Rough Sleeping

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Thank you for your chairing the debate, Sir Christopher, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for securing it.

Homelessness is at a record high—we have heard the tragic stories from Members about people across their constituencies who are sleeping rough every night—and it is up 74% since 2010, which is a shameful legacy of the Tories. Like much of the south-east, my constituency is fighting a losing battle, with capped housing allowance rates, ever-rising rents and a shortage of supported housing and single-person affordable housing.

I recently met with Two Saints, a brilliant homeless charity in my constituency that does valuable work on temporary and supported accommodation for adults, young people and people with mental health problems. That visit showed me some ideas for action we could take to meaningfully reduce rough sleeping. Long-term funding is needed urgently to stem the reduction in public funds to address homelessness. For example, extending the rough sleeping initiative funding beyond the spring would provide more money for local authorities to make further strategic plans and tailor rough sleeping services. That would prevent the number of rough sleepers from spiralling out of control.

We also need to tackle the divergence in policy by area caused by the devolution of housing policy; for example, Hampshire county council intends to remove non-statutory homeless support by March 2026, which will leave other councils picking up those services. That will mean roughly £2 million a year being removed from homeless services, and if others do not have the capacity to fill the funding gap, over a thousand people across Hampshire will lose valuable support and be back on the streets. That is just a snapshot of the chaotic postcode lottery in support caused by the confusing mix of levels of government in Britain. We must address that by joining the dots on the national level with a long-term, strategic, cross-departmental approach to tackling rough sleeping and homelessness. We could create a single, ringfenced homelessness support fund, designed to adapt flexibly to local and individual needs.

I really am pleased to be in a Government committed to housing veterans, children leaving care and those fleeing domestic violence. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), I am pleased with the Government’s Renters’ Rights Bill and Employment Rights Bill, and I am also pleased that this Government are focusing on building more houses of all types and more social housing. But as part of that, we must have a proper focus on supported housing and single-person housing. Some 30% of households in Britain are now single person, but our home building currently does not reflect that. That allows for a rise in family homes being made into houses in multiple occupation. We must build the right types of accommodation in the right places. Alongside that, we can unlock access to the private rental sector by immediately unfreezing and restoring local housing allowance to cover the 30th percentile of market rents.

Ending homelessness makes sense morally and financially, but we must be bold and take this opportunity to provide safe and suitable housing alongside diverse support services that wrap around the most vulnerable constituents.

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[Rushanara Ali]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I absolutely agree with him. That is the spirit in which we want to work and learn from the models that have been effective. Let us not forget that when we look at the journeys of people who have ended up as rough sleepers or facing homelessness, they have been part of our communities. They have often worked in public services. I met a nurse who, after a series of shocks in her life, ended up sleeping rough. People can experience family breakdowns that lead to them ending up sleeping rough. We must ensure that services are focused on the individual needing that support and work around that. I know there are many great examples, including, of course, from the previous Labour Government, as was mentioned earlier, with the work that was done and the ambitious target that was set and achieved. We also need to learn from the work that was done during the pandemic and build on what worked. I am very pragmatic about how we approach this agenda because we are determined to take action, support people and tackle this challenge.

The example of the changing futures programme was striking because of exactly those points about multi-agency working, joining up, and focusing on the individual to give them confidence and give them that back-up by having people assigned to provide mentoring, support, coaching and the rest of it. I know that there are many great examples, including, of course, in our own respective constituencies, and I see, week in and week out, the heroic work that they are doing. It is vital that we continue to help and support them.

More widely, we are taking action to tackle the root causes of homelessness. We are delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation—recognising that the supply of housing is critical—with our commitment to building 1.5 million homes over the next five years. As has already been mentioned, which I am grateful for, we are also committed to abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions, preventing private renters from being exploited and discriminated against, and empowering people to challenge unreasonable increases.

On funding, £450 million of third-round funding has been made available for local authority housing funds to create 2,000 affordable homes for some of the most vulnerable families in society. That will support local authorities to obtain better quality temporary accommodation for homeless families, and will provide safe and suitable housing for those on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme who have fled persecution.

