Local Government Funding

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has raised that point. A moment ago, I talked about how Labour had brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy and how, given the chance, it would do it all over again. She has just illustrated that point. All that Labour knows is borrow, borrow, borrow and spend, spend, spend, and it wants hard-pressed taxpayers to pick up the bill. She mentioned Labour’s garden tax. It is interesting that the shadow Secretary of State did not want to dwell on that, but it appeared in Labour’s 2017 manifesto, and it was calculated at the time that it could result in a charge of £3,700 a year for the average home, which is roughly £2,000 more than the current band D council tax. That reminds me that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) was recently sacked from the shadow Front Bench for exposing Labour’s plans to double council tax. So the facts are out there, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sajid Javid]

I will give way in a moment.

It has taken titanic efforts to turn the situation round and rebuild our economy, with both central and local government having to find new ways of delivering essential services while delivering value for money. The country cannot afford a return to Labour’s ways of spend, borrow and bust.

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[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady gives me the opportunity to highlight Labour’s tax plans once again. She says that Labour is not considering a land value tax, but perhaps she is not aware of what Councillor Sharon Taylor of the Local Government Association Labour group said just a few days ago, on 20 March. She said that she would like to see increased freedoms for councils from day one of Labour Government and that this should include

“the ability to look at local taxes such as land value tax”

and a tourism tax. Labour’s plans are all about tax, tax, tax. That is the only thing it knows.

There is no doubt that local authorities are stepping up to the challenges that they face and demonstrating real ambition and creativity to drive efficiencies at the same time as protecting frontline services. Let me share a few examples with the House. Suffolk County Council has used advanced technology to understand what is behind the service pressures generated by troubled families. Since that work began, the council has saved some £10 million and increased the capacity of its system to focus on priority cases. South Cambridgeshire has set up its own housing company to provide innovative solutions to meet local housing need. The company will expand its portfolio of properties, investing approximately £100 million over the next five years. This will generate an additional £600,000 per annum for the council.

Many councils have taken a more radical approach to restructuring to do better for their communities. The benefits can be enormous when local areas look beyond lines on a map and party differences and find new ways to work together. That is what Suffolk Coastal and Waveney district councils have done to create a new district council: East Suffolk. That culmination of years of collaboration is expected to yield annual savings of more than £2 million. There are also mergers of Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury to form West Suffolk, which is estimated to generate a saving of over £500,000 each year, and of West Somerset and Taunton Deane to form Somerset West and Taunton, which will lead to transformational change and annual savings of some £3 million.

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the Secretary of State clarify something? Given the pressures facing local government up and down the country, why has £817 million in underspend been given back to the Treasury?

[Sajid Javid]

I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that he is demonstrating his ignorance of how Government financing works. If he really thinks that that is issue, perhaps he can explain why that figure includes £65 million for affordable housing returned by the Mayor of London? Has he asked his colleague that question? Perhaps he can also explain why in Labour’s last full year in office, when the current shadow Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), was the Housing Minister, £240 million of housing and regeneration funding was returned?

Council Housing

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his informed and relevant intervention. He is of course absolutely right that this essentially leads to what may be described as social cleansing. We may actually be creating ghettoes of particular types of community, when we should be striving for sustainable, balanced communities for our economic and social good. I totally endorse my hon. Friend’s points.

It is estimated that lifting the cap would allow £7 billion to be injected over five years, providing an additional 60,000 council homes. Even the Treasury Committee, chaired by the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), has called for this and stated:

“raising the cap would have no material impact on the national debt, but could result in a substantial increase in the supply of housing.”

The Local Government Association agrees. In my view, we should lift the cap entirely and take borrowing to invest in council housing off the country’s balance sheet, as is standard in other European countries. Why not?

Returning to the use of land and its availability, there is clearly much land available, but it is questionable in terms of its efficient use. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East just alluded to, there is land—including public sector and brownfield land—but it is all about the planning process and how that land is brought into the equation in order to deliver affordable housing. The current planning policy framework makes it prohibitively expensive for this to happen. The whole process needs radical reform.

