Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Anna Turley and Jess Phillips

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

I do.

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

Q 153 I would like to go back to the points about the financial robustness of housing associations and surpluses and so on. David, could you tell us a bit more about the geographical disparity in that? It is my understanding that, particularly in terms of assets, housing associations in London will be substantially better off than housing associations in, say, Teesside in my area. Could you say something more about what that geographical picture looks like, and the different geographical implications of this policy?

David Orr: Yes, of course, you are quite right that the basic financial strength of organisations varies hugely. If they are in an area where assets are very high value, their business has a greater degree of financial robustness underpinning it than an organisation in an area where the asset value is very low. It is more possible in some parts of the country to trade assets, and therefore maintain financial stability, than it is in others.

The impact goes back to one of the things I was saying earlier. This is a measure that sounds simple, single and straightforward, but it has a profoundly different impact for organisations in different parts of the country. In my introductory remarks I said that for some organisations, not because they are inefficient but because of accidents of history and geography, this decision could mean that they will collapse.

Having an efficiency challenge is one thing, but imposing a new measure that has the direct effect of making it impossible for good, well-run, well-managed, efficient organisations to survive is not helpful.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Jess Phillips

Thursday 10th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

Q 11 Apologies for being a bit late; I was stuck in the Chamber.

My questions have been largely answered, but I have some real concerns about the advice sections you are talking about. In my experiences of women and domestic violence, their husbands leave and they are left with the mortgage of a property. They have never worked and would find it difficult to get into work.

I am concerned about the advice, but I am also concerned about what detail is not in the Bill. I am confused. It is confusing enough, let alone if you are a vulnerable person in a difficult situation. I wonder if you have some concerns about the detail and whether you will need more detail before you can give firm conclusions about whether this is going to be terrible for the claimants.

Paul Broadhead: Yes, the detail will tell us the exact process—how this will work, who will provide information and all that final detail. That is not here at the moment. We are talking at a bit of a conceptual level, but I think we are generally supportive. Both parties are supportive of moving this to a loan in most cases, but we have concerns about the mechanism for delivering that advice and ensuring that there are not unintended consequences. There is a lot still to be worked out in the secondary legislation.

Paul Smee: We have offered to get down and work closely with DWP Ministers on the detail. We have a lot of experience within the lending community of how to deal with people who are in arrears and how to handle them sympathetically. We will be very keen to work with officials to come up with detailed proposals that work for the industry and for the claimants.

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

Q 12 Building on that point about the lack of detail in the Bill, one of the biggest concerns you have raised is the huge number of existing claimants, but there is no detail on how they will be dealt with. What are your thoughts on how they should be dealt with? How serious is it that the detail is not there?

Paul Broadhead: Many, in fact more than half, of the existing claimants are in receipt of pension credit, so we are talking about a certain type of individual and we need to ensure that the advice is right. Many of these people have been long-term claimants, so we need fully to understand that change. The timetable for delivery is challenging. There could be an argument—I am not saying there is, because it depends on the Government’s delivery plans—for saying, “Okay, on 1 April 2018, this applies to new claimants,” and we then make sure that we take our time to ensure that everyone understands the effect of the change on their circumstances. Perhaps we could put that back 12 months or so for existing claimants, but it needs to be considered very carefully so that we do not end up with unintended consequences. We have talked about debt—whether it is debt or not and whether it is going to be repaid—and many of these people will not like the thought of debt and might put themselves in a more difficult position than is needed.

Paul Smee: I hope that the Government can come to an early conclusion about the channel through which the advice will be given, because we would want to work with those who are giving the advice in order to understand their position.