National Plan to End Homelessness
Debate between Judith Cummins and Alison McGovern(5 days, 19 hours ago)
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The Minister for Local Government and Homelessness (Alison McGovern)
I would like to make a statement to the House about the publication of our national plan to end homelessness.
The strategy we have published today, I want to say from the outset, builds on the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I pay tribute to both of them for their considerable work.
This Labour Government inherited a homelessness crisis. Both rough sleeping and households in temporary accommodation increased radically from 2010. It is not just the people we can see sleeping in Westminster tube station as we leave this building, but the families and children we cannot see—those living in unsuitable temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts, without a kitchen and far away from family, friends and schools. For some, this has been a matter of life and death: 1,142 people died while homeless last year, and 74 children’s deaths were connected to temporary accommodation in the five years to 2024—58 of them were babies under one. Everyone deserves a roof over their head. Children in the worst housing our country can offer deserve the attention of this House. The strategy outlines the tangible actions and targets we have set ourselves for delivery this Parliament, which will act as milestones on the way to achieving the long-term vision.
We have looked at the issues carefully. As well as the interministerial group, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government convened a lived experience forum, so that the people who have experienced homelessness and rough sleeping could influence the strategy. We established an expert group to bring together representatives from organisations that support people, local government and experts to provide knowledge, analysis and challenge. I thank them all, on behalf of the House, for their contribution.
To tackle the root causes of homelessness and break the cycle of failure, we must build more homes. We want to build 1.5 million new homes, including more social and affordable housing—more than has been built for years. The new programme could deliver around 300,000 social and affordable homes over its lifetime, with about 180,000 for social rent.
Not having enough money is another cause of homelessness. The child poverty strategy, presented to the House last week, will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030, including through the removal of the two-child limit. The implementation of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 will give more protection to renters by abolishing section 21 no-fault evictions, closing a key route into homelessness.
Building more homes and preventing homelessness overall will take time, but families living in squalid, overcrowded conditions simply cannot wait. The Government will eliminate the use of B&Bs for families in this Parliament and make sure that, on the rare occasion that homelessness cannot be prevented, temporary accommodation is liveable. We have already proven that that is possible through innovation funded by our emergency accommodation reduction pilots programme. The programme funds new work to find more sustainable accommodation, the inspection of properties, the acquisition of long-term accommodation for families, and support to make that transition. That is why, in this strategy, we are increasing funding to £30 million to stop a wider range of poor practice, including the overuse of B&Bs and unsuitable out-of-area placements.
There is £950 million for the fourth round of the local authority housing fund. That means councils can invest in owning their accommodation, rather than paying through the nose to rent bad accommodation, and we will explore partnering with social impact and institutional investors to use private finance and support from the National Housing Bank to yet further increase the supply of good-quality temporary accommodation.
To make sure that children in temporary accommodation get the support they need, we will introduce a new duty on councils to notify schools, health visitors and GPs when a child is in temporary accommodation—something that Members have called for. That will improve health outcomes and school attendance, and reduce the risk of mortality for those children. Most crucially, we will work with the NHS to end the practice of discharging newborns with their mums into B&Bs.
There is no worse feeling for any of us as public servants than seeing a man or woman on the street in need of help that we failed to give them. Over a third of people who have been sleeping outside have been doing so for months, and some for years. They have complex underlying needs and have been failed by services again and again. This cannot continue, so today we are setting a target to halve the number of people sleeping rough long term by the end of this Parliament. We will help more vulnerable people off the streets and into stable housing by investing £124 million over the next three years in supported housing services. We will provide £37 million to our partners working in the voluntary, community and faith sector to support recovery from homelessness. We will target £15 million for councils to test innovative approaches to helping people experiencing long-term rough sleeping, which is often complicated.
In a country such as ours, we really should be able to prevent homelessness; instead, hard-working professionals are stuck responding to crisis after crisis. Many councils have simply become overwhelmed by the costs, and people are having to face a night on the street just to access support in the first place. I am proud that the strategy prioritises the targeted prevention of homelessness among vulnerable groups, like young people and survivors of domestic abuse. We are providing more support to young people in supported housing, helping them to develop the skills and independence they need. By making work pay—crucially, by removing the work disincentive for those in temporary accommodation and supported housing —we are ensuring that a job is a reasonable and achievable outcome.
