Schedule
1
The
homes and communities
agency
Question proposed, That this schedule be the First schedule to the Bill.
Sir
George Young (North-West Hampshire) (Con): I, too, welcome
your benign chairmanship, Mr. Benton, as somebody who will
be with our Committee proceedings for the next few weeks.
The schedule
gets to the nuts and bolts of the HCA, and I shall press the Minister
on one or two issues, particularly one that I raised in oral evidence.
The last paragraph of the schedule states:
“The
Secretary of
State...may—
(a)
appoint the first chief
executive”.
I asked the
Minister for Housing about that in oral evidence, and she
said:
“We
intend to appoint the shadow chief executive as soon as
possible”.——[Official Report, Housing and
Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December 2007; c. 142,
Q234.]
That was four
weeks ago, so I wonder whether the Minister can update us on the
appointment of the chief
executive.
The
schedule also deals with the members of the board, and the Minister for
Housing also said last year that she hoped to have a shadow board up
and running “from April next year.” I take it that means
that in April this year there will be a board. It would be helpful if
the Minister were to outline the progress that is being made with the
board’s
appointment.
The
schedule also deals in paragraph (4) with staff. Again, it would be
helpful if the Minister were to outline whether the existing staff of
the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships will be transferred to
the HCA, or whether the process that was used during the reorganisation
of the health service will be adopted, whereby people in effect have to
bid for their own jobs. Many people who work in those organisations
hope to become HCA staff, and it would be helpful if the Minister were
to outline their position during the transition period.
The schedule
also deals with property, and it would be helpful if the Minister could
say whether the Government propose to do what they have done with other
departmental bodies or quangos, and re-locate them outside London, or
whether they intend the body to stay in London. As he knows, the
Housing Corporation is based on Tottenham Court road. Does he intend to
base the HCA in London, or does he have other ambitions for
it?
Again, this
may be getting slightly ahead of the game, but does the Minister
envisage a regional structure, replicating the organisation of the
Housing Corporation? I take it that he wants the staff all in one
place—that he wants to co-locate the relevant people from
English Partnerships with the relevant people from the Housing
Corporation, rather than have them continue to work in separate
buildings. It would be helpful if the Minister were to share some
details and colour in the schedule’s black and white prose, so
that we have an insight into the way in which the organisation will
start.
Mr.
Wright:
I appreciate the comments made by the hon. Member
for North-East Bedfordshire. I am a great admirer of his; he is a great
talent for the Conservatives, and it is a shame that he will spend the
rest of his career in opposition, but we all have our crosses to bear.
He mentioned that 1997 was not year zero, and I understand and
appreciate that. I am a lover of history. I did a history degree and I
have read about Lord Heseltine in history, but perhaps we can confine
the issue to history and move forward. That is what the agency intends
to do.
I also
welcome the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, who has
considerable experience from his former remit as a Minister. He raised
some interesting and pertinent points about the governance of the
agency, and I hope that I can reassure him. The appointment of the
chief executive is crucial if we are to ensure that the agency hits the
ground running and its agenda moves forward quickly. I know that
Members have been concerned about that, so may I point out that Sir Bob
Kerslake, who was the chief executive of Sheffield city council, has
been appointed as the agency’s shadow chief executive. He will
start in March 2008. The recruitment process for the Chair will
continue, and Sir Bob will be involved with that incredibly closely.
His appointment is a good one, not least because the Committee will
tease out the importance of local government in the delivery of homes;
Sir Bob knows the local government sector extraordinarily well and
will, I suspect, be a great champion of it. His appointment is very
welcome.
I
should like to make a wider point about the broader functions of the
agency. I am sure that you will rule me out of order, if necessary,
Mr. Benton, but I hope that you will not. During our oral
evidence sessions, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing said
that various funding streams from various parts of the Department would
be delivered through the agency. That is all part of the broader
concept that the communities and local government will set the strategy
for housing delivery and regeneration policy, and that various
agencies, be they local government or the Homes and Communities Agency,
will deliver that. At 9.30 am, my right hon. Friend is laying a
statement before the House about this. I have advance copies for
Committee members, setting out the functions of the agency in relation
to delivery. It sets out in some detail what delivery functions
the agency will provide, including, to give a quick summary, decent
homes, housing market renewal and the Thames Gateway. So, we have fair
sight of the statement that will be laid in four minutes and we can
have a chat about that. The right
hon. Member for North-West Hampshire made some other points about
schedule 1. He talked about approval of terms and conditions for staff.
Given that the new agency will be a non-departmental public body under
DCLG, staff terms and conditions will have to remain broadly in line
with those for departmental staff so that aspects such as pay
bargaining remain consistent. For that reason, the Secretary of State
will have to approve the terms and conditions of staff in the new
agency.
