Homelessness Reduction Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

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

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I will try to live up to that, Mr Deputy Speaker. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) made an outstanding speech. She and her fellow members of the Select Committee should feel proud of what they have done to support my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in getting the Bill this far. Homeless cases are some of the most troubling we see in our surgeries because they bring with them many overlapping aspects of human misery. We are assisted in our work as Members of Parliament by fantastic organisations in our constituencies, of which I will list two: Loose Ends—to call it a soup kitchen would not go near the level of support it gives to homeless people—and Two Saints, a hostel. I commend the words of the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), and I say to the Minister that it would be a shame if the Government’s great work to support this Bill were undermined in any way by local authorities being unable to continue funding contracts for hostels across the country. I also pay tribute to Citizens Advice for preventing many people from becoming homeless in the first place.

I commend my hon. Friend for how he has guided this Bill. He said that primary legislation is not always the best way to address such problems, but his introduction of the Bill in a cross-party way, with pre-legislative scrutiny, is exemplary. Most concerns raised by local government have been addressed, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that.

The concept of new duties meaning new money is excellent, but I draw hon. Members’ attention to what happened in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. As this Bill progresses through both Houses, I encourage my hon. Friends, despite the excellent Minister here today, to put on the record what “new money” means. I have a recurring problem in my constituency with the funding of a new burden under the 2012 Act, which I hope the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is about to resolve.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have been absolutely right to raise the perverse incentives that currently mean that local authorities, however compassionate councillors and staff are, have to play a game of brinkmanship with someone facing a potential crisis in their life. If the Bill goes a long way to addressing that, the fullness of time will show that the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) about a glass-half-empty approach will not be realised.

At the moment, a perverse pressure is put on the private rented sector not to make housing available to people on housing benefit and other vulnerable tenants. I speak with some experience on this, in regard both to the situation in London and to providing affordable housing in rural areas. There are small tweaks the Government can make that would go a long way to addressing some of the problems people face in the housing crisis that has been referred to.

I hope the Bill will blur the divide between providers, whether local government, national Government through policy creation, charitable sector agencies, such as mental health agencies, and the police. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East for putting a specific list in clause 2, which details a proposed substitute section 179 of the Housing Act 1996. Proposed new section 179(2) states:

“The service must be designed to meet the needs of persons in the authority’s district, including, in particular…care leavers…former members of the regular armed forces…victims of domestic abuse”.

I will not list the rest because there is not time, but it also mentions “persons released from prison”. In my local homeless forum—this is going back a few years, so I hope things have got better—I heard of people leaving prison and going back to the community where they had offended. Their benefits did not come through on time, so they sofa surfed, possibly with someone with whom they had offended in the past, and we can write the script after that. I hope that the work done on the Bill by my hon. Friend and the Committee will help to resolve that.

I conclude by echoing the praise for Crisis, which is a wonderful organisation, and mentioning a couple more. The Depaul Nightstop UK service provides free, safe, secure emergency accommodation for single young people, predominantly aged between 16 and 25. The homes are vetted and have trained volunteer hosts. That is an extraordinary service which we could roll out across our constituencies. A web-based solution could deal with many of the problems that have been raised. I mention finally the Centre for Social Justice, which I am honoured to be involved with, along with one of our former colleagues in this place, Brooks Newmark. It is doing very interesting work, building on success in places such as the United States and Finland, talking about early intervention and whether the current legislation is fit for purpose—I hope to an extent that that is being addressed today—and, beyond legislation, building on best practice.

Let us be able to say that, on our watch, collectively across the House, we have tackled what is one of the most shaming—to use my hon. Friend’s word—features of modern society. Let the huddled figure in the doorway and the hidden figure in the myriad other forms of homelessness described so eloquently be addressed; with the Bill and with the actions of a Government who really want to take forward social reform, we will be able to do so.