Rough Sleeping: Families with Children

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) on securing this debate. She is not just an hon. Lady; to me she is an hon. Friend, and I am delighted to respond to her today on the Opposition’s behalf. I even managed to get out of bed just to do it because she was leading this debate this morning.

The hon. Lady was absolutely right to say in her opening remarks that we should not be here this morning having to debate an issue such as one. However, while we do have to debate these issues, I am pleased that she is on the case and I look forward to working with her, being a successor to her as the shadow Minister with responsibility for homelessness. I know that the welfare of young people across this country, particularly those who have found themselves homeless, is at the heart of what she does, and I congratulate her again on securing this debate.

Rough sleeping among families with children represents one of the most visible and distressing signs of the housing crisis in our country. Behind every statistic is a child growing up without the security of a stable home, a family living with uncertainty, and communities struggling to cope with rising costs of living and other socioeconomic pressures. We can all agree across the House that this is not a matter to procrastinate or prevaricate about.

In its 2024 manifesto, the Labour party promised to,

“develop a new cross-Government strategy…to put Britain back on track to ending homelessness.”

That strategy was not published until 11 December 2025, which was much later than expected; indeed, it was at the tail end of this Session of Parliament. However, I remind the Minister, who I am pleased to see here in Westminster Hall this morning, that in a meeting she kindly offered on a cross-party basis, I assured her that the official Opposition and I, as the shadow Minister with responsibility for homelessness, are committed to working on a cross-party basis to make sure that this strategy works. My comments this morning do not signal that I demur from that approach. However, I will make some comments on some parts of the strategy and I will challenge the strategy regarding where we think it could go further.

My main concern about the homelessness strategy is this. The current time seemed to offer an opportunity, but although the Minister has grabbed that opportunity, it is an opportunity whereby the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems to be leading the search for a solution to homelessness, so the chance for a fundamental rewiring of how Government works to tackle homelessness has been missed. As I said, I make these comments in a constructive way. Nevertheless, I believe that the strategy lacks genuine cross-party ministerial oversight.

The strategy also lacks the cross-departmental approach that we need, particularly when we consider that homelessness is not just an issue that MHCLG must find a solution to. Homelessness also involves the Department for Education, the Department for Health and Social Care, and the Home Office, in the way that the hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree described. For example, regarding the involvement of the Department for Health and Social Care, we need to get better at analysing the data around drug and alcohol discharges from hospital.

I am not convinced that the strategy, despite its good intentions overall, really takes the cross-ministerial approach where it needs to go. I look to the Minister to confirm to the Chamber this morning, when she responds to the debate, that she is chairing a cross-ministerial committee on this issue, and that she will continue to do so going forward. I also look to her to say how often that committee will meet.

The hon. Member for Liverpool Wavertree mentioned the problem with data concerning immigration. She is absolutely right that the Home Office has been slightly let off the hook on this strategy; I look to the Minister to provide some reassurances on this data issue when she stands up shortly to respond to the debate.

I think that the strategy goes in the right direction, but there are some concerns about the lack of funding to tackle some of the issues and to enact some of the good intentions that the Minister has outlined over the past few months. For example, the strategy does not give funding to Housing First so that it can be rolled out nationally. Also, the Local Government Association says that a cross-departmental approach is needed, and needs to be embedded at the heart of all Government Departments, within their constitutions. We ask for that approach to be considered.

Lastly on the housing strategy itself, prevention models are still patchy across the whole of the UK and there needs to be an emphasis on national outcomes, to stop people falling into homelessness. Throughout the UK, charities such as The Bread and Butter Thing are really helping on an emergency scale to relieve the homelessness crisis; we congratulate them on what they are doing.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The right-to-buy scheme, the pros and cons of which I will not go into, led to councils losing big chunks of their housing stock to people who bought their houses at a discount. I know that the scheme has been changed and that the discount has been reduced, but I am not aware where the money that is generated goes, even today. Does the shadow Minister agree that the decision of the then Government and subsequent Governments to take the proceeds of sales, instead of leaving them with councils to replenish the stock, was a mistake, and should the Government now be looking at doing the latter for any further sales?