I also wanted to point to a temporary accommodation project that I visited called the Peony Project, which is run by Depaul UK, a charity that works with adult women who are homeless. It was really impressive and inspiring to see the work that it is doing with vulnerable women. I know that there are many other powerful examples; I see that with the work that is being done by organisations in London and other parts of the country to support women. Projects such as those are critical in supporting vulnerable women, who face particular challenges as rough sleepers.

[Amanda Martin]

I speak as a former teacher: will the Minister ensure that, during those discussions and consultations, youth provision and the housing of youth is also taken into account?

[Rushanara Ali]

Absolutely. I hope very much that, as part of the strategy that we develop, we can bring in the different perspectives. And, of course, I mentioned from the outset the consequences on children and young people, children in care and accommodation for care leavers. This is a big agenda and we need to make sure that these elements are built in. I am delighted to see the level of enthusiasm among colleagues, with officials, as well as Government Ministers, including in the Department for Education, wanting to really focus on this agenda as part of the strategy.

A number of other points were made by colleagues in their powerful speeches, and I want to focus on those. I have already mentioned some of the interventions already announced by the Government on 11 September, through the Renters’ Rights Bill. As I mentioned, we will deliver on our commitment to ensuring that we transform the experience of private renters and provide them with better support and protection. The Government are clear that we also need to bring homes to a decent standard, and have extended Awaab’s law to achieve that. We know of many examples of people in poor quality accommodation, and there needs to be a step change in improving the quality of housing. The Government are also clear that discriminatory treatment on the part of anyone carrying out right-to-rent checks is unlawful. The Home Office has published codes of practice on what landlords are expected to do and how to avoid discrimination.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall raised important issues related to the asylum system. We have inherited a total failure across the asylum system from the previous Government. As the Home Secretary told the House on Monday, that included £700 million spent on a scheme that sent only four people to Rwanda voluntarily. We are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly.

We recognise the potential challenges that individuals granted asylum may face when they need to transfer to accommodation in mainstream wider society. We have to act to ensure that there is a smooth transition. I am grateful for the points my hon. Friend and others have made. I know local authorities and others in the sector have raised the notice period as a challenge in supporting people to move, once their status has been determined, to avoid homelessness.

Those are the points we need to take into account, working across government, to look at how best to address them, ensuring we do all we can to avoid people leaving the asylum system into homelessness. I have already started discussions with colleagues in the Home Office and will continue to do that.

City and Town Centres: Regeneration

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this debate and raising compulsory purchase orders and auctions, which I know will be welcome in my city.

Portsmouth is a proud city of heritage, the Royal Navy and development, but so much of that is in the south. In my constituency of Portsmouth North, there are forgotten high streets—Cosham, North End and the London Road that runs through the centre, none of which have received high street funding and all of which are in desperate need of regeneration. My constituents write to me to complain of high streets where bookies, vape shops and massage parlours proliferate, where pubs are boarded up, and where there are no quality businesses or family-friendly spaces.

What do we need to do? We need solutions. We need a holistic, creative approach to place making and regeneration that includes the voices of the community and develops the public realm into useful and beautiful spaces. We should not shy away from expecting where we live to benefit our lives and wellbeing. Building up capacity in local authority planning is crucial.

Where excessive retail or office space leads to vacant shops, that creates a feeling of decline. With cross-Government co-operation and support for local authorities, we could repurpose those buildings, providing the new primary—[Interruption.]

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes.

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[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers, and to represent the Liberal Democrats for the first time as a Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson. The regeneration of towns and cities is an intensely local matter, and it must be approached from a local perspective. Telling people what will fix their towns is the best way to fail. Cities and towns evolved over many decades, and the vestiges of every generation serve as a reminder of what once was, and local authorities need to balance the need to retain the heritage of a place with having an eye to the future.

Toxic nostalgia about how places were when we were young can be a dangerous inhibitor to regeneration. “When we were young” is subjective. For example, the department stores that sorted out our parents’ wedding lists, immortalised by Mrs Slocombe and Captain Peacock, belied the slum conditions and heavy pollution in the cities right outside those stores, and the Woolworths and Blockbuster Videos on the high streets of my childhood are remembered much more fondly than the massive dole queues on those very same high streets. We also forget how the infamous pick ’n’ mix counter destroyed so many independent sweet shops.

