Homeless Young People

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

First, may I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), on securing the debate and on his excellent speech, which gave a comprehensive appraisal and thoroughly good analysis of the situation? I associate myself with the comments that he made about the wide range of organisations acting nationally to raise awareness about young homeless people and to provide a range of solutions and services to support them so ably.

I am, however, rather disappointed with the speech made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), who preceded me and introduced party politics. The young people who are watching the debate deserve something rather better from us. We should be making a determined effort to use the data in the Crisis report and other reports to be released shortly, such as the one from the Children’s Society, to work together to do something—

[Ian Lavery]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I will make some progress before I take an intervention.

[Simon Danczuk]

Will the hon. Lady give way, given that she made reference to me?

[Sarah Newton]

When I have made this particular point, I am happy to do so.

The Conservative party has a long tradition of campaigning on homelessness. In the 1970s, MPs Iain Macleod and William Shearman were in favour of the first legislation to be introduced to protect homeless people. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) introduced the rough sleepers initiative, which cut dramatically the numbers of people sleeping on our streets. More recently, Boris Johnson has made tackling rough sleeping in London a central part of his mayoralty.

[Ms Buck]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I will give way when I have finished making this point.

As a Cornish MP, I have seen first hand the coalition Government deliver real improvements in services for homeless people. Before I was a Member of Parliament—I came into the House in 2010—for a great deal of my life I volunteered in charities looking after and seeking to help homeless people, whether in New York, where I lived in my 20s and ran a shelter for homeless men, or in my home town of Truro, where I volunteer with Truro Homeless Action Group and help with the excellent work of St Petroc’s Society.

Before I was elected, I participated in the rough sleeper counts. However, the guidance given by the Government of the day made it so difficult to count the number of homeless people that Cornwall was deemed to have a rough-sleeping population of two. Since the coalition came in and properly opened up the rough sleepers count, we have been getting much better data on the scale of the problem. Sadly, although it is no surprise to any of us who live there, Cornwall is now deemed to have the second largest homeless population outside London. Without that honest collection of data, we will never be able to take the steps needed to tackle these issues.

Those reforms were brought in by this Government, which underlines the fact that the issue has all-party support. We all understand that nothing could be worse than being homeless. We may not always agree on every measure, or on how to tackle the issue, but turning it into a party political football does no service to the debate.

[Simon Danczuk]

Let me be clear: before entering Parliament, I carried out research into homelessness issues for 10 or 12 years while I was working for The Big Issue in the North, and I suspect I have met more homeless people and visited more homeless projects than the hon. Lady has had hot dinners, so I know what I am talking about. Let me make it clear that I am all in favour of consensus, but the Government need to be judged on their record on dealing with homelessness, and that record is very poor. I am in favour of consensus, but if the Government fail on this issue, it is right and important that young people see the Opposition challenging that failure and helping to come up with solutions.

[Sarah Newton]

I am not going to lower the tone of the debate and further let down the young people who are watching it by responding to that personal attack. As I have said before, I have volunteered throughout my life on the issue of homelessness—I still volunteer now, and I am well into my 50s. I do not know how many hot dinners the hon. Gentleman has had, but it is silly and demeaning to start personally attacking hon. Members’ motivations. I am in no doubt that hon. Members from all parts of the political spectrum care deeply about homelessness and have been personally committed to dealing with it as volunteers or in other appropriate ways. I really want to carry on with the debate.

I am proud to stand on my record and on the record of what the Government have delivered to help homeless people in Cornwall and prevent homelessness there. One person sleeping rough in my constituency, one person sofa-surfing or one person living in unacceptable accommodation is one too many, and I will continue day and night to do what I can, but there has been significant improvement. Once we had better data from the rough sleepers count, the money followed, and Cornwall council has received considerable sums, which have been fed into really good third sector organisations such as St Petroc’s and Glen Carne, voluntary organisations such as the Truro Homeless Action Group, the statutory sector and the NHS. I could speak for half an hour about the different activities that are going on to prevent homelessness and to help homeless people, so I will stand on my record.

[Ms Buck]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I am going to make a little progress.

That is not to say that I am complacent or that much more does not need to be done. I very much welcome the Crisis report, and I support a lot of its recommendations. The ones I would like to discuss today build on the need for a better evidence base for local planners and those making housing decisions.

Under the Government’s planning reforms, each local authority must do a local housing need assessment to make sure its local plan meets the unmet housing need of the people it represents. Having gone through that process in great detail locally, I know that some groups of people, such as young homeless people who are sofa- surfing, are difficult to pick up in the statistics used to form the local housing needs assessment. Assessments must be robust and data-driven, using data from the Office for National Statistics and others, but it would be useful—this is one of the recommendations from Crisis—to look at the guidance given to local authorities as they plan their local housing needs assessment to make sure that those young homeless people are picked up on and that their needs are met.

Following the success of the “No Second Night Out project”, which has done very well in Cornwall, we have much more information about young people and people of other ages who are homeless, but we now need, as part of the planning process, to work out how we can build more appropriate housing for their needs. People have all sorts of complex needs—they may have mental health issues or substance abuse issues, or they may be fleeing domestic violence—and they need supported accommodation, and the Glen Carne charity in my constituency provides it so well.

[Ms Buck]

On data, the hon. Lady made specific reference to London. Since Boris Johnson became Mayor of London, rough sleeping has increased every year. In the summer of 2014, it was 19% higher than in the six months over the summer of 2013. Is the hon. Lady honestly saying that that year-on-year increase in rough sleeping is a consequence of better data? If so, what is the point of having better data and failing to do anything about it?

[Sarah Newton]

Speaking from personal experience in my constituency, I can absolutely say yes. Now we have the tools to go out there and try to get as accurate a count as we can. We will then have a far better understanding of the underlying reasons why people—we are talking not just about numbers, but about people’s lives—are homeless so that we can put in place the appropriate services to help them into accommodation. The money follows the problem, and having those tools has brought extra resources into my constituency. It is vital that we carry on gathering data so that we can better plan to meet the needs of people who are currently homeless and prevent more people from becoming homeless.

The other recommendation from Crisis that I would like the Minister seriously to consider is that we go back to local authorities to see how well the legislation we created in this place is implemented. A key finding of the Crisis report was that the legislation was not implemented consistently. Contained within that was another recommendation—that we come up with an inspection regime. We have done that very well with the Care Quality Commission, which we have asked to inspect providers of health and social care services. Given that a decent home is essential for people’s health and well-being, it would be a good idea to think about how we can extend the CQC’s remit so that it can inspect providers of housing for vulnerable groups and the sorts of accommodation we have heard about today, which take people off the street, providing accommodation that is often supervised in some way, as well as a package of care for a couple of years. That would be really good.

Associated with that, I would like it to become common practice for people in councils and organisations responsible for preventing homelessness and supporting homeless people to be part of health and wellbeing boards, because decent housing is important to health and well-being. Some local authorities have included such people on their health and wellbeing boards, but that is not common practice. Including people on those boards will really help those providing joined-up services locally to understand the complexity of the issues confronting people who face the prospect of homelessness or who are experiencing homelessness. It will also enable those providing services—whether social, housing or health services—to better meet the needs of the particularly vulnerable group we have been discussing.

I know that colleagues want to speak, so let me conclude by saying that the Government have made huge progress, and I have seen that in my constituency. However, I urge the Minister to take seriously the recommendations made by Crisis, which it presented in a non-party political way. We can then take them forward, review what is working, understand what is not working and bring in necessary reforms in the next Parliament.