Homelessness

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who has been a remarkable and outstanding champion of homeless people for many years. In a most dramatic and vivid way, she has brought home the sheer scale of human misery felt by hundreds of thousands of those we represent. The voice of homeless people has been heard in Parliament today.

Like my hon. Friend, I see the ever-lengthening queues of the desperate in my constituency: families trying to get a decent home at a price that they can afford who are being evicted; and those whose lives have come apart, who have spiralled down and ended up homeless on the streets. They are good men and women who deserve better in 21st-century England.

Homelessness and rough sleeping in 21st-century Britain, the seventh-richest nation on earth, are a disgrace and a scar on our society. Those were the sentiments of the Prime Minister when he was in opposition in 2009. Indeed, in August 2011, the Housing Minister said:

“Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is what first got me into politics”.

No one doubts the Minister’s desire to bring an end to homelessness and rough sleeping. In opposition, he set up the Conservative homelessness foundation. In government, he has set up a cross-Government working group on homelessness and introduced a “no second night out” policy. However, with sadness I have to say that as we have seen all too often with the Minister and the Government, the rhetoric and the reality are very different indeed.

On the Minister’s watch, the consequences of the Government’s economic, housing and benefits policies have been devastating. We now have the biggest housing crisis in a generation, and, at its heart, the depressing statistics of homelessness up by 14% and rough sleeping up by 23%. The truth is that homelessness is rising precisely because their economic and housing policies are failing.

I have some questions for the Housing Minister. Does he accept that the Government were warned that the 60% cut in investment in the 2010 comprehensive spending review would have catastrophic consequences and that they have led, as today’s figures from the Homes and Communities Agency have demonstrated, to a 68% collapse in the building of affordable houses? Does he accept that the Government were warned that the toxic combination of increasing rents in the private sector, collapsing affordable house building and ill-thought-through changes to the benefits system would mean thousands of families being uprooted, particularly in London? The private secretary to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government wrote last year that the cap and other housing benefit reforms could result in 40,000 people being made homeless and that the policy could cost more than it saved. Does the Minister accept that the Government were warned about the consequences of the biggest cuts to local government expenditure in history and the cuts to Supporting People?

As we have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) and the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) say eloquently, the consequences have been serious. The city of Birmingham, which I am proud to represent, has had the biggest cuts in local government history in the past two years: £312 million, including £15 million in cuts to the big society through cuts to the charitable and voluntary sectors.

In Birmingham, and throughout Britain, there have been cutbacks in services to homeless people. Again, the statistics are depressing; 58% of projects have received reduced funding, leading to a reduction of one in 10 staff— 1,400 people—caring for the homeless. The number of clients using day centres for the homeless has risen by nearly a third and there are 22% fewer empty beds on an average night. The research report, “SNAP 2012”, produced by Homeless Link, shows that there are 1,544 fewer bed spaces in 2012, compared to the previous year.

As a result of the Government’s actions—their failed economic policies—there is higher unemployment and the greatest squeeze on living standards in a generation, with families and individuals struggling to stay in their homes, whether owned or rented. Increasing numbers of people are presenting as homeless or are out on the street, not to mention the cuts to services that provide the safety net. There has been a catastrophic fall in construction, which is at the heart of the double-dip recession made in Downing street.

The Government’s failed housing policies are contributing to the growing housing crisis and the collapse in affordable house building. The private rented sector is defined by ever-increasing rents and, all too often, poor standards, with one in two homes in the sector not meeting the decent homes standard. Social housing providers are increasingly unsupported and their tenants shamefully demonised by Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North used powerful case studies to demonstrate eloquently that the combination of the Government’s failing housing and economic policies and their benefit changes is leading, as the Housing Minister was warned, to misery on a grand scale. Tenants are forced out of their private rented homes because of the housing benefit changes and councils cannot find anywhere to put them. Many landlords are increasingly leaving the housing benefit tenant market. Councils are told by the Government that tenants should not be sent elsewhere in the country, but councils cannot keep them locally, so tenants end up in hotels paid for by the taxpayer, costing the taxpayer more and leading to more misery for the tenants. That is the economics of the madhouse.

