Tag: Luke Hall

Below is the text of the statement made by Luke Hall, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in the House of Commons on 3 June 2020.

As required by the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, section 3(1), today my Department has published the fourth annual report, setting out how the Troubled Families Programme (2015-20) has been supporting our most disadvantaged families who face multiple and complex problems. We are laying this report today and will place a copy in the House of Commons Library. There has been a slight delay to the publication of the report, due on 31 March, as my Department focused on the emergency response to the covid-19 pandemic.

The Troubled Families Programme has been at the heart of our ambition to strengthen families and improve their futures since 2015. This year’s annual report details the programme’s performance for the period up to the end of March 2020, outlines the changes introduced for the 20-21 financial year to allow more families to be eligible for support, and clarifies how their progress towards outcomes will be measured. The report was drafted before the covid-19 pandemic so does not reflect the ongoing response from local government to support families during this unprecedented time.​

Improving families’ lives: fourth annual report of the Troubled Families Programme 2019-20 details how the programme is driving a profound shift in the way that local services respond to entrenched problems and support our most disadvantaged families. Assigning a single key worker to each family, backed by multi-agency partners and co-ordinated data, this joined up “wrap-around” support works with whole families to tackle the range of issues they face.

Over the lifetime of the programme, local authorities have supported 350,105 families to achieve successful outcomes, including 30,000 adults who were helped into sustained employment, although the programme has worked with many more families. These families faced multiple and complex problems including a combination of crime, truancy, neglect, antisocial behaviour, domestic abuse, poor mental health, worklessness and financial exclusion. Every successful family outcome represents a family’s life changed for the better—a considerable achievement for the families and the local authorities supporting them.

Analysis to track family outcomes over time, and case study research, indicates that the programme delivered successful outcomes by intervening early to prevent escalation to children’s social care. Analysis found that for every £1 spent on the programme it delivers £2.28 of economic benefits (includes economic, social and fiscal benefits) and £1.51 of fiscal benefits (only budgetary impacts on services).

Analysis also suggests that the programme is reducing the probability of future interaction with the criminal justice system, and the severity of offending, for adults and juveniles who had been convicted or given a custodial sentence before they joined the programme.

The Troubled Families Programme has received new investment to extend the programme for an additional year. The additional Government funding of £165 million will enable the current programme to continue until the end of 2020-21.

The refreshed financial framework for 2020-21 was published on 14 May 2020 and sets out the expanded eligibility criteria and an explanation of the way in which local authorities should identify and support families using a range of indicators.

“Improving families’ lives: fourth annual report of the Troubled Families Programme 2019-2020” is accompanied by a range of publications that evaluate the programme’s progress which can be accessed at: www.gov.uk.

These are:

Analysis of national and local data sets: part five.

Staff Surveys—Troubled Families Co-ordinators: part four.

Staff Surveys—Troubled Families Keyworkers: part four.

Staff Surveys—Troubled Families Employment Advisors: part four.

Case Study Research: part four.

Family Survey additional analysis.

Below is the text of the letter sent by Luke Hall, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, to local authorities on 27 March 2020.

Dear Local Leaders,

Thank you for your continuing work in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This scale of the challenge we all face is unprecedented. I know this is a particularly challenging time and that you and your staff are going above and beyond to help support your communities at this time.

Last week, the Government asked Dame Louise Casey to lead the Government’s response to COVID-19 and rough sleeping to help make sure that we bring everyone in. It is our joint responsibility to safeguard as many homeless people as we can from COVID-19. Our strategy must be to bring in those on the streets to protect their health and stop wider transmission, particularly in hot spot areas, and those in assessment centres and shelters that are unable to
comply with social distancing advice.

This approach aims to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on people facing homelessness and ultimately on preventing deaths during this public health emergency. Given the nature of the emergency, the priority is to ensure that the NHS and medical services are able to cope and we have built this strategy based on NHS medical guidance and support.

The basic principles are to:

focus on people who are, or are at risk of, sleeping rough, and those who are in accommodation where it is difficult to self-isolate, such as shelters and assessment centres

make sure that these people have access to the facilities that enable them to adhere to public health guidance on hygiene or isolation, ideally single room facilities utilise alternative powers and funding to assist those with no recourse to public funds who require shelter and other forms of support due to the COVID-19 pandemic mitigate their own risk of infection, and transmission to others, by ensuring they are able to self-isolate as appropriate in line with public health guidance

This should be done by taking the following programme of actions:

1. Convening a local coordination cell to plan and manage your response to COVID and rough sleeping involving the local authority (housing, social care and public health) and local NHS partners together. This would then report in to wider local COVID structures.

