Bob Blackman
Main Page: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East) Homelessness Reduction Bill
Bob Blackman ExcerptsFriday 28th October 2016
(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 View all Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Before I begin my remarks, I place on the record a declaration of interest. I have a small number of properties in the private sector, and am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The reality is that, in this day and age, homelessness results from many different causes. It could be because of a relationship breakdown, the end of a private sector tenancy, someone being ill or injured in an accident, or many other causes. As Members of Parliament, we know that often someone who reaches that crisis of homelessness in their lives will naturally go to their local authority to seek help. The sad fact is that when someone is threatened with homelessness and goes to their local authority they will as likely as not be told, “Go home, wait until the bailiffs arrive and come back when you are literally on the streets.”
When someone is on the streets—when they have reached that terrible crisis point in their life—they arrive at the housing office and the people there do a checklist: is the person addicted to drugs or alcohol; do they have children under the age of 16; are they suffering from some terrible illness or other problem?
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this Bill. He talks about local authorities and he is right that changes need to be made to legislation, but does he agree that if this Bill is to be successful there needs to be urgent Government funding behind local authorities so that they can tackle mental health, drug abuse and so forth, and that without that extra funding the good aspirations of the Bill will not work?
Bob Blackman
Clearly, the Bill is part of a strategy. It is not the sole basis of this approach. Under the new doctrines operating in this Parliament, new duties on local authorities mean new money for local government. I hope to hear that from the Minister later on.
After the checks, if someone is priority homeless the local authority will house them, probably in emergency accommodation, which is expensive to the local authority and not very suitable for the people who have to be housed. The non-priority homeless are told to go out and sleep on the streets, on a park bench, or in a doorway, and then they may—may—be picked up by a charity under the No Second Night Out programme. That is an absolute national disgrace. When employment is at the highest level ever and we have a relatively low level of unemployment, having one single person sleeping rough on our streets is a national disgrace that we must combat.
For 40 years, we in this House have forced local authorities to ration the help that they give. I passionately believe that people enter public service to deliver a service to the public, not to deny them a service.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this important Bill. He points to the fact that local authorities will make an assessment and some people will be placed in temporary accommodation as a result. Does he agree, however, that far too many very vulnerable people still end up sleeping rough, sofa surfing or sleeping on the streets, including, for example, people discharged from hospital or from custody?
Bob Blackman
That is precisely why I am introducing this Bill. Anyone who is sleeping rough is extremely vulnerable. They are liable to be mugged and to be attacked. Women are likely to be raped. Horrible things happen to people who are forced to sleep rough. I do not want to see that happen in this society any longer.
Bob Blackman
If I may, I will make a bit of progress.
When I was drawn second in the private Members’ Bills ballot, I asked myself what I could do that would make a difference. At the time, I never realised how popular I could become, literally overnight.
Mr Smith
I too congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this Bill, and the number of people here this morning attest to its importance and the support there is for it, which I certainly share in. Does he agree that important lessons should be learned from the action taken by Tony Blair’s Government between 1998 and 2009, when rough sleeping was cut by three quarters, not least because of the close focus on the issue that the Prime Minister personally gave it? Does the hon. Gentleman believe that he will enlist the present Prime Minister’s equal focus in cutting the level of rough sleeping we clearly face?
Bob Blackman
For 40 years, we in this House have forced local authorities to ration the help they provide to the homeless.
I looked at what I could do. I served in local government for 24 years and saw at first hand the damage that homelessness can do to ordinary people who, through no fault of their own, lose their homes. I also sit on the Communities and Local Government Committee, which published its inquiry into homelessness in August. The Committee made particular efforts with ex-homeless people and young care leavers, which led directly to the report’s recommendations that form the basis of the Bill.
The aim of the Bill is to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place and to prevent people from ever having to sleep rough. In case anyone misunderstands the extent of homelessness, rough sleeping has doubled since 2010. It was up 30% last year alone, with 3,569 people reported as sleeping rough on any one night in 2014. In London, 8,096 people slept rough at some point in 2015-16, an increase of 7% from 2014-15. Last year, 112,330 people in England made a homelessness application, a 26% rise since 2009-10, with 54,430 accepted as homeless and in need of assistance.
