek to deny the common and equal humanity and dignity of every single human being. Those who denigrate, despise and ultimately seek to destroy those whom I, as a Christian, will always declare as being created in the very image of God.
I now live in Salford, in the midst of the largest Jewish community outside of London. The boundary of the eruv, which permits many of my Jewish neighbours to undertake tasks such as pushing wheelchairs and prams on the sabbath and other holy days, is my garden wall.
This year, I have been delighted to see the success of the Holocaust Memorial Day schools exhibition held in Manchester Cathedral. It features the work of Church of England primary schools across the whole of Greater Manchester from many culturally, racially and religiously diverse communities. The children responded to key themes of the Holocaust in a number of ways. Some of them created origami paper cranes as prayers for peace; others reflected on Pavel Friedman’s poem, The Butterfly, which was actually written in a concentration camp. There was a re-creation of the pile of children’s shoes from the children who lost their lives at Auschwitz—that was very difficult to look at—and a collection of human portraits from many different cultures to celebrate our differences.
Meanwhile, local authority Holocaust Memorial Day events in Greater Manchester, including one that I attended in Manchester Town Hall, had local speakers who were Holocaust survivors or from their families. Respect was shown to them at these events by members of all our main faith communities: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jain. In my role as convenor of the Greater Manchester faith leaders, I have the privilege of leading representatives of all our major faiths. We are good friends and good neighbours.
The multifaith Challenging Hate Forum, which is hosted by my cathedral, undertook its own visit to Auschwitz, led jointly by my dean and Rabbi Warren Elf. My wife was part of that trip in March 2019. We also have vibrant bilateral groups, such as our Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, where relationships that are forged and sustained over many years prove so vital when we find ourselves in tense times. I am privileged to work closely with the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region, and to use my voice here in your Lordships’ House to raise concerns that it and other faith communities have first prompted me about.
The Church of England teaching document, God’s Unfailing Word, which was published in 2019, speaks of attitudes towards Judaism over many centuries as providing,
“a fertile seed-bed for murderous antisemitism”,
and of the need for Christians to repent of the “sins of the past” towards our Jewish neighbours. It notes the part played by flawed Christian theology in promoting negative stereotypes of Jewish people.
I am grateful to other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lichfield, for reminding us that anti-Semitism did not arise in the 1930s but was nurtured and grown over the preceding two millennia. There can be no overlap between the truth of our witness to Christ, which it is the task of theology to articulate, and the darkness of anti-Semitism. We have a duty as Christians to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it. My right reverend friend was a member of the group that wrote this document, though I note he was too modest to refer to that in his own speech earlier.
Remembering the Holocaust serves as a bulwark against the ever-present forces across the world that seek to resurrect vile, violent and murderous anti-Semitism or to perpetrate fresh genocides against other targeted groups. This year marks 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre, when more than 8,000—mainly men and boys—were killed in just a few days by the Serb forces. I am proud that, in Manchester, we—again together, as all our faiths and others—commemorate Srebrenica Memorial Day each year.
In Britain, we take pride—I take pride—in our pluralistic society, one where people are free to practise their religion and express their identity and where they should be able to live without fear of persecution. But we must never take those freedoms for granted. They are the product of a long history of struggle and sacrifice. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, they remain under attack—even in the UK, even today. We must make sure that atrocities such as the Holocaust never happen again. We must speak up and act up when anti-Semitism, racism or xenophobia happen.
As a schoolboy in Manchester, I studied alongside many fellow pupils who were Jewish. Most of them would have lost family members in the Holocaust. Simply being boys together—we did not have girls in those days in my school, and it still does not—taught me that we were one humanity under the skin. Indeed, the only practical difference between being Jewish or gentile seemed to be that my Jewish friends got to go home a lesson early on winter Friday afternoons.
As others have said, with each anniversary, the memories of the Holocaust slip away from living memory. If we are to hold firm against the evils of fascism and other extreme ideologies—as indeed we must—as each generation of survivors passes on, it is incumbent on all of us to remember the past. Today’s debate plays a vital part in enabling that, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley—a good friend, who does so much excellent work to promote strong relationships between different faiths and communities, and who spoke so strongly and movingly in opening our debate today—for giving us this opportunity to build “For a better future”, to quote the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
Future Homes Standard
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My noble friend is quite right that, as we set out in our Plan for Change, our growth agenda and our drive towards net zero are not exclusive: there is no conflict between them. I see three major opportunities for us here: great jobs, training, skills and apprenticeships for our young people, both in construction and in retrofitting; manufacturing capability for technology such as heat pumps, solar and maybe many new aspects of that; and building on our country’s fantastic reputation for innovation as we develop the green technologies of the future. These things are totally compatible with our growth agenda.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of a housing association. Housing associations are a key provider of homes for those who can least afford high energy bills. What support will there be for housing associations when they are bidding for grants to subsidise the properties they are building? It does cost that bit extra, maybe £5,000 or £6,000 per home, to build to the standards that we need to.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand the issue; in fact, I met the National Housing Federation just last week to discuss these issues. We want to drive forward the delivery of affordable housing, particularly social housing, and we recognise the costs that will make. We will be considering, once we have set the standard, what that cost might be and what further support we might offer.
