Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban
Debate between David Simmonds and Christopher Pincher(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Christopher Pincher
The best way to help the hon. Gentleman’s constituents—and all our constituents—out of this crisis is to get the economy back on track and people into work so that they can pay their bills and enjoy their lives again. As for the specifics of his constituents’ cases, in fact, we have not given £50 million—we have given £500 million in council tax relief for the most egregious cases and £63 million for the non-shielded food vulnerable to help them. We have protected, as I have said, 8.6 million people as a result of the other changes that we have made. I am confident that we have done the right thing, and we continue to do the right thing—for example, by adding a further £40 million to discretionary housing payments, bringing the total to £180 million, to help the sort of people he talked about in his question.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
In my constituency, I have military families, returning from serving this country abroad, who are unable to regain access to their family homes because of the moratorium on evictions. I have neighbourhoods that are blighted because, despite the best action of local authorities to evict households that are a persistent source of antisocial behaviour, the moratorium means that those individuals are there, thumbing their noses at their neighbours and causing misery for many. May I encourage and invite the Minister to stick to his guns and ensure that we can still take robust action against those who abuse their position?
Christopher Pincher
I quite agree with my hon. Friend. Those who abuse their position make everyone’s lives intolerable. Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner, has said that antisocial behaviour is an issue for local authorities, the responsible agencies, Government—possibly even Opposition. People are being let down by antisocial behaviour, and antisocially behaving tenants need to be dealt with by the courts. I will stick to my guns—the Government will stick to their guns—and we will do the right thing by landlords and tenants.