If we combat homelessness at an early stage before it becomes a crisis, we will save money in the long run for local authorities. Research commissioned by Crisis, based on in-depth interviews with 86 people who have experienced homelessness, estimates that £742,141 of public money was spent on 86 cases during a 90-day period of homelessness. Overall public spending would fall by £370 million if 40,000 people were prevented from experiencing one year of homelessness, based on an average reduction in public spending of £9,266 per person a year.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing the Bill, which I fully support. On prevention, does he agree that in Wales the Labour Government have introduced measures very similar to those in the Bill? They are starting to work. Unlike in England, homelessness is dropping. He talks about a false economy. The Welsh Government have put money up front to deal with this issue, but I am sure they will save money in the long run.
Bob Blackman
I will come on to the situation in Wales in a moment.
The anticipated savings will include direct savings to local authority homelessness teams. Drawing on the lessons from Wales, which the hon. Lady rightly raises, academics commissioned by Crisis estimate that a projected 20% increase in prevention and relief activity could produce an additional cost of £43.9 million, but that that would be offset by a £46.8 million reduction in spending on people who are already homeless. That is partly due to reductions in the use of temporary accommodation and a greater focus on preventing homelessness. Over time, this should reduce the number of people who lose their home in the first place. This would require more intensive support through either a relief duty or an offer of settled accommodation under the main duty of homelessness.
The Bill should also make savings for other public bodies. Research by Crisis into the cost savings of prevention and relief duties in England suggest that in just six months we could save £2.88 million for the criminal justice system and £1.2 million to £3.8 million for the national health service, including over £500,000 of savings for accident and emergency departments alone. What we know is that people who are sleeping rough are far more likely to suffer from respiratory diseases and they have to use the NHS repeatedly.
In Wales, the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 came into force on 27 April 2015—a great day, the one after my birthday. The experience gained from that legislation has helped to inform measures in the Bill in certain areas. Wales has seen a 69% reduction in the number of households owed the main homelessness duty, with only 1,563 households owed the main homelessness duty in the first year of the new prevention and relief duties. In the first year, 7,128 households were provided with prevention assistance, of which 4,599, or 65%, had a successful outcome. Temporary accommodation has fallen by 16% in Wales since the introduction of the new duties, saving £697,980. In London, which accounts for 72% of temporary accommodation, even half that reduction would save some £37 million.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am here to support my hon. Friend and his excellent Bill. I just observe, however, that when London boroughs seek temporary accommodation it disrupts the housing market in Wycombe for my constituents. Does he agree that we need many more affordable homes, to both buy and rent, everywhere, but especially in London?
Bob Blackman
The Bill does not deal with supply, but that is an important issue. It is clear that we need to increase the supply of affordable homes right across the country, but particularly in London.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman suggests there will be a saving to local authorities in London, so why does my council in the London Borough of Redbridge estimate that the Bill will lead to additional costs of £5 million for our local authority?
Bob Blackman
There will be an increase in costs associated with the help and advice, and prevention duties. Clearly, that needs to be funded by the Government. I am sure we will hear good news from the Government when the wind-up speeches take place. There are beacons of excellence across the country, where homelessness is not an issue and local authorities carry out the prevention duty properly. I do not want to comment on particular councils, but I suggest that the hon. Gentleman advises his council to look at the Bill very carefully. We need to make sure that London councils support the Bill, recognise their duties and seek funding for them.
The Bill seeks to revolutionise what happens in housing offices. I received an email from a young lady in Wales. Carol Martin is a line manager for homelessness and housing options for a rural county council in west Wales, with many years of housing experience in both England and Wales. She wrote that since the changes:
“It has taken a total rethink of the way my staff work and has needed additional funding, but we are changing things around to take a preventative approach at the outset. It was certainly not an easy process but with a strong belief it can be achieved, some additional types of training and strong negotiation skills it really does work...the roles within the Team are more positive due to the help they are able to give, and the clients coming through the doors are more likely to join in a mutually agreed Personal Housing Plan where the clients take some responsibility as well as the Officers, all working towards a positive outcome.”
That is precisely what my Bill seeks to achieve.
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill addresses the cruelty of the current system? What is brilliant about the Bill is that it will allow local housing staff to express more of their innate compassion and kindness. Like many MPs, I have found staff to be incredibly helpful when people are in desperate need—a gentleman in Richmond borough called Brian Castle does outstanding work—and the Bill will help them to utilise their great abilities.
