Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) Regulations 2021

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, thank you, it does not. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, said in March 2020 that

“no one should lose their home as a result of the coronavirus epidemic.”

That sounds like a promise, which the Government are breaking by cutting the rent arrears minimum to six months—only half the period for which the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been raging. I will also quote Shelter chief executive Polly Neate on this statutory instrument, which she described as

“the minimum required to keep … people safe in their homes”,

as the very useful briefing from Generation Rent on this SI notes. Eviction notices can still be served and possession notices are being granted, while the Government are asking people not to leave their homes—and all of this runs only until 21 February. To complete my trio of quotes, I will go to the Green Member of the London Assembly, Siân Berry: “Everyone has the right to a home.”

The Government doing the minimum here is really not enough. In Scotland and Wales more is being done. Both nations have loan schemes. Wales has a five-year loan with an APR of 1%, while in Scotland the loans are interest free, and there is also an increase in direct support to tenants. That is better than in England, although of course the problem with loans is that they still have to be paid back. For many households who were living permanently on the edge, even pre-Covid, in a society with a minimum wage well below the real living wage, and the horrendous insecurity of zero-hours contracts, it is hardly any relief from the massive pressure of poverty and inequality under which so many live to say, “Here, have a loan”. Clearly, what is needed are grants—support for the poorest, who have been utterly failed by our massively expensive, exploitative, privatised housing system, to lift them at least to ground level out of the massive financial hole they find themselves in through no fault of their own.

Progressively, over decades, under Governments of various political colours, we have destroyed a system that provided genuinely affordable, generally decent homes for all. Let us not forget that in 1979 nearly half the British population lived in secure council homes. Some of those were not as well built or maintained as they should have been, or were in areas with inadequate facilities and opportunities, but they were secure. As the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, has just said, we replaced that with a market, and that is not a successful model for housing.

As noble Lords might predict from those remarks, the Green group supports both of the regret amendments, particularly that in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, with its focus on the need to provide long-term security for tenants. However, looking at that longer term, we have to move away from regarding houses primarily as financial assets and instead focus on providing everyone with a secure, genuinely affordable home that meets their needs—although of course I acknowledge that that is beyond the immediate scope of this SI. I note research last month from Aldermore Bank showing that half of renters now regard their circumstances as unstable, with one in 10 struggling to pay the rent since March. Clearly, we have a broken housing system.

Coincidentally, I spent this morning chairing a Westminster Forum session about our broken food system. That is two basics of human existence—food and housing —on this planet, with a climate emergency and a nature crisis, where as a species we are smashing through multiple planetary limits while failing miserably to meet even basic human needs in a collectively wealthy country such as the United Kingdom. I have to say that we have a broken economic, social and political system. We have to rescue people in the immediate future, but we also have to think longer term about massive transformational change.