Homelessness Reduction Bill

Debate between Marcus Jones and Stephen Timms

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 28th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for introducing this carefully considered Bill. As he is aware, this Government are committed to preventing homelessness. The number of people found to be homeless is down by 58% from the 2003-04 peak, but the Government remain absolutely clear that one person without a home is one too many.

We are supporting the largest house-building programme by any Government since the 1970s, but homelessness is not just a housing issue. Tackling it requires a collective response at national and local level, and an unrelenting focus on prevention. There are many examples of good early intervention around the country, and we want all areas to learn from the experiences of the best, driving good practice to help more areas to learn from effective ways to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

We are taking action, and we have already made significant progress. In 2010, we overhauled the methodology for counting rough sleepers, so every council now has to report the scale of the problem in its area. Since 2010, we have invested more than £500 million to help local authorities prevent almost 1 million households from becoming homeless.

Over the course of this Parliament, we are going further. The Government have protected the homelessness prevention funding that goes to local authorities, which will reach £315 million by 2020, and we have increased funding to tackle homelessness to £139 million over the course of this Parliament.

Just this month we have announced that we are going even further. We have launched our £40 million homelessness prevention package, which takes an end-to-end approach to preventing more people from becoming homeless and helping them to recover quickly when they do. It will mean quicker intervention with rough sleepers or people at risk of sleeping rough, and it will turn around the lives of some of the most entrenched rough sleepers in England. The £10 million rough sleeping grant fund, which forms part of this package, will enable local areas to intervene early with rough sleepers before their problems become entrenched, and to build better local multi-agency partnerships to address people’s underlying problems.

[Stephen Timms]

The Minister has explained some of the things the Government have done. What in his view are the reasons why, as has been acknowledged across the Chamber in this debate, rough sleeping more than doubled since 2010?

[Mr Jones]

As I have said, homelessness is not just about housing supply. It is about a number of issues and I am going to outline a number of steps the Government are going to take to tackle rough sleeping; those steps will wrap around the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to support the most disadvantaged in society.

This Government did bring forward the first social impact bond in the world to help the most entrenched rough sleepers on London’s streets. We are now going to build on that success and introduce a social impact bond with a £10 million rough sleeping fund for it, which will allow local partnerships to work with some of the most entrenched rough sleepers, focusing on getting them into accommodation and using personalised support to address their complex needs. This will be open to all areas but we will particularly be interested in hearing from areas with the highest levels of rough sleeping.

Our programme will mean innovation and collaboration to prevent homelessness. Our £20 million grant fund for prevention trailblazer areas will help up to 20 local areas to go further and faster with reform, laying the groundwork for many of the changes we want to see through my hon. Friend’s legislation. They will adopt and develop best practice and data-driven approaches to identify people at risk of homelessness, and will provide them with early support to prevent a crisis. Southwark, Newcastle and Greater Manchester are our early adopters and will be taking forward a range of initiatives. Projects will include collaboration with a wide range of services to identify people who are at risk of homelessness, and to work with them well before they are threatened with eviction. Early adopters will also test innovative approaches to preventing homelessness to help us build our evidence base on what works. Taken together, these three funds make up a strong package of local support that will make an immediate difference to the lives of homeless people in our country.

It is not just local change that is needed. I am also driving action across Government through the ministerial working group on homelessness. The group is focusing on many key initiatives, the first of which is the development of cross-departmental indicators, so that we can track the progress that all Departments are making in tackling homelessness. Homelessness is not just a housing issue, and that is why, through the ministerial working group, we will work closely with health services, such as hospital discharge teams and mental health services, to understand what more they could do to help to prevent homelessness. Finally, the group is looking at how we can ensure that people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness receive the help that they need to get into work.

This Government are committed to going even further. That is why last year we said that we were looking at options, including legislation, to prevent more people from becoming homeless, and I am pleased that the Government are now providing full support to the Homelessness Reduction Bill. This important piece of legislation will reform the support offered to everyone who is at risk of homelessness, better protecting vulnerable households. Services will focus on intervening earlier, and working with people before they reach crisis point. People who do face a homelessness crisis will get quicker help to resolve it.

The Bill requires local authorities to provide new homelessness services to all those affected, not just those who are protected under existing legislation. My hon. Friend provided an excellent description of the effect that the Bill will have. I particularly draw Members’ attention to the extension of the duty on local authorities to provide advisory services. This means that services must be designed with certain vulnerable groups in mind, such as care leavers and victims of domestic abuse. This will mean that people at risk of homelessness will receive more meaningful information earlier, to help them to prevent their own homelessness.