City centres have always changed over time, and if we want to avoid another decade of decline after the shocks of Brexit and covid, we need the Government to invest, and to hand the resources and responsibilities to councils and communities. We also need to make sure, as previously mentioned, that our towns and cities give visitors an experience. Shopping will still be part of that, but rarely do people go to the city for just shopping; it is now for eating, playing, meeting, working or living, and we need to make sure that high streets are not just about retail any more.

The Government need to help businesses become more efficient and make the most of technology, but also to provide people with the skills to adapt to their second or third careers. That could be through better use of the apprenticeship levy and supporting both further education colleges and specialist skills providers in offering more bespoke and more agile courses, particularly for people for whom traditional education has failed. One example is Mike Taylor Education in my constituency, which offers high-quality barbering courses from a high street location and supports other thriving businesses with their future workforce.

Liberal Democrats want to see the various pots of money, such as the future high streets fund and the towns fund rolled into a single pot, like with the shared prosperity fund, and we want to avoid the cliff edge that we are expecting in March 2025, so that councils know where they stand for at least another year while a longer term funding cycle is developed. We must learn lessons from the past: under a previous Conservative Administration, Bournemouth’s council approved an out-of-town shopping centre, which led to a mass exodus of most of the corporates from the town centre.

[Amanda Martin]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we need some focused solutions? She has talked about holistic approaches, about the changes in our high streets and about how we need them for communities. That could be for new GP surgeries, for nurseries—whether private or local authority—for pop-up markets, which we have heard about, for art studios, or for facilities that we need, such as baby changing and public toilets. Does the hon. Lady agree that, in order to do that, we need to reform business rates and ensure our local authorities’ planning departments have the capacity to look at those changes? Does she agree that we need cross-Government working, including with the Home Office to make our streets safe, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to support local authorities and update planning systems—

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

Order. I think you are trying to have the 30 seconds you lost. Interventions should be much shorter.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is right. We have engaged constructively and intensively with tenant representative groups and with landlord bodies. Most of them will say that what he describes is part of the problem, because they represent the better end of the market, and that good landlords welcome the new system because it forcefully targets the unscrupulous landlords, mainly at the bottom end of the market, who bring the whole sector into disrepute. That is one reason why the characterisation of this Bill as overly pro-tenant and harmful to, and unwelcomed by, landlords is misplaced. Good landlords should welcome this legislation.

I welcome the support expressed on both sides of the House for the provisions that will see a decent homes standard applied to the private rented sector and Awaab’s law extended to it. It is important that we get the detail right, and I assure the House that we intend to consult on the content of the decent homes standard for both social and privately rented homes, and on how Awaab’s law will apply to the latter, given the obvious differences between the private and social rented sectors.

I want to respond briefly to a question posed by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Mr Amos). I thank him for his kind remarks about me in his speech. The approach we are taking in this Bill to applying and enforcing the decent homes standard to the private rented sector is not, in our view, suitable for the unique and distinct nature of Ministry of Defence accommodation, but I hope he will welcome the fact that the MOD is reviewing its target standards so that we can drive up the quality of that accommodation separately from the Bill.

A large number of hon. Members raised concerns about affordability, and several argued forcefully for rent controls to be incorporated in the Bill. While we recognise the risks posed to tenants by extortionate within-tenancy rent rises, we remain opposed to the introduction of rent controls. We believe they could make life more difficult for private renters, both in incentivising landlords to increase rents routinely up to a cap where they might otherwise not have done, and in pushing many landlords out of the market, thereby making it even harder for renters to find a home they can afford. However, we are introducing a range of measures in the early part of the Bill that will empower renters to challenge unreasonable rent increases and prevent rent hikes from being used as a form of back-door eviction.

