Asylum Seekers: Accommodation

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in moving asylum seekers from accommodation in hotels.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

The Government are committed to reducing hotel use through reform of the asylum system, including streamlining asylum processing and establishing the Border Security Command to tackle people-smuggling gangs at source. In the year ending September 2024, 35,651 people were in hotel accommodation, down 36% from September 2023.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful for that reply. Labour’s manifesto said that it would

“end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds”.

That must be right, as hotels are an expensive and inappropriate solution, but it will be a challenge for the Government as, since July, there are 5,000 more asylum seekers in hotels than there were and all the 35,000 the Minister has just mentioned are likely to get leave to remain. Responsibility currently rests with the Home Office, but do we not need a much more joined-up approach with local government if we are to reduce dependency on hotels, not least because a hotel costs £145 a day per person, whereas so-called dispersed accommodation costs less than 1/10th of that, at £14 a day? Should we not transfer responsibility for asylum seekers in hotels from the Home Office to local authorities, together with the funds, saving public money and enabling those in the hotels to be more integrated with local services when they leave them?

Fighting Fraud (Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee Report)

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Friday 30th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. We are all absolutely delighted that she has made a recovery from her recent hospitalisation and is once again able to take part in our proceedings. The points she made about AI and the skills shortage are well taken. I look forward every weekend to reading her column in the Sunday Times. It is also a pleasure to be reunited with the fraud squad who took part in the committee and to endorse what others have said about the qualities of our chairman and support staff.

The theme running through our inquiry and this debate is the mismatch between, on the one hand, the incidence of fraud and the damage it causes and, on the other, the resources devoted to it. This was well summed up by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, an impressive witness. He said that:

“You could probably times the £80 million by five and you would start to make a small dent in relation to the scale of the problem”.


His comments were reinforced by what Mark Fenhalls, chair of the Bar Council, told us:

“The state has retreated from the investigation and prosecution of fraud over the last 15 years”.


Prosecutions went down from 20,000 a year in 2010 to about 5,000 a few years ago. The government response to our report, while welcome, was drafted by one of our more cautious civil servants:

“We recognise that there needs to be improvements in the response to fraud, from the reporting process through to investigations”.


But, in fairness to the Government, the Minister Tom Tugendhat took a more robust approach when he gave evidence.

Before I sat on this committee, I was doubtful about the success of police and crime commissioners. However, I was impressed by the performance of Mark Shelford, the Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner, and his approach to fraud. I was delighted to read in his report:

“I personally have taken on the national lead role for economic and cybercrime on behalf of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners”.

We need more like him.

I will focus my remarks on authorised push payment fraud and compensation. The Payment Systems Regulator, the PSR, reported that there are more incidents of APP fraud than any other type of fraud in the UK, with 95,000 incidences in the first half of last year and gross losses of £250 million. I wholeheartedly agree with one part of our recommendation in the report, which has been adopted: that the recipient bank should be in the frame as well as the paying bank. The paying bank is acting on the instructions of a legitimate customer. The recipient bank has allowed a fraudster to open an account, almost certainly with false details, or is operating an account on behalf of a money mule, aiding and abetting a crime. If banks devoted the energy with which they pursue noble Lords, who are politically exposed persons, to explain how we got every penny we own to checking up on the authenticity of the new accounts operated by fraudsters, there would be a lot less crime.

I want to refer to an exchange which did not feature in our report. It took place on 10 March last year, when one of our witnesses was Revolut, which is basically in the money transfer business. I asked a question about suspicious authorised push payments:

“What percentage of customers do you convince that it is a fraud and that the payments should stop? To what extent does the customer just go on?”


This was the answer from Nicholas Taylor:

“Our machine learning models correctly identify over 90% of attempted APP fraud … It is incredibly difficult to break the spell. We have all the normal warnings before you make a transfer, but our models detect and block a payment post fact, where we think it is a fraud, and then we make the customer talk to one of our agents. Even after we have directly intervened, 80% of them still go on to make the payment”.


