Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Debate between Nick Boles and Karen Buck

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nick Boles]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will come back to him in writing on that question, which is important. He also made the important point on the possibility of ring-fencing the homelessness prevention grant. I will allow the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), to respond to that in an intelligent way, rather than make it up on the hoof.

[Ms Buck]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm what his predecessors said, which is that local authorities should, other than in exceptional circumstances, care for their own homeless locally in recognised local connections? Alternatively, does he think that local authorities should give their homeless to other councils to have to worry about?

[Nick Boles]

It is clearly right that local authorities should do everything in their power to house people within their own boundaries, whether temporarily, if that is unfortunately the only possibility, or ultimately permanently. It is deeply regrettable that some authorities have found that they are not able to do that. We are constantly writing to them, speaking to them and putting pressure on them to ensure that they fulfil that duty, because it is clear and important.

Briefly, on the bigger argument, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East pointed out that we have been building far too few homes, not just recently, but over the past 20 years. We can all make political points about whether house building rate are lower than they were five years ago, but the fact is that we have had the most devastating financial crash and the deepest recession in 100 years. It is not surprising, at a time when several of our major banks had to be nationalised and others bailed out by the taxpayer, that the possibility of lending money to builders to build and to people to buy houses has become severely constrained, and that has led to a dramatic fall in house building.

The Government are utterly determined—I am utterly determined—to do everything we can to reform the planning system, the funding streams for mortgages and the lending for builders, to enable the rate of house building to increase. It is also clear that we need more housing of a tenure type and cost that makes it available to many of the people likely to be affected by homelessness. I simply point out that nobody’s record is perfect on this matter. The previous Government presided over a dramatic fall in the number of affordable houses available to people, and under this Government, the number has gone up. We have managed to build just less than 100,000 affordable houses in the three years that we have been in office, but that is not enough and we accept that. We hope that we will build 170,000 over the life of this Parliament. Are 170,000 houses enough to deal with the problems that we have, and the 20-year backlog in house building? No, they are not.

At the same time, however, we have created 1.5 million jobs, and I am sure that all hon. Members will accept that the long-term solution, to prevent more people falling into homelessness, and to help the people whom Members have all admirably mentioned, is to enable those people to get stable jobs that pay them more than the minimum wage, and ideally more than the living wage. That will enable them to hold down a tenancy, whether in social housing or private rented housing. That is the solution to the homelessness problem of our country.

North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Debate between Nick Boles and Karen Buck

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

rose—