John Healey
MP for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough · Labour · United Kingdom
“Mr Spock, I think some would say, Mr Speaker! My hon. Friend is right. Despite global conflicts, trade tensions and rising threats in the world, which are pushing up inflation, bearing down on growth and pushing up borrowing costs, the UK economy is demonstrating huge resilience.”
“The Prime Minister and I have been clear that we must cut the costs of welfare. On levels of taxation, we had a period of Conservative Government, with low growth and high debt. They crashed the economy with the mini-Budget, and we had levels of taxation that were putting pressure on business, adding to the cost of living.”
“The hon. Lady is talking to the person who led the work to establish a defence and security partnership with the European Union and bilateral agreements with other countries, on which we now build both our economic strength and our national security strength. On the question of the Budget, I ask the hon.”
“Since day one in the job, the Prime Minister and I have been in lockstep in our determination to meet Britain’s fiscal rules. This is the bedrock on which we build good growth and help give a bit of breathing space to families and businesses.”
“May I start by paying tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves)? I am proud to have been a member of a Government with the first female Chancellor in 700 years.”
“My hon. Friend speaks up very strongly for his local area. He is right about the importance of pubs, social clubs and live venues, and about the importance of the 20% cut that we announced in July. These are the things that make the places where we live the places that we also love.”
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“I thank the Secretary of State for early sight of his extensive statement. Last Tuesday, Mr Speaker, you welcomed Grenfell survivors and bereaved families to this House for a memorial meeting. Many of us in the Chamber today were at that event, and, six months on from the terrible fire at Grenfell, they told us, “It should not need us, as survivors, to bear our wounds to get the action needed, but you’re the only people we can turn to.” As the Secretary of State said, both he and I were also at the national memorial service in St Paul’s cathedral last week, and perhaps the most moving part of the service was a sound montage of voices from Grenfell.”
“The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) has just broken the news to the Opposition about Jimmy Hood’s death. He was a huge humane figure in Scottish Labour and in this House, and he will be sorely missed. The Secretary of State tries to tell us that the Government have a good record on homelessness. Since 2010, Ministers have made 452 announcements on homelessness, but 47,000 more children are now homeless; that is more than 100 additional homeless children for every Conservative press release. What is needed now is action to deal with the root causes of this rising homelessness, not more warm words. I have a straight question for the Secretary of State: will there be any further cuts in funding in this Parliament for homeless hostels and women’s refuges under his plans for short-term supported housing?”
“The problem is that many of the decisions the right hon. Gentleman’s Government have taken have made this so much worse. In his consultation document on supported housing, he pledges to protect funding only in 2020-21, which is why homelessness charities, such as women’s refuges and Women’s Aid, are so concerned that there is still a risk to their future services. The tragedy is that we know what works because we have done it before, when Labour was in government. If he wants to act on a cross-party basis, will he back Labour’s plan to end rough sleeping homelessness within a Parliament, provide 4,000 extra homes for rough sleepers, review the social security system and build the new low-cost housing that is needed?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you offer any guidance to the House on your expectations and on the conventions? We just heard the Secretary of State, after an hour of Question Time, say in an offhand way, in answer to the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who has now left the Chamber, that later this afternoon he will make a statement about the backing the Government will give to garden villages and urban extensions. Surely we should have expected that either in a written statement this morning or certainly through a reference in the body of questions this afternoon, so that the House had a chance to ask him about it.”
“We have never built the homes this country needs because we have slashed Government capital investment in homes and outsourced responsibility for building the new homes we need to the big developers. That is the fundamental flaw in the Government’s strategy. It has been the fundamental flaw for seven years, and it is the fundamental flaw of this Budget. If we are to build not just the number of new homes we need to fix this country’s housing crisis, but the range of new homes we need to deal with seven years of housing failure on all fronts, we must do more to bring public sector investment, effort and action alongside the private sector. The Budget confirmed that this is a Government without a plan to fix the housing crisis.”
