Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Anna Turley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I was just about to point out to the House, and in particular to Government Members, that a fairly easy way of finding out what this afternoon’s debate is about is to actually read the title. It is about homelessness services and the unintended consequences, or maybe intended consequences, of the cap on housing benefit. It is about the potentially catastrophic outcome of these changes for people in specialist housing, homelessness arrangements or specialist schemes for dependent drinkers, for example—the catastrophic outcome for their rents, their circumstances and, indeed, the organisations that seek to house and provide services for them. That is what this afternoon’s debate is about and we need to concentrate on that.

I must say that I was remarkably disappointed by the fact-free bluster that we heard from the Minister. I suppose one can only forgive him that, because there was never any impact assessment of these changes. Therefore, if he has not come here today armed with an impact assessment, he presumably does not really have any facts to defend his side of the argument in the first place. I want to provide a little impact assessment of my own. I want to base it on an organisation that is based in my constituency, but which nevertheless provides services for homeless people, people with severe and enduring mental health problems and people with alcohol or substance misuse problems, as well as specialist services for ex-offenders, in Southampton and around.

That organisation is called the Society of St James, and—[Interruption.] Government Members who are playing with their phones might put them to better use by looking up that organisation’s website, because if there is any dispute in this debate about who cares, then the Society of St James certainly does care. It cares deeply about all the people it is trying to house and help, and it assists by housing or helping some 2,500 people across Hampshire.

The Society of St James has looked at the impact of the changes on its various housing schemes across south Hampshire and calculates that the average rent reduction will be 40% across the 300-odd people who are housed at any one time, although that does not include the wider group of people it helps with various schemes, in addition to those it houses. The Society of St James calculates a sum of £1.03 million per annum, which means, quite simply and straightforwardly, that all those schemes are at risk over the next period, because it will not be able to fund them properly.

It has been said that the discretionary housing payment scheme might help in the longer term, but as its name suggests, it is discretionary. It covers temporary situations and cannot give the long-term revenue security that these organisations need to plan their future housing needs.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the discretionary housing fund is already barely covering the number of people applying for it, given the impact of the bedroom tax? What we are seeing is just another attempt to stretch it further, when it is already not going far enough.

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed, and my hon. Friend makes an important point. I was perhaps being a little kind to the discretionary housing fund, in that so many things are being poured into it that the chances of it having a material impact in this field, even on a limited basis, look to be fairly low.

The other question is what happens with new schemes that develop in future. The Society of St James has recently received substantial capital donations to develop new properties to extend its services, but there is no chance that those sorts of schemes can now go ahead, because there is no prospect of them being funded properly once they have been built. Indeed, it would be deeply irresponsible.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe).

These measures are about striking a fair deal: a fair deal for those in accommodation, a fair deal for those who provide accommodation and a fair deal for the taxpayer. There needs to be a balance between the rent increases in the social housing sector and those in the private rented sector. Over the past 10 years, there has been a 60% increase in the social housing sector and a 23% increase in the private rented sector. I therefore consider that the 1% reduction in housing benefit is a fair measure. It is fair to the taxpayer and to tenants, but it is also a fair deal for the housing associations, and one that I believe they can manage.

This is, of course, all about balancing the books, which UK Governments have done in only 28 of the last 34 years. That has led to a cumulative debt of £1.6 trillion. The present Government have reduced the deficit from £150 billion to £75 billion, but there is much more to do. In the last eight months, since I have been in the House, the Opposition have opposed every single cut. So how would they balance the books? Would they cut funds for healthcare, the armed forces, welfare or pensions? I invite them to make constructive suggestions.

Housing associations have a responsibility to use taxpayers’ money wisely. The top 100 housing associations employ, collectively, 91,000 people, and the number has been growing. Is a 1% reduction per annum feasible in an organisation with 1,000 employees? Yes, I believe it is. It is managed on a regular basis in the private sector.

Not only are these changes fair, but they will result in huge savings. They will save £255 million by the end of this Parliament, and £1.1 billion a year will be saved by future Parliaments. Of course, consolidation and greater efficiency may be needed.

[Anna Turley]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the impact on supported housing will fly in the face of any notion of economic credibility? When accommodation of that kind is closed, there will be knock-on effects: people will resort to NHS care or more costly residential care, and the impact on the taxpayer will be higher. This is not good economic policy.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There is no doubt that we need to house vulnerable people in supported and specialist accommodation, and that our homes, hostels, refuges and sheltered housing need such support. They constitute a much more labour-intensive part of the market, involving personal care, supervision and maintenance.

