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Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of rough sleeping among families with children.
I place on the record my co-chairship of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness. It is always an honour to speak in a debate under your stewardship, Dr Murrison, but I deeply regret the need to have this debate today.
Government policy is clear. The letter of the law is clear. Basic decency is clear. No child should have to sleep rough on the streets of this country. Despite that, I found myself last week watching a stark ITV News report by Dan Hewitt revealing that the homelessness charity Crisis is seeing growing numbers of families with children who are homeless and approaching it for help after being turned away by their councils. In some cases, that has forced those families and children to sleep rough.
Over six months, Crisis has identified 134 cases of families with children and pregnant mothers who came to its services asking for help to avoid or end their homelessness, because they had been unable to access support from their local authority. One hundred and thirty-four cases—that is about four a week, or almost one every single working day. Those cases included children as young as four, a child with epilepsy, refugees we have welcomed and single mothers. All were people who needed help, but were utterly failed by our broken system.
In my time as shadow Minister for homelessness and rough sleeping and in continuing to be an advocate since then, I have heard many heartbreaking stories while campaigning in this space. I have seen relentless record highs in the numbers of people forced to sleep rough, people discharged from hospital to recover on the streets, and children doing their homework in mouldy bed-and-breakfasts. I thought I could no longer be shocked by how deep this crack in the foundation of our society runs, but I was wrong.
Hearing about children being forced to sleep rough while the services built to help them played “pass the parcel” with their future was profoundly shocking. Before we talk about national plans, funding pots and statutory duties, I want everyone in this Chamber today to sit with these thoughts. What if that were me? What if it were my child having nowhere in the world to go, sleeping in a car or on the steps of a town hall, confused and getting colder, hungrier and more scared every night? How did it come to this? How is our system so broken that we cannot even keep children from having to sleep rough?
We can end this scandal and deliver historic change if we hold on to the moral clarity that we feel right now and pull every lever we have. There are still many levers we can pull if we have the political will to prioritise this issue. I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister because she has already written to all the councils in the country to remind them of their clear duties under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 and under the Housing Act 1996. However, will she set out what accountability measures will be put in place to ensure that situations like this are unheard of, as they should be?
These cases also show how guidance, laws and letters can take us only so far. I do not believe that anyone goes to work wanting to refuse help to a child facing rough sleeping, but the fact is that that is happening. It shows just how broken our system really is and how critical it is that we reduce the number of people and families being pushed into homelessness.
I welcome the Government’s national plan to end homelessness. It is an historic first in tackling a range of forms of homelessness across England, setting out a new duty to collaborate between six key Departments, with outcomes frameworks for local authorities, and matching our APPG’s call for the collation of homelessness funding into a multi-annual pot. However, when the APPG for ending homelessness, which I co-chair, produced our “Homes, Support, Prevention” report, we listened closely to the homelessness sector—researchers, councils and experts by experience—to identify three key pillars that the Government need to address. The national plan only really addresses one and a half of those pillars. Without delivering on all three, some of which I accept are beyond even the Minister’s capable reach, families will keep being forced into desperate situations.
The plan broadly focused on what we called the support pillar, with toolkits and an outcomes framework for local authorities that will be published in due course, as well as the prevention pillar, through the new duty to collaborate. I would welcome any further information the Minister can provide about the timeline for the consultations on the toolkit and the new duty.
However, when we review the prevention targets, it becomes clear that a key driver of homelessness is not being adequately addressed: Home Office policy. Homelessness after move-on from asylum accommodation rose by 37% according to the last Crisis homelessness monitor for England, yet the only target the Home Office has signed up to is informing councils about when people are leaving its accommodation. The Home Office has effectively been let off the hook when it comes to preventing homelessness among refugees—people we have welcomed here—and has instead been allowed to start doing what other Departments have been expected to do for years under the duty to refer. This is a huge hole in the preventive wall the Minister is working to construct—one that will see homelessness and further division spreading across the country if it is not closed.
I would like to talk about homes. Homes are the best and only truly sustainable way to end and prevent people’s homelessness, yet across the country an affordable home is becoming a pipe dream for whole communities, leading directly to unsustainable numbers of people needing homelessness support. It does not matter how quickly or effectively we bail if the boat is still sinking. It is therefore vital that the Government step up their social house building targets until the crucial 90,000 social homes per year—a figure supported across the homelessness sector—has been reached.
One way that could be done is by stepping up work on empty homes. Analysis by Crisis found that just £1.38 billion of direct Government investment in local authorities and partner agencies could bring 40,000 long- term empty homes back into use as social homes over four years. I appreciate that this is not directly the Minister’s brief, but how is she working to ensure that the Minister for Housing and Planning understands the need for homes for people experiencing homelessness?
We also need to look at short-term measures. The review of social homes allocation policy is welcome, but there needs to be a commitment to legislative change. The feedback I received from the 27 organisations on our APPG steering group was that people experiencing homelessness face a range of barriers to accessing social homes beyond simply supply, including being dubbed “too poor” to afford social rent homes. How far have we come from the purpose of social housing as housing to ensure that everyone can afford a home if people across Britain are being deemed “too poor” for it? Where are they meant to go? Supported housing, temporary accommodation, the street—back into the bowels of the system. I would welcome it if the Minister set out a timeline for her review of social homes allocation policy.
Given the lack of social homes, the affordability of the private rented sector is crucial. For people who rely on benefits to pay their rent, the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget in November that the two-child benefit limit will be abolished was extremely good news. However, as it stands, many families in my constituency of Liverpool Wavertree and across the country are still struggling. There is an average gap of £200 per month between local housing allowance and the median rent for a home. That gap can turn a bump in the road into a car crash. If people lose their job, need to take up caring responsibilities or fall ill, they can no longer afford to pay their rent. When they are pushed into homelessness, the local council simply cannot find a local home that those people can afford, trapping them in temporary accommodation at much greater expense to the state—a classic false economy.
I know that the Minister understands these issues. At a recent meeting of the APPG for ending homelessness, I was struck by her focus on the structural causes of homelessness, rather than on individuals. That is a welcome step forward from the last Government, but I am concerned that that understanding is not shared across other Departments.
