Homelessness

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Thank you for allowing me to speak on this important subject, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your appointment and all the other Members who have made their maiden speeches during this session.

It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to have been elected to represent the place where I was born and spent my formative years, and I would like to thank all those who placed their faith in me last December. As I stand here, I am conscious of the fact that a Member for Birkenhead has not delivered a maiden speech in this House for over 40 years.

My predecessor, Frank Field, was a long serving and greatly respected presence in this House, and he served the town of Birkenhead well. He was particularly noted for his powerful campaigning on the issues of poverty, hunger and the deep failings of our welfare system. He also moved Members of the House to tears by highlighting the misery endured by many people claiming universal credit. He would no doubt have had much to contribute to this debate.

I applaud my party for choosing homelessness as the subject of this Opposition day debate. Homelessness is—I doubt anyone would disagree—one of the most pressing issues of our time. Certainly it is a real and growing concern in my constituency. Birkenhead Park, a proud reminder of Birkenhead’s prosperous and industrious past, now regularly hosts rough sleepers seeking sanctuary and a safe night’s sleep. As a volunteer at Charles Thompson’s Mission every Sunday, helping to serve hot breakfasts to homeless people and families suffering in-work poverty, I see at first hand how homelessness devastates people’s lives.

Charles Thompson’s Mission is one of many community initiatives in my constituency attempting to fill the cracks. Every night, homeless people seek shelter at Wirral Ark or the YMCA on Whetstone Lane. These projects embody the very best of Birkenhead—our sense of solidarity and community spirit—but the truth is that they should not have to exist. For far too long, the Government have failed to address the crisis of homelessness with any seriousness at all. Since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, homelessness has risen by 165%, and over £1 billion has been cut from homelessness budgets across the country.

While the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 mandated local authorities to take action to prevent homelessness, many councils and third sector organisations are still struggling to provide basic support for homeless people due to massive demand and sweeping cuts in funding. The announcement yesterday that local authorities would share £112 million in rough sleeping initiative funding was rightly described by the shadow Housing Secretary as a “paltry sum”. It is simply too little, too late.

If we are serious about tackling the homelessness crisis, we must also begin to address the economic factors that have given birth to it. In my constituency, the skilled and dignified work that my generation took for granted is largely gone. Unemployment in Birkenhead now stands at nearly twice the national average, and everywhere I see the potential and promise of younger generations being stifled by a low-pay economy dominated by zero-hours contracts and precarious employment. So too do I see families and young people struggling to secure the kind of quality, affordable housing in which I was able to raise a family. As the recently redundant Thomas Cook workers said so clearly, those out of work find themselves victims of universal credit, lost in a bureaucratic maze designed to make their lives more difficult, not to provide them with a much-needed safety net.

The consequences of this low-pay, precarious economy are chilling. Last year, Shelter revealed that 3 million people—half of all working people living in privately rented accommodation—are now only one paycheque away from homelessness. The average person is only two paycheques away. Right to buy, the failure of successive Governments to build adequate social housing and the inability of local councils to regulate the rental sector effectively mean that many tenants are now too scared to speak up against rogue landlords for fear of losing their homes.

Even on my short walk from Westminster tube station to Parliament today, I passed, as I have done each day since being elected to this House, a line of homeless people on Bridge Street between Portcullis House and the Palace of Westminster. Even here, at the very heart of our democracy, in one of the five richest boroughs in the richest city in the sixth richest country in the world, we are still faced with the outrage of homelessness, and that should shame us all into taking action.

The homelessness crisis has no easy solutions. We must commit, as Shelter and other housing charities have so often urged, to a radical and ambitious house building programme that will create 90,000 new social houses. We must also end the right to buy and preserve our existing social housing stock, ensuring that it is available for those who need it. We must pledge far greater investment in our crumbling health and social care system so that the most at risk of homelessness are properly looked after and so that their needs, in their complexity, are fully addressed. We must also build a fairer economy so that we can provide security and stability for all. We can end homelessness in Britain.

[Several hon. Members rose—]