Bob Blackman
That is the aim—to revolutionise the culture in local authorities and housing offices that provide a service.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for introducing the Bill, and I am pleased to hear his acknowledgment that if it is going to work, it will need to have resources behind it. Let me put this point to him about prevention. Prevention must mean what it says. I recall an Adjournment debate in which it was pointed out that a previous Conservative administration of Birmingham City Council was using the term “prevention” as a means of passing the buck to others to give advice to people threatened by homelessness. It is really important that prevention means prevention and not just passing the buck.
Bob Blackman
There are beacons of excellence in local authorities, some of which do a really good job on preventing homelessness. Unfortunately, the norm is that they do not. We must ensure that they do not pass the buck, that they come up to the plate and that they deliver for homeless people.
The aim of the Bill is, first and foremost, to ensure that no one, but no one, is turned away at the door. Everyone should be entitled to some form of support before they get to the stage where they literally have nowhere safe to stay. No one should go to their council for help, only to be told, “Come back when the bailiffs have arrived.” This Bill ensures that everyone, regardless of priority need status, is entitled to receive free information and advice to help them with their situation; and it means that 56 days prior to someone becoming homeless, they will get help. The council will have to produce a personalised housing plan to create a tailored road map for preventing homelessness in that crucial period, so that both the applicant and the council have an agreed set of steps to fulfil the prevention of homelessness.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing the Bill forward today, but will it guard against substandard accommodation? We would not like to see people being placed in substandard accommodation, which is the big issue up and down the country at the moment.
Bob Blackman
I am coming on to that particular issue in a few moments.
The Bill will also ensure that local connection requirements are working in a way that prevents people from moving from one city to another or one part of London to another. People demanding housing in London, for example, would obviously put undue pressure on the system.
The Bill also makes sure that everyone takes an aspect of personal responsibility, so that people will be rewarded with good outcomes for co-operation and engagement with the process. It will bring about a culture change in councils—away from a crisis response towards prevention strategies and a more compassionate approach to helping people who are in that desperate crisis.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that I support his Bill, and it is good to see that MPs can turn up on a Friday when a Bill is genuinely popular and important to Members of Parliament. Will he confirm that the Bill will stop some of the perverse incentives that I saw when I volunteered for St George’s Crypt in Leeds, where local authorities were turning away people who did not have a drug or alcohol addiction because people with those addictions were seen as a priority? The people who were turned away felt that they were effectively being told that if they wanted to be housed, they had to develop a drug or alcohol addiction. Will his Bill stop those perverse incentives?
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for his support for the Bill. Yes, we have to stop these perverse incentives that are encouraging people to go down such routes. The reality is that the vast majority of people become homeless through no fault of their own; they just want help and advice from the local authority. The Bill will make sure that they get that help and advice at the time when they need it—not just on the basis of priority need.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
I would like to join the universal hymn of praise to the hon. Gentleman. I suggest that anyone who wants to understand the reality of homelessness in London today should read “This is London” by Ben Judah. Speaking as a former homeless persons officer at the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we did not lack empathy or sympathy; what we lacked was housing, and we need to know how to address that. On the point about priorities, I am very proud that this and the last Government have prioritised people leaving the armed forces. We have a military covenant, so will the Bill still include that prioritisation of people leaving the armed forces?
Bob Blackman
I can confirm that the Bill does include priority for the armed forces and for people leaving the armed forces.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill and I wholeheartedly support it. I am glad that he has referenced the absurd situation whereby people have to wait until the bailiffs arrive to evict them before they can get help from the housing department. That is one reason why private landlords are so reluctant to take on housing benefit tenants as well. Will my hon. Friend reference another particularly vulnerable set of people he has not mentioned so far: children leaving care? It can be ridiculous when such people can be evicted even from council-owned housing only for the council then to have to pick up responsibility for them at greater cost and with huge social implications for those vulnerable children.
Bob Blackman
I can confirm that the Bill will deal with care leavers. They are included in line with one of the suggestions made during the pre-legislative scrutiny process of the draft Bill.
The Bill will help to stimulate partnerships between local authorities and other public bodies by making sure that key public services are part of the process and have a duty to refer anyone identified as homeless to the responsible local authority. It also creates a power for the Secretary of State to introduce a statutory code of practice, providing further guidance on how local authorities should deliver their homelessness and prevention duties. This will be amendable and helpful when it comes to raising standards or sharing best practice. I do not want us to stifle local authorities that have creative schemes, but I want to make sure that all local authorities are brought up to the standard of the best.
