Andrew Cooper

I thank my hon. Friend for her statement and for her leadership of the Select Committee during this inquiry. I would like to start by commending Cheshire West and Chester council for its efforts to substantially reduce B&B use for temporary accommodation. However, not every local authority is in the same position as mine, and this is a really difficult issue. I join my hon. Friend in thanking the people who attended our roundtable, particularly the families with lived experience of temporary accommodation who came and shared their experiences with the Committee. Many of them talked about how they had to sign in daily or risk losing their accommodation. Some talked about their fears of what are in effect reprisal evictions: if they complained about the state of the accommodation, the landlord or the B&B owner would be straight on the phone to the council, and they would lose their place. One young lady very bravely told us about how the council had provided her contact details to the hotel reception, for understandable reasons, but the hotel reception staff used that information to make unwanted advances to her. That was some of the absolutely disgusting behaviour we heard about. I particularly want to mention the evidence we heard from another woman about the increased travel time to school for her children because of her out-of-authority placement. We know that this inevitably leads to poor attendance, and can lead to off-rolling—in short, it is a safeguarding disaster. That was outside the scope of our inquiry, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should be tracking the outcomes of children who have experienced temporary accommodation, in much the same way as for children who have experienced care— I think we would find similar problems—and that doing so would affect the policy solutions we come forward with?