Homelessness

At my surgeries, homelessness and housing dominate among the issues people come to see me about. ...

I have bad news for my hon. Friend. I hope she was not listening to Ministers recently when they ...

I beg to move an amendment, line 1, to leave out from “House” to end and add:

“notes the Go...

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

The figures showing that rough sleeping fell...

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I appreciate the tone of his rhetoric, ...

Order. Let us make this clear from the start: we cannot have long interventions. If Members make ...

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I said, the figures for the past year suggest we are se...

I am glad the Secretary of State raised Housing First. I know he will join me in congratulating C...

I am very happy to praise anybody who has been involved in Housing First. As I said, a few days b...

The Secretary of State must have heard me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth an...

I speak regularly with my colleagues at the DWP, including the Under-Secretary of State for Work ...

I will make some progress, as I think Madam Deputy Speaker asked me to.

The question of fun...

Does my right hon. Friend agree that people sleeping rough quite often have drink or drug addicti...

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and I do not understand the chatter from Opposition Memb...

The Secretary of State referred to the local housing allowance. About a year ago, the National Au...

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are working together very closely—I regularly meet my colleag...

As the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster, I know a thing or two about rough sleepin...

My hon. Friend speaks with great personal experience and she is right; we must all beware of reso...

Does my right hon. Friend agree that St Mungo’s started the campaign on rough sleeping, in the la...

I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. I am very happy to pay tribu...

rose—

I will give way in a moment, if I may.

The strategy that we published in 2011, backed at th...

I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware of the great work being done in Wolverhampton by Good She...

I will come on to the strategy. I know the Good Shepherd centre’s work; in fact, I volunteered th...

rose—

We are keen for more parts of the country to benefit from the initiative.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way; he has been very generous. I have had constituents...

I think I have answered that question. We do not recognise some of the figures that we have heard...

The Secretary of State is being very generous in giving way. I am pleased to hear him outline the...

As the hon. Lady may know, we are reviewing the Act; we are very aware of that and want to see it...

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way—he has been extremely generous with interventions. ...

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Anybody who has spent time meeting rough sleepers, partic...

If the Secretary of State was to be kicked out of his house and find himself in the unfortunate c...

As I have said, we are increasing funding for this issue. We are spending £1.2 billion. This year...

The Minister has agreed to introduce a Bill that will, hopefully, get rid of no-fault evictions a...

I should be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. He will not be surprised to hear that we have alrea...

Before I call the spokesman for the Scottish National party, I should give notice that, as we hav...

In the interests of being collegiate, I will seek to limit my remarks to eight or nine minutes in...

Order. We now have a formal limit of six minutes.

5.6 pm

I shall be fairly brief. Over the years since the early 1990s, I have spent several months living...

If the hon. Gentleman thinks we should have wet accommodation, does he support consumption rooms ...

The truth is that I do not know, as I have not looked into it.

There is no point spending a...

My hon. Friend mentions homes, but does he agree with the Secretary of State that recruiting supp...

Absolutely, and it is another hard reality. We cannot have groups of young people in what starts ...

I have a very different set of prescriptions for some of the problems set out by the hon. Member ...

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I will come on to Walsall in a minute. I could give the House a barrage of statistics about how r...

I am just disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention the excellent work of YMCA B...

I would add to the hon. Gentleman’s list, because not only does the YMCA do an amazing job, but s...

My right hon. Friend is making a valid point. I am sure he recognises that we tried to amend the ...

What we need is what I have called Kane’s law, in memory of Kane Walker, who lost his life on the...

It is a pleasure a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrn...

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in addition to his suggestions around build to rent, the Gove...

That is a very fair point, but the Government are, of course, looking at it, and we await further...

I am delighted to call Abena Oppong-Asare to make her maiden speech.

5.27 pm

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech on an iss...

What a great pleasure it is to be called so early in this debate and to follow the hon. Member fo...

I give notice that, after the next speaker, the time limit will be reduced to three minutes. [Int...

Thank you for allowing me to speak on this important subject, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulat...

Order. We now have a time limit of three minutes.

5.46 pm

It is an absolute honour to follow the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) and to listen to...

One of the factors that I think people do not consider is that if we add a couple of hundred thou...

I thank the hon. Member for his point, and I also think it is really important for those of us wi...

My hon. Friend mentioned supported accommodation. Does she agree that such support is a vital par...

I concur entirely. People need a health worker, a mental health worker, and a private sector brok...

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and for ...

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), with whom I worke...

In the brief time I have available—I am very sorry the Secretary of State is leaving, just as I a...

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speeches from Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Birke...

As I am sure we all agree, even one person sleeping rough in this country is one person too many....

I applaud the earlier maiden speeches, which were excellent. They showed that the next few years ...

I want Government Members to understand the root causes of much of the homelessness in West Ham. ...

We all need to do more to address homelessness. That is quite clear from this debate. To their cr...

I am glad that my right hon. and hon. Friends tabled this motion, because I believe that homeless...

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asar...

My hon. Friend is right to speak of the sense of shame that I think we all feel when we see peopl...

It is a complete shame. I am going to talk about the number of deaths in a minute or two.

I...

I speak as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which I got in...

Does my hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to advocate for the people who lose their li...

Absolutely. As the Secretary of State mentioned, there is often an overlap with mental health iss...

Homelessness is the manifestation of a society that is not working. The soaring numbers of rough ...

I call Fleur Anderson.

6.27 pm

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in a debate that is important for my con...

Does my hon. Friend agree that out-of-borough housing, often in seaside towns, means that people ...

I absolutely agree, and I will share the story of one family to illustrate how the benefits and h...

The street count system is not working, and people do not trust it. When they see the increasing ...

I have already mentioned that Wandsworth does not have emergency accommodation, so does my hon. F...

Exactly, and that might stop some of the deaths, but the deaths are not just in emergency accommo...

I am grateful for being called to speak in this incredibly important debate. Parliamentarians mus...

Homelessness is a crisis and it has been a growing crisis under successive Tory-Lib Dem and Tory ...

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, no.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) los...

We are not going to get anywhere in helping these people in dire need if we continue to conflate ...

Health is of course an element, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that the most recent Labour Gover...

I thank the Opposition for bringing this debate to the House