Community Engagement Principles and Extremism Definition
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend makes a series of excellent points. I totally agree about extremist behaviour and its disproportionate impact on women and girls. Let me reassure the noble Baroness that we are looking at ensuring that we have more female voices—not just female voices, but young female voices—in the faith space. Let me also let the House know that I have been up and down the country and have engaged not just with the major faiths but with every faith in our country. That has been a privilege, but I have learned that there need to be more female voices in the faith space.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, a decision under the previous Government about a particular Islamic organisation being characterised as extremist led to the defunding and collapse of the national Inter Faith Network. I wonder if the Minister agrees that the Inter Faith Network provided a vital role in co-ordinating interfaith work at a national level. We do great things at local level, but we need some national work as well. Will he urge His Majesty’s Government to commit to refunding the Inter Faith Network?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate, with whom I have worked closely in the interfaith area in the north-west of England. I totally agree about the work of the Inter Faith Network. It is important that there is a national forum. Although we will not be bringing back the Inter Faith Network as it was previously, we are looking to ensure that that work is brought back and we are exploring ideas. My department, the MHCLG, has just commissioned some research and a consultation on what form that will take in future, so that there is a national interfaith presence that the Government can regularly engage with.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill
Lord Bishop of Manchester ExcerptsWednesday 24th April 2024
(1 year ago)
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“(3A) But in a case where the freeholder is a charity and the freehold interest was vested in that charity immediately before the passing of this Act—(a) assumption 2 must not be made, and(b) accordingly, marriage and hope value are payable.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would provide that, where the freeholder in the case of a lease extension or freehold enfranchisement is a charity which had owned the freehold interest since before the passing of the Bill, marriage and hope value are payable.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, while I thoroughly enjoyed that previous group, I hope this one will not prove quite so wide-ranging. In tabling these amendments, my aim is to deal with an issue that in the charity world is specific to a small number of bodies but would severely impact the work that they do. First, I am a leaseholder myself, as it happens, as set out in the register of interests. I have been through the process of extending my lease; my flat is not in London, and it was quite a simple and cheap process. Secondly, although I am no longer on the board of governors of the Church Commissioners, it is the body that pays my stipend, owns my home and covers my working expenses, so I declare that interest too.
The commissioners are directly affected by the proposals in the Bill. They would indeed benefit from my amendments but, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, in the previous group, that charity is large enough to withstand the adverse impact. Smaller charities would struggle much harder to maintain their work, and it is their case I seek to plead today.
As I said at Second Reading, I wholeheartedly support the central thrust of the Bill, which is to protect leaseholders from freeholders who exploit them as a cash cow. I also agree that leasehold is ripe for bold reform. I have spoken repeatedly in your Lordships’ House on behalf of victims of the cladding scandal, as well as joining them on public platforms in Manchester. My lifelong commitment to those in housing need is well known in this House and that commitment remains undiminished.
I was unable to be in my seat on Monday and I am grateful that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Derby spoke to an amendment in my name that day. Having carefully read the report of that debate in Hansard, I have informed the Whips’ Office that I no longer intend to oppose the question that Clause 47 stand part of the Bill, nor does my co-signatory, the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow. I have taken that step as I believe my efforts at this stage are best focused on the specific issue of charities and marriage value. I apologise to noble Lords for the lateness of that decision but hope that they will take it as a sign that even a bishop can be penitent.
To focus on the subject of this group, in England there are a small number of charities, probably no more than a dozen, all of them with long and distinguished histories, which, in centuries far past, came into the possession of land lying largely within just a few miles of this House. As London grew and the land increased in value, rather than simply selling it and seeking to invest elsewhere—remember that back then there were far fewer opportunities for investment—the charities stuck with the business they knew and understood. They kept the freeholds and have used them as regular and predictable sources of income to drive their work. The charities, apart from the commissioners, of which I am aware, are John Lyon’s Charity, the Portal Trust, the Dulwich Estate, the London Diocesan Fund, Merchant Taylors’ Boone’s Charity, and Campden Charities —not a large number.