We Labour Members learnt in government that homelessness can only be tackled by addressing all the factors contributing to it. Above all, more homes are needed. In government, Labour delivered 2 million new homes—500,000 affordable homes—and introduced Supporting People, bringing together seven income streams from across central Government to give the necessary housing and related support, particularly for vulnerable people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale is right to say that as a consequence of Labour’s determination to tackle the scandal of homelessness and bad housing, there was, progressively, a 70% reduction in homelessness. That reduction has gone dramatically into reverse under this Government.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an incomprehensible lack of logic in the Government’s now telling local authorities that they cannot transfer people to other local authorities, when that is the inevitable conclusion of the Government’s policies? Indeed, Ministers highlighted that conclusion in respect of the welfare reform and housing benefit changes of the past two years.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is right. I have seen at first hand some utterly tragic cases resulting from those policies. For example, a young woman, who understandably chose to remain anonymous, appeared on the “Today” programme. She lived in Waltham Forest, was married to a professional man and they had a nine-year-old. The couple broke up and stayed close, but sadly he died. She then lost her home and ended up in temporary accommodation and was told that because there was no available alternative accommodation that the council could provide for her, she would have to go from Waltham Forest to Walsall. She said, “I can’t do it. My nine-year-old is distraught because of her dad’s death. She hasn’t gone to school for the last three months, with the agreement of the school, as she recovers. I go every day to my mum, who looks after her granddaughter while I train to get back into the world of work.” I do not mind admitting that after she told me that story, with its consequences and the pain that she felt, I was in tears. It is about time that Ministers faced up to the consequences experienced by the victims of their policies.

It appears that there is consensus in this Government that housing does not matter and should not be centre stage. Labour believes strongly—we know—that it does matter. Does the Housing Minister accept how important housing is to the economy? Construction accounts for 3% of gross domestic product, £91 billion of economic output and 1.5 million jobs. Does the Minister accept that it matters to health? The annual costs to the national health service of poor housing and homelessness have been assessed at £2.5 billion. Another depressing statistic shows that, on average, the homeless on the streets die 30 years younger.

Does the Minister accept that homelessness matters with regard to educational attainment? Again, the depressing evidence shows the impact on a generation of young people brought up in poor housing or temporary accommodation.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind hon. Members how many debates on housing the Opposition have called?

[Jack Dromey]

My predecessor and I have stood up for all that is decent in terms of putting housing centre stage, and fought hard on behalf of the homeless, the badly housed and the millions who need a decent home at a price that they can afford, whether to buy or to rent. The Housing Minister should not make flippant comments but, instead, take his responsibilities seriously, as Labour is doing.

[Grant Shapps]

That is none then—not a single debate.

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Jack Dromey]

We have—as the Government have not—put housing at the heart of our economic recovery plan to kick-start the economy and get it moving.

[Ms Buck]

We might reflect on the fact that, in a full-day Opposition debate, we discussed the impact of the housing benefit cuts on housing, in the context of the collapse in housing supply. We warned of the interaction of the policies bringing about exactly the conditions that we have been debating today.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is right, and I would compare our record with that of this Government at any time, including on what kind of action should be taken now. When there was global collapse in 2008, did we stand back? No, we did not. We acted on the one hand to keep people in their homes, avoiding the tide of repossessions to which my hon. Friend referred earlier, and on the other hand by way of the kick-start programme, which saw 110,000 homes built and 70,000 jobs and 3,000 apprenticeships created. To this day, the benefits of that programme are feeding through.

What do we see now? We see the reverse. We see a Government who have done scarcely anything, as a consequence of which we see today the depressing statistic that there has been a 68% fall in affordable house building. That is why we want the Minister to listen to our case for a repeat of the bank bonus tax, enabling us to start with 25,000 badly needed affordable homes, the creation of jobs for 100,000 young people and a cut in VAT on home improvements, which will both upgrade housing stock and create jobs in the economy. If we were in government, our argument is that we would do what this Government are refusing to do, which is to act: to raise standards in the rapidly growing private rented sector, protecting tenants and good landlords alike, to create a more stable, secure and affordable sector and to encourage investment in major new build in that sector. The Housing Minister has gone in exactly the opposite direction; for example, repealing crucial protections that Labour put in place when in government, dismissing them as red tape. Much needed protection for tenants, many of whom are suffering in the private rented sector, is not red tape.

