We move on now to item 5 on the agenda, which is the Plaid Cymru debate on eviction of households with children. I call on Bethan Jenkins to move the motion—Bethan.

Motion NDM6190 Rhun ap Iorwerth

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Calls on the Welsh Government to work with local authorities to ensure that no households with children face eviction in Wales.

Motion moved.

[Interruption.] Making an entrance. [Laughter.]

Between this debate and Christmas, 16 children will lose their homes because they will be evicted with their families from social housing. Welsh public services will spend over £600,000 dealing with the consequences of these evictions. These children are likely to face lifelong consequences on their health, their education and, therefore, their income levels. So, our motion today is simple: Wales should be a nation where children no longer face eviction and homelessness. Yet, according to the latest statistics, there are 792 families with children in temporary accommodation, and 84 of these families are in hostels. Yesterday, the BBC reported on the scandal of teenagers in bed and breakfasts and the figures show 27 families with children in B&Bs, which has almost doubled since the last quarter. Enough is enough.

This is not the first time we’ve discussed homelessness, evictions and the protection of children in this Chamber. Perhaps if the statistics showed progress, this debate would be less urgent. But, last week showed that, far from progress, things are getting worse. Last week’s report on poverty by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed evictions by social landlords have increased in the majority of the UK, including an upward trend in Wales.

Shelter Cymru’s research estimates that, in 2015-16, 500 children were evicted from social housing. That’s 500 children with an increased risk of health problems, an increased risk of lower education attainment and, therefore, an increased risk of becoming adults in poverty—and it needn’t have happened.

The Welsh Government has been rightly praised for introducing a duty to prevent homelessness on local authorities with the early evidence showing some success. But I would like to remind Members that it was this Government that opposed Jocelyn Davies’s attempts to remove the Pereira test and opposed our attempts to extend priority need in housing to all under the age of 21 and care leavers up to the age of 25.

However, legislation is only part of what we should be doing to prevent evictions and prevent homelessness. My colleagues will be elaborating on this point later, but there is a great deal more that the Welsh Government and local government should be doing to ensure that we have a no-evictions policy for children.

Over 80 per cent of evictions are down to rent arrears. Most of these evictions, according to the recent Shelter Cymru research, are of people who are in work but are low paid with often fluctuating incomes. Most people in social housing and on housing benefit are in work and often in jobs that require hard graft and physical exertion. The real issue is: we have a benefit system incapable of understanding the patterns of work at the lower end. As the report put it, and I quote:

‘Low income work patterns can involve frequent changes of circumstance, with hours and income sometimes changing monthly or even weekly. This results in difficulties and inconsistencies in the payment of Housing Benefit, putting tenancies at risk.’

Solving this can actually be as simple as getting social landlords, housing solutions and housing benefits departments to communicate with each other.

This leaves the remaining smaller proportion of evictions where there are more complex needs. This often involves mental health, substance misuse or other forms of chaotic lifestyle that mean rents can be missed or antisocial behaviour occurs. Many housing officers are not trained to spot or support people with mental health or other needs. Housing officers often misinterpret this as a refusal to engage.

Where additional support needs lead to arrears, threats of eviction make things worse—I’ve seen it myself in my region. Tenants are often fearful of authority and feel they can’t win, so eviction notices themselves hamper progress, turning the relationship adversarial and making a solution less likely in the long run.

The research also shows that social landlords can be inflexible and harsh when obtaining arrears—I quote from the report again:

‘One tenant had to pay a shortfall of £130 a month, including £30 as “back up” to the landlord. She was told by the RSL that if she was even 1p in arrears again, they would take her back to court to get her evicted.’

This demonstrates that many of those 500 evictions involving children last year could have been avoided.

So, what about those families whose benefits are being paid on time but who still refuse to pay rent and commit antisocial behaviour that ruins the neighbourhood they live in? It’s fair enough for the 0.01 per cent of adults who fall into that category to face eviction as the last resort. A child living in such conditions would be regarded as extremely vulnerable and would probably have been taken into care long before the eviction notice had started anyway.

So, if, after implementing all of our changes, a small proportion of those 500 children still face the eviction process and there was no evidence of neglect or abuse that would justify a care order, then we should instruct local authorities to use discretionary payments to maintain the tenancy.

Shelter Cymru estimates that the cost of evictions and near misses is £24.3 million each year. This estimate does not include long-term health consequences or educational consequences for children. Considering that evictions happen when arrears are typically between £1,500 and £2,500, this means we’re spending far more enforcing evictions than the lost revenue would justify.

