Homelessness Reduction Bill

Pauline Latham Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The Minister mentioned time. If the Government were making the Bill a priority, perhaps they would make time to debate these issues and to propose their own initiative. Instead, we have a debate on a Friday as a result of a private Member’s Bill. I will welcome anything the Minister does to address the issue, but I do not accept a cosy cross-party debate today when the number of people sleeping rough on our streets is increasing every single week. It is a bigger issue than just patting ourselves on the back. More needs to be done, and the Government need to set out today their ambition to cut rough sleeping in the next few years. That is why I am here today. I fully support the Bill, but let us be honest about what it is: a modest first step.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It was interesting to listen to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). If I did not know that he represents Leigh, I might have thought that he was standing for some position in Manchester.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on the effective way in which he has secured progress on such a sympathetic Bill on this compelling subject. One would hope that every debate in this place is worthwhile, but few issues are more significant than this Bill, which endeavours to ensure that no one has to endure sleeping rough on the streets of England, that no one has to face the frightening prospect of the lack of a roof over their head if nobody can put them up, and that no one has to be subject to the appalling mental and physical degradation that accompanies homelessness.

It is important to note that homelessness is not the same as rough sleeping, which the right hon. Member for Leigh perhaps misunderstands. We must not dismiss the plight of those who, although they might not be sleeping on the street, are plagued by anxiety and disquiet at that very real possibility. Britain is a developed nation with a strong economy, and I would be so bold as to say that I speak for everyone in this place when I say that it is shameful that so many people in our country are homeless. We must do all that we can to help them.

It is, of course, agonising to see somebody sleeping on the street, and it is even more concerning when we have freezing weather at this time of year, as we have faced in London this week, because a night out on the streets becomes even more unbearable than it is at the best of times. It is not possible to scrutinise the Bill effectively without understanding the complex nature of homelessness and just how extensive the problem is across the country. Quantifying homelessness is, in itself, an extremely difficult task. The way in which homelessness is recorded varies and, even if a unanimous method were both agreed and employed, the number might still be underestimated, as many people often sleep out of sight, moving from place to place.

Indeed, because of the appalling physical abuse to which rough sleepers, particularly women, are subjected, many actively try to leave places where they can be spotted. Despite that difficulty, Government statistics show that 4,134 people slept rough on any one night across England in 2016. Shockingly, that is more than double the number recorded in 2010. In London alone, local agencies report that 8,096 people slept rough in 2015-16, a 6% rise on the previous year.

[Andy Burnham]

The figures showing the rise since 2010 are shocking. Does the hon. Lady think that her Government are doing enough to tackle rough sleeping?

[Pauline Latham]

The Government are trying to tackle rough sleeping, which is not an easy subject to address. The fact that they are allowing the Bill to go through shows that they are taking it seriously.

[David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)]

Members on both sides of the House need to be aware that many people who are sleeping rough, even if they present to a local authority, will find that local authorities do not currently have the power to help them—it is not a question of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that the powers in the Bill will give local authorities the ability to intervene?

[Pauline Latham]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend made that point, which I can clearly illustrate with a case I dealt with over Christmas. I had to ring a helpline for a family whose rented house had burned down. They had four children. Derbyshire County Council was not interested in the fact that they were homeless and would have to come back from family to homelessness after Christmas, although the parents would have to continue with their jobs and get the children back into school. It was interested only in whether the children were vulnerable and were being abused. That is a clear example of a local authority not being interested in the fact of homelessness. Even when I phoned on Christmas day and several days after that, we could not get Derbyshire County Council to put anything in place for these people because its view was, “Well, they are not homeless. They are staying with friends in Bournemouth,”—or wherever it was—and not that the parents had to come back to Borrowash to get the children back into school and go back to their jobs. There are therefore problems at the moment.

The problem of homelessness is getting worse and the Bill could not be more necessary. Breaking the numbers down, certain groups are at particular risk. In England, women make up 26% of the clients of homelessness services, but as a group they are often much more vulnerable. There are high levels of vulnerability within the female homeless population. Mental ill health, drug and alcohol dependency, a childhood spent in care, experiences of sexual abuse and other traumatic life experiences are all commonplace.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that organisations such as Crisis back the Bill shows that the Government and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) have got this right?

[Pauline Latham]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government are getting it right. They are acting for the benefit of homeless people in this country.

Interviews with homeless women that have been conducted by the fantastic homelessness alleviation charity Crisis, which was cited a few moments ago, show that more than 20% became homeless to escape violence from someone they knew, with 70% of them fleeing violence from a partner. That shows that the Government need the cross-party support that they are getting—or were getting; it seems that that is perhaps not as strong as it was. We need to move forward with the Bill so that it can go successfully to its next stage and become law.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I am sure that new clauses 2 and 3, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), are well intentioned. New clause 2 would give tenants assurances on their length of tenure and new clause 3 would give assurances on rent increases. However, I am concerned that, rather than helping vulnerable homeless people, they would hinder some of the best work in the Bill.