Councils are currently incentivised to sell off the overpriced land that they own to highest bidder, rather than to use it for the common good. This needs to be reconsidered urgently. I am calling for us to recognise this national crisis in housing by legislating for all unused local authority and public sector land to be used exclusively for council housing. That is the nature of the crisis we face.

The inflated land prices across the country are preventing local authorities from being able to assemble the land to build on. Land is currently priced at its potential future development value, rather than at its existing use value, as is done in other countries. This pushes up the cost of undeveloped land that would be suitable for housing development, making investment in council housing more expensive. Bizarrely, it also rewards landowners for housing and infrastructure developments to which they do not contribute.

The homelessness charity Shelter has argued that a few small reforms to the Land Compensation Act 1961 and associated legislation on compulsory purchase orders would enable local authorities to purchase land at a fair market value—one that reflects both the current value of the land and reasonable compensation, and allows for the delivery of high-quality, affordable developments. This is not rocket science; it is not complicated. That is what they do in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is just about changing the planning approach so that it favours the local authorities.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the current section 106 arrangements and the community investment levy have failed to deliver affordable housing for our local communities?

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, as ever. This needs radical reform. The section 106 moneys are understood by few, and the provision of those moneys for housing is not being realised. This goes back to my point about how the planning process and the planning policy framework need urgently to be addressed.

Councils currently retain only one third of receipts from homes sold through right to buy, while the rest goes to Treasury coffers. Why should that be? Surely it should be in the gift of the local authorities. They are the ones that are adding the value to this process, not the Treasury and not the developer. That means that council housing is lost and never replaced, with 40% of that stock now in the hands of private landlords who, in some cases, are charging up to 50% more rent than is being charged for comparable local authority-owned housing.

It also acts as a disincentive for councils to build. Why risk building new council homes when they could be bought three years later, and two thirds of the receipts will then go to the Treasury? Right to buy in its current form must be scrapped, or at the very least radically reformed, if we want to build the new homes we need. At the very least, councils must be allowed to retain 100% of the receipts from the homes that they lose.

We urgently need to change the language around housing in this country. For 40 years, the sector has become dominated by talk of assets and investment, rather than provision for people’s essential needs for security, refuge and living. Housing also meets the needs of our society more widely and determines the communities in which we live. Housing is so simple, so fundamental and so basic. It provides a sense of place and connectedness in our communities. What is rarely discussed is the vital importance of low-rent council and social housing to the UK economy and how that has been ignored by recent Governments. High rents contribute to pressure on household budgets, lead to lower savings and lower consumption and may lead to poorer health.

The time has come to address this failing and the urgent need to restore much needed balance to the UK housing sector by allowing local authorities to build council housing on a scale not seen since the 1970s. That would mean 120,000 new council homes being delivered per year across the UK. Council housing was and is the answer to our housing crisis—I have absolutely no doubt about that. It is about time the Government recognised that and got on with the job of building it.

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[Dominic Raab]

I say to the hon. Lady and her constituents across the board that we are absolutely restless to create more affordable homes so that they can realise their dream of home ownership. I encourage her and her party not to vote against cutting stamp duty for first-time buyers. I do not think that doubling council tax would be the answer, but I share her aspiration to help precisely those people to realise the dream of home ownership. We will be straining every sinew to make sure that that happens.

That is why we have announced a package of measures to help local authorities to build additional affordable homes for their local communities. The autumn Budget provided a further boost with the announcement that local authority housing revenue account borrowing caps will be increased by £1 billion, as was mentioned both by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). That is good news; it is something on which we are making progress. Local authorities will be able to bid for increases in their caps from 2019-20, up to that total of £1 billion by the end of 2021-22. Again, it will be for local authorities in areas of high affordability pressure, where authorities are ready to start building, but the decision should be welcome news. I hope that the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington will take that back to his local authority.