John Lyon’s Charity was gifted its land in St John’s Wood about 500 years ago. Income from being the freeholder, principally through marriage value, provides it with about £4 million per annum, which is one-quarter of its total income. Marriage value is not a matter, as we have heard, in which the freeholder can set their own arbitrary figure. It is not open to the abuses that have been associated with ground rents. It is also the case that around 80% of all marriage value is in or around the capital. This is a very London-focused issue.
The money that John Lyon’s Charity receives enables it to be one of the principal providers of youth services to some of London’s most needy children. Properties on its holdings sell for around £5 million. The leaseholders who purchase them are not London’s poor and needy. Many are not resident in the premises, which are let out to tenants. A typical leaseholder on such an estate is, as we have heard in previous debates, more than likely to be a wealthy overseas investor or corporation. I have nothing against them, but the Bill, in its present form, will transfer money used presently for youth work to these very rich organisations and individuals. It will present them with an entirely unearned windfall, hence my comments at Second Reading about this being a “reverse Robin Hood”.
I have been told that the Bill needs to be kept simple, and that making any exceptions will unnecessarily complicate it. Of course, there is already an exception for the National Trust, but I will not debate that any further. However, the simplest solution to a problem is not always the right one. In any battle between simplicity and justice, justice must always prevail.
I have also been told that it would be wrong for some leaseholders not to profit from the abolition of marriage value when others, whose freeholders are not charities, do. I will not go back as far as my good friend, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, did when citing Magna Carta in the previous debate, but there is another principle that is long established: the assets of a charity should not be alienated from it at anything less than full market value, except where those assets are being applied directly to the purposes set out in the charity’s objects clause. That principle has been applied even to such flagship Conservative projects as tenants’ right to buy, in which charitable housing associations were excepted as not being forced to sell properties at a discounted value, unless that discount was being made up from elsewhere. I have not heard any case, not even an unconvincing one, as to why leaseholders of charity-owned freeholds should be treated more favourably than charity tenants.
My amendments in this group offer one way forward. They stipulate that marriage value should continue to apply in cases where the charity owned the freehold before the Act came into effect. There would be no loophole allowing charities to purchase freeholds and apply marriage value in future, nor any opportunity for other bodies to seek to register as charities thereafter. From day one, those leaseholders with charity freeholders should know exactly who they are.
We could tighten it up even further—this is still just Committee stage. It would make little difference if the exemptions applied only to charities, or their predecessors, which owned the freehold prior to 1950, which would of course exclude most housing association leasehold properties. Given how few they are, we could even name them in a schedule. We could explore how marriage value for charities might be phased out over a period of some decades, as was referred to more generally in the previous group, instead of the impact hitting in full in the first year. We can also look at ways of compensating charities in full for the loss of assets—again, an issue referred to in the previous group. I note the Minister’s comments that to fully compensate all freeholders would be an unfair burden on the taxpayer. We are talking here about something much smaller—a small number of charities severely impacted—and I beg to suggest that that can be afforded. None of this needs to slow down the progress of this much-needed Bill through your Lordships’ House.
I am grateful to the Minister, who has already met me and representatives of some of the affected charities, written to us setting out the Government’s current position, and assured us that she remains ready to meet again. I greatly appreciate her openness to such conversations. I also appreciate the Opposition Front Bench for similarly listening to our concerns. I look forward to hearing the views of other Members of your Lordships’ House, so that the charities impacted can have a better sense of where we might find ways forward to tackle this problem. In the meantime, I beg to move.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and I have added my name to his amendments.
There is a great deal that I could say on this issue but, since I said most of it in the debate on the last group, I shall keep my remarks fairly short. I can add a little personal knowledge of one charity to which the right reverend Prelate refers, because it is very Kensington-based. I have no connection with it and no interest to declare—but Campden Charities was started in the 17th century by Count Campden, a devout Puritan. When he died, he left a charitable endowment, naturally in the shape of land that he owned, for the benefit of the poor youth of Kensington. His widow, when she died, did likewise with her property—hence the plural. It is Campden Charities: technically, they are two separate endowments, but they are run as one. They own land in Kensington to this day from which they have an income, and they continue to support the poor youth of Kensington—and there are poor youths in Kensington—giving them grants to allow them to continue their education and apprenticeships, and work of that sort. Their income is now going to be, to some extent by this measure, reduced and expropriated.
