Schedule 1 - Minor and consequential amendments
Homelessness Bill
11:00 am
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 16, in page 14, line 3, at end insert—
`In section 190 (duties to persons becoming homeless intentionally), after subsection (3) there is inserted—
``(4) In any case where the local housing authority are advised by a social services authority that a child who is in need within the meaning of section 17(10) of the Children Act 1989 resides with an applicant to whom they have secured that accommodation is available under subsection (2) above, they shall—
(a) continue to secure that accommodation is available for the occupation of the applicant and any such child for so long as the social services authority advise them that accommodation is required to enable the social services authority to provide services to such a child to promote or safeguard the child's welfare; or
(b) provide such assistance to the social services authority as shall enable the applicant to secure that accommodation becomes available from some other person.''.'.
The Minister will be aware that recent judgments appear to have compromised some of the principles of the Children Act 1989, which places the interests of children first and seeks to keep families together wherever possible. The amendment deal with the effects of such judgments, thereby ensuring that at least some safety net continues to exist for families with children who have intentionality decisions taken against them.
In an application for judicial review, the Court of Appeal found that section 17 of the 1989 Act conferred a power rather than a duty on local authorities to provide assistance to families of children in need. That is often done by financial assistance for a rent deposit, with rent or other help in accessing private accommodation, rather than the direct provision of accommodation. The Court of Appeal also found that the duty to provide accommodation under section 20 of the 1989 Act was a duty to house the child, not the parent and child together. Only a few weeks ago, the High Court applied that judgment and concluded that such decisions of local authorities were not subject to judicial review.
The provisions of the 1989 Act were an important last line of defence for families, so those decisions are worrying and may have caused—we will find out if the loophole is closed—children to be taken into care unnecessarily. That will cause great trauma for the families, not to mention expense. The problem, as Shelter makes clear, is that intentionality decisions are complex and are not infrequently overturned on review. Unfortunately, giving local authorities the power rather than imposing a duty on them to make assessments will allow much greater scope for variation.
Assessments made by authorities whose decisions may be less robust could leave families in a difficult position. Only last week, a family attended my surgery; the man, who was born and bred in Paddington, and his Swedish wife, who allegedly had left private rented accommodation in Sweden, were on the streets in my constituency with a small child. I have no idea whether the local authority's intentionality decision was correct. I am not a lawyer and I do not know whether the child would have been found to be at risk under the Children Act and that action should therefore be taken. However, regardless of whether that decision was correct, the family was sitting in my office in hysterics with nowhere to sleep that night and a six-year-old child attending a school in my constituency had, for the previous few weeks, been moved every night to sleep on a sofa in a friend's accommodation.
We must do everything possible to close the loopholes that allow that sort of thing to happen. Ideally, we would close those loopholes by amending the Children Act, but we cannot do that and amendment No. 16 would not be as effective. However, it would help by replacing the weaker power of local authorities to assist by inserting the word ``duty''. It would thereby ensure that a safety net was always in place.