“What is needed is a deep and big change—a proper national living wage, rising to £10 an hour; a national investment bank that will back businesses right across the country; and a long-term investment plan, especially for housing. Let me finish with some comments on housing. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), and to the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones). I am sorry that I have not been able to deal with the other points on housing. The serious problem underpinning everything in the Government’s strategy was made very clear by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely).”
“On funding for R&D and science, spending on R&D has simply flatlined; it has been well below the OECD average in the last seven years. Finally, on investment, the Government—they were supported by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government when he was in the Treasury—halved public sector investment as a percentage of GDP in the first years of the Parliament after 2010; it fell from 3.4% of GDP in 2009-10 to 1.7% in 2015. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) talked, in a rather gushing speech, about how the Government were investing for the future. But the Budget pushes up the level of public sector investment by only 0.1% over the whole Parliament. We are seeing the legacy of the decisions made in 2010, with the country paying the price and the current Chancellor playing catch-up.”
“The Government have been in power for seven years, and it is clear that many of the problems have got a great deal worse during that time. It is also clear that George Osborne got it wrong. What he thought was clever politics trumped sound economics. He cut too far, he choked off the recovery and he undermined our economic foundations. On enterprise, he scrapped the regional development agencies, which supported competitiveness, business and skills in all parts of the country. On skills, he cut training and education budgets by 14% in real terms, according to the IFS; that was an unprecedented cut. On competition, he did nothing to deal with the industries—including house building, energy and water—that are dominated by a few big providers.”
“Why are Britain’s real wage growth, productivity levels and economic growth prospects so much worse than those of other major countries? The OBR is clear that by far the biggest contribution to the major downgrade of growth prospects is the huge reduction in productivity, equivalent to 3% of our national economic output over the next five years. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield said that that is a long-run problem, and, to be fair, all Governments have grappled with it. During the period that I spent in the Treasury, we tried to support the five drivers of productivity by encouraging enterprise, raising skills, improving competition, funding R&D, science and innovation, and boosting investment.”
“Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) claimed that the Budget was good for Scotland, but in the end it will be the Scottish people who decide that. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was quite right to argue that people in Northern Ireland need a functioning Northern Ireland Assembly to make the best of what he sees in the Budget, and to push for what is not in it. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made a powerful speech to back a powerful campaign against the use of mesh, and I really hope that the Government were listening carefully. Much of the debate was about what is in the Budget and what is happening to the economy. The real question for us all, though, is: why?”
“Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is not in his place—made important points about how there was so little for the north of England, and how the greatest gaps are between the regions of this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) spoke about the problems and pressures faced by Bradford Council. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) quite rightly said that national housing and other policies are too often skewed towards the concerns of London. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) was right to ask why the far south-west was ignored in this Budget when it came to investment, the NHS and the armed forces. The hon.”
“Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) talked about the problems that steelworkers in the British Steel pension fund face, with a lack of clear information or a clear guarantee for the future. I hope the Government will respond to that. Good luck to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) in her bid to get traditional cider makers recognised by the Chancellor. Having been the Minister responsible for excise duties at one point, I am right behind her on that. Actually, cider duty was frozen for the first time when I was the Exchequer Secretary, and it made a big difference to cider makers in the south-west, as they will confirm. A number of hon. Members—including my hon.”
“Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who said that the current situation does a grave disservice to public servants such as Mrs Davies who give their life to working for others. The hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who are no longer in their places, made the same point. The right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) made a series of important points about the longer-term structural changes that are needed beyond the Budget to encourage savings, to spread the benefits of quantitative easing more widely and to reform business rates, which, as the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, too often still bear down too heavily on small and medium-sized firms. My hon.”
“I wish to pick up on some of the points made today about the implications and impact of the Budget. A number of colleagues on both sides of the House spoke about the fact that the Government had raised expectations of lifting the public sector pay cap but then, after seven years of falling income for public servants, dashed those expectations. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) made that point, and my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Ms Lee) spoke powerfully about the reality of work on the wards in Lincoln hospital. I enjoyed the comment of the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) about the Chancellor having a matt finish and a Budget that was more of the same. He also spoke about the need for a pay rise for public service workers, as did my hon.”
