Homelessness

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on securing this really important debate. It is incredibly important, as has been brought home to us this week, more than most others, because of the terrible weather we are having.

We all know that visible forms of homelessness have increased. We cannot walk around any town or city centre without seeing people bedding down for the night in doorways and makeshift shelters. In fact, when I walked down St Matthew Street in London this morning, I passed two rough sleepers who had all their belongings in a doorway. Given that I had been talking about affordable housing at an agency that is coming up with housing policies, I thought how perverse it was then to be walking past people sleeping rough in the street.

We know that on any given night last year about 4,500 people were sleeping rough on the streets of England—a 170% rise since 2010. I say “about 4,500” because we still do not have any method of accurately recording the numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets up and down the country. Until we get such a method, we cannot accurately address the scale of this problem.

As has already been said, the fact that people are dying on the streets of Britain in 2018 is entirely unacceptable. On Friday morning, however, a man named Rob O’Connor was found dead in Chelmsford, as temperatures dipped below freezing, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) mentioned, just the other week a man died outside Westminster tube station. In this bitterly cold weather, most of us are able to wrap up warm and return to our houses, but rough sleepers do not have the most basic options. It is absolutely clear that we must find genuine solutions to this 21st-century scandal.

There are now over 120,000 children living in temporary accommodation. The four-year freeze of the local housing allowance that started in 2016 has, according to Shelter’s research, the potential to put over 1 million households at risk of homelessness by 2020, so are the Government seriously planning against all eventualities that may arise? As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and, very eloquently, by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), the supplementary estimates have revealed that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has surrendered £72 million of funding for affordable homes. That money could have built 1,000 social rented homes.

There are a range of reasons why people become homeless. The most common are a breakdown of relationships with family, friends or spouse; mental or physical health problems, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) said; alcohol and drug addiction; and being unable to find anywhere to live on leaving care, hospital, prison and the armed forces. The Harbour Place homelessness charity has been operating the SWEP—severe weather emergency protocol—process every night since 28 January in my constituency. It tells me that many of its service users say they became homeless after having their benefits sanctioned or withdrawn. That issue was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya).

The assessment that there is a clear link between welfare cuts and homelessness is supported by the National Audit Office. It has said:

“The ending of private sector tenancies has overtaken all other causes to become the biggest single driver of statutory homelessness in England.”

The number of households made homeless by the ending of an assured shorthold tenancy trebled between 2009-10 and 2016-17—from 11% to 32%.

Labour has a plan to solve the scourge of homelessness. We would make 8,000 homes available for those with a history of rough sleeping. We would increase security for private renters with new three-year tenancies and controls on rent. We would have a Prime Minister-led taskforce on ending rough sleeping and tackling homelessness, and we would build thousands more affordable homes to rent.

We have got a plan, but what have the Government given us? They inherited from the previous Labour Government a trend of falling homelessness, with what was described by the independent Crisis and Joseph Rowntree Foundation homelessness monitor as an

“unprecedented decline in statutory homelessness”.

They have squandered that, with a 48% increase in the number of statutory homeless households; a 59% increase in the number of households in temporary accommodation, such as bed and breakfasts, hostels and refuges; and—at under 1,000 last year, compared with nearly 40,000 in 2009-10—a record low number of Government-funded homes for social rent.

I would like to use the few moments remaining to me to ask the Minister a few questions. First, how can the Government say that they are tackling the housing crisis when they have handed back £742 million to the Treasury—all related to housing schemes? Why has that not been spent? Why was it allocated in the first place? As has been highlighted, £560 million of that was for private ownership schemes; does that really address the issue of homelessness?

I have made a list. Rough sleeping, as my hon. Friends the Members for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston both highlighted, was reduced significantly under the Labour Government. On temporary accommodation, my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) talked about the excellent work being undertaken in Wales by the Labour-led Government under Carwyn Jones. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) talked about the issues of funding for supported accommodation. Other issues include Housing First; public health; mental health; social housing; affordable housing; healthcare and the life expectancy of people living on the streets; minority group issues, particularly LGBT support run by charities such as the Albert Kennedy Trust; housing benefit, with about £10 billion of housing benefit going directly into the private sector and not being invested in social housing; skills in the building industry—

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Melanie Onn]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not put his name down to speak at the appropriate time, but he should plan his time better.

My list also includes the number of planners in local government, property as a commodity rather than a home in the community and empty homes. All these issues have been raised by Members across the House, and it strikes me that much more should be done cross-departmentally between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. Are there any plans to undertake cross-departmental work to address the issue in the round? Is the Minister satisfied that local government has been provided with sufficient resources properly and fully to deliver the Homelessness Reduction Act? Finally, if she is so committed to the homelessness agenda why has the homelessness reduction taskforce not yet met?