Rough Sleeping

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered rough sleeping.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma.

I have just arrived in the Chamber from my first ever blood donation. I am a little giddy, so bear with me—I have the sugary biscuits just in case. If anyone has not given blood, please do so. A donor drive is on in London, #giveblood, because we need more regular donors.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us time to have the debate. I thank the Minister for being present. It is good to see her here, and I know that she attaches a lot of importance to the subject. I also thank the shadow Minister—it is always a pleasure to serve alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn)—and everyone else who is present for making time for this debate.

I extend a bigger thank you to everyone who has contacted me about the issue in advance of the debate and since I was first elected in 2015. News UK is in my constituency, so it is rare for me to plug other papers—I do not usually do so anyway—but I will quickly plug the Daily Mirror for a fantastic campaign on tackling rough sleeping and homelessness. It deserves credit for humanising a debate that can be a bit statistical when, actually, it is about the lives of real people in devastating circumstances.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I am sure that I cannot be the only Member who has been surprised—or perhaps not—at the number of constituents who have never experienced homelessness writing to me about this problem. They feel, as I do, that it is a shocking indictment that a society such as ours has so much visible street homelessness. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Neil Coyle]

I agree 100%—there is nothing higher than 100%. There is a contrast here, because the public will and interest in solving rough sleeping and homelessness more widely have not, sadly, been matched by Government action to date.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

Virtually every evening, as we walk out of this place into the tube station, we pass a number of homeless people. The Government must take time to reflect on which of their policies makes the situation worse. Does my hon. Friend agree, however, that this is not only a problem in London? It now infests towns and villages throughout our nation.

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. No part of the country is not affected by homelessness in all its forms, but in particular rough sleeping. Of course, the numbers are disproportionately large in metropolitan areas such as London, Birmingham and Manchester, where people are attracted by additional opportunities to get money and food. The bigger cities also have more organisations, so people are naturally drawn to them. It is shameful that we walk in and out of this building past those people.

Not everyone—even among those who want to take action—is comfortable trying to support someone who is rough sleeping, but StreetLink and its partners across the country are amazing. Anyone can refer someone to it—it has an app, it is online and people can phone to ask it to intervene in support of someone they have seen rough sleeping. They can say where the person is, give a rough description and say what time of day the person was seen.

I am grateful for the interventions, but I had not even finished my thank yous. I want to thank all the organisations such as St Mungo’s, which is represented in the Public Gallery, that have provided briefings.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I cannot be present for the whole debate, but I too wanted to thank St Mungo’s, as well as Access Community Trust in Suffolk. Such organisations do great work. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that to meet this challenge and solve it, three things need to be done: an assessment of any correlation with the roll-out of universal credit, a move towards long-term funding for homelessness services, and a dramatic increase in the amount of affordable housing we provide in this country?

[Neil Coyle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I should probably finish my speech, because he has just said everything—[Interruption.] Steady on, I am not giving up that easily. He made three salient points, and I hope the Minister heard them being made from her Back Benches.

This issue is not, and should never be, a party political one. I am proud to co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness with the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince). Through him, we have met the Minister—if I had requested a meeting, I do not think she would have been as free with her time as she might be with the hon. Gentleman—and together we have had some successes. I look forward to that continuing. Work on this subject is happening across the parties and the solutions are there if we are prepared to invest in them.

Had I finished my thank yous? No. I was going to mention Crisis, Shelter and other organisations. Crisis provides facilitation for the all-party group.

The background to the debate is the statistics on rough sleeping, which were published a week ago. The wider background, which has been touched on by others, is the rise in overall homelessness every year for the past eight years. On that wider issue, I hope that the Minister will indicate in her response whether she thinks the overall homelessness figure, which I think is to be published at the end of March, will rise or fall. What is her expectation?

I also pay tribute—as all MPs do—to the work of local organisations in my constituency. That includes St Mungo’s, which does some brilliant work.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. If it were not for local organisations, such as the Slough homelessness forum in my constituency, which helps the council to operate two night shelters, we would be in a much worse situation. Does he not agree that it is a shocking indictment of our society that rough sleeping has more than doubled, increasing by more than 165% since 2010?

[Neil Coyle]

I have not been able to disagree with a single intervention yet—someone will have to challenge me. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

There is a positive and a negative: the positive is that the public care about this issue. Volunteers help out, and even St Mungo’s in my constituency relies on them to do the outreach. I went on a walkabout with them, to support homeless people and to try to get them into shelters during the very cold spell last year. The public appetite is there. People are willing to give their time and donations to address the issue. That, however, is in the face of eight years of annual increases in homelessness and of Government policies that directly contributed to that rise. That is the negative.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Organisations such as Depaul and the YMCA have projects that help thousands of young people who sleep rough, nationally and in North Tyneside. Does my hon. Friend agree that those organisations should have the Government’s ear on policy issues? Depaul, for example, would like to see the shared accommodation rate put back to the 30th percentile of local rents, so young people can have somewhere affordable to stay at night.