“We have had growth downgraded to below 2% each year for the next five years, for the first time in recent history; productivity downgraded by 0.6% a year for the next four years, which the Office for Budget Responsibility rightly calls a “remarkable period of weakness”; business investment downgraded and subdued for the next four years; and earnings downgraded, with the Resolution Foundation showing that pay is now not set to recover to pre-global financial crisis levels until 2025—17 wasted years. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) was right: the big story yesterday was the OBR’s damning judgment on the economy and the Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), one of Labour’s strongest, clearest voices on the economy, said the same.”
“The Chancellor said today in the media that the economy is fundamentally strong, but he said in the Budget statement yesterday that the economy is weakening and getting worse. That is the hard truth that confronts and challenges all of us. This has been a serious debate, with 31 speakers, after a Budget that confirmed that these are serious times for the country.”
“They could also increase the security for private renters, make three-year tenancies the norm, and cap and control the rise in rents. In that way, we will start to tackle the homelessness crisis.”
“In the spirit of a Backbench Business Committee debate, let me offer some actions that the Government could take to start to get to the bottom of the issue and deal with the homelessness crisis that we are facing. The Government could overhaul how we measure rough sleeping so that we know how many people are sleeping rough on the streets; transform capacity and get people off the streets for good by making 4,000 homes available now for people with a history of rough sleeping; halt their plans to change how supported housing is funded, which could still lead to the closure of homelessness hostels; protect the housing cost element of universal credit; and, above all, build the tens of thousands of new affordable homes, homes for social rent and council homes that are needed to fix the housing crisis.”
“When we came into power in 1997, the level of statutory homelessness was already over 100,000 and rising. It peaked in 2003, but the critical question is the action that we took then. After that, the independent Joseph Rowntree Trust and the Crisis homelessness monitor described what happened as an unprecedented decline in statutory homelessness, and the level of rough sleeping homelessness went down by more than 75%. So it can be done. We know what works, so let us do it. This Government have no majority in the House and no real mandate in the country, and they have no domestic policy programme because that is not covered by the deal with the Democratic Unionist party.”
“They include: the big cut in investment in new affordable homes; the ending of all Government investment behind new social rented homes; crude cuts to housing benefit; the introduction of the roll-out of universal credit, unreformed; the reduction in funding for homelessness services; and the lack of action to protect private renters. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden that Connect House probably exists only because of the changes in the planning regime that our Government brought in to prevent councils from being able to withhold permission for that kind of development. We know what works because we have done it before. The Minister is sometimes guilty, when responding to questions about rapidly rising homelessness, of saying, “Oh well, it was higher under Labour.” And he is right.”
“Today, the House will want to pay its deepest sympathy to Carl’s family, his wife and his close friends. He was a passionate politician who put community at the heart of all his politics, and his Act was the first ever piece of housing legislation to be passed in Wales. Today we mark his legacy, because every month hundreds of families in Wales are helped to avoid the trauma of homelessness because of what he did. The reason why the Homelessness Reduction Act offers some remedies but no solutions is that it does not deal with the root causes of rapidly rising homelessness. Many of those causes are now being driven by the decisions taken by this Government over the past seven years.”
“It had all-party support, including from our Front Bench, but it comes to something when the one stand-out piece of housing legislation and policy from a Conservative Government in the last seven years has come from the Back Benches, not the Front Bench. I pay tribute to the Minister, however. I am well aware of how hard he worked with colleagues behind the scenes, first to get backing for the Bill and then to get some financial resources behind it. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood has said, there is very much more to be done. She was also right to say that the Homelessness Reduction Act was modelled on the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. That legislation was introduced four years ago this month by Carl Sargeant.”
