Homelessness Reduction Bill (Fifth sitting)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith—I am standing in his place—who has family commitments and is unable to attend. I am perfectly happy to support the sittings motion. Obviously we are keen to conclude the Bill, but I have to say once again, as the Committee enters its second year of deliberations, that it is something of a surprise to Opposition Members that we still await clause 1, clause 7 and the money provisions.

When my hon. Friend said that he would not be able to attend this sitting, he was anxious that important elements of the Bill would be introduced today. I assured him that that was unlikely and that parliamentary draftspeople were burnishing and polishing the clauses through the night, as they had done throughout the recess, and that they would produce them in perfect form at the last possible moment. Expectations are very high for the quality of those clauses and the generosity of the financial provision that we look forward to the Minister offering us next week. When my hon. Friend returns next week, we will expect the quality of those substantive clauses to justify the unusual and extensive delay in producing them.

[The Chair]

Does the Minister want to comment?

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[Bob Blackman]

The clause makes a major change to the duties that we place on all public authorities. We intend for people who work in public services to spot those who are either homeless or at risk of homelessness and to refer them to specialists who can deal with the problem. That is a sea change and a cultural change, and it will take place across the public services. It clearly requires training and assistance so that people do not slip through the net, which is a clear concern. An important part of the process is that all public bodies will have to look at what training their frontline staff need and how they can ensure that they assist and spot people who are at risk of being homeless. Homeless rough sleepers are easier to spot, but those who are at risk are less easy to spot, so there will have to be training in that regard.

I intend, through the Bill, to ensure that a person’s housing need is assessed in any contact with public authorities. The measure will help to achieve that. Clearly, we will need to monitor it and work together with service partners to identify at an earlier stage those households that are at risk. That means that prevention activities can take place earlier, with the ultimate goal of relieving or preventing someone’s homelessness.

In conclusion, on schools and education facilities, children are often vulnerable. It is possible for teachers, headteachers and support staff to spot the signs of homelessness, so those in the profession will need to be trained so that they can be assisted in spotting such problems before they arise.

[Ms Buck]

Obviously, Opposition Members support the general thrust of the clause. It is right that housing authorities are able to draw on information from all the other agencies with which people at risk of homelessness engage.

Quite rightly, you will not let me, Mr Chope, rehearse the spirit of the amendment that we just discussed, but the task here is to ensure that the referral process leads to meaningful engagement and supplies the information necessary for a local authority to make an informed housing decision. I am afraid to say that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East said, if the co-operation were working as well as the Minister implies, we would not have many of our current problems.

On Second Reading, I raised the worrying statistic about ex-offenders, to which the hon. Member for Harrow East has alluded and which provides a classic illustration. My own local authority, Westminster, is the frontline of rough sleeping. Nearly one in three of all rough sleepers in our borough have been through the prison system. Something is going badly wrong when people who are highly vulnerable and, as has been said, with almost no resources to their name, leave prison, fall through the net and end up on the streets.

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[Mr Jones]

The Government welcome the clause, which is commonly referred to as the duty to refer. We believe it will help to extend the good practice that already exists in many local areas across England. In those areas, public services are already working with local housing authority teams to identify as part of their normal daily work households that are at risk of homelessness or who are currently homeless. The measure will ensure that this good practice becomes a legal duty, so that all local housing authorities can intervene much earlier and have more time to work with those at risk.

In addition, the clause is important in helping to raise awareness that there are many varied and sometimes complex reasons behind a person’s homelessness. We believe a person’s housing situation should be considered when they come into contact with those wider public services. The measure will help to achieve that. English public authorities exercising functions in relation to an individual will have a duty to notify a local housing authority if they think that person may be homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The public authority must have consent from the individual before referring them and allow the individual to choose which local housing authority they are referred to.

The hon. Members for Westminster North and for Dulwich and West Norwood made a point about which local authority the person will be referred to. The public authority must ask a person for their consent. That person will then identify the local authority to which they want to be referred. That mirrors the judgment that an applicant would make in other circumstances when applying for help independently. It avoids, for example, public authorities having to make a judgment with someone in hospital A&E about where their local connection is, which could be complex and difficult to achieve. Effectively, the normal local rules on local connection will apply once an individual has applied to that particular housing authority.