In acknowledgement of the point raised by the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), the Bill will help to make sure that private sector accommodation has been checked by the local authority when the authority secures accommodation for vulnerable households, ensuring that it meets the specific suitability requirements, including the legal checks required of properties, before being offered to people.
I have now described the ambit of the Bill, and it would be fair to say that it has been a long process to get to this stage. Crisis convened an expert panel of council representatives, lawyers and housing experts as well as others from the charity sector to look at ways to update homelessness legislation in England. I want to put on record my particular thanks to Jon Sparkes, Matthew Downie and Maeve McGoldrick from Crisis, particularly for their exceptional support throughout this whole process and for working with me to put this legislation together and help it reach this stage.
We drew on the Select Committee report and the work of the expert panel, publishing a first draft of the Bill in August. It was then put through pre-legislative scrutiny. The Select Committee on Communities and Local Government held an inquiry and produced a report on the draft version. The Bill is complex and it is unique in that it originates from a Select Committee report, has been scrutinised by the Select Committee and has been substantially amended as a result.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend has set out all the steps that he has taken prior to this morning in preparing the Bill. Does he agree that he has set out the gold standard, if I may put it like that, for what other Members should do before they bring private Members’ Bills before the House, and that Members should not just turn up and expect them to get through?
Bob Blackman
When I set out on this journey, I did not realise just how much work was going to have to be done. If Members are bringing legislation to this place to change the law, I believe they should go through a long process and ensure that their Bills are thoroughly tested before they present them.
The Select Committee recommended that clause 1, on the extension of duties to 56 days, should be retained—and the Bill has been kept in line with that recommendation. The Select Committee also found that the Bill’s original measures on the consequences of non-co-operation did not offer sufficient support to vulnerable households. As a result, this aspect was completely reworked, with the bar for non-co-operation during the prevention or relief stage raised to the level of
“deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate”
to ensure greater protection for vulnerable people. Further safeguards have been introduced to ensure that any household in priority need that is found to have deliberately and unreasonably refused to co-operate will be made an offer of a six-month tenancy. That change is supported by the homelessness charities involved.
The prospect of 56 days of emergency accommodation at the end of the prevention stage, regardless of priority need status, was criticised by the Communities and Local Government Committee. While it agreed with the idea in principle, it added:
“we also recognise the reality that it is not feasible for councils to provide accommodation to all homeless people.”
We heard evidence that suggested that there might be some unfortunate unintended consequences, such as the stimulation of the growth of a market in substandard temporary accommodation—warehouse-style accommodation, for instance—or the diversion of resources from vulnerable people.
Primary legislation is not a panacea. It is not always the best way of tackling an issue properly, especially an issue with a complex range of causes. I am therefore very pleased that the Government have now announced a package of measures—at a cost of £40 million—to tackle rough sleeping, with Manchester, Newcastle and Southwark becoming “trailblazer” councils for preventive work. I believe that that will be a far more effective and flexible way forward, and I commend St Mungo’s in particular for all the work that it does in this regard.
The Committee recommended that clause 2 include the words
“those who have experienced, or are at continued risk of, domestic violence and abuse”.
That has been duly done, and is covered by subsection (2)(d).
In respect of the proposed changes in the definition of a local connection, the Committee recommended that the definition in the original legislation be left unchanged. That too has been done, although a minor correction has been made to the original text to deal with a long-standing issue relating to care leavers, and to ensure that they are protected.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh), and his all-party group on ending homelessness, for all their support. I also commend the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Select Committee, for all his help and guidance during this process, and for ensuring that the pre-legislative scrutiny was conducted in a fair, transparent manner. As a result, we have ended up with a Bill which I believe has all-party support.
I am also delighted to have secured Government support. I took into account the views of many interested parties, and on Monday the Government finally announced that they would back the Bill. They will fund the additional costs in line with the long-standing “new burdens” arrangements.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I am grateful to my near neighbour in north-west London for giving way, and I, too, congratulate him on his Bill. He has referred to local authority funding and the Select Committee’s report. That report estimates that there could be 1,100 potential “extra duty” cases for the London borough of Ealing, which already has 677 statutory homelessness cases. I am encouraged by the news that extra funding is on the way, and we await the full details, but does the hon. Gentleman share my concern about the revenue support grant? Ealing was a big loser last time round, whereas the grants for certain Tory councils such as Hampshire and Surrey went up. My borough estimates that our grant will fall by 65% by 2019-20, and it would be great if the Government would assist in that regard.
