Homelessness Reduction Bill (Fifth sitting)

Clive Betts Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

The Minister may continue the speech that he started four weeks ago.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Let’s hope it’s worth waiting for.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

That is a challenge, Mr Chope. I wish you and the rest of the Committee a happy new year.

Clause 10

Duty of public authority to refer cases to local housing authority

Amendment proposed (14 December 2016): 2, in clause 10, page 16, line 31, at end insert—

“(3A) Where the specified public authority makes a notification to the local housing authority the public authority must cooperate with the housing authority in meeting its duties under sections 179, 189A, 195, 189B and 199A of the Housing Act 1996.”—(Mr Betts.)

This amendment would ensure that where a public authority made a referral to a housing authority in respect of a person who is or may become homeless the public authority is under a duty to cooperate with the housing authority.

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

[Mr Jones]

Amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East, would reintroduce a duty that was in the original draft of the Bill when my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East first proposed it. We are concerned that the amendment would create burdensome and centrally imposed obligations on how local housing authorities interact with other public services. A one-size-fits-all obligation could create inefficiencies, potentially undoing some of the good work that is being carried out and developed naturally at local level.

In City of York Council’s response to the Communities and Local Government Committee’s call for evidence on the Bill, it highlighted the fact that local agencies in York already work together to prevent homelessness. That is just one example of effective arrangements being put in place locally that we would not want any new duties to cut across.

During our last sitting before Christmas, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate, spoke at some length about the national statement of expectations published by the Home Office at the start of December. That sets out what local areas need to put in place to ensure that their response to violence against women and girls is collaborative, robust and effective, so that all victims and survivors receive the help that they need. We worked closely with the Home Office in developing it and our priorities for domestic abuse services.

Both the national statement of expectations and our priorities for domestic abuse services set out what local areas need to put in place to ensure that their response is as effective as it can be, so that all victims and survivors receive the help that they need. They were developed by working with commissioners and service providers, including third sector stakeholders, and they reinforce the importance of bringing local service providers together, understanding local need, developing a strategy to meet identified need, commissioning services accordingly and setting out clear leadership and joint accountability for delivery. That is a great example of how we can stimulate and encourage good work at local level. It underlines the importance of local flexibility and expertise, and supports local innovation.

The Government are supporting that innovation further, through our homelessness prevention programme. Just before Christmas, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced £50 million of funding, including £20 million for new prevention trailblazer areas across the country. One aim of that programme is to identify innovation and best practice, and the funding will support projects working across different services. For example, Brighton will provide a jointly commissioned nurse to help people with both substance misuse and mental health needs to access the support that they require. Examples such as that will create the best practice from which the rest of the country can learn.

In addition to the funding programme, I chair the local authority working group for homelessness prevention, in which about 15 local authorities come together to discuss various topics. One theme to which we will return regularly is good practice and how central Government can support and disseminate it. I also chair the ministerial working group on homelessness. The existence of that group recognises the fact that homelessness rarely results from a housing crisis alone, and that underlying issues with employment, health and justice are often critical factors. One aim of the group is better to join up homelessness strategy across Government, which in turn will help to encourage public services to work together in their local areas to prevent and relieve homelessness.

[Mr Betts]

I am listening to what the Minister is saying about the various ways in which good practice can be disseminated. Will he give consideration to including something in the guidance that he will issue, after the Bill becomes an Act, to local authorities, public bodies and other agencies about the importance of working together and co-operating?

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point, which I will take on board and think about. There will certainly be guidance relating to the substantive clause on the duty to refer. Whether that guidance will look further into collaboration in places that are doing a good job remains to be seen, but I will certainly look at the question, as he suggests.

Finally, we will also support councils through a network of advisers. That is possibly where the suggestion made by the hon. Gentleman, who is Chairman of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, might apply. The advisers are experts who will work with local authorities to produce multi-agency homelessness strategies. They will also agree protocols and pathways between services in line with the good practice that already exists.

We believe that the initiatives I have set out are powerful ones that will help with best practice and encourage the delivery of local partnerships. I am not sure whether we are to have a clause stand part debate, but if we do, I shall be able to set out in more detail how the duty to refer will work. It will be an important step towards where we want to be; it will also be important for encouraging the sort of local collaboration that we want. For all those reasons, the Government believe that the amendment is unnecessary, and I ask the hon. Gentleman withdraw it.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I echo the Minister in wishing everyone a happy new year, as we rush towards completion of our Committee sittings on this private Member’s Bill.

The Minister is quite right that there was a similar clause on duty to co-operate in the original draft Bill, and he has set out the position on co-operation between service partners. Clearly, we shall have further discussion on that on clause stand part. This matters for defining how the relationship between service partners works. Service partners are co-operating in a number of innovative local operations, and the last thing that any of us wants is to stymie those local approaches. It is important to give them a chance to work, see what best practice is, and bring forward alternatives.