[Ms Buck]

Can the Minister give us a worked example? If someone is in hospital or has come out of prison and choses to nominate an authority where they have a family member or a personal connection but where they had not recently lived, would the referring authority be under an obligation to establish whether that was an appropriate referral? Is there not a risk that, if the authority does not refer, the person could end up putting themselves into a lengthy and difficult process of applying to a local authority that will have no duty to them?

[Mr Jones]

It is sensible to have a system that mirrors the current system. It is clear that it is up to the individual to present at a particular authority, at which point the authority will confirm whether there is a local connection. The hon. Lady gave examples of particular organisations such as prisons or hospitals. If we made them try to interpret and second-guess the rules, we would be layering in significant complexity and risk that they may get that judgment wrong. An individual’s decision may be overridden by the advice they get from that public body, which certainly would not be expert in housing law and local authority housing matters.

The Government will set out in regulations which public authorities will be subject to the duty. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, the list is likely to be wide-ranging and include service providers such as GPs, schools and the police. As I mentioned GPs, I will pick up on the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Westminster North around GP referrals. I agree that more work needs to be done on how various agencies, and not just GPs, work together. The advantage of the duty is that people at risk of homelessness will become known to housing authorities earlier, providing more time for the necessary work to assess and address the needs, including work between public services.

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[Ms Buck]

Will the Minister assure me that no agency—obviously GPs have the greatest risk of this occurring—will be allowed to charge for any letter? Will he clarify the difference between a referral and a letter that provides support or additional medical information that the person at risk of homelessness may wish to take with them to a local authority?

[Mr Jones]

The organisation involved will have a duty to refer somebody who is either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless to a local housing authority. I say to the hon. Lady that it is a process to refer somebody, and not necessarily a process to set out verbatim somebody’s circumstances. The thinking behind the measure is that referring somebody to the local housing authority will mean that they get the help they need, particularly given the other measures in the Bill that will ensure that councils provide more assistance to people than they currently do. The measure is an important step in ensuring that that referral process takes place. It currently takes place in some areas, but it does not take place in many. She has highlighted some of the challenges.

In my experience, GPs’ letters to constituents are often not about referring somebody to a housing authority, but about making a case why an individual needs a bigger home or has special needs, or why they are in priority need rather than not. I am not dismissing the issue that the hon. Lady raised—it is extremely important and pertinent in the wider sense—but there is a difference between a duty to refer and somebody seeking assistance in explaining that they have special circumstances. In the course of the work I undertake, particularly on the ministerial working group, we could certainly look at how that works and see how things can be improved.

We also hope that the measure will encourage all those involved in the process to build stronger relationships based on local needs and circumstances in order to produce the best outcomes possible. Service partners should decide how this will work in each local area because they are best placed to decide what working relationship they should have and what it should look like. In the longer term, we expect the duty to refer to help change the culture necessary to deliver earlier prevention of homelessness.

Local authorities such as our homelessness prevention trailblazer early adopters—Newcastle, Southwark and Greater Manchester—have very good relations with wider public services. To pick up the good point that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole made about charities working with local authorities on preventing homelessness, he will be glad to know that, within the bids for prevention trailblazers, a number of local authority areas are working with charities, church organisations and so on to supplement the work they do in preventing homelessness.

Southwark in London and Trafford in Greater Manchester, for example, have protocols set up with local hospitals in the form of release agreements. The protocols mean that the local housing authority is notified when a patient who is homeless or threatened with homelessness is getting ready for discharge. It is always important to point out that, in such an initial situation, it is in the local authority’s interest to act at that point rather than pick up a more difficult situation further down the track. That is the type of culture change to which the measure will lead. Early notification allows local housing authorities more time to put plans in place with the aim of avoiding people becoming homeless and the additional costs I mentioned. We would certainly like public services throughout England to use the initial contact created by the duty to refer to develop further relationships.

A number of colleagues mentioned co-operation with the criminal justice system—my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester and for Harrow East mentioned it, as did the hon. Member for Westminster North on the Opposition Front Bench. Co-operation with the criminal justice service is obviously extremely important. We recently published the prison reform White Paper, which provides far more freedom for prison governors to provide training on housing, managing money and other skills that people may need when they leave prison. It is extremely important in this context that we do everything we can to ensure that people coming out of prison are in a far better position in terms of their housing. We all know that housing issues are one of the major drivers that lead people, and particularly those who have been on very short-term sentences, on to a path back into prison after a short time.

