Homes: Affordability

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on securing this important and wide-ranging debate. That is the sort of formal thank-you that we normally have, but I think I join most noble Lords who heard his introduction in noting his powerful and emotional opening speech. I will return to the idea of the importance of emotion in decision-making.

The title of this debate is an indictment of the Government’s handling of our economy. It may be growing, but the nature of that growth is delivering increasing inequality, forcing more and more people into crippling, life-changing poverty. Yesterday, the Chancellor sought to paint an optimistic picture of the UK economy. That is his prerogative, but, for many, it has been a tough couple of years, and it is likely to be an even tougher winter.

While bankers and companies such as Amazon are handed new tax breaks, families face rising costs, high inflation and empty supermarket shelves. People are feeling the pinch and, despite their claims, the Government are not in their corner. We will have other opportunities to debate the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget, but there are a few key facts that are worth citing in the context of this discussion. GDP growth may have been revised upwards this year, but it has been downgraded for 2022, 2024 and 2025. Inflation is expected to peak at 4%, or a little more, over the next year, with this persisting for some time. The legacy of austerity is such that, despite increases in departmental budgets, around half will remain worse off than in 2010.

If growth is weak, inflation is high and public services are not properly funded, people will suffer. That is true in normal times, but even more so when one factors in the impacts of the three strands of the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. Yesterday’s Autumn Budget was an opportunity to give those in need, in the words of the noble Lord’s publication, “a hand up”. Unfortunately, that opportunity was missed.

We welcome the announcement of certain initiatives, as well as the cut in the universal credit taper rate, which I will return to later, but they do not go nearly far enough. Millions of Britons are facing a lengthy cost of living crisis, and too many face the prospect of losing their home. This has been backed up today by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which warned that low-income households will feel real pain in the months ahead.

Noble Lords may wonder why all this matters. We often discuss poverty as a concept, trading definitions and stats. Policy wonks compare relative and absolute poverty, while Ministers instruct officials to tweak the formulae. For those living in poverty, though, it is not an abstract concept; it is a hard slog, a cruel and daily reality.

Earlier this week, Channel 4’s “Dispatches” highlighted the plight of several families living in poverty and in poor-quality, overcrowded housing. It was hard hitting and made one wonder whether this is why Ministers are so desperate to privatise the broadcaster. The programme was a timely reminder of problems that have gone unresolved for too long: the sheer number of people trapped in emergency accommodation or on council house waiting lists, and the lack of quality and affordable properties in parts of the private rented sector.

We know these problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic, prompting the Government to step in with a range of Covid-19 economic support schemes. Many came with shortcomings, but at least they kept people in their homes. Now, the withdrawal of those schemes, as well as the removal of the £20 universal credit uplift, has come at the wrong time and is starting to bite.

But, again, I worry that we are falling into old habits and approaching this from the wrong angle. I want to read into the record the stories of two boys who featured in the Channel 4 broadcast earlier this week, to highlight the daily fear that young children are experiencing. Nine year-old Qasim lives in temporary accommodation with his dad and siblings. He is worried that his father does not have enough money when they go shopping and that if the family is made homeless, they will have to sleep in the car. Qasim struggles to sleep and fell behind with his schoolwork during lockdown. He is now attending catch-up classes but is worried about his future: “If I don’t learn, I may not be able to get a good job, and I might end up poor”.

Eight-year-old Kai doesn’t care that his mother, a care co-ordinator who has her income topped up by universal credit, has never been able to take him on holiday or to a restaurant to have macaroni cheese. He loves her dearly because she’s “trying to do her best” to provide for him.” He said, “I worry about my mum having less money because you can’t pay rent. It wouldn’t be fun living on the streets because you have to beg people for food, and they’ll say no”. These children are not asking to live a life of luxury. They just want the basic sense of security that so many of us take for granted, so they have room to grow as people and begin to get some enjoyment from life.

I was particularly struck by a tweet from Save the Children’s Kirsty McNeill, who said:

“Kids shouldn’t know where the family is on a housing waiting list, when pay day is, how much their school supplies cost. They should be dreaming about how they can cure cancer and be in the Olympics at the same time”.


The reality faced by Qasim and Kai, and many more besides, is the result of choices made by this Government. The Chancellor essentially confirmed this yesterday, when he said:

“do we want to live in a country where the response to every question is ‘What are the Government going to do about it?’, where every time prices rise, every time a company gets in trouble, every time some new challenge emerges, the answer is always that the taxpayer must pay? Or do we choose to recognise that Government has limits?”—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/21; col. 286.]

Of course the Government do and should have limits. However, they also have duties, and I fear those duties are not being upheld. Too many people face a winter of great uncertainty. The Government are not wholly to blame, but their decisions have had, and will continue to have, a very real impact.

The decision to increase the national minimum wage to £9.50 an hour is welcome, as is the end of the public sector pay freeze. However, the IFS also warns that high inflation will cancel out much of the immediate benefit, meaning that millions will be worse off in the short term.

We also welcome the reduction in the universal credit taper rate, although it will not benefit all claimants, particularly the poorest, and its impact will very much depend on individual circumstances. Other fundamental issues remain with universal credit, and we hope that these will finally be addressed, sooner rather than later.

I am sure that the Minister will cite a variety of schemes and statistics in his response. However, I urge him and his ministerial colleagues to acknowledge the scale of the problem and the long-lasting impacts that poverty and homelessness—potential or actual—have on people across the country. The Government talk of improving life chances for all but, sadly, their record to date speaks for itself.

There is a fundamental problem about the issues that we are talking about. The problem to some extent is us. As the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said, the loss of £20 would be unnoticed in his life, and it would certainly be unnoticed in mine. We debate homelessness —this debate is about homelessness—but we think of it in terms of fears and as having to do with “them” or as so many per cent. As human beings, we often avoid thinking about unpleasant things.

Curiously, I have always been terrified of not having a roof, despite the fact that it has never been a real threat. I came from a poor household, but a poor household in the 1940s and 1950s was, in an important way, much richer: we were richer because we lived in a council house, with a secure tenancy and affordable rent. Despite being lowly paid, my father worked for the National Health Service as a porter and had a secure income. Throughout my life, I have always had a roof over my head and confidence; despite being fired a couple of times, even then I had sufficient reserves for it not to be a problem.

I invite people to think about how they would feel—I do not know why I think about this—if tonight was to be their first night on the streets; that they had done their best not to get into this situation, but somehow all their options have run out. Would it help to be told that it was their own fault? Somehow, we have this concept of the undeserving poor. When you are on the streets—it does not matter how you got there—it is an almost impossible position to climb back from.

Would it help being told that losing £20 a week would help, despite the cost of living shooting upwards, as though somehow making you poorer means you are more likely to get a job? I find that very difficult to believe. I draw no conclusions from this because I accept that this is complex, but we surely have to somehow feel the terror of homelessness and, as best we can, try to imagine what poverty is like to give this the weight it should have in our discussions.

It is crucial to recognise that these people exist. They may not vote, but they are citizens, and somehow, they cope—or do they? Google told me today, in my last dive into this area, that homeless men typically die aged 45. In the general population, the age for men is just over 79. So, these people do not cope, really, but they do cope night by night. I am not sure I could cope for a single night.