Measures in the Bill will prevent unscrupulous landlords from using rent increases in this fashion. All rent increases from private landlords will take place via the existing section 13 process, so the tenant can challenge them if necessary. That will protect landlords’ rights to achieve market rent while preventing abuse. We will also give tenants longer to prepare for rent increases, and allow only one rent increase per year. For too long—this is reflected in the low numbers of tenants going to tribunal —tenants have feared challenging a rent increase at the first-tier tribunal. We will end this situation by ensuring, by contrast to the previous Government’s legislation, that a tenant will not pay more than the landlord asked for in circumstances where a tribunal might determine otherwise.

We are going further: we will end the practice of backdating rent increases, to stop tenants being thrust into debt if they take a case to tribunal. That would have acted as a powerful disincentive for tenants to take such cases to tribunal. Let me be clear: we do not want the tribunal overwhelmed, but we want more tenants to take a challenge against unreasonable rent increases to the tribunal. The tribunal will play an important role in looking at what a reasonable market rent is in their area, and assessing whether a particular rent increase is reasonable. To protect the most vulnerable residents, in cases of undue hardship, the tribunal will be able to delay the start of the rent increase for tenants caught in those particular circumstances.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister very much for his brilliant synopsis of what has happened today. How will tenants and landlords be able to put their cases to the ombudsman without having to go through the courts? How will that give tenants more reassurance?

[Matthew Pennycook]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I am about to come to the ombudsman, but I would like to make a point about affordability. Concern was expressed by several hon. Members about rent in advance. I would like to assure the House that we have long recognised that demands for extortionate rent in advance put financial strain on tenants and can exclude certain groups from renting all together. We think that the Bill as it stands protects renters against requests for large amounts of advanced rent, but I will happily continue to engage with individuals and organisations who have concerns that it does not, and I am entirely open to keeping that under review as the Bill progresses.

My hon. Friend mentioned the ombudsman. The database is also a feature of the Bill, and both are integral to the functioning of the new system. We want the database and the ombudsman to be operational as soon as possible and we think they could be transformative—particularly the database, for the information it can give tenants about landlords’ previous behaviour. All that detail is to come in secondary legislation, and I look forward to engagement from hon. Friends and colleagues across the House about how we should implement both the database and the ombudsman.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), Chair-elect of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee—I say that carefully as she does not have a Committee yet—asked specifically which organisation will deliver the new PRS ombudsman service. No final decision on a provider has been made, but the Government remain of the view that the housing ombudsman is currently best placed to take on the role, given that it would allow us to move toward a streamlined cross-tenure redress service.

A number of hon. Members raised specific issues relating to the impact of the new tenancy system on the student rental market. The provisions that we ultimately alighted upon enable students to benefit from the new system while protecting the supply of student accommodation. However, this is an area where the judgments are finely balanced. I have heard various concerns, and I look forward to future discussions as the Bill progresses.

Lastly, a large number of hon. Members rightly raised concerns about the ability of local authorities to enforce against landlords and letting agents who flout the new rules. The enforcement of all the measures in the Bill will not begin immediately, but I recognise the resourcing challenges that many local authorities face and the impact that they could have on effective enforcement. We think that these are offset to an extent by the ringfenced civil penalties that councils can levy when landlords do not comply with the new rules, but we accept that those alone will not be sufficient, so in accordance with the new burdens doctrine, we will ensure that additional burdens on local authorities resulting from our reforms are fully funded.

It is now five and a half years since England’s 11 million private renters were first promised the biggest overhaul of the sector for a generation and the abolition of section 21 evictions. Those 11 million private renters were badly let down by the previous Conservative Government, who decided under pressure from their Back Benchers to weaken and delay the introduction of their own legislation before abandoning it all together. They are being badly let down today by the official Opposition, who, in arguing for yet more delay, would see thousands more renters unnecessarily put at risk of homelessness because of an unfair eviction, and would prolong the uncertainty that responsible landlords across the country have experienced in recent years. We will not allow that to happen.

Today, we have the opportunity to progress legislation that will overhaul the private rented sector and level decisively the playing field between landlord and tenant. Our Bill will empower renters by providing them with greater security, rights and protections so that they can stay in their homes for longer, build lives in their communities and avoid the risk of homelessness. Everyone deserves a decent, safe, secure and affordable home in which to live. With a view to taking an important step towards making that a reality, I commend this Bill to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.