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

We are talking about the implementation of what we all want to achieve. The codes of practice are obviously important and the amendments set out that the statutory instrument will be subject to the negative procedure.

It is important to reflect on the concerns expressed in the Communities and Local Government Committee. For example, the London Borough of Wandsworth is concerned about the codes of practice being so woolly as to be meaningless or being so prescriptive as to be unworkable. We need to ensure the codes of practice are the focused tools that we want them to be and are based on collaboration and co-operation, so that they are not seen simply to impose a diktat or central command.

As we know, once a statutory instrument is before Parliament, particularly with the negative procedure, there is very little we can do to scrutinise it. Indeed, at an earlier stage, during the formal processes of consultation that will take place and eventually lead to the instrument’s being laid before Parliament, it will probably be too late, in many ways, to achieve the co-operation and collaboration that local authorities have suggested.

Shelter raised in the Select Committee the need for proper co-operation. Indeed, Salford has suggested a co-production and oversight of codes of practice, which I suggest should happen way before the formal process under amendments 13 and 14 and the formal consultation process that normally applies to statutory instruments. Will the Minister assure us that there will be the collaboration and consensus we see in the Welsh example, which we often pray in aid? The point is that it was a cultural change as much as an administrative one. That cultural change was about a consensual and collaborative approach that we have seen in this Committee and during the passage of the Bill. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for the way he has enabled that to happen. It is important that that continues into the implementation, not least of these very important tools, the codes of practice.

I seek assurance from the Minister that that approach is part of the process set out in amendments 13 and 14, because plainly when the statutory instrument comes before Parliament we might ask questions about co-operation and consultation but it will be too late. I look forward to the Minister’s response. Perhaps he could also tell us whether the assurance on compliance will form part of the statutory instruments. It is one thing to get a code of practice out there but another to ensure appropriate monitoring of local authorities that are not complying, with consequences for inaction.

[Ms Buck]

I want to reinforce those points. The code of practice is important as something to which local authorities can properly refer. We know from the Select Committee report that when housing charities undertook mystery shopping in local authorities they found extraordinary variation in practice.

We know there is very good practice and that local authorities are working under extraordinary stress, with staff on the frontline invariably seeking to do their best. At the same time, under the sheer scale of housing pressure, especially in high needs areas, hon. Members will know from their own experience with homeless households and the charities’ work on mystery shopping that there are also examples of very poor practice.

Individuals have told me, quite plausibly, some of the things they have been told in a harsh gatekeeping environment. They have been told that if they make a homelessness application they will be sent to another local authority, sent out of London or, in some cases, have their children taken into care. They have been told that it would be better for them not to make a homelessness application because it would be easier to house them outside the legislation, even though that is not what they want. We know there are examples of such poor practice.

I know that local authorities are anxious to ensure that a code of practice is of use. None the less, it is important that we have an opportunity to scrutinise that code of practice and are able to satisfy ourselves that it will be valuable, sharp and focused. I hope the Minister will be able to give us that assurance.

[Bob Blackman]

I welcome the Minister’s amendments. When we come to discuss the codes of practice in full I will have much more to say. The key point is that any proposed code of practice will be subject, I trust, to full consultation with all public bodies before being laid before Parliament. It will then be subject to negative procedure, which means that Members of Parliament will be able to scrutinise the final outcome of the deliberations following that consultation. That will allow us to implement the code.

As the hon. Member for Westminster North and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate pointed out, local authorities will want to have their say and ensure that the codes of practice are clear, not woolly or over-prescriptive. We will then be in a position to get the results we desire rather than implementing something that will not work.

The other point is that the provision does not apply to the reissue of any codes. If the Minister or the Secretary of State believes that things are not working, action can be taken more quickly, which is to be welcomed. I welcome the amendments and trust that we can agree to them.

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[Bob Blackman]

I support clause 11, which will allow the Secretary of State to introduce statutory codes of practice that provide guidance on how local authorities should deliver their duties relating to homelessness and homelessness prevention. When the Communities and Local Government Committee investigated homelessness, we heard repeatedly that the quality of service provided to non-vulnerable households, if a service is provided at all, is completely inconsistent across the board. It is a complete postcode lottery.