In conclusion, what strikes me as the most shocking thing about homelessness is not that it exists in a rich nation such as ours but that we know how to solve it. Therefore, I hope that the Minister has not completely forgotten what brought him into politics and that, instead, he listens to the voice of those concerned, such as the verdict on homelessness in the second edition of the powerful “Housing Report” produced by the National Housing Federation, Shelter and the Chartered Institute of Housing, whose annual conference he and I will be addressing later this week. I hope that the Minister hears the report’s assessment:

“The large increase in homeless acceptances and rough sleepers is deeply troubling. Ministers need to respond urgently to this growing problem, which could be exacerbated by further cuts to Housing Benefit in 2013.”

It is true that there was once a noble tradition in the Conservative party that took housing obligations seriously. It was the tradition of Harold Macmillan. Sadly, that tradition now appears to be all but extinct in the modern Conservative party.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing the debate, as well as my thanks to her for understanding my predicament this morning, trapped as I was when trying to reach the House, our inclement summer weather not letting me make the journey.

The housing debate is incredibly important, and homelessness even more so. I pay huge tribute to the hon. Lady for her long-term commitment to this subject, going back many years. Housing does not always get the attention that it rightly deserves, whether from Government or Opposition—I will say more about that in a moment—but not so with the hon. Lady, who is a passionate advocate on housing and in particular on homelessness, on which I have heard her speak often over many years.

We need to set the context. Far from being a recession “made in Downing street”, as the rather glib soundbite from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) suggests, sensible people looking at today’s circumstances appreciate that we need only to look across the water to see what is happening in Europe—the bail-out in Spain and events in France, Greece and so many other places—to understand that the problem is global and not one experienced only in the UK. In fact, the problem has a source, a reason, a cause, which was spending money that we did not have today and expecting our children to pay it back in the future. That was unsustainable; it could not be maintained forever. Only a fool imagines that we can spend money that we do not have forever. We had to do something about it, which means reducing the deficit in every area of the economy. Yes, that includes reducing the capital available to build homes—there is no point pretending that that has not been affected. Our great challenge has been to reduce the deficit while finding ways to increase the amount of house building, which, as we would not know from the contributions of the Opposition Members, fell to its lowest level since the 1920s under the previous Administration’s plans, resulting in a huge housing crisis.

We must look at the overall housing picture to understand the situation in a bit more detail. We have such enormous pressure on housing in this country because house prices were able to double in only 10 years, which is precisely what happened between 1997 and 2007. Lo and behold, what a great surprise, we end up with a large proportion of our fellow citizens finding it almost impossible to buy a house. As a result, rents and the number of people trapped in their housing position grow and grow exponentially. That did not happen overnight but over a decade and more. A lack of house building is at the very heart and is the very root of the problems of homelessness.

[Jack Dromey]

I am aware that the Minister struggles with his statistics, but perhaps he can take the opportunity today to confirm his Department’s own statistics. Under a Labour Government, there were 2 million new homes, 1 million more mortgage holders, 0.5 million affordable homes and, as a consequence of the kick-start programme in precisely the same kind of difficult economic circumstances as we now face, 110,000 new homes, 70,000 jobs and 3,000 apprenticeships. That is a record to be proud of. Can the Minister confirm those statistics?

[Grant Shapps]

The problem with statistics, as the hon. Gentleman should know, is that they can be played any which way we choose. For example, six months ago, when the Home and Communities Agency produced the house building figures for the previous six months, the hon. Gentleman made great play of a 97% reduction in the amount of affordable housing starts, although it was a natural consequence of the switch from the old programme to the new affordable rent programme. In the light of analysis of the figures six months on, he has failed to come to the House to explain that there has been 3,500% increase in starts based on his measure. I agree that we are not building sufficient homes in this country, but I am not happy with him ducking and weaving and using one set of figures six months ago and a different set of figures today in order to make a point.

