Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I hope