Housing, Communities and Local Government

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Ministerial Corrections

[Gareth Thomas]

Estimates of homelessness among veterans of our armed forces range from the low thousands to approximately 11,000. Why does the Minister think that the Government have failed veterans of our services?

[Mrs Wheeler]

As Members might imagine, as the Minister with responsibility for veterans in MHCLG, I have taken a great interest in this matter. In London, we have data from the combined homelessness and information network—so-called CHAIN data—which gives us very good and specific data about the number of veterans who are on the streets. Similarly, the homelessness case level information classification, or H-CLIC, contains data that all councils put into it. It is still experimental, because it has been going for less than 18 months, but the latest figures show that the number of veterans on the streets is lower than it has ever been, and lower than 3%.

[Official Report, 22 July 2019, Vol. 663, c. 1084.]

Letter of correction from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler):

An error has been identified in the answer I gave, as the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas).

The correct answer should have been:

[Mrs Wheeler]

As Members might imagine, as the Minister with responsibility for veterans in MHCLG, I have taken a great interest in this matter. In London, we have data from the combined homelessness and information network—so-called CHAIN data—which gives us very good and specific data about the number of veterans who are on the streets. Similarly, the homelessness case level information classification, or H-CLIC, contains data that all councils put into it. It is still experimental, because it has been going for less than 18 months. The latest figures show that the number of veterans on the streets in London is lower than it has ever been, and lower than 3%.