[Neil Coyle]

Again, I agree. I was going to mention Depaul specifically because it has a base in Bermondsey. Its policy is for equal benefit levels for young people—their rent is not cheaper just because they are 20. That is a complete falsehood that leads to arbitrary levels of benefit that do not match people’s needs. Depaul does some fantastic work in Bermondsey and beyond.

The church-run Robes Project, which is specific to Southwark and Lambeth, opens for five or six months in winter. Every year, it has had to provide more accommodation as a result of the outcome—whether intentional or not—of Government policies. That strikes at the same point. If the organisations working on homelessness, as well as those with experience of it, were listened to, some of that could have been avoided.

The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) mentioned universal credit; I have had constituents, including one with a significant mental health condition and another self-employed and in work, who were made homeless as a result of universal credit. That was avoidable. That direct link is unacceptable, but there is no brilliant data set for identifying those kinds of people.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know homeless people who have not applied for universal credit because it is so complex. Does my hon. Friend agree that is another failing of the system?

[Neil Coyle]

It certainly is. The universal credit training centre is at the London Bridge jobcentre in my constituency. The jobcentre staff do what they can with limited resources and time, but people come to see me because they have been failed by that jobcentre. A few weeks ago, a man in his fifties who could not even spell his own address came to see me. He had not been told about advance payments; he was told he would have nothing for six weeks.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic opening speech. He talks about some of the inherent problems with universal credit. Does he agree that the fact that it is digital by default ultimately prevents a number of people making applications, because they do not have access to online resources to make the initial application?

[Neil Coyle]

We are keeping up the trend, because I completely agree. People who have very little and who use certain mobile networks cannot call freephone numbers from their mobile phone, let alone use their phone to go online and fill in a form that they have to add extra information to multiple times, just to get it right.

Returning to Harry, who came to see me about his universal credit, he had no heating, electricity or food. He was told just to turn up at the council office. The council has not had a walk-in appointments system for years, yet the universal credit training centre in my constituency sent someone there, who they knew would not get help elsewhere.

There are massive failings. In my surgery sessions I have seen many people, and the number rises every year. Already this year, two homeless people—not just at risk of homelessness—have come to see me at my surgery. One lady, who is cleaner, was carrying all her belongings with her. She was still working and was sleeping on night buses. We are fortunate to have those—it is not the same in other parts of the country, where there is no opportunity to have somewhere warm and as safe as possible to sleep.

[Paula Sherriff]

I want to make the point about homeless women who may not have access to sanitary products, and how undignified it must be not to have access to those products and to a bathroom. I support the food banks and other agencies that provide menstrual products for those women.

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend has done a huge amount of campaigning on that issue, including on the tampon tax. People may be unaware of the Red Box Project. In my office, we provide sanitary products—this is the situation that MPs are faced with, which was not there in 2010. In my office, I have a food bank box, a toiletries box and a red box for tampons. Not everyone knows where to go for those items, but I encourage those who are not already to get involved with Red Box. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on food banks. “Food bank” is a misnomer—it is not just about food, although of course that is part of it, but about toiletries. What is shocking to many people who are unfamiliar with food banks is the number of families who come in for their babies. Food banks have to give out nappies, because those families would not otherwise be able to look after their children.

[Rachael Maskell]

And baby milk.

[Neil Coyle]

Yes, baby milk too. If anyone watching this debate wants to donate, do not just take food—it is not just about pasta and beans—but take all the other daily essentials.

A young woman who came to me was sleeping with someone different every night rather than go back to an abusive domestic environment or sleep on the streets. That is an appalling situation for people to be in. The two truisms from all the individuals I see is that no personal circumstances have been anything other than tragic, but all of them are avoidable—without exception—if we get the policies right.

The latest statistics are shameful: in the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet in the 21st century, an estimated 4,700 people are forced to sleep rough. That is completely unacceptable, whatever the politics. Genuine efforts to tackle rough sleeping are welcome. It is the most extreme form of homelessness, but in November last year, Shelter estimated that there were 320,000 homeless people in Britain. That fuller extent of homelessness needs adequate attention. It is not just about rough sleeping, because moving people from the streets into temporary accommodation still leaves them homeless.

