Homelessness Reduction Bill

Flick Drummond Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pauline Latham]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government are getting it right. They are acting for the benefit of homeless people in this country.

Interviews with homeless women that have been conducted by the fantastic homelessness alleviation charity Crisis, which was cited a few moments ago, show that more than 20% became homeless to escape violence from someone they knew, with 70% of them fleeing violence from a partner. That shows that the Government need the cross-party support that they are getting—or were getting; it seems that that is perhaps not as strong as it was. We need to move forward with the Bill so that it can go successfully to its next stage and become law.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I am sure that new clauses 2 and 3, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), are well intentioned. New clause 2 would give tenants assurances on their length of tenure and new clause 3 would give assurances on rent increases. However, I am concerned that, rather than helping vulnerable homeless people, they would hinder some of the best work in the Bill.

We know that private landlords are increasingly reluctant to accept benefit claimants—that is certainly the experience of Portsmouth City Council. The Bill represents an effort to change that situation, but new clauses 2 and 3 would frustrate it. Tenants are currently encouraged to remain in occupation until they are evicted by a court order so that they cannot be considered to be voluntarily homeless. That is a stressful and debilitating practice for the tenant, and a disincentive for landlords to take on cases from local authorities. That would be especially true under new clause 2 because it would lock landlords into an unbreakable three-year tenancy agreement if the result of giving notice would be to make the tenant homeless.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the reality is that only around 50% of mortgage lenders lend to buy-to-lets with tenancies of more than one year? The measures might restrict the market even further, so they could cause many more problems than they would fix.

[Mrs Drummond]

That point was discussed earlier. It would be good if mortgage lenders could extend their offer to three years or even beyond, because we do want long-term tenancies.

New clause 2 would make landlords reluctant to take on anyone who might need local authority help, most of whom would be vulnerable people in receipt of benefits or on low incomes. As Portsmouth and District Private Landlords Association has stressed to me, landlords do not usually evict good and responsible tenants, nor do they want to risk finding bad replacement tenants or to bear the costs of eviction and establishing a new tenancy. But nor do they want their hands to be tied. What if they wanted to sell the rental property or occupy it themselves? New clause 2 makes no provision for that. As a result, it would be a strong disincentive for landlords to take on any tenant who might call on the local authority’s duty to house, if they were given notice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Drummond]

I was pleased to serve on the Bill Committee and to be part of the consideration of a Bill that will make a big difference to many vulnerable people. There are two aspects that I particularly welcome: the extension to 56 days; and the measures on the personal adviser and assessment. I hope that I will no longer have constituents in my surgery who are waiting for the arrival of the bailiffs as that is the only way they can declare themselves homeless under existing rules.

In Portsmouth, the average time spent in temporary accommodation is three to four months. I hope that under the new system created by the Bill, temporary accommodation could become unnecessary for the majority of homelessness cases in my city, saving the local authority money. Removing the threat of a prolonged fight to regain possession will also encourage private landlords to take on benefit claimants referred by the local authority. The measures in the Bill will therefore ease the need for temporary accommodation at both ends of the process. Private landlords will take on more tenants, and those who are given notice will more frequently be found a new tenancy without an interval.

I hope that local authorities will look on the Bill not as a burden, but as an opportunity. Many, including Portsmouth City Council, are already working on the Bill. I hope that it will pass smoothly through the other place and will return to us with few changes, unless they make things dramatically better.

I thank the Minister and his civil servants, and the charities, especially Crisis, for providing excellent briefings. Of course, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in particular for his many hours of hard work to get the Bill through.