The right
hon. Gentleman asked what would happen to current English Partnerships
and Housing Corporation staff. I must point out that because we are
talking about the skills base and, perhaps, skills shortages, this
certainly is not a project about reducing staff numbers. It is about
better using the expertise of existing bodies. The structure of those
new bodies has not yet been determined. No compulsory redundancies have
been identified and if any redundancies are required, it is estimated
that they will be met through natural wastage. All staff who transfer
to the agency will be protected. Similarly, although pension provision
for staff is still to be determined, it is certain that staff who
transfer to the new agency will be offered pensions equivalent to what
they currently have. With all of that, the transition team is drawing
up plans for the transition of the delivery of the various work streams
to be achieved.
The right
hon. Gentleman also asked where the HCA would be located. It is
proposed that it should have a national and regional presence, with
offices in London and each of the English regions. It is expected that
it will be configured along the lines of the Government offices, but
specific decisions about the location of the headquarters and regional
offices will be made as part of the transition process. Ministers will
look at the location of existing offices, and at their lease terms, as
is consistent with the recommendations of the Lyons review. I hope that
I have reassured the right hon. Gentleman.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Schedule 1
agreed
to.
Alistair
Burt:
On a point of order, Mr. Benton, although
I am grateful for the Minister’s good intentions in bringing to
our attention the written statement that was laid before the House this
morning, I must put on record my concern that something pertinent to
the clauses that we are discussing has been produced half an hour after
the Committee began its sitting, given that it could, presumably, have
been produced at any time this week. This information is pertinent, as
it refers to one of the amendments that I have tabled about the Thames
Gateway. To produce it at half past 9 on the morning of our first
sitting strikes me as most impertinent of the Department. I do not hold
the Minister responsible. If he had not told us about it, we should not
have known, but I wonder whether an adjournment would be in order,
while we consider the matter and make the adjustments that we
need to make to the work we have to do in this morning’s sitting,
so that we can start again this afternoon.
I thank the
Minister for bringing the matter to our attention, but ask him to tell
the Minister for Housing of my concern that something so important has
appeared at this stage, when I see no reason why it could not have been
dealt with yesterday, to give us much more notice and help us in our
deliberation. Will he consider an hour’s adjournment of the
Committee, so that we can consider the matter and get on with it this
afternoon?
9.30
am
The
Chairman:
Order. That is not strictly a matter for the
Chair, although I take the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, and
have perhaps some sympathy with what he says. I do not think that it is
appropriate to adjourn the Committee. Now that the hon. Gentleman has
made the point, it will be observed and perhaps recorded in some other
quarters for deliberation. It is a fair point, but does not justify my
adjourning the Committee at this
stage.
Mr.
Wright:
Further to that point of order,
Mr. Benton. I welcome your ruling on the matter of an
adjournment. I recognise and welcome the sentiments expressed by the
hon. Gentleman, as he set out his concerns. A balance was needed and I
was keen to ensure that the whole House would be aware of the written
ministerial statement that was laid down at half past 9, and that the
Committee would, during its deliberations, have sight as early as
possible of things that were extremely pertinent to the matters under
discussion. The hon. Gentleman was very fair about acknowledging that.
A balance was needed and I intended to give Committee members as much
notice as
possible.
The
Chairman:
Order. I think that it was a fair point, and I
hope that it is noted in other quarters that, where possible, any
information pertinent and relevant to the Committee should be made
available well before the Committee sits.
Clause
2
Objects
Sir
George Young:
I beg to move amendment No. 13, in
clause 2, page 1, line 11, after
‘supply’, insert ‘,
accessibility’.
The
amendment would extend the remit of the Homes and Communities Agency to
cover increasing not just the supply and quality of new housing but
also its accessibility. This is a consensual, bridge-building amendment
that I know the Minister will want to accept as evidence of his good
will and as an improvement to the Bill. By increasing accessibility, I
mean ensuring that disabled and older people can enter and use the new
homes to be provided under the Bill as independently as
possible.
The genesis
of the amendment was a meeting that I attended before Christmas of the
all-party group on disability, which was attended by the
Minister’s colleague
in another place, Baroness Andrews, on housing policy and disability.
The meeting welcomed the concept of the HCA as a body to produce more
housing and regeneration, and protect tenants, but concern was
expressed there that the proposals in the Bill to increase housing
supply were out of sync with other Government objectives on
accessibility. Those concerns were reinforced when, over the Christmas
holiday, I re-read the Housing Minister’s speech, which was
circulated at our last meeting, entitled “A Vision for 21st
Century Social Housing”. It was a long and thoughtful speech
with a lot in it about supply, affordability, tenant empowerment and
mobility. Yet there was nothing in it about the houses themselves or
about the specific subject of the amendment—ensuring that houses
will be fit for
purpose. To
summarise the concern expressed at the meeting, it was that the
Government want to bring about a step change in the supply of housing,
but that parallel policies on accessibility kick in after the policy is
under way, instead of at the same time, or earlier. The object of the
amendment is to ensure that the pledged 3 million new homes, to which
the Minister referred earlier, will be truly sustainable and designed
according to the needs of the current and future population, taking
account of demography.