Those statistics show that for every homeless person we see sleeping rough, there are about 63 other homeless people who are less visible: they are in temporary accommodation, sofa surfing or on night buses like my constituent. Some say that rough sleeping is the tip of the homeless iceberg, but if an iceberg is one-eighth out of the water, the analogy is not strong enough. Rough sleeping would not even be a quarter of what is visible above the water, if my maths is right—I make no claim to be a mathematician.

The latest statistics on rough sleeping show that the total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night was 4,677, which is down 2% from the 2017 total of 4,751. That is a reduction of 74 people. It is important to flag that that data set is not strong enough. No one thinks that it is the most reliable way to assess the genuine number of people sleeping rough.

[Mr Dhesi]

To build on those statistics, research in 2014 found that 61% of women and 16% of men who were homeless had experienced violence or abuse from a partner. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a serious link between homelessness and domestic abuse that the Government need to investigate further and deal with?

[Neil Coyle]

I completely agree, and I will come back to domestic violence later.

The data are based on numbers on the street, but areas such as Brent Council did an estimate rather than go out and count, so that is not a reliable figure. Keith, the Big Issue seller at London Bridge, sleeps in a bin cupboard on the Purbrook Estate near Tower Bridge Road. Nobody went into that bin cupboard to count him. That estimate is not an adequate assessment of the problem. I hope that the Minister will tell us how she intends to ensure that data collection is more robust. That decrease of 74, based on a faulty test, is on the back of an increase of 2,909 since 2010, using the Government’s own measure. Under the last Labour Government, the number of rough sleepers was at an all-time low. The latest figures suggest that rough sleeping may have reached a two-year low.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

The figures that my hon. Friend mentions are compelling, but even if we did not have them, we can see the problem anywhere—I know about it in my constituency, and that applies to most of us. In the centre of Leytonstone, by my office and by the library where I do my surgeries, the number of rough sleepers is massively greater than eight years ago when I was elected. On top of that, universal credit has just gone live. In the next few months, many of us—particularly me—are very apprehensive about the effects of UC when it really hits our area.

[Neil Coyle]

Sadly, my hon. Friend is right to be nervous. Of course, I gave way to the chair of the parliamentary Labour Party in the hope that he might call me in a debate at some point. Southwark was one of the earliest test areas for universal credit. My experience is that my hon. Friend will have more cases of rough sleeping as a result of the universal credit roll-out.

The 2% drop nationally comes with very significant variances. There was a massive 60% jump in rough sleeping in Birmingham. In Manchester, I believe it was about 31%, and 13% in London. There were not such high numbers overall, but there were statistically significant jumps in areas such as Doncaster, where rough sleeping is three and a half times what it was just a year ago. In Rugby, there is five times as much, and in Corby there is seven times as much, albeit from low bases. Those anomalies need addressing. The towns and cities with large rises need more significant attention. I hope that the Minister will address that.

I want to highlight areas that are doing better than others. Brighton has reduced rough sleeping by two thirds; Luton has almost cut it in half and Bedford has cut it by about a third. Some areas are doing better, and I hope that their perhaps better practice is extended. My own council has bucked the London rise of 13%. There were just three additional rough sleepers in Southwark last year, and it is leading work to train staff in other local authorities to implement the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I have been out with the police in Lancashire and Kent and have seen their joint agency approach to tackling homelessness. Does he agree that a whole-system approach is necessary, and does he share my concern that some police forces still use the Vagrancy Act 1824 to criminalise rough sleepers without giving them the support they clearly need?

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know she does a huge amount on policing. The police should not be picking up the pieces of failing systems elsewhere. That is an avoidable drain on their resources.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend touches on something vital: we must deal not just with the phenomenon of homelessness and rough sleeping but with its causes. We need to make more effort on employment, the benefits system, young people coming out of care, people leaving the armed services without the necessary support and, yes, drug and alcohol problems. All those issues—including mental health problems, by the way—need to be addressed if we are really going to get on top of this problem.

[Neil Coyle]

My right hon. Friend is spot on. It is a sad truth that we know who these people are. We know which people are more likely to become homeless or sleep rough. They are an identifiable group. They are care leavers, women fleeing domestic violence, ex-forces people and people with mental health problems. We know who they are. We also know from experience—the scrapping of the Supporting People programme had direct consequences in this policy area—that there is no silver bullet. I do not think anyone suggests that there is, but we know who is more likely to become homeless, and we know how we can support them to avoid that.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with interventions. We know what the causes are. We also have experience of the solutions. We had lots of rough sleeping in London in the mid-’90s. The Labour Government addressed the issue by identifying all the people who were vulnerable and putting in joined-up services. By 2010, there was virtually no rough sleeping in central London. Does he share my anger at Ministers who say that this is a complex problem and they do not know where to start?