We heard at an IPT breakfast seminar last July that the larger banks have even more sophisticated systems, using behavioural biometrics, data analysis and other technologies to detect fraudulent payments, and their experience is the same. Sadly, as we heard from one of the brave victims who gave evidence to us in Birmingham, at least one victim went ahead despite repeated warnings from her bank. I think that exchange influenced our response to the issue of reimbursement. We said:

“While we recognise the case for mandatory reimbursement of victims of APP fraud, we are concerned that a blanket reimbursement policy may lead to increased levels of moral hazard and fraud, and the perception that it is a ‘victimless crime’. In some cases, it may even lead directly to new avenues for APP-reimbursement frauds”.


We asked the Government to revise their proposals to legislate to allow the PSR to mandate blanket reimbursement of APP fraud conducted via faster payments. The government response did not take on board the risks of an overgenerous compensation scheme, it just recognised the urgency to protect consumers and said that they have given powers to the PSR to direct banks to reimburse victims of APP fraud.

The PSR then issued a comprehensive consultation document on proposals for reimbursement and responded earlier this month on 7 June. This was one comment on its proposals:

“Under the new legislation, 100% of consumers’ APP fraud losses will have to be reimbursed by PSPs, except in extreme cases of negligence on the part of the customer, which will—by all indications—be extremely rare”.


I am all in favour of improving the current position, in which only 46% of fraud is reimbursed. We need minimum standards and a common approach, but the proposals will apply to all cases, except where the customer has acted fraudulently or with gross negligence.

My concern is that, with consumers protected in this way, some customers may be willing to make more risky payments without properly considering the consequences, whereas we should be considering exactly the opposite. The proposal means that people who are careless will be fully compensated. I think this is overgenerous. If you are careless with your wallet, your insurance company certainly will not compensate you. If you are careless and damage your car, you will not be compensated. Obliging the banks to compensate you unless you have been grossly negligent is overgenerous, weakens the message that people should be careful and, far from deterring fraudsters, will encourage them. It is also inconsistent with the paragraph I quoted from our report. There is time to put this right, as the PSR is still consulting, before finally agreeing the regime. I will not be popular for saying this, but I urge them to think again.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 93 and 95. Amendment 95, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier—who, sadly, cannot be here—is closely related to Amendment 93 but has a key difference in that subsection (3) of the proposed new clause says that the annual report must detail how much money has been brought in and how much has been spent in securing it.

UWOs were introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017. At the time, I was Treasury spokesman in your Lordships’ House. I have no recollections of piloting this legislation through, but I have some memories of some of the statutory instruments that flowed from it. The background was that this had been tried in other countries with varying degrees of success. I do not think anyone can argue with the principle: an individual has at his or her disposal substantial sums of money for which there is no reasonable explanation—they may be an official working for, or who used to work for, some totalitarian Government, whose official salary in no way could support their standard of living. I see the case for UWOs but, as we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, they have not been a stunning success.

When the Bill was going through, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, tabled some amendments to give the SFO more powers but also to understand the ambition of the Home Office with that legislation. A Home Office assessment in 2017 predicted that there would be about 20 UWO applications per annum. We just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that, to date, there have been nine applications against four individuals, with not a lot of money realised. In fact, in one case, the cost of failure against the Aliyev family was about £1.5 million. Since then, we have a cap on the costs that can be awarded against the SFO or the prosecuting authority, but I wonder whether that goes far enough and whether we should not provide that there should be no order for costs against the SFO unless the proceedings were brought maliciously or without any reasonable justification. That would place a burden on the person against whom the UWO was claimed to show, in effect, that the institution of proceedings was abusive.

Related to this, last year the register of overseas entities was introduced, following the invasion of Ukraine. A Joint Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, looked into the register of overseas entities and to what extent it could relate to the UWOs. Can my noble friend the Minister update us on that? The register should provide some valuable information in seeking an UWO, and a failure to provide relevant details, or the provision of inadequate details, would clearly be of immense value.

However, at the heart of the problem is something that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to in a previous debate: the inequality of arms in the firepower available to each side. The targets, by definition, will be well resourced, and the SFO considerably less so. This is not the first time in our debates on this Bill that we have emphasised the importance of resources in the fight against economic crime.