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[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Let us all ready ourselves for some “shroud waving”. I rise to speak as perhaps the only Member here today—and perhaps the only Member in the whole House of Commons—who has run one of these precious services. Let me tell you, it has been so frustrating today to listen to the lack of understanding of the practicalities and the reality of how these services actually work. It has been mind-boggling, so I apologise if any of my comments come out as aggression.

There are many women, and even more children, who have lived in a refuge who stick in my head, but none more so than Amirah. You learn to live with it, but she was the only woman who brought tears to my eyes. Amirah, who was pregnant, was found on the side of the road after she had drunk bleach in an attempt to end her life. She had been kept chained to a table and fed scraps like an abused animal by her perpetrator. In the refuge, we had to teach her to eat again, with small portions. It was slow progress. When her beautiful daughter was born, it was a refuge worker who held her hand while she was in labour and a refuge manager who picked her up from the hospital and took her back home. The women in the refuge became her family. Refuges are amazing.

I think back to the Conservative Members I walked round the women’s refuges where I worked and where Amirah lived. I remember drinking tea with the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and the then Minister Francis Maude in the playroom of one of our refuges. That playroom, in which the Minister so delighted in posing for his photo opportunity, will not be there if these changes come to pass. The likelihood is that they would not have had a refuge to visit at all if those measures had been in place then.

They were not our most eminent guests, however. That accolade goes to the Home Secretary, who was a keen visitor to my domestic violence services. If the Government’s plans to reduce housing benefit do not exempt this group, Ministers will be letting the Home Secretary down in a big way. In every safety net that she tries to put in place, these proposals without exemptions will snip a hole that women and children will fall through. Ministers here today should make no mistake that when people slip through these safety nets, no amount of hard work or personal responsibility will help them. They will face danger, abuse and, in too many cases, death.

The coalition Government and some Departments in this Government have shown their commitment to these families. The Home Office, while by no means perfect, has tried to invest pots of money and to create schemes for improved access to services. It has taken a good hard look at laws that will help these victims. There is a lot more to do, but it is not that the Home Office is not trying. I believe that its Ministers care, but they are being woefully let down by other Government Departments, which fail to recognise the Home Office’s role in the fight to end domestic abuse. There is no greater offender than the Department for Communities and Local Government, whose brutal cuts to local authorities have already closed 34 specialist women’s refuges since 2010. Just before the election last year, facing “shroud waving” from Women’s Aid, the Department suddenly had an epiphany and released a fund to stimulate increases in the number of refuge bed spaces.

[Anna Turley]

Does my hon. Friend agree that these constant references to “shroud waving” are an insult to those refuges and housing associations that are genuinely concerned that they are going to have to close accommodation for the most vulnerable people? For example, Thirteen, which does great work in the Tees valley with veterans, ex-offenders, women fleeing domestic violence and people recovering from addictions, is going to have to close supported accommodation. If the Conservatives are so genuinely bothered about scaremongering and shroud waving, they could put an end to it by doing something about this policy today.

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more. The simple thing to do is to exempt this category. I think we all know that the Government are properly going to do that. We have waved our shrouds and, do you know what, in every single case, they listened. So stop me having to talk about this! Stop making me a shroud waver! Just do it!

Anyway, the 10 million quid over 12 months that the Government gave just before the election was intended to create new beds, and I have heard Ministers stand at that Dispatch Box and talk about the number of extra bed spaces that they have created. However, I know that every single bid that was put in for that fund will have made its calculation based on the existing rates of housing benefit. I also know that every bid, as part of its sustainability plan beyond the 12 months, will have contained calculations based on the existing rates of housing benefit. Without the housing benefit-plus settlement, the £10 million offered would have been completely meaningless. I know that because I helped to write three of the successful bids.

I have run refuges that survived solely on housing benefit contributions, without any recourse to the now non-existent Supporting People funds. At my charity, when times were tough and our refuge funding was cut in half, we sucked it up, made tough decisions and found new ways and new funds. We worked on different models to bring in support staff to our refuges. None of that would have been possible without the existing system of housing benefit. We got all those Tories coming to see us because we had done such a great job of cutting our cloth to suit our needs, but we were only able do it because of housing benefit. Day one of this change would have closed at least 20 of our bed spaces. That would have resulted in turning away more than a hundred women and at least as many vulnerable children every year.

This week, I spoke in the debate on childcare and begged once again for the responsible Minister to consider exempting victims of domestic violence from the rules on the 16-hour threshold for increased childcare. He stopped me in my tracks and made that commitment. I am begging the Ministers here today to do what he did, and what the Home Secretary is trying to do, to protect victims of domestic violence and their children. The Minister might think that this is hyperbole, but I shall say it anyway: without the exemption, what he is proposing will, for many, be a death penalty. Please don’t do it.