Homelessness Reduction Bill

John Healey Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 28th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk). He has spoken this morning with a combination of policy expertise and personal experience. He made a telling point towards the end of his speech about the priority that the Bill gives to young people leaving care, which I really welcome. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on his Bill and also on the way in which he has gone about securing it. His sponsors are all members of the Communities and Local Government Committee, including my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and for Leicester West (Liz Kendall). Together, they have produced the first ever prelegislative scrutiny report of a private Member’s Bill. That has been helpful, in that the Bill before us has been significantly amended as a result of the Select Committee’s report.

The Bill is well supported, and there have been good briefings on it by campaign charities including Shelter, St Mungo’s and, above all, Crisis, for which it has become something of a crusade in recent months. I am glad that we got confirmation in the House on Monday from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government that the Government intended to back the Bill. That is a tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). I know very well how much work is required behind the scenes to get all parts of the Government, not least the Treasury, lined up to support a private Member’s Bill. Those of us who have seen him at meetings, receptions and debates in recent months know how hard he has been working to secure the Government’s support.

We on the Labour Front Bench welcome the Bill. I back the Bill and I welcome the cross-party support for its aims, which are to provide more help earlier for people who are threatened with homelessness, and reduce the number of people hit by the misery of homelessness. I also welcome the Bill because it builds directly on similar legislation that was introduced in Wales by the Labour-led Government in 2014. Importantly, however, that was not an isolated piece of legislation, but part of a 10-year strategy.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Did my right hon. Friend see the comment by Simon Rose, the housing management officer at Newport Council, that for every pound Newport Council spends on its homelessness policy, it saves £4 as a result of the legislation introduced by the Welsh Government?

[John Healey]

I have not seen Simon Rose’s comments, and I would be grateful if my hon. Friend could send them to me. He makes the point that the extra cost required to support this Bill will be a good investment in the long term, and I hope that Ministers will recognise that. Preventing homelessness will prevent higher, longer-term costs. It is early days, but the experience in Wales in the first year following that legislation has been encouraging. In 65% of cases, homelessness has been successfully prevented when at-risk households have been helped by councils. That means that there are nearly 5,000 people and families in Wales today who last year could have been homeless, but who have instead benefited from the help offered by the councils.

This is a good, useful Bill, but it is only a first step. The hon. Member for Harrow East was right to say that legislation is not a panacea that can reverse the rapidly rising level of homelessness. The Bill is not a silver bullet. We cannot legislate and claim to be tackling homelessness. We cannot legislate and lay the blame on councils. If the hon. Gentleman really wants to reverse 40 years of rationing the help that councils can offer, he cannot do it by simply redesigning the system, when councils are struggling every day with an ever-increasing workload, and face an ever-decreasing range of housing options. If the Government are serious about this Bill, and if Ministers mean what they say about homelessness, they must do two things: fund the cost of the extra duties in the Bill in full, and tackle the causes of the growing homelessness crisis in this country. Those are the two tests with which we Opposition Members will hold the Government to account, hard.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I warmly welcome the practical measures in the Bill, but I also heed my right hon. Friend’s comments about the need to accompany the changes with a real effort to build more homes, as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), said. That is a test not only for Government, but for us all. So many times in Communities and Local Government questions, MPs rise to oppose new developments in their constituencies, even though that has nothing to do with the House of Commons. We must have the courage to tell our constituents that this country does not build enough houses; we cannot simply reflect their prejudices back on them. We have to tell them that this country must build more homes.

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the cross-party spirit in which we tackle this Bill may, in due course, lead to more of a cross-party spirit in tackling the bigger housing challenges that he mentioned.

I return to our two tests. First, the Government must fund the costs. The Minister told the Select Committee that he hoped to complete a costs estimate of the Bill before Second Reading. He has not, but in answer to a parliamentary question this week he confirmed to me:

“The Government will fund any additional costs in line with the longstanding ‘new burdens’ arrangements.”