2. Seeking to stop homeless people from congregating in facilities such as day centres and street encampments where there is a higher risk of transmission

3. Urgently procuring accommodation for people on the streets if you have not already done so – MHCLG will support you to do so if you are struggling to procure sufficient units

4. Triaging people where possible into three cohorts driven by medical advice:

 those with symptoms of COVID19;
 those with pre-existing conditions but without symptoms; and
 those without any of the above.

Attached to this letter is additional guidance on the approach that agencies should be taking to triaging agreed with NHS England and Public Health England.

5. Getting the social care basics such as food, and clinician care to people who need it in the self-contained accommodation. It is likely that you will need to utilise your commissioned homeless services to provide support to people in this accommodation and we urge you to work with the commissioned and non-commissioned sector to make sure there are adequate levels of support provided.

6. If possible, separating people who have significant drug and alcohol needs from those who do not.

In the longer term it will of course be necessary to identifying step-down arrangements for the future, including the re-opening of shelter-type accommodation.

Given the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday night that the public should be staying in their homes wherever possible, it is now imperative that rough sleepers and other vulnerable homeless are supported into appropriate accommodation by the end of the week. Dame Louise is spearheading all of our efforts to get everyone in. As she has said ‘it won’t be perfect but all of us together will do our best’.

We know that this requires funding. Last week, the Government announced £1.6bn for local authorities to respond to other COVID-19 pressures including for services helping the most vulnerable, including homeless people. This grant will cover all costs incurred in the first phase of the response, but we will keep future funding need under review. To support our understanding of what authorities or additional funding is likely to be required we will be working with local authorities to develop an ongoing assessment of costs.

Thank you very much for everything you are doing to save lives and provide care for some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Luke Hall MP

Below is the text of the statement made by Luke Hall, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 23 January 2020.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day.

This debate is taking place on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe, which brought an end to the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany. But as we know, it did not bring an end to the scourge of antisemitism. Today, sadly, we see antisemitism on the rise once more in this country and across Europe and the Americas. It is a mark of a civilised society that people of different faiths, different cultures and different traditions can live together in harmony. If we are truly to value Holocaust Memorial Day, we will do it by remembering this lesson: that we must show tolerance and respect for other people in order to live in peace. That is why it is vital that we all rise to the challenge and rid our society of this age-old hatred.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember all those murdered by the Nazis: the 6 million Jews; the thousands of Roma and Sinti; the political prisoners; those with physical disabilities and mental illness; and those persecuted for their sexuality. It is a day when we remember the 2 million victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the almost 1 million victims of the Rwandan genocide. It is a day when we remember the 8,000 Muslim men and boys murdered in Srebrenica 25 years ago. On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember them all.

The enormity of the numbers can make it seem almost impossible to relate to individual victims. That is made even harder because the names of many holocaust victims have been lost to us. In Nazi Germany, Jewish men and women were forced to change any name believed to be Aryan to Israel for men and Sara for women. Others, in the camps, had their names stripped from them and replaced by a tattooed number. Personal names that had been handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter were lost or replaced.

To mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has launched a social media commemorative project that will generate the name of an individual who was murdered by the Nazis, allowing us to honour those victims by giving them back their name. Today I will be honouring Johannes Degen. He was born in Germany on 8 July 1900 and was murdered by the Nazis for being a Jehovah’s Witness. I hope that all Members will take the time to take part and visit the trust’s website.

Survivors are at the heart of holocaust commemorations. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to sit before a survivor and listen to them describe their experience can be in no doubt about the terrible truth of what happened. Sadly, to this day there are still people who insist that the holocaust never happened.

Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)

The Minister is absolutely right that as these wonderful survivors come to the end of their lives, we need to have a record of their testimony. The exhibition at the Huddersfield holocaust memorial centre, which was ​opened by Lord Pickles, is a wonderful resource. We have those recordings, and children and other people can learn and remember.

Luke Hall

I thank the hon. Gentleman for putting that on record, and I completely agree with what he said. Survivors are the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, and the testimonies that we hear are a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history.

I wish to take the time to share a little of the story of Auschwitz survivor Lily Eberts. In 1944, when she was just 14 years old, the Nazis deported her and her family from her Hungarian home town to Auschwitz. She was with her mother, brother and three sisters. On their arrival, they were split up, either directed left or right. Lily’s mother, brother and sister were told to go right and they were taken to the gas chambers and crematorium. Lily and her two sisters were directed the other way. They never saw the others again. The only possession that Lily was able to keep with her on her journey was her gold pendant, given to her by her mother, which, remarkably, survived the camp with her, hidden in the heel of her shoe.