The increase shows that we have listened to local authorities and hon. Members across the House who asked for it. It will come on top of the £3.5 billion-worth of borrowing headroom that is already available to local authorities across England. We will release information shortly about how councils can apply for an increase in their local housing revenue account cap. I am keen to see local authorities, wherever they are across the country and irrespective of where they are across the political divide, take up the opportunity to bid. I hope that local MPs will get on board and back them and that we can have a broader cross-party approach to this. I want to see that programme well subscribed, so I encourage all local authorities to think about how the additional borrowing can help them to deliver more council homes for their local community.

[Mike Amesbury]

Why do the Government not consider removing the cap altogether?

[Dominic Raab]

We have raised the cap by £1 billion. If we are going to go further, we need to take a more balanced approach and make sure that we are fiscally responsible, as well as giving the leverage and flexibility to local authorities, but we do keep the position under review. Therefore, I recommend that the hon. Gentleman supports his local authority in any bids that it puts forward. I say that to all hon. Members across the House.

On top of that, we recently announced an extra £2 billion to deliver new affordable housing for social rent, taking our total investment in the affordable homes programme to £9 billion over the period 2016-21. The chief executive of the National Housing Federation, David Orr, has described this extra money as

“a watershed moment for the nation.”

Local authorities, as well as housing associations, which my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) referred to, will be able to bid for this money, which will go where it is needed most, and particularly to areas of acute affordability pressures. Again, we will be releasing information shortly about the programme. I encourage local authorities and housing associations to bid and local MPs to get behind it.

In addition, we are giving local authorities more certainty over their rental income to 2025. We are setting a longer-term rent deal for local authorities, enabling them to increase rents by up to CPI plus 1% for five years from 2020. That will provide local authorities with extra oomph and greater confidence in their approach; enable increased future rental income to underpin future house building plans; and—we hope and are confident—give local authorities greater reassurance and confidence to build more homes more quickly, and to do so in a way that benefits local communities. All of this—the rent certainty, the additional HRA borrowing, the billions for new affordable housing—affirms our commitment to ensuring extra council housing built to scale, as does our commitment, of course, to giving councils the tools, flexibility and leverage to do the job.

Local Authority Financial Sustainability: NAO Report

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the National Audit Office report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, HC 834.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I will start by doing something very simple that we do not do enough in this place, or in the political world more broadly: saying thank you. I want to say thank you to our councillors, mayors and local government staff. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] As a former councillor, I know that local government holds our communities and services together and makes our towns and cities what they are. Our local government leaders take decisions and hold responsibility for budgets that directly affect their constituents just as much as, if not more than, many Members of Parliament. They deserve more recognition and respect for that than they are sometimes given. However, since 2010 their very challenging job has become almost impossible. The National Audit Office report makes it clear that funding has been cut by nearly 50%.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. The Times, which is not known for its hyperbole, stated recently in an editorial:

“All politics is local, and local government is going bust”.

Does he agree that the Government are culpable and must take responsibility for their funding decisions, and that it is down to them to stop local government going bust?

[Mike Amesbury]

I do. As a result of that 50% cut, services have been drastically reduced. Pressures and demands are increasing, but the Government have failed year after year to provide councils with fair and sufficient funding.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mike Amesbury]

I give way to my colleague and constituency neighbour.

[Derek Twigg]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He knows that Halton Borough Council, which serves our constituencies, is under extreme pressure. It is one of the smallest councils, and its budget will have been cut by nearly 60% by the end of the Parliament. Does he agree that that puts the council’s sustainability and its ability to deliver its statutory duties, particularly for social care, at great risk?

[Mike Amesbury]

Of course. Things have been particularly difficult for local children’s services and adult services, about which we have recently lobbied Ministers.

