Lord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Dubs
My Lords, there is a very serious housing crisis in this country. Too many families are homeless, badly housed or in temporary accommodation. The situation has got worse largely as a result of coalition policies: first, too little housebuilding, especially for the poorest members of our society; and, secondly, the results of government policies on welfare. The more I have looked into this situation, in preparation for this debate and even before that, the more I feel that one cannot look at housing in isolation; one has to look at the whole social welfare system in order to understand the effect of changing the social welfare on housing. Part of what I want to say will be to do with that.
One has to ask: why is there such a housing crisis? No peacetime Government since the 1920s have presided over fewer housing completions than this Government of the past two years. It is actually getting worse. In 2012, housing starts were 11% lower and dropped below 100,000. Housebuilding in Britain has now hit new lows. The actual figure of housing starts last year was 98,280. New home starts have been lower in every single quarter than when Labour left power in 2010.
We have a definition of statutory homelessness—I do not believe it covers all homelessness but it is a working definition—and that has risen by more than a third since the election that brought the coalition to power. At the end of the second quarter of 2010, the number of homeless people stood at 10,100 and hit 13,890 in the last quarter. In practical terms, homelessness may be higher than that because the statutory definition is somewhat limited.
The Government have introduced the benefit cap, which I believe will make more people homeless. In London alone 7,000 families stand to lose more than £100 a week. Mr Leslie Morphy, the chief executive of Crisis, the homelessness charity, said:
“For the sake of cutting just a few pounds a week from their benefits, families and individuals are being forced out of their homes, to be put up in B&Bs or temporary accommodation that costs us all far more”.
The Labour Party’s contention is that there are regional variations and the Government’s benefit-cap approach has not taken account of that fact—it is not a matter of one size fits all. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said that the benefits cap should take into account housing costs in each region. He said:
“We've said we're in favour of a benefit cap but it has got to be adjusted regionally depending on housing costs in each region. The danger of the way the government is doing the cap is that it forces people into temporary accommodation, bed and breakfasts, which drives up costs not reduces them. And actually what we're seeing with the welfare bill is, despite the cuts the government is making, the welfare bill rising and not falling”.
That is a real condemnation that the Government are putting people through a lot of pain, allegedly to save money, and they are not even saving the money.
What we all call the bedroom tax is going to have a very important effect on housing. Frankly, it is hard to find anybody who has a good word to say about this policy. It is likely to cost far more than it saves. It has been estimated that 31% of working-age housing benefit claimants in the social rented sector—that is, 660,000 claimants—are likely to be affected by this measure. The problem is that there simply is not the smaller accommodation for people to move into. If there were, it might just about be a viable policy. For example, in the Hull City Council area, 4,700 tenants are likely to be affected by the policy but the council has only 73 one- or two-bedroom properties to let. It does not make any sense. How can it be possible to force, drive or coerce—whatever word one wants to use—tenants out of accommodation in which they are alleged to have an extra bedroom when there is nowhere else for them to go?
The other killer is that two-thirds of the households being hit contain within the home someone who is disabled. The Government have tried to meet the needs of disabled people in such circumstances, but it is going to be very cumbersome to measure those needs. Indeed, we know that disability is not a constant. People with disabilities often find that they have a developing condition, so that someone who is a bit disabled one day may be more disabled in the future. If they are forced out of their home, the situation can become particularly difficult for that family.
It has been estimated that, over the past four years, the cost to councils of bed and breakfast hostels and shelters has been £2 billion. The problem is that the figure is increasing, which makes any savings to be made on the welfare bill look even more remote. There is now a clear pressure on families to move out of central London simply because they cannot be rehoused in their own local area; that is to say, never mind that they cannot afford the rent because of the benefits cap because there is also the bedroom tax. London boroughs in particular are rapidly accelerating the rehousing of homeless households outside their home boroughs. During the year up to this April, almost 11,000 households were rehoused in this way, a rise of 16% on the previous 12 months. Most of those households left inner London for the cheaper outer suburbs, but some were moved to towns completely outside the capital, such as Dartford in Kent and Slough in Berkshire, or to the borough of Spelthorne in Surrey. Inevitably this has put a strain on local services and many council leaders outside London are now complaining about it. For example, Mr Edward Smith, a Conservative councillor in Enfield, has said:
“The pressure will not abate … Before long, we will have to build more secondary schools”.
That will be one of the consequences of the Government’s policy on welfare. The leader of Slough borough council has said:
“You can’t just pitch up halfway through a year and expect to get a school place. It’s not McDonald’s”.
The housing Minister, Mark Prisk, insists that councils should be careful about placing families in B&Bs that are far from their home boroughs:
“There is absolutely no excuse for families to be sent miles away without proper regard for their circumstances, or to be placed in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation for long periods of time”.
That is fine, but the trouble is that the policy is not happening. He may be insisting on it, but it is simply not the way it is working. I should mention in passing that rough sleeping rose by 23% two years ago and by 6% last year, which represents a rise of a third since 2010. Rough sleeping is, of course, one of the most serious aspects of housing difficulties.
I turn briefly to the issue of temporary accommodation. The latest Government figures show that 53,130 households were living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2012, a rise of 9% on the previous year. The statutory limit for families living in bed and breakfast accommodation is six weeks. However, estimates suggest that a third of British local authorities are in breach of this limit, largely because of the shortage of suitable temporary accommodation. Last year, 12 of Britain’s biggest cities spent £464 million on temporary accommodation, an increase of almost 6%, while the London boroughs are budgeting for significant further increases this year.
Before I conclude, I want to say a word about overcrowding. There is a definition of overcrowding, but even accepting that definition, it varies according to the type of accommodation in which the household or family is living. Under the definition, almost 7% of social renters and 6% of private renters are overcrowded in their accommodation. I appreciate that the Government’s answer is that the bedroom tax will deal with overcrowding and that the Minister will quote figures to show how many people have spare accommodation. I have already talked about why the policy is not working. If one could simply switch people from one to the other property within the same neighbourhood, it might be easier, but housing does not work that way and the Government must surely know that. The problem is that the policy is causing enormous dislocation to households and families. If people have to move a long way away from where they have been settled, that is upsetting for them, it is not desirable and it is yet another sign that the Government’s policies are not working. There is a real crisis here and everyone who is looking at it says that it is getting worse. I hope that the Government will do something about it because the next Labour Government will certainly have to.