My final point is this: we have had two Bills in quick succession on economic crime, and I think we can now expect a legislative silence in this area while Governments of whatever complexion concentrate on other issues. Hence the importance of a provision to keep the Government up to the mark in telling Parliament how they are using the valuable powers that Parliament gave them with the UWOs. That, in effect, is what these two amendments seek to do.

[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, having spoken briefly to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who regrets that he is not able to speak to his amendment, I think I know broadly what he would have said, and I agree with him. I shall try to articulate it briefly.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cookham, about inequality of arms in this area, is critical. It is very strange and troubling that there have been so few applications of this nature since the jurisdiction came into existence, and the reason, unquestionably, is that the SFO, which is responsible for deciding whether to make these applications, is understandably very wary of the cost consequences of losing.

As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, by definition, the respondents to these applications will be well resourced. They will retain City firms whose partners charge £600, £700 or £800 an hour or more—and, in responding to the applications, which will tend to raise quite tricky points of fact and complex issues of foreign law, they will swiftly run up legal bills that extend to hundreds of thousands, even millions, of pounds. If the principle that the loser pays applies to these applications without qualification, the cost consequences of losing, from the point of view of the regulator or prosecutor, will be a considerable deterrent to making applications, even when there is obviously a good reason to do so.

The points that I am considering in these short remarks may come into focus later on this afternoon when we discuss another amendment. The reason for me making them now is that it seems to me that the information that would be yielded by the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, would be of great value both to Parliament and to those who make decisions in this area in deciding how the regime needs to be restructured so that applications are made when they should be made.

Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I welcome the Statement, but does my noble friend recognise that there is a connection between absence from school and anti-social behaviour? The figures for the last 12 months indicate that 27% of secondary school children were persistently absent—the “ghost children” we have been reading about recently. As part of the multiagency plan that my noble friend referred to, will he be in touch with the DfE to ensure that more is done to promote school attendance and thereby reduce the risk of children coming into contact with the judicial system?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend raises a very good point. I have read some of the articles about the so-called ghost children with similar alarm and concern. I have spoken to the Department for Education about this; it has asked me to stress that it is worried about these stories as well. Without being an expert on this, I can say that there are three strands to its work. The Secretary of State regularly attends an attendance alliance. I am afraid that I cannot give much more detail about it because I do not know much more about it, but it is very good that the Secretary of State is taking this as seriously as I have been told. Local registers are being set up. They are voluntary. The intention is to collect data on the estimates from local authorities as to how many children are “ghost status”, if you will. We are also using certain specialists that exist in multi-academy trusts. Apparently they are very good at collecting some of this data on missing children and they are advising in areas where there seems to be a particular problem. If I can enhance that answer in any way over the coming days, I will certainly do so.

Public Order Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendments 3 and 4 not moved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

I am unable to put Amendment 5, by reason of pre-emption.

Amendment 5 not moved.

HM Passport Office: Backlogs

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I can take that point back. I may be completely wrong here but I thought the EU insisted on six months. I am glad someone is nodding, so I am not going mad: the EU insists on six months. There might be a pragmatic solution. We are probably undergoing a hump in the process and things will smooth out, particularly by engaging more staff.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend mentioned that the performance of the contractor answering the telephone lines was unacceptable. Does the contract with Teleperformance have any penalties, so that there is a financial consequence to the company if standards are not maintained?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As always, my noble friend asks a very good question. I do not know the answer to it. I know that we have been engaging with the contractor and outlining that what is happening at the moment is utterly unacceptable, and I know that steps are being taken to rectify that.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in his opening remarks my noble friend spoke to Amendment 89, and I hope that it is in order to introduce a more consensual note to this debate by welcoming Amendment 89. The first subsection of the new clause states:

“The Vagrancy Act 1824 is repealed.”


This shows the value of your Lordships’ House. When the legislation came to this House, there was nothing in it at all about the Vagrancy Act. But an all-party campaign, led by the noble Lord, Lord Best, who had hoped to speak to this amendment, inserted an amendment that would have repealed the Vagrancy Act in its entirety. That went back to the other place and, following a very constructive meeting with the Minister, my noble friend Lady Williams, and Minister Eddie Hughes, a satisfactory compromise was reached that is set out in Motion J and government Amendment 89, which, as I said, begins:

“The Vagrancy Act 1824 is repealed.”