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman asks a perfectly reasonable question. That was a policy decision of Governments before I took this role. I believe in the right-to-buy policy. It was a massive tool to allow people to achieve ownership in a radical way that we need to see again in this country. But in hindsight I accept, given some of the way the system worked, that we needed to see greater investment back into councils so that they could reinvest in stock. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to assume, but I will say that under this Government, the social housing fund that has been allocated just is not great enough to ensure that we have the houses that we need to deliver.

The number of people sleeping rough in England is now at its highest level since records began in 2010. Figures from autumn 2025 estimate that 4,793 people were sleeping on the streets on a single night, which was an increase on the previous year. Particularly concerning is the rise in vulnerable groups on the streets. The number of female rough sleepers increased by 8% to 733, alongside 3,938 men and 122 cases in which gender was not recorded. London continues to face the greatest challenge, with 1,277 people sleeping rough—the highest figure in the country—but the sharpest increase was in the north-east of England, where rough sleeping rose by 31% in just one year.

For many families, the pathway to rough sleeping begins long before anyone ends up on the streets. It often starts in temporary accommodation. Between July and September 2025, 134,760 households were living in hotels, B&Bs or temporary flats, which was an increase of nearly 7% compared with the previous year. Of those households, 85,730 include children. These are the highest figures since records began in 2010.

In London, the situation is particularly stark. According to London Councils, one in 50 Londoners is now homeless and record numbers of children are growing up in temporary accommodation. In some boroughs, the pressures are especially severe. Newham has 6,667 households in temporary accommodation, followed by Lambeth with 4,657 and Southwark with 3,828. Statutory homelessness data shows that, across England, 169,050 children are currently homeless in temporary accommodation. That represents a 12% increase in just one year and the ninth consecutive record since December 2022.

Ultimately, the only sustainable solution to homelessness is to increase the supply of homes and, in particular, social and affordable housing. The Government have pledged to build 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. However—I say this again—experts have expressed serious doubts about whether that target can be achieved. Professor Paul Cheshire, a leading planning expert who advised previous Governments, stated that there is “absolutely no way” the current reforms will deliver that number of homes. Let me be clear to Members across the House: that does and should include social homes.

Recent housing statistics raise similar concerns. According to official figures, 208,600 net new dwellings were added in Labour’s first year in office, which is a 6% drop on the previous year, and just 190,600 new homes were built, which is 8,000 fewer than in the final year of the previous Government. If this rate continues, fewer than 1 million homes will be delivered by 2029—well short of the Government’s stated target.

That is a serious issue because housing supply directly affects homelessness. Without sufficient homes, more families are pushed into temporary accommodation and the risk of rough sleeping continues. The scale of the challenge facing families with children demands urgency, co-ordination and long-term solutions. That means tackling child poverty, expanding affordable housing, supporting local authorities and ensuring that strategies are delivered on time and backed by meaningful action. All of us in this House, on both sides, agree that no child should grow up without the stability of a safe home, no family should face the prospect of homelessness and no society should accept rising rough sleeping as inevitable.

I say once again to the Minister that we come here in the spirit of co-operation. I genuinely believe that this Minister wants to achieve her aim of reducing homelessness. She has been going in the right direction to make sure that the Department constitutes what is necessary to deliver that, but we will look to see how this will be carried on across all Departments to achieve what we all want to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

I am not quite sure that I caught all the details of the case that the hon. Member raised, but if he sends me them I will happily respond to him. He will know that we do not want children to be in B&B accommodation. That is one of the main planks of our strategy, which I will come to later.

As has been mentioned, I wrote to local authority leaders and chief executives last month to remind them of their duties and to ask that they take personal responsibility for making sure that no child in their area is ever left to sleep on the street, in a car or in any other location not designed for living in. I am conscious of the case raised by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed). I am sure that he has made every effort to sort that out with Kirklees, but if he has further problems, or Kirklees has specific issues that it wants to raise with me, I trust that he will write to me directly.

