HC Deb 30 April 1951 vol 487 cc959-72

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Sparks.]

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Yates (Birmingham, Ladywood)

The question I desire to bring to the notice of the House tonight is the number of homeless persons in the City of Birmingham. It is one aspect of the housing problem as it affects people who are experiencing great difficulty in getting any kind of accommodation whatsoever. I raised this question three years ago by letters to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Labour. I called attention to a particular hostel in my own constituency which at that time was having to accommodate more than 100 men, 90 of whom were sleeping on the floor. I pressed on the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Health, by Questions in the House, the importance of some kind of hostel accommodation. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health in July, 1948, informed me by letter that: It is understood that the National Service Hostels Corporation will be able to provide 1,500 beds in the City before next spring. Later, in 1949, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour at that time informed me that: Although this additional accommodation appeared to be necessary in the early part of 1948, as a result of the changed labour situation, it was found later that the existing accommodation secured through the normal lodging arrangements was adequate to meet the anticipated needs of transferred workers. In view of that, I pressed the matter with the Minister of Health, and in May, 1950, the Minister wrote me a letter in which he said: As you know, the City Council last year in their capacity as public health authority enforced higher standards at the Winson Green Shelter and certain other hostels with the result that there has been, I am informed, a net loss of some 100 places. Despite this reduction in accommodation, we have not received—apart from your letter—any representations that there is a need for further accommodation of the hostel type in Birmingham, but in view of what you say in your letter, I am taking up with the City Council the possibility of their providing a hostel for men in employment as part of their housing programme. It was this particular suggestion that I wanted Birmingham to consider. The National Assistance Board had in their Report for 1948 included a passage, on pages 30–31: Shortage of suitable lodgings is a serious obstacle in the way of efforts to get men settled in regular employment. Some good workers have rough habits which do not commend them as lodgers to private householders and some seem to be temperamentally incapable of settling down, except in communal lodging houses where they can have company, and do not have to bear the responsibility of organising their life. There is a shortage of good communal lodging houses, and those that exist are generally already full. There is a real need, which the Board themselves can do nothing to meet, particularly of good cheap hostels for young working men, and this would be a fruitful field for municipal and voluntary effort. If there were more good lodging houses and hostels it would be easier to reclaim men from an 'unsettled life' and far fewer of them might drift into it. Nothing happened about this; at least, as far as I am able to gather, no hostel on these lines was considered.

Therefore, I raised the matter by means of a Question in this House on 15th March, and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health told me that the city council were asked to consider the possibility of providing a hostel for men in employment who had no homes. Since then I have met the chairman and some members of the local welfare committee. I was surprised when I was informed by them that this suggestion had not been considered by the local housing department and that, as far as they knew, it had not been put to them.

Because of that, I felt it necessary to raise this matter on the Adjournment. The local authority certainly conducted an inquiry. As a result they decided to open a hostel for men for use under the control of the police. Men coming into the city late at night, who cannot obtain accommodation but who have 1s. 6d., are directed by the police to this hostel in Dartmouth Street, Birmingham. To my knowledge, that is the only hostel established as a result of this inquiry, which I assume arose from the investigation by the Ministry of Health.

I have discussed this question with the Chief Constable of Birmingham. He told me of the concern which the police have expressed previously about the problem of people on the streets at night. The opening of this hostel relieved the problem of the police to a large extent. People on the streets at night who have no money can be referred to the reception centre, and those who have 1s. 6d. can be directed to this hostel. The Chief Constable informed me that since the beginning of January, 110 men had been directed to the hostel. Seventy-two were English, and 38 were Irish, Welsh or Scottish. But this is not the type of hostel which I think is desirable to meet the present need.

We are told by the Ministry of Labour that there are 50,000 vacancies in the district at present, and men come from all parts of the country. I do not think that a hostel for people who might be regarded as suspicious is required. What is required is a reasonable kind of dwelling in which men can be housed. I have visited this hostel. No one is admitted before 10 p.m., and all must leave by 7 a.m. There are two bedrooms, one with six beds and one with four. It does not matter at what time a man arrives at the hostel, he must leave by 7 a.m. If the police find a man who has arrived at two or three in the morning in search of work, or to take up a job, and he is admitted to the hostel, he must leave by 7 a.m. In fact, if there is any difficulty in that direction, the police are called in. No refreshments are provided, either at night or before the men leave in the morning, and frankly I do not think that this is the type of hostel that is really worthy of the City of Birmingham.