“But they are doing their best at the same time as the numbers and the pressures are rising, and the options available for housing for councils are declining. That is why the number of people accepted as statutorily homeless has risen by nearly 50% since 2010, and it is why we are seeing the number of rough-sleeping homeless more than double; it has gone up by 50% in the last two years alone. The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, promoted by the hon. Member for Harrow East and on which my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) led for Labour in Committee, is a good step.”
“Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) called for longer tenancies and an end to six-month assured shorthold tenancies. Homelessness is both highly visible, with the rapidly increasing number of people we see sleeping rough on our streets, but also hidden, and the homelessness crisis is essentially a hidden crisis today. The figures for temporary accommodation, which are in the motion before us today, are just the tip of the iceberg. Our councils across the country are, irrespective of political party leadership, doing their best, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said about his own in Redbridge. As well as the 60,000 families accepted as statutorily homeless in the last year by our councils, together they helped prevent homelessness and helped house 215,000 more families.”
“Some of the solutions have been set out for the House today. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) argued for tougher planning obligations. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and my hon. Friends the Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) recommended building more new social rented homes and council homes. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said we should back private landlord licensing. The hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) argued that we should end out-of-area temporary housing. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) said we should replace all right-to-buy sales with new council and social rented homes, and the hon.”
“At one point, she said she was worried she might not find the right words to convey the anguish of some of her constituents; she did, however, and in doing so she did her constituents proud and this House a real service. In a country as decent and well off as ours, it should shame us all that 120,000 children this Christmas will have no home and will spend Christmas day in bed and breakfast-style accommodation, hostels and in some cases private rented accommodation that is not fit for human habitation, as we have heard this afternoon. This has been a very important debate. As a number of contributions have underlined, temporary accommodation is too often not temporary but can last up to a decade and more. It is too often substandard and sometimes downright dangerous, and is too often not available in people’s own areas.”
“This powerful and moving debate is testament to the importance of the introduction of the Backbench Business Committee and its debates. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this debate. She told me previously that there were 44 Members from both sides of the House behind her bid for it, and she has led it very effectively. However, this important debate has been very badly squeezed for time this afternoon. My hon. Friend gave a speech that those of us who know her well have come to see as characteristic: it was passionate, practical and laced with the personal commitment and care she gives to her constituents.”
“Let us hear from the Government that that is what they will take.”
“That is a disappointing intervention to take right at the end of this speech at the end of this debate, but I will send the hon. Gentleman the Labour housing manifesto. We have committed to ending the bedroom tax; the Conservatives brought it in. We will restore housing benefit support for 18 to 21-year-olds; they cut it. We will review the whole housing benefit system, including the local housing allowance and the lack of link with rising rents, which they brought in. Problems in the system are directly driving the rapid rise in homelessness and the need for the temporary accommodation that this debate has been about. I hope that this debate will give the Government a lead. Accepting that there are problems and agreeing with the concerns is not enough; action is needed now.”
“Some 3.5 million families with a variable rate mortgage face higher costs if the Bank of England puts up interest rates this week, so why are the Government, at this of all times, scrapping support for mortgage interest payments?”
“The Secretary of State is flannelling. Home ownership is at a 30-year low, and he does not seem to appreciate that 126,000 households, including 60,000 pensioner households, get help from the current scheme. From April, they and anyone else struggling with their mortgage costs will be offered a loan, but a loan is no good for those already struggling with the cost of the loans they have. Under Labour, with our mortgage rescue scheme, help was there when it was needed for families facing repossession. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) is laughing; I ask this of the Secretary of State, who takes the subject more seriously: will he use the Budget to scrap the Government’s current changes and back instead a new home ownership guarantee scheme, as Labour proposed at the election?”
“I am really glad, as I was in previous debates, to see so many Members from all parts of the House in the Chamber. The Prime Minister’s announcement was certainly welcome, and it was good to see Labour yet again winning the argument and making the running on Government policy.”