Bob Blackman
The hon. Lady tempts me to start talking about the revenue support grant, but I will not be so tempted. I do not wish to digress from the main aim of the Bill, which is, after all, to help to prevent homelessness in this country.
Over time the Bill is likely to save money, because if local authorities act earlier households will receive help earlier, and people will be prevented from becoming homeless and requiring more expensive accommodation. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), and his team of officials for working so hard to ensure that the Bill was in a suitable state to be passed.
I know that the Bill cannot do everything. It will not tackle issues relating to supply, and it will not be a magic bullet to clear the streets of homeless people overnight. What it will do, however, is introduce a long-term cultural change which will, over time, bring about a different way of working among local authorities that will stop people from getting into the terrible position of being homeless in the first place.
Let me relate just one story from my constituency. I will not name the individual concerned, but he had lived in west London and fallen on hard times. When he approached the local authority for advice, he found himself passed between various staff members before falling into an agreement with a housing association. He was evicted from that property, and moved further west. He approached the local authority there, and the local Member of Parliament. Again, he was passed between council staffers. He ended up sleeping rough sporadically, or in his car. After a while he was given a room by a support group, but he left the property shortly after beginning the tenancy as a result of a mutual agreement with the management. He then approached a third local authority.
It was at this point that the man contacted my office for help. That third local authority had told him that he could not be housed. No help was offered, despite his obvious need. My staff approached the office of an MP with whom he had had contact in the past, as well as a support officer who had helped him at one stage. There is a strong suspicion of an undiagnosed mental illness. Without a permanent address, it is difficult for the man to retain a single GP and obtain a diagnosis, and without a diagnosis, he is not considered vulnerable. The cycle just repeats itself. It is important to ensure that everyone is given help, advice and support from the start to prevent such situations from developing.
It is vital for Members, here and in the other place, to refrain from adding amendments to the Bill if it is to succeed. Private Members’ Bills are inherently vulnerable because they have a limited amount of time to get through Parliament, so amendments are likely to cause this Bill to fall in its entirety. I shall welcome short contributions from Members today, as well as volunteers to serve on the Bill Committee. Certain organisations have expressed concerns about the drafting of some clauses; if the Bill succeeds today, I shall undertake to investigate them fully in Committee.
The Bill has received the maximum possible pre-legislative scrutiny, so Members can be confident that it will be workable and has been properly costed. Homelessness is a complex issue, and no one piece of legislation can be the sole solution. The Bill is one part of a larger strategy, but it is a key part, and will produce a revolution in local authority housing offices.
I thank all those who have helped to guide and produce the Bill, but in particular I thank my long-suffering parliamentary assistant, who, over the past six months, has done virtually nothing except work on the Bill. The Government have proved their commitment to social justice in backing it, and, in doing so, have also demonstrated that the Conservative party, led by our current Prime Minister, is the truly reforming, progressive party that is delivering after 40 years of legislation that has prevented local authorities from offering a service to homeless people.
Mike Gapes
Yes, I am coming on to that matter.
The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) made an unfair attack on his local authority. He said that the staff were not doing their job properly. He implied that people not getting services was somehow the fault of the council and its staff. I was concerned when I read in the report of the Association of Housing Advice Services, which brings together people from local authorities all over London, that it has calculated that the extension of homelessness prevention duties to single, non-vulnerable people will lead to an additional estimated cost for all 32 London boroughs of £101,641,728. Frankly, £40 million from the Government is peanuts compared with the additional costs for London alone. In an intervention on the promoter of the Bill, I pointed out that my council, Redbridge, has said that the Bill will cost it £5 million. Redbridge is suffering a major homelessness problem. In my borough of 278,000 people, 64% of householders own their own home, only 11% live in social housing, and 25% rent privately. Systematically over the past three years, large numbers of private tenants have been evicted from their homes in Redbridge because of benefits changes and landlords pushing people out so that they can get higher rents. Every day, I am contacted by people in hotels in Bath Road, Hounslow who have been placed there by my local authority because it cannot find any accommodation in Redbridge. A few months ago, my council outbid Kent County Council for ex-Army accommodation in Canterbury. That got national publicity. It happened because people cannot be moved out of the hostels in Redbridge—they are blocked because there is nowhere else to go. We face an ongoing crisis.
