Houses in Multiple Occupation (Asylum-Seeker Accommodation) (England) Regulations 2023

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Houses in Multiple Occupation (Asylum-Seeker Accommodation) (England) Regulations 2023.

Relevant document: 37th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, there are currently more than 50,000 asylum seekers living in hotels, given that our asylum system has been overwhelmed by the large volume arrival of asylum seekers by small boats. Hotels are neither intended nor adequate to be used as long-term accommodation. This is also burdensome on local communities and expensive for the taxpayer. It is important to recognise the significant challenges we are grappling with. The Home Office is working tirelessly, along with other government departments, to reduce the Government’s dependency on hotels by introducing a suite of short and longer-term measures. It is not right that the country is spending millions of pounds a day on hotels, and we are determined to put the asylum accommodation system on a far more sustainable footing. This reform is one of the many measures being taken to provide adequate and cost-effective accommodation in line with our statutory duty.

The Home Office is also bringing forward a range of alternative sites, such as disused holiday parks, former student halls and surplus military sites, to add thousands of places at half the cost of hotels. All local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales became an asylum dispersal area in April 2022, thereby increasing the number of suitable properties that can be procured to accommodate asylum seekers across the UK.

Currently, the Housing Act 2004 requires all houses in multiple occupation—HMOs—where five or more people from two or more households share facilities to be licensed. Local authorities can also introduce additional licensing in their area. This requires all HMOs housing three or more people from two or more households to be licenced. Home Office service providers have reported that these additional conditions set by local authorities present a challenge when procuring cost-effective, suitable and safe accommodation for asylum seekers. The Home Office is therefore seeking to remove this barrier.

These regulations will temporarily exempt from the HMO licensing HMOs used by the Home Office to house asylum seekers. This means that HMOs which begin use as asylum accommodation before 30 June 2024 will not need to be licensed for a period of two years. These regulations will cease to be in force on 1 July 2026, and after this point all HMOs used as asylum accommodation will require licences.

I am aware of the concerns that noble Lords and the Local Government Association have raised. I assure noble Lords that the Home Office asylum accommodation and support contract—AASC—standards are broadly equivalent to mandatory HMO licence conditions. This alignment between contracts and national housing standards is deliberate and was developed in consultation with the local authority property inspectors via their professional body, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

Home Office service providers are contractually required to provide safe, habitable, fit for purpose and correctly equipped accommodation for all asylum seekers. The contracts also require providers to comply with the law and a host of best-practice guidance. Consequently, matters that stand to be enforced by local authorities in respect of unscrupulous landlords can also be enforced contractually by the Home Office via its service providers.

All asylum accommodation will continue to be subject to wider private rented sector regulations, including the duties set out in the HMO management regulations, and local authorities will retain their power to enforce these standards and take action against landlords who fail to meet them.

The Home Office contracts for housing also set out a minimum standard for all asylum accommodation, including conditions relating to gas and fire safety requirements, as well as compliance with wider private sector minimum standards. The Home Office is doubling the size of its inspection team to ensure that its service providers are maintaining minimum standards in all its accommodation, and specifically all HMO properties that benefit from this exemption.

This dedicated assurance team is responsible for testing and reporting on providers’ performance. In addition to the provider’s monthly inspections, the Home Office inspects properties on a targeted basis, as well as testing providers’ monthly performance against the contractual key performance indicators and conducting assurance reviews. The Home Office will ensure that the assurance regime is commensurate with existing arrangements for HMO licensing to avoid the risk of reducing quality. Where a provider fails to meet contractual obligations, financial penalties can be applied.

Separately, Migrant Help is contracted to provide a free, round-the-clock helpline and online portal available 365 days a year which asylum seekers can use to raise issues, request help, give feedback and make complaints. Maintenance issues raised via Migrant Help are referred immediately to the AASC—asylum accommodation and support contract—provider for action within contractual timescales. If a service user reports that a defect has not been fixed and they remain dissatisfied, it is escalated to a dedicated Home Office complaints team to adjudicate. In addition, the Home Office will put measures in place to allow local authorities to report poor standards or safety issues with any of the housing provided for asylum seekers. The Home Office will also take up the offer from the Local Government Association to enhance joint working to deliver suitable and safe accommodation for asylum seekers under its care.

The Home Office dispersal policy will focus on ensuring the fair and equitable placement of asylum seekers, as we recognise the strain on public services, including housing. The Government will do everything they can to mitigate the risk of homelessness in support of the existing cross-government commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act.

