Ukrainian Refugees: Homelessness

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on leading the debate and the important and pertinent points he made. I want to talk first about the situation in Scotland and then the cost of living crisis and some of the other issues that he highlighted.

One year on from Putin’s illegal invasion, the message of the SNP to Ukrainian arrivals remains crystal clear: Scotland is their home for as long as they need it to be. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has recorded over 8 million refugees from Ukraine across Europe. That is around 20% of the Ukrainian population. From the outset of the crisis, Scotland has been ready to help. As the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said at the time,

“Let us let people in and do the paperwork afterwards.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 8 March 2022; c. 11.]

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we had the super sponsor scheme in Scotland, which everybody thought was a great initiative, but did it not fall foul of the point that the hon. Member for Harrow East made—namely, that we thought the problem was over when we got people to Scotland? We did not see it as a long-term exercise, and as a consequence, we have had almost 2,500 people living on cruise ships, which the British Red Cross rightly says is completely inappropriate for their needs. We are going to be dealing with these situations many times in the future. We must learn from the mistakes we have made this time and understand that, when the refugees arrive here, that is the beginning of the story, not the end.

[Chris Stephens]

I have great sympathy with that. One cruise ship is currently based in my constituency, at least until the end of the month, and I am going to touch on some of those issues. A lot of people thought that the situation would end quickly, and it has not. Governments across the board and all of us as elected Members should learn from things as they develop, so I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point.

The super sponsor scheme has been overwhelmingly popular, with local authorities, the third sector and local communities all working in partnership. As a result, the last 12 months have seen nearly 23,000 people from Ukraine arriving to safety in Scotland, with over 18,900 of those arriving through the super sponsor scheme. That represents around 20.4% of all UK arrivals. The Scottish Government are supporting the scheme with over £70 million allocated for the Ukrainian resettlement programme for 2023-24, to ensure that communities continue to receive help to rebuild lives.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the cruise ships—I have visited one to help people who became constituents. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate last week, and I would be interested to hear from the hon. Member for Harrow East on this, one big concern is that those people are waiting months—far too long, in my view—for their biometric residence permits. I hope the Minister will once again take that issue up with the Home Office, because I am still dealing with it weekly with Ukrainian refugees who cannot go on to employment. The hon. Member for Harrow East and other Members across the Chamber are indicating that that remains a problem, so I hope the Minister will take it up on behalf of us all.

Support is being provided, with the Department for Work and Pensions, the education department, the council and the health and social care partnership all helping people based on the cruise ship in Govan as best they can, but the focus needs to be on matching them with suitable long-term accommodation. In September, the Scottish Government introduced the Ukraine longer-term resettlement fund, with up to £50 million available to bring council and empty properties into use and increase housing supply. We need to have a discussion on housing policy across the board, but with a lot of homelessness among Ukrainian refugees and empty properties, something should be done.

[Florence Eshalomi]

The hon. Member is making a powerful speech on this issue. One issue highlighted in the evidence session where we heard from a number of women, as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) mentioned, was housing, and especially the cost of housing in London. Can the Government learn anything from what the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) has outlined that the Scottish Government are doing in bringing empty properties back into use? My frustration is that we know there are many empty properties that a number of councils could bring back into use, but their funding has been cut drastically for the past 13 years.

[Chris Stephens]

I will come on to the UK Government’s support in that regard, but we should be encouraging local authorities and the Government to look at empty properties. Going past an estate agency in London, I thought I was looking at a premiership transfer fee, not a property price. That is a big problem in London. For those of us who are not London MPs and have to try to find accommodation here, it can be very difficult. The case that there is a specific issue in London has been well made in the debate.

I want to develop the point—made by the hon. Member for Harrow East—that the hostile environment has made it difficult for Ukrainian refugees to move into longer-term rented accommodation. The Immigration Act 2014 introduced a right to rent scheme that obliged landlords to carry out immigration checks on their prospective tenants, but that legislation was found to have a discriminatory impact, making landlords less likely to rent their properties to people from minority groups. As the hon. Member said, there are landlords who are refusing to take Ukrainian refugees. That is another issue that must be looked at.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out the issues with the right to rent scheme. There are some additional barriers for Ukrainians—we like to call them temporarily displaced people, because we are hoping they will go back after the war, but the issues of guarantors and deposits are really big ones to overcome. There is a whole range of issues that the Home Office and DLUHC need to look at in order to ensure those people can get into housing.

[Chris Stephens]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and again, I hope the Minister will answer those questions. The structure of the UK rental market places power in the hands of landlords, and it undermines any rights that tenants may be afforded under the law.