It is said that this hostel has been established and yet is not full every night. I cannot imagine that it ever would be full in these circumstances, because, first of all, a man can only stay there one night and must prove that he came into the city that very night. If a man had been in the city the day before, he would not be allowed to go to this hostel, and therefore no one would expect to keep a hostel full in those circumstances.

When the local authority made their inquiry, the report of the general purposes committee to the City Council in December included this sentence: It will be observed that the common lodging house accommodation in the city has diminished since before the war by the net amount of 922 beds. So we lost 922 beds for various reasons, and these beds have never been replaced. The city took a census of accommodation in May, 1950, and, because at some of the hostels in the city they discovered that there were beds vacant in the summer months, they decided in December that there was no need, as far they could see, for further hostel accommodation beyond what had been established.

I decided to make an investigation myself, apart from the hostel in my own constituency, which is run by the Church of England Temperance Society, and is free but can accommodate only 25 men. This society has pioneered in looking after the down-and-outs for a number of years, and, but for these voluntary institutions, I do not know what we should have done in Birmingham. The other larger hostels in the city make a charge. First, there are the Salvation Army hostels. I made personal visits to the Salvation Army hostels at Loveday Street, Ryder Street, Jamaica Row and Moor Street. These hostels accommodate 470 people. In my own constituency, the Church Army has a hostel accommodating 85, and there is a women's hostel of the Salvation Army accommodating 21, and Rowton House. which is run by a limited company, which accommodates 801. I have visited every one of these large hostels in the City of Birmingham during the past month, and there has not been a single vacant bed on any occasion when I visited them.

The serious matter about this is that, at every one of these hostels at which men are prepared to pay for their accommodation, men are turned away night after night. There are 1,402 beds permanently taken, and, at Rowton House, which is the largest hostel, accommodating 801 men, people are turned away at the rate of 30 every night. It is a very grave problem, because the important question is what happens to the people who are turned away. I should like my hon. Friend who is to reply to look at this photograph from the shelter in my own constituency. It was included in the last report of the Birmingham Diocesan Church of England Temperance Society Prison Mission, and on it is stated, "No room. Sorry, full up." That was a year ago, and the position today is very much worse. My principal concern is what is happening to these men and women who are being turned away. Is it correct that they are sleeping out?

I have made many inquiries, and I want to take the case of the men first. In one week this last month, I discovered no fewer than 12 men who had actually slept out in the open because they had nowhere to go. Last week, I came across two men who were working at Northfield, Birmingham, and who had to wander eight miles away before they could find a place to sleep. They eventually slept out in a barn. I suppose that in their wanderings they were successful in avoiding the police.

One man who was living in a Salvation Army hostel informed me that he had committed a crime in order to obtain accommodation. He said that he would be quite prepared to commit a crime rather than sleep out. He had never slept out and did not intend to do so. Last week, a man came out of Winson Green Prison and had nowhere to go. When he was offered accommodation at the prison night shelter, he said, "That is no good, because I want to go to work, and I must have a place of abode." He then tried to obtain accommodation at Rowton House, but, after waiting four hours, was unsuccessful. By that time the Winson Green Prison free night shelter was full, and he was unable to get in.

There is, of course, the reception centre for which the local welfare committee is responsible as the agents of the Assistance Board. There is—and I would like my hon. Friend to consider this in consultation, perhaps, with his right hon. Friend the Minister of National Insurance—a kind of resentment on the part of those who go to the reception centre, especially those who have got jobs. The reason is that, as under the old workhouse system, they have to perform a task from 8 o'clock to midday the next morning. It is true that if they can get a written authority informing those in charge that they have a job to go to, they can be released the following morning without performing this task. But this privilege can only be granted on one occasion, which means that they cannot go back to the reception centre. There is a national regulation which insists upon the task being performed. The local authorities say that they have now waived that regulation, but, upon investigation, I find that it is only waived for the one night. That being so, the reception centre cannot expect to be always full, even in present circumstances.

