Homelessness Reduction Bill

James Berry Excerpts

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

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I want to say how pleased I am to be here to see the passage of this very important Bill, particularly as I am sitting just in front of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who put his case, as he did on Second Reading, with passion, with conviction, with real dedication and with real knowledge about this cause.

I also want to thank Crisis and Shelter for all their work behind the scenes and for their public advocacy, and Members have turned up to speak to the Bill and to ensure its passage through the House. I know of the great work that Crisis, in particular, does, because my mum spent Christmas volunteering with it two years ago and had a really fantastic time. I would thoroughly recommend volunteering to all Members of the House.

The Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), were right when they said that legislation alone would not be sufficient to tackle homelessness. We do need legislation, and that is why we are here today—to pass the first significant piece of legislation on homelessness for 40 years. This legislation will, among other things, end the nonsense that I hear time and time again in my advice surgeries, where 40% of the cases I see are about housing: that tenants facing eviction must be made to wait for a bailiff’s notice before receiving homelessness protection from the council.

As well as legislation, to tackle homelessness we need money from the Government and involvement from third sector organisations. Having convened a homelessness summit in Kingston with our many third sector organisations, council officers, the leader of Kingston Council and the lead member for housing, thereby gaining a lot of knowledge of the local processes, practices and needs, I was able to lobby the Government for homelessness funding with, I think, some authority. I am pleased that Kingston is part of a tri-borough homelessness prevention trailblazer area that is to receive £1 million of Government funding to tackle homelessness. This is great news for the Royal Borough of Kingston, which in virtually every funding formula applied by the Government, be it the revenue support grant or the schools funding formula, does not do very well. It was dismissed as a “leafy borough” by the noble Lord Prescott when he sat where my hon. Friend the Minister sits today, but that woefully fails to recognise the fact that it has pockets of social deprivation as bad as those in any other area of London—and yes, it has rough sleeping, which we must tackle.

Third sector organisations are, and have always been, vital in the fight against homelessness and in homelessness prevention. It is notable that many of these are faith-based organisations where people, as part of their worship and devotion, give service to the most needy in their local community. In Kingston, that includes Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness; the Joel Community Project; the YMCA; Churches Together, which offers up churches as night shelters in the winter; and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. I thank all those organisations, and others I have not mentioned, for their work, in collaboration with the council, to tackle homelessness in Kingston. I look forward to working with all of them, and with Kingston’s Conservative council, in implementing the provisions of this Bill, and working out how best to spend the trailblazer funding we have been granted by the Government to end the disgrace of homelessness in Kingston and in our country as a whole.