Seventy five years have passed since liberation. Lily is now a proud great grandmother. She still wears the tiny gold pendant and shares its remarkable story with all those who will listen. Any gold arriving in Auschwitz was stolen by the Nazis, so Lily believes that her pendant is unique in that it was the only gold to enter and leave the camp with its rightful owner. Like Lily herself, it survived against the odds.

Many Members of this House and many millions of people from around the world have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and have seen the thousands upon thousands of shoes, of all shapes and sizes, piled on top of one another. Many of those shoes, like Lily’s, hold the memories of those last murdered in Auschwitz. Hidden in the soles of those shoes are notes and photos—the last possessions of men, women and children murdered by the Nazis.

I pay tribute to the eye witnesses for their resilience and their bravery. They are still, even in their 80s and 90s, sharing their testimony in schools across the country with the Holocaust Educational Trust. We are also hugely grateful to the next generation of Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors—thousands of young people who have heard testimony from survivors and who have visited Auschwitz and returned to share what they have learned. They are doing incredible work, taking on that responsibility and commitment to carry the legacy and stand up to hate today.

Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

Further to that point and, indeed, to the intervention of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), will the Government play their part in working with schools to bring the life of the work of the trust to every part of our kingdom? It is vital that the next generation understand that the future is, in part, shaped by what we learn from the past.

Luke Hall

I absolutely give that commitment, and I thank my right hon. Friend for the opportunity to put it on the record. That is why we should pay particular tribute to the next generation of volunteers who are really taking on that legacy and serious responsibility.​

Although Auschwitz is synonymous with the holocaust, few people are aware of the Arolsen archive, the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of Nazi persecution. The collection has information on around 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s memory of the world. Apart from the paper records, the archive has 3,000 personal possessions belonging to former inmates of concentration camps. Thanks to the #StolenMemory campaign, the archive has returned precious recovered items to family members. Members can imagine the immeasurable value that these items have to their families—they are often the last remaining traces of parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters.

Decades after the Nazis had confiscated a watch from his father, Jean-Pierre Lopez held it in his hands and wound it up again. He reported that it was extraordinary. He said that it seems to still work perfectly even after 74 years. In 1944, the Gestapo had arrested his father, José Lopez, as an anti-fascist and deported him as a forced labourer. He managed only just to survive, ending up with typhus and a body weight of just 40 kg.

The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “stand together”. It is a reminder for us to stand together, with each other and with our communities, to remember the holocaust. It is also a reminder that during the holocaust and subsequent genocides, communities themselves were deliberately divided, with individuals persecuted because of their identity, and that, despite the dangers of doing so, some people chose to stand together with those targeted, to challenge the divisive actions of genocidal regimes. We must remember their bravery and sacrifice and be inspired by it. We also must make sure that we stand together to challenge hatred and prejudice wherever we find them today, which is why this Government are so proud of the support that they give to holocaust education remembrance.

The incredible work of the Holocaust Educational Trust is of massive value. Every year, the trust takes thousands of young people to Auschwitz-Birkenau and trains hundreds of teachers across the country. The Government have provided £2.2 million to the trust’s “Lessons from Auschwitz” project and £1.7 million for visits to Bergen-Belsen, the camp liberated by British troops. We also provide £1 million a year to the Holocaust Memorial Day trust to deliver the annual memorial day and thousands of local events across the country. We have been funding the charity Remembering Srebrenica since 2013, including with a further £400,000 this year. The charity uses the funding to raise public awareness of the 1995 genocide, with the aim of creating a diverse movement of people coming together to challenge hatred and intolerance.

Despite that education and the support of successive Governments and people in the United Kingdom, it is a sad fact that antisemitism has spread like a virus far into UK politics in recent years—even into the very building in which we stand. When the Chief Rabbi unprecedendently feels the need to speak about his fears during the general election campaign, when Jewish councillors and Members of Parliament are subjected to such campaigns of hatred that they feel they have no alternative but to stand down, when dangerous conspiracy theories become so widespread on social media that the ​public start to believe them and write in to our offices with the most offensive lies, we must shake ourselves and remember that this is not normal; this is wrong. I urge all Members to play their part in turning the tide of antisemitism.

Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)

The sad truth is that there are people elected to this place in the recent general election who have shared antisemitic conspiracy theories and breached the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti- semitism. It is all very well people apologising, but the real evidence that they have changed is their taking some action over what they have said—owning it and showing that their apologies are more than just words.