For the extremely small number of families for whom a solution has not yet been found, the financial case alone justifies not proceeding with the eviction. For those who maintain we should keep evictions in the toolkit, I think they must answer where this £24 million will come from. I look forward to hearing Members’ contributions and to concluding this debate. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much. Jenny Rathbone.

Diolch. I am grateful to Plaid Cymru for raising this issue, because I think it’s an extremely important one. I want to talk about two changes in the law that are likely to make the problem worse, not better: one is the universal credit and the other is the new immigration rules.

I fully acknowledge, as indeed has Bethan Jenkins, that the Welsh Government has made supporting communities and tackling child poverty a priority, stating that early intervention is key to long-term health and well-being, and eviction of households with children—deliberately making children homeless—would undermine all of this. Housing associations and councils go to great lengths to avoid evicting people who fail to pay their rent or are creating antisocial nuisance to their neighbours. Since 2002, evictions by housing associations have gone down by 32 per cent, and 6 per cent in the last year, and that’s no doubt as a result of the housing Act, which requires everybody to do their best.

Tenant support officers do their best to help people with chaotic lives get back on track, but we have to acknowledge that it doesn’t always work and that some people are deeply damaged by adverse childhood experiences. At the end of the day, there has to be a sanction if people (a) don’t pay their rent and (b) are causing absolute havoc to other people’s lives, because everybody is entitled to have the quiet enjoyment of their home. I’m afraid I deal too often with examples of families who are just creating absolute havoc, and causing huge emotional and mental distress to other people. So there has to be a sanction if people don’t play by the rules.

But if you contrast that situation, where we make every effort to ensure that people’s tenancy doesn’t break down—private landlords are entitled to evict families under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 without giving any reason at all. They simply have to give them 2 months’ notice. It doesn’t matter if they’re model tenants, they just have no right to stay in a place that their children call home. So for these families, there’s an endless churn of looking for a new place to live, and struggling to try and ensure that their children are continuing to attend schools that they’re settled into and are desperate not to lose their friends. They may well be on the council’s waiting list, along with—in Cardiff—9,000 other families, but they undoubtedly have a very long wait in most cases. This poses some extremely challenging problems for schools as they see new children arriving in year, and children having to change school time and again.

It’s all extremely tragic. But the universal credit is going to make the problem a whole lot worse because—both residential landlords and social housing providers are very concerned about this—housing benefit at the moment can be paid direct to the landlord to avoid the money being spent on something else. That’s particularly important if someone in the household has a serious addiction. Universal credit in the future will only go to one adult in the household, and that will normally be the man—traditionally the main breadwinner—and this is a particularly worrying issue for families living in abusive relationships. Inevitably, as a result of that, the numbers being evicted in my view will go up, whatever local authorities or housing associations or, indeed, private landlords try and do about it. If people don’t pay their rent, that is what will happen.

The other big threat is the Immigration Act 2016, which hasn’t yet been implemented in Wales, but once implemented it is bound to increase destitution. Indeed, that is what it has been designed to do. Currently, when an asylum claim is refused, asylum support ends unless you have children in your household, and then you are continued to be allowed to stay in the house that’s provided by the Home Office to allow you to appeal the decision. It’s important to remember here that a very significant number of asylum seekers who have been refused get it overturned on appeal once they’ve got proper legal representation to put their case. But the Immigration Act 2016, under the ‘right to rent’ checks, will make it an offence to rent to a person who’s disqualified as a result of their immigration status. What then is going to happen to these people, particularly these children? Potentially, we’ll be talking about families with children being turfed out of their temporary accommodation as soon as their initial application for refugee status is refused. Do we really want them ending up sleeping in the park? If and when—

Are you winding up, please?

[Continues.]—the UK Government implements section 42, I assume it will then fall on local authorities to accommodate those children under the UN convention on the rights of children, unless, of course, they too fall under the section 42 exclusions from the right to rent. It would be useful to have the Government’s guidance on this matter, as there’s a huge burden, potentially, on local authorities coming along that we haven’t really considered before.