The work to assess and agree the extra costs of the new duties or, if we like, burdens on councils that are in the Bill must be done urgently and openly. It cannot be done in some backroom deal between the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Local government must have confidence in and involvement in the process. That is the first commitment that we want the Minister to give the House today. Beyond that, councils rightly want to know that any additional funding of the costs really will be additional, not taken off some other part of the funding due to go to local government. We look for that commitment from the Minister today as well. First, fund the costs in full; secondly, tackle the causes.

Homelessness is not inevitable. It is not necessary in a country as well off and as decent as ours for people to have no home. Cutting all types of homeless was one of the proudest achievements of the previous Labour Government. At the time, it led the independent homelessness monitor produced by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to declare

“an unprecedented decline in statutory homelessness”.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said, homelessness, rough sleeping and people on the streets all fell by three quarters while we were in government.

I regret the fact that, since 2010, we have seen that trend go into reverse. Rough sleeping has doubled, statutory homelessness is up by almost half, and the latest official figures show that, each night, nearly 115,000 children are sleeping in temporary accommodation. Those are young lives blighted by transience. They are often in temporary bed and breakfasts and hostels. Their belongings are in their bags. They are often sharing bedrooms with siblings and bathrooms with other families. These are the children who cannot go home. These are the children with no home in our country today. That is a scandal that shames us all.

I say as gently as I can to the Minister that many of the housing policy decisions and failures we have seen over the past six years have led directly to the current homelessness crisis. There have been 13 separate cuts to housing benefit, including the bedroom tax, and, of course, the breaking of the link between housing benefit or local housing allowance and the rise in private rents. In the previous Parliament there was a 45% cut to Labour’s Supporting People programme, which provides vital funding and support to homelessness services. We have seen soaring private rents. Rent in the private sector is now on average more than £2,000 a year more than in 2010.

Councils cannot help the homeless if the Government will not build or, indeed, let councils build the homes that are needed. The number of new social rented homes started in Labour’s last year in government was 40,000; the number started last year was just 1,000.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. We often talk about people losing their homes; does he agree that people do not lose their homes like they lose their keys but are often being forced out of them by Government policy? We need a joined-up strategy of exactly the kind he is describing.

[John Healey]

We do indeed. Increasingly, the trend is that people face the threat of homelessness and, indeed, are made homeless by breakdowns in private rented contracts, and they are often evicted by a private landlord. To tackle homelessness, we have to tackle the causes of homelessness. We must build more affordable housing, act on the rising costs and short-term lets for private tenants, and reverse the crude cuts in housing benefit that hit some of the most vulnerable people.

In today’s cross-party spirit, I direct the Minister’s attention to two planned changes that he simply must stop. If he does, he will find almost as much support for doing so among Conservative councils and colleagues as he will among the Opposition. Both of the changes are part of the toxic legacy for housing left by the previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), so perhaps there is plenty of scope for common ground. First, how can councils house the homeless if the Government are going to force them to sell off the better council houses every time they become vacant? The Minister should drop that plan from the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

Secondly, how can councils house the homeless if homeless hostels face closure because the new housing benefit or local housing allowance falls so far short of the housing costs? The Minister should fully exempt supported housing from the changes to housing benefit.

Finally, I turn to the hon. Member for Harrow East and his cross-party sponsors. The Opposition wish them well during their further detailed discussions and debates with the Government. We wish the hon. Gentleman well in moving forward with the Bill, and in securing the action required to fund the costs and tackle the causes of the homelessness crisis in our country. To the extent that he does that, he will have the Opposition’s full support.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words about my work on this important matter. In view of the changes recently made to the Bill, we are looking very carefully at the costs. We acknowledge that the Government will have to deal with the new burdens that will come with the legislation. We are speaking to the LGA and will continue to do so. We are also speaking to local authorities about the costs that will be incurred. He makes a good point; in the past few months, I have created a local authority working group. Local authorities come to the Department to discuss various issues and good practice that they are promoting. We are certainly listening to what that group is saying and feeding that into the work being done by the cross-Government ministerial working group.

[John Healey]

Members on both sides of the House will be pleased to hear what the Minister said on the new funding that will go to local government for the new duties. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) may have jumped the gun a little. Speaking to the LGA and listening to the local government working group is one thing, but will the Minister undertake to involve the LGA in assessing and agreeing the additional duties and the likely additional costs that will necessitate the new funding?

