Homelessness

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), with whom I worked on supported housing issues. He took a less political line than the opening speech by the shadow Secretary of State, which I personally felt rather overlooked the fact that homelessness and rough sleeping is a major social issue for all of us in this House, particularly those of us with urban constituencies. It is what we have to tackle. We have to take ownership of it in our own patch.

How are we trying to tackle homelessness in Gloucester? It is worth noting that under successive Labour MPs during the previous Labour Government from 1997 to 2010 not one additional unit of social housing was built in our city, so although it is fine to talk about making 8,000 homes immediately available, I am afraid that that is not what happened when the shadow Secretary of State was a Minister for eight of those 13 years. I am glad that today, after good work done by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer in writing off all of Gloucester’s housing debt, we now have Gloucester City Homes building new social accommodation. We need to do more of that—I am in no doubt about that.

Let me highlight one particular issue that I suspect others will also face in their constituencies. The major issue for us in Gloucester at the moment is the number of EU nationals with no recourse to public funds. I am afraid it will be the reason why the number of rough sleepers on the statutory count, when the results are announced publicly, will have risen from eight in 2018 to probably close to 20 in 2019, which is not what the Secretary of State wants to see. He wants those figures to come down. He has provided us with funding, but the truth is that two thirds of our rough sleepers are EU nationals in that situation. I know that for London and Birmingham, he has waived the no-recourse situation. I would be grateful if the Minister, in replying to the debate, could say a little bit about what more can be done, or whether he believes this issue will just fade away at the end of the year after we finish the transition period and people coming from the EU will have to have longer term jobs. That will undoubtedly have an impact on the problem for us and I suspect elsewhere in the country.

It is also worth highlighting the fact that the money given by the Government to help us with rough sleepers has made a huge difference. We have been able to house 100 people through the “Somewhere Safe to Stay” hubs and I welcome the additional funding that has been announced this year. It will make a difference to maintaining the hubs and expanding the outreach. I am convinced that we can get on top of these things.

Lastly, I would like to highlight the work done by a new charity, HaVinG – A Voice in Gloucester. We aim to try to provide a pathway not just for housing but for skills and, later, jobs. That is the long-term solution to this problem.