There’s no doubt that eviction and having to live in temporary accommodation, as 792 families are currently doing, is a traumatic experience for a child. The impact of homelessness on children begins at birth. Children who are born to mothers who have been in B&B accommodation for some time are more likely to have a low birth weight. They are also more likely to lose out on their vaccinations. One in two mothers evicted from their homes experiences depression. The children themselves will suffer, and the impacts are numerous. Compared to other children, homeless children have four times as many respiratory diseases and four times the rate of asthma. They are five times as likely to suffer from diarrhoea and stomach upsets, six times more likely to have speech defects and stutters, and they are admitted to hospital urgently twice as often as their counterparts. There is also clear evidence of the impact on health of overcrowded homes, and overcrowding is, of course, common in temporary accommodation. Children in housing that is over capacity are 10 times as likely to suffer from meningitis than children in general, which as well as threatening life, obviously, can lead to the long-term impacts of hearing loss, the loss of sight and behavioural problems. There is a strong link between overcrowding in homes during childhood and the helicobacter pylori condition, which is one of the main causes of stomach cancer, and other conditions of the digestive system in adults, including chronic gastritis and peptic ulcers. Those living in very overcrowded homes during childhood have been found to be twice as likely to suffer from this disease when they reach 65 to 75 years of age.

So, call a B&B or a hostel a temporary home if you like, but there is nothing temporary about the impact that that can have. In the context of the cruel bedroom tax, I would invite any Members who believe that under-occupancy is the major problem facing social housing to think very deeply about the facts that I’ve just listed. The long-term impact on mental health is also an issue. Homeless children are three to four times more likely to suffer mental health problems as compared to their peers, even a long time after they’ve been rehoused—even 12 months, maybe, after being rehoused. So, given the health impacts, is it any surprise that educational attainment also suffers? Homeless children in temporary accommodation on average miss 55 school days, which corresponds to 25 per cent of the school year, because of the problems that they experience in moving into or moving between temporary accommodation. And there is also the fact that temporary accommodation, more often than not, is inappropriate as a place for a child to learn, whether it’s in terms of carrying out formal schooling work or a more educational hobby, such as learning a musical instrument.

Let’s turn to the financial costs now. The costs to public services in Wales are numerous. We could split them, perhaps, into a number of different categories—the direct costs of the eviction itself for the landlord; the broader direct cost of rehousing the individual or the family that has been evicted; but then you also have the broader costs to other public services. Shelter Cymru estimates that this cost is some £23.4 million per annum, and this, I have to say, is quite a conservative estimate that doesn’t include long-term health issues and educational costs for a child who has lived through that experience. Anyone who supports the practice of eviction does have to face the question of how you’re going to pay for this, because the fact is that any analysis of economics comes to the conclusion that it’s always a lot cheaper to prevent homelessness and to prevent evictions—even more so when we are talking about children with families, where the long-term cost for society in going down that route will be great.

To conclude, therefore, I am shocked that we haven’t received a critical report from the audit office on the practice of evicting people. We are spending £468,000 per week on evicting people from their homes. Why not use that money for education?

I thank Plaid Cymru for introducing this motion—very important. It is the season when traditionally we have looked at the needs of the most vulnerable in terms of housing, but I think it’s a lesson that should be considered all year round. As has been observed already, I think most evictions are undertaken by social landlords and Shelter estimates that over 900 social evictions a year are now occurring and they involve more than 500 children. So, it’s not surprising it occurs in this sector because, obviously, it caters for some of the most vulnerable people in society and many of those are on very low incomes. There’s a huge budgetary challenge, if nothing else, of living on a very low income, especially if you’ve got responsibility also for children. So, I do think that we need to focus on this and how tenants are supported.

I must just refute some of the information that has been advanced about universal credit. It is not the ‘blunt instrument’ that Jenny Rathbone seems to think it is. It is there to take the sharp divide between the world of work and benefit and to incentivise work, and there are mechanisms that allow for the most vulnerable to have their rent paid directly. It is nothing about creating a system that makes that less likely and creating additional burdens for those living on low income. So, I think you need to be fair in your assessment of these reforms, even if you don’t agree with them in principle.

We’ve heard that it’s rent arrears—I think the public would be quite surprised by this—that account for the overwhelming majority of evictions and not anti-social behaviour. And I think what is particularly stark is that over three quarters of evicted tenants are still homeless six months later.

A couple of speakers have already talked about the costs, which are considerable, and those costs could be recycled I think into better spending on eviction prevention services in particular. I do, as other speakers have, commend Shelter’s report on these issues that was published, I think, in October. Although, as the report observes, there is in general an ‘any eviction is a failure’ culture, policies amongst social landlords vary and are often inconsistently applied and there should be a system of pre-action protocols that is the bedrock, really, of effective support for tenants. Can I also commend Shelter’s particular recommendations to the Minister, because I do think it’s a very practical report and it’s very, very well researched, but they do say that no court action should be taken before a fully preventative response has been exercised? I think that really has to be the absolute starting point.