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is right to be angry, and she is right to remember that this problem was being resolved. I remember cardboard city around Waterloo and Westminster in particular. The extent of the problem was reduced, and there was a good track record on it, but it is coming back.

The Government’s target is to halve rough sleeping by 2022. If the statistics are accurate and there was a 74 person reduction last year, there are another 2,376 people to go. At the current rate, it would take 32 years—three decades—to meet the Government’s target of halving the overall number. If anyone is struggling with the maths, that means it would take until 2051 to meet the Government’s 2022 target. That is not good enough, and I hope the Minister can tell us what she intends to do to boost action to prevent the problem.

If only as much effort went into tackling the problem as went into creating it, we would be in a better place. It did not come out of nowhere. Warnings were given by organisations such as St Mungo’s, but sadly they were not heeded. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, lots of issues contribute to the problem, but the warnings were there.

Destabilising the NHS with a wasteful top-down disorganisation that divided primary care trusts from social services, splurging millions in the process, prevented joined-up work to support people to manage conditions that are more prevalent among rough sleepers and the broader homeless population. When mental health services lose their staff and ability to intervene up front, more service users and survivors are forced towards the streets. When drug and alcohol cessation services are decimated, no solutions to addiction are provided. The “fend for yourself” attitude, which was proven previously not to work, has failed again since 2010. When funding for affordable house building is undermined, and when councils have their resources attacked and their ability to manage local case loads undermined, the outcome can only be more gatekeeping to services and a reduced ability to support people with genuine needs.

The benefits system has already been touched on. Attacking people who rely on our threadbare social security system, calling people “scroungers” and making it harder to claim—we heard about digital access and processes that force people out of the system before they get any support—creates problems. This Government have extended sanctions to even those with significant mental health conditions and other impairments. That is unacceptable. Deliberate delays are built into benefits such as universal credit. People now face a minimum five-week wait to get universal credit—according to Department for Work and Pensions figures, that target will not be met for 300,000 people this year—but when it first began in Southwark, the average wait was 12 weeks. That is three months without a penny coming in. Sanctions are also imposed for longer and to a greater degree than ever before. I am a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions; I recommend our report on that subject, which calls for a dramatic change to the sanctioning system.

When the DWP, under the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), scrapped disability living allowance and brought in personal independence payments, its own impact assessment stated that 500,000 disabled people would not qualify for support. Making it that much harder for disabled people to obtain basic funding—the average DLA payment was £3,500 a year—of course pushes more people towards the street. I should plug the Trussell Trust’s campaign to scrap the waiting time for universal credit. I encourage Members to sign up and support it.

Most organisations that work in this area have a long-term focus, and the Government should too. There has been only a 2% drop in rough sleeping so far, but will the Minister say how even that low level will be sustained if the pilots are temporary? I hope she will also tell us whether the funding for the schemes that exist—there are not enough—will be extended. We need an answer, because local authorities and organisations such as Shelter, which works with Southwark Council on this issue, need to know that they have longer-term funding. Their own sustainability is at stake. Without longer-term planning, I am uncertain whether we will halve rough sleeping even by 2051. I hope the Minister tells us how the Government intend to build on success in some of the pilot areas.

Lots of local authorities got in touch with me in advance of the debate. Last year, the number of households accepted as homeless was almost 60,000 in England, 34,000 in Scotland and 9,000 in Wales. Southwark is doing a lot of work on this issue, and it deserves credit for that. Southwark spends all its discretionary housing payment. It receives £1.3 million, and it all goes out—there is not a penny left—to try to support people to stay in their homes. It needs more. Southwark has trained all 326 councils on the Homelessness Reduction Act, and 271 councils have visited to shadow its service and learn how to operate in the HRA environment. Southwark has established both a London training academy, which has trained 1,000 council officers, and a rough sleeping training academy, which has trained the 81 councils across England that have the highest levels of rough sleeping. I acknowledge that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government funded that.

The Local Government Association got in touch to say that homelessness

“is a tragedy for all those it affects,”

and that rough sleeping

“is one of the most visible signs of the nation’s housing crisis.”

It estimates that councils provide temporary housing for more than 82,000 households, including 123,000 children. “Temporary accommodation” does not begin to describe the circumstances of some of those households. Children will have woken up on Christmas day with a shared kitchen or even a shared bathroom. How can families celebrate Christmas day when they cannot even cook their own food? That is an appalling set of circumstances. The number of people living in temporary accommodation has increased by 65% since 2010. In Southwark alone, 2,400 families are supported in temporary accommodation.