As I say, apparently as Conservatives we feel no embarrassment in doing this—we feel no constraint on us. We are too tender and too ginger to feel that we can expropriate the assets of ill-doers such as Putin’s friends—they are sacrosanct. But those who do good, such as charities, can have their money taken away with very little debate and handed to leaseholders who may or may not be poor and meritorious. Who knows? What is it next, I wonder, for my noble friends on the Front Bench? Shall we be stealing the widow’s mite from the poor box?
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
Obviously, I completely respect my noble friend, but I think I have answered that point.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, which has been somewhat less emotive than the previous one. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his support, and for his description of the good work that is done by the Campden Charities for young people in Kensington. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, who spoke movingly of how that same charity has been part of what has enabled him to become the great asset he is to your Lordships’ House today, and to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his helpful and insightful questions.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for asking whether other charities, including those outside London, are affected. While I cannot guarantee that my list is exhaustive, I am pretty sure that if there are any that we have missed, they would quickly come forward, but I do not think that there are many.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, both for her meeting yesterday and for her support for the matter being further considered. Can we find a workaround that does not disapply the whole principles of the Bill, but which deals with the problem that these particularly good causes are going to suffer as things stand? I am very happy to look at some tighter drafting, as she suggested. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for his response, and for his willingness, and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to continue to engage with us on this matter.
In the previous debate, we were told that compensation for loss of marriage value would be too much of a strain on the taxpayer. We are talking about a very much smaller amount here, and I wonder whether that would be a course that we could continue to pursue in further conversations before Report. For now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill
Lord Bishop of Manchester ExcerptsWednesday 27th March 2024
(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests. I am no longer a church commissioner, as my time finished at the end of last year, but I am paid and—if the Lord spares me—will be pensioned by the Church Commissioners in due course. The commissioners are freeholders, not least of the Hyde Park Estate, which has been in continuous Church ownership and care since around the 11th century, when it belonged to the monks of Westminster Abbey. I guess, if I am going to echo a word that we have used several times today, that makes it genuinely feudal. I also own one leasehold flat in the West Midlands, as set out in the Members’ register.
I support this Bill. It addresses many deep injustices which other noble Lords have addressed and hence I do not wish to repeat. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness the Minister for meeting me and colleagues from the charity sector a few days ago. I am grateful for the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about regulation and the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, on forfeiture and buildings with fire, safety and other defects. I am also grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who is such a doughty campaigner on these matters. It remains a huge scandal that so many people remain trapped owning apartments that are unsaleable.
However, there are three areas that I would like to see explored at later stages; I shall try to be brief for now. The first is about marriage value. Noble Lords might expect a Bishop to support marriage and I will not disappoint. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for raising this subject, not least in referring to pension funds, and again to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and, most recently, the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising. My concerns are with particular reference to charities which own freehold as part of their permanent endowment. We have already heard that some 80% of marriage value in UK relates to properties in and around central London. As several noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, have stated, many leaseholders in such blocks are corporate and often overseas entities. They are not the people this Bill aims to protect or benefit, nor should it. The Church Commissioners’ Hyde Park properties have an average sale value of £1 million. Those who own them are not, by and large, London’s poor.
The Bill, as drafted, will take money presently used for charity purposes and give it to the wealthy—robbing the poor to pay the rich: a reverse Robin Hood. Lest I be seen as being parti pris, let me offer a non-Church example. John Lyon’s Charity exists to fund children and young people’s services, particularly in nine north and west London boroughs. It is the largest independent funder of children and young people’s services in Greater London and, in 2022-23, it reached the milestone of having awarded over £200 million in grants since 1991. That is over 4,500 grants to over 1,700 organisations. The loss of marriage value could cost it around £3 million per year, money which would go to owners of apartments valued in the millions. John Lyon’s is not the kind of rogue landlord that leaseholders need protecting from.
It is a widely accepted principle of charity law, accepted even when right-to-buy legislation was extended from council housing to many housing association tenants, that charity assets should not be transferred to individuals or bodies that would not qualify as their beneficiaries. This Bill seems to fly in the face of that principle. Is it possible to exempt charities? It appears that the National Trust already has such an exemption and one not restricted to those parts of its estate that are inalienable under Act of Parliament. The principle of exemption is not at stake; what we need to talk about is its extent. Will Ministers look at whether that exemption, or one similar to it, afforded to the National Trust could be extended to encompass other charities? Should that prove impossible, will they put forward a full compensation scheme for when a charity loses marriage value?