We also recognise the general strain on public services in local authorities, and for this reason existing funding has been doubled for those local authorities which take on new accommodation and do so quickly. Subject to conditions of a grant agreement, this money is not ring-fenced and will incentivise co-operation and ease pressures on local services. However, payments will be subject to the conditions of a grant agreement.

The Home Office will develop a monitoring plan, which will cover service provider data in relation to the accommodation acquired as a result of this reform, reporting on quality and compliance/assurance to measure its effectiveness as well as to inform the assessment of wider homelessness impacts. More broadly, Home Office engagement with local authorities has significantly increased and improved since the introduction of an engagement strategy which is designed specifically to ensure that impacts on local services can be raised, discussed and mitigated through the multi-agency forums. Regular meetings are held between the Home Office and local authorities’ key strategic fora, including the asylum and resettlement council senior engagement group and the strategic oversight group. The Home Office will also arrange an open forum for local authorities to attend, which is a further opportunity for local government colleagues to discuss issues of concern with senior Home Office officials. I beg to move.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this SI, but this is yet another chapter in a book that is about dehumanising some of the most vulnerable people in the world seeking asylum in this country. It is bizarre that the Minister says that the reason why we need this SI is because the contract that providers of asylum accommodation have is exactly the same. In a moment, I shall go through what a mandatory HMO is licensed for, and I seek from the Minister an absolute assurance that every single clause that I give is covered in that contract. If not, the Minister has not been quite correct at the Dispatch Box.

It is not necessarily the case, as the Minister tried to portray, that the reason for the cost of accommodation for asylum seekers is because of the number of small boat arrivals. The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee reported recently that the reason for the strain on accommodation is the incompetence and inefficiency of the Home Office in dealing with the backlog. Some 68% of those waiting to have their claims assessed in March 2023 had waited more than six months. Even though the number of case workers has doubled from 308 to 614 since 2022, productivity has not changed at all. The number of people being dealt with or cases that have actually been closed in a month is exactly the same: one case per caseworker per month. That is what is causing the strain on accommodation, not the number of people arriving. It is clearly the incompetence and lack of productivity from the Home Office.

In her introduction, the Minister said that the number of those who are available to investigate will double in size to see whether the contractual arrangements are being carried out. How many individuals, full-time equivalent, will be available? On average, how many does that equate to for each local authority area?

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[Lord Scriven (LD)]

In my enthusiasm to speak, I forgot to put on record my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate today. Much of what has been discussed is obviously for the Home Office; in my responsibility as a Government Minister, I shall attempt to answer everything I can, but there will be things that I will have to come back to. I hope that I can persuade noble Lords to join me in supporting these regulations, which are a necessary step to accelerate moving asylum seekers from what is not suitable—we have had this debate many times in this House, and hotel accommodation is not suitable—into more suitable accommodation for them.

This is not dehumanising; this is actually giving them a better place to live, and trying to get people out of hotels as quickly as possible. Both the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, asked why we are doing this. We are doing it because the asylum accommodation service people are telling us that they have identified that the whole process of licensing requirements is really a challenge to swiftly bring on board the properties that we need in order to get people out of the hotel system.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I think either the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, or the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I cannot remember which, asked whether any thought was given to improving the resources for local government to take this on, rather than setting up a whole new system. Is the Minister able to comment on that?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will go through the support we are providing to local authorities, but I do not think the local authorities could have moved as fast as was necessary to do this: it takes training, et cetera. It is about getting people out of hotels and into better accommodation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, brought up the Home Office contracts. I have listed all the requirements under the licensing. I am sorry I have not got an answer to everything. Gas and safety requirements are there in the contracts for the Home Office, as well as compliance with wider private rented sector minimum standards, but I will go through each and every requirement in the licensing and we will send a letter explaining what is there and what is in the contract so that we are absolutely transparent about that.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Therefore, the Minister, at this point, even though we are being asked to accept the statutory instruments, cannot give an assurance to the Grand Committee that it is like-for-like and that housing standards of quality and safety will be exactly as asylum seekers now have in accommodation in HMOs if they are licensed by a local authority? That is what is actually being said: that guarantee cannot be given on a like-for-like basis.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I am not going to give that guarantee from this Dispatch Box, because there is a complicated list of things, and if I say, “Yes, it is”, there will be a tiny bit that the noble Lord will come back and quite rightly say, “You have got this wrong”. I am going to make sure that I look at that licensing requirement, look at the contract, and see what differences there are.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Will the Minister therefore give a commitment that that answer and letter will come before the statutory instrument hits the whole House? I think it is really important that we get it before the statutory instrument is before the whole House and agreed by the whole House.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I cannot do that because I am not in control of when the statutory instrument comes before the whole House, but we will get it to noble Lords as soon as we possibly can from the Home Office. I am sorry, but that is as much as I can do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, brought up the issue of the dispersal policy. I have to say, I hate that word. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, brought up the pressures on local authorities; she mentioned London specifically. We need to make sure that asylum seekers are located across the UK, not just in one or two areas. We know the pressures on public services, and we need to make sure that those are not overtaken by larger numbers. It is important that we look at that. Equally, we need to make sure that we do not put asylum seekers away from family, friends and their communities, so we have to do both.

