Homelessness

Ben Everitt Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speeches from Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) was incredibly generous to his predecessor, who was clearly very well thought of by Members on both sides of the House, and the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) was passionate and sincere—I am sure I join everybody else in this place in hoping that her careers adviser saw her speech.

There are 48 rough sleepers in Milton Keynes—that is, of course, 48 too many—but the really shocking statistic is that there are 2,244 people in temporary accommodation. This is a complex issue. Each of those statistics has an individual behind it who will have complex needs, such as domestic violence, adverse childhood experiences, substance misuse—be that alcohol or narcotics—poor school attainment and attendance, family breakdown, debt and mental health issues that are either underlying and exacerbated by homelessness or caused by homelessness and other issues.

The extra money does help. Earlier this month, Milton Keynes received £1.7 million more to tackle homelessness and only this week it received £870,000 to target rough sleeping. Obviously, however, there is a correlation between the number of people who are homeless and the number of homes that are available, so I welcome the Government’s record and the Secretary of State’s commitments to delivering more affordable homes.

Planning is a complex and devolved issue. At this point, I should declare my interest as a district councillor on Aylesbury Vale District Council, which deals with planning activities, but Milton Keynes is the area that I have been elected to represent in Parliament and Milton Keynes Council has been Labour-run since 2014. It recently released a plan to double the size of Milton Keynes—I say plan but it is more of a land grab, complete with a map with “Dad’s Army” style arrows going north, south, east and west into other boroughs. While it plans to double the size of Milton Keynes, a shocking 24,000 existing planning applications have currently not been built out.

We need to build not only more houses, but the right kind of houses in the right places, so that our homeless people can have somewhere that they can practically expect to live. I welcome the Government’s commitment to building more affordable houses and I look forward to voting for the next housing Bill.