Over the next
20 years, the number of disabled and older people will increase by
roughly two thirds, and we must factor that into the design of the
homes being planned. At the moment, 1.4 million people need accessible
accommodation, including 329,000 disabled people who are living in
housing totally unsuited to their needs. On top of that is a nationwide
shortfall of about 330,000 wheelchair-standard houses. As well,
approximately half of all disabled children live in unsuitable
housing.
Disabled
people are more likely than others to live in a house that does not
meet decent homes standards. The relatively small amount of new social
housing in recent years has also hit disabled people hard. The thinking
behind the amendment is to promote the lifetime home standard, which
the Minister will know has been around since 1991 and is promoted by
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The standard includes design features
to ensure that a new house or flat will meet the needs of most
households. It does not mean that every family is surrounded by
features that they do not need; it means that a new flat or house can
be adapted to future needs and is flexible enough to meet whatever
comes along in life—a teenager with a broken leg, a family
member with a serious illness or even people carrying in heavy
shopping.
The
lifetime home standard has been around for some time. I should like the
Minister to give us some assurances about its application to the
properties that will be built under the Bill. In 1999, part M of the
building regulations was extended to include new housing, but those
standards ensure that disabled people can visit homes, not live in
them. In March 2004, the Government announced that they would review
part M with a view to incorporating the lifetime home standard within
two years. That commitment was reiterated in 2005 in
“Opportunity Age”, which said that measures would be in
place by 2007. An advisory committee was set up to begin the work, but
it was suddenly disbanded.
Meanwhile,
measures are in place to ensure that publicly funded housing will meet
the standards by 2011. It is not clear to me why we must wait that long
to
extend the measures to publicly funded housing. The lifetime home
standards have been incorporated into the code for sustainable homes,
and the Government plan to phase them in, applying the relative levels
over the next few years—level 6 this year, level 4 in 2010 and
level 3 in 2013. Although that is helpful, it will take six years for
most private builders to adopt lifetime home standards, and even that
is not guaranteed. We also do not know the time scale for including all
that in the building regulations. Perhaps the Minister could shed some
light on that, as it would then bite on all new homes of all types and
tenures. It
is not clear whether local authority new build, which the Bill promotes
elsewhere, must meet lifetime home standards. There is a pressing
reason why it should. The Minister will know what pressure there is on
disabled facilities grants. They are mandatory grants to which people
are entitled, but there is a long waiting list and the work is quite
expensive. It involves retro-fitting at great cost the sort of
facilities that I believe should be designed in at the beginning. The
additional cost of building to lifetime home standards ranges from
£165 to £545 a dwelling. That compares quite favourably
with the average disabled facilities grant, which is factored in
later.
Unless we
address the layout and design of housing stock, the housing problems
facing disabled people will continue and may get worse. That is why I
believe that the HCA should make the need for accessible, flexible and
adaptable housing a priority. Without the amendment, nothing in the
Bill will ensure that the issues that I have mentioned are addressed. I
hope that the Minister will look benignly on the amendment in order to
promote the supply of accessible housing and reduce housing
inequalities for disabled
people.
Mr.
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich)
(Lab): I welcome you as Chairman of this Committee,
Mr. Benton, and look forward to serving under your
chairmanship. I also draw attention to the interests that I declared
during an earlier sitting. I hope that they stand on the record and do
not require a repeat, as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire
said at the
time.
I
agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of this
matter, but I do not agree that the amendment is appropriate. The
argument was presented in a way that probably did not do justice to
part M of the building regulations, which has improved accessibility
significantly. The changes to that part of the regulations were not
simply about making it easier for people with disabilities to visit
other homes but required all new housing to meet accessibility
standards. That has been important in the provision of level access,
setting the width of doors and other such matters that make it easier
for disabled people to gain access to all homes that are built. I
accept entirely that that applies only to new housing and that it takes
time to work its way
through.
In
his comments on year zero, the right hon. Gentleman was perhaps not as
generous to the Government’s record as he might have been. The
Government in which he served declined to amend part M of the building
regulations to introduce changes requiring level access and
accessibility improvements in all new housing. The Government who were
elected in 1997 committed to and introduced those changes, and also
supported the application of
the lifetime homes standard. He rightly highlighted the work of the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation in propagating that concept, and the
Government gave, and still give, considerable encouragement for the
application of lifetime homes by registered social landlords and
others. There
has been progress, but accessibility is important and it is right that
there should be a short debate on it. I hope that the Minister will
indicate clearly the Government’s commitment to continuing work
to improve accessibility. My only reservation about the amendment is
the usual one of the list principle. When one particular item is added
to a list, others are excluded by inference. The right hon. Gentleman
knows only too well that many other important housing issues could be
added to the list of objectives that the HCA ought to pursue: energy
efficiency is an obvious and topical example. We should not single out
accessibility, but it is extremely important and there is more to be
done to improve it and propagate lifetime homes. I hope that the
Minister is able give us an assurance us on
that.
