HC Deb 07 June 1988 vol 134 c732 4.22 pm
Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, the eviction yesterday by the Tower Hamlets council from bed-and-breakfast accommodation of 10 Bengali families. These families are in the United Kingdom lawfully and the husbands and fathers all came to Britain before 1973—many of them well before. For the past year Tower Hamlets council has sought to deny its responsibilities for housing the families or financing them in bed-and-breakfast accommodation on the ground that, as the families must have had a home in Bangladesh, they rendered themselves intentionally homeless by coming to the United Kingdom. That wholly unexpected interpretation of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was upheld in the Appeal Court in May, even though, with 46 children involved, it is accepted that the families are in priority need of housing.

The families spent last night in the church hall of the United Reformed Church in Bethnal Green, following—I am proud to report—a vote of the congregation to offer shelter to the families. However, this can only be a temporary arrangement, and their plight is urgent.

It is utterly wrong of Tower Hamlets council to do what it has done. The council has brought shame upon itself and much misery to the 10 families involved and to the further 24 families threatened with similar treatment.

The issue is specific to the families involved and no one will question that it is a matter of great importance to them; but it also raises issues whose importance goes far beyond Tower Hamlets. The decision affects immigration policy, as the clear implication is that the families, who waited years for their entry certificates, should now go back to Bangladesh. That would be compulsory repatriation by the back door. It is also extremely damaging to race relations in my borough and much more widely. It reveals a totally unexpected defect in the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act as the words "intentionally homeless" were never meant to apply to lawful immigrant families. The Government are involved, because the one serious, but insufficient, excuse that Tower Hamlets council can offer for its conduct is the undoubted great shortage of accommodation in Tower Hamlets and the continued inadequacy of local authority housing finance provided by the Government.

These are matters of great importance to the House arid I submit that they merit an early debate.

Mr. Speaker

The right hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific arid important matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely, the eviction yesterday by the Tower Hamlets council from bed-and-breakfast accommodation of 10 Bengali families. I have listened with care to what the right hon. Gentleman has said, but I regret that I do not consider that the matter that he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20 and I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House. I hope that he may find other ways of raising the matter.