The Local Government Association estimates that the funding gap will be £110 million this year, and £421 million in 2024-25.

I will touch on dehumanisation. Last year a man died at Westminster tube station, right on the doorstep of this building. It got a lot of attention because of where it happened, but sadly it is estimated that 600 homeless people—600 people—died on the streets last year. We should be more shocked by this, not just because somebody died at Westminster and that case got more attention than usual, but because of the level of the problem and the age at which homeless men and women die, which is around 40 years old.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although we welcome the severe weather emergency provision money, which people in my area who run the shelter—largely the churches—get, the problem is that it is based on predictive weather planning? It is never easy for a volunteer to try to work out whether they are going to be needed on a particular night. Some of that money could be used more creatively for preventive work, to get people into accommodation before they need to go to the shelter.

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. The costs of getting this wrong are far greater than the costs of the up-front preventive measures.

The sector is unanimous, and it is a recommendation of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, that adult safeguarding reviews should become the norm for any adult rough sleeper who dies on the streets. We have them for children’s services, but there is not an automatic assumption that they will be done for adults, and there should be. A review should be done in a no-blame culture, so we can identify what interventions might have helped to prevent that death on the streets. I hope the Minister will commit to that today.

I have an example of a really difficult case. A woman whose sister had died in Ghana came to my surgery. The day she left to go to her sister’s funeral, she wrote to the police, the council, the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, the GP and others begging for help for her grandson. She had looked after her grandson as he grew up—his mum had died and his dad was never on the scene—for as long as she possibly could. However, his mental health had broken down and his behaviour became too much, so he was supported elsewhere, in sheltered accommodation.

What happened next was tragic. The grandson was not getting the mental health support that he needed. His behaviour became erratic in the shelter and problematic for other residents, and he was evicted. He was beaten to death in Walworth. He had stolen someone’s bike and pawned it, and the people he had stolen it from found him and beat him up, and he died. The morning his grandmother got back from Ghana, the police knocked on her door to tell her he was dead, despite the fact she had begged everyone to provide an extra, small intervention that could have prevented such an awful occurrence. Personally, I think the mental health services should have done more in that case, but we need to learn from incidents like that, to make sure that all avoidable deaths are actually made avoidable.

There is a question mark: are homeless people worth less, somehow? They have been made to feel that way. Being homeless is a dehumanising experience and the lack of human contact—even eye contact—is something that comes out in homeless group sessions, when we talk to homeless people directly.

There have been some bizarre policies. At Poole Borough Council the solution to rough sleeping was to introduce public space protection orders, which imposed fines on homeless people. Unsurprisingly, those fines were not paid when the council attempted to impose them, because homeless people do not have much money. It was a bizarre attempt at policy, but perhaps not as bad as the Cardiff Conservative councillor, Kathryn Kelloway, who was so outraged at the indecency and indignity of homelessness that she called for homeless people’s tents to be torn down—not because they had new homes, but just to take away their tents. That was shameful. She was suspended by the Welsh Conservatives, but less well publicised is the fact that she has already been readmitted, which speaks volumes.

Perhaps I have talked for too long, but I want to touch on some other issues. The private rental sector is the fastest growth area for people becoming homeless. Lots of organisations, some represented here today, are calling for no-fault evictions to be scrapped and section 21 reformed. There are lots of reasons why I want more rent controls and longer tenancy agreements to try to prevent some of this, as well as an increase in expenditure on help to rent, to try and get more people into the sector where possible.

Hon. Members have already referred to domestic violence, which I will touch on. The Government statistics, which I have taken from the House of Commons Library briefing, are astonishing. From April to June 2018, 4,500 households were owed a statutory homeless duty where the reason for losing their last settled home was

“violent relationship breakdown with partner or associated persons.”

That is 8% of all households owed homeless duty. The Women’s Aid annual survey 2017 found that housing was the most frequent co-presenting issue for women experiencing domestic abuse, above health, justice, finance and children.

The crisis in refuge funding has been driven by the demise of the Supporting People programme. If there is one specific programme that should be rebuilt, it is that one. In 2015-16, one in 10 homeless acceptances were due to domestic violence. Half of St Mungo’s female clients have experienced domestic violence and one third said domestic violence had contributed to their homelessness.

There is an issue around the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. Fleeing from domestic violence does not automatically make women a priority need. They still have to meet the vulnerability threshold in the legislation to meet the criteria for assistance. That needs addressing, because councils are getting this wrong. The Women’s Aid project No Woman Turned Away looked at the reasons given to women for not getting homelessness assistance—we should think about the circumstances in which councils are doing this—which included the woman needing proof of abuse. Some women were deemed to be intentionally homeless as a result of being beaten up by a partner. That is not an acceptable excuse to try and deny someone the support they need. Some were even told to return to the violent partner, rather than get help from their council. Those circumstances must change.

