Supported Housing

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) is absolutely right to say that this is a happy day for the House of Commons: the Prime Minister has made an important remark on policy; the Minister has said the Government will respond to the consultation on supported housing by broadly adopting the recommendations in the joint Select Committee report; and Members on both sides of the House, housing associations and charities have welcomed the direction of travel, and we will have the details in a week’s time.

I thank my co-Chair for the joint Select Committee report, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who was on the Committee and knows a lot about the sector, other Members, including the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who was on the Committee as well, and the Chairs of the two Select Committees who commissioned our report. We should also warmly thank Lord Best and the five housing associations—I do not have time to name them all—that road-tested our recommendations and improved the detail. We should also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who has held two debates on this subject.

Above all, what this shows—and what today’s debate shows—is why Select Committees are important, why working cross-party really does matter, which is not something that all new Members seem to have yet grasped, and why Parliament should be proud that such a report can have a real impact on the Government. It was delivered in May, just before the election and long recess, and the Government will be making the announcement in late October. This, then, is a good day.

It is worth reminding those listening of the key recommendations, which have the backing of the sector and now the Government: a separate supported housing allowance; a limited number of regional variations; tenants eligible for supported housing allowance only if they are in accommodation that is regularly inspected; national standards to monitor the quality of the supported housing allowance accommodation; and a separate funding system—this is important—for women’s refuges, about which I hope the Minister will say something later.

I regret that not all charities in their briefings seemed to have read the recommendations. In its response, Shelter wrote that it had

“responded to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into the issue”,

but it made no comment on the recommendations. I encourage all charities to look closely at Select Committee reports and endorse them where they find them useful.

Inevitably, success has many fathers, so it is not surprising that the Labour party and the Scottish nationalists—I even heard a reference to Andy Burnham at one point—have wished to add their names to the credits at the end of this film. In my view, it does not matter who tries to take the credit; what matters is that Parliament has had a significant say in shaping Government policy. I hope that the announcement next week will confirm the details, although there are questions that I hope the Government will cover—I know that the Minister will take note of this. We need answers to the questions on funding, the number of regions, the timetable for implementation, the quality assurance and the refuges themselves. I hope that all this in turn will trigger announcements from the housing associations on the go-ahead for the projects that have been put on hold but that will enable us to have more supported housing.