[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.