Alistair
Burt:
I rise to support the amendment tabled by the right
hon. Member for North-West Hampshire and to respond to the right hon.
Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. Having been the Minister with
responsibility for disabled people, I rather regret that we did not do
more to change the standards required. Of course, there was the
inevitable tussle between Departments, but there is now greater
recognition that the matter is not just about disability but about
ageing.
When
amendments are tabled on behalf of disabled people, or when people talk
about the disabled lobby, there is sometimes not enough understanding
in the wider community that virtually everything that is done for
people with disabilities, particularly in relation to space, movement
and housing, inevitably benefits anyone who is ageing as well as women
with buggies and so on. A different approach needs to be taken, and the
long-term needs of the people who benefit from such changes as my right
hon. Friend suggests must be borne in mind. Will the Minister indicate
how the agency will deal with
that?
Such
improvements also help to deal with a problem that we shall come back
to from time to time. Despite the fair wind being given to the
establishment of the agency, for reasons that we have already explored,
a niggling factor in the back of many minds is that it may turn out to
be just a numbers machine. Because the Government have set targets and
understandably want to meet them, worrying that they have not in the
past, there will be huge determination just to churn out units. When
that is coupled with changes over the years that have meant that the
space given to each housing unit is much smaller, it puts extra
pressure on the needs of those with disabilities and those who are
ageing. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation reckons
that in the next 20 years, there will be an increase of between 57 per
cent. and 67 per cent. in the number of disabled older people. A
significant number of new people will be coming into that time of life,
with needs that are not discretionary for them but crucial to their
enjoyment of life—their accessibility to those things that we
all too often take for granted.
I would be
grateful if the Minister would indicate how he and the agency intend to
handle that. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s
amendment.
9.45
am
Andrew
George (St. Ives) (LD): Briefly, I wish to respond to the
point made by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich about
the risk of that leading to the creation of a list of further
requirements within the measure. I wish to support the
proposal.
My
professional experience prior to coming to this place was in
undertaking housing needs surveys. I was making recommendations for the
development of new schemes to meet social housing need. We often found
that it was sensible to recommend that schemes be easily
adaptable—in most cases they were very small schemes. In other
words, the configuration of the building itself should ultimately be
adaptable—there might not be a need straight away for disabled
access and for ground floor, walk-in baths and those types of
utilities, but the buildings themselves should be easily adaptable for
when a need might arise at some later
stage.
I
strongly support the introduction of the measure; this is an
appropriate amendment, which does not portend the creation of a long
list. In many recommendations of developments in the past, that seemed
to be appropriate. One does not need, at the point of construction, to
go to the expense of including and installing all of the utilities, but
simply to allow for ease of adaptation at a later
stage.
Mr.
Wright:
I thank the right hon. Member for North-West
Hampshire for the amendment and for the positive and constructive
manner in which he articulated the arguments. I would expect no less
from him. I find the manner in which the debate is being conducted
pleasing and encouraging. I understand where he is coming from with the
amendment, but it is not necessary. In the Bill, the agency already has
the object of improving the supply and quality of housing in England,
with a view to meeting the needs of people living in
England—that includes ensuring provision of housing of all
tenures and types appropriate to the needs of community. If those needs
are for accessible housing, that is what the agency must provide or
facilitate the provision of. We will ensure that the Homes and
Communities Agency is tasked to provide or facilitate the provision of
accessible homes appropriate to the needs of the
community.
During
the debate I was struck by the points made by the hon. Member for
North-East Bedfordshire points about ageing. I absolutely agree with
them. I am looking into the subject. Some of the facts are striking. We
talk about household growth formation and how that is
increasing—something like 223,000 new households being formed
every year. That is why we have a housing shortage that needs to be
addressed—with 3 million new homes by 2020. Older households
make up 48 per cent. of year-on-year household growth. That is a
phenomenal amount, which we need to address. The over-85 population
will increase by 85 per cent. by 2031. The hon. Gentleman also
mentioned that a third of older households lived in non-decent housing,
particularly privately rented. We need to address that. Older people
spend between 70 and 90 per cent. of their time in their
homes. They must have an appropriate, decent home in order to do so.
Appropriate and safe housing is critical in increasing independence and
health. Preventive measures could save up to £3 billion in NHS
costs for over-65s, by reducing falls and accidents. The Government
recognise the growing challenges and opportunities that are posed by
demographic changes and, in particular, by the ageing
population. I
reiterate the need for the lifetime homes standards, which the right
hon. Member for North-West Hampshire mentioned. Those set out criteria
that make homes more adaptable to people’s changing
circumstances, to create homes that are specifically built to ensure
that they will adapt to the needs of people at different stages of life
and enable people to remain independent—which is very
important—and in control of their lives at all stages. Our
intention is for all homes funded by the public sector to be developed
as lifetime homes by
2011.