I cannot say how many men are walking the streets at night. The Chief Constable informed me that during the night of the census, the police found eight men sleeping out. But we know that these men are naturally dodging the police, and are not sleeping in places where they are likely to be seen by them. Some of them explained to me roughly where they were staying.

The problem of women and children is probably more serious. The Salvation Army Women's Hostel in Aston Street, Birmingham, had a case of a man, wife and two children who were on the streets at night. The Women's Hostel was able to take in the mother and the little girl and, of course, they could not take the man and the little boy. The problem of boys is a really serious one. In this particular case the father wandered about the streets with the boy.

In this connection I should like to refer to the experiment in temporary night shelter recently carried out by the Birmingham Settlement, I believe by arrangement with the local welfare committee. When I was discussing this matter with the officials, they did not inform me they were making this experiment because they did not want it made public in any way. They wanted to find out how many women and children were out on the streets. The report they have just issued shows that the shelter opened on Saturday, 13th January, and closed on Sunday, 8th April, that is, a period of 12 weeks. They say that 41 women and 20 children have been given a total of 279 nights shelter. This is an average of four nights per person. The report analyses all the cases that have been given shelter and in a recommendation at the conclusion of the report, which I should like my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to examine, they say: It would appear there is a need for further accommodation for women at work and also accommodation for women with boys over 5 years old, as at present there is nowhere for them to go. One boy of 10 spent a night in a male reception ward at Weston Road which hardly seems desirable. Is there any way of mitigating the low National Assistance Board allowance during a period of 'no fixed abode'? … Eating out is not cheap, particularly in the winter with children, and cups of tea in a cafe become a fairly frequent necessity. I think that report supports the case which I am putting forward. I am sure the local authority is very anxious to deal with the problem. I do not raise it in any narrow sense, but I feel that this House and the Minister responsible should take all possible steps to consult with the local authority and to assist, where possible, so that the problem may be dealt with adequately.

I ask my hon. Friend if he will investigate this matter, especially in view of the large numbers of workers who are likely to be brought into the city as a result of re-armament. The matter also ought to be considered in conjunction with the National Assistance Board. I cannot think that the conditions at present experienced in Birmingham are really worthy of our city and I think every possible effort should be made to improve them. Those who are responsible for the hostels have informed me of their own anxiety at having to turn people away in the night. There is a special need for some kind of hostel accommodation to relieve this position, and I hope my hon. Friend will take every possible step to get some kind of conference to discuss this situation.

If the local authority feel that they cannot undertake the provision of such accommodation, an approach should be made to all the voluntary people concerned, such as the Salvation Army, the Church Army and the Church of England Temperance Society who are anxious for every possible step to be taken. I have with me a letter from the Church of England Temperance Society who express the hope that further accommodation will be provided and that I shall be able to obtain some recognition of the need for increased hospital accommodation for homeless and displaced persons in the City of Birmingham in association with Government bodies, voluntary organisations and the National Assistance Board.

If this situation develops, the problem created will be very grave. We saw in the Press a few weeks ago the story of a woman who died and who had been living in an air-raid shelter. I do not know how many people are living in air-raid shelters. I do not think the police know. In fact, I think that if the police had to find out what people are doing at night in the City of Birmingham, with a million population, they would have to increase their force considerably, for they are certainly under strength. I am raising a grave problem, and I hope my hon. Friend will make every possible investigation in order that it may be dealt with satisfactorily now.

9.28 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Blenkinsop)

We have all listened with very real sympathy to my hon. Friend the Member for Lady-wood (Mr. Yates) detailing these individual cases which arise in Birmingham; it is a problem, indeed, that may be arising elsewhere as well. I think we are all anxious, when we hear cases of people having to spend the night in the streets, to try and take any step we can to avoid that situation arising in any part of the country. No doubt, we would all have hoped that we had got beyond that stage in this country.

