Housing Market

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I particularly welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, to her place. I am aware of the substantial work that she did on regional development banking, which has been of particular interest to me since the 1970s, when I wrote a paper. I also liked her reference to Lewis Silkin, who in 1960 I met in Milan in Italy when I was a 17 year-old boy, and who advised me to join the Labour Party, having had a political discussion with me.

I want to concentrate my remarks on a controversial report on Exempt Accommodation from the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. At its heart is a disturbing commentary on the appalling conditions in which people in exempt accommodation are having to live. I need to quote directly from the report, because there is a desperate need for all of us fully to understand what is happening. The devastating attack on housing provision for the poor should be considered in the context of the report’s opening comments:

“it was surprising to have undertaken a piece of work that has shocked and alarmed us as much as this inquiry has … the system involves the exploitation of vulnerable people who should be receiving support, while unscrupulous providers make excessive profits by capitalising on loopholes. This gold-rush is all paid for by taxpayers through housing benefit.”

What an indictment that is of government housing policy. The report goes on to challenge “the quality of provision” and

“its … significant growth in some areas … and the exploitation of the system by people seeking to make profit from it”.

The report cites the impact on people, stating that:

“It is clear from our inquiry that some residents’ experiences of exempt accommodation are beyond disgraceful, and that some people’s situations actually deteriorate as a result of the shocking conditions in which they live. Where the very worst experiences are occurring, this points to a complete breakdown of the system … Areas with high concentrations of exempt accommodation can also attract anti-social behaviour, crime—including the involvement of organised criminal gangs—rubbish, and vermin”.


The report calls for a system of national standards for referral of those people in desperate need and proposes that local authorities take on that role. It calls on the Government to publish national standards, with powers for local authorities to enforce those standards which would include a referral process that works, proper care support and supervision, standards of housing quality and, most importantly, information that a provider would be required to give to the resident as to their rights. The committee regarded the whole problem as so acute that it warranted special additional funding.

In a series of dramatic statements on domestic abuse, the report flagged up its finding that

“organisations with no expertise are able to target survivors of domestic abuse and their children and provide neither specialist support nor an appropriate or safe environment”.

This is Dickensian stuff. The report seeks to ameliorate the position of those suffering domestic abuse, and proposed that

“where a prospective resident of exempt accommodation is a survivor of domestic abuse, there must be a requirement that housing benefit is only paid to providers that have recognised expertise and meet the standards”

of care in the Domestic Abuse Act.

The report revealed that, while extraordinarily some providers do not fall under the remit of any regulator, the patchwork of existing regulation was full of holes. It reports on an acute absence of data on exempt accommodation—which I found quite incredible—and then reveals that there is an absence of data and statistics rendering the committee’s inquiry

“unable to establish how widespread the very worst experiences are”,

and even

“how many exempt accommodation claimants and providers there are.”

It is a devastating report, perhaps one of the worst I have read during my many decades in Parliament. I say to colleagues: please read it. The report goes on with a call to the Government to urgently conduct a review of exempt housing benefit claims to determine how much is being spent. The committee felt that

“the current system offers a licence to print money to those who wish to exploit the system.”

The truth is that we are being taken for fools by those who are prepared to play fast and loose with our laws and ignore human rights.

There is one final recommendation in the report on the wider issue of authorisation. The suggestion is that the Government “end the existing exemptions” that registered providers enjoy from HMO licensing arrangements, and

“that the loophole relating to non-registered providers with properties containing six or fewer residents also be addressed so that they are brought within the”

whole exempt accommodation regime within the law.

This whole debate about exempt accommodation, which I knew very little about before reading this report, and I suspect that many Members of the House have little knowledge about, raises real questions about priorities in life and our treatment of those who have little and so often live in real poverty.