Do the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury know how hard it is for families on universal credit to keep a roof over their heads, given that fewer than three in every 100 homes are affordable on local housing allowance, and that the LHA freeze is pushing people into homelessness? Does the Home Office care that when it slashed the move-on period from asylum accommodation from 56 days to 28 days, it made it impossible for families who have been granted asylum to find a home in that time, and that is pushing people into homelessness? I would welcome it if the Minister set out how often the interministerial group on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping will meet. Will she commit to publishing the minutes? What steps will be taken if Departments in that group do not deliver on their stated commitments?
We must not let national Government play “pass the parcel”, as local government has. Children’s lives are hanging in the balance. I know the Minister shares that determination, and I hope the Government as a whole do too.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)
Order. I intend to call the Front Benchers at 10.28 am, so brevity will be a virtue.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for leading the debate. She often brings important debates to the House, especially on issues such as this. I welcome her contribution. She showed passion and understanding from her constituency, and she expressed that incredibly well. I am pleased to see the Minister in her place again. She has been a frequent visitor to Westminster Hall in the past two days; it is always a pleasure to see her in her place. I wish the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), well too.
I have seen on social media awful revelations that in England children as young as three, holding on to their mummies—three years old; my goodness!—are being forced to sleep rough with their families. What an awful thing that is to think about and to experience, even if at that young age they may not exactly understand all that is happening. The hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree is right to raise this issue. It is our duty to ensure that no child—furthermore, no individual—is ever subject to sleeping rough with little or no support. The hon. Lady conveyed her revelations and personal experience very well through her words today. This should not be allowed to happen.
There are many charities in Northern Ireland and across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that contribute and do well. I want to thank the church groups in my constituency that collectively and ecumenically come together to help families in need at the time that they need it. The good will and Christian faith that drive people and churches to do that are often underestimated; I thank them for that.
The Simon Community is very active in Northern Ireland. I have used its stats and information as evidence. In audits it carried out across Northern Ireland, the number of people observed sleeping rough has ranged from zero to 19 per night—it very much depends on the circumstances—with an average of six in certain monitored areas. To be fair, in Northern Ireland rough sleeping among families with children is relatively uncommon, because families are usually placed quickly in temporary accommodation. When there is a rush because circumstances overtake them and they have to leave their house—domestic abuse can be one of the reasons for that—the authorities quickly jump in to give temporary accommodation. Rough sleeping is not something that we see much of in Northern Ireland because of the methodology that the authorities use to ensure that families are housed.
I am ever mindful that this is a devolved matter, but my request of the Minister is that we learn together. That is an example of what we do. Maybe things are different in Northern Ireland and the temporary accommodation is a bit more abundant. Maybe the way we do things works. Again, I just want to be helpful in this conversation today.
As of November 2024, almost 5,400 children were living in temporary accommodation in Northern Ireland. That is the other side of the coin, which illustrates very clearly that there is much need. Temporary accommodation is often under the “homeless” category as properties are not permanent places of residence and are often, with respect, substandard and not always up to the standard they should be. The figures are increasing, showing that there is a real issue and that steps are not being taken to address it.
Loss of housing and domestic abuse are significant drivers of homelessness. Victims of domestic abuse might be forced to leave their homes suddenly to protect themselves and their children, often without time to secure alternative accommodation. Given the shocking stats in Northern Ireland in relation to domestic abuse and violence against women, I want to reiterate how important it is that we make those services available and known and that we continue to ensure they are fit for purpose to provide support for those who need it most.
I am working on the assumption that my speech will be about five minutes, to make sure that everybody else can get in. Although families with children sleeping rough are often hidden from official stats, the reality is stark: this is real. In England alone, over 140,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, and the problem is not confined to one region—it affects communities in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland alike. Things do not stop at the Irish sea and at borders. We must do more on a UK-wide basis to prevent families from reaching crisis point and to expand access to safe and affordable housing.
I congratulate the Government on removing the two-child benefit cap. That made sure that almost 60,000 children in Northern Ireland from 13,000 families were lifted out of poverty. I have put that on the record in the main Chamber and I say it again in this one. Some of the work that the Government are doing is to be welcomed and encouraged, but we need to ensure that every child has a secure home. I look to the Minister to commit to that.
Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this debate and for her tireless work on tackling homelessness.
The crippling cost of living, sky-high private rents and the lack of social housing in the UK mean that far too many people have no option other than to spend the night on the street. We hear reports of people sleeping in cars, pregnant women turned away from support by their local councils, and children as young as four years old forced to sleep rough. In the sixth richest country in the world, those are despicable reminders of how broken our system is. We know the detrimental effect that sleeping rough and housing insecurity can have on children’s health, education and life chances.
The trauma of living in insecure, temporary and often dangerous conditions can have lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, housing stability and economic prospects. Children experiencing homelessness face increased rates of infection, asthma and sleep deprivation, high rates of anxiety, depression and behavioural issues, and a higher likelihood of being exposed to violence, crime and the risk of sexual assault. The streets are no place for children to be sleeping. It has a knock-on effect across other areas of children’s lives: disrupted education, increased school drop-out rates and children forced to hide their situation, leading to social exclusion. We must do better.
A huge driver of homelessness and rough sleeping is the current unaffordability of the private rented sector. Two weeks ago, the Welsh Affairs Committee heard evidence from Shelter Cymru, Cymorth, the Bevan Foundation and Crisis. Private rents in Wales are increasing faster than anywhere else in Great Britain. In the last year, private rents in Wales have gone up by 6% on average. In England and Scotland, the figure is closer to 3%. Housing is devolved in Wales, but there are levers that can be pulled in Westminster, particularly around benefits, to immediately prevent more people from being forced into homelessness, the most effective of which would be unfreezing local housing allowance and restoring it to cover the true cost of rent.
Local housing allowance is a massive driver not just of homelessness in general, but of keeping people in homelessness, in turn affecting those sleeping rough, including children. When LHA was introduced by Labour in 2008, it was intended to cover private rents up to the 50th percentile—the lowest 50% of rents in a local area. Due to subsequent policy changes and freezes, LHA now covers only 1% of private rents in Wales, and 2.5% in England. I call on this Government to end the routine freezing of LHA and permanently relink it to the 50th percentile of local private rents, in line with the Welsh Government’s position. That is a vital step to prevent homelessness, tackle inequality and further rebalance the power of private tenants.
How can the Government achieve their plan to halve long-term rough sleeping and prevent homelessness if people on low incomes simply cannot afford a local home?