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[Lord Scriven (LD)]

The Minister really confused me then. She just said that the providers of this accommodation will have to abide by the licensing conditions of local authorities on HMOs. Does not the statutory instrument actually remove the requirement on them to do that? Is that not its sole purpose?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, it removes the requirement for them having to get a licence, which takes time. The letter I am going to write to the noble Lord, and to all noble Lords, will then give the specifics to make sure that there is nothing missing between those two issues. That is what he wants to hear, I think. We will get that to him—that is what he is asking for.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

It is, but the logic behind this statutory instrument is to speed up the process of getting accommodation. However, if the accommodation has to be exactly the same as the HMO licensing conditions of local authorities and the Home Office does not have the number of people to be able to do the assessment of the properties, how does it speed up getting the properties? The number of properties will be the same in each area and they will have to be inspected before they can be brought on board to house asylum seekers. I do not understand the logic of how this will speed that up.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The whole process of licensing takes time and, I have to say, a bit of paperwork and bureaucracy. Noble Lords know that these things take time, whereas, if we can get people out and into accommodation that is properly regulated and tested, and people go in there and check it on a regular basis, that is a quicker way of getting people into communities and out of hotels.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Hamwee, asked about unaccompanied minors—a really important point. I assure the Committee that they will not be placed in HMOs, which is extremely important.

I know I have not answered everything, but the difference between the licensing regime and the quality regime of the contracts and the Home Office is important, and I want to get it absolutely right and make sure that the detail is correct for noble Lords.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

The question that I and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, asked was: if the number of people enforcing from the Home Office is going to double, what will that number be and what is the average per local authority area?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I asked for an answer on that, but I do not think it has come forward. I am really sorry; I will get these answers to noble Lords as quickly as I possibly can. I am conscious of what they are asking me to do.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I know it is not the tradition of the Committee to not vote for SIs, or to vote against them, and I understand that—I will not do anything like that—but had this come before my council, with the lack of information that we have about why it is being done, not just what is being done, I could not have supported it. Whether local government could do this job equally well was never assessed. If the Home Office can recruit more inspectors, local government can do so too. If the Home Office are going to look at the same things that local government looks at, why is local government not looking at it? Can we have some clarity about what will be looked at? I am happy to have that in writing.

Before I sit down, I profusely apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, whom I called by the wrong name. I had written the wrong name on my papers, which is completely my fault, and I apologise profusely. I will not get it wrong next time.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I cannot let it go that we are not making it clear why we are doing this. I want to make it very clear that we are doing it to speed up the movement of these people from what the House has clearly said many times is unsuitable hotel accommodation, which is not right over a long period of time, into better accommodation. That is why we are doing it. We want to do it as quickly as possible, and we fell that, in the short term of two years, the licensing regime was slowing that movement down.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I will tell the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, a tale about mixed-up names when we finish this Committee.

We have focused very much on safety standards. As I understand it, and I may be wrong, the standards of bathroom and kitchen facilities, and possibly the amount of space per person, will be different. I think that is covered by what the Minister has said she will find out about, but I do not want to lose that.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, absolutely not: I have written down everything that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asked to be checked against the Home Office conditions, and we will make sure we check Hansard. I know that things such as bathrooms, kitchens and room sizes were in that list because I have written them down. If there are no further questions, I assure noble Lords that these regulations are an important part of the Government’s asylum dispersal plans—although I do not like that word. I thank noble Lords for the challenge and scrutiny they have given to them, and I will make sure that I get answers to them as soon as possible.

Motion agreed.