Rough Sleeping

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for calling this debate. People sleeping rough often have important things in common. They often have several support needs, such as mental ill health, substance misuse, an offending history, physical disability, self-harm, learning disabilities, experience of domestic abuse, sex work, abuse, neglect and modern slavery—pretty much some of the worst things a person can go through. But they also often do not get the entirety of the services and support they need, when they need them, in the ways they need them.

Frankly, that is the fault of nobody—certainly not the person sleeping rough—except the last Conservative Government. I say that with the immediate and direct experiences of having run a mental health and domestic abuse charity for the five years before I was elected, of setting up and sitting on a homelessness alliance, of chairing a mental health partnership, of being a councillor for 10 years and of serving as deputy council leader in that time. I can tell the House that over the 14 years of Conservative government, this problem got worse and worse.

I want to commend those leading and working in our services, because they are the most amazing, caring, understanding, dedicated people. We have heard from some of those people who are now in Parliament. In my constituency of Bournemouth East, I want to commend Bournemouth Churches Housing Association; St Paul’s Hostel, which is run by BCHA; HealthBus; YMCA Bournemouth; Healthwatch Dorset, which has just produced a fantastic report on homelessness and health; Homewards, represented by the Prince of Wales; WithYou; We Are Humans; the citizens advice bureaux across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; and Shelter.

That goes to show the array of services available in my local area, but the services they lead and the systems they contribute are being held back by forces beyond their control. Underfunding has forced services to narrow and narrow their focus, year after year. As a result, they are meeting a smaller set of needs. Services cannot wrap support around as many needs as they would have done in the past; instead, somebody sleeping rough must engage with a larger set of services. No charity has wanted to narrow its focus, but, left out of pocket, and often subsidising contracts, they just could not carry on delivering services without enough funding.

The result is twofold. First, our third sector’s ability to support clients and contribute to healthcare has been eroded year after year, and secondly, the people needing support who no longer fit the referral criteria for a service will end up being bounced from pillar to post, and people with a combination of issues will always be the exception to somebody’s rule. People who are willing to engage may become distrustful of agencies and refuse services, and that is a particular problem when people who are sleeping rough may, because of their needs, have difficulties keeping appointments.

When people are flying through revolving doors, increasingly distrustful of people and services, and feeling let down, they may experience crises. Without the support they need, that will only set back their health and increase the cost not only to their own health but to services that could wrap around them. Prevention is always cheaper and better than having to treat somebody’s health.

The people in Bournemouth East working in these sectors know exactly what is going wrong, they know exactly what needs to happen, and they know exactly how things could be so much better. They tell me what needs to happen. They are clear that we need sufficient funding to run the services to meet the needs of rough sleepers.

What will that buy? First, it will mean that we have enough caseworkers with the time to care, because a flexible approach is needed to engage people with multiple support needs who may slip through the net of services. People sleeping rough typically benefit from longer-term interactions, and we need to understand that the funding should be available for those longer-term interactions rather than for short interventions.

Secondly, we need funding models that appreciate that work can go at a slower pace to achieve useful outcomes. That means having a system with the clarity, and the time to achieve that clarity, for the people working within it but also for the people accessing support.

Thirdly—and this cannot go ignored—caseworkers who are supporting people sleeping rough need to be at their posts in their organisations for a long period of time, uninterrupted, to develop relationships with the people they support and build trust. If they have to get out of bed worrying about whether they can pay their bills, or worrying about their own mental health, they are not going to be able to provide support to the people who need it the most. That requires taking away the reasons caseworkers may leave the service: not getting paid enough to survive; not being able to develop professionally with the training and new skills that they need; or having their resilience beaten down because they support too many people, their caseloads are too high and the needs they are meeting are so many, so varied and so complex.