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
I was shocked, although perhaps not entirely surprised, to learn that among local authorities, Somerset has the third highest number of young people sleeping rough, in absolute terms, in the country. It struck me even more that it is sandwiched between urban areas. Does the hon. Member agree that the challenges of destitution and homelessness for families are as acute but far less visible, which often leads to rural rough sleeping being overlooked in national policy considerations?
Steve Witherden
The hon. Lady and I both represent rural parts of England and Wales, and she makes an extremely valid point. Not only do rural areas often get overlooked, but there is simply less housing in those areas—it is a double whammy. I thank her for her welcome intervention.
We must ensure that no child is forced to sleep rough in any circumstances. The measures that I have outlined today would be a vital step towards achieving that. Diolch yn fawr.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this important debate. I will repeat and add to a couple of points that we have already heard.
It is not an unfortunate inevitability but a national disgrace that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, families with children are still being pushed into homelessness and, in some cases, on to the streets. We are a country with immense resources and capacity to solve problems—one that spends tens of billions of pounds on weapons every year, and that has just opened Crossrail, the Elizabeth line, after one of Europe’s largest construction projects—yet we cannot guarantee that every child in this country has a safe and secure roof over their head when they go to sleep at night. That is a fundamentally moral contradiction, and it should weigh heavily on all of us, as parliamentarians with the collective power to change that status quo.
The statistics alone paint a bleak picture. In autumn 2025, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in England: a record high, and a 171% increase since 2010. We must remember that the figure, which is a snapshot of just one night, is widely acknowledged to have been undercounted. Even more shockingly, recent reports suggest that families with young children have been forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, in direct contravention of the law.
As we know, children in temporary accommodation are still classed as homeless, and the numbers show that over 175,000 children are currently homeless in temporary accommodation. Based on the most recent council-level data, as of June 2025 more than 600 children were living in temporary accommodation in Kirklees, where my Dewsbury and Batley constituency sits. These children are part of the around 375 family households in Kirklees in temporary accommodation as of March 2025. That temporary accommodation is costing Kirklees between £7 million and £8 million, which is money that could be better spent providing other public services.
Recent reports have shockingly suggested that families with young children are being forced to sleep rough after being refused emergency local authority accommodation, despite that being in direct contravention of the law. If families are reaching the point where they are unable to prevent their children from sleeping on the streets, in cars or anywhere else not designed for human habitation, then something in the system is clearly broken and the state is failing in its most basic obligations to its citizens.
One constituent, who has been contacting me regularly over the past several weeks, is a single mother with three children, one of whom has autism and asthma. The council has been unable to provide suitable accommodation for her and her children, and she has been sleeping in her car for the past several weeks. Her car is now uninhabitable, as it has been written off. She has been forced to accept temporary bed and breakfast accommodation. It is not suitable for her children, but she has nowhere else to go. I am sure that Kirklees is doing everything it can to help the family, but given the lack of resources and the lack of adequate family social housing, such examples are not as rare as they should be.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
The hon. Member is right to highlight the resource challenges that local authorities have. From an outward perspective, my Chichester constituency is a very affluent area, with lower levels of homelessness, but in 1989 a gentleman died on our streets, and so a charity called Stonepillow was formed. It has gone on to support thousands of people experiencing homelessness across the Chichester and Bognor area. Does the hon. Member agree that although the charitable and voluntary sector has admirably stepped in where local authorities are too poorly funded to support people, it should not have to do so?
Iqbal Mohamed
The hon. Member is absolutely right. We all pay tribute to all the charities across the country, including the one in her constituency, that are stepping in to help people in times of desperate need, when Government and councils have not been able to provide the necessary support. I pay tribute to all those charities, but they should not have to step in to provide the basic necessities for children and families in our country.
Part of the failure undoubtedly lies with the immense financial pressures facing local authorities. Councils across the country are struggling to meet their duties to house those at risk of homelessness, including children, because of skyrocketing costs, limited housing supply and shockingly overstretched budgets. The cost of temporary accommodation alone has placed extraordinary financial strain on local government, with councils now covering more than half of those costs themselves, according to a recent analysis by the Institute for Government.
I see the consequences of this crisis at first hand in my constituency, where housing and homelessness are among the issues most frequently raised by my constituents. My office regularly hears from families who are on the brink of losing their homes and from people facing unfair evictions, struggling with rising rents or desperately seeking emergency accommodation at a time of unimaginable crisis. Increasingly, we see that these are not isolated individuals, but families with children who are living with the constant fear of having nowhere to go. Local authorities want to help, but they are operating with limited resources in the face of overwhelming demand.
Another shocking incident, reported by local media at the start of this year, is that a single mum of three, including a 12-year-old daughter with cancer, has been housed by my local authority in a one-bedroom flat with damp and mould for the past two years, after a no-fault eviction by a private landlord who wanted to sell their property. Such stories mean that we must be honest about the scale of the challenge facing us and the requisite ambition to adequately address it.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that no local authority unlawfully refuses emergency accommodation to families with children, and how will compliance with the statutory duties be monitored? Secondly, what additional financial support will be provided to councils that are struggling with the costs of temporary accommodation? Finally, what specific measures within the Government’s homelessness strategy are targeted at preventing families with children from ever reaching the point of rough sleeping in the first place?
Ultimately, this debate is about the kind of country we want to be. A society that allows children to sleep on the streets is a society that has lost sight of its most basic humanity. Ending rough sleeping among families is not simply a policy challenge, it is a moral imperative, and one that this Parliament must treat with the urgency it deserves.
Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) on securing this debate on such an important issue.
The levels of homelessness in our United Kingdom are appalling, and it is shameful that a wealthy country like ours has allowed it to persist to such an extent. In Scotland, the scale of homelessness and rough sleeping today is stark. Under the watch of the SNP Government, homelessness has spiralled: the number of open homelessness cases has risen by 58% since the SNP came to power in 2007. Devastatingly, someone in Scotland becomes homeless every 15 minutes and, as of September last year, a record 10,480 children were living in unsuitable temporary accommodation. That is a disgrace.
Last year, more than 4,500 children were living in poverty in my West Dunbartonshire constituency, putting them in a position of uncertainty and fear, and in uncomfortable surroundings, hungry, cold and often unsafe. This instability takes a toll on children’s mental and physical health, education and sense of security. It is an unthinkable situation for most of us, but a horrific everyday reality for many homeless people with children in my constituency and across the UK.