[Jack Dromey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Grant Shapps]

I would like to make progress on the essence of this debate, because I have a feeling that we will never agree on the housing stats, although it is undeniable that house building had slumped to its lowest level since the 1920s, and starts were up by 29% in 2011 compared with 2009, so some progress has been made.

I want to focus on the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Westminster North—I have caught up on the notes—and to address some of the issues. I heard clearly her description of some of the people who are trapped in homelessness, and there is no doubt that the anxiety and pressure is immense. We have all seen that in our constituencies. I have been the Housing Minister or the shadow Minister for five years, and I challenge the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) on who has visited the most homelessness projects. However, he is spot on to say that when one hears such stories and understands what is going on in people’s lives, it is often surprising and even shocking to realise how little of the problem is simply down to the roof over one’s head. I have yet to meet someone who is homeless and who does not have a catastrophic tale of complex circumstances such as family break-up, financial problems, health problems, sometimes mental health problems, having been in prison and not having got their life back together, and sometimes following active service. There is almost always a combination of some of those contributory factors.

I decided early on, following our work with the Homelessness Foundation, which was set up in 2008, that we need to make Government Departments work better together. That is why I set up the ministerial working group on homelessness. It is the first time that Ministers from different Departments—eight of them—have come together to work on these issues. They include the Department for Work and Pensions, which works closely with us.

I think we must accept that the Government and the Opposition start from slightly different positions. I passionately believe in a safety net to ensure that people are not made homeless, and Members on both sides of the House can be proud that this country probably has the best safety net in the entire world.

[Grant Shapps]

I will give way in a moment. It is a tribute to the Opposition as well as the Government that in this country we do not see families and children homeless on the streets. We do see single people homeless on the streets, and I will talk about the measures that I am taking to try to address that problem.

When people talk about homelessness, there is a confusing set of definitions; that has come out in our debate today. For example, when we talk about homelessness, we are usually talking about homelessness acceptances: people who have been accepted as having a right to be helped and who, in other words, will not be homeless because they will be provided with a home. Until now, that has been an offer in the social sector of a home for life, which more often than not can be passed on to a future generation.

It is still true, although one would not know it from the Opposition’s comments—I even wonder whether they are aware of it—that homelessness today is lower than it has been in 28 of the past 30 years, and half the average level during the 13 years of the previous Administration. I do not want to paint an overly rosy picture, because I am alive to the many real pressures and difficulties for families and family budgets posed by the extended downturn and the world economic problems. Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Rochdale, rightly talked about not playing politics with these issues, but he then proceeded to play politics. It is not simple to resolve the problems, and the Government must find the right responses.

[Jack Dromey]

Does the Minister accept that his statement is misleading, because where we are now is a consequence of the 70% reduction under a Labour Government, and that is now in reverse with a 14% increase in statutory homelessness and a 23% increase in rough sleeping?

[Grant Shapps]

One of the problems is that it depends where the figures are taken from. The high point in the number of people in bed and breakfast accommodation was in 2004, which was a long time—seven years—into the previous Administration. We may say that there was a big reduction in, for example, the number of homeless people in temporary accommodation, and that may have been from halfway through the previous Labour Administration, but we must be very careful when trading figures. I am much more concerned about the outcome for people on the ground, and when I talk about people on the ground, I sometimes mean people at the bottom of the pile who are sleeping on the streets.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington and other Labour Members feel some shame that the true size of the cohort of people living on the nation’s streets was buried under the previous system of counting. For example, if someone was sitting upright in a sleeping bag, they were not counted, and they had to be there at a certain time and so on to be counted. One of the first things I did was rip up the system that tried to claim that only 424 people in the country were sleeping rough. Any observer with any knowledge of the system, let alone hon. Members who had spent a lot of time studying homelessness, knew that that was nonsense. I have tried to reveal the true size and scale of the problem and not to bury it or hide it away, but I want to go further.

Reference has been made to the importance of the Supporting People budget. Despite the enormous pressure on reducing budgets to deal with the record deficit, we have kept almost the entire cash amount for the Supporting People programme. In fact, there was a 1% reduction in Supporting People over four years—£6.5 billion. I know that there have been problems on the ground—the hon. Member for Westminster North described them clearly—about the way in which Supporting People money has been spent. I understand that there are challenges when such funding is not ring-fenced—it was not ring-fenced in 2009—and that with other pressures the Supporting People budget has been pressurised on the ground, but it is not that the money has not been going in. Nor is it the case that we have reduced by even a penny support for homelessness. The homelessness budget was £400 million—£100 million a year—for the spending review period, and that has not been reduced.

