Temporary Accommodation Costs

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. No one wants to see families with children in temporary accommodation, and I am sure that every local authority across the country is doing everything they can to stop it happening. But sometimes, in emergency situations, it is important for the short term that those families have a roof over their head, a safe and secure place to go. We continue to work with the Local Government Association and local authorities on how many there are in such accommodation, and what more we can do—for instance, stopping people going into temporary accommodation in the first place. With the £1 billion grant for local authority homelessness prevention, we can also start to improve the quality of any temporary accommodation that we might have to use.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is quite right to draw attention to the pressure on local authority budgets. Given the hundreds of millions of pounds that we are spending on accommodating illegal migrants, might a possible solution for the right reverend Prelate and his colleagues be to go through Division Lobbies and support the Rwanda Bill?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that is within this Question. I will leave it to my noble friend to fight his corner on that one.