Homelessness Reduction Bill

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow so many passionate speakers, not least the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who spoke well and with great knowledge of this issue. I join the tributes to the enormous success of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). In my working life, I was part of the Government machine that produces legislation, so I am in awe at how he has managed to go through the process effectively alone, albeit with the team he outlined earlier.

I am pleased that the Bill has Government support and that funding has been promised, although I hope the Minister was listening carefully to my hon. Friend when he said that more might be necessary. On that note, I thank the Department for Communities and Local Government for the £790,000 that has been given to Oxfordshire under the Government’s homelessness prevention programme to fund the trials of new initiatives on homelessness.

We have heard a great deal about the importance of co-operation and cross-party working, and I make a plug for the cross-party co-operation in Oxfordshire over the past year that has led to good practice in the reduction of homelessness. For example, our district council and charities have been working closely together to reduce the number of rough sleepers in our district by 20%, which shows how well a more holistic approach of the type set out in the Bill can work.

We have seen some great initiatives in the past year, including the production of a pocket guide for the homeless. That might not sound like much, but having all the phone numbers in one place for short-term and long-term solutions to homelessness problems is useful to people whose life is chaotic and who are moving from place to place.

We also have some great local charities. I have seen the Beacon centre at St Mary’s church in Banbury offering friendly but firm advice to some of our rough sleepers, and one of my favourite buildings in my whole constituency is the one that houses the Banbury Young Homelessness Project, which takes a forward-thinking, holistic approach to preventing the causes of homelessness. The project provides counselling and therapy for family groups, and it has a brilliant job club. In 2012, the project won the Queen’s award for voluntary service. I love going there; it is very much like being at home with one’s own teenagers. Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that you will understand and empathise with the fact that the sort of support it provides is almost that of a parent for a group of teens who are uncertain about which way to go, who need a bit of help and encouragement to get through job interviews, and who might not get such support from their family or at home in the way that we hope our own children do.

The Salvation Army has been turning lives around, particularly those of rough sleepers, for many, many years. It helped members of my family who came home from the first world war, and I am impressed by the cutting-edge work it continues to do. It is clear that rough sleepers have very different needs—families at risk of eviction differ greatly from people with drug and alcohol dependencies who have been rough sleeping—and our charities and council, working together, recognise that. I accept that not all are working together so well and that we need the safety net enshrined in the Bill, but it seems right that there should no longer be a double standard of priority need. Anyone who does not have a bed for the night is, of course, a priority.

We have heard a lot this week about difficulties in the Prison Service, and it is right that we draw attention to the link between homelessness and imprisonment. Some 15% of new inmates going into prison for the first time are homeless, and 80% of those previously homeless prisoners reoffend in the first year after release, which compares very badly with a reoffending rate of under 50% for those who were not homeless when they went into prison. Dealing with homelessness will really help in the battle to reduce reoffending, so I add my support to this well-balanced Bill, which will support the homeless without putting undue pressure on councils. I hope that, by working together, claimants and councils will help to reduce the problem of homelessness.