We know that private landlords are increasingly reluctant to accept benefit claimants—that is certainly the experience of Portsmouth City Council. The Bill represents an effort to change that situation, but new clauses 2 and 3 would frustrate it. Tenants are currently encouraged to remain in occupation until they are evicted by a court order so that they cannot be considered to be voluntarily homeless. That is a stressful and debilitating practice for the tenant, and a disincentive for landlords to take on cases from local authorities. That would be especially true under new clause 2 because it would lock landlords into an unbreakable three-year tenancy agreement if the result of giving notice would be to make the tenant homeless.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pauline Latham]

I rise to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on getting so close with this Bill, and with relative speed. Interestingly, most of our constituents will not understand that it is really hard to get private Members’ Bills to this stage and that very few such Bills make it to the end, so he has done incredibly well. Obviously, as he said earlier, he has had help from an awful lot of people, not least from a couple of Opposition Members whom he has already praised.

Cross-party work to help vulnerable people is one of the most important things that we as Members of Parliament do, and my hon. Friend was fortunate to be drawn high enough up the ballot to be given an opportunity to bring something into law.

Homelessness is a very difficult issue. Not many Members in this Chamber will remember “Cathy Come Home” or even Rachmanism, but it is clear that we have progressed hugely as we no longer see those sorts of problems on our streets and in private rented households today.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) talked about private landlords. I think that that problem is bigger in London than in places such as Mid Derbyshire. Our landlords are better sorted out by the local authorities than they are in London, which is a much harder market on which to focus.

I wish to return to an earlier point, which is that, when women are on the streets, they are one of the most vulnerable groups. Very often, they are on the streets because they have been abused by their partners or their husbands. It is a very difficult situation when a vulnerable young woman—or a woman of any age—is thrown out on to the streets, or chooses to leave, and has to sleep rough. I have experience of that with a family member who, because she was being beaten up very severely, had to run away and sleep on the streets. In the end, she had to go back, because she had nowhere else to go—or so she thought. Eventually, she went back to her family. It was a very difficult situation. It does not matter where in the country vulnerable people are, they depend on the support mechanism to pick them up and help them out. Some people have nowhere to go. That may be due to the fact that they were in care as a child or are mentally ill. As constituency MPs, we know how many mentally ill people there are out there. They write to us on a regular basis on a range of issues because they do not know where else to go. Some of the most vulnerable people become homeless for those and many other reasons.

My hon. Friend talked about all the charities that helped him to prepare for this Bill. I pay tribute to many of the charities that I have worked with over the years in Derby city and Derbyshire. A huge number of people want to help the vulnerable, and I commend them for their work. An organisation called the Padley Centre in Derby helps vulnerable people not only by housing them overnight—and sometimes for extended periods—but by giving them additional skills so that they can eventually get a job as well as housing. Very often, the homeless out on the streets do not have a job because they have missed out on education.

At this time of year, the city centre churches come together so that a different church is open every night or every week; seven churches have participated. In that way, people do not have to sleep out in this really cold weather that we are experiencing at the moment. The initiative has been incredibly successful. Even the cathedral in Derby city has opened its doors to the homeless. Milestone House and Centenary House in Derby work hard with the homeless to support them and give them a roof over their heads. The YMCA, of course, has been going for many years and particularly helps young people, although it also helps others as well.

I am sure that all those organisations will appreciate the Bill’s coming into law. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said that he felt proud standing in the Chamber today talking about his Bill and about having got so close. So he should: he should accept the praise he deserves. His Bill is tackling a problem that many people would like to have addressed but never have. I am pleased that this Conservative Government are supporting him.

Women are more vulnerable when they are out on the streets. There are fewer places where they feel safe to go and ask for help because of the predominance of men. I clearly remember coming across a woman while walking through the centre of Derby after a council meeting. I do not generally give money to beggars on the streets because I would rather contribute to a charity that will help them. But this particular woman came up to me and said, “I’m in the middle of my period. I have no money, so I cannot buy any Tampax.” I had never thought about that, and I decided to give her the money. As every woman will appreciate, it must be very difficult for a woman on the streets to have a period and no money. Perhaps we forget about that. As I say, I did give her the money—whether it went on that or whether she bought drugs I will never know. I hope that it was a genuine call for help from this poor, young woman who looked freezing cold and needed help from people. I hope that the Bill will help such women.

Earlier I mentioned the family from Borrowash who found themselves homeless. They had been in a private rented house that burned down—when they were not there, fortunately. They had no insurance because they are very poor. Both parents work but they have four children and do not have any savings to fall back on. They have received some money through crowdfunding, which has helped them get back on their feet. They are the sort of people who have a problem when they are with private landlords. In such situations, it is, apparently, the landlord’s job to rehouse such families—but if there are no vacant houses, how can they, particularly if four children are involved?

I rang the Derbyshire County Council helpline, but all the people there were interested in was whether the children were being abused or vulnerable. All homeless children are vulnerable, of course, but so were the parents. I did not feel that the mechanisms to help were in place. Eventually, Derby City Council, which I would not normally praise for very much at all, stepped in and helped this couple with their children.

I am delighted that the Bill is to pass into law. I wholeheartedly support it. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and many others have worked incredibly hard to get it on to the statute book and I commend him for his hard work. I support him, this Bill and the Minister.