Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, these debates are interesting because I find myself agreeing so much with Members with whom I often do not agree, including the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I agree with everything that he has just said. I also agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, regarding bans on protests. That does not relate to this particular statutory instrument but nevertheless needs to be stated. I also agree with the comments of my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lady Tyler, who said many of the things that I might have said.

My noble friend Lady Tyler said that this is kicking the can down the road. A better metaphor would be that it is shunting the issue further along the track—and the track is actually a siding, so sooner or later it will hit the buffers. When that happens, there will be a major problem.

The debt advice organisation StepChange says 150,000 private sector tenants are at risk of being evicted within 12 months. Then, of course, there are all the children, dependants and other members of those families. Do the Government have a figure on the number of people they think are seriously at risk of eviction when this particular truck finally hits the buffers and the Government stop shunting it down the track because there is no track left?

The Minister referred to the road map out of lockdown, but the question for so many of those people is: what is the road map out of debt? Many of them cannot see one at all.