Homelessness Reduction Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 28th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I arrived early in the Palace of Westminster this morning. In the tunnel between the tube station and the entrance I passed four people asleep on the floor. I do not think that I have ever been past quite as many as that before; there are often people sleeping there but the fact that there were four was a very visible reminder of the growing scale of the problem that we are rightly discussing.

Next Tuesday, the NEWway homelessness night shelter in my constituency will open its doors for the fourth year. Some 14 churches, led by Bonny Downs Baptist church, which stared the initiative, will each provide shelter and a meal for up to 15 single adults for one night each per week; seven churches will do so for three months, and then another seven for the following three months, so from November to March there will be places and meals available for 15 adults every night of the week. Last year, NEWway night shelter obtained the quality mark from Housing Justice, which supports church-based homelessness initiatives around the country. Housing Justice estimates that 500 churches, church halls, synagogues and mosques opened up to provide overnight shelter last winter. I imagine a larger number will be doing so this winter.

NEWway has provided accommodation for 225 people in total in the past three years. It has been able to help about a third of those people to secure long-term housing. The co-ordinator, Jonathan Adams—he used to design racing cars for a living—has done a fantastic job. Caritas Anchor House in Canning Town, of which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and I are patrons, supports more than 200 single homeless adults at any one time, and provides employment support and rehabilitation for them as well. Both those organisations have been among those lobbying us to support the Bill that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has introduced this morning. Anchor House developed a very impressive online application, the Global Noticeboard, to support homeless people, housing providers and others. It hopes, believes and is confident that, in widespread use, that would significantly shorten the accommodation delays currently experienced and endured by homeless people.

These are wonderful initiatives, and, as is so often the case, faith groups are on the frontline of meeting need, but they argue, rightly, that they should not be having to deal with the scale of the homelessness crisis that we are facing today. I warmly commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward the Bill, and also commend the organisations that he has been working with. I welcome the work of the Welsh Assembly Government, also, who came up with the ideas that have given us the blueprint for this.

[Susan Elan Jones]

As a Member of Parliament from Wales, I must say that I think the legislation in Wales has been absolutely transformative on this. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the need to share best practice between both Governments is pivotal?

[Stephen Timms]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. This House should extend its thanks to the Welsh Assembly Government for those ideas, which have brought about change there and will, I hope, do so in England as well.

I want to press the Minister to set out some information—it has been hinted that he will do so—about what resources there will be to enable the new burdens in the Bill to be discharged. We have heard some quite large estimates of the additional costs. The East London Housing Partnership currently estimates that implementing the Bill in east London will cost local councils £18 million in the first year. Now, that is a good deal less than it was estimating a month or so ago, as a result of the changes that the hon. Member for Harrow East talked about, which were made in response to the Communities and Local Government Committee, but it is nevertheless a substantial cost, and we need reassurance that such costs will be met, or at least some figures that indicate what the Government believe the costs will be.

I very much welcome the fact that local councils will be taking on these new responsibilities. There is the potential to transform the service, as we have heard, and I very much welcome the fact that the Government are supporting the Bill, but they also need to shoulder their responsibility and confirm—I hope very soon—what additional funding they will provide to enable local councils to play their part.

We heard that some London councils were saying that the Bill was unworkable. I think almost certainly that that view would have been expressed before the changes were agreed. I do not think that that is the view of councils in north London or elsewhere, but we need assurances on the resources provided by the Government to enable local councils to take forward these welcome additional responsibilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for introducing this carefully considered Bill. As he is aware, this Government are committed to preventing homelessness. The number of people found to be homeless is down by 58% from the 2003-04 peak, but the Government remain absolutely clear that one person without a home is one too many.

We are supporting the largest house-building programme by any Government since the 1970s, but homelessness is not just a housing issue. Tackling it requires a collective response at national and local level, and an unrelenting focus on prevention. There are many examples of good early intervention around the country, and we want all areas to learn from the experiences of the best, driving good practice to help more areas to learn from effective ways to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

We are taking action, and we have already made significant progress. In 2010, we overhauled the methodology for counting rough sleepers, so every council now has to report the scale of the problem in its area. Since 2010, we have invested more than £500 million to help local authorities prevent almost 1 million households from becoming homeless.