Legislation is only one tool in the box for helping to relieve homelessness. We are imposing a duty—we shall come on to this in clause stand part—to refer individuals from different public bodies. My real concern about the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Select Committee is that it would give carte blanche on the duty to co-operate, without specifying what such co-operation would look like. I have a lot of sympathy with the intention behind the amendment, but the general intention of the Bill is to drive through a culture change, and an element of that is wanting culture change—in local authorities, but also in all public bodies across the piece. It is important to create strong local working relationships, and on that basis I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

The problem with this amendment in many ways is that because it includes a duty to co-operate overall, it runs the risk of creating a maelstrom across public services because of its uncosted and unbudgeted element, which would cause a problem in future. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment. I have a lot of sympathy with wanting to ensure that we have proper co-operation, but the first part of that is ensuing that public bodies refer homeless people to the local authority, so that they get expert help and advice.

[Mr Betts]

I wish everyone a happy new year and echo the sentiments of the Minister and the Bill’s promoter. I will not press the amendment for reasons that I will explain, but I want to keep an eye on the issue, because I am not totally convinced by what the Minister said.

I recognise that the Minister and the Bill’s promoter want public bodies to co-operate in all shapes and forms. I accept that that is their intention and take their comments at face value. However, I am not totally convinced that all Departments always want to engage in this way. There is a history of some Departments being less co-operative than others on some of these matters, and I think we all know that. That applies not just to Departments and Ministers, but down the line to local health bodies, for example, which in my experience are not always co-operative in every shape or form, though many are. That is the issue; it is not just about Departments, but about what happens in practice on the frontline. I listened to what the Minister said about guidance. I hope that he will reflect further on that and talk to his colleagues in other Departments about what can be done to get the message down the line about what is expected.

I thought there was a little conflict in what the Committee was told this morning. The Minister talked about a one-size-fits-all approach; a requirement on a public authority to co-operate in a very general sense cannot be described as a one-size-fits-all approach. It is a very general requirement. Indeed, the promoter of the Bill said that the amendment does not specify what co-operation looks like. If it does not specify that, it can hardly be described as a one-size-fits-all approach. The two do not quite sit together.

The Minister referred to York and Brighton, where good things are happening. That is right and is to be encouraged and commended. If authorities are co-operating anyway, this is hardly a new burden on them. My suspicion is that it is not happening everywhere. He gave examples of where it is happening, not where it is not, and there could be examples of where it is not. The amendment would require all authorities to come up to the standard of the best. It might impose a duty, but a duty that should be there anyway. I hope that, even if this requirement cannot be in the Bill, the Minister will reflect on the issue of guidance, and let us know what he intends to do about it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Bob Blackman]

I beg to move,

That the Order of the Committee of 23 November 2016, as amended on 30 November, be amended, by inserting at the end—

“and on 18 January when the Committee will meet at 2.00 pm as well as 9.30 am.”

By way of a brief explanation, this change would mean that the Committee would sit not only in the morning, but in the afternoon until we conclude our business. We have had a number of sittings during which we have had vigorous debate, which is absolutely right, but we need to move the Bill forward so that it returns to the Chamber on Report. My intention as the Bill’s promoter is for Report and, hopefully, Third Reading to be on 27 January. That would obviously necessitate us concluding our debates and deliberations next Wednesday, by when we will have certainty about concluding proceedings and the Bill going back to the Chamber. We have important issues still to resolve, but I trust that Wednesday afternoon will give us sufficient time to debate and discuss vigorously those elements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Hon. Members have made very good points. We all believe that the Bill is a good tool for enabling culture change, and that it will drive different thinking and different behaviour among local authorities. We have heard from the various charities that have done mystery shopper exercises. The Bill has been driven by a concern about the need for more consistency in how the current legislation and statutory guidance are implemented locally and how assistance is received by people who go to a local authority for it.

The clause is very much a process whereby we will enable further parliamentary scrutiny of the decisions that the Secretary of State will make on creating and bringing into force codes of practice. There is obviously the issue of reissuing guidance, or reissuing under the code of practice things that are already dealt with in guidance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, that will sometimes need to be done quickly and, therefore, the procedure will not apply. If we see that local authorities are not responding properly to the guidance that is currently issued, we will be able to beef up our approach quickly if necessary.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister’s proposal is very welcome. Thinking off the top of my head, almost, I am wondering whether, given that we have been setting precedents in our approach to this legislation and subject, there might be a role for the Select Committee to have a brief hearing on the draft code of practice to consider whether it really does deal with the problems that the Committee has identified.

[Mr Jones]

That is certainly an innovative suggestion, which I would need to take away and think about further. However, I see where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. I accept that we have dealt with the Bill very much in the spirit of co-operation, as we want to get the right outcome for the people we all represent. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, and I will take it into account.

On other codes of practice that may stem from the changes made by the Bill and other statutory guidance that is issued, it is extremely important that we enable parliamentary colleagues to be consulted on measures in the code of guidance. Although the measures will not be voted on as such, there will be a procedure whereby Members can bring a debate to the House and potentially pray against any code of guidance that they did not think was right. However, given the spirit in which we have approached this matter, rather than taking safeguards away, in most cases we would look to add further safeguards to help people. I therefore hope hon. Members are reassured that this is a positive tool with which we can enhance the situation for the people that we are trying to help through the Bill.

Amendment 13 agreed to.

Amendment made: 14, in clause 11, page 17, line 24, at end insert—

“( ) Subsections (3A) to (3C) do not apply to the reissue of a code of practice under this section.” —(Mr Marcus Jones.)

This amendment clarifies that the procedure for issuing a code of practice inserted by amendment 13 does not apply to the reissue of a code.