The “no recourse to public funds” policy is completely unacceptable on every level. Either we believe in human rights or we do not. NRPF denies people equality of opportunity and rights to family life. I will give some examples, but for those who do not know, let me first explain that it used to apply only to illegal immigrants to the UK—to those who had no lawful reason to be in this country. The coalition Government, to their shame, then extended it to families, including those with British-born children; there are now 50,000 British-born children, born to parents legally in this country, who are not entitled to any public support. The circumstances into which those families are driven are horrific, and in some cases they are the result of Home Office error.

On Monday, Mr Musari sent me a message. I am godfather to his son; when we first met in 2015, he was about to become homeless. He had been working, paying tax and paying private rent, but the Home Office told him to stop—apparently we did not want him working, contributing or paying tax—and he was made homeless while his wife was pregnant with their third child. They were put through the wringer so much that he nearly killed himself; he said that he thought his children would get more help if he were dead. Only on Monday, almost three years later, was the decision finally overturned, granting him access to public funds—it has taken that long to correct a Home Office error.

Let me give one more example from my constituency. A woman was told seven years ago, in court, that she had a criminal record and did not meet the “person of good character” criterion, so she would be denied access to public funds. She has just got her new biometric card, but it has taken until now to overturn the decision, because it was a case of mistaken identity. She has never committed a crime, in this country or anywhere else—not so much as nicking a pint of milk of from a supermarket, which I am sure we have all done. She too has been through the wringer: she and her son, now 10, were made homeless and were reliant on friends and family. That boy was three years old when this situation began as a result of a Home Office mistake.

The all-party parliamentary group has made recommendations, including reinstating access to legal aid so that people in those circumstances do not have to wait three and a half years, or seven years, to overturn awful erroneous decisions by the Home Office. It is unacceptable. The Zambrano restrictions, which deny people access, should be lifted for anyone with a dependant. No child should be put through this process as a result of where their parent may have come from.

It is completely unacceptable that Surrey Square Primary School in my constituency has 40 children in those circumstances. If my daughter Esme were old enough, those children could have been born in the bed next to hers in St Thomas’s hospital, but they are denied access to the same support that Esme might qualify for. The children get this. They understand how unfair it is to victimise their classmates and friends. The Government are missing what this divisive and horrific policy is creating in our schools, especially in areas such as my constituency.

I will touch on the criminal justice system, which a couple of hon. Members have already mentioned, and the cost of getting this policy wrong, with specific reference to criminal justice. I hope the Minister sees her role as a cross-Government one, because there is not just one solution to this; it touches on many other areas. The cost to the taxpayer of getting this wrong is extortionate, through councils, the NHS and mental health services, which we have already talked about. Rough sleepers experience higher levels of certain health conditions that result in hospitalisation, and that is not free.

The response to a question I put to the Ministry of Justice revealed some figures that I think are shocking. The total number of people going into prison has fallen slightly since 2016, but the proportion of homeless people going to prison has risen from 23% to 27%.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am finding the hon. Gentleman’s speech of great interest, and he has obviously researched this subject very deeply, but I will tentatively point out that it has been going on for 42 minutes, and while I am enjoying it, it would perhaps be more appropriate, given that there are other people here, if he came to his peroration.

[Neil Coyle]

Finally, an intervention that I can say “Get lost!” to. Bad luck; perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not want me to take interventions. He will be pleased to hear that I am nearly finished, but his intervention was in poor taste, I think. Perhaps I will take a bit longer—I do not know.

As I was saying, the total number of people going into prison has fallen slightly, but the percentage of those people who are homeless has risen to 27%. Last year, that will have amounted to 27,000 people entering prison who are of no fixed abode—homeless, in other words. The average cost of keeping someone in a prison in England is £35,000; it is higher in Scotland and much higher in Northern Ireland, where it is more than £50,000. If we just use the England figure, 27,000 people at £35,000 a year means that the Government’s failure fully to address homelessness is contributing to a prison population costing roughly £945 million a year.

What a waste—what an awful waste. That is nearly a billion quid. I know the Government did not get their money’s worth out of the Democratic Unionist party, but this £1 billion would be much better invested up front in preventative services to stop the scandal of people being made homeless and forced into crime. We know who is among the prison population: people with mental health conditions, care leavers and people who are ex-forces, as has already been touched on. The Government should invest in those groups to support them and prevent them from becoming homeless.

