My Lords, I will speak also to my Amendment 36B.
Amendment 36A introduces a review on homelessness and housing need, which would be established by the Secretary of State, to determine whether there should be targets for local authorities to reduce the numbers of homeless children and families in housing need in their area. Similarly, Amendment 36B asks the Secretary of State to order a review to look at the advantage of setting some sort of target for affordable housing in these areas and associated borrowing powers to facilitate that housing. I am thinking in particular of affordable housing for key workers, such as teachers and child and family social workers, who will have such an important role in turning around the lives of vulnerable families in housing need and of homeless children.
Before proceeding, I put on record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for moving my earlier amendment this afternoon. I was hosting a reception for a charity which is 250 years old this year, and it was very good to be there, so I am most grateful to him.
The Minister and many of your Lordships will be aware that in this country we have a chronic problem of child homeless and families in housing need, particularly in London and the south-east but also in other parts of the nation. The statistics from Shelter showed that over 90,000 children in England, Scotland and Wales were homeless—that is to say, living in temporary accommodation—and over 2,000 families were living in bed and breakfast accommodation last summer in England. That figure was rising in England but falling in Wales and Scotland. Therefore, it is getting worse at the moment but it has been a problem for many years, and it has not been properly addressed. These are not just statistics. The children who experience homelessness experience insecurity; they do not know where they will be living from one week to the next. That uncertainty is so disruptive to their lives, and they are often from vulnerable, problematic families.
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This morning I attended a conference in Canterbury on the education of looked-after children, and the main theme was the importance to such children and young people of a continuity of relationships. So often what our vulnerable families lack above all is that continuity of relationship, with a father or with a teacher: important figures in their life who can, over a period of time, take an interest in their welfare— and of course homelessness makes that much more difficult.
I understand also that to deal with this issue some authorities are having to uproot families and move them into other areas of England where there is more housing supply. Just when these families are getting the help they need to settle down, they can find that their support services are disrupted and they are placed in areas with many families like themselves. I hesitate to use the word “ghettos”, but it does not seem helpful to put these families with other families who are suffering similar problems. We want a much more mixed environment rather than concentrating troubled families in one place. Can the Minister therefore write to me to explain the policy of the Government around
these issues of families in housing need and homeless children? What does she think the Bill might do to address those problems?
On affordable housing, briefly, I will say again how much I warmly welcome the Government’s promise of 275,000 new affordable houses—I hope I have the figure right—by the end of these five years. That is very important indeed. I am thinking in particular of the need, as I said earlier, to have housing for teachers, social workers, prison officers and nurses where it is needed most. When I speak to teachers I hear about their long commutes into central London to do what they have to do. So often the temptation must be to move away once they have some experience to somewhere that is less costly and set up a family home there. We are talking about new powerhouses outside London, but if these sorts of problems are not already there they will develop as those powerhouses come into economic well-being. Therefore we need to think about how we are to provide decent housing for our teachers and social workers that will keep them near where they are needed. I understand that in the past, some local authorities would give a social worker a house at the beginning of their career, which would be a big incentive for that social worker to stay around.
Last night I heard Michael Spurr, who is the chief executive for the National Offender Management Service, talking about his work managing the prisons of this country. He has faced many challenges such as an increasing number of prisoners and reduced funding, but he seems to be doing an extraordinarily good job in those circumstances. I think we would all agree that he is a very admirable man. However, he is having a problem in London and the south-east in recruiting officers and filling vacancies. He did not mention it, but I am sure that one of the issues must be affordable housing in London and the south-east. I would appreciate any insight from the Minister on how she thinks the Bill might help in this area of affordable housing, particularly for key workers. On that point, I beg to move.