Homelessness Reduction Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

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

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

I welcome the Bill, and I want to add my tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for taking on this subject and for the diligence and commitment he has shown in seeing the Bill through. I also welcome the process of the Bill. I have been pleased to be closely involved from the beginning, taking part in the inquiry as a member of the Select Committee and also serving on the Bill Committee. This is an excellent example of evidence-based legislation.

The Select Committee saw undeniable evidence that the problem of homelessness is increasing at an exponential rate and that the current system is not working. The Bill will play an important role in setting some of that right. This is a principled reform that will set the basis on which homeless people receive support on the right footing. It is right that local authorities should have a responsibility—and indeed a statutory duty—to intervene earlier when residents are threatened with homelessness, to provide help and support and, wherever possible, to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. This is the compassionate thing to do, and it is what a decent society demands, but it is also the cost-effective thing to do. When someone becomes homeless, the personal cost to them and the many different costs to the public sector rise to a level that we simply cannot afford. Money spent propping people up and dealing with a situation that should never have arisen in the first place is not money well spent.

It is also right that more people should be eligible to receive support than is currently the case, and this legislation will help in that regard. We have all had examples in our constituencies of people, usually single people, who common decency demands should receive support but who are not eligible to receive it under the current system. The Bill will help to address that problem. It is also absolutely the case that the culture of work around support for homeless people should change, as well as the practice. The Select Committee saw evidence of significant levels of gatekeeping by local authorities, and of people being treated in ways that are simply unacceptable. They were made to feel that they were somehow to blame for their predicament or that they were a problem or just a statistic. Witnesses described the dehumanising effects of being in the current system, and it is absolutely right that this legislation seeks to change that.

I support the Bill on its own terms and I believe that it will make a significant difference to the nature of the support that homeless people receive. However, we cannot for one minute kid ourselves that by supporting a piece of legislation that has the words “homelessness reduction” in its title we are solving the problem of the housing crisis in this country. I cannot speak about the Bill without speaking in the same breath about the wider context of the housing crisis. This Government’s record on housing is shameful. Under Labour, rough sleeping fell by 75% in 11 years. Under this Government and the coalition Government, it doubled in just five years and it has gone up again by a further 30% in the last year alone. The number of people in temporary accommodation is rising, and the experience in my constituency is that homelessness is becoming more intractable for those who find themselves in that predicament. Individuals and households are in temporary accommodation for longer and it is much harder for them to secure the affordable accommodation they need. That is about the supply of new homes and, more importantly, of secure, high-quality, genuinely affordable homes.

People face insecurity in the private rented sector, and I urge the Government to take reform of the private rented sector seriously. If someone decides to become a landlord, their primary responsibility should be to their tenant under the terms of the tenancy agreement, but the problem is that far too many people are living under tenancies that are not fit for purpose and do not provide the security that they need. While we wait for new homes to be built, reform of the private rented sector would make a rapid difference to people facing the terrible situation of homelessness. If more people had security in the private rented sector, fewer people would present to our hard-pressed councils’ homelessness departments for help and support. The LHA cap, uncertainty around funding for supported housing, the bedroom tax, the forced sale of council homes and many other aspects of Government housing policy are simply not helping to deliver the secure, affordable homes that we need to solve the problem of homelessness.

Funding for the Bill’s provisions is the second issue that I want to flag up. I welcome the Minister’s assurances about reviewing the funding and how the Bill works in practice. I accept that there are many unknowns about the new burdens that the Bill introduces and that a greater focus on prevention is expected to save councils money, but the Government’s working to date lacks clarity about what councils will be expected to use the funding for. Will it be for additional staffing costs only, or will it enable the provision of additional support to help people bridge a gap if they are finding it difficult to pay their rent for a period of time? Serious doubts exist about whether the funding will be enough.

I am particularly worried on behalf of Lambeth and Southwark Councils about the severe problems and pressure that they face. Some 5,000 children in Lambeth—more than 1,500 households—will spend tonight in temporary accommodation. While the Bill will help the councils to provide more support to families to prevent them from becoming homeless, the system is clogged up to the point of being at a standstill. We all want councils to be provided with sufficient resources to implement the new duties in a way that enables them to be effective. I hope that the Government will use this process of developing legislation in a private Member’s Bill on the basis of evidence through the Select Committee process as a precedent for their approach to housing in the future. They should look at the evidence of where the current system is simply not working and take decisive action on the wider contributors to our housing crisis.

I end by once again offering my congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrow East. I thank Crisis and the other homelessness charities that provided input and supported the Bill. I also thank the Minister for his support and for seeing the Bill through. Finally, I thank my Front-Bench colleagues and the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for their excellent contributions and for scrutinising and pressing the Government on this most important issue.