Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, immediately before this debate, we were discussing the pay of women at the BBC. I should make it clear I in no way condone the relative underpayment, but I wonder whether I am the only person in this House who really attaches rather more importance to the group of women we are discussing now, who suffer physically as well as materially and as a result of extraordinarily abusive partners or husbands who betray the person whom they should most care for. I therefore join with all other noble Lords who have spoken in welcoming the Bill.

I do not want to outdo the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in generosity, but the Government have a commitment in this area, which I think stems from the Prime Minister herself. As evidence, it is really rather extraordinary that this measure should force itself into a Queen’s Speech, and now into a parliamentary programme, so burdened with other weighty matters such as Brexit, Brexit and Brexit. This is a wonderful triumph and is not the only such case: the Government are promising the domestic violence and abuse Bill, which will make a difference to women in this situation over a wider field. I pay great tribute to the Government’s motivation. What I will say though is that it is not uncommon to find that the good effects the Government are having are weighed against—or even outweighed by—things they are doing which have an adverse effect on the group they are trying to help.

My first example is that of legal aid to women. We know that the numbers getting legal aid when they appear in court fell by about a third after the Government’s restrictions. The Government have eased up a bit, but I bet the figures never get to what they were before. Think of the plight of an abused woman facing her abuser in court without professional legal advice at hand. That is no small thing.

There is a more serious problem lurking in the wings. It relates to the ending of the system whereby aid for refuges for women is given via the HB system, to be replaced by grants to local authorities that are—I share the view that has been expressed about this phrase—ring-fenced. I do not think you need surveys, although they exist, to show what effect this is going to have on refuges. Picture a local authority with terribly difficult choices to make because its expenditure is being slashed on every side, faced with claims from a refuge. On average, three-quarters of the women in that refuge will not come from that area at all; if you are subject to domestic abuse, of course you want to fly as far away as possible from the local area in which you lived to get away from your abuser. Councils therefore do not have an incentive to give that refuge the priority that they would give to services that really were for local people. There is some evidence now that this is going to cause the mass closure of refuges. The figures that I have seen suggest that 39% might close as a result, with a 12% reduction in beds.

From a scandal we proceed to a confusion. I do not know what the Government’s policy is in the area that I am talking about, and the reason why is that I do not really think they know themselves. One consultation, launched in October 2017, to which people have to submit their representations by 23 January, seems absolutely committed to this switch from the money coming from HB to the money coming from grants to the local authority. At the same time, though—this almost beggars belief—the Government are launching a separate review of support for supported housing that is not designed to report until November 2018. So they have a policy that they are reviewing even before it comes into force in 2020. Even odder, in a kind reply the other day to a Question from me, the Minister said,

“We are continuing to explore all options for future delivery of refuge services, including a national model for refuges”.


Here we have this new localism being instituted, based on grants, while at the same time a national model is being looked at. This really is chaos.

I know that government is not usually chaotic by accident; there is usually a reason. I will lay before the House—I expect the Minister to deny it, but that is his prerogative—what I think is probably going on here. On the one hand, his department, the MHCLG, can see perfectly well that this policy is a nonsense; that while there are many things that should be given to local authorities, this is not one of them; and that it is going to lead to closures and a hell of a row. Indeed, if the Prime Minister gets involved, it will be a hell of a row that rebounds on the MHCLG. Over at the DWP, on the other hand, there is another problem: the Ozymandian project to build universal credit. HB does not fit easily into universal credit, and HB for refuges does not fit into universal credit at all. So the DWP has taken its sabre, cut straight through this and got rid of a system that is working perfectly well in order to ensure that the prospects for universal credit are not further discredited, as they have been so regularly over the last few months. Support for refuges, support for the women in tragic circumstances who have recourse to them and even support for rebuilding their lives rank pretty low in the priorities in the battle between these giant bureaucracies.

I do not know how all this will be resolved. I am extremely optimistic that the degree of opposition to this change of policy, witnessed in the 140,000 signatures to a petition got up against it, will pressure the DWP to think again. Otherwise, the bad day when that system is introduced will more than outweigh the great good to be done by this excellent Bill.