Luke Hall

First, I thank my hon. Friend for his work as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism. I agree that people should take action. We are proud to support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which unites experts and 34 member states behind the need for holocaust education, remembrance and research. In 2016, the IHRA created a working definition of antisemitism, which is now internationally accepted. The alliance seeks to ensure that no one can shirk responsibility for their words by playing with semantics, but it will succeed only if organisations sign up to the definition and support it. The IHRA definition is already used in guidance for the police and Crown Prosecution Service, to help them to identify hate crime. I urge public organisations in the UK to sign up to the IHRA definition.

I will finish by saying a few words about the holocaust memorial and learning centre we plan to build in Victoria Tower gardens next to Parliament. We are fortunate that the foundation delivering the memorial is headed up by the right hon. Eric Pickles and the right hon. Ed Balls. By placing the memorial and learning centre next to Parliament, we ensure that it will serve as a permanent reminder that political decisions have far-reaching consequences.

Below is the text of the speech made by Luke Hall, the Local Government Minister, at the LGA Finance Conference on 7 January 2020.

Introduction

Thank you for your kind introduction and for inviting me to speak here today.

Can I start by saying how grateful the government is for all of the excellent work the LGA does, supporting local authorities across the country on key issues throughout the year.

We are particularly grateful for your collaboration on last year’s Spending Round. The strong arguments put forward by the sector helped me and the Secretary of State make a persuasive and successful case to Treasury ministers.

The work that you do on political development, with I understand, over 1,000 councillors booked onto the LGA leadership programme this year.

Your work on corporate peer reviews, with over 150 challenges this year.

And the advice, sometimes very forthright advice, that you provide on the sector’s needs to ministers, is incredibly valuable. So we are incredibly grateful to you.

And I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody here who is working in local government and elected members for all your efforts to deliver high quality and efficient services.

I know as a minister, a constituency MP and as someone who has been involved in my community in South Gloucestershire for many years the direct impact that well-run local authorities have on local residents’ lives.

There are many people in this room who have made a big contribution to the sector over the past 12 months, but I would like to single out James Jamieson for his leadership over the last 6 months – it’s been a pleasure to work with you.

And, whilst I didn’t have the opportunity to work with Lord Porter direct, I would also like to publicly acknowledge and thank him for his work as chair – we will continue to see the legacy of your work for years to come.

Every New Year is an opportunity for us to reflect on the one that has just passed, and to look to the year ahead. I hope you will allow me to do that and reflect on our world of local government.

2019

One of the stand out events in 2019 was the rapid one-year Spending Round and the publication, some might say the very last-minute publication, of the provisional local government finance settlement for 2020 to 2021.

And we believe that the proposals set out in the Spending Round and in our settlement consultation will give local authorities access to the largest year-on-year increase in spending power in a decade: 4.4% in real terms.

The local government finance settlement delivers significant extra resources to the priority areas of adult and children’s social care: an extra £1 billion of grant across adult and children’s services, plus an additional £500 million from a 2% council tax adult social care precept.

I am glad these resources have been welcomed by many for providing significant extra help for local authorities to support the most vulnerable.

We also committed to ensuring that local authorities receive the certainty and stability they need to confirm their plans for next years’ service delivery. We did this in the Spending Round by providing protection for vital services by increasing core settlement resources in line with inflation.

We also maintained key grants from 2019 to 2020 – including continuing all existing social care grants, such as the £2 billion improved Better Care Fund.

There will be a new £900 million round of New Homes Bonus and a continuation of last year’s £81 million Rural Services Delivery Grant, which was the highest paid to-date.

In our manifesto we committed to ensure that ‘local people will continue to have the final say on council tax.’

We have proposed a package of council tax referendum principles which provide local authorities with the flexibility to address service pressures, while ensuring local residents have the final say on any excessive increases.

If the package is approved by Parliament, the expected average council tax increase for 2020 to 2021 would be the lowest since 2016 to 2017.

We have now also confirmed Dedicated Schools Grant allocations for 2020 to 2021, including an increase in high needs funding for schools and colleges of over £700 million. This extra money will enable local authorities to think carefully about where best to invest in provision so that they can establish a more sustainable system in future.

Every school will get more money for every child – “levelling up” funding and helping to spread equality of opportunity for all. This government is determined to invest in the education and future of our young people and the dedicated teachers and staff who support them.

At the same time, we also recognise that it is not just about the money and the cross-Whitehall SEND review that the Department for Education is leading will be looking carefully at what other aspects of the system need to be improved or changed

There will also be an increase in Public Health Grant, to allow you to continue to invest in prevention and essential frontline health services.