My noble friend explained that there may be sections of the Vagrancy Act that need to be kept and therefore that total repeal is subject to a review, with an undertaking that it will be repealed in its entirety, subject to that review, within 18 months. I am most grateful to my ministerial friends for their constructive approach and I wonder whether the Minister, when he winds up, can say when the review that he referred to will be completed, and when we can have the assurance that there is nothing in the Vagrancy Act that needs to be kept and that, within the total span of 18 months, it will be repealed in its entirety. On behalf of all those who supported the campaign led by the noble Lord, Lord Best, I say that we very much welcome the outcome of our discussions.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I echo the thoughts that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has just shared. I declare my interest as chair of the Manchester Homelessness Partnership board and as co-chair of the national police ethics committee, because I also wish to speak to the Motion regarding serious violence reduction orders.

I support the Vagrancy Act repeal, as I know my right reverend and most reverend friends on these Benches do, and have sought to see that included in previous Bills. I am grateful that it is now on track and I look forward to working with Ministers and others to ensure that we avoid any unintended consequences and do not simply recreate the old Act in more modern language.

On serious violence reduction orders, I am deeply concerned about knife crime. In fact, in Greater Manchester we are holding a summit on the afternoon of Friday of next week and I would be delighted if the noble Baroness the Minister could join us on that occasion, if her diary permits. As one of those who sponsored Amendments 114 to 116, I am grateful that we now have an expanded list of things that the review of the pilot must include and I am grateful for the assurances that we have heard today that the list is not exhaustive.

I still have concerns that these orders may prove unworkable, that they may put vulnerable women and girls at greater risk or that they may damage community relations with police through their disproportionate application. At worst, I think that all those things could happen, but for now I am willing to accept that the review is in good faith. Again, I look forward to seeing how the lessons learned from it will be taken fully on board and incorporated into any subsequent national rollout of SVROs.

Enforcement of Lockdown Regulations

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I was not there, I am afraid.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the ONS has recently published data that shows, after adjusting for age, that men and women of black ethnicity are four times as likely to die from Covid as people of white ethnicity. What steps are the Government taking to identify and then eliminate the causes of this very worrying disparity?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend asks a pertinent question—that there is a disparity is not disputed. I know that the Ethnicity Subgroup of SAGE has done some work on this, both the year before last and last year. Factors include people’s jobs, and therefore their exposure to risk; household circumstances, such as more people in the house interacting; and financial difficulty in isolating. Vaccine hesitancy is an undoubted factor. The Government are giving financial help with things such as Covid support payments, but I think there is more to be gleaned. On people’s responses to Covid, maybe there is something in the physiology or make-up of different types of people—such as the cytokine storms that we talk about and inflammatory responses—that make them susceptible to more serious illness. I think some of that is yet to be uncovered.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Agreement on these two steps—an amendment at Third Reading to repeal only rough sleeping legislation and an urgent review of the begging issues thereafter—may not be exactly what we originally hoped, but they would take us a long way to righting the long-standing wrong of the moribund, objectionable Vagrancy Act 1824. I await the Minister’s response with some trepidation, and I beg to move.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will add a very short footnote to the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and pay tribute to the way that he has spearheaded the campaign to repeal the Vagrancy Act. He has summarised the case for repeal succinctly. Nearly a year ago, on 25 February, the then Secretary of State said that the Act had been reviewed and, in his opinion, “should be repealed”. He said that it was

“an antiquated piece of legislation whose time has been and gone.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/2/21; col. 1138.]

Since then, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have consulted extensively with a range of stakeholders—the police, local government, housing charities and legal experts—confirming the view that the Act is indeed redundant and can safely be repealed, with other, more up-to-date pieces of legislation to deal with aggressive behaviour. That took us to Committee stage, when the Government applied the brakes.