Clearly, the Bill’s intention is to change not only the law but the culture of local authorities. In the Select Committee’s evidence sessions and in private hearings that I attended in preparation for the Bill, I heard about individuals repeatedly meeting dismissive and discriminatory treatment when seeking support for their housing needs. Members who had the chance to have a look at that video before Christmas will remember that it demonstrates that this is a wide-ranging problem across a number of local authorities. The Select Committee has called for a code of practice that

“outlines clearly the levels of service that local authorities must provide and encourages regular training of staff to ensure a sympathetic and sensitive service. Services should put users first with a compassionate approach that gives individuals an element of choice and autonomy.”

It is important that we do not stifle local authorities that are coming up with innovative schemes. I would be the last person to want to prevent such schemes, but I do not believe that this measure will do that. I am keen to ensure that services are compassionate, fair and open and work well with other services. I believe that codes of practice will effectively give the Government a stick, so that they can impose prescriptive measures on local authorities that are not acting in the spirit of the Bill. That will help with improving standards and sharing best practice across the country, which is what we all want. Everyone should experience the best standard of help rather than the minimum.

I have seen elements of good practice throughout the country that we do not want to stifle. Equally, Government and Opposition Members will have seen local authorities that failed to help people who are homeless through no fault of their own. Under clause 11, the codes of practice—there may be more than one—will not come into operation on the day on which the Act is passed, but guidance will be issued with a statutory basis, so that local authorities know what they are supposed to do.

We already know that many local authorities are currently ignoring some of their legal responsibilities. Ensuring that clause 11 stands part of the Bill will mean that local authorities are put on notice that if they come up to the standard of the best, the Secretary of State will not need to take any action, but that if they fail to do that, a code of practice could follow quite quickly, to force them to do what we all want them to do.

This legislation comes 40 years after the previous legislation that dealt with these problems. We do not get the chance to change legislation very often, so I am very keen on this provision, because we should not have to wait another 40 years. We have a hook that gives the Secretary of State an opportunity to introduce and change codes of practice, so that we can ensure that best practice is shared and that local authorities come up to the standard of the best.

The measure plays an important role not only in ensuring that, after the Bill becomes law, local authorities will change their culture and way of operation, but in giving us an opportunity as Members of Parliament to make sure that the Secretary of State, whoever he or she may be, can introduce further measures to ensure that the best standards are implemented right across the board.

[Ms Buck]

As I indicated in responding to the Minister’s amendments, I, too, welcome this approach. I very much want to see a culture change in local authorities. The examples of gatekeeping that I referred to were applied to people in priority need. These are people who really should be navigated through the system because they have children, have disabilities, are elderly or have severe health problems. Even in those circumstances there are examples of gatekeeping that is so harsh that those people are effectively turned away or deterred from making an application.

On non-priority groups—the type of groups for which the Bill is particularly keen to see some form of service provided—we know that even some best practice involves little more than giving somebody a list of telephone numbers and telling them that they may be able to access accommodation in a hostel. My own local authority has a bundle of papers that runs to 40 or 50-plus pages of phone numbers. I have spent some afternoons doing my own mystery shopping, sitting and ringing the phone numbers, trying to find out whether they exist or will take people on benefits and so forth. I find, almost invariably, that someone will spend hours, and a lot of money, on a telephone, not being able to get through. We absolutely know that the gatekeeping process is very harsh, and sometimes even worse, because of the nature of the experience that an individual will have when they are in a housing option service. Local authorities need to work within statutory guidance and do not always do that.

The critical point for me is accountability. We need to have a form of measuring what local authorities are doing and a way to hold them to account. That should not be excessively bureaucratic—we do not want to add too much to the monitoring workload of already very stressed local authorities—but we cannot measure the success of the code of practice and the way that the cultural element of the Bill is working just through another mystery shopper operation later and by anecdotal evidence from charities or from our own casework.

