Housing Supply and Homelessness

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real privilege to have the opportunity to follow the most reverend Primate. We first met in Durham cathedral. It was a great civic occasion, where I was the appointed preacher and he was the recently arrived—merely, at that time—right reverend Prelate. I preached at him and he blessed me, and it has been like that ever since.

A month or two later, in May 2012, the most reverend Primate made his maiden speech in this House. On that occasion, he was still the Bishop of Durham and he toured the heights of his experience, drawing massively on his secular as well as his religious experiences. He has played a large part in the banking and financial sector themes that we have pursued in this House and in Parliament generally. Indeed, he is a towering figure in many other ways. After all, he officiated at the funeral of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth and crowned the brand-new King and Queen in his turn.

He has been a great campaigner for women’s consecration to the episcopacy and to see that happen. We cannot divorce him from the achievement of that great step, which has greatly enriched this House. Another of his great themes is on investment that crosses between morality and ethics, on the one hand, and finance performance, on the other.

In a sense, I could pursue a tour d’horizon of the great themes that he has taken some part in, but it would not really get to where I want to be. In his maiden speech, as well as proclaiming the virtues and qualities of the north-east—we remember that Newcastle drew last evening with Manchester City; a very good thing—he also championed the issue of loan sharks and people with payday loans at extortionate rates of interest. They were gone within two or three years of him striking that note. From then until now—choosing to speak on housing and homelessness in his valedictory address—that for me is the theme that runs right through this particular Primate’s life and witness, like the word “Blackpool” through a stick of seaside rock.

Somewhere along the way, he has espoused the marginalised, the oppressed, the poor people of the land, and internationally too. He has travelled to every province of the Anglican Communion. We can only honour him for his stamina as far as that is concerned; stamina to get there, but holding it together is an entirely different challenge. Somewhere on that parabola he quoted a line from Nelson Mandela which is the hallmark for his particular ministry—that overcoming poverty is a matter of justice, not charity. That is a pretty high bar to set. I honour him for his work.

I am reading an enlightening book, which I am enjoying, that traces the history of John Milton’s Paradise Lost through its various iterations and its usefulness around the world. It is truly insightful, but it is called What in Me is Dark. There is not a Member of this House, not one noble Lord or Baroness, who has not had to face the dark at some stage in their lives. We can only feel with the most reverend Primate as he gazes into his, none of us feeling superior as we do so. However, it is a good thing to follow to the end John Milton’s quotation,

“What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the highth of this great Argument

I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,

And justifie the wayes of God to men”.

That is nobler than the cut-off title of the book that I am reading at the moment.

One last word, if I may, as I have some indulgence on these occasions—it is very dangerous to give such an indulgence to a Welshman, but I will do my best. It allows me to give vent to a long-nurtured secret desire of mine to quote some Latin, as an alumnus of Llanelli Boys Grammar School, to an old Etonian. It is from the Aeneid. In Carthage, Aeneas is looking at a mural of Juno at the fall of Troy and all his friends who died there. He weeps to see them fallen:

“sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangent”—

there are tears at the heart of things and the mind is affected by ideas of our mortality.

There are tears at the heart of things. I would guess that the most reverend Primate knows that as well as anybody. However, they can be tears of joy. We must hope that the future that he will enjoy with Caroline and the family will be full of joy, that joy will invade the darkness and dispel it, so that the man whom we know will have a chance to be himself again, breathe his own air and stand in his own dignity. Justin, I am going to miss you, and I think we are going to miss your family too. God bless you.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

And so to the business of the day.

I start with the most reverend Primate again. He says somewhere that his beginning—the opening chapter of his life—was messy, and I can say that mine was messy, too. For him, he was three; for me, I was five and a half when everything broke down and darkness descended upon us. I still have the letter from my father’s solicitor to my mother, indicating that she was to take her two boys out of his client’s home within a week—so, my mother, with two little boys, was on the street. For days we were on the street, and a kind neighbour in the little two-up, two-down houses would put us up, but the pressure on their space was great. In the end, my grandparents, who had two rooms as caretakers in a factory, decided they could live in one room so that we could live in the other. I grew up in one room in a brickyard. That was at five or six.

What can I say about homelessness? I have decided I want to say a word about the homeless—let others talk about construction, targets and all of that. What can I remember? I will tell you what I remember. I remember my mother’s face, tear-struck. I remember her despair. I smelled her panic. Before the welfare state, how was she going to put food on the table? How could she cope with life and its demands? How would her boys have a chance to wear shoes and underwear? I remember homelessness, and I have refused to call it homelessness ever since; I call it the plight of homeless people, in order to remind ourselves that homelessness is about people, their needs must be paramount, and we must find ways of forging policies that hold them and their well-being in mind.

Fast forward 40 years and I have inherited a programme of social work that was begun by Donald Soper, of beloved memory. One of his institutions was a homelessness centre, open 365 days in the year, a brilliant piece of work. The work I did in those few years enabled me to become friends to homeless people. One of them, called Tom, would take me around with him. He spoke Hungarian. He had a PhD. His life had fallen apart. He had resorted to alcohol. All of them have stories. Tom took me to where the IMAX cinema is now, on the Waterloo roundabout—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Bird, knows what I am talking about—where the homeless would gather, often with a fire. They would send scouts from among their own community to the railway stations to see if any children were running away from home and before predators got hold of them. There was an advice centre in the Royal Festival Hall that helped people who were newly homeless to cope.

One night—just one—I spent a night in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Tom told me how to wrap my legs and my lower body in newspaper. He told me where to find the best cardboard, outside McDonald’s: there was not so much grease in it, and therefore the rodents would not bother me in the night. In the middle of the night, we were woken up by a soup kitchen that wanted to feed us with sustainable food. I have to say that, when the rain started at 3 am, I was a coward and went home, but I have never forgotten the comradeship of the people in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the jokes and the banter.

Homelessness is about people. This debate is about finding ways to solve the needs of people. If we do not do that, then all the statistics, trends, budgets and hopes are for nothing. I am so glad that I am being followed by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who is a more authentic voice than I on these matters.