Some 66.2% of councils now have to use their reserves for social care provision. These figures are not mine or the Labour party’s; they are in the National Audit Office report. Last year local authorities overspent by £901 million. Minister after Minister has ignored the crisis or tried to pretend that using calculations such as core spending power can somehow mask the level of the cuts that councils face, especially those in highest need.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and echo his thanks to our councillors and local government workers. Does he agree that it is outrageous that my local authority, Barnsley Council, faces cuts of 30% between 2015 and 2020? Such cuts put an unfair burden on local authorities and have a significant impact on local services. It is clear that the Government should take responsibility and do something about that.

[Mike Amesbury]

I agree. It took the Conservative leader of Surrey County Council to threaten a referendum on a 15% council tax rise to get any response at all from the Government. Even then, they just placed further accountability on local taxpayers. I am surely not the only person who was a little concerned that a financial crisis so grave that it required a 15% council tax rise in one of the wealthiest areas of the country appeared to go unnoticed for so long by so many local MPs. It is all the more worrying that those MPs include the Minister of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Ministers of State for Education, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is it any wonder that Ministers do not appear to realise that we have a cash crisis in councils, schools and the NHS?

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

The NAO report shows that the number of looked-after children has increased by 10.9% since 2010, but the Chancellor failed to offer local authorities any additional support to address that in the Budget or the spring statement. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must act to provide more funding to support looked-after children?

[Mike Amesbury]

Certainly. In fact, there will be a £2 billion shortfall by 2022, so there is a real crisis in children’s services.

One of the other Surrey MPs happens to be the Environment Secretary. Given his experience of dealing with the outcomes of difficult referendums, I cannot imagine why he was not keen to support that one.

Many colleagues in the Chamber and beyond will know that although cuts have hit the poorest areas hardest, the damage is not limited to them, as the Local Government Association rightly points out. Rising pressures on social care, transport and other services cut across borough and political boundaries. As such, I wish the Defence Secretary all the best with his petition to save bus services in Staffordshire—I hope he gets a sympathetic ear from the council. Many in the Chamber might have been a little surprised that he addressed his concern locally rather than nationally, where the real fault lies, but raising it nationally might have resulted in the Chancellor informing him to shut up and go away—a statement that the Defence Secretary is all too familiar with.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. We both served on Manchester City Council, a great council with great leadership that has been devastated by cuts. Greater Manchester leaders say that they may be close to bankruptcy in four years if Government cuts continue in the same way. Does he agree with the report’s finding that, instead of blaming councils, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government should recognise that it has failed in its duty to monitor and mitigate the impact of budget cuts on our local authorities?

[Mike Amesbury]

I agree with my hon. Friend and former colleague on Manchester City Council.

Councils of all colours and types are near breaking point. Indeed, Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council has already reached that point, although, as the report shows, any suggestion that its funding challenges are unique is wide of the mark. Some 10.2% of local authorities have less than two years’ reserves. They are at breaking point, and we could face another 15 being served with section 114 notices. It is only through the sound financial management of most councils that we have not seen more local authorities topple.

Warnings have come from councils across party politics and from the cross-party Local Government Association. The National Audit Office report confirms what those at the frontline of local government have been saying for years: funding is down by almost 50%, while demand for services such as adult and children’s social care and homelessness support rises. Lack of central Government support has meant that the tax burden has shifted to local taxpayers. The National Audit Office concludes that:

“As funding continues to tighten for local authorities and pressure from social care grows, there are risks to statutory services.”

Those findings are stark and should alarm us all, and not just in politics but well beyond. The picture that the report paints is familiar to Halton Borough Council and Cheshire West and Chester Council in my constituency, as it will be across the country. Pressures on some areas of children’s services have increased by 26% in Cheshire and by 83% in the more deprived Halton, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) pointed out, yet the recent Budget failed to offer more money for that vital area of responsibility. That would be damaging enough when taken in isolation, but when we consider the human and future economic costs of failing our vulnerable children, it is truly damning. By 2020 the shortfall for children’s services will be a massive £2 billion.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

One of the great problems for many children’s services departments operating in areas of high housing cost is that it is particularly difficult to recruit staff. We have a severe problem with that in Reading. We are outside the boundary for outer London weighting, which stops at Bracknell, even though that is an area of lower housing costs, and we suffer from a severe shortage of skilled workers to work in our children’s services departments. I understand that is a common problem for local authorities, and particularly for those in areas of high housing costs. There are issues with both pay for staff at those grades and the ability of local authorities to provide their own council housing. Reading had a plan to build 1,000 council houses, which sadly was stopped by George Osborne. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on the twin problems of low pay for key staff and the inability of local authorities to build housing for them?