Public institutions should lead the way in preventing homelessness, and this strategy sets out our long-term ambition that no one leaves a public institution into homelessness, with cross-Government targets to start the change to reduce homelessness from prisons, care and hospitals. To force lasting system change, we will introduce a duty to collaborate—to compel public services to work together to prevent homelessness.
We are backing up all these actions with record levels of funding. We have invested more than £1 billion in homelessness services this year, including the largest ever investment in prevention services. Today I can announce the allocation of an extra £50 million top-up to the homelessness prevention grant this year, which further boosts the support available to people at risk of homelessness right now. The strategy sets out how we will provide a further £3.5 billion for homelessness and rough sleeping services over the next three years, with much more freedom and flexibility for councils to get on and do.
We have made our ambition clear, and we will hold ourselves accountable for achieving the outcomes we seek. The strategy sets out three new national targets, alongside commitments from six of our most crucial partner Departments across Whitehall. The interministerial group on homelessness and rough sleeping will continue to meet to deliver the strategy, and will publish a report on progress at least every two years—although I have absolutely no doubt that hon. Members will hold us accountable for the targets week in, week out. We will monitor local progress with new outcomes metrics, with councils setting targets and publishing action plans.
On those goals—ending the use of B&Bs, halving long-term rough sleeping and increasing the rate at which homelessness is prevented—I know that everyone in this House wants all our places, up and down the country, to succeed. Now more than ever, we need our partners to join us in this mission: councils, frontline public services, homelessness organisations, and voluntary, community and faith groups. If we join forces, the strategy will set us on the path to ending homelessness and will deliver immediate action to improve the lives of people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping.
For every child without a bedroom to do their homework in, for every adult whose life could be turned around by an arm around their shoulder, and for every person who needs a home for Christmas and beyond: this plan is for you, and this Government are for you too. I commend this statement and our strategy to the House.
Alison McGovern
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and I thank hon. Members across the House for the cross-party way in which they have engaged on the strategy. We will disagree—I am sure we will disagree about the manner in which Opposition Members sometimes discuss social security—but where we agree, let us make every effort to put the people who need this strategy first. Those are people who have been on the streets for too long and children who deserve a proper childhood. I hope that we can share that ambition.
The hon. Gentleman asked about metrics. The Department publishes a number of datasets that we are using to analyse the metrics. He mentioned a couple of them—children in temporary accommodation and long-term rough sleeping—but we also know how many people present themselves to councils at risk of homelessness, and we want to increase the rate at which that is prevented. I will ensure that we report regularly to Parliament on that.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned repealing the Vagrancy Act. Some other bits of legislation need to come into force so that we can do that. I will write to him with the exact timings, because they relate to the business of another Department.
On the matter of councils’ strategies and whether it is just paperwork, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it very much is not. The statistics show that in some areas, we have been able to get on top of B&B use—there are more details in the strategy—while in some areas, we have not. It is less about paperwork and more about transparency over outcomes and then taking action to ensure that best practice informs what is going on everywhere.
The hon. Gentleman asks about targets and how cast-iron they will be. Thinking about the state of house building, we were always going to have to ramp up over time. I am clear that the goals in the strategy are achievable, and I would welcome the support of the hon. Gentleman and the rest of the House in ensuring that we see them done.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for her statement this afternoon. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) for their work; this is an area they were both committed to when they were in their previous ministerial roles. The Minister is correct that reversing the tide of homelessness should certainly be a national priority. It is not something that will happen overnight, and we know that further action will be needed to ensure that councils have the support they need for the pressures they are facing—particularly London councils, as the Minister will know, which are collectively facing costs of £5 million a day just on TA.
One of the ways the Government can help to alleviate those pressures and stop people becoming homeless in the first instance is with their rents. There have been asks of Government with cross-party support and from a number of organisations, including the Local Government Association, to look at local housing allowance rates to ensure that people can afford to rent locally so that they do not find themselves facing the threat of eviction and homelessness. Has the Minister discussed this matter with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury to ensure that our residents and tenants do not find themselves evicted? I think of the many children who, two weeks from today, will be opening their presents in another B&B or in more unsuitable temporary accommodation. For them and for many others, we have to make sure we get this right.
