Oral Answers to Questions

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Penny Mordaunt)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his campaign. He is quite right that this is an issue that restricts growth locally. We recognise that and have introduced restricting the use of CCTV to enforce parking, grace periods for on-street parking, and have made it possible for local people to require their local councils to review parking. I draw his attention to the Great British High Street portal, which demonstrates that if local authorities reduce their parking rates they receive greater revenue.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

T2. Responding to a Centrepoint report quoted in The Independent last week, the homelessness Minister said that the number of people sleeping rough was falling dramatically and claimed that it was a result of the Government’s action. Given that his Department’s own figures show that the level of rough sleeping has risen every year under this Government and is up 37% since 2010, will he repeat his claim to the House and take responsibility for this dramatic change in levels of rough sleeping?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

The Government take the plight of individuals who are homeless and rough sleeping extremely seriously, which is why we support the No Second Night Out project and have invested £1 billion through homeless services and welfare reform to address the problem. Levels of homelessness have dropped by 2%. Rough sleeping figures across the country are variable, but the Government take the issue extremely seriously and will continue to support those vulnerable individuals.