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[Mike Amesbury]

Indeed, those factors are highlighted in the report. Perhaps its most concerning aspect is the finding that the Government do not have a long-term funding plan for local authorities. That confirms the fear of many councillors and mayors I have spoken to. They have been offered no clarity about how 100% business rate retention will work, especially for those areas that will be net losers. Other councils talk of reaching a cliff edge in 2020.

My question to the Minister is simple. Does she have a long-term funding plan for local authorities and, if so, what is it? Councils need to know now. At what stage in the near future will she legislate to ensure that local authorities can use 100% of the money they raise locally for the good of their residents? If she cannot give our councils the stability and guarantees they need, she should not be surprised if future ambitions around homes, schools and services fall even further short of the mark than they do now. Between 2010 and 2017, spending fell on planning and development by 52.8%, on housing by 45.6%, on culture by 34.9%, and on highways—we are all familiar with potholes and everything else—by 37.1%. Again, those are not Labour party figures, but figures from the National Audit Office report.

A national Government who try to lecture local government about financial stability and saving for the future have no credibility to do so when their own watchdog makes such a serious statement about their short-sighted approach. The status quo can no longer continue. Our councils, our communities and the dedicated staff who work in them deserve and demand better.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and repeat: the money from this Government has increased from £44.3 billion in 2017-18 to £45.6 billion in 2019-20. The National Audit Office rightly noted that local authorities are increasing their spending on the social care services that councils provide to our elderly and vulnerable citizens, in the face of growing demand. This is why at the spring Budget in 2017 an additional £2 billion was announced for adult social care. This year we have seen how that money has enabled councils to increase provider fees, provide for more care packages and reduce delayed transfers of care.

[Mike Amesbury]

That still equates to a 3% reduction from 2010 to 2017. It is a real-terms reduction.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am always delighted to hear the dexterity of mathematicians in this building. It is £44 billion up to £45 billion, which I see as an increase. [Interruption.] I will move on. Local government and the NHS have worked in collaboration this year to deliver significant improvements in care. That is highlighted by the 26% reduction in delayed transfers of care, when comparing February this year with February last year. That is not all, however, because a further £150 million is being made available in 2018-19 for adult social care support grants. That, alongside the freedom to raise more money more quickly through the use of the adult social care precept, and the improved better care programme, means that councils have access to £9.4 billion in dedicated adult social care funding over the three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

I would be devastated if that happened and I cannot imagine why it would happen, with the growing economy that we have.

We will continue to work with the sector to identify opportunities to increase the level of business rates retention further at the right time. We are already making progress towards that. The Government have announced an expansion of the piloting programme for business rates retention into 2018-19. In the latest round of pilot bids, more than 200 authorities put themselves forward, demonstrating local government’s enthusiasm for business rates retention. We are enthusiastic about working with them to take that agenda forward. We will be taking forward 10 new pilots, covering 89 authorities, instead of the five that we originally planned. A further pilot will begin in London in 2018-19, and existing devolution pilots will continue in 2018-19. The 10 that we have selected, taken alongside the existing pilots, give a broad geographic spread.

[Mike Amesbury]

At what stage will the Government legislate, as they previously stated they would, to ensure that there is 100% business rates retention? And surely, as part of the funding mix, an area-based grant needs to be retained.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for that to happen.