I do not know whether it has escaped the attention of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, but during the past year, I took another £70 million, which was not in the spending review and aimed at homelessness, and put it into homelessness programmes, because I passionately believe in maintaining that fantastic homelessness support in this country. When we talk about people being homeless, we generally mean that they have been accepted as being homeless so that they can get a home, but there is a category of single people who do not receive help and support through our system. If a single person—the sort of people we are familiar with from our constituency surgeries—turns up at their local authority, under the rules that have applied until now they would simply be told, “I’m sorry, you are not covered as a preference category. We can do nothing for you.” That is not good enough, and I am sure that other hon. Members agree, so I have made £18.5 million available in the last few months to ensure that tailored advice is available for individuals, in addition to £10 million to Crisis to do the same.

I would dearly like to make the category of single people without dependants a preference category, and that should be the objective of any Government when money allows. I have not only protected all the preference categories that Opposition Members talked about—the work of Louise Casey was praised, and I echo that—I have added to those preference categories and I am trying to go further.

It is crazy that anyone who sees someone sleeping rough in this country must call the local authority; they may or may not get a response, and will not know what has happened afterwards. That is not good enough, so I am setting up a national helpline and a website to ensure that assistance can be brought directly to that individual. It will be run with the assistance of Homeless Link and will be in place by Christmas, and I hope that the whole House will join me in supporting it. When we see somebody sleeping rough, we have a terrible moment of dilemma about whether we should try to assist them directly—even if we do not know whether the money will be used in that person’s best interest—or do something else for them. Now we will be able to use the helpline, and information will be available so that people can see whether that person was helped and in what way. I think that is important.

We have also announced the “no second night out” initiative nationwide. “No second night out” came from the first cross-ministerial working group report, and I hope that Opposition Members will welcome it. The £70 million that I mentioned includes £20 million to back that programme, and it means that nobody in this country who is found sleeping on the street should ever experience a second night in that situation. I slept rough for a night to see what it was like: it is frightening and one feels vulnerable. We do not want any of our citizens to be in that position, and there is no reason for them to be because we have also allocated £42.5 million of funding to the hostel system, to ensure that new and refurbished hostel places are available.

The problem in this country, and particularly in London where we have the excellent combined homelessness and information network—CHAIN—database, is generally not about whether a hostel place is available on any given night, but about finding the individual, connecting them with the hostel, and sometimes persuading them to go into it. “No second night out” and the national reporting line is designed to help deal with that, and I am pleased to say that it has been taken up in Merseyside, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. It is an excellent, practical example of the way that we are trying to work.

[Grant Shapps]

No contribution from the hon. Gentleman would be complete without a reference to his own time as leader of housing in Hammersmith and Fulham. I think, however, that that council has a good record of looking for constructive measures that help to take people off the housing waiting list. For example, it was one of the forerunners in a programme that I launched recently with the Prime Minister to sell 100,000 homes under the right-to-buy programme. Critically, and unlike the previous programme, every penny of that money will be used to build more homes for affordable rent, and that seems to be a great solution. Not only can a family achieve their aspiration of purchasing their own property, but they can do so in the knowledge that somebody else is being taken off the housing waiting list. I have yet to hear whether the Opposition support the return to the right to buy, with the money going towards affordable houses.

[Jack Dromey]

rose—

[Grant Shapps]

I will happily give way so that I can understand the hon. Gentleman’s policy.

[Jack Dromey]

A straight answer to a straight question. Labour has supported the right to buy, but—crucially—we are not convinced about the bogus figures put forward that somehow suggest there will be one-for-one replacement. Councils are not able to retain the bulk of the receipts, and there is no guarantee that if a home is sold in a local authority area, a matching home will be built in the same area. We therefore fear that we will see a significant reduction in available social council stock, without any new build to compensate. Time will tell, but the sad reality will soon dawn.