My
right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich mentioned the
list principle, in a manner far more eloquent than I could, and I
absolutely agree with his sentiments. I have no wish to elevate one
strand of housing need above another. In order to deliver its object,
the agency must improve the supply and quality of housing in England
according to the needs of the community. Singling out any specific
strand of housing would place a duty on the agency in relation to that
type of
housing.
Although
accessible housing is hugely important, I do not think that it should
be pursued at the expense of other forms of housing that are equally
important and just as necessary to the community as a whole. I
understand that, as a country that is ageing steadily, we will need to
address this issue and it will be one of the major concerns and
strategic priorities of the agency. However, I do not think it
necessary, on the grounds of the list principle mentioned by my right
hon. Friend, to put it in the
Bill.
In
summary, I do not think that it is wise to emphasise one type of
housing in primary legislation. I therefore hope that the right hon.
Member for North-West Hampshire will withdraw the
amendment.
Sir
George Young:
The debate has been helpful and informative
and I listened to the argument about rejecting the amendment on the
list principle. I then turned over to page 2, and what did I find but a
list? It states, “‘infrastructure’
includes—” followed by a list of eight things. I view
with a little suspicion the argument that there cannot be a list on
page 1 but the Government can have a list on page
2.
Mr.
Raynsford:
The right hon. Gentleman knows only too well
from his experience that the list on page 2 is necessary because there
is a reference to the term “infrastructure” and that
without a definition, people could quibble about what that is. Rather
different issues apply on page 1, where the object
is
“to improve the supply
and quality of
housing”.
I would argue
that “quality of housing” embraces a wide range of
issues, including accessibility, energy efficiency, good design and
other elements. If any one item is singled out, rather than having a
comprehensive list—as there is on page 2—there is a
danger of misinterpretation.
Sir
George Young:
There is a limit to the extent to which we
can develop this line of argument. As to whether the list on page 2 is
comprehensive, it says that the term “includes”, which
presumably means that other things may be included. I had not intended
to provoke the right hon. Gentleman into a vigorous defence of his
record.
If
one looks at the provision for disabled people, there has been an
evolution and an improvement over decades. The Major and Thatcher
Governments did things that had not been done under the Callaghan and
Wilson Governments. My object in tabling the amendment was to gently
nudge and to try to accelerate the process that had gone on over many
years, under many
Governments.
I
asked the Minister a number of questions and perhaps he could drop me a
line, for example, on whether local authorities have to build to
lifetime homes standards or not. I might have raised some other issues
that he did not deal with in his response. However, I have no wish to
get these proceedings off to an acrimonious start by pressing this
matter to a Division, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Andrew
George:
I beg to move amendment No. 34, in
clause 2, page 1, line 11, at
end insert—
‘(aa) to carry
out, or provide for the carrying out of, regular assessments of the
nature and scale of housing need in
England,’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be
convenient to discuss the following: amendment No. 35, in
clause 2, page 2, line 2, after
‘subsection (1)—’,
insert—
‘“housing
need” includes the condition of those who are
homeless and those who are housed in insecure, unsatisfactory or
overcrowded
accommodation.’.
New
clause 7—Rough Sleepers Steering
Group—
‘(1) The
Secretary of State shall, within six months of the coming into force of
this Act, establish a body (“the Steering Group”) to
review the services provided to rough sleepers in England and draw up
an action plan to provide adequate hostel and permanent
accommodation.
(2) The
membership of the Steering Group shall include an equal number of
members from central government, local government, registered providers
of social housing and other relevant charitable organisations, with an
independent chair.
(3) The
Steering Group shall make recommendations within six months of its
establishment in respect of the matters referred to in subsection
(1).’’
Andrew
George:
It is a pleasure to move the amendments tabled by
me and my banished colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for
Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), whom I hope will be joining me
later in the
proceedings.
The
purpose of the amendment is to give the new Homes and Communities
Agency the responsibility for ensuring that there are regular
assessments of the scale of need for new social rented housing and
low-cost home-ownership market housing. The reason behind it is that
the largely desk-top base of the assessments that are often made by
official bodies does not necessarily reflect the nuances within the
market and the need for housing; nor is there the reassurance in the
Bill that many of us would hope that the Government could provide that
there will be regular updates of those assessments of housing
need.
Much of the
purpose of the Bill is in response to assessments, such as that
undertaken by Kate Barker, of the need for housing in forthcoming
years. My view is that that assessment is rather two-dimensional. It
does not take into account the existence of sub-markets in those areas
where those who, quite rightly, wish to express a need for housing do
not necessarily have an opportunity to do so through any official
channels. They do not feel that there is any chance of getting social
housing in the foreseeable future; therefore their numbers do not exist
on the local authority registers. They do not walk into local estate
agents because the housing there is way beyond what local people on
local wages can afford. Therefore, that need should be
assessed.