“I beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to halt its current plans to cap, at the local housing allowance rate, help with housing costs for tenants of supported housing and to adopt instead a system which safeguards the long-term future and funding of supported housing, building on the recommendations of the First Joint Report of the Communities and Local Government and Work and Pensions Committees of Session 2016-17, Future of supported housing, HC 867. This is the third Labour-led debate to confront the Government about their plans for supported housing. Perhaps it is a case of third time lucky, after the Prime Minister announced at Prime Minister’s questions this morning that the Government had backed away from capping help with supported housing costs at the local housing allowance rate.”
“Will he guarantee that this policy will not be subject to the same ill-conceived, ill-judged decisions that we have seen over the past two years?”
“Members on both sides of the House who I have previously heard make a very persuasive case in calling on the Government to change their plans. Let me turn instead to the heart of what is at stake and what still remains to be settled. The decision to drop the local housing allowance part of the plans is welcome, as we and the Select Committee have been clear about the Government’s error in this regard: it is too low and too variable to be the basis for supported housing. Will the Minister confirm today that any system for setting the level of support for those in supported housing will take full account of the costs? Will he confirm that the long-term funding levels will reflect the need for supported housing now and in the future?”
“It also calls on the Government to adopt instead a system that safeguards the long-term future and funding of supported housing, building on the recommendations of the joint report. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will signal their support for this approach during the debate, and then back the motion so that the will of Parliament is clear to the Government. Together, the Communities and Local Government Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee have done a really important service to the House and to the Government with their recent report. As I did earlier, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gloucester and my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. I look forward to their speeches and to the contributions of many hon.”
“The fears of many of the most vulnerable people in our society are very real, and the damage is already being done to vital specialist housing at a time when we already need at least 17,000 more such homes. The National Housing Federation reports that 85% of all building plans for new supported, sheltered or extra care housing have been halted over the past two years by the Government’s plans, and the Salvation Army says that the future of nine in 10 of its lifehouses for homeless people “could be placed at risk.” Our motion is designed to map a way forward. It calls on the Government, first, to halt its current plans—tick. That is what the Prime Minister announced today, and that is what the Government say they will do.”
“We called this debate to give Parliament a further opportunity to play its proper role in challenging and contributing to Government policy decisions, and our concerns are still important today. I trust that Ministers realise that Parliament, the housing sector and the Government must all play an essential part in sorting out a good, long-term system for supported housing for the future. It is now nearly two years since the Chancellor revealed the plan for crude cuts to supported housing via the local housing allowance, it is over a year since the second version of the same plan was announced and there is now less than 18 months until any changes are set to start.”
“Let us hope that this is third time lucky, and that the Government get the policy right this time. Ensuring that they did was the purpose of this debate, and even after the Prime Minister’s partial statement about the Government’s future plans, it remains the purpose of this debate. Since November 2015, these plans have been like the sword of Damocles hanging over the homes of more than 700,000 frail and elderly people, young people leaving care, homeless people and those with dementia, mental illness and learning disabilities, as well as ex-service veterans and women fleeing domestic violence. We called this debate to give a voice to the continued urgent warnings of organisations such as Mencap, Age Concern, Centrepoint, the Salvation Army and Women’s Aid, and their concerns are still important as the Government finalise their plans.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He pre-empts some of the tributes I am going to pay to members of his Committee and the Communities and Local Government Committee for the role they have played. In particular, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who chaired the sittings on the very important joint report, which was published back in May. After what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions earlier, we now know what the Government will not do, but we do not know what they will do. She said that the full announcement on future plans will be made on Tuesday, which is Hallowe’en, so the real question is: will this be trick or treat?”
“Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who knows such a great deal about welfare and benefits issues, is absolutely right.”
“My right hon. Friend is exactly right, and the Select Committees’ joint report was very clear about that. Not only does the LHA bear little relation to the actual cost, when the cost of providing supported housing is pretty consistent wherever people are in the country, but an LHA-based approach—I am glad the Government have backed off—would cause particular problems in the north and the midlands, where the level of the LHA is much lower. In my own area, the South Yorkshire Housing Association says that the majority of the 1,000 places it provides in supported housing for the frail elderly, people with learning disabilities and the homeless are at risk, and describes that approach as “catastrophic”. My right hon.”