This Bill, unfortunately, is a classic piece of wishful thinking. It is gesture politics of the worst kind in that it wills the ends but does not provide the means. It is about feeling good about voting for something that sounds good, having been pressed to do so by pressure groups and campaigns. The Bill should not be called the Homelessness Reduction Bill but the “Homelessness Recognition Bill”. It will not provide any additional social housing or good-quality private rented accommodation in my constituency. It will not provide any extra money for my local authority to offset the additional £5 million that it estimates will be necessary owing to the bureaucratic and staff requirements that will result from it.
I could go on at length, and I am tempted to do so after the attitude of the promoter of the Bill, who seemed to say, “Take it or leave it, and don’t amend it.” The Bill needs to be looked at very closely because it has implications in a whole range of areas leading to costs and processing issues. I will concentrate on just one or two of them. The proposal to change the definition of “homelessness” does not give us any extra temporary accommodation. We cannot deal with these problems simply by shuffling things around so that women with children are unable to get accommodation in the borough because somebody who is single and homeless has had it instead. That means, potentially, more people going out of borough. There are issues and implications to do with legal judgments about the definition of what local authorities can do when they send people out of borough. We have a major crisis in housing in London generally, and certainly in east London, and this Bill does not deal with that.
The Bill contains an entirely new duty to provide people with accommodation for a maximum period of 56 days if they have nowhere safe to stay. That is supposedly going to solve the problem, but it does not—it simply shuffles the criteria around. We have in the Bill various—
Bob Blackman
I am very tempted to allow the hon. Gentleman to continue, but I think he is looking at the original draft Bill rather than the Bill presented today. The 56 days’ emergency accommodation provision was removed at the request of the CLG Committee because of the resource requirements and because London authorities, in particular, said that it would be unworkable and cost far too much money. I trust that he will understand that it has been removed, and that probably removes his principal objection to the Bill.
Mike Gapes
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I look forward to seeing the final version of the Bill after it has come out of Committee. I accept that he has made some late changes to the Bill, mainly because the CLG Committee came up with the proposals referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). My principal objection to the Bill concerns the obligations and requirements on cost, which will be considerable on my borough and many other boroughs in London.
The Bill has considerable resource implications. Redbridge Council has calculated that there will be between £3.2 million and £4.3 million in additional accommodation costs, and extra staffing costs of £673,000. That is just for one borough. My local authority has faced £70 million in central Government cuts over three years. At a time when we are cutting services, restructuring and reorganising, and down to the bare bones, this could be a significant additional burden. Moreover, councils all over the country face an autumn statement that is potentially going to be not very friendly towards them.
There is, of course, an argument that we should just pass the Bill today and hope for the best. I look forward to, and will listen with great interest to, what the Minister says when he winds up. He needs to reassure me—not just me, but Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors and rate payers all over the country—that these measures are going to be fully funded, and not just for one year, or two years, or some transitional period. He needs specifically to take account of the needs of London, where there is a massive homelessness crisis. The alcohol services, mental health services and provisions for dealing with rough sleepers who have no recourse to public funds must also be looked at, because the failure to deal with those issues properly is a blight on our society. This Bill does not address that, and that is why I am raising my concerns today.
Bob Blackman
We have had a passionate and well informed debate. With the leave of the House, I will briefly sum up the debate. First, may I thank the 32 Members who have taken part and the numerous others who have made interventions?
When we set out on this journey, the informal title of the Bill was the Homelessness Prevention Bill, but, as it was politely pointed out to me, that would mean that it would make it illegal for anyone to be homeless. We rapidly retitled it to the Homelessness Reduction Bill in the hope that we will eliminate homelessness in the long run.
I wish to place on record my thanks to Crisis for all the work that it has done on getting us to this stage, to St Mungo’s, which every day tries to take people who are sleeping rough off the streets, to the Minister and the Communities and Local Government team for all the help and advice they have given to get us to this stage, and to the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association, which have given their critical input. I wish to put on record my thanks to FirmFoundation in my constituency, which does so much work to get single homeless men off the streets and into appropriate accommodation. Equally, I thank Members on both Front Benches for their support and assistance in getting us to this stage.
Getting a Bill to Second Reading is a long struggle when one is doing something so important. We have taken a lot of time and trouble to get this right. Provided that the Bill receives its Second Reading, I look forward to it going through Committee, Report, Third Reading and the House of Lords. Out there today, people will be looking at this House and saying how proud they are that MPs from all parts of the House are taking the right sort of approach to ending completely the social disease of homelessness.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).