Budget Statement

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate. I am grateful for many of the measures in the Budget, particularly the Government’s very successful policies in terms of making opportunities for employment much more widely available.

I can remember many years observing Louise Casey as she sought to deal with the problem of rough sleeping. In her work, she emphasised above all things the need urgently to find purposeful activity for people who had been on the streets for some time. She also quite controversially pushed for the public not to provide money to those on the street because she felt that it was a pull factor for them. From my own experience of caring for a middle-aged man who is mentally ill and has been unable to work for quite some time, I can see the degenerative effect on him of feeling that he is not helpful to anybody else. Worklessness and dependency are corrosive to the soul, so I heartily commend the Government on their successful policy in terms of raising the level of employment, which has many benefits, including raising children out of poverty.

I also welcome what was said around the Budget Statement about relaxing property development restrictions; I declare my interest as a landowner who has recently had success in gaining planning permission for residential development. There are real concerns for local property owners, which should be respected of course, but I had the feeling from time to time that we were jumping through many hoops, and seemed to have done the right thing, and then suddenly we were told no. There was great uncertainty in that process. We need to respect the local community’s concerns, but at the same time there is a need to have more homes. That needs to be addressed, too.

The topic that I seek to address is principally to do with family homelessness; that is, expectant mothers, mothers with very young children, mothers or parents who are escaping violence and the temporary accommodation that they are put into. I want also to talk about the withdrawal of housing benefit from those aged under 21 and the very poorest families.

I want to make a couple of requests to the Minister. The first relates to productivity. Will he consider looking at the role of secure families in terms of the long-term achievement of better productivity? In principle, if a child in his or her earliest days has a strong attachment to their mother and then a secure upbringing, they should be far more resilient when they reach 18 or 19, so the inevitable knocks and difficulties will not strike them back so easily. They might well be more able to learn and therefore pick up the skills necessary for the developing job market.

It is striking for me that Italy does well in productivity—

[A noble Lord]

Oh!

[The Earl of Listowel]

Well, compared to us, I suppose. Perhaps I should not pursue that. Germany and France may be better examples in comparison with the United States. One would think that the United States, with its many advantages in many ways, would outstrip those two by far but, in terms of family households with an absent parent, Germany has a level of 15% and France has 17%, while the US has 26% or 27%. There may be some interesting inquiries to be made there.

The second request that I make of the Minister is to look at the long-term cost of family homelessness that I have just described. A recent, important report on the cost of failing to meet the perinatal mental health needs of mothers identified a long-term cost of £8 billion a year of failing to meet those needs. So it is possible to project such costs into the future. It would be helpful in future Budgets to think, for instance, about the treatment of homeless families and to ask what the long-term cost is of failing to address their needs. The Minister might work with the Department for Communities and Local Government and perhaps commission a charity such as the Centre for Social Justice to look at the issue of family homelessness and the long-term cost, and at what the policy options might be to mitigate any harm arising from homelessness.

There are many challenges to families who are homeless. I commend the Government on continuing the work of the troubled families initiative, so ably led by Louise Casey. However, even its model of forming relationships with such families through a family support worker must be challenged if there is such a high turnover of families moving, with it being hard to intervene effectively.

I want briefly to quote from what last week’s Economist said about homelessness and the housing crisis:

“Without roofs over their heads, certain households can appeal to be put up by their local authority. Families with children, expectant mothers and those escaping domestic violence all have a legal right to emergency accommodation … At the end of March, 64,610 households in England were living in council-provided temporary housing, a quarter more than in 2010”.

The article goes on to talk about the move to private accommodation:

“Private tenancies are precarious … The number of people made homeless following the termination of a rental contract in the private sector trebled between 2009 and 2014; termination of contract is now the main cause of homelessness … Despite relying more on private landlords, councils are leaving thousands of families out in the cold. Fewer than half of all applications for temporary accommodation are accepted. Even those households that meet the sufficient conditions—having young children, being pregnant, and so on—are frequently let down. In the first three months of this year, councils failed to find homes for 6,900 households that had a legal right to emergency shelter. That is 80% more than in 2010”.

The article goes on to say that this is a growing crisis.

I welcome much of what the Government have done in the past with the support of the Liberal Democrats and their proposals for the future, but I ask the Minister whether he might look particularly at these concerns around family homelessness and its long-term impact.