The consequences can be tragic: new figures released last week show that in 2024, 231 people died in Scotland while experiencing homelessness. Those deaths should be a wake-up call to the Scottish Government and to every Government.
At the root of this crisis is a shortage of housing. House building in Scotland has fallen dramatically—in fact, 5,000 fewer homes are being built every year compared with the years of the last Labour-led Scottish Government. Had the rate under Scottish Labour been maintained under the SNP, 90,000 more homes would have been built in the last 19 years. Imagine how many more families could have avoided homelessness if those homes existed.
West Dunbartonshire has one of the most severe housing crises in Scotland. I frequently see children starting life on the back foot through no fault of their own. We must start building more houses. No one, no matter their personal situation, should be sleeping rough, especially those with children. How will anyone living on the streets improve their circumstances if they are not given the opportunity to rebuild their lives?
Under the leadership of Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour has set out a plan to deliver 125,000 new homes over five years, across all tenures—expanding affordable housing, reforming planning laws and establishing a housing investment bank to unlock land and finance construction. But we must also give councils the resources they need to meet their legal duties. The Scottish Government must intervene earlier to prevent families from becoming homeless in the first place.
Every child deserves the stability of a safe home and a decent start to life. Rough sleeping among families with children is not just a housing issue but very much a moral one. No child in West Dunbartonshire, in Scotland, or anywhere else in our United Kingdom should ever have to wonder where they will sleep at night.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
It is wonderful to speak under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
Rough sleeping among families and children is one of the starkest signs of a system failing at a point where people need it the most. No child should ever be exposed to that kind of trauma and no parent should ever be in the position of trying to protect their child while having no safe or stable place to go.
This issue matters very deeply to me personally. When I was 15, my own family experienced homelessness. I want to be clear that we never had to sleep rough—we always had some form of roof over our heads—but even without that, the disruption, insecurity and fear leave an everlasting mark. You feel lost, hurt and absolutely scarred for life. But I know that if someone shows love and care, there is hope and there is light. I genuinely believe that this Minister has given the Government the bulb—the Government just need to switch on the light.
When home is uncertain, everything else becomes uncertain too. Schooling and mental health suffer, and family life is placed under an enormous strain. That is why I feel so strongly that when we talk about rough sleeping among families, we cannot treat it as a question only of emergency accommodation. We have to see it for what it is: a crisis that can shape a child’s life for evermore, long after the immediate dangers have passed.
For families with children, the answer must be a Housing First approach. Put simply, we need to start from the principle that a safe and secure home is not the reward at the end of recovery but a foundation that makes recovery possible. If a family is facing rough sleeping, or is at immediate risk of it, the first job must be to get them into stable accommodation quickly, not to leave them cycling through unsuitable temporary accommodation and arrangements—not expecting children to recover while living out of bags in one room and not assuming that the crisis ends at the moment a roof is found. We should not be seeing a mum having to leave a baby during the night to warm their milk in a microwave in a service station, like one mum in my constituency.
I am working with families in Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme who have been made homeless and are living in hotels. They are no longer sleeping rough, but they are living in deeply unsuitable and unstable circumstances. The priority must of course be to get families off the streets and into a safe place, but their story does not end there, and neither can our concern. That is the point when they need us the most and need the most support, to end the disruption and get back on track.
Alongside housing, there must be proper wraparound support. That means mental health support, help with school continuity, support into work, help with debt, access to children’s services where needed, and practical help for parents trying to rebuild stability post trauma. Without that, we risk addressing the symptom for a night while leaving the damage untouched for years.
A child who experiences homelessness or rough sleeping does not simply bounce back because the immediate risk has passed. The disruption and impact are long term, and the response has to be long term too. If we are serious about ending rough sleeping among families with children, we need to be serious about stability and support at home first, and then the sustained joined-up help necessary to build lives.
I urge the Government to build the social homes, support those with trauma, deliver the toolkit and work across Departments to deliver our homelessness strategy. I can tell Members that for that 15-year-old doing his GCSE coursework on the double mattress, sat next to his mum and sister in that room, it has been a journey. But now he is fast approaching 50, and I am proud to be part of a Government that can, once and for all, end that situation for children going forwards.
Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)
I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing the debate. I also thank my friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) for his impassioned sharing of his very deep personal experiences. Also, he does not look a day over 60.
The fact that children are sleeping rough on the streets of the United Kingdom should appal every Member of Parliament. I certainly find it deeply distressing. The impact of any form of homelessness, including rough sleeping, on young people’s futures is huge, and the number of those impacted is steadily increasing. As we speak, around 176,000 children are believed to be homeless and living in temporary accommodation—the highest amount since records began. That figure is nearly equivalent to the total number of children living in Leeds.
In the first six months of 2025 alone, the homelessness charity Crisis saw more than 100 pregnant women and families with children use its services after being turned away from the support offered by their local councils—councils that are also struggling to cope with the rising pressures of the housing crisis that we are working hard to fix.
This Government, with their comprehensive national plan to end homelessness and their ambition to build 1.5 million homes, have been clear that there is no excuse for children to be sleeping rough on our streets. On that note, I was pleased to see that the Minister had written to councils to reiterate their duty of care to prevent children from sleeping rough.
It is important to recognise the vital role that the third sector plays when it comes to safeguarding young people against the impacts of homelessness and rough sleeping. In Southend, for example, we are fortunate to have HARP, a dedicated homelessness charity that works around the clock to safeguard our city’s most vulnerable residents. I have had the pleasure of meeting Vanessa Hemmings on a number of occasions. With her dedicated team at HARP, she works tirelessly, with passion and empathy, to ensure that even in the most challenging of environments and moments, our residents have somewhere to turn.
Since becoming the MP for Southend East and Rochford, I have been grateful for the chance to visit HARP on several occasions, and have been consistently moved by its invaluable work. This debate is a crucial one, and I strongly hope that it will refocus efforts to ensure that no child has to endure a night without a home.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
I am so grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this really important debate, at the heart of which is a simple principle: every single child deserves to be safe and warm, with a roof over their head. That should not be controversial for anyone; it should be the basic foundation of a decent society.
Before coming to this place, I spent 18 years working for the YMCA North Staffordshire, supporting people facing homelessness and housing insecurity. I have seen up close the reality of what homelessness does to people, and when kids are caught up in the mix of that instability, the consequences can really last a lifetime, as we have heard.