Tenant engagement is key and it’s often very difficult because when you get into arrears and you’re in difficulties, you don’t want to engage—you don’t open your mail, sometimes. There are some really difficult experiences when people get into that hole and don’t know how to get out of it. So, engagement is key and to trigger engagement with the threat of eviction is obviously not likely to lead to very positive engagement. But there does need also to be rigour in the process, as Jenny Rathbone said, because it’s a serious issue if you are not paying your rent.

I think the relationship between engagement and tenants’ mental health is something that we need to be aware of and I was particularly interested in Shelter’s recommendation that all front-line housing teams should have a named mental health contact. I think that would be very, very useful. I also agree with the concluding recommendation that Shelter make that the Welsh Government should take responsibility for co-ordinating, or have a co-ordinating role in this area to ensure that landlords do provide support-based preventative services. At the very least, many of these evictions could be prevented, and certainly any eviction involving a child is a great tragedy. Thank you.

A number of people have talked about the cost of evicting families from their homes, and just to summarise, moving families out of their homes is a very expensive thing. It costs more than £24 million a year in direct costs, let alone the indirect costs for the health service and the education service. That’s nearly £0.5 million a week that is spent on evicting people, and Plaid Cymru believes that this is a waste of money and that it would be much better to use that money on education. That would be better and more beneficial to everybody—the children, the families and the community generally.

Eighty per cent of the cases arise in the wake of rent arrears, and the background is often poverty, low income, uncertain employment and varying income from week to week, and on top of that, benefits that arrive late and are delayed as the process is delayed, and a lack of order in the welfare system generally. But there is a lack of consistency from area to area. This doesn’t have to happen. I disagree with Jenny Rathbone here; this doesn’t have to happen, particularly at the level that it’s happening at present. I’m pleased to see that there is variation across Wales; not every area is as bad as each other, and I’m pleased to say that Gwynedd and Ceredigion have lower rates than Cardiff and Wrexham, for example, in terms of evictions.

In Gwynedd, the emphasis is on preventative work. There was an anti-poverty partnership, an umbrella body bringing together, four housing associations operating in the area, the county council and Citizens Advice—a partnership that has a focus on anti-poverty and working against the destructive agenda of the Westminster Government in terms of welfare reform. There was a fund that was established, which is a pot of money where it’s possible to give people a discretionary housing payment when they are more likely to face difficulty in terms of paying rent and so forth, and then face eviction possibly from their homes. This pot of money has been established after specific lobbying by the council for additional funds for rural areas, and this is money from Westminster. Good work is happening with the cohort of people who face hardship, and financial help is available to help with housing benefit payments from this fund. But there is also practical help available to people who face debt problems. There’s financial advice available, and putting people on the right track to avoid these problems. Ultimately, of course, there are fewer families who are evicted from their homes, and it is a proper last resort in these progressive areas.

There are good practices in other housing associations across Wales, and what is important is to learn from those good practices. It is possible to avoid evicting people from their homes. Plaid Cymru believes that preventative work is much better, keeping families from being evicted from being evicted from their homes and then in turn avoiding the other outcomes that are related to losing your home for a child, for example avoiding going into the care of social services care, avoiding drug abuse, avoiding mental health problems, and avoiding falling behind at school. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 does put prevention or stopping the exacerbation of problems at the heart of the Assembly’s work, and it’s about time now for this to permeate through to other things that are happening on the ground, and to act on that. I do believe that this area does give a golden opportunity for that to happen—that the emphasis moves to the preventative work and avoiding these problems facing those who are evicted.

Thank you very much. I call the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, Carl Sargeant.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Deputy Presiding Officer, I’m happy to support the motion, which reflects the work already being done by Welsh Government and councils and our shared commitment to take this further. Preventing homelessness and addressing its root cause remains a priority for this Government. This is particularly important where there are children in the household. Homelessness or the threat of it can have a devastating effect on adults, and a profound impact on children. It can create pressures that damage people’s health and well-being, which lead to children suffering from those adverse childhood experiences—it can affect them for the rest of their lives. This is an issue that should concern everyone and we see here that we’re deeply committed to tackling it.