Alison McGovern
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for her words and for her long-standing commitment to tackling homelessness in the capital and right across the country. She is right to ask about council pressures, and we are trying to address the inadequacies of council funding across the country. At the moment, the costs of TA and the spikes in demand are putting pressure on councils that will make it even harder for them to balance their budgets, and that serves nobody. We have to get this under control, because it is a waste of taxpayers’ money, no less than it is a waste of childhoods. We have got to get on top of it.
My hon. Friend asks about incomes and whether I have discussed that with other Departments. This is a cross-departmental strategy, and Ministers from DWP and other Departments have been very involved in it. At the heart of the problem is the lack of social housing, particularly in London, which is why we need to build more. I am glad that this strategy comes closely after the child poverty strategy last week, which saw action to improve family incomes, not least the removal of the two-child limit.
Welfare Cap
Debate between Judith Cummins and Alison McGovern(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Employment (Alison McGovern)
I beg to move,
That, pursuant to the Charter for Budget Responsibility: Autumn 2022 update, which was approved by this House on 6 February 2023 under section 1 of the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, this House agrees that the forecast breach of the welfare cap in 2024–25 due to higher forecast expenditure on Universal Credit and disability benefits is justified and that no further debate will be required in relation to this specific breach.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following motion:
That the level of the welfare cap, as specified in the Autumn Budget 2024, which was laid before this House on 30 October 2024, be approved.
Alison McGovern
Before this Government were elected, we said that we would change this country, and we will. To get change done, any Government have to stand on firm foundations, which is why, as we have just heard from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we promised to be responsible with the public’s money. We know that every penny counts in this mission, because if we fail to protect the public purse, we fail to protect the purses of the public. Family finances can never withstand fantasy economics.
That was supposed to be the whole point of the welfare cap. It was designed to help better control public spending, counting the cost of the rising price of failure. I will come to some of the failures we are now seeing and the people thrown on the scrapheap as a result of the failure of 14 years of economic policy, particularly on the labour market.
The welfare cap was intended to ensure that the cost of important parts of the social security system, such as universal credit—though not counting those actively looking for work—the personal independence payment and pension credit, remains predictable and affordable. Only the state pension and benefits for unemployed households were excluded.
What was the result of a decade of Conservative welfare caps? Repeated breaches of the cap, with ever higher limits. The latest cap is now on course to be breached by an £8.6 billion overspend. This is not tolerable, given the state of our economy and the public finances.
Worse still, there is the human cost for every single person who could be enjoying the benefits of work but has been denied the choices and chances they deserve. I regularly meet people in that position. There is the young person who has not recovered from the dreadful legacy of the pandemic—not in college, not starting their first job, barely even able to go out with friends, and bearing the burden of the mental health crisis that our young people face. I believe the pandemic generation was completely let down.
There are our older relatives who have been pushed out of work before their time with hip or knee pain. The NHS is just not able to help them at the moment, and they are not even getting advice about how to make ends meet. That is the legacy we inherited, and it is not good enough for anybody. It is also the legacy of low growth, the higher cost of living and high inactivity, with employment and social security systems ill equipped to meet the requirements of an older, sicker nation. That is the Conservative party’s record.
Unfortunately, this breach—forecast as far back as March 2023 but ignored—is now wholly unavoidable in this fiscal year, given the scale of failure we have inherited. We will not duck the difficult decisions needed to restore economic stability, and we will deal with the failure we see before us.
Before I say how we will do that, I want to reflect on exactly how we ended up in this situation. The sad truth is that, in way too many parts of the country, too many people are denied the opportunity to have a good job so that they can support themselves and put a roof over their family’s heads.
The benefits bill only reflects that failure, with 2.8 million people locked out of the workforce due to poor health, and 3.4 million more working-age people reporting a long-term health condition than 10 years ago. We have large numbers of people turning up to a social security system that is not geared up to meet what has become the greatest unemployment challenge of a generation.