Public Disorder: Eviction from Social Housing
Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Baroness Hanham(13 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Hanham
Noble Lords may not like my answers, but I shall give my answers. It is not up to me to decide this matter at present. There is a consultation on whether the law around anti-social behaviour and criminality in social housing, and when people can be evicted, can or should be extended in the circumstances that we have seen in this country. I do not understand how much clearer I can be. That is the third time I have said it.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, surely we are talking here about parental responsibility. I do not think that anybody in this House can feel that parents should not be responsible for their children, particularly when they are involved in riots.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, clearly, the answer to that is yes. It is also clear that a number of the parents of those who were involved in the riots did not know where their children were at the time.
Allotments
Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Baroness Hanham
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am not sure who has lost the plot and it is not an issue I want to address this afternoon.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, my family have some allotments in Surrey—I live in Devon. They are run by the allotment holders, who provide everything that is needed to keep them running; they do not need the local authority. Is this not an example of the big society?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, self-help and people working for themselves, producing their own answers and working without government intervention of course is the big society at its best. After all, the big society is just about that; it is about local people working for themselves and for others and looking after their neighbours. In that regard, what could be better than working on an allotment?
Local Authorities: Redundancies
Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Baroness Hanham
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I suppose I could also produce the statement that I have made frequently in this House that if it were not for the previous Government’s mess we would not have to make these reductions. I point out that the previous Government had also seen the ill of the way in which they were going about this, as they were also making provision for substantial reductions in the budgets for local government in this financial year. The fact that this Government have had to make slightly more reductions than expected should not have been totally unexpected by local authorities—they knew perfectly well that they were going to have to make reductions.
The “tired mantra” that the noble Lord refers to is not a tired mantra; it is just a truth. The truth is that all the money for local government has now been given to local government by this Government. It is no longer ring-fenced—there are now only two areas that are—so local government can use every bit of money that the Government get, except in the areas of education and health, and can decide how to use it. Local government can decide how to provide its services and how to provide the most value to its own communities with all the resources that it has.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, does my noble friend have any figures for natural wastage in local government? Does not natural wastage contribute to the reduction that there will be in the number of jobs—although obviously it will not contribute all of them?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I do not have the figures, but the noble Lord is correct. There is always natural wastage—amazingly, people do leave jobs voluntarily—and there are ways of leaving jobs other than through redundancy.