Homelessness

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right to address our attention to the excellent and helpful role that Shelter performs; we work very closely with it, and of course we will take up the report with it and have an early meeting to pursue its findings.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister please take back to his colleagues in government the fact that one of the major problems of underachievement by children is the underachievement of those who do not live in settled homes, who move around and whose education is disrupted? Returning to the 11-plus will not help at all, because those are precisely the children who have failed because the Government of the day have not given a high priority to providing housing, particularly in areas such as seaside towns, where children move all the time and have their education disrupted because there is no permanent accommodation.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asks something of a pantechnicon of a question, encompassing many different areas—but I can certainly share with her, in relation to housing, that it is clearly vital and that the lack of housing contributes to social problems, ineffective education and health problems. There is no doubt of that.