A secure home provides more than shelter: it offers stability, dignity and the foundation for a child to thrive. But someone having a roof over their head is only the first step. Across many communities, including my own in Stoke-on-Trent and Kidsgrove, there are families who receive the keys to a home but step inside to find an empty property with no beds for the kids, no sofa to sit on and no table to eat around. That is the reality of furniture poverty, which is far more widespread than many people realise.
Last week, I brought together partners in Stoke-on-Trent, including Stoke-on-Trent city council, Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council and local housing providers, alongside the charity End Furniture Poverty, which is doing excellent work across the country to tackle the issue. End Furniture Poverty, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree worked extremely closely for a number of years, is campaigning to increase the percentage of social housing offered on a furnished tenancy basis. I am keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts about its campaign to increase the supply of furnished tenancies among social housing providers, because when a family finally gets the keys to their home, it should be a great moment, but they also need to live there with dignity.
There is a fundamental issue that we must confront: we simply do not have enough affordable social council homes. In Stoke-on-Trent alone, more than 3,500 people are on the council’s housing waiting list. If association lists are not included, the real demand is even greater. Too many people are locked out of home ownership, and without sufficient social and affordable housing, families remain trapped in temporary accommodation or insecure housing.
If we are serious about ending homelessness, especially for families with kids, we must keep building the high-quality, genuinely affordable social homes that the communities we represent desperately need. Ultimately, it is really simple: every single child deserves not only a roof over their head, but a place that they can truly call home.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this important debate.
In my constituency of Woking, we are fortunate to host the extraordinary work of the York Road Project. For three decades that local charity has supported people experiencing homelessness. It began as a winter night shelter run by local volunteers who simply believe that no one should be left out in the cold. Yet today it is a significant local charity that provides specialist help for people that are experiencing homelessness. They keep people off the street at night in their night shelter, and support them to turn their lives around in their day centre.
It is an unfortunate truth that rough sleeping and homelessness is growing. More people are in crisis, and increasingly that involves families with children. Local authorities are spending more than ever on temporary accommodation to do their best to keep people off the streets, particularly those with families and children. The net cost to councils has risen from £200 million in 2015 to more than £1.3 billion today. At the same time councils are facing a wider funding gap, estimated to be £4 billion. It is a postcode lottery, where some constituencies and councils are struggling hugely. As a result, the system is under huge strain. Temporary accommodation is becoming long-term accommodation—housing for families who are stuck in limbo. From our casework, we see the human impact of that every day.
I highlight that the quality of that temporary accommodation is a huge issue. Although it is vital that we keep families with children off the street, with a roof over their head, the fact that the report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee into temporary accommodation’s impact on children made for such stark reading should shock us all. The report found that in the past five years, 74 children had died because of the quality of the temporary accommodation they had been in. Of those 74 children, 58 were under the age of one. That is not acceptable in 21st-century Britain.
I highlight a deeply worrying case in my constituency of Woking. The Conservatives running Surrey county council have withdrawn funding for an initiative that supported single mothers with their children in temporary supported accommodation. That programme provided a safe space for vulnerable women to rebuild their lives, often after instances of domestic abuse or family breakdown. They were able to do that with their children. Without that support, families are now facing eviction. At the last minute, the county council is throwing many vulnerable constituents out of their accommodation and on to the borough council’s housing register when they know that that register is overwhelmed and oversubscribed. That is morally indefensible. Will the Minister condemn that decision by Surrey county council, and will she raise that decision with them to ensure that vulnerable families are not left without safe accommodation?
More broadly, the reality is that sleeping rough and homelessness are symptoms of a deeper structural failure in this country. I have heard that from Members today. Our country is broken, but it can be fixed, and we need the Government to lead on that for us. Across—
Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman came into the debate about half an hour in. It is entirely up to the hon. Member for Woking whether to allow the intervention, but in general I expect people to be in the debate far sooner. A few minutes late is permissible; 30 minutes is not.
Mr Forster
I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. I believe he will attend debates a bit earlier as a result of your comments, Dr Murrison.
Edward Morello
I appreciate the steer from the Chair and apologise for the late arrival. My hon. Friend talks about the wider structural issues that drive homelessness, one of which is the winner-takes-all system when it comes to benefits. In that system, families that are breaking up may split child custody on a 50:50 basis, but the benefit awarding system only awards benefits to one parent. That results in the other parent having no access to their children, and often results in them losing their home and ending up homeless.
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as the councils and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, we should also look at how the benefits system can ensure that parents can stay in accommodation and have access to their children?
Mr Forster
I completely agree with my hon. Friend; he makes a really valid point. The debate has rightly focused on housing, but there are wider impacts, and the Department for Work and Pensions needs to change our benefits system to ensure that families are properly supported so that we do not have children sleeping rough. I have highlighted the particular case of Surrey county council evicting families with children in my constituency, and I really worry that some of them may sleep rough. Across England, almost 5,000 people slept rough on one single night last autumn—a 20% increase on the previous year. We know the causes: chronic housing shortages, poverty, relationship breakdowns, gaps in welfare support and, above all, a lack of social housing.
Iqbal Mohamed
In the late ’70s and the ’80s, more than 80% of Government support for social housing—housing benefit—went to councils. That money was reinvested in housing and repairs, and the surplus was used in other services. In real terms, it was then worth about £28 billion; today it is about £30 billion, so it has not changed, but 20% now goes to councils and 80% goes to private landlords. Whatever 80% of £30 billion is— £24 billion—is now going out of the system, and that is money that was going to councils. Does the hon. Member agree that the right to buy, and councils’ inability to replenish stock, has adversely impacted not just housing but wider public services, and that we must allow councils to buy back homes or build new ones, so that housing benefit goes to councils?
Mr Forster
I completely agree. We have privatised our housing welfare system, which has resulted in worse conditions and a higher cost to taxpayers. The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on housing since before we were the Liberal Democrats. The great architect of the welfare state, the Liberal William Beveridge, characterised the squalor of poor housing and homelessness in the early 20th century as a giant that needed to be defeated, yet we still have not slain that giant.
It is heartbreaking to hear these stories. Will the Minister ensure that sufficient financial resources are available to local authorities so that they can deliver the measures in the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and provide accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse? Will the Government ringfence emergency funding for local councils to ensure that they can deliver permanent accommodation for rough sleepers? Will they exempt groups of homeless people, and those at risk of homelessness, from the shared accommodation rule?