My remaining two points relate specifically to mixed blocks in town and city centres. Typically, you will get a ground floor of retail, then there will be some floors of offices and then the residential floors on top. These points might well have been addressed by us moving away from leasehold entirely but, while it remains, they need to be addressed if our town and city centres are to be the vibrant hubs that we need.
First, how are we to prevent groups of enfranchised leaseholders, particularly if many of them are overseas companies, from neglecting the community facilities—ground-floor shops, and sometimes even schools? I have heard it said by one of my colleagues that, on one estate, we could end up with a whole load of vaping or mobile phone shops. We would lose all the shops that really matter to those who live perhaps not in that block but locally. Can the Government offer amendments that will enshrine ways to protect the non-residential parts of blocks, particularly those areas devoted to community and retail uses, or can we limit those entitled to vote on decisions about their properties to actual individual residents in person, rather than remote and often disinterested corporate entities, which would see shops as a way in which to get a rental income, not a service to a community in which they play no part?
Finally, I am concerned that the reduction of threshold for enfranchisement could lead to less building of homes in town and city centres—or we could end up with too few homes and too much office space. I am aware that I am taking a different view from that of the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, a few minutes ago, so perhaps we need to establish the facts. Have His Majesty’s Government undertaken an impact assessment on future home building and, if not, will they do so, and report to your Lordships’ House during the passage of this Bill?
I believe that this is a good Bill, but one capable of improvement, and I look forward to continuing to engage with it through its later stages.
Local Government Finances
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for securing this important debate, but I am doubly grateful for its full title. This is not simply a debate about local government finances; it is a debate about the impact on local communities, and that is a vital distinction. Money is only ever a means to an end. It is an input—a crucial one—but what really matters are the outcomes and, in terms of local government, what really matters is how well local communities are served.
I still recall that back in the 1990s, when I started attending and speaking at national housing conferences, there were some where every positive mention of housing associations brought an audible hiss from some local authority members who were present. They saw us as rivals, and in some cases even the enemy, as we were taking money that had formerly gone to them to provide services that they had previously enjoyed delivering. I guess their attitude could be summed up as: if a job is worth doing, it is for the public sector to do it. I hope that we have long moved on from those attitudes. Local authorities have a vital and leading part to play in the service of their communities, but they are not the sole provider. Other agencies are not competitors; they are partners in the common task of supporting the local community.
Much of my diocese, as noble Lords will know, falls within the Greater Manchester area. Our mayor, Andy Burnham, understands well that it needs more than just local authorities—indeed, more than just the wider public sector—to pull together if we are to maximise the positive impact we can have for our local communities. So, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority works closely with voluntary, community, faith and social enterprises, and our faith communities work hard to be both visible and distinct. The authority acknowledges that faith-motivated work makes a significant contribution to the well-being of the whole of our communities, regardless of the service users’ faith.
Only last year, the GMCA’s faith and belief advisory panel drafted a statement which drew attention to the variety, visibility and delivery of faith community support in a whole range of areas of social need—things such as homelessness and food security. That initial statement is part of working towards a faith covenant. We are currently drafting one which we hope will be signed by each of the 10 local authorities, along with faith community reps. Faith covenants actually emerged from the APPG on Faith and Society, and I know that they are already operating in areas such as the West Midlands and in Leeds.
Our combined authority has a number of action networks, including the homelessness action network. A youth homelessness report from 2023 showed that at least two community partner agencies are working to resolve individual youth homelessness cases through the pathfinder programmes that have grown out of faith communities. Faith involvement is woven into the whole of the provision of tackling homelessness, including the “A bed every night” scheme, whose target remains to ensure that nobody need sleep rough on our streets. The Greater Manchester Food Security Action Network is a similar story, with 134 food banks and 68 pantries or clubs across Greater Manchester, many of them run by faith communities, including my own local Broughton food pantry run by St James Higher Broughton, which I think has been well-reported here before.
As well as responding to immediate needs, partners recognise that the long-term future prosperity of Greater Manchester depends on our being able to achieve our shared commitment to be carbon net zero by 2038. To that end, our faith leaders—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jain—invited our mayor and other civic leaders to accompany us in a delegation to meet and discuss these matters with Pope Francis and leaders of the international Roman Catholic organisations in Rome last year. That really inspired us to think about how we could better work together as faith and political leaders to achieve our goal.
