Supported Housing

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma? This is the first debate I have contributed to with you in the Chair, and I very much hope it will not be the last. I note with pleasure how my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) opened the debate. The two Committees are fully signed up to much of what he said. I thank the members of the Committees for the work they did. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—he is my hon. Friend on many topics—for leading the Work and Pensions Committee in this joint endeavour. I hope he will keep a longer-term interest in the subject. I am so pleased to see the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), because he has had a long-term interest in the area, initiating debates and following things up in the Commons. All that work helps to create the tide of reform that we want.

I also welcome the Minister. Normally people say, “We hope Ministers come to their Departments with open and empty minds”, but I very much hope she is coming to this position with an open and full mind—she will be—because from her experience she knows the answers to many of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East. I hope the Minister clings on to that and educates her civil servants, rather than letting them do the job that they think they do so well of educating Ministers. Mr Sharma, I told you that I am chairing a roundtable in the House on modern slavery and so cannot be here for the whole debate, but I will return, I hope, to hear the Minister and the shadow Minister summing up our contributions.

I thank the Government for their movement in their response on sheltered rent on the key issue of how rents are paid in the longer term, for up to two years. Those rents will be met from state benefits, which is a real improvement. Mention has been made of at least three areas to which we would like the Minister to turn her full mind, both in this debate and in following through. The first area is the real concern about tenancies of from one month to two years. The money is ring-fenced at the moment, but what further guarantee can she give that there will be security of that funding, given that those commitments will outlast the lives of individual Governments? I look forward to hearing from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), on the commitment that the Opposition will make.

The second area is domestic violence refuges. If we stand back, we see that the Government’s response goes back to the Elizabethan Poor Law. They say that this is the responsibility of local government, but local authorities naturally feel that the councils from which families have come should be responsible for paying the bills. We all know that people escape their original parish, as the old Poor Law would have said, because it is not safe for them to reside in that parish. I underscore strongly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East made: we need a national system of funding that can support a national network. It is fine to talk the talk and say that we are serious about giving people a safe haven from the violence inflicted on them, but we want Government action. The best way of establishing a national network would be through a national agreement on funding.

The final area, which, naturally, my hon. Friend also touched on, is payment for emergency temporary accommodation—or, as those of us who have grown old in the trade would call it, bed and breakfasts. The Committee heard from Neil Couling, the boss-person of universal credit, back in September. He said that this payment would be a locally administered housing benefit. Since then, there has been a wonderful quietness on that front. Why? I hope that the Minister, whatever stick she has for poking into places to stir people up, will give a commitment in this debate to going back to see why universal credit is not delivering on those three fronts.

I end by again thanking the members of both Committees for their work, and particularly the hon. Member for Gloucester for leading on the Department for Work and Pensions side in this incredibly successful report. It was successful in the sense of keeping us all together, and partially successful in the light of the Government response. In summing up, we hope that we will be able to record total success on all fronts.

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[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I am pleased to speak in this debate as co-chair of the joint inquiry into the future of supported housing. It was a pleasure to work with the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and members of both Select Committees on the inquiry. It was a privilege to co-chair the inquiry on a part of the housing sector that makes a significant difference to the lives of those who rely on it.

The inquiry heard extensive evidence from residents in supported housing in formal oral evidence sessions, informal evidence sessions and visits and as written evidence. I have also visited several supported housing settings, both in my constituency and further afield, to speak to residents and providers about their experiences on the ground.

Supported housing enables a wide range of residents who face particular challenges in life to live independently and with dignity, and it enables them to access the support they need. It delivers substantial savings to the public sector, which are estimated to be £3.5 billion each year. Without supported housing, many residents would end up more reliant on the NHS at a much greater cost, or in some cases in the criminal justice system.

The Government’s approach to supported housing over the past two years has thrown the sector into disarray. The initial announcement that the local housing allowance cap will apply to supported housing, followed by a year of uncertainty, caused providers to put 85% of planned new schemes on hold. Many providers stated that they feared that they would have to withdraw from the supported housing sector altogether because the funding simply would not stack up. Our inquiry clearly demonstrated the financial impact that the LHA cap would have on the sector. In particular, it highlighted the fact that the calculation of LHA, in relation to private sector rents for general needs housing in local housing market areas, made no sense at all for the funding of supported housing. There is no direct or necessary relationship between private sector rents in a given area and the cost of delivering supported housing.

I am pleased that the Government accepted that argument and announced last year both that the LHA cap would not apply to any type of supported housing, and that a new type of sheltered rent would be introduced to cover the cost of sheltered housing. I have spoken to several providers since that announcement, and although it is welcome, they have many questions about the details of the proposal. They are anxious to know how the formula for sheltered rent will work, which schemes will be deemed to be sheltered housing, whether there will be a separate sheltered rent rate for extra care housing, and what provision there will be for sheltered rent to increase to keep pace with inflation and increasing demands. I hope that the Minister is able to answer some of those questions today.

I want to focus on two remaining areas of the inquiry report and the Government’s response. The first is the Government’s refusal to accept the inquiry’s recommendation to establish a national network of domestic violence refuges. Refuges are unique in the supported housing sector because to a large extent they serve women from outside the local authority area in which they are situated. The current system relies on local authorities’ mutual recognition of the need for refuge provision and their willingness to fund provision that they know will not generally be used by local women.

The cuts to local government funding over the past seven years have put that arrangement under great strain. Many councils feel that they have no choice but to make cuts to their provision, which is creating a postcode lottery in many areas of the country. For example, there are no longer any domestic violence refuges in the county of Cumbria. Having looked carefully at the evidence provided by Women’s Aid and others, the inquiry reached the view that the postcode lottery could be addressed only if the Government committed to establish a national network. Full devolution of funding to local authorities risks having the opposite effect. I therefore ask the Minister to reconsider the Government’s rejection of that recommendation and to commit to working with Women’s Aid to establish a national network of refuges to guarantee a place for every woman and child across the country who needs one.

[Frank Field]

That links to the point made by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). It is possible that the local initiatives that he praised so much will continue to operate, but they need funding. They are not dependent on local funding. Such measures often do not work unless they are supported strongly locally, but the funding is key.