The Government have reduced the move-on period for refugees in accommodation from 56 to 28 days. When it was 56 days, rough sleeping notably reduced. It gave refugees a chance to set in motion plans for leaving state support, but 28 days isn’t working. The Government have made an exemption only for those who are pregnant, are over 65 or have a disability. Those are the only exemptions. I do not agree with changing the rule, but I will not ask the Minister to defend that. I ask her to raise it with the Home Office, to ensure that families with children are also exempt.
The Government must address this awful system, which is failing vulnerable children and their families. We cannot have children sleeping rough. The work of organisations such as the York Road Project in my constituency of Woking shows what people can achieve when compassion and community are involved. It is now the Government’s responsibility to match that endeavour and ensure that children and families do not sleep rough.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) on securing this debate. She is not just an hon. Lady; to me she is an hon. Friend, and I am delighted to respond to her today on the Opposition’s behalf. I even managed to get out of bed just to do it because she was leading this debate this morning.
The hon. Lady was absolutely right to say in her opening remarks that we should not be here this morning having to debate an issue such as one. However, while we do have to debate these issues, I am pleased that she is on the case and I look forward to working with her, being a successor to her as the shadow Minister with responsibility for homelessness. I know that the welfare of young people across this country, particularly those who have found themselves homeless, is at the heart of what she does, and I congratulate her again on securing this debate.
Rough sleeping among families with children represents one of the most visible and distressing signs of the housing crisis in our country. Behind every statistic is a child growing up without the security of a stable home, a family living with uncertainty, and communities struggling to cope with rising costs of living and other socioeconomic pressures. We can all agree across the House that this is not a matter to procrastinate or prevaricate about.
In its 2024 manifesto, the Labour party promised to,
“develop a new cross-Government strategy…to put Britain back on track to ending homelessness.”
That strategy was not published until 11 December 2025, which was much later than expected; indeed, it was at the tail end of this Session of Parliament. However, I remind the Minister, who I am pleased to see here in Westminster Hall this morning, that in a meeting she kindly offered on a cross-party basis, I assured her that the official Opposition and I, as the shadow Minister with responsibility for homelessness, are committed to working on a cross-party basis to make sure that this strategy works. My comments this morning do not signal that I demur from that approach. However, I will make some comments on some parts of the strategy and I will challenge the strategy regarding where we think it could go further.
My main concern about the homelessness strategy is this. The current time seemed to offer an opportunity, but although the Minister has grabbed that opportunity, it is an opportunity whereby the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems to be leading the search for a solution to homelessness, so the chance for a fundamental rewiring of how Government works to tackle homelessness has been missed. As I said, I make these comments in a constructive way. Nevertheless, I believe that the strategy lacks genuine cross-party ministerial oversight.
The strategy also lacks the cross-departmental approach that we need, particularly when we consider that homelessness is not just an issue that MHCLG must find a solution to. Homelessness also involves the Department for Education, the Department for Health and Social Care, and the Home Office, in the way that the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree described. For example, regarding the involvement of the Department for Health and Social Care, we need to get better at analysing the data around drug and alcohol discharges from hospital.
I am not convinced that the strategy, despite its good intentions overall, really takes the cross-ministerial approach where it needs to go. I look to the Minister to confirm to the Chamber this morning, when she responds to the debate, that she is chairing a cross-ministerial committee on this issue, and that she will continue to do so going forward. I also look to her to say how often that committee will meet.
The hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree mentioned the problem with data concerning immigration. She is absolutely right that the Home Office has been slightly let off the hook on this strategy; I look to the Minister to provide some reassurances on this data issue when she stands up shortly to respond to the debate.
I think that the strategy goes in the right direction, but there are some concerns about the lack of funding to tackle some of the issues and to enact some of the good intentions that the Minister has outlined over the past few months. For example, the strategy does not give funding to Housing First so that it can be rolled out nationally. Also, the Local Government Association says that a cross-departmental approach is needed, and needs to be embedded at the heart of all Government Departments, within their constitutions. We ask for that approach to be considered.
Lastly on the housing strategy itself, prevention models are still patchy across the whole of the UK and there needs to be an emphasis on national outcomes, to stop people falling into homelessness. Throughout the UK, charities such as The Bread and Butter Thing are really helping on an emergency scale to relieve the homelessness crisis; we congratulate them on what they are doing.
Iqbal Mohamed
The right-to-buy scheme, the pros and cons of which I will not go into, led to councils losing big chunks of their housing stock to people who bought their houses at a discount. I know that the scheme has been changed and that the discount has been reduced, but I am not aware where the money that is generated goes, even today. Does the shadow Minister agree that the decision of the then Government and subsequent Governments to take the proceeds of sales, instead of leaving them with councils to replenish the stock, was a mistake, and should the Government now be looking at doing the latter for any further sales?
Paul Holmes
The hon. Gentleman asks a perfectly reasonable question. That was a policy decision of Governments before I took this role. I believe in the right-to-buy policy. It was a massive tool to allow people to achieve ownership in a radical way that we need to see again in this country. But in hindsight I accept, given some of the way the system worked, that we needed to see greater investment back into councils so that they could reinvest in stock. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to assume, but I will say that under this Government, the social housing fund that has been allocated just is not great enough to ensure that we have the houses that we need to deliver.
The number of people sleeping rough in England is now at its highest level since records began in 2010. Figures from autumn 2025 estimate that 4,793 people were sleeping on the streets on a single night, which was an increase on the previous year. Particularly concerning is the rise in vulnerable groups on the streets. The number of female rough sleepers increased by 8% to 733, alongside 3,938 men and 122 cases in which gender was not recorded. London continues to face the greatest challenge, with 1,277 people sleeping rough—the highest figure in the country—but the sharpest increase was in the north-east of England, where rough sleeping rose by 31% in just one year.
For many families, the pathway to rough sleeping begins long before anyone ends up on the streets. It often starts in temporary accommodation. Between July and September 2025, 134,760 households were living in hotels, B&Bs or temporary flats, which was an increase of nearly 7% compared with the previous year. Of those households, 85,730 include children. These are the highest figures since records began in 2010.
