Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [Lords]

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The Bill is a welcome step towards the provision of increased security and stability when those fleeing domestic violence are rehoused, and I definitely support it. Survivors should never be trapped in an abusive relationship for fear of losing their right to secure housing. The lack of safe, affordable housing is the single biggest barrier to people leaving abusive relationships. How can somebody leave when there is nowhere to go?

In December, Women’s Aid reported that of the 113 women killed in the UK last year, nine out of 10 were killed by their current or former partner or by another male family member. According to the Office for National Statistics, two women a week in England and Wales are killed by their partners or ex-partners. Those are not just appalling figures, but real people whose lives have been destroyed.

It is only right that social housing lifetime tenants who need to leave their home, often because their lives are at risk, are granted a further lifetime tenancy when they are re-housed. However, it must be said the Government’s plans to change refuge funding will undermine the Bill’s aims. By removing refuges’ last secure form of funding from housing benefit payments, the proposed changes will prevent survivors from escaping domestic abuse. The Government must understand that if they underfund the refuges that provide a safe haven for those fleeing domestic violence in the first instance, the Bill will fail to achieve what it has set out to do, which is to save lives.

I hope that those undertaking the Government’s review of the commissioning and funding of domestic abuse services will listen to what is said in the Chamber today. I eagerly await the domestic violence Bill that the Government have promised will come in this Parliament. Cuts to local authorities have meant less funding for domestic abuse services, which have suffered. As we have heard, some services have had to refuse referrals from victims because of lack of capacity.

One main issue is that the Bill’s success will depend on the training of local housing authority staff to guarantee that its objectives are implemented on the ground. That is important, not least because the Bill does not create a new statutory requirement for the rehousing of lifetime tenants who are victims of domestic abuse, but will instead ensure that if a lifetime tenant is rehoused, it will be with a lifetime tenancy.

Furthermore, to be able to house these women in safe and affordable social housing we must have enough safe and affordable housing. In 2016-17, some 12,600 homes were sold under right to buy, and, as was just mentioned, we continue to lose social housing, with only 5,000 new social homes built in the same period. Our social housing stock is at a record low. The Bill will be able to deliver on its promises only if a large amount of new social housing is built.

Under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, housing associations will retain discretion over whether or not to offer a flexible tenancy. In some areas, such as Bath, housing associations will be the only registered social landlord. What advice will the Government give to housing associations, which will not have the same obligation to give a lifetime tenancy if a tenant moves to another housing association property? It is issues like that that must be resolved if we want the Bill to achieve its objectives. I welcome the Bill and its aims, but urge the Government to put their money where their mouth is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I rise to speak briefly on this Bill. Like other colleagues, I welcome the limited but important steps that the Bill takes to ensure that one thing that victims of domestic violence do not have to consider when facing choices about their housing is whether they will lose their secure tenancy. It is important that this is clarified for victims of domestic violence. We all feel strongly about them and we all wish to protect their interests at what we know is an incredibly difficult time.

The debate has raised a couple of other issues on which I wish to touch. More broadly, there is the point about how well we, in this place and as a society, support victims of domestic violence with regard to housing and some of the other issues that have been raised today. Importantly, I am very conscious of the fact that there should be security for victims of domestic violence, who have often been left with absolutely no security—no financial security—and in psychological turmoil, as well as with the physical scars that have come from the situation from which they are fleeing.

The earlier exchange that I had with the Minister raised some important questions about the allocations policy for victims of domestic violence. In her response, she talked about the fact that, when it comes to victims who have moved into refuges, many authorities will consider that, because they are often there for four or five months, they have developed a local connection and will then consider that they should be allocated a property. From my perspective, the minute that someone flees domestic violence, we should recognise that the circumstances that they face are different. Often they need to escape their local connections, because it is those local connections—the wider family unit—that they are escaping from. Therefore, it is crucial that they can get to a place where they do not know anyone and where they do not have those local connections.

The Minister said that I was talking about something that did not really exist, but when I visited the Elm Foundation, an important domestic violence refuge in my constituency, precisely that issue was raised. The staff said that they faced different circumstances depending on which local authority they were dealing with. That is why I believe that it would be useful for the Government to clarify more broadly that we do not operate a postcode lottery here and that the rights of domestic violence victims should be the same wherever they live in the country. There should also be a recognition that once someone finds refuge in a hostel and is accepted by that hostel, a local connection should be established immediately at that point. They should not be stuck in the hostel for a long period to establish some kind of local connection. The moment that they and their family unit are ready to move on from the hostel, they should be accepted by that local authority area as having a local connection.

It is impossible to separate the needs of domestic violence victims in our social housing environment from the wider crisis that exists around social housing, homelessness and pressures on local authorities. That is why I took up the point that the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) raised about right to buy. I very much support the right to buy. In its broader context, it plays an incredibly important role. My sister has just moved into a council house and is delighted to know that she is one of the last to get a secure tenancy and is delighted to know that there may be an opportunity in the future for her to take over the ownership of that property. However, an exemption should be put in place for brand new council houses. In Chesterfield, we have about 9,500 to 10,000 council houses, and a council that is very enthusiastic about taking up the opportunity to build more council houses. However, it also says that it would be unaffordable for it to build a new estate of the size that Chesterfield Borough Council used to build in the past, because, within three years, it would be vulnerable, as a large number of those houses would have been bought by tenants.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the system would only really work if we replaced like for like? If a social house has been lost through right to buy, we should replace it. That requires large Government subsidies. The fact that those are not forthcoming means that we are losing large numbers of social homes.

[Toby Perkins]

I partly agree with the hon. Lady. A big flaw in the original right to buy policy was that the same number of houses were not replaced. That was a deliberate political decision. I do not think that Mrs Thatcher wanted to see large numbers of tenants in council houses. She introduced the policy with a view to reducing the number of council house tenants. Like with so many other policies, she wanted to reduce people’s dependence on the state, because she thought there was a political purpose for doing so. Therefore, there was a flaw in the original policy.

I would certainly like to see more council houses being built and some kind of link between the number being built and the number being sold off. To an extent, these are two different questions. There is one question about whether we replace the number of council houses. Some Members want to see more council houses built, but we should have a specific exemption from the right to buy on brand new properties, so that those council houses could regenerate the money for local authorities before they are expected to sell them. Councils would then be more enthusiastic about building more council houses.

If we head back to the 1980s when the Thatcher Government introduced the right to buy, we can see that a very reasonable point was being made at the time. It was that local authorities had built these houses and that families had lived in them for 30 or 40 years and had spent in rent far more than they would ever have spent if they had bought their houses in the first place. Therefore, it was perfectly reasonable for them to say, “Well, look, I have already paid for this house many times over.” Getting a discount when they bought their houses seems very reasonable, and I support that entirely.

None the less, if we want local authorities to build more council houses in any substantial way—there is a real need for that now—a moratorium should be introduced. I will encourage my colleagues on the Front Bench to develop this as Labour party policy. In those early years, councils could build the required number of houses, giving domestic violence victims and others the opportunity to move into them—I say this without in any way wanting to undermine the value of the right to buy as a policy more generally—and that is how we will achieve the council house building that we need.

I very much welcome this Bill, but we cannot discuss the impact of policy on domestic violence victims in the round until we address issues such as housing allocation for domestic violence victims and the shortage of council and social housing more generally. Notwithstanding that, this Bill is a welcome step forward that I look forward to supporting.