Additionally, the NHS’s contribution to the Better Care Fund will grow in line with the additional investment in the NHS in 2020 to 2021 – 3.4% in real terms.

I would like to thank colleagues in local government for your responses to our settlement technical consultation last year.

These allowed us to develop a set of proposals in this provisional consultation that we genuinely believe reflects the priorities of local government in this roll-forward year. Including extra resources where they are needed most and stability in other areas.

I look forward to hearing your views on our proposals through the consultation, which is open until 17 January.

2020

Looking forward to the coming year, we have an exciting agenda in front of us.

One of our first announcements this Parliament was the allocation of £263 million to local authorities to support their work to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping.

In 2020 to 2021 we are providing a total £422 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. This is £54 million more funding than in the previous year – a 13% real terms increase.

In 2018, rough sleeping fell nationally by 2%, the first reduction in a decade. As the Minister for Homelessness I will work tirelessly to build on progress and see these reductions go further – to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.

Looking to the Troubled Families Programme, over the weekend we announced £165 million of new funding for 2020 to 2021 which will provide intensive support for some of the most vulnerable families and place the programme on a stable footing for the future.

We have been clear that we will build on the success of the programme; the latest evaluation results show that the Programme is reducing the proportion of children going into care, of adults going to prison and of juvenile convictions, and helping people back into work.

I am always struck by the extraordinary skills of the family key workers in building trust and gaining a true understanding of the issues confronting the whole family so they can support them in moving forward with their lives.

This new funding will enable local authorities across the country to achieve even more in the year to come.

There will be a longer-term Spending Review, alongside reviews of the allocation and distribution of those resources, and a review and upcoming revaluation of the business rates tax.

We will set out our plans to fix the social care system once and for all, to give everyone the dignity and security that they deserve. We will work with political parties from all sides of the House of Commons to seek consensus around the very best solutions.

And we will publish an ‘English devolution white paper’, aiming for full devolution, so that every part of the country has the power to shape its own future.

The Spending Review will not just settle the amount of resources available to local government over the period and the approach to distributing these, but also important related questions including:

which programmes are the most effective in delivering outcomes for local communities?

how do we balance resources for mainstream programmes with much-needed investment in prevention?

what is the best approach to incentivising local housing supply and economic growth? For which we have already committed to reform of the New Homes Bonus

how do we provide the certainty to support investment in improving services?

and how do we best support local authorities to improve; helping you become more efficient and transform services around the needs of local people? I want to have a wider look at how we can do this more effectively, and will make an announcement soon on next steps.

Fair Funding Review

As you know, the review of relative needs and resources is progressing – finding ways to ensure authorities receive the right allocations to meet their needs.

This is a large and complex project – and expectations are high on all sides. We are making good progress and will continue to try to build consensus – or at least the recognition and confidence that everything has been thoroughly tested – as we start to take decisions to narrow the range of options for the future of local authority funding.

But successful delivery of the Fair Funding Review will require everyone to recognise the need for trade-offs which will be necessary in order to deliver the review as planned.

Compromise will be needed to ensure that the formula works for everyone.

The direction of the review has been welcomed by many, but we must deliver a sustainable formula that works for the whole sector.

This is a time when a well-argued sector position with a clear consensus would be helpful, not only in delivering the Fair Funding Review, but also in building a strong position going into the Spending Review.

And we will be consulting on further detail of the proposed reforms as soon as we can, allowing time for your feedback before final decisions are made; and we aim to release some exemplifications in advance of this, to allow dialogue on technical issues.

Business rates retention

We also know that business rates retention has been a popular part of the local government finance system, with many councils benefitting from keeping additional business rates growth.

But we also know there are questions about some aspects of the way the system operates – like the volatility caused by business rates appeals; like whether all councils benefit from the same opportunity for reward; and whether there could be stronger incentives for councils to work together across their areas.

We have been examining these issues alongside local government and are still genuinely welcoming views on the best way forward.

Business rates tax

Everybody here will appreciate how important it is that the system of local government finance works well if we want to deliver top flight public services.

Which is why we have committed to carrying out a fundamental review of the business rates tax.

It is therefore vital that we are hearing the perspectives of those who are administering the system in this review.

It is also important that we consider alongside you how business rates income is used, and how well that meets councils’ funding needs, whilst we consider the future direction of reforms.

Conclusion

We have a bold and ambitious agenda for change, and a working majority in Parliament now gives us the ability to achieve this.

But we will not be able to succeed in this without working in close collaboration with local government. We need your help to achieve these bold and ambitious objectives. I am looking forward to doing just that in the year ahead.

Thank you so much.