I
mentioned earlier that, in a former life, I was involved in the process
of assessing local housing need, when housing departments undertook
door-to-door surveys of that need in the early 1980s. When those
surveys were started, local authorities were saying, “We know
that there is not a need, because we have checked the local authority
register and looked for the names of those who have sought properties
in this particular village.” That particularly applies to rural
housing need. Because no, or very few, people indicated a wish to live
in that particular village or parish, the assumption was, therefore,
that there was no need at all. They had not properly taken into account
at the time that very few properties were ever likely to become
available.
In
areas such as my own in West Cornwall where, under the right-to-buy
scheme, properties were being sold off and in some cases sold on and
lost from the local community altogether, with some becoming second
homes, people have not had an opportunity to express their need for
affordable accommodation. There is no likelihood of their ever
obtaining that type of accommodation within the area where their job
is, where they have been brought up, where they have an attachment and
wish to remain living. I believe that the Government need to take into
account the need to undertake rather more sophisticated assessments of
housing need. The new agency should accept that it has a responsibility
to update that assessment of housing need, particularly in those areas
where there is a sub-market. The new agency should accept that it has a
responsibility to update that assessment of housing need, particularly
in those areas where there is a sub-market. It is a little like the
logic that transport operators use when they say that there is no need
for buses on
Sunday.
10
am
Mr.
Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op): I thank the hon.
Gentleman for giving way—I have been following his argument
carefully. What I have difficulty with is whether it is appropriate for
that task to be carried out by the HCA or whether something more
locally based, such as a local authority or even another body at
regional or national level would be more
appropriate.
Andrew
George:
There is nothing in the amendment that states that
the HCA is required to undertake parish-based housing need surveys. In
my view, it is not a requirement and I do not think that the amendment
implies that the HCA should undertake that. However,
it does need to keep an eye on whether the basis on which targets have
been set for social housing, low-cost home ownership and market housing
during a planned period is sufficiently sophisticated with regard to
the numbers that pertain at the time.
There are
many parts of the country where a local market exists. The Barker
review seems to imply that, where there is a pressing need for
affordable housing, it is possible to build a way out of that need. It
suggests that, by keeping many thousands of market homes in an area,
equilibrium will be achieved and the needs of working families on local
wages met by the magic of the market through demand and supply
relationships. However, there are many parts of the country where the
market does not operate in that way. I mention my own area, west
Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, because it is a very good example of
a part of the country where there is a sub-market, and where the
housing market is also a receptacle for the desires of people across
the country, particularly better-off people, who wish to buy properties
for investment and recreation. I think that this is a rather simplistic
view of the way in which the market works, because no matter how many
houses are built in that area, as far as market housing is concerned,
we will never achieve the equilibrium that would allow local people to
meet their housing
needs.
Across
Cornwall, for example, the number of properties has more than doubled
over the last 40 years and it has been one of the fastest growing
places for housing in the United Kingdom—I believe that only
Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire are above it. That will perhaps
surprise many people who assume that Cornwall does not change much. In
fact, it has seen phenomenal housing growth over 40 years but, despite
heaping over 120,000 houses into the area, local people’s
housing problems have become phenomenally worse. Simply building houses
is not the answer to the problems. A more sophisticated understanding
is required.
I hope that
the Minister will take on board not only the fact that the Homes and
Communities Agency, when making an assessment, should take into account
the existence of what is often a need that cannot be expressed through
normal and official mechanisms—such as through local
authorities—of the type that I have described in rural areas,
but the way in which sub-markets work. That process would be a great
deal better informed if my amendments were
accepted.
Furthermore,
amendment No. 35 contains a proposal for a better and more detailed
assessment of the extent of homelessness. Impressive attempts have been
made by the Office for National Statistics, for example, to assess
homelessness at the time of each census. I was certainly impressed by
the amount of field work undertaken in many areas during the last
census to uncover the level of homelessness across the country.
However, those who understand the problem often found that figures in
those assessments massively underplayed the extent of the problem and
of the existence of an underclass and sub-market of demand that was not
expressed in local authority waiting lists. Of course, that is because
it could not be expressed there.
This is not
just a question of ruthlessness. A mass of people were living in
insecure housing. In my area, which no doubt I shall continue to
mention time and time again, some people live in very insecure
circumstances. They might have a roof over their head on a given
night—many live in winter lets, caravans, garages or, in some
cases, in my part of the world, in caves and elsewhere—and so
are not always picked up by the field work. Those living in such
insecurity are often not picked up by any other measures either. Often
local charitable organisations, such as the Salvation Army and Shelter,
which do excellent work on the ground running soup kitchens and finding
hostel accommodation, see a much larger population with housing needs
than it appears that the Government have been able to see through their
official work. Having said that, I congratulate the Government and the
ONS, in particular, on having undertaken the kind of field work that
they have done in recent years. On that
basis, I hope that the Minister accepts that the purpose of amendments
Nos. 34 and 35 is to ensure that the Homes and Communities Agency
undertakes more than just a remote and, perhaps, unsophisticated,
desk-based exercise. As I have made clear, I do not suggest that the
agency itself undertake such surveys, but it might want to commission
them to reassure itself about the accuracy of the information that it
receives, such as on the level and type of need, on how that splits
between social housing and low-cost home ownership, and on other
aspects of the intermediate market, and of course for market housing
itself. I believe that the need for that is far stronger than was
expressed in Kate Barker’s review and elsewhere. I do not think
that we are at that point at the moment. The work of the agency will
only be as good as the quality of the assessment of needs that it
itself
undertakes.