I would like to think that this is linked to the rising and extortionate cost of getting this wrong, but, as touched on previously, the public will is there to tackle this problem. The public do not want people to be sleeping rough or to be made homeless. As an indication of that demonstrable public will, the intervention and support of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who has done some brilliant work on this, meant that last year StreetLink had more referrals and more donations from the public than ever before.

[Paula Sherriff]

Batley Homeless Project, Dewsbury Cares and Churches Together in Dewsbury do amazing voluntary work, but Sarah Watkinson of Winter Warmers of Mirfield is now taking the space-type blankets that people get at the end of a marathon to the railway station in the morning and asking people to give them out to homeless people they see on their commute. Does my hon. Friend agree it is a shame that people have to do that and that, while we are grateful for the work they do, if the Government got their act together, perhaps they would not have to do it?

[Neil Coyle]

We are, of course, grateful to the army of people out there who are propping up this failing system. They want to see action from the Government and they are not getting it. I will plug StreetLink again: people can phone to make a referral, and StreetLink will do the intervention. Anyone who wants to help directly should to that.

I will end, hon. Members will be pleased to know, with a quick point. The Minister made the commitment last year that if rough sleeping continued to rise, she would resign. Obviously there has been a 2% drop, so we are glad to see her still in post—I mean that genuinely; a drop is welcome—but will she commit to continuing that pledge for next year?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck.

[Neil Coyle]

Too long!

[Kevin Foster]

Given that heckle, I will be considerate as there are Labour Members who want to speak, even though I am not under a formal time limit.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on having secured this debate, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince). Rough sleeping is clearly an issue in Torbay, as it is in many other coastal communities. We have the contrast between those people with a £1-million boat in the harbour and a coastal apartment, and the people sleeping on the streets nearby.

The last count showed that 24 people were sleeping on the streets of Torbay. However, the Minister will know that from my time in local government, I have some suspicions about how the rough sleeper count is carried out: it is literally an exercise in going out and spotting homeless people. I suspect it is hard to work out another way of doing it, but if somebody is walking around, even though they visibly could have been sleeping on the street, they do not count towards the statistics. There is even some suggestion that if somebody is stood up with bedding around them, they may not be counted as a rough sleeper, even though most of us would look at them and see exactly what is going on.

The rough sleeper count is a measure that originates from Victorian times, and I am much happier with the way in which the Torbay End Street Homelessness campaign has set about doing a proper survey of those who are sleeping rough on the streets of the bay. Over the course of a week, people have been going out and engaging with those they find; not just spotting someone and saying, “There is someone who is sleeping rough,” but interviewing them about the reasons why they are sleeping rough, what their background is and what types of support services they have engaged with. It is clear that no one gets up in the morning and thinks, “It would be a great idea to go and sleep rough.” Some may feel it is their only choice in life, but we need to engage with those people and get genuine information that allows us to understand what has driven them to that position.

Another charity that works closely with those who find themselves on the streets of Torbay is People Assisting Torbay’s Homeless, a wonderful volunteer organisation that, sadly, is now trying to find a new home. It was removed from one of its previous properties because of a development going ahead, and now finds itself facing possession action by the local council. I certainly hope that the council will not implement a possession order until an alternative base has been found. I accept that the place offered up was temporary, but for PATH to be evicted and literally become homeless would be a rather cruel irony.

There is, of course, Shekinah in Torbay, which has provided a long-standing facility at Factory Row—the Leonard Stocks Centre, to which I used to be one of the closest residents. I recognise some of the comments that other Members have made about the issues that can occur, particularly when residents of such places are targeted, for no other reason than the evil intentions of those who are targeting them.

That leads us on, however, to a wonderful initiative that is happening in Torbay: the town’s night shelter, for which local churches come together and open their buildings to provide an option for those who are sleeping rough over winter. It is not just about having somewhere to keep warm and something to eat; it is about people finding a system of support and friendship, with a family or home atmosphere, to try to get them off the streets for good. Ultimately, it is not spending one night in a church hall that will make a difference to someone; it is having a system of support. I know that the churches in the bay are keen that their buildings should not just be magnificent Victorian structures that people visit on a Sunday morning, but places that really live out the gospel. That is a massive resource, and I know that some others are looking at how they can take it further.

I would certainly like Housing First to be extended into our bay, as we think it would make a great difference. The work of the Mayors of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands in driving that project forward is very welcome, and I do not see why it would not make a difference in Torbay. It has been slightly misconstrued as closing the hostel, but it is not: it is about making sure that people are supported from day one in terms of housing, rather than having to earn a right to housing via being in a hostel for a longer period of time. There will always be a need for emergency accommodation. Other Members have touched on the issue of housing supply, which clearly needs to be dealt with if we are to move forward.