Perhaps I should explain the action which has been taken up to now, following the very real interest which my hon. Friend has shown in this matter. It is quite true, as he says, that he has raised this question before and has had discussions with the local authority and quite a good deal of correspondence with us—with the old Ministry of Health as it was, and with the present Ministry of Health in its rather attenuated form. It is also the case that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), who was then Minister of Health, wrote to my hon. Friend in May of last year, as indeed my hon. Friend has said, and there were discussions with the local authority following that letter. It is true that we did not write an official letter to the local authority about the matter, but our regional officers discussed it with the officials of the city of Birmingham and the city of Birmingham set up its own inquiry through its general purposes committee. I have here a copy of the report presented by that committee to the council in December, which was followed by an additional report in January.

The first part of their report dealt with the particular problem which my hon. Friend had raised originally—that of employed persons who, it was alleged, were coming into the city and, although they had work, were unable to find accommodation for the night. The problem was of those entering the city and arriving so late at night that they had no opportunity to find accommodation. It was stressed very strongly that whatever else might be recommended, there was a very urgent case to be made out for some hostel accommodation of a very temporary character which would enable those entering the city to find some shelter at least for the night of their arrival.

It was to meet that particular need that this very modest hostel accommodation to which my hon. Friend has referred was provided. Indeed, following the special inquiry which they carried out the general purposes committee made that one of the recommendations in the report presented to the Birmingham Council in December. They recommended that the welfare committee be requested to consider the possibility of providing a hostel at which temporary accommodation for 10 men can be reserved for use in an emergency only after 10 p.m., such accommodation to be at the disposal of the Chief Constable, and to report thereon to the council as soon as possible. It was following that recommendation that this accommodation was provided. But the committee also inquired into wider needs. When we consider the more permanent accommodation which my hon. Friend has in mind—something more than just this minimum, urgent-necessity accommodation—then of course we enter the wider field of housing requirements generally. The council have also been considering whether or not further accommodation of a hostel type should be provided, but it must be borne in mind that any accommodation of that kind would have to come out of the building materials available and which are used for the ordinary housing programme.

Certainly it would make a call of some size upon building resources, and it has been one of the major problems in Birmingham to try to attract more building labour in order to get on faster with the general housing work. It was, however, a matter for the council to consider whether they should make any of that type of accommodation available; and apparently they felt that it would be unwise to make any further call upon their supply of building labour, which is already short. It is still a matter for the council themselves to decide, and they can consider whether or not to review that decision and whether there is a good case to be made out for additional hostel accommodation of a rather more permanent character, in view of some of the points which my hon. Friend has brought forward tonight. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Local Government and Planning will, I am sure, be very glad to consider, through his local officials, any representation which the city council may wish to make in that respect.

In addition, my hon. Friend raised the very important and in some ways even more tragic question of the need for accommodation for evicted families. There again, the inquiry which was set up by the general purposes committee recommended that there was a need for temporary accommodation in which the family could be kept together until more permanent accommodation was made available. They wondered whether it would be possible to provide a community hostel, and in their recommendations to the City Council on 9th January they suggested that Swanhurst Camp might be used for this purpose. They put proposals to the Ministry, who felt unable to approve them because they meant the breaking up of families. We have always insisted, even with temporary accommodation, upon trying to keep families together.

When this point was put to them the council quite understood it and further discussion is going on between officials of the Ministry of Local Government and Planning and the council to see whether revised proposals can be worked out for the use of the camp. At the present time, up to the last moment of which I have information, the camp was being used by the employees of a firm who are doing a great deal of the house building in Birmingham. One will have to be clear during the discussion what other accommodation there is available for them. Even if these proposals fail I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Local Government and Planning will welcome the opportunity of discussing alternative proposals to meet this need.

My hon. Friend raised another point upon which I do not think he will expect me to give a final answer, the regulations issued by the Assistance Board relating to the use of reception centres in Birmingham. I am prepared to undertake to have a discussion with the Minister of National Insurance and to represent to her the points which my hon. Friend has raised. We are only too anxious to take steps to relieve the problem. I think my hon. Friend realises that the regulations are designed to deal with a particular type of problem and were never intended to refer to some of the cases he has mentioned. It is probably a sign of the urgent need for this matter to be tackled on a rather different basis as part of the very real housing problem that Birmingham has to meet.

