Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:18 pm on 29 April 2020.
Certainly. So, on the rough-sleeping point, you just heard me saying we're very determined that we will not have people returning to the streets. It may be that there are one or two that we won't be able to prevent, and obviously we're not in a position of preventing people from doing that, but we're working very hard to make sure that everybody has the wraparound services that they need to be able to sustain their accommodation and that we can move them rapidly into suitable accommodation. But there's no doubt there will be a draw for some people with serious substance misuse problems, and so on, back to the streets if we can't do that, but we're very determined to do it.
I am very concerned about the group of people who have no recourse to public funds. We've been lobbying the UK Government extensively that those people should not be released back onto the street as soon as the public health emergency is over. And we continue to lobby on that basis. I would appreciate anyone, any Member, who wants to help us with that doing so as well. I do think it's very important that that doesn't happen.
In terms of tenancy support, you can't be evicted at the moment because there's a practice direction in place with the courts, so no eviction proceedings are proceeding at this point in time. So, you're protected at the moment. We are giving serious thought to extending the three-months provision in the emergency regulations to six, and I'm hoping to be able to do that shortly. We are lobbying the UK Government about what will happen if the lockdown continues past the end of May, because you are absolutely right that it's a holiday; it's not a removal of the need to pay your rent. And once people have got more than two months in arrears, we know that they will really struggle to catch back up again. In the social sector in Wales, we've been working hard with our councils and RSLs to make sure we have pre-action protocols in place that force the RSLs and councils—although the word 'force' is not necessary, as they want to do this as well, but they will have to do it—to enter into negotiations with the tenant around repayments and write-off where that's necessary in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, we don't have that power in the private rented sector. We are encouraging all our landlords, with whom we have reasonable working relationships, and their representative bodies, with whom we have reasonable working relationships—all of them; there is no problem with any of them—to enter into that pre-action protocol as well so that we can make sure that that mediation has happened. And we will be lobbying the Ministry of Justice to see if we can make it a practice direction that such a pre-action protocol would have to have been entered into before you could start eviction proceedings for rent arrears. So, we're working on that as well.
The last point you were making was fleeing domestic violence and increased risk of abuse, and I think David Melding, to be fair, raised that as well, and I didn't cover it. That's why we're having people presenting on the streets now daily—that's why the figure is moving. We are trying to publicise the dial 999 and then push 55, which will indicate immediately that you're not in a position to speak and will get help out to you. So, if we can get that information out as far as possible, that's good.
Jane Hutt, my colleague, will be running again the Don't be a Bystander campaign to make sure that people recognise it in their neighbours and don't stand by, and report it themselves. And we also welcome any ideas from any Member or any member of the public that would help us identify other ways of getting to people who are at risk so that we can get the assistance they need to them.