I recently visited the Poole campus of Bournemouth and Poole college. I talked to the head, Phil Sayles, and he told me about a chap who had been sleeping rough on the park grass beside the college campus. Every morning, he had packed up his tent to come into the college and learn. His relationship had broken down and he was unable to see his child; his life had fallen apart. But with the kindness and support of the college and the services around him, he was able to start to get his life back on track, and he is now flying. That is one person on one campus of one college, in one town in one part of our United Kingdom; there will be countless people across our country in similar situations.

I commend the Government for moving forward with the endeavour for a cross-departmental long-term strategy. We have ended rough sleeping before, during the pandemic; we can end it again. We just need the necessary political will, and the people who know what the solutions are to be listened to.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Christopher, so soon after we were engaged on local government matters yesterday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) on bringing forward this debate—I know her constituency well as mine is nearby—and I congratulate Members on their contributions, which have illuminated not just some of the policy and political angles, but the genuine complexity of the rough sleeping issue.

The measurement of rough sleeping across the United Kingdom commenced in 2010. The last Conservative Government felt that it was a high priority and, consequently, we moved from a situation under the previous Labour Government in which less than a quarter of local authorities measured the number of people rough sleeping in their area at all, to one where all local authorities were required to use a standard methodology to count the number of rough sleepers and indicate the composition of that population.

That measure fed into a number of policy initiatives over those years. We saw a growth in the number of people recorded as rough sleeping on the streets from 2010 to 2017, and then some ups and downs. We saw a reduction from the 2017 peak to the number we see today, with a particularly low figure recorded during the covid pandemic, when the Everyone In policy was rigorously pursued by local authorities across the country.

It is clear that this matter is not simply one of political will. We note that, despite the high priority that Labour placed on it in opposition, the highest increases in the number of rough sleepers on the streets were in Labour-led local authorities, and the most effective authorities at reducing the number were Conservative-led. I see some shaking of heads, but Westminster, Camden and Bristol consistently top the list of authorities with the highest numbers of rough sleepers on the streets.

We also need to note that around 46% of all the people sleeping rough are in London and the south-east. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall provided a graphic description of what she has seen—one reflected on the streets of our capital, in particular. As other hon. Members have acknowledged, it also reflects a complex set of issues that lead to people sleeping rough.

The issue of veterans was a high priority for the previous Government. I have to note the work of the former Member for Plymouth Moor View, Johnny Mercer, in driving forward the so-called Operation FORTITUDE, which set up a direct and guaranteed route out of rough sleeping for any veteran who required it.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the hon. Member acknowledge that many of the Labour local authorities he was just referencing are in densely urban areas, which, according to research into homelessness, tend to have larger numbers of homeless people? Will he recognise that those authorities, like Conservative authorities, have been significantly starved of funding in recent years, to the point that council leaders, both Conservative and Labour, have been crying out for relief from Government? Will he also acknowledge that, with the starvation of many of our public services, people who are sleeping rough could otherwise often have received support earlier, but because they did not they now have to sleep rough—and that that is the fault of the Conservative Government?

[David Simmonds]

It is not an excuse. It is clear when we look at the performance of local authorities in that respect, and in particular in respect of the effectiveness of the many measures introduced following the Homelessness Reduction Act sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), that the authorities that were good at everything demonstrated that they were also good at reducing the number of people who were sleeping rough. Those of a more questionable performance standard, however, did not demonstrate that they could step up to the plate, despite being provided with additional resources.

Seeking to make a political point rather glosses over the complexity of the matter, as highlighted by many hon. Members. I will finish my point around veterans. We know, according to the current snapshot, that around 3% of those sleeping rough are thought to be veterans of our armed forces. Providing a specific guarantee, with a freephone number and an online portal, so that accommodation that met their requirements could immediately be found for anybody in that situation, was an important example of how that particular group can be addressed.

It is also interesting to reflect that the snapshot data consistently shows that those sleeping rough tend to be older adults aged over 26; that they are overwhelmingly male, although I acknowledge that female rough sleeping is sometimes hidden; and that the numbers recorded are very small—in some years, zero—for people under the age of 18. That goes to the complexity of the issues highlighted by a number of hon. Members. It is not simply a matter of a lack of supply.