Grant
Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con): I join the Minister and
other hon. Members in welcoming you to the Chair, Mr.
Benton, for what I know will be constructive proceedings in Committee.
Opposition Members welcome many elements of the Bill, particularly the
establishment of the Homes and Communities Agency. We recognise that
the agency, whose objectives are set out in clause 2, has a wide remit,
but elements of the remit appear to be missing from the Bill, and one
of those is recognition of the problem of homelessness. I think that
hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise that
concern.
One thing
that is frustrating when one starts to discuss homelessness is that
there is an immediate reflex reaction among politicians to blame one
side pre-1997 or the other side post-1997. I hope that in this
Committee we can get away from that simplistic analysis of the issues
of homelessness and talk about the real problems, which are certainly
serious. Charities tell us that there are probably 400,000 or 500,000
homeless people. It very much depends on the definition used. The
Government’s definition categorises four different areas of
homelessness in temporary accommodation, but however we measure them,
the numbers are certainly
large.
A
piece of work with which I was recently involved showed, for example,
that there are 130,000 homeless children this year and that figure has
doubled in the past 10 years. I said at the start that I do not want to
turn this into a hugely political issue, because I believe that nobody
in the House has come into politics to make people homeless. I accept
that of Labour Members and the Government as much as I hope that they
accept it of Conservative Members. It is not an objective of good
people going into public service to make people
homeless. My point is not to suggest that for one moment. However, it is
important to recognise the facts and, using the same measurement that
has been in place for a while and looking retrospectively, we can see
that the number of homeless children has doubled. That point needs to
be recognised, but the Bill has, surprisingly, relatively little to say
on the
subject. A
particularly extreme example of homelessness is rough sleeping, which
has been addressed, quite rightly, by the current Government. They set
themselves a target of reducing rough sleeping by two thirds, which was
achieved. They set themselves a further target of reducing rough
sleeping to zero, which has not been achieved. In fact, there is
evidence that the number of rough sleepers is moving the other way;
there has been a 9 per cent. increase in London over the past year
alone.
Mr.
Love:
New clause 7 specifically mentions rough sleeping,
yet the hon. Gentleman in his introductory remarks talked about the
wider issue of homelessness. Why does his new clause not include the
wider issue, rather than being aimed specifically at rough
sleepers?
Grant
Shapps:
I introduced the new clause by talking about the
wider issue of homelessness because rough sleeping is, I suppose, the
most acute aspect of the wider issue. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing
that we should have a broader definition in the new clause to include
the wider problems of homelessness, that is certainly interesting. If
his colleagues are prepared to back a wider definition, that should be
worked
on.
Lyn
Brown (West Ham) (Lab): I am getting frustrated and I felt
the need to speak.
Alistair
Burt:
The hon. Lady is a Government Back-Bencher and will
have to be terribly careful about that.
Lyn
Brown:
I realise that, and I am getting anxious about it,
too.
The situation
would be easier if the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield were to be so
good as to differentiate between street homeless and families that are
housed, because I presume that he acknowledges that the children of
whom he speaks are in fact housed in temporary accommodation by local
councils. They are not street sleepers. When he talks about street or
rough sleepers, I should be grateful if he acknowledged that there are
other issues—apart from the availability of homes—that
cause people to sleep on streets, and that the Bill will not address
those social and personal needs that people who are street sleeping
encounter. If we can get our terms agreed throughout the
room—
10.15
am
The
Chairman:
Order. I think the point has been
made.
Grant
Shapps:
I am grateful to the hon. Lady
and agree with her entirely. One of my enduring frustrations when
talking about homelessness is that people instantly imagine that one is
talking about rough sleeping. It is one aspect—the most extreme,
obvious and visual
aspect—of homelessness, but it is not the major numerical
element. She is absolutely right on that front, and she is right also
to highlight the fact that when we talk about, for example, 130,000
children being homeless, we are not of course talking about street
sleeping. One would trip over a child on every corner. The hon. Member
for Edmonton is also right when he talks about the definition of the
clause. I was merely talking about homelessness in order to introduce
the most extreme aspect, rough sleeping, to which I turn now.
We know that
work on rough sleeping has been going on for a long time. My right hon.
Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire did a great deal of work,
which all charities that I have visited recognise, in setting up
something like—he will correct me if I am wrong—4,000
emergency hostel places. We began to see a dramatic decline in the
number of people sleeping rough, and as I said, I recognise the efforts
of this Government in taking that objective further and in reducing the
number of people sleeping rough by another two thirds. However, there
are problems.