We must support councils to meet their obligations, and my Department has been in contact with the councils mentioned in the report to understand how this was able to happen and to ensure that it will not happen again. More broadly, hon. Members will be aware that we recently completed the local authority finance settlement for the next three years, reconnecting council funding with deprivation. That should aid the councils that are more likely to face these issues to deal with them.

The Government are providing more than £2.4 billion this spending review period in support of the Families First Partnership programme, which is introducing reforms to children’s social care. It will ensure children and families can access timely support so that they can get ahead of this problem, as many Members have suggested. Local authorities should use that ringfenced funding to meet their duties under the Children Act. It has been great to speak to many Members and their local authority leaders about how they will do that.

We are providing record levels of investment in homelessness and rough sleeping support, including more than £3.6 billion over the three years from 2026-27 to 2028-29. That is a funding boost of more than £1 billion compared with the previous Government’s commitment, and I pay tribute to the Chancellor for taking that decision. It is right that we are investing that much, because we inherited a homelessness crisis. Members have set out just how bad things have got.

Our long-term vision is to end homelessness and rough sleeping and ensure everyone has access to a safe and decent home. The statistics that we have heard today show that, for far too many people, that is not yet the case. We published our national plan to end homelessness last December to shift the system from crisis response to prevention and to get back on track to ending homelessness.

Our plan is backed by clear national targets to increase the proportion of households who are supported to stay in their own home or helped to find alternative accommodation when they approach their local council for support. That is the prevention goal, and it should underpin everything we do. For reasons that have been mentioned—not least the experience shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher)—we must prevent first. Homelessness is too big of a trauma; nobody should experience it.

By the end of this Parliament, we want to eliminate the use of B&B accommodation for families, except in absolute, dire emergencies, and halve rough sleeping. Of course, we want everyone to have a roof over their head, but some of the problems that we are facing and the experiences of rough sleepers go deep, so we have to go to the toughest of problems.

Our plan is backed by £3.6 billion of funding, including £2.2 billion that councils are free to use to design effective, locally tailored services to deliver better outcomes and reduce reliance on emergency interventions. A number of Members asked about ringfencing. There is tension between allowing local innovation, for which ringfences are unhelpful, and putting clear ringfences around funds to ensure that all councils can tackle homelessness. It is a balance, and that is the way we have taken the decision about the funding.

Our plan sets out how we will tackle the root causes of homelessness by building 1.5 million new homes, including more social and affordable housing than has been built for years. We are also lifting 550,000 children out of poverty through the measures in our child poverty strategy, including by lifting the two-child limit.

Public institutions should lead the way in preventing homelessness. Our plan sets a long-term ambition that no one should leave a public institution into homelessness, and we have cross-Government targets to start that change and reduce homelessness from prisons, care and hospitals.

A number of Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), were kind enough to say that they believed in my will to get this done but expressed scepticism about other Departments. I hope I can reassure them that they do not need to be sceptical. My experience of working with Ministers in other Departments has been positive.

[Paul Holmes]

Will the Minister briefly give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I was just going to respond to the shadow Minister. The interministerial group will meet quite soon, and we have been preparing for that. Our expert group of advisers met me yesterday, and we got a great deal of things done and discussed. I will come on to some of those, but I want to reassure Members that we have active participation in the interministerial group and across Government.

[Paul Holmes]

I knew the Minister would give me a straight answer, but may I push her a bit further on the remit of the interministerial group? Will she confirm her intention for how often it will meet? Is it constituted to meet a certain number of times during the year?

[Alison McGovern]

The interministerial group will meet regularly.

There are interconnections between homelessness and violence against women and girls, because the third biggest cause of homelessness is people fleeing domestic abuse, so we will do some of what we need to do via our work as Ministers through the violence against women and girls strategy. As a number of Members have highlighted, there is clearly a connection between homelessness and poverty. We are about to take forward the delivery of the child poverty strategy, so some aspects of what we are considering will be taken forward through that discussion among Ministers. I am very conscious that we should have meetings not for the sake of it, but to get things done. We will deliver our objectives through those three interconnected strategies, and Ministers will certainly meet regularly.