I referred to a broad geographic spread. That was carefully thought through, as we want to see exactly how the system works across the country, and the pilots will ensure that that happens. The expansion of the pilots, and our plan to do more piloting in 2019-20, is how the Government are listening to the voice of local councils. The precise benefit to the areas involved will depend on the economic growth that they achieve. I am very keen to see what we can learn from these and the other pilots. We should be clear: the system of business rates retention is helping local authorities to benefit from the proceeds of growth.

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[Mike Amesbury]

I thank you, Mr Evans, and the Minister. Of course, I too am disappointed at the austerity clearly displayed on the Government Benches—that symbolises the Government’s relationship these days with local government.

It is clear that we are at a watershed moment. The National Audit Office paints a stark picture, highlighting the genuine risk to statutory services. It is clearly time to change the record. Austerity is not working. It is a political choice. Certainly, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, it is not a sound financial one. Councils are crying out for certainty and are desperate to fund vital services and create better, healthier, more prosperous communities for all. We are a wealthy nation and must get our spending priorities in order. Rather than giving the richest corporations and individuals billions of pounds in tax cuts, let us fund local government services and help the most vulnerable to thrive and reach their full potential. We demand and need fair funding for all, now.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the National Audit Office report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, HC 834.

Supported Housing

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing this debate and on all the work that they have done. I welcome the new Minister to her place—a pragmatic Minister, I hear.

Housing policy is complex. It is not easy and not always universally popular. It is tricky for Governments of any colour to develop policy, but we can consider the end result in fairly simple terms. Is it the right thing to do and is it better than what went before? When it comes to the proposals for the Government’s definition of short-term supported housing, charities, users and service providers are telling me, as have Members in this Chamber and beyond, that the answer is a plain and simple no. Indeed, on the test of whether the policy will make things better, it fails in relation to housing provision and tenants’ rights, and pretty quickly it will have a knock-on effect on other services such as the NHS.

Before I explain why, I accept that there are some things that the housing providers who operate in my constituency and elsewhere welcome. They tell me that the Government have done the right thing on LHA and by recognising the higher costs of sheltered housing and extra care housing. That is to the Government’s credit. However, a Government that accept praise when they do the right thing must also listen to experts when they criticise them—constructively—too.

Housing providers tell me that the move to the defined short-term local authority grants not only has the potential to be damaging to the sector in future, but is already causing 85% of new schemes to be put on hold. Even if we accept that the local authority grants will be ring-fenced—the evidence suggests they will not—can we blame any housing association for being cautious, knowing what pressure there is on local government finances and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) mentioned, bearing in mind the complexity of local government finances as well?

The consequences reach beyond the issue of housing numbers alone. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East referred to this. There are serious implications for tenants’ rights and the broader health and social care sector. Local authority grants do not provide the same protections and rights for those living in short-term supported housing as those living in long-term schemes. Service users will no longer enjoy the same rights as tenants. The situation is described by Riverside and Women’s Aid, who operate in my constituency and elsewhere, as a backward step. Many people who access such housing are already marginalised from society on multiple levels. Removing tenancy rights not only makes matters worse, but sends a signal that our services and our society define users as short-term problems, not as equals. On the question of whether it is the right thing to do, the answer again must surely be no.

Finally, when it comes to the test of whether the policy will make things better for services such as the NHS and social care—we have already referred to women’s refuges—yet again the answer is no. Short-term accommodation provides emergency support for those who have been through a crisis: the homeless, victims of domestic violence, people with mental ill health, and those dealing with drug and alcohol dependency. Social care, our NHS and homelessness are already at crisis point. A policy that reduces the chance of vulnerable people having a safe place to stay will only make matters worse.

In the current climate it may be unwise to predict politics. However, I fear that 12 months down the line the effects of these policies being enacted will be a topic of debate yet again, with the most vulnerable in our society paying for the consequences of a poorly shaped policy. My message to the Minister is this: no individual contributing to this debate here and beyond has every single answer to every question. But collectively, the Minister included, our housing associations, our charities and our service users have the knowledge and the ideas to develop a better approach than the one that is currently planned. Listen to what they say. It is in all our interests, so please respond pragmatically.