We know about the complexities around addiction, domestic violence, patterns of previous accommodation by local authorities that have ended with difficulties with landlords, issues of settled status—or lack of it—and immigration circumstances. All those factors contribute to the complex set of reasons that affect an individual who should be able to access help from a local authority. Like many other hon. Members, I have sat through homelessness interviews with constituents who seek that help and accessing it can be incredibly difficult when a number of those complicating factors come together.

How is the issue to be tackled? From 2010 to the most recent election, a number of measures were introduced. I refer to the Homelessness Reduction Act, which sought to give both additional duties and powers to local authorities to work with those at serious risk of becoming homeless—not just to prevent rough sleeping but to stop people from being placed in substandard temporary accommodation that did not fully meet the needs of their household.

More recently, we saw the introduction of “Ending rough sleeping for good” in 2022, which was a £2.4 billion multi-year programme aimed at bringing to an end, as far as possible, rough sleeping on the streets of our country. Although that was clearly not a matter of law, it was a significant and important Government programme. Many hon. Members participated actively in the debates on that and brought their views to bear on shaping a programme that included the rough sleeping accommodation programme, with an additional 6,000 units of accommodation aimed at bringing people in off the streets.

As I move to a conclusion, I will share some reflections on my time in local government. The snapshot is beginning to be taken in a consistent way, so we have a reasonably good idea of at least the trends, if not the detail, of the numbers that may be sleeping rough. One of the challenges, however, is that the snapshot always takes place around the same period in autumn. We know that the numbers of people sleeping rough in our country tend to be higher in the summer when the weather is better and that the numbers decrease as winter comes on.

One major factor that the rough sleeping snapshot is not readily able to capture is the availability of temporary accommodation in night shelters and short-term shelters set up, for example, by churches and other charities and voluntary organisations. We know that they are incredibly important for those who have not found assistance for whatever reason in the statutory sector.

My local authorities have contracts with local charities that open up those shelters when the weather begins to turn cold; they staff them and provide beds, heating, food and showers. In the spring, those services are unwound, and that means that some of those people are either back on the streets or, if the service is performed as we would hope, they have been found a pathway into a job and into more permanent housing.

The consequence of that patchwork provision still means that we do not always have a clear idea of the number of people in that situation because they genuinely have nowhere to go on that occasion; many who may have been booked accommodation by a local authority instead choose, typically because of addiction, to be on the streets with others who share their addiction rather than to use that accommodation. That is frequently cited as a major issue with the operation of the Homelessness Reduction Act. This is a complex issue. The numbers overall in our country are small, and they are declining.

[Tom Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman made valid points about using a street count to determine the number of people sleeping rough. Does he therefore agree that the numbers of those recorded as sleeping rough over the past 14 years are the tip of the iceberg and that the vulnerability, often in urban areas, is far higher?

[David Simmonds]

That reinforces my point. We have gone from a situation under the previous Labour Government in which there was no counting at all. There was no serious effort to understand the numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets. As a councillor, I was responsible for some of that period for housing and social care; rough sleeping was one of those major challenges that was simply put in the too-hard-to-deal- with box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

Absolutely. I hope very much that, as part of the strategy that we develop, we can bring in the different perspectives. And, of course, I mentioned from the outset the consequences on children and young people, children in care and accommodation for care leavers. This is a big agenda and we need to make sure that these elements are built in. I am delighted to see the level of enthusiasm among colleagues, with officials, as well as Government Ministers, including in the Department for Education, wanting to really focus on this agenda as part of the strategy.