At the absolute minimum, local authorities should provide a written statement of the advice and options that they give to everybody in non-priority need, which those people could then take away to whatever advocacy and representation they can access in this post-Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 world—some of it is still there—and which would demonstrate to that outside organisation, whether it is a councillor, a Member of Parliament or a charity, what the local authority has said is available and the advice that the local authority has given to that person. That would not be a set of actions that they have to take, but a summary of what the local authority is going to be able to do.

I do not know whether the Minister will commit to that, but we need a means of holding local authority performance to account, in a simple and consistent way that applies to Wandsworth, Hull, Blackpool and everywhere in the country. If we do not have that, further down the line we will find that there is good practice and some cultural change on the back of the Bill, but if all the other pressures continue to mount—we know further cuts in housing benefit are coming down the line, there is a pressure on affordability and a continuing crisis in housing supply—we will find that, despite the best efforts, we end up with a number of very vulnerable individuals still not receiving consistent advice. There will be a need for the code of practice further down the line, but ideally we do not want to have that. We want to make sure that the Bill’s provisions are implemented from day one. We need to know how we can measure that and hold local authorities to account.

The Minister mentioned earlier that where there were examples of local authorities not employing best practice, he would “beef up” his response. I am not quite sure what beef up means in this context. It would be helpful to turn that into something in language that we can understand and monitor. Will the Minister tell us a little bit more about what will happen to local authorities if they are judged as such down the line—as I think some will be, even if the best of all outcomes is achieved—and what he will do to those authorities to make sure that best practice is adhered to?

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I rise to support clause 11. As discussed, it seeks to create a basic standard in the form of a code of practice. That will ensure that local housing authorities have guidance on how to deliver homelessness prevention functions. The guidance will offer councils a reference to check against, to ensure that the level of service offered is equal to the best currently seen in the UK.

The clause speaks to the essence of what we have been talking about over the last few weeks. Up and down the country, services are being provided at a different level. Those people who are deemed vulnerable but not in priority need are often those who fall between the gaps and do not receive the service that they should. We have all agreed on that, which is why the clause is so important: it seeks to ensure that those people receive the best service throughout the UK, and indeed, to end the existing postcode lottery.

In many ways, the clause is not only about improving and equalising services, but about giving local housing authorities more guidance and steering—although it will not replace the existing code of guidance. It will enable the Secretary of State and all of us to raise the standards of homelessness support services across the country, so that the minimum level of service—equal to what is currently the best—is delivered. That minimum level will be one of the Bill’s supreme achievements.

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[Bob Blackman]

Under the clause local authorities, under their part 7 functions relating to homelessness and prevention of homelessness, have a duty that requires the housing authority to be satisfied that accommodation provided by them is suitable for the applicant and his or her household, or that private rented accommodation that they secure or assist with securing is suitable. In considering suitability, authorities must by law consider whether the accommodation is affordable for the applicant, as well as whether its size, condition, accessibility and location are suitable. In addition to those factors, when securing accommodation in the private rented sector for those in priority need under the main homelessness duty, suitability requires that local authorities check a number of other things relating to the safety, physical condition and management of the property.

The measure extends the requirement and means that local housing authorities will be required to carry out those additional checks when they secure accommodation for vulnerable persons in the private rented sector under the prevention and relief duties in the Bill. That means that a number of vulnerable people will be assisted in a way that they are not at the moment. By “vulnerable” we mean as a result of old age, mental illness, handicap or other special reason, or someone with whom such a person resides or might reasonably be expected to reside.

The measure broadens the scope quite considerably and the additional checks and requirements are set out in article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012, which we have referred to in previous meetings of this Committee. Many of those are already legal requirements. They include, for example, whether there is a valid energy performance certificate; whether adequate precautions have been taken to guard against carbon monoxide poisoning; and whether the landlord is a fit and proper person to act in the capacity of landlord. The landlord will need to provide the local housing authority with a written tenancy agreement that the local housing authority considers to be adequate.

A key objective of the Bill is to increase the effectiveness of local authority prevention and relief efforts. The private rented sector will inevitably play a key part in delivering that and enabling local authorities to fulfil their duties. The Bill will ensure that where property is for vulnerable people, it is in good condition and managed properly.

Clearly, there is an issue with checks being made of all households. That would require a significant additional burden on local authorities. Many tenants are capable of carrying out those inquiries themselves. We do not want to be in a position where individuals find a property, have it allocated to them and then find it is not suitable. One issue that has to be resolved in guidance is how that process works. As the hon. Member for Westminster North pointed out, many people already find private rented accommodation for themselves without local authorities carrying out any checks on their behalf. That is a concern in many parts of London in particular.

