Homelessness Reduction Bill (Second sitting)

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

All those are challenges right across Departments. I was pleased to receive a letter from the Prime Minister recently in which she indicated that homelessness is an issue right across Government, not just a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government. The crux of the matter is the advice duty in clause 2. Without proper advice offered at an early stage, people risk becoming homeless. We need to do more, through this Bill, to improve that situation.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I am pleased to see this clause in the Bill. I particularly welcome the emphasis that runs throughout the Bill on shifting resources into prevention, so that we stop as many as people as possible becoming homeless in the first place.

The Bill will drive a change in culture and we need legislation to drive that change in many local authorities. The culture that prevails has come about because the existing requirements on local authorities, as well as the pressure of resources, force councils into a position in which they support the people they have to support. Resources are not currently available to support all the people councils have to support, and it is necessarily the case that many people fall outside the scope of local authority support. I agree entirely that local authorities should have the flexibility to devise and design services at local level that are appropriate to the needs that present themselves.

The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole indicated that he does not believe the provision of advice services constitutes a set of new burdens on local authorities, but we delude ourselves if we think the provision of meaningful advice does not constitute a series of resourcing requirements that result in a set of new burdens on local authorities. It is important that the Committee acknowledges what we mean and the implications of the clause for local authorities. We should ensure that the clause can be effective in delivering the outcomes that we all want.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. I too heard and saw the evidence that that Committee received during the homelessness inquiry. We saw evidence of local authorities being unable to support many people presenting as homeless in two different categories. We saw evidence of very poor practice—that came through strongly from the Crisis mystery shopper exercise. Some local authorities were simply not interested in helping or advising anybody they did not have to advise. In some cases, even people eligible for support were not receiving support of any kind of quality or meaningfulness. We also saw overwhelming evidence that the systems that exist to support homeless people in local authorities are at breaking point—they are overwhelmed.

The problem faced by many local authorities is to do with the wider housing crisis that we face in this country. We saw evidence of advice that was not up to date, as other hon. Members have said. Referral to third-party organisations that are already overstretched is a common form of advice. Local authorities are saying, “Go and see the local advice agency, go to the local law centre, go to the citizens advice bureau.” Residents turning up to those places find that they have to wait in a long queue and that they cannot get an appointment immediately, and then find that those agencies are not in a position to provide meaningful advice because the housing that people ultimately need is simply not available. We saw evidence that advice was being provided for people to contact organisations that could and should be able to provide alternative housing, but which themselves had been forced to increase their threshold for accessing their support.

I have an example of a constituent who was given a list of organisations that she could telephone who would provide alternative housing because that was what she needed. She phoned them. As a single person, she was not considered to be in priority need, and every one of those organisations required a nomination from a local authority in order to access their services. Such advice is not in any way meaningful.

I want to ensure that we introduce clause 2, and that it will result in the provision of meaningful advice to people seeking support from local authorities. The provision of meaningful advice is to a large degree about the provision of meaningful options. I can say to my constituent, “I advise you to contact your local authority to seek their support with housing.” The local authority will say, “We simply do not have any social housing available and we have a list of many thousands of people already waiting for that housing.” That is not meaningful advice for me to provide to my constituent. We need to focus on the issue of meaningfulness.

Two things are important in ensuring that we deliver: first, we need to be clear that, in introducing a new duty, it cannot be acceptable for a local authority to discharge their duty, and to be considered to have discharged their duty, by providing advice that is poor quality or out of date, or not the best possible advice that can be provided. I flag up to Government Members the need for the provision of detailed guidance to accompany the Bill to make it clear to local authorities what constitutes the discharge of their duty to provide advice. The guidance would also make it clear that the Government will not stand for the continued practice of passing the buck to external agencies who cannot themselves provide that advice, resulting in a situation in which people are not meaningfully helped. Detailed guidance is important.

