Safe and Sanctuary Rooms (Exemption from Under-Occupancy Penalty)

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to exempt social housing tenants occupying properties with safe and sanctuary rooms from the Housing Benefit and Universal Credit (Size Criteria) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2013; and for connected purposes.

The bedroom tax, spare room subsidy—call it what you will—has had a significant number of serious and unexpected consequences. The Bill would remove the penalty placed on a victim of domestic violence who has in their property a safe or sanctuary room, or whose property has been adapted to make it secure.

One in four women will have been a victim of domestic abuse. It accounts for 17% of all crime, and two women a week are killed by their partner or a former partner. Safe rooms or safe houses can mean the difference between life and death, yet under current legislation, many women, and indeed some men, cannot afford to remain in the home because it is viewed as having a spare room. If they cannot pay their rent, they will be evicted, and so these victims of abuse not only lose their home, with a safe space within it, but become more vulnerable to further abuse. We are not just talking about a room, but about a place of safety for victims and their children.

In Plymouth alone in 2012-13, there were 6,092 abuse incidents; in Cornwall, there were 7,451—and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Ninety per cent. of the victims were female and 90% of the perpetrators were male. The reduction in support for refuges across the country as Government cuts start to bite is further adding to the problem. Without access to a safe room, there may well be nowhere else for the victims to go. Those victims are deemed to be at high risk, for whom the option of a sanctuary scheme can be a lifesaver, quite literally.

The numbers involved are small and so the spending commitment, when set against the cost of hospitalisation, police time and the need to take children into care, has a cost benefit attached to it. In introducing the Bill, I have consulted social housing providers and support groups such as Women’s Aid.

What are we actually talking about? We are talking about properties, which may have a room with reinforced doors, an alarm installed and other safety equipment. Or we could be talking about a situation whereby the property has been upgraded to ensure that the whole site is secure, but that property has an extra bedroom, which causes it to fall foul of current legislation. The family may well have moved into the house many years previously, perhaps with children of different sexes and therefore needing three bedrooms. The scenario is that the relationship degenerates into one where one partner is abusive and violent, and the house is made safe to protect the victims, but when one of the children leaves, the remaining partner—the victim—is technically under-occupying.

Moving that person and her family into another property will, of course, require a new and smaller property to be upgraded to keep her safe. The costs involved here would be significant. Making a new property safe could involve, as I have already suggested, windows being laminated and reinforced, external doors being strengthened, fire retardant letter boxes, smoke detectors, fire alarms, window alarms and so on. While all those changes come at a considerable cost to the taxpayer, that still does not take account of the distress caused to the family and children involved. They live in a home where violence is an issue and periods of calm are needed. Expecting them to move out, possibly find a new school and build new friendships is hugely destabilising. There is therefore a further human cost to the decision to include sanctuary rooms and properties in the legislation. Indeed, Plymouth city council and Cornwall council have tabled motions with cross-party support that seek to press the Government to consider the exemption. I congratulate Councillors Nicky Williams and Hanna Toms on making such a strong case that councillors from all parties, including Government parties, have given them their support.

I should like to provide a case study to support the argument for changing the legislation. Julia is a survivor of domestic violence who suffered rape, physical assault and harassment at the hands of her partner. Julia and her 10-year-old son live in a three-bedroom house that has been specifically adapted to enable them to live there safely in the light of the risk posed by her abuser. A sanctuary system has been installed in their home, which contains all the things that I have described: reinforced doors and windows and alarms, as well as a room to which Julia can go for safety, with a direct hotline to her local police station. Those measures are necessary to enable Julia and her son to live safely in their home. Under the bedroom tax rules, Julia is only entitled to receive housing benefit for a two-bedroom house. She either has to pay the extra rent and go without essentials, or move to a smaller property. If she cannot pay the extra rent she faces eviction, and with very few two-bedroom council houses available, and none with the safety features that she needs, she faces a grave risk from her abuser, who has threatened to kill them both.

We have to protect women such as Julia. The cost of exempting safe rooms in Plymouth is minimal. Only 39 such rooms have been installed in Plymouth in the past three years, and of the new homes built in the city by Plymouth Community Homes, 13 have full sanctuary rooms available. I applaud Plymouth, Cornwall and indeed Swindon councils for taking a stand on this issue, as they have agreed to use discretionary housing payments to support women living in sanctuary scheme properties, but the money that they have is finite.

Why should a victim of violence be treated differently in Plymouth, Peterborough, Poole or Preston? What they face at present is a postcode lottery, which could mean the difference between life and death. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions, in its report, “Support for housing costs in the reformed welfare system”, made it clear that the criteria applied by local authorities to discretionary housing payments varied enormously. It confirmed that

“there was too much variation in decision-making”.

The Women’s Aid Federation has carried out a detailed study and has identified in England about 1,300 households in 2012-13 which were part of a sanctuary scheme. For each of those households to face a different decision-making scheme depending on their local authority is nonsense. In the 80 authorities surveyed, only about 280 properties in total were affected by the bedroom tax, so the Minister can see that the numbers are very small. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), will say that discretionary housing payments are designed to protect these women—and they are mainly, but not solely, women—but this is a time-limited benefit, and the cost of the assessments and delivery of this support would, I suspect, be easily offset by making the premises exempt in the first place.

The Opposition want to see the abolition of this evil piece of legislation. I am sure the Minister will disagree, but I hope that she will at least consider the addition of this small exemption that will better protect victims of abuse. I remember highlighting in Prime Minister’s questions, using a local example, the application of the bedroom tax to families with children serving in the military. The Prime Minister at the time said that he did not think that that was a problem, but an exemption was subsequently introduced. I do not want to have to come back to the House after a death has occurred because a woman had to leave her house, which had a safe space, because she could not afford to remain there.

We have an opportunity to put a safety net in place that will have a positive impact in cost terms but, more importantly, could ensure that a victim remains safe. I urge the House to support the measure.