A range of protections exist for those in the private rented sector. For example, local authorities have strong powers to deal with health and safety hazards through the housing health and safety rating system. Requirements for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms have been introduced relatively recently. The Government are taking action against rogue landlords, including through a range of measures included in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. That strong framework already provides protection for all tenants in the private rented sector, and not only those allocated by a local authority.

The approach in the clause is therefore a proportionate one that provides additional protection where it is most needed for those who are vulnerable, and imposes new duties on local authorities to ensure not only that they provide help and assistance and an offer of accommodation, but that the accommodation for vulnerable people is both suitable and safe.

[Ms Buck]

Obviously, any steps towards ensuring that properties in which particularly vulnerable people reside are fit and proper are to be welcomed. The clause amends article 3 of the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012, on circumstances in which accommodation is not to be regarded as suitable for a person. When a local housing authority is securing accommodation under the Bill’s new duties whether for a homeless household or to prevent homelessness, the accommodation must meet the same requirements for suitability as private rented sector offers made under a discharge of duty under the Housing Act 1996.

We know very well that, as the private sector has extended significantly, a minority, but a catastrophic minority, of private sector provision is deeply substandard. Indeed, that is one reason why the Government have introduced measures to tackle rogue landlords. Such provision is partly because of the rogue behaviour of landlords who are not fit and proper persons, and partly because of accidental landlords who are not able to manage their property as well as we would like. As a consequence, many people are living in accommodation that is well below what we require to be decent.

One reason that I introduced my private Member’s Bill last year—I was not as fortunate as the hon. Member for Harrow East—was to ensure that individuals can seek legal redress if a property is not regarded as fit for human habitation. As he said, local authorities can intervene using the powers available to them under the housing health and safety rating system, but practice is highly varied between local authorities, which in a way mirrors the discussions we have had about homelessness legislation. That is partly driven by the lack of resources for local authorities, but in some cases it is cultural change.

As an underpinning for the legislation, it would be very helpful if the Government collected information on what local authorities are doing under the housing health and safety rating system, so that we have a better and clearer idea of where substandard accommodation is being investigated and what action local authorities are taking. At the moment, that information does not exist and the only way in which we can collect it is through a freedom of information request, such as I have done.

Those are all relevant issues, but the central issue as far as the clause is concerned is that its scope—it applies to vulnerable individuals set out under the priority needs group—means that the same standards do not apply to either pregnant women or women with children. It therefore simply does not cover everyone who falls within the category of priority needs. The effect is that pregnant women and children could be offered private rented accommodation under the prevention and relief duties without checks necessarily having to be made as to whether the landlord has convictions for violent or sexual offences, or whether the accommodation is safe from serious hazards and is being let in a professional manner.

I am sure that will be done in many cases, and certainly when a local authority is acting properly and investigating the accommodation for which it is making provision, but it does not have to be done. I am afraid that, again, given the extreme pressure on local authority resources, in some cases it simply will not be done.

The Opposition are concerned that that could place pregnant women and children at a serious risk of harm. We know that 28% of private rentals fail the decent homes standard and that one in seven contains a category one hazard under the housing health and safety rating system. I am sure all members of the Committee will have experienced cases in which individuals have found themselves accommodation that is seriously substandard. We need to ensure that there is a proper legislative framework to ensure that that does not happen. In the past few weeks alone, I have had to take a case in which a nine-month pregnant woman was left sharing a hotel bedroom with two young siblings, and another in which a mother of premature triplets with lung disorders was moved to a second property by a local authority that was plagued by damp and mould. We know that that is a real and current problem.

The pressure on accommodation, whether for discharge of duty, temporary accommodation or prevention, is so acute in high-stress areas such as London, the seaside towns and others, and the capacity to inspect and maintain such housing is so variable and so under-resourced that, without this robust legal protection, we are worried that children and pregnant women will be left at risk. The key question for the Minister to answer is: why have those two categories been left out of provision in the Bill? Will he undertake to introduce an amendment on Report to ensure that they are not excluded?

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Burrowes.)