Families in Temporary Accommodation

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

I agree. Those families are being failed, and they are being failed by us all unless we get action to build more social housing.

The shocking thing is that the weaker someone is, and the less fight they have, the worse they get treated. A child with special needs will often find themselves in the ridiculous situation whereby the social services department—in the same council as the housing department that placed the child outside their borough—scraps the transport to their special school because their council has moved them out of their area. It is extraordinary that we make victims of those people, who just cannot stand up for themselves.

Members would not believe the fortune that taxpayers spend on such unacceptable accommodation—accommodation that you wouldn’t put your pet in. London boroughs spend £90 million every month on it, which is 40% more than they spent last year. Councils in England alone spent £1.74 billion on temporary accommodation in 2022/23—that is 10% more than the year before and a 62% increase over five years. Some councils seriously risk bankruptcy because of the cost of temporary accommodation.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend, who is undoubtedly a doughty champion for those in temporary accommodation in constituencies up and down the country, is making a powerful and moving speech. The Secretary of State has expressed his regret about the number of children living in temporary accommodation, even though he has sat on the Government Benches throughout. The figures that my hon. Friend outlines make for very grim reading indeed, and it is clear that we cannot go on like that. Does she agree that a future Labour Government will have to work at pace across all Government Departments, rather than in silos, to get those numbers down, just as we did last time we were in office?

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Providing more social housing, and giving more support to families in temporary accommodation, needs to be a mission of the next Labour Government.

It strikes me as extraordinary that we, as a nation, are spending £1.74 billion on temporary accommodation, knowing that the figure will not go down any time soon. In Merton, we have one of the lowest numbers of families in temporary accommodation. The figure stands at between 400 and 500 families, but that is 400% higher than it ever used to be. With the ban on section 21 evictions again kicked into the long grass, I have no doubt that I will continue to see more and more families turn up at my weekly advice surgeries having been evicted from their homes and forced into temporary accommodation.

However, we can solve this crisis; it just needs the political will, which is, I would argue, something that we have been missing over the past 14 years. I do not know how anyone can say that building more social housing has been at the top of the Government’s priority list, given that we have had 15 housing Ministers in 10 years, with an average tenure of nine months each. I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) is very talented, and I know that she is sympathetic to our arguments and has helped the APPG on temporary accommodation greatly, but I think even she would find it difficult to struggle around this generational crisis in less than a year.

I try not to take things personally in politics, but when a Government treat housing as a political game—another hotseat for the latest Minister, only for them to be turfed out months later—it is difficult not to be angry. Never has this country needed a cross-party, long-term consensus about tackling our housing crisis more than it does now, and never have a Government seemed so ill equipped for that challenge. I appreciate that I may be biased, but the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities must be desperate for a Labour Government, just to give it some stability. I bet that a fair few of the 112,660 families living in temporary accommodation would like to see that, too.

Here is what we can do. There are 19,334 hectares of unbuilt green belt within a 10-minute walk of London train stations where there is enough space for 1 million new homes—that would be a very sensible start. Then, we could look at dealing with land bankers: in 2019, the FTSE 100 house-building companies were sitting on land banks of more than 300,000 plots between them. That is even more land that could be used for some of the families I have mentioned today. Finally, it feels like stating the obvious, but we could bring back mandatory house-building targets for local authorities. It is incredibly important to bring back those targets, and I am glad that Labour Front Benchers have committed to do just that.

There is one party in this House refusing to build on the grey belt, removing housing targets and delaying the ban on section 21 evictions, and its Members are not sat on the Opposition Benches. I issue a plea to the Government: build the homes my constituents deserve, so that we can end the vicious cycle of temporary accommodation. The situation is desperate, and I hope that the Government give it the political will it deserves.