Support for Care Leavers

Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Will Quince

Thursday 16th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince]

Broadly, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am pleased that the Minister has heard that point. I hope she will take it on board.

We also found that 25% of homeless people have been in care at some point in their lives. The Government’s care leavers’ charter states:

“We promise…To find you a home”.

We have to make sure that the benefits system supports that aim.

The APPG’s report recommends that care leavers should be exempt from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 25. To provide some background, in 2012 the Government extended the shared accommodation rate to everyone under 35. The rate is the maximum amount that an individual can claim in housing benefit for a private rented property, and it is based on the cost of a room in a shared property rather than the cost of self-contained accommodation.

The rationale for that change, which incidentally I agree with, was to

“ensure that Housing Benefit rules reflect the housing expectations of people of a similar age”,

meaning a similar cohort who are not on benefits. Yet it is often the case that care leavers have had a really challenging upbringing; they might have suffered traumas that other people of their age might never experience.

We already recognise that we should have different expectations of care leavers compared with those we have of their peers. We currently exempt care leavers from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 22. Nevertheless, most young people have the option of staying at home if they are unable to move out, but that choice is not available to care leavers. Furthermore, in our evidence sessions we heard from care leavers who said that they would feel unsafe in a shared home.

Exempting care leavers from the shared accommodation rate up to the age of 25 would give them the space and security of their own home, which would make a tremendous difference to their transition into adulthood. That suggestion has actually been recognised by the Government. The 2016 “Keep on Caring” strategy stated that the Government would be

“reviewing the case to extend the exemption to the Shared Accommodation Rate…for care leavers to age 25”.

Obviously, such an extension would have a financial cost, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar pointed out earlier. Currently, we do not know the number of care leavers who are affected by the move to the shared accommodation rate. I found that out—or, rather, tried to find it out and failed—when I submitted a written parliamentary question. However, the Children’s Society estimates that the potential case load is about 3,300. With an average difference between the shared accommodation rate and the one-bedroom rate of about £1,600, the cost of exempting care leavers would be about £5.3 million. Given the potential difference that change could make to the lives of care leavers, that is not an unreasonable figure.

The state has a responsibility for care leavers, young adults who are often among the most vulnerable in our society. We need to ensure that their housing needs are looked after just as well as their other needs. By exempting them from the shared accommodation rate, we can give them safe and secure accommodation, and help them in that all-important transition to adulthood.

I know that the Minister is as passionate as I am about improving the life chances of care leavers and ensuring that we address and minimise the risk of homelessness. I hope that the Government will take that recommendation on board and look at it. I will send the Minister a copy of the APPG’s very good report and hope that the Government will also look at its other recommendations.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

We move to the winding-up speeches. I call Mr Alex Cunningham.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Will Quince

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

My right hon. Friend makes a good suggestion that I hope the Minister takes on.

Bangladesh is doing a great job, but it is under considerable pressure. The movement of people, particularly within the past few months, is on an unimaginable scale—the figure was some 10,000 to 15,000 people just over the past weekend. What camp could cope with such numbers of people desperate for help?

We saw many people and discussed many different stories, most of them absolutely tragic. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans said, we picked the people to whom we spoke; we were not directed. Either this is the biggest conspiracy theory in history, or they are telling the truth, and I choose to believe they are telling the truth.

I want to tell the story of a lady whose house was burned, with her husband killed and son murdered before her eyes. She picked up her remaining children and what possessions she could carry, and walked for five days in the hope that things might be better somewhere else. She got to the camps. As I spoke to her, she held her eight-month-old baby, who looked around four months old because they were so malnourished. She was desperately trying to feed her baby as we spoke, but her malnourished body could not produce the milk to do so. As a father myself, it broke my heart. That story is not a one-off; it was the same with every person to whom we spoke, mostly women who had gone through such a horrific ordeal, and in some cases worse.

We visited a makeshift school in the camps and heard 30 or so children singing “We Will Overcome” in English, because hope is all they have left. I am incredibly proud, as we should all be, of the role that the Department for International Development and the United Kingdom are playing through UK aid. It fills me with pride to see UK aid from the British people used all over the camps. Can we do more? Of course we can.

This is my message to all those who sent me emails and Twitter messages after Prime Minister’s questions last Wednesday to say that we should not be sending UK aid: “You are wrong. This is exactly where we should be sending UK aid.” I am incredibly proud of what we are doing, as everyone in this country should be. Yes, we have to do more through diplomacy and work within the United Nations. I am grateful for the Prime Minister’s response, and I know the Minister has visited the region and is as passionate as me about addressing this issue.

[Mrs Gillan]

My hon. Friend’s personal visit cannot be repeated by all of us who have read about the situation. Is there anything we can do to get aid more quickly to where it is needed? The speed of response seems to be one of the big problems in helping people on the ground.

[Will Quince]

There are many ways in which we can help, and I look to the Minister, and to DFID Ministers, to answer that question. The scale of the challenge is the issue. The Bangladeshi Government have recently set aside another 2,000 acres of land for the camps to expand, but they need money. That is why I encourage Members and people across the country to support the DEC appeal, which DFID is supporting with match funding.

The hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) referred to landmines and helicopter attacks in his extremely passionate speech. We went to the border and saw that for ourselves. Yes, Bangladeshi military officials told us about it, but so did individuals. We saw videos on people’s phones of landmines, landmines being laid and people who have had their limbs blown off by landmines. There is no excuse anywhere in the world for landmines. We have to condemn the Myanmar Government in the strongest terms possible if they are using landmines, as I believe they are, and helicopter attacks to drive people towards the border. Whether the Myanmar Government are planting those landmines to prevent people from crossing the border or to prevent them from heading back into Rakhine state, it does not matter. This is wrong and we should absolutely condemn it.

I know the Minister is as passionate as I am about this issue, and I am proud of what we are doing. The Rohingya people are desperate to go home, but I just ask him to redouble our efforts to make sure that the UN, the humanitarian agencies and the NGOs can work in Myanmar not only to keep people safe, but to protect that all-important humanitarian aid.