“As a Parliament, and as Members on all sides, we are still coming to terms with the much bigger role and much stronger say we have in Government policy decisions. The influence— [ Interruption. ] The Minister snorts, but the truth is that the influence of Members from all sides has had a very significant bearing on the policy on supported housing. It has been very significant so far, but there is a good deal more to do. I trust that Ministers will see this debate as another important contribution.”
“Secondly, any new funding system must be needs-led and be able to deal with increases in demand and need for supported housing, not subject to arbitrary cash limits such as departmental revenue spending. Thirdly, any funding model for the future must take account of the particular needs of very short-term accommodation, including homeless hostels and women’s refuges—this is one of the very serious failings with universal credit. Fourthly, and most importantly, any new funding system must not lead to the closure of any vitally needed supported housing. This is a Government with no majority or mandate for domestic policy, because this is not covered by their deal with the Democratic Unionist party. It is Britain’s first minority Government for 38 years.”
“This is a funding cliff edge for existing supported housing and it entirely demolishes Ministers’ claims that they will protect supported housing. Will the Minister confirm today that the Government will make good this funding gap in full, so that the Prime Minister’s pledge this morning to the House in Prime Minister’s questions can be properly honoured? In our motion, we say the Government should adopt a system that “safeguards the long-term future and funding of supported housing.” I want to set out four tests for the Government, which explain what we mean and how we will judge the detail of any plans for change. First, any new funding system must reflect the real cost of running supported housing.”
“Gentleman will “generate additional savings in subsequent years as it is applied to the stock of supported housing tenants”. In other words, that includes all current supported housing tenants and not just, as originally planned, the new ones. It shows additional cost cuts in 2020-21 of £160 million. Of course, that was updated in the Budget 2017 Red Book to £165 million. As well as the £390 million of cuts already announced, therefore, there will be a further cut in 2020-21, the second year of any new system. The upshot is clear: Ministers have lined up costs for this programme. And they have lined up cuts of over half a billion pounds for year two of any new system they put in place, and further cuts after that.”
“Government Members are right to look puzzled and a little alarmed. This has not been mentioned by Ministers and it is only evident in the small print of the Treasury’s fiscal reports. If Members look closely at the Treasury documents, as I have, they will see exactly what the Government plan. On page 87 of the Budget 2016 Red Book, table 2.2 shows that the Government scored cuts to supported housing spending of £390 million in 2020-21. Following the pledge by the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to protect funding, page 12 of the Treasury’s 2016 autumn statement policy costings report reflected the commitment that overall funding for supported housing will be the same in 2019-20. However, it also confirmed that the amended policy announced by the right hon.”
“For all of us in this House and, in particular, for the 700,000 people who currently have their homes in supported or sheltered housing, what the Government do instead matters a great deal. The devil is always in the detail and the funding. We are told that we will have to wait until next week for the detail, so let me turn to funding. The previous Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, now the deputy Prime Minister, said in a written ministerial statement in September 2016: “we will bring in a new funding model which will ensure that the sector continues to be funded at current levels”. —[ Official Report , 15 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 37WS.] That is simply not true. Total funding is only protected in year one, 2019-20. In year two, the sector faces a funding cliff edge with cuts of more than £500 million scheduled from April 2020.”
“In their own review in 2011, they listed the main reasons behind the costs of supported housing, where housing costs are often greater than those for general needs housing, saying that they included “providing 24 hour housing management cover…providing more housing related support than in mainstream housing…organising more frequent repairs or refurbishment…providing more frequent mediating between tenants; and…providing extra CCTV and security services”. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) is absolutely right, and I am sure that the House will look forward to hearing her speak, and that she too will welcome the Prime Minister’s partial announcement today.”
“That is true, and my hon. Friend is another of the House’s experts in this area. However, it is also the case that the housing benefit element of the costs of supported housing is designed to cover the housing costs and the management of housing costs, not the personal or support care costs. Sometimes there is a confusion of those issues, but there should be no confusion for the Minister or the Government.”