I have drawn my examples predominantly from the combined authority level, but I could equally mention more local cases, such as the Manchester homelessness partnership board, which I chaired from its inception until recently. That body brings together businesses, charities, and faith and public sector partners to maximise impact on ending homelessness in the city. I could speak of how the housing association that I chaired, Wythenshawe Community Housing Group, provides much of the services for young people in its area, using properties owned by the city council but where that council is no longer able to be the provider. Our emphasis is on synergies and partnerships—on recognising that faith communities deserve a seat at the table for what they already do, and what more they can do.
This debate must be as much about recognition and partnership as it is about sources of funding, but I guess that is where the levels of local authority funding kick in. Noble Lords have spoken, and will no doubt in the rest of this debate speak, of the severe limitations that many are operating under and the rapid rise in Section 114 notices that we have heard about. The danger is that when they are faced with major deficits, councils become tempted to cut back on the vital support they provide to those partner bodies, simply to maintain as much as they can of their own directly provided services. I understand why they want to limit the damaging impact of redundancies among their own staff. The trouble is that those understandable responses tend to maximise rather than minimise the harm being done to local communities.
Noble Lords will also note the negative impact of very short-term funding. Earlier on, I asked a Question about the household support fund and its extension for a mere six months. We debated that this morning, but local authorities and their partner agencies need longer-term certainty so that they can plan and provide. They are not helped by constant fears that funding may end in the very near future. So yes, my speech is a cry for a more generous settlement for local authorities; not so that they can plot a return to the municipalism of former decades, but to allow them to plan and deliver services along with their partner agencies.
The principle that we should come together across all sectors to support and strengthen community life is important at all times, not only when the money is short. Because it is through that partnership working, as I have seen over and over again throughout my adult life, that we begin to see, in big ways and small, not only our communities served better but the revitalisation of our common shared life together.
Temporary Accommodation Costs
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Manchester
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on local authority finances caused by the rising cost of temporary accommodation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, local authorities deliver vital homelessness services, and we recognise the pressure that the cost of temporary accommodation places on councils. As we announced recently, total core spending power for councils in England will rise by 7.5% for 2023-24 to 2024-25—an above-inflation increase. In addition, we are providing more than £1 billion over three years to councils through the homelessness prevention grant, with a further £120 million UK-wide funding in 2024-25, announced at Autumn Statement, to help prevent homelessness.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
I thank the Minister for that Answer. I recently visited a secondary school in Manchester which now has to make significant bespoke provision out of its school budget for pupils who are living in bed and breakfast hotels. Those students are only a tiny fraction of nearly 140,000 children in temporary accommodation, which represents a 14% rise in the last year. What assessment, if any, have the Government made of this issue? Will the Minister commit to improving the data available so that the impact of living in temporary accommodation on children, particularly on their education, can be fully understood, and local authorities can be supported to enable their schools to address and minimise it?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. No one wants to see families with children in temporary accommodation, and I am sure that every local authority across the country is doing everything they can to stop it happening. But sometimes, in emergency situations, it is important for the short term that those families have a roof over their head, a safe and secure place to go. We continue to work with the Local Government Association and local authorities on how many there are in such accommodation, and what more we can do—for instance, stopping people going into temporary accommodation in the first place. With the £1 billion grant for local authority homelessness prevention, we can also start to improve the quality of any temporary accommodation that we might have to use.
Home-ownership Rates
Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government completely recognise the issue that my noble friend has set out. The mortgage guarantee scheme is relatively new; it opened in April 2021 and was recently extended to June 2025. It extends the availability of 95% mortgages, which helps with that deposit issue because it reduces the amount that people need to save for their deposits. More than 39,000 households have been helped through that scheme already, and I expect many more to be helped in future. To give a sense of scale on the lifetime ISA and its predecessor—the Help to Buy ISA, our other main scheme to help with saving for deposits—I say that under the Help to Buy ISA we supported over 550,000 property completions, so these are not insignificant support schemes to help people in these areas.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, in cities such as mine of Manchester and Salford, in terms of home ownership, many people in this age group aspire to an apartment yet, however many years we are on from the Grenfell fire disaster, too many properties still remain unmortgageable. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for the support he has given to campaigners over the years, yet still people cannot get a property because they cannot get a mortgage on it. When will the Government put an end to this scandal?
Baroness Penn (Con)
Let me reassure the right reverend Prelate that we continue to make progress on the cladding issue. It has gone on for too long; we have made significant changes to the legislation and other measures to address it, and we will continue to work until everyone in that position has the resolution they need.