Many people will have seen and been moved by Channel 5’s recent production of ‘Slum Britain: 50 Years On’. Although I’m grateful that things are improving in Wales we are well aware that there is much more to be done. Evictions from housing are a significant contributory factor leading directly to homelessness, and these were positive overall trends in 2015, with declining possessions, claims and orders, and falls in both mortgage repossessions and eviction warrants. Unfortunately, there was an increase, however, of 8 per cent in private landlord repossession orders, which we need to address.

Our reform of homelessness legislation in Wales—the 2014 Act—has created a new framework that ensures every household will be helped both in terms of preventing them becoming homeless wherever possible, and in terms of assisting those who do lose their homes. Local authorities have duties to help people who are threatened with homelessness due to eviction or for any other reason, and they’re expected to intervene as early as possible. It’s vital that work goes on with support agencies and landlords to identify people at risk across all sectors, particularly if they have children.

There needs to be greater recognition of how and why people become homeless so that potential problems can be addressed, Llywydd, and help provided at the earliest possible stages. We need agencies across the public sector to work better together, effective housing solutions, and the necessary support to help people live as independently as possible and be able to sustain their accommodation. The support needed includes many areas within my portfolio, including financial advice, community safety and the private rented sector. Where families with children are threatened with eviction, there must, of course, be close working with social services to ensure the needs of children are safeguarded.

We must promote awareness of services that can help people if they get into difficulty. One of the most common causes of homelessness is rent arrears, which has been mentioned by many today. This is why we’re developing a national advice strategy to connect people to independent advice where and when this is needed. The funding we provide to Shelter Cymru and to Citizens Advice Cymru ensures people can get specialist advice to help them keep their homes.

Shelter Cymru recently published a report on access to and sustaining social tenancies. They identified some failings in the way organisations work together to avoid evictions. Social landlords should only use eviction as a very last resort, and after every possible alternative has been exhausted. As I’ve said, eviction is most often the result of rent arrears and the intensive support and advice services should be engaged assertively to rescue the tenancy. We’re following up on this report and its recommendations with stakeholders to ensure everything possible is being done to minimise evictions and prevent homelessness taking place.

Llywydd, we’re also going to have to work even harder to mitigate the issues of welfare reform. The welfare reform changes that Jenny mentioned, introduced to date, have already generated new pressures that can lead to homelessness. I’m concerned that these pressures will grow further with the gradual roll-out of universal credit and the additional restrictions placed on the benefit entitlements of 18 to 35-year-olds. Further welfare reform by the UK Government will increase the risk of families losing their homes. These changes will put even more pressure on households living on a low income. Independent evidence suggests it will place even more children at risk of poverty and homelessness.

Preventing homelessness also needs to become even more embedded within the planning and delivery of housing-related support services. The Supporting People programme will also continue to be at the heart of our commitment to help vulnerable groups. I’m looking forward to the programme making an even greater contribution towards preventing homelessness, including an expectation that anyone at risk of eviction is offered support to retain their tenancy.

We all recognise that evictions cannot always be avoided however, particularly in the private rented sector, and we need to ensure people are helped to find alternative accommodation as soon as possible. This isn’t always easy and that’s why we’ve committed to an ambitious target of providing a further 20,000 affordable homes during this Government.

Llywydd, in particular at this time of year, around Christmas, we should be very aware of people losing their homes—potentially losing their homes—and in particular children. I’m sure all Members of this Chamber are very committed to tackling this very issue. We will continue to focus on those issues that affect the well-being of families and children, including financial resilience, through employment, the promotion of mental health and a legal and policy framework that ensures everything is done to avoid these evictions. We will be supporting this motion today.

Thank you very much. I call on Bethan Jenkins to reply to the debate. Bethan.

Diolch and thank you, all, for contributing to this debate today. I think, as many of you have said, it’s not just a debate for us to have at the times when we might be feeling that this might be more acute, it’s at times when we need to discuss this throughout the year and make sure that the problems are eradicated.

We did hear from Jenny Rathbone first of all and I do agree with you with regard to universal credit and the pressures that will come from the immigration Act. I would be very concerned when someone’s status is potentially refused how they would then be able to cope in circumstances that are already difficult, actually—they don’t have a salary, they don’t have recourse to the benefits system like we do, so I would be even more worried in those extreme circumstances. But I would say, with regard to your comments on eviction statistics, that there was a substantial rise since 2011, which doesn’t tally with what you said earlier. And, they’re often not used as a last resort, otherwise there wouldn’t be such discrepancies between different areas of Wales. If it was being used as a last resort, I think we would see the statistics much lower than they currently are.