Secondly, we need to locate the clause firmly within the wider debate about the expansion of housing provision, including social housing, and the expansion of support for advice and support agencies that people need when they are at risk of becoming homeless. I wish to assert my view that the clause imposes new burdens on local authorities, and I would like a response from the Government on the question of what resources will be made available to enable those new burdens to be met. Otherwise we give ourselves a pat on the back in this House that we have enacted something that talks about the provision of advice. If the measure does not make the necessary difference on the ground, we have failed and we will be held to account. With those remarks, I am pleased to support the clause.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be involved in the debate on clause 2, which in many ways is at the heart of the Bill. If we get clause 2 right, we will have made a big difference in reducing homelessness. Following on from comments made by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, including the hon. Member for Sheffield South East, the point I wish to make is that it is about ensuring that good practice is enshrined. As other hon. Members have said, good practice is not always followed.

On behalf of the vulnerable, and as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on complex needs and dual diagnosis, I welcome the Bill and the duty to provide advisory services. Those groups of people often miss out and do not properly access the advice that they need. If they could access advice earlier at a preventive stage, it could prevent greater complexity, greater cost and crisis management.

I recognise that the Bill enshrines good practice and codes of guidance, as has been said. However, if properly applied, the Bill also places an additional burden on statutory services. If one looks at the example of the Bill, one sees the burden applies not least to persons leaving hospital. St Mungo’s has been particularly active in highlighting the scandal that 70% of homeless people who are in hospital are then discharged on to the streets. That must end, and the Bill must help it to end. Local authorities including mine in Enfield sign charters, but it is one thing to sign up to a charter and another to ensure that there is a link between health, social care and housing—that needs to happen and often does not—to ensure that support and advice is provided at the point when people need it most on leaving hospital. That is why it is welcome to see that explicitly included in the Bill. Frankly, it is neglectful that that does not happen and we need that statutory duty and provision.

I welcome, through the good endeavours of the Select Committee, the addition of victims of abuse and domestic violence. I pay tribute to Agenda, which is a charity representing the interests of women and girls at risk. I understand that it gave evidence to the Select Committee and made the point that the reality is, sadly, that the victims of abuse are not getting the proper advice that they need, which we will know from our constituency case work.

Indeed, in my surgery on Saturday, a victim of domestic violence came to me and said that she needed desperately to move from her house with her young child. Recently, her shed had been burned down by her abuser and her car had been vandalised. She went to Enfield Council to seek advice and was met, sadly, with indifference. I recognise that within Enfield Council there are some excellent housing officers, and in many ways they are overstretched, but she was met with a yawn and someone saying, “Well, we can’t help everyone.” That attitude towards my constituent in a state of absolute vulnerability is shameful and must end, which the Bill will help to do. She has simply been told, “We will get back to you in 10 days,” but then there is another 10 days and another 10 days. She has not heard anything from the council in terms of meaningful advice. The Bill and the clause will help.

May I draw attention to one detail? Within the draft Bill and what would have been the new section 179, people with a learning disability were included as a group, although the provision was not limited to them. That is not included in the Bill before the Committee. Hon. Members will know from experience that those with learning difficulties and disabilities are particularly vulnerable and have problems accessing meaningful advice. They may not fall within priority need or appear at first communication to do so, but because of their learning disabilities they may not be able to communicate those needs properly. There is therefore a need for specific and meaningful advice for them. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the Minister to help me to provide reassurance that the category of

“persons suffering from a mental illness or impairment”

properly includes people with learning disabilities and that, in practical terms, they will receive the meaningful advice they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I will turn the point around and say that the objective of the Bill is either to pay lip service to a problem or it is designed to tackle a problem. When individuals in housing need, owed duties by the state, present themselves, they will receive advice and assistance. That point was made by a number of hon. Members on both sides of the Committee in relation to the list in clause 2. That is not an exhaustive list, though it could be quite onerous. We will later consider, under clause 10, the way that other public authorities should assist local authorities in discharging their duty, and that is the other side of the equation. I will not say anything more on that because I am conscious of the time. I will simply say that if we are going to look at the different approach that local authorities need to take, we should be as comprehensive as possible.