More than one department is concerned in this matter, but both my right hon. Friend the Minister of Local Government and Planning, and ourselves, are very willing to discuss with local authorities on the spot any practical proposals to relieve these cases. It is very difficult to establish the precise size of the problem. We certainly appreciate the fact that it is probably more serious in the winter than in the summer. I can assure my hon. Friend that his raising of the matter in the House tonight will give it valuable publicity and will enable us to take further steps to get into touch with the local authority and to keep in touch with them in order to help solve this problem.

Mr. Keenan (Liverpool, Kirkdale)

May I ask, as the position disclosed in Birmingham is so terrific from the housing point of view, what is the position of the Ministry of Labour in this matter? There are vacancies in my own area, and it would seem to me to be folly to direct labour to Birmingham if there is no accommodation.

Mr. Blenkinsop

I think that I should say in reply to the interjection that, on the submission of my hon. Friend, the total number of these cases is very small in relation to the total number of those who are being found employment and who are going into Birmingham at the present time. It is, of course, a matter which the Ministry of Labour do have to bear in mind—the availability of accommodation for those being sent there—but I think that it is important that we should keep some sort of perspective of the size of the problem.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. Julius Silverman (Birmingham, Erdington)

I agree that it is necessary to keep this matter in perspective in relation to the whole problem. While I am glad of the assurances which the Minister has given, this is a symptom of a very big problem indeed. So far as the City of Birmingham is concerned, it is a problem which I think I can say is unique in this country. It is not simply the problem of one large city which is repeated in the other large cities.

During little more than three years, 60,000 additional people have come into Birmingham. That means that in a short period the population of a whole town has come into the City of Birmingham and had to be absorbed by the existing housing accommodation. That, of course, creates all sorts of problems. It is not simply a problem of the present re-armament drive, because this addition to the population of Birmingham took place before the present re-armament drive commenced, and therefore there is every reason to expect this influx to continue for many years and even when the rearmament drive comes to an end. Birmingham has many prosperous industries at the present time and people flock there from the less prosperous parts of the country. This creates an immense and increasing housing problem.

There is a housing problem not merely for those who come into the city, but also for those who are already there. At present on the register of the Birmingham housing Management committee there are 58,000 families, and the register is being increased at the rate of about 200 per week. That means that there are about four times as many families as there is accommodation found every week. There is no doubt that all these people coming into the city create an immense pressure on the existing accommodation, some of which is felt immediately and some of which may be delayed in effect for two or three years.

It is a broad problem, and the problem of the physically homeless is simply an outward symptom on its periphery. There is a general problem which has to be tackled. I cannot expect the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with this from his own Department because the problem affects many Departments. Apart from those he has mentioned, it affects the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour. Somehow or other there seems to be a gap in our planning. While much has been done by the Board of Trade in the direction of planning, it seems to me that only an extension of overall planning will really begin to solve the problem. At present I cannot see any daylight in the problem as a whole, nor can I see any possibility except of deterioration in Birmingham's housing situation in the next few years unless something very drastic is done about it. In the meantime I am very glad to have the Minister's assurances about these particular problems.

I am concerned particularly about evicted families. There is a distinction between the evicted families and the families which come into the city. At any rate, the family which comes into the city does so of its own choice. The evicted family has no choice. Some of the evicted families come from council houses. In some cases the head tenant, who is the council tenant, has left the district, exchanged for another house or died, and these other tenants are sometimes evicted by the council. That is apart from evictions of tenants of privately-owned houses. There were about 500 evictions in all last year. Many of these people have nowhere to go and the present accommodation provided by the welfare committee is quite incapable of receiving additional cases, and one is faced with the problem of people who, literally, have nowhere to go except the workhouse. Some of them have actually gone to the workhouse. That shows the nature of the problem.

Something should be done urgently to provide additional accommodation so that the welfare committee can deal with the problem of evictions and to make sure that if a family suffers the misfortune of eviction—it is a major misfortune—it shall not be on the streets or have the alternative of the workhouse, but shall have some accommodation to which to go. I hope that the Minister will follow up his assurances and make every representation possible to the local authority in conjunction with the National Assistance Board and give all assistance to see that additional provision is made for these unfortunate families. I hope, moreover, that it will be possible for the Ministers concerned to investigate the whole of the problem, because something very drastic must be done within the next year or two to prevent an extension into what might very well be a housing calamity.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Eleven Minutes to Ten o'clock.