One problem,
which has already been referred to in amendments Nos. 34 and 35, is
that the number of people sleeping rough is by definition a difficult
figure to pinpoint. The problem is that local authorities are asked to
go out and make a street count to find out how many people sleep rough,
but they will not find all those people. It stands to reason, because
they will be hidden in locations that are sometimes hard or dangerous
to reach.
There is a
further problem beyond that obvious and natural under-reporting: the
reporting mechanism. Each local authority is invited to send in a list
showing how many rough sleepers they have, which is bracketed for cases
in which the local authority does not physically go out and carry out a
count. The list will say, nought to 10, 11 to 20 and so on, and when it
comes in, the Department will, for example, count a rough sleeper count
of nought to 10 as nought, regardless of whether the local authority
estimated five, six or seven people on the list. That leads to a
consistent underestimation of the number of rough sleepers, and if one
adds it up throughout the country and compares the figures with figures
from authorities that do actually return them, as I did in a recent
report, one discovers that rather than 498 people sleeping rough in
this country every night, there are more likely to be about 1,200. Can
I be certain of that figure? No, because it is impossible to know. It
fails to account for people who do not appear on the rough
sleepers’ register simply because they are never found. That is
not what I am talking about. These are people who are under-registered
by a system that fails to take them into account, so I should be
interested to hear from the Minister whether there are any plans to
improve on that historical system to reach a more accurate count of
rough sleepers.
Mr.
Love:
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Again, I am following
his argument closely. Does he accept that there is a second function of
collecting the statistics, and that is to show the trends in street
homelessness? By measuring it over a period of time we can discover
whether it is going up or down, and that is an important consideration
in itself.
Grant
Shapps:
I absolutely accept the hon.
Gentleman’s argument. This provides a measure that tells us that
there was quite a dramatic reduction and tells us that it has started
to turn around, particularly in London in the past year because of a
number of different pressures. If we start to go into those now our
discussion will go beyond the Bill.
I accept that
it is important to have a measure. My criticism of that measure is that
it could now be improved. It is important that that measure bears
relevance to the actual number of people who are sleeping on the
streets, rather than a red-blue-green measure of how well we are doing
against an historical trend. I urge the Minister, perhaps through the
Bill, to make that measure deliberately more accurate to the actual
number of individuals.
Andrew
George:
I simply caution the hon. Gentleman against taking
too much of a trend from the sort of field work that we are talking
about, because sometimes the trend is more a function of the quality of
the field work over time than the underlying trend itself. If the
robustness of the field work is greater, it will identify something of
larger numbers than a less robust period of field work. I also warn him
that the people who are rough sleeping are not simply a social problem,
as was implied by the intervention from the hon. Member for West Ham;
they are people with genuine housing needs.
Grant
Shapps:
The hon. Gentleman’s argument runs contrary
to the previous intervention. I think that we are agreed that it is
important to have a measure; I believe further that it is important
that that measure is accurate against the real numbers, so that when
the Government say that there are 498 rough sleepers each night that is
an accurate number, whereas at the moment we know it to be inaccurate.
I am not certain that there is any specific evidence to suggest that
counts are less accurate now than they were previously. I suspect that
because the agencies and charities that carry out these counts for
local authorities are getting better at it over time in a process of
continuous improvement, the counts are getting slightly better rather
than slightly worse, notwithstanding the problems with the mechanism
for returning data to local authorities where there is a check box for
a bracketed number of nought to 10 and so
on.
I
want to reflect on the point about the reason why people sleep rough.
It comes down to the purpose of the new clause. The hon. Member for
West Ham is right to say that it is never straightforward. My
experience of meeting rough sleepers is that it is incredibly complex.
If it was easy, both sides of the House at different times in past
Governments would have cracked the problem and there would be nobody
sleeping rough. I met somebody when I went out on Christmas Eve who had
slept rough for 20 years—20 years on the streets—but when
one talks to this chap, Ivan, he will say that he was offered housing
time and time again.
There are
problems of relationship breakdowns, of financial crisis, of mental
health and many other areas. It is not as simple as saying, “All
we need to do is provide more housing.” However, it is also the
case that the number of available hostel places tends to seize up,
simply for the reason that people move into hostel places and then find
it difficult to get to the next step of
housing. Overall housing provision, which is the reason why I think that
the new clause is so relevant to the Bill, is still a key. When someone
is off the street, the next step on the housing ladder is a hostel; the
next step after that is some kind of move-on housing and beyond that,
social housing, and beyond that, rented accommodation and so on. The
problem is that if we fail to build sufficient social housing, as has
been the case, with less social housing being built every year over the
last 10 years than in any of the previous 18 years, it is difficult
to then move people on from hostel housing into the next move-on level
and into social housing. One of the problems is still the equivalent of
bed-blocking—hostel-blocking—which prevents people from
moving out of
accommodation.
It
being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock
The
Chairman
adjourned the Committee without Question
put, pursuant to the Standing
Order.
Adjourned
till this day at One
o’clock.
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