I turn to the cost of living crisis, which was another point well made by the hon. Member for Harrow East. The last year has placed unprecedented financial pressure on households, with the cost of living crisis playing havoc with people’s finances. Many hosts who opened their doors to Ukrainian arrivals last March could not have fully appreciated how bad the crisis would become, with inflation at 10.5% in December last year. From January, the UK Government support available to local councils was cut from £10,500 to £5,900 for each arrival. That seems to be a short-sighted decision. To develop further the point from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, that decision was taken without any consultation with the devolved Administrations, and I hope the Minister will be able to respond on that.

Councils should receive proper funding to provide employment and language support for Ukrainians, which research has shown is crucial. As the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) said, the Local Government Association continues to warn of the growing number of Ukrainians presenting as homeless to councils, particularly the significant rise in those who have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Data released in February shows that 4,295 Ukrainian households have presented themselves to councils as homeless, which is a 40% increase since November 2022.

The Government cannot simply pass the buck to local authorities. They must ensure sustained funding so that no one who has volunteered to take part in the scheme has to stop. Finally, the uplift in the thank-you payment from £350 to £500 was welcome. However, I hope that the Government will listen to the concerns of the British Red Cross, which says that the increase could come too late and will not always be enough. I look forward to hearing from other Members in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Felicity Buchan]

I will go on to explain exactly what the Government are doing, but clearly the scheme is evolving. We have already changed it to increase the thank-you payments and to open it up to unaccompanied minors. We are always happy to take on board feedback and to refine it, but I will come on to explain exactly what the Government are doing.

We are doing so much in Ukraine, but we are also doing much here in the UK. This scheme, which is powered entirely by the generosity of the British public, has seen more than 117,000 people arrive in the UK since its launch a year ago. If we include the Ukraine family scheme, we have now helped to find more than 166,000 people a safe and secure home. Those numbers are enormous, and we should never desensitise ourselves to just how many people we have given a new home, helped to start a new life, and offered optimism for life after the conflict. Each of those 166,000 people is somebody removed from the immediate danger of that terrible conflict.

A number of Members have mentioned Government money, so let me explain exactly what the Government are doing. As a Government, we have been determined to reciprocate the generosity of the hosts who have come forward with offers of help. To that end, we have committed to provide £1.1 billion to councils through tariff funding and thank-you payments for arrivals in their area, to support guests and sponsors alike. I thank local authorities for the excellent job they have been doing. By way of recognising the hugely generous support of sponsors in the Homes for Ukraine scheme, we have upped the thank-you payments—the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) alluded to that. Those thank-you payments are now £500 a month, once guests have been in the country for over a year. The scheme has also been extended from 12 months to two years. Our No. 1 priority throughout has been to offer stable homes to Ukrainians seeking sanctuary on UK soil. I feel a tremendous sense of pride that we have offered Ukrainians a temporary home, and huge pride in the thousands of people in this country who have taken in a guest.

[Chris Stephens]

The British Red Cross had some criticisms about the qualifications for the thank-you payments. Will the Minister remind the House of the eligibility requirements to qualify for those thank-you payments, and say whether the Government are considering changing them?

[Felicity Buchan]

To be eligible for the thank-you payments, someone needs to be a sponsor under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. For the uptick in the thank-you payment, they need to be hosting a Ukrainian who has been in the country for more than 12 months, although they need not have been with that person for more than 12 months.

This debate is about homelessness, so I want to focus in on the numbers. There are cases where relationships between hosts and guests have broken down, but that is not unique to the United Kingdom; such issues exist in many countries across Europe. The Government have tried, wherever possible, to make sure that those who experience that kind of unavoidable scenario have been protected by a safety net. As Members will know, when a sponsorship can no longer continue, councils will support Ukrainians to find new accommodation. Our data shows that by 24 February this year, 2,910 Ukrainian households under the Homes for Ukraine scheme had been owed a homelessness duty by their local authority in England. That number is 4,630 for all Ukrainian arrivals. To put that in context, we have seen more than 166,000 Ukrainian arrivals, so that is a very small percentage. I would also like to clarify that a homelessness duty means a local authority has a duty to prevent or relieve homelessness, so in many cases local authorities will be preventing homelessness before it occurs. Indeed, 2,085 of the approximately 4,600 are recorded as having been prevented or relieved.

I want to come back to temporary accommodation. The latest number is 660 Ukrainian households in temporary accommodation. Again, we do not want Ukrainian households to be in temporary accommodation, but they are in accommodation and it is a small percentage of the overall number of arrivals.