If I may be allowed two sentences, I think they will evolve neatly into talking on clause stand part. I am conscious that, as we will probably find in every clause, there are caveats from homelessness charities that the proposed legislation does not go far enough and caveats from local authorities that it places undue burdens. The AHAS does not see the need for a plan that it believes would be extremely onerous in the bureaucracy, the drawing up, the modifying and the review of that. Shelter would say that there is no statutory right to a review on the plan and that that itself should be reviewed. I think we have probably got it about right. There is a need for a plan. I do not accept what local authorities say on that point. I am conscious of the example that the LGA gave in relation to this. It used the example of Stoke-on-Trent Council, which believes that the administrative costs around prevention work will require four more homelessness officers at about £35,000 a year each, just in relation to dealing with those issues.

I will stop there, Mr Chope, by urging support for the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East. We are, a little bit, creating a wish list and talking in a vacuum until the Minister makes clear what resources he intends to provide.

[Helen Hayes]

I wish to speak briefly in support of amendment 1, which arises directly from evidence we heard in the Communities and Local Government Committee, as the Chairman of that Committee has already said. It also speaks directly to the experiences of my constituents and some of the most devastating cases in my time as a Member of this House and, before that, as a local councillor.

As Members well know, homelessness is one of the most devastating circumstances that can befall someone in the UK today. In such challenging circumstances, people will often hang on to every little bit of stability that they can, in particular for their children. Which of us would not do that? My local authorities do everything possible to place people in borough when they have to provide families with temporary accommodation. When they place people outside the borough, they do everything they can to find accommodation in neighbouring boroughs, so people do not have to travel long distances.

The first of two cases that I particularly recall involved a family placed in temporary accommodation in Edmonton who were travelling with their children to primary school in Dulwich every day. That is a very long distance, by any stretch of the imagination. The train would have been the quickest way to make the journey, but they could not afford that, because they were a family facing homelessness. They had to leave their temporary accommodation in Edmonton at 5.30 every morning to travel with their children to my constituency for school, because they were part of a stable school community and knew that their children were receiving good support there.

More recently, a family living in temporary accommodation —a hostel in Dulwich—were travelling every day to Leytonstone with their daughter to attend primary school. Similarly, because they were a family in destitution and without any money, mum was sitting on a park bench in Leytonstone for the duration of the school day before collecting her daughter and travelling back to Dulwich. Such circumstances are devastating.

The other sets of circumstances covered by the amendment are, straightforwardly, invest-to-save provisions. I can recall countless constituents who have come to my surgeries to tell me that the local authority is suggesting that they move to accommodation further away, but they are fearful of what that would mean in terms of loss of support from their family and community networks. Furthermore, most often, they are constituents with mental health difficulties. As we know, and it seemed self-evident when I was talking to them, if they were forced to move from their support networks, their families and the people they rely on to maintain some stability in their lives, there would be additional costs. Not only would those individuals be much more likely to be forced into a crisis, but there would be additional costs to the NHS and to social services arising from people being moved away from their informal networks of support.

The final set of circumstances covered by the amendment involves people who are in employment. We all applaud anyone facing homelessness who manages to sustain their employment. That is a difficult enough thing to achieve in the best of circumstances, but if as a consequence of homelessness people are forced to move a long distance from their employment, so that they could not afford the travel costs or time, the burden would become unsustainable. That, too, would be a false economy. The state should be doing everything to ensure that, where possible, employment can be sustained.

For those reasons, I hope that the promoter and the Government will accept the amendment, because the matters that it covers are so important that they should be on the face of the Bill.

[Mr Jones]

On amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East, local housing authorities must already have regard to the significance of any disruption that would be caused by the location of the accommodation to the employment, caring responsibilities or education of the person or members of the person’s household under article 2 of the Suitability of Accommodation (England) Order 2012. I therefore do not agree that an amendment to repeat that point is necessary.

To expand on that and to reassure the hon. Gentleman, local authorities must by law take account of the factors included in a suitability order. If an authority acts illegally, as he pointed out, households would have redress by review and on appeal. My Department intervened in a Supreme Court case on just this point to ensure that the order and the guidance are followed.