[Mr Jones]

As I said a few moments ago, we are engaging with the LGA, and engaged with it and the Select Committee on the Bill. Like the Select Committee, we are aware that some concerns from the LGA arose from the process of prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill. We are speaking carefully to the LGA about the costs and new burdens on local government, and will continue to undertake to do that, because we want to make sure that the Bill works. As I said, we are determined to put in funding that does not currently go to local authorities to support the Bill.

We know from the experience in Wales that a change in culture, alongside the introduction of new legislation, is critical. I will drive forward work alongside the Bill to ensure that the change becomes a reality. Our funding package, and the work that will take place alongside it, will be important steps in that direction. That work will support the reform of local practice and partnerships through the provision of expert support from a network of specialist providers; improve the quality of services by giving front-line organisations and local authorities easier access to evidence-based best practice through an online hub; and improve data collection and analysis, making it easier for local areas to spot those at risk of homelessness. There are extremely good examples of that type of work going on. In Newcastle upon Tyne, extremely good work is being done on spotting the people who may be at risk of homelessness, but who are not yet at that point.

I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for his admirable work in bringing this legislation to this point. Since publishing his draft Bill in August 2016, he has worked tirelessly with the LGA, Crisis, Shelter and St Mungo’s to address many of the concerns raised in their evidence to the Select Committee. The Government are proud to support this important Bill, and are very grateful to all concerned for their expert work.

Although the measures that set out to provide 56 days’ emergency accommodation for anyone who needs it were not included in the final version of the Bill, the Government are clear that no one should have to sleep rough to get the support that they need. That measure was removed because of concerns that that duty was unworkable and would not achieve the outcomes it sought to secure. I hope that the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) will acknowledge that a lot of work has been done, following the representations made by local authorities and the sector, through the Select Committee, and that changes have been made to overcome the biggest impediment that local authorities saw to delivering the Bill.

The Government are committed to building up evidence and good practice to address this issue in the longer term, which is why our £40 million support package includes a new £10 million rough sleeping prevention fund to help people who are at risk of rough sleeping. That will prevent people from reaching the streets and help new rough sleepers quickly off the streets. Ensuring that people on the edge of homelessness have a safe place to stay while longer-term solutions are found will be a key part of this programme.

I know that concerns have been raised by the National Landlords Association about clause 1. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, I am committed to working through these concerns with the NLA over the coming weeks. I put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for leading such thorough scrutiny of the draft legislation through the Communities and Local Government Committee. I also thank all other hon. Members who are on that Committee, many of whom are here today, as their scrutiny has resulted in important changes to the Bill, such as: the removal of the clause that changed how local connection was defined; people who have experienced, or are at risk of, domestic violence being specified in the duty to provide advisory services; the increase in safeguards for households considered not to be co-operating with the local authority; and the added flexibility for councils to be able to help to secure a six-month tenancy when working with people to relieve their homelessness.

I also pay tribute to Crisis for all its work. It has been a pleasure to work with it, and when I first met the people on its expert panel, who were promoting the original Bill, which was based on the Welsh legislation, it was extremely revealing to hear what they had to say. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has been able to take the Bill forward, and that the Government have been able to support it with him. I also pay tribute to Shelter and St. Mungo’s, which have also worked together to contribute to this Bill so far. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) and the all-party group on ending homelessness for their input into this important work.

A great deal of work has gone into the Bill to get it to this point. As we know all too well, when Members play politics with private Members’ Bills, they often find that their Bills get timed out. As has been said by a number of right hon. and hon. Members today, I urge Members not to take that risk with this Bill, which has enormous potential to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our country. I also thank the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) for his kind words about my work, and for the spirit of co-operation shown today. I hope that that spirit is continued throughout the progress of this Bill.

The Government are confident that the Bill will significantly reform England’s homelessness legislation and work well alongside the package of non-legislative reform that the Government are also driving forward. This Government will continue to ensure that more people get the help that they need to prevent them from becoming homeless, and the support that they need, should they fall through the safety net. I am honoured and very proud to say that the Government will give their full support to this Bill. I hope that it will receive its Second Reading today, and that it will proceed through the remaining stages in this House.