Diolch yn fawr i Rhun ap Iorwerth am eich cyfraniad chi hefyd. Rwy’n credu ei bod hi’n bwysig ac yn eithaf poenus i glywed yr hyn roeddech chi’n ei ddweud o ran sut y mae’n effeithio ar iechyd pobl ifanc mewn cymaint o wahanol ffyrdd; nid yn unig o ran iechyd meddwl, ond o ran agweddau eraill nad oeddwn i’n bersonol yn ymwybodol ohonynt. Roeddwn i’n credu bod eich sylwadau chi’n taro tant o ran bod rhai pobl yn aros mewn gwestai neu B&Bs am ran o’r amser, ond nid yw’r effeithiau hynny dros dro; mae’n effaith bywyd i berson ifanc sydd wedi bod yn rhan o hynny. Rwy’n credu, wrth gwrs, fod yn rhaid inni roi’r arian yna nid yn unig i mewn i addysg, ond i’r sector gyhoeddus yn gyffredinol. Os ydym ni’n gallu rhoi arian i mewn i bethau sydd yn mynd i helpu ein plant ifanc, yna dyna sut y dylem ddefnyddio’r arian hwnnw.

David Melding made very valuable comments too. I think, obviously like me, you’ve read the Shelter report, but it does inform much of what we have to say on this. Obviously, when we talk about budgetary challenges for people on low incomes, I will always refer back to the importance of financial education and inclusion, and hopefully the new financial inclusion strategy will say something about that. It’s not just about the fact that people, potentially, will have less money, it’s how they manage what they have. I’m not saying it’s just people on low incomes who face that challenge, but if you do have less money, it may be, then, that they need more support on how to do that so that they can potentially not face that eviction in those very extreme circumstances.

As you say, pre-action protocols are definitely needed. We’re all Assembly Members here. In relation to tenant engagement, I think you are absolutely right. I’ve seen letters from constituents where they’ve had those warnings at the first stage, and then they actually don’t want to engage at all and they turn off totally from what they see, then, as a sort of policeman figure in their lives. So, if we can change that around, then I think we’re all winning as a society in that regard.

Diolch i Sian Gwenllian am eich sylwadau chi, hefyd. Mae’n ddrud iawn i wneud hyn, ac felly rwy’n credu mai dyna pwynt Plaid Cymru drwy roi’r drafodaeth yma ymlaen, mai’r gost o gael gwared ar bobl o’u tai yw’r peth mwyaf ‘problematic’ i deuluoedd ac wedyn mae’n cymryd hyd at chwe mis i’r bobl hynny ffeindio tŷ arall. Wrth gwrs, rydym ni eisiau clodfori’r hyn mae Cyngor Gwynedd yn ei wneud o ran ei waith, yn gweithio’n ataliol gyda phobl fel Shelter a Chyngor ar Bopeth, ac rwy’n credu y dylai bob llywodraeth leol edrych ar sut mae gwneud pethau sydd efallai’n fwy creadigol, neu’n fwy unigryw yn y maes yma, er mwyn sicrhau bod pobl yn gallu cael cefnogaeth ariannol pan maen nhw yn y sefyllfaoedd caled hynny yn eu bywydau.

Finally, thank you to the Cabinet Secretary for your statement. I’m sure we all recognise that there’s more that can be done, and we shouldn’t be complacent in this regard. I heard you, quite a lot, describing the problem; I think we need to actually be looking at more solutions now in this regard. If there are lots of areas that are acting differently in relation to evictions of families with children, then we need to really put those solutions in place. You say that local authorities have duties and are expected to intervene as soon as possible, but, clearly, in some instances that’s not what’s happening. We need to understand why that’s not happening and how we can change their perceptions as to how they engage with people in their area.

I do welcome the national advice strategy and the specialist advice that Shelter and others give. I think they play a massively important role in providing those services where other services are not able to do that job.

Universal credit and welfare reform should worry us all, and I think it’s a ticking time bomb. We may be here next year discussing even more difficult situations than we are this year as a result of those changes. I urge you as Cabinet Secretary, therefore, to make sure that you have clear lines of communication with the UK Government to make sure that we can protect Welsh people and that children are not evicted and not faced with feeling that they are second-class citizens in Wales when they shouldn’t be treated as such. They need to have the same respect and the same opportunities in life as anybody else. If their educational attainment, if their mental health, if they are more likely to have cancer than other young children, I think that should be something that we all should care about and worry about here in Wales.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.