I will conclude with some remarks about the Vagrancy Act 1824, which is a hopelessly out-of-date piece of legislation. I hope that in any review of that Act, we can take a mature cross-party approach, as happened with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and “to your credit, Ms Buck” your campaign for the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill the following year. That Bill became an Act, and it made a difference to people.

The 1824 Act is hideously out of date: it is both morally and practically wrong to think that homelessness can be dealt with by hauling people down to the magistrates court. I was only too happy to stand up against the idea of using a public spaces protection order against rough sleeping in Torbay—I did not see that as a practical thing to do at all—and I was pleased that councillors from both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups made it clear to the independent administration that it was not something they would tolerate or accept. PSPOs should be used against antisocial behaviour. The act of sleeping rough—a person putting their head down and going to sleep—should not lead to them being arrested by the police; it should lead to them being supported by agencies.

This has been a welcome debate, and one that could probably go on for a lot longer. I hope that we will be able to take some comfort from the Minister’s response.

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[Mrs Wheeler]

In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, the number of rough sleepers is down to 13. In Liverpool it has reduced from 33 to 15, in Torbay from 24 to 19, and in the Worthing and Shoreham area from 35 to 11.

[Neil Coyle]

One of the specific questions I asked was whether the Minister would improve the data collection to ensure that these figures were robust. There is a question mark over them.

[Mrs Wheeler]

People have asked these questions. Some councils choose to do an estimate, and some choose to do a count. Personally, I prefer a count.

The number of people rough sleeping in York has reduced from 29 to nine, and I congratulate the hon. Member for York Central on all her hard work in that area. In Ipswich the number has gone down from 21 to 11. In the Warwick area it has gone down from 24 to 12—the area received £370,000-worth of Government funding to help with this. I work very well with the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on these particular issues. Her area has received £583,000 of Government money and there has been a slight reduction in rough sleeping, but there is much more to do. We very much recognise the importance of the certainty of funding for services. The Chancellor has said there will be a spending review this year, and Ministers have made it clear that rough sleeping and homelessness are key priorities for this Government.

I shall crack on and then allow the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark to wrap up. We note the release of the first ever ONS death statistics—hon. Members have mentioned this—which will help us to ensure that we are targeting our action to prevent deaths. We know that the risk to life increases during periods of cold weather, which is why we launched an additional £5 million cold weather fund in October. The fund has already enabled us to increase outreach work further, extend winter shelter provision and—I am sure that Members will be pleased to hear—provide over 800 additional bed spaces. We are also ensuring that when a homeless person dies or is seriously injured, safeguarding adult reviews take place, where appropriate, so that local services can learn lessons from the tragic events and prevent them from happening in the future.

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[Neil Coyle]

I thank both Chairs and everyone who contributed to the debate.

I asked several questions in my speech. The Minister referred to her team, and I hope they are busy drafting their reply to the inevitable letter in which I put those questions again, because not all of them were answered. Will the funding for the pilot be continued? Will the data be improved? Is the Minister still committed to resigning if rough sleeping rises again? Will there be changes to legal aid and the Zambrano restrictions? How can we ensure that safeguarding adult reviews are more routine? Councils are simply not carrying them out. Even in the example I gave, that did not occur.

There were several running themes in the debate. The first is shame. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) both touched on that powerfully. People are ashamed that the system in our country has compelled so many people to sleep rough. It simply should not be happening. There is a public appetite for change, but sadly not in the Government.

The second theme that came out strongly is ambition, which the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) touched on. The Government’s target is simply not ambitious enough. They are not on target to meet their weak, unambitious target to halve rough sleeping by 2022. Their figures show that they will not meet it. The risk is that this problem will continue for far longer than necessary. There was some complacency in the Minister’s response. She did not listen to the debate.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend, who opened the debate brilliantly, is summing it up brilliantly. I am afraid that I heard the Minister read out a prepared speech that just seemed to say that everything is going terribly well. It is complacency. We have heard very good speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House advocating an immediate solution to the problem.

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. There were some warm words, but they will be cold comfort to those who are living in these extreme conditions. The Minister said that three quarters of councils in the pilot areas have done better than average at reducing rough sleeping. That means that, even in the pilot areas, a quarter of councils have seen rough sleeping increase. That is simply not good enough. There may be pilots, but there does not seem to be a cockpit or even a plane. The Government must properly address this problem. I will end on that and start drafting my letter to the officials.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered rough sleeping.