In London, the situation is particularly stark. According to London Councils, one in 50 Londoners is now homeless and record numbers of children are growing up in temporary accommodation. In some boroughs, the pressures are especially severe. Newham has 6,667 households in temporary accommodation, followed by Lambeth with 4,657 and Southwark with 3,828. Statutory homelessness data shows that, across England, 169,050 children are currently homeless in temporary accommodation. That represents a 12% increase in just one year and the ninth consecutive record since December 2022.
Ultimately, the only sustainable solution to homelessness is to increase the supply of homes and, in particular, social and affordable housing. The Government have pledged to build 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. However—I say this again—experts have expressed serious doubts about whether that target can be achieved. Professor Paul Cheshire, a leading planning expert who advised previous Governments, stated that there is “absolutely no way” the current reforms will deliver that number of homes. Let me be clear to Members across the House: that does and should include social homes.
Recent housing statistics raise similar concerns. According to official figures, 208,600 net new dwellings were added in Labour’s first year in office, which is a 6% drop on the previous year, and just 190,600 new homes were built, which is 8,000 fewer than in the final year of the previous Government. If this rate continues, fewer than 1 million homes will be delivered by 2029—well short of the Government’s stated target.
That is a serious issue because housing supply directly affects homelessness. Without sufficient homes, more families are pushed into temporary accommodation and the risk of rough sleeping continues. The scale of the challenge facing families with children demands urgency, co-ordination and long-term solutions. That means tackling child poverty, expanding affordable housing, supporting local authorities and ensuring that strategies are delivered on time and backed by meaningful action. All of us in this House, on both sides, agree that no child should grow up without the stability of a safe home, no family should face the prospect of homelessness and no society should accept rising rough sleeping as inevitable.
I say once again to the Minister that we come here in the spirit of co-operation. I genuinely believe that this Minister wants to achieve her aim of reducing homelessness. She has been going in the right direction to make sure that the Department constitutes what is necessary to deliver that, but we will look to see how this will be carried on across all Departments to achieve what we all want to achieve.
The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing the debate. She has been dedicated to tackling homelessness for many years, including in her work as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness. Rough sleeping and homelessness are issues that scarred our city region for many years, and I know that everybody at home is very proud of her and the work she does.
As many hon. Members from a number of parties have mentioned, we do not want to be here talking about this issue, but it is so serious that we must. Like all hon. Members, I was extremely concerned about recent reports of families with children sleeping rough. To be absolutely clear, because there ought to be no ambiguity, this should never, ever happen.
Let me say, for clarity, that a household with a child has a priority need for the purposes of the Housing Act 1996. That means that if a household with a child is homeless and is eligible for homelessness assistance, the household must be provided with temporary accommodation until suitable settled accommodation is secured. Where households do not meet the criteria for homelessness assistance, local authorities have a duty under the Children Act 1989 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in need, including by providing them with accommodation where necessary. Let me say, for absolute clarity, that that applies irrespective of the child’s immigration status.
The law is absolutely clear that where a local authority believes that a household does not have a local connection to the district, it remains under a duty to accommodate until a referral to another district has been accepted. It is only when a referral has been accepted that the receiving authority must fulfil any duties to accommodate. There should never be any reason for families to be refused accommodation while there is a dispute about which authority owes that household a duty. There is no grey area here: families with children should never be left without accommodation.
Jim Shannon
That is very clear for everyone, and I thank the Minister for it. One example from Northern Ireland that I did not get a chance to mention in my speech was the case of a mother with two children who were sleeping rough in the square. The reason they could not get temporary accommodation was that the Northern Ireland Housing Executive had none at the time. However, because of its duty of care, which the Minister outlined, it made accommodation available in a local hotel until such time as temporary accommodation became available. Is that something that the Minister advocates?
Alison McGovern
I am not quite sure that I caught all the details of the case that the hon. Member raised, but if he sends me them I will happily respond to him. He will know that we do not want children to be in B&B accommodation. That is one of the main planks of our strategy, which I will come to later.
As has been mentioned, I wrote to local authority leaders and chief executives last month to remind them of their duties and to ask that they take personal responsibility for making sure that no child in their area is ever left to sleep on the street, in a car or in any other location not designed for living in. I am conscious of the case raised by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed). I am sure that he has made every effort to sort that out with Kirklees, but if he has further problems, or Kirklees has specific issues that it wants to raise with me, I trust that he will write to me directly.
We must support councils to meet their obligations, and my Department has been in contact with the councils mentioned in the report to understand how this was able to happen and to ensure that it will not happen again. More broadly, hon. Members will be aware that we recently completed the local authority finance settlement for the next three years, reconnecting council funding with deprivation. That should aid the councils that are more likely to face these issues to deal with them.
The Government are providing more than £2.4 billion this spending review period in support of the Families First Partnership programme, which is introducing reforms to children’s social care. It will ensure children and families can access timely support so that they can get ahead of this problem, as many Members have suggested. Local authorities should use that ringfenced funding to meet their duties under the Children Act. It has been great to speak to many Members and their local authority leaders about how they will do that.
We are providing record levels of investment in homelessness and rough sleeping support, including more than £3.6 billion over the three years from 2026-27 to 2028-29. That is a funding boost of more than £1 billion compared with the previous Government’s commitment, and I pay tribute to the Chancellor for taking that decision. It is right that we are investing that much, because we inherited a homelessness crisis. Members have set out just how bad things have got.
Our long-term vision is to end homelessness and rough sleeping and ensure everyone has access to a safe and decent home. The statistics that we have heard today show that, for far too many people, that is not yet the case. We published our national plan to end homelessness last December to shift the system from crisis response to prevention and to get back on track to ending homelessness.
Our plan is backed by clear national targets to increase the proportion of households who are supported to stay in their own home or helped to find alternative accommodation when they approach their local council for support. That is the prevention goal, and it should underpin everything we do. For reasons that have been mentioned—not least the experience shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher)—we must prevent first. Homelessness is too big of a trauma; nobody should experience it.
By the end of this Parliament, we want to eliminate the use of B&B accommodation for families, except in absolute, dire emergencies, and halve rough sleeping. Of course, we want everyone to have a roof over their head, but some of the problems that we are facing and the experiences of rough sleepers go deep, so we have to go to the toughest of problems.
