Homelessness

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I speak as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which I got involved with in 2016 because of the very visible rise in homelessness in my community in Southwark. Southwark Council deals with the highest number of homeless applications in London. It has 11,500 households on the waiting list and nearly 2,500 households in temporary accommodation, but despite significant problems and severe cuts to Southwark’s funding since 2010, the council also has the largest council house building programme in the country, with 11,000 new homes in the pipeline. Today, its information line is showing the 172 sites across the borough where those homes will appear. My first ask is that the Government should match Labour’s ambition in the national council house building programme.

On local housing allowance, the main problem is affordability. There are almost no properties in Southwark that are affordable at the current LHA rate or at the rate it will reach in April. The Government must reflect local prices in rates. At the extreme end of homelessness is rough sleeping. The Secretary of State described it as a serious moral failure, but there is no accurate measurement of rough sleeping. The local authority headcount is an insufficient estimate. Ministers say that they will end rough sleeping by the end of 2024, but in 2018 the total reduction in the number of rough sleepers was 74. At that pace, it will take until 2081—57 years behind schedule. It would take the Government six decades to tackle a problem that they have created in one. They must develop a robust measure of the problem.

In 2018, a ministerial taskforce on homelessness and rough sleeping was created, but the Department refuses to reveal when it meets. It claims that that information cannot be disclosed because it involves confidential communications. Only under this Government has tackling homelessness become a state secret. I hope the Minister will agree to be more accessible and transparent about those meetings.

The Office for National Statistics has revealed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) just mentioned, that two homeless people died on our streets every day last year. That is unacceptable, but what is worse is the normalisation of those deaths. None of them is investigated and no one asked whether they could have been prevented. I want the Minister to ensure a safeguarding review of every death of a homeless person. That would help to identify the interventions that could have prevented the homelessness and the premature deaths.

[Justin Madders]

Does my hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to advocate for the people who lose their lives, as he says, to understand what led them to that sad situation in the first place?

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. As the Secretary of State mentioned, there is often an overlap with mental health issues, but we are not going to identify the cause if the deaths are not investigated.

My final request today is that we use the Domestic Abuse Bill to help the 2,000 people last year who fled domestic violence and were provided an immediate refuge but did not qualify for long-term accommodation. The A Safe Home campaign aims to break the link between homelessness and domestic abuse. No one should be left facing a choice between returning to a violent, dangerous partner or being made homeless, and the Bill should ensure that everyone fleeing domestic abuse who is homeless is automatically considered in priority need. I hope that the Minister will agree today to meet representatives of that cross-party campaign to see how we can make that happen in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Hall]

I will not at the moment, I am afraid—just because of the limited time.

We are working to implement test models of community-based provision across six projects that are designed to enable access to health and support services for people who are sleeping rough, with both physical and mental ill health, and substance dependency needs, being managed by Public Health England. All these projects are being informed by people who have lived experience of rough sleeping to ensure that rough sleepers receive the right support. In Portsmouth, Westminster and Newcastle, these projects include placing nurses and other specialist staff in homeless services to provide wraparound and intensive support.

[Neil Coyle]

Will any of the pilots introduce a safeguarding review of any of the deaths in those areas, to try to identify possible interventions that could have prevented each death or the homelessness itself?