Over the course of this Parliament, we are going further. The Government have protected the homelessness prevention funding that goes to local authorities, which will reach £315 million by 2020, and we have increased funding to tackle homelessness to £139 million over the course of this Parliament.

Just this month we have announced that we are going even further. We have launched our £40 million homelessness prevention package, which takes an end-to-end approach to preventing more people from becoming homeless and helping them to recover quickly when they do. It will mean quicker intervention with rough sleepers or people at risk of sleeping rough, and it will turn around the lives of some of the most entrenched rough sleepers in England. The £10 million rough sleeping grant fund, which forms part of this package, will enable local areas to intervene early with rough sleepers before their problems become entrenched, and to build better local multi-agency partnerships to address people’s underlying problems.

[Stephen Timms]

The Minister has explained some of the things the Government have done. What in his view are the reasons why, as has been acknowledged across the Chamber in this debate, rough sleeping more than doubled since 2010?

[Mr Jones]

As I have said, homelessness is not just about housing supply. It is about a number of issues and I am going to outline a number of steps the Government are going to take to tackle rough sleeping; those steps will wrap around the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to support the most disadvantaged in society.

This Government did bring forward the first social impact bond in the world to help the most entrenched rough sleepers on London’s streets. We are now going to build on that success and introduce a social impact bond with a £10 million rough sleeping fund for it, which will allow local partnerships to work with some of the most entrenched rough sleepers, focusing on getting them into accommodation and using personalised support to address their complex needs. This will be open to all areas but we will particularly be interested in hearing from areas with the highest levels of rough sleeping.

Our programme will mean innovation and collaboration to prevent homelessness. Our £20 million grant fund for prevention trailblazer areas will help up to 20 local areas to go further and faster with reform, laying the groundwork for many of the changes we want to see through my hon. Friend’s legislation. They will adopt and develop best practice and data-driven approaches to identify people at risk of homelessness, and will provide them with early support to prevent a crisis. Southwark, Newcastle and Greater Manchester are our early adopters and will be taking forward a range of initiatives. Projects will include collaboration with a wide range of services to identify people who are at risk of homelessness, and to work with them well before they are threatened with eviction. Early adopters will also test innovative approaches to preventing homelessness to help us build our evidence base on what works. Taken together, these three funds make up a strong package of local support that will make an immediate difference to the lives of homeless people in our country.

It is not just local change that is needed. I am also driving action across Government through the ministerial working group on homelessness. The group is focusing on many key initiatives, the first of which is the development of cross-departmental indicators, so that we can track the progress that all Departments are making in tackling homelessness. Homelessness is not just a housing issue, and that is why, through the ministerial working group, we will work closely with health services, such as hospital discharge teams and mental health services, to understand what more they could do to help to prevent homelessness. Finally, the group is looking at how we can ensure that people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness receive the help that they need to get into work.

This Government are committed to going even further. That is why last year we said that we were looking at options, including legislation, to prevent more people from becoming homeless, and I am pleased that the Government are now providing full support to the Homelessness Reduction Bill. This important piece of legislation will reform the support offered to everyone who is at risk of homelessness, better protecting vulnerable households. Services will focus on intervening earlier, and working with people before they reach crisis point. People who do face a homelessness crisis will get quicker help to resolve it.

The Bill requires local authorities to provide new homelessness services to all those affected, not just those who are protected under existing legislation. My hon. Friend provided an excellent description of the effect that the Bill will have. I particularly draw Members’ attention to the extension of the duty on local authorities to provide advisory services. This means that services must be designed with certain vulnerable groups in mind, such as care leavers and victims of domestic abuse. This will mean that people at risk of homelessness will receive more meaningful information earlier, to help them to prevent their own homelessness.