Our plan is backed by £3.6 billion of funding, including £2.2 billion that councils are free to use to design effective, locally tailored services to deliver better outcomes and reduce reliance on emergency interventions. A number of Members asked about ringfencing. There is tension between allowing local innovation, for which ringfences are unhelpful, and putting clear ringfences around funds to ensure that all councils can tackle homelessness. It is a balance, and that is the way we have taken the decision about the funding.
Our plan sets out how we will tackle the root causes of homelessness by building 1.5 million new homes, including more social and affordable housing than has been built for years. We are also lifting 550,000 children out of poverty through the measures in our child poverty strategy, including by lifting the two-child limit.
Public institutions should lead the way in preventing homelessness. Our plan sets a long-term ambition that no one should leave a public institution into homelessness, and we have cross-Government targets to start that change and reduce homelessness from prisons, care and hospitals.
A number of Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), were kind enough to say that they believed in my will to get this done but expressed scepticism about other Departments. I hope I can reassure them that they do not need to be sceptical. My experience of working with Ministers in other Departments has been positive.
Alison McGovern
I was just going to respond to the shadow Minister. The interministerial group will meet quite soon, and we have been preparing for that. Our expert group of advisers met me yesterday, and we got a great deal of things done and discussed. I will come on to some of those, but I want to reassure Members that we have active participation in the interministerial group and across Government.
Paul Holmes
I knew the Minister would give me a straight answer, but may I push her a bit further on the remit of the interministerial group? Will she confirm her intention for how often it will meet? Is it constituted to meet a certain number of times during the year?
Alison McGovern
The interministerial group will meet regularly.
There are interconnections between homelessness and violence against women and girls, because the third biggest cause of homelessness is people fleeing domestic abuse, so we will do some of what we need to do via our work as Ministers through the violence against women and girls strategy. As a number of Members have highlighted, there is clearly a connection between homelessness and poverty. We are about to take forward the delivery of the child poverty strategy, so some aspects of what we are considering will be taken forward through that discussion among Ministers. I am very conscious that we should have meetings not for the sake of it, but to get things done. We will deliver our objectives through those three interconnected strategies, and Ministers will certainly meet regularly.
Paula Barker
I thank the Minister for the contribution she is making. Will she commit to publishing the minutes of the interministerial group?
Alison McGovern
I was going to come on to that. I will certainly commit to providing an update. It is beyond my procedural knowledge exactly what we are allowed to publish from ministerial groups, but I will certainly commit to providing an update. I was going to suggest that we might have a meeting with the APPG shortly after, so that we can provide an in-person update, because I think it would be far better for parliamentarians to be engaged in this process.
I will quickly provide an update on the work of other Government Departments, in response to the questions raised. The Treasury is leading on the value for money review of homelessness support, which should pick up the precise point that the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley made on the cost of temporary accommodation. We have talked about the disaster this is for families, but what is going on at the moment is also a disaster for taxpayers. The Treasury is working with us and the DWP on that and is actively engaged.
I am working extremely closely with the Department for Work and Pensions on incomes and the homelessness system overall, and it has been very active. With regard to the Ministry of Justice, the Minister for Prisons and I have been working very closely on people leaving prisons; he has exacting targets for reducing the number of people who leave prison to no fixed abode. I have also worked very closely with Home Office Ministers, and I will ensure that they receive a copy of the report of this debate, because I am sure Members want their opinions to be heard by them.
On health, we need to ensure that neighbourhood health services support people who have experienced rough sleeping, particularly in relation to addiction and the trauma that children who have experienced homelessness might go through. On education, Members will know the disaster it is when children have to move schools because of temporary accommodation. The Department for Education has been working closely with us on that. I hope that reassures Members that this is a cross-Government effort. None the less, we will introduce a legal duty to collaborate, to compel public services to work together to prevent homelessness.
As the shadow Minister pointed out, building more homes takes time, but our plan takes immediate action to tackle the worst forms of homelessness now. Alongside the work that the Minister for Housing and Planning is doing to bring forward much more social housing than we have seen in this country for a heck of a long time, we will increase the emergency accommodation reduction pilots into a programme backed by £30 million of funding to tackle a wider range of poor practice, including B&B and unsuitable out-of-area placements. As I mentioned, I met our expert group yesterday, and we intend to move very quickly on the toolkits that we need. Much of the information exists already; we just need to get on and do it.
We are helping more vulnerable people off the streets and into stable housing by investing £150 million in supported housing services and £15 million in our long-term rough sleeping innovation programme, to help councils with the greatest pressures to deliver more personalised and comprehensive support for people with complex needs. I could talk about that for a long time, but I will not. Members here will understand that, sometimes, complicated personal circumstances sit behind someone’s homelessness, and we need really skilled caseworkers to support people with those. Likewise, we want to get on with the work on allocations, which is under way, and I am making sure it moves quickly.
The latest data showed progress against two of our new targets. The percentage of duties owed where homelessness was prevented or relieved with accommodation secured for six or more months is up 3.7 percentage points year on year to 46%. That means a higher proportion of households at risk of homelessness or already homeless was helped to secure accommodation than over the same period the year before. That includes an increase in households helped to find accommodation before experiencing the traumatic experience of homelessness—that is the target that I really want to see go up.
The quarter in question also saw a reduction in the number of families in B&B accommodation over the statutory limit of six weeks, to 1,670. That number is still far too many, but it is the lowest since the beginning of 2023 and down 55% year on year. I am confident that we are going in the right direction on B&B use, but we need to go faster and do more.
The figures do not mean the job is done—far from it—but they show that prevention is improving and that fewer families are spending long periods in unsuitable accommodation. I have confidence that we can achieve the targets we have set ourselves, but we need to make sure that we maintain focus and, as Members have suggested, keep working right across Government to deliver.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree for securing this debate. As I said, our city is very proud of her. I hope we will never have cause to discuss families with children sleeping rough again, but I trust that Members here will secure other debates so that we can keep our focus on our homelessness strategy and make progress, as I have suggested, over the years to come.
Paula Barker
I thank all hon Members for their thoughtful and knowledgeable contributions. I also thank the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), and the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster), for their contributions, as well as the Minister for hers. I look forward to working with her constructively in the months and years ahead.
I place on the record my thanks to Crisis for its incredible work. I particularly thank Dan Hewitt and ITV for keeping this all in the public domain—the work they do is incredible. I hope that, collectively, we can all use the moral clarity that we have found today in these abhorrent cases to spur us on to build a better Britain where nobody experiences homelessness.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of rough sleeping among families with children.