A number of other points were made by colleagues in their powerful speeches, and I want to focus on those. I have already mentioned some of the interventions already announced by the Government on 11 September, through the Renters’ Rights Bill. As I mentioned, we will deliver on our commitment to ensuring that we transform the experience of private renters and provide them with better support and protection. The Government are clear that we also need to bring homes to a decent standard, and have extended Awaab’s law to achieve that. We know of many examples of people in poor quality accommodation, and there needs to be a step change in improving the quality of housing. The Government are also clear that discriminatory treatment on the part of anyone carrying out right-to-rent checks is unlawful. The Home Office has published codes of practice on what landlords are expected to do and how to avoid discrimination.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall raised important issues related to the asylum system. We have inherited a total failure across the asylum system from the previous Government. As the Home Secretary told the House on Monday, that included £700 million spent on a scheme that sent only four people to Rwanda voluntarily. We are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly.

We recognise the potential challenges that individuals granted asylum may face when they need to transfer to accommodation in mainstream wider society. We have to act to ensure that there is a smooth transition. I am grateful for the points my hon. Friend and others have made. I know local authorities and others in the sector have raised the notice period as a challenge in supporting people to move, once their status has been determined, to avoid homelessness.

Those are the points we need to take into account, working across government, to look at how best to address them, ensuring we do all we can to avoid people leaving the asylum system into homelessness. I have already started discussions with colleagues in the Home Office and will continue to do that.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rushanara Ali]

I am running out of time, so please make it brief.

[Tom Hayes]

Integrated care boards are expected to have a dedicated focus on reducing inequalities in access to and outcomes from health care in the populations they serve. Clearly, rough-sleeping people are among the health inclusion populations that integrated care boards are supposed to have a dedicated focus on. Will the Minister talk a little about the importance of integrated care boards in supporting the access of people sleeping rough to GPs and dentists?

[Rushanara Ali]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is why the involvement of the Department of Health and Social Care and other relevant Departments is key. Not least, because there are also issues around step-down care, when people leave the healthcare system, whether a hospital or other services.

To respond to the point on public funds, we are keen to ensure we work across government with the Home Office on those issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall will be aware that women form the majority of those being exploited in modern slavery, and they can end up sleeping rough. That is an important agenda. The Home Office has committed to hiring 200 additional staff to process cases. Thousands of vulnerable people will receive faster decisions on their cases, so that they can move forward, while making the process more efficient. Those new employees are being recruited and will be in post in early 2025. Modern slavery is a huge issue. I have seen that through my own work and visits to organisations that do inspirational work to protect those being exploited in that way.

On veterans, no one should leave the armed forces and have to sleep rough. I am grateful to hon. Members for raising that important issue. They will be aware that the Prime Minister made announcements at the Labour conference on our commitment to making changes, to provide the crucial support to ensure that veterans do not sleep rough.

The point has been made about domestic abuse, particularly in relation to women. We recognise that there are particular issues with violence against women who are sleeping rough and their experience is very different; and £9.2 million of funding is available for women-specific rough sleeping services. We will take action, as part of the cross-departmental strategy, to make sure that we continue to provide the appropriate support for women who have been sleeping rough.

To go back to the issue of veterans, more than £8.5 million is being spent on the reducing veteran homelessness programme that has been established. That is part of the agenda to provide support to veterans.

Supported housing is a big issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) mentioned. We are taking action, building on the work done in the previous Parliament to improve the quality of supported housing through the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which was supported by Members across the parties, including Conservatives. There is more to say and do on that; it is a critical area. Hon. Members will be aware that, according to the National Housing Federation, we will need to have a further 170,000 supported housing units to deal with the need by 2040. With an ageing population and the existing need, that is a huge agenda.

Hon. Members raised the important role that charities and community organisations play, and I commend them for the work they do. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the challenges in Northern Ireland and some of the great examples of work. We are keen to learn from the good practices in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, along with city regions in England, about how we tackle this issue.

On trauma, local authorities have made great strides to provide trauma-informed services, and we will look at what more we can do to support them.

In conclusion, this is a really important agenda. It requires comprehensive work across Government. It also requires the expertise and input of colleagues across the House and organisations on the frontline, who have done extraordinary work to protect and support people. I very much look forward to working with colleagues, as well as organisations out there, to tackle the deeply damaging problem of rough sleeping and homelessness.