To get an insight into the Government’s reservations —as the noble Lord has just said—we met Ministers on 2 December and asked for details of why they believed that sections of the Act were still needed. We needed that so we could amend, if necessary, our amendments for Report and avoid a Division. We were told we could have the necessary details. Here, I am afraid, the Department for Levelling Up, whose policy area this is, has let my noble friend the Minister down. Despite repeated reminders, as we have just heard, only on the last working day before today did we get the reply—far too late to table amendments, six weeks after the meeting and with arguments I found less than compelling. As we are trying to deliver what is stated government policy, I think the performance of that department fell below the standard that we were entitled to receive.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, has set out what seems to me a perfectly respectable compromise, which even at this late stage would enable us to withdraw the amendment, and I hope that the Minister can agree to it. If not, then with some regret—because we have been willing to compromise throughout—I will support the amendment and hope it goes to the other place, where we know it will have support not just from the former Secretary of State but from Conservative Members of Parliament in London, including the former leader of Westminster City Council. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which I have added my name. In view of the hour, I too will be brief, as the two noble Lords have already said it all. I thank the Minister for the time that she gave us both in meetings and in numerous emails. I genuinely believe that there is real commitment to undoing this blot on our societal conscience. Therefore, given the genuineness of that feeling, it is massively disappointing that it appears that the Government have decided not to seize the only opportunity that we can see in the legislative calendar to actually repeal this piece of legislation.

There is widespread support for repealing this Act. To do so would actually be popular and uncontroversial, unlike much of this Bill. It is unequivocally the right thing to do. The fact that in Scotland it has been repealed for years and that most police forces rarely, if ever, use the powers in the Act is surely evidence enough that, in reality, it is of little use in tackling the current issues of homelessness, where there are, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, a raft of alternative measures at the disposal of the police and local authorities. It will be a great disappointment for many if this can is to be kicked further down the road. That is why, if it comes to a vote, we will be supporting the noble Lord, Lord Best. To steal a slogan from somewhere else, why do not the Government “Just Do It”?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

14: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Serious Violence and the Housing Act 1996
The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 3 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, issue a code of practice under section 214A of the Housing Act 1996 on preventing serious violence to provide—(a) that the application of section 177 of the Housing Act 1996 is to be applied to those at risk of serious violence so as to ensure that it is not deemed reasonable for a person to continue to occupy accommodation if the provision of alternative accommodation would prevent or reduce the risk of serious violence against that person;(b) for the Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities to be updated to include a new chapter on the duties of local authorities under sections 7(3A) and 8(3A) of this Act, with particular reference to preventing and reducing serious violence and safeguarding young people at risk of serious violence; (c) that the police shall be responsible for timely collaboration with housing providers on the reduction of the risk of serious violence to individuals where the exercise of housing duties may reduce or prevent the risk of serious violence; and(d) guidance on the disclosure of information in accordance with regulations under section 9(2) of this Act by and to specified authorities which are housing authorities to prevent and reduce serious violence in a prescribed area, with particular reference to assisting the housing authority with the prevention and reduction of serious violence in the exercise of its duties under Part 7 of the Housing Act 1996.”

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 14 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds. This adds a new clause to the Bill after Clause 9—the clause dealing with the power to authorise collaboration to prevent and reduce serious violence. It is the same as Amendment 50, which we debated in Committee on 25 October. It links that objective of reducing serious violence specifically to the area of housing by giving priority to those who need to be rehoused to protect them, for example, from gang violence. Homelessness massively increases a young person’s risk of exploitation and abuse, and a safe and stable home is a key element in preventing and reducing youth violence.

The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy in 2018 identified homelessness as a risk factor in being a victim or perpetrator of violent crime. This has been confirmed by research by Crisis and Shelter. The amendment builds on the protection in the Domestic Abuse Act for victims of violence in the home, extending it to victims of violence outside the home that is every bit as dangerous. Whatever the theoretical protection offered to them by existing legislation and guidance may be, evidence on the ground shows these young people are not getting priority—a fact confirmed by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. The amendment does not ask for fresh primary legislation but requires current codes of practice and guidance to be updated and refocused, and for the police to collaborate and to ensure that relevant data is shared between authorities where people are at risk.

The Companion says:

“Arguments fully deployed … in Committee of the whole House … should not be repeated at length on report”.


I will therefore refer very briefly to what I said: that we are seeking to ensure that what the Government say is happening, and what should be happening, is actually happening on the ground. I also refer to what noble Baroness, Lady Blake, said when she gave specific examples with fatal consequences of a failure to rehouse a child out of area, and about how local authorities currently view their responsibilities in this area. The noble Baroness will deal with proposed new subsections (c) and (d) in the amendment.

The amendment was supported from the Cross Benches by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, by the Liberal Democrat Benches and by a former police commissioner on the Labour Benches. In her sympathetic response to that debate, my noble friend the Minister said:

“We will continue to work with the relevant sectors to ensure that the statutory guidance is clear on this point”—


the priority need for those at risk of violence—

“ahead of a public consultation following Royal Assent and prior to the serious violence duty provisions coming into effect”—[Official Report, 25/10/21; col. 572.]

I took comfort from that.

But the amendment goes a bit further than that and refers to the code of practice and guidance under the Housing Act 1996. On that, my noble friend said:

“We think that the current legislative framework and accompanying statutory homelessness code of guidance, combined with the statutory guidance on social housing allocations, strikes the right balance as it considers the vulnerability of the applicant on a case-by-case basis and is the … appropriate means of determining priority for accommodation secured by the local authority.”


My noble friend also referred to the code of practice covering Section 177 of the Housing Act, saying:

“I say to my noble friend at this point that the statutory homelessness code of guidance already provides such guidance for housing authorities when a person at risk of violence or the threat of violence approaches a local authority in housing need. The statutory guidance on social housing allocations also makes it clear that local housing authorities should consider giving preference to such persons.”—[Official Report, 25/10/21; cols. 574-75.]


But the view of the Committee was that this did not go far enough to deal with the often tragic cases that we referred to.

At 5.50 pm yesterday, my noble friend wrote to me about the amendment, and I am grateful for a thoughtful and reasoned response. At the end, she says, “I hope that, in the light of these commitments, you will not consider it necessary to return to this issue on Report”. But the amendment had already been listed for debate today yesterday morning, so she will understand that this hope was ambitious. One argument in her letter for resisting the amendment is a tribute to the ingenuity of the civil servant who drafted it, but it cut little ice with me. This was the suggestion that giving strengthened advice to social landlords about those suffering from serious violence, as proposed, and simply ensuring that what should happen does happen, would add £88 billion to the PSBR. I do not believe that the National Audit Office would reclassify housing association debt on the basis of my amendment.

My noble friend’s letter says that the Government do not think that there is a case for changing the legislation, and I agree; the amendment is about the guidance. Here I welcome what she has said to me— namely, that “officials will work with those in Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and representatives from the housing sector to strengthen the statutory guidance for the serious violence duty”.

In conclusion, can I press my noble friend to give a little more detail of what she has in mind? Will this new guidance complement, and so update, the homelessness code of guidance and ensure that all agencies are adequately protecting those at risk from serious violence, as in the amendment, without requiring them to gather extensive evidence and demonstrate unique vulnerability, often without a clear idea of what it is that they are being asked to demonstrate? In other words, will it make the process more like that for those who are threatened by domestic abuse, as in proposed new paragraphs (a) and (b)? These ensure that all local authorities would be required to consider the needs of individuals at risk of homelessness due to serious violence. At the moment, this is covered by only one paragraph in the code of guidance, compared with a whole chapter for those at risk of domestic violence. I hope that she is now able to go a little further than she was able to go in her letter and flesh out what she has in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank, first, the co-sponsor of the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, for continuing the duet that we launched in Committee. I am grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for his continued support. I should also mention that I am grateful to Stella Creasy and her office for the briefing that she has been able to give us in connection with the amendment.

There was a lot in my noble friend’s reply and I am very grateful for what she said. I will pick out just three things. She said that the additional guidance under this legislation will place a statutory obligation on local authorities, which will complement existing guidance. I set great store by what she said on that. She also said that the draft guidance that has already been published will be developed further and strengthened in the light of debates in both Houses. She also said, crucially, that there will be an extra chapter to the homelessness guide—again, something that I asked for.

In the words of “Oklahoma”, I think she has gone about as far as she can go. Against the background of the assurances that she has been able to give, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 14 withdrawn.