Rough Sleeping

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. At the heart of our new strategy is bringing together a co-ordinated approach in central Government. Dame Louise Casey and I will work to ensure that all of us—the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office—work together as a team to deliver our commitment. We already see that work in local communities by some brilliant charities. For example, St Mungo’s takes mobile hubs to rough sleeping hotspots to bring all the services together. That is the surest way to tackle the challenge.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I agree that it is a moral scandal that we have rough sleeping in this day and age, and I wish him every success with his strategy to tackle rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.

I have a few points to make. First, in the four years to 2019, the Scottish Government delivered five times more social rented properties per head of population than the Westminster Government. Progress out of poverty is thereby made more likely. Poverty rates are lower in Scotland owing to the existence of affordable housing. Earlier this month, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that

“for someone with the same life circumstances such as qualifications, wage and family type, progress out of poverty is more likely if they live in Scotland or Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK.”

The JRF also attributes lower poverty rates in Scotland than in England and Wales to

“lower rents in the social housing sector as well as Scotland having a higher proportion of social rented properties”.

I have a couple of questions. Will the Government’s review of their homelessness strategy look at what is being done in other countries, including Scotland? Will they follow the Scottish Government’s lead in building genuinely affordable housing?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful the hon. Gentleman for those comments. We will certainly and happily look at the experience in Scotland and other parts of the Union, as we do at international examples. One of the purposes of bringing in someone as respected as Dame Louise Casey, who not only has a great deal of experience within the UK but is an internationally respected figure, is to learn from other parts of the world. I believe we are already doing that. Our Housing First pilot is learning from what happens in Finland and the United States and we have seen tremendous progress—success rates up to 90% in some areas. First is the simple aim of getting people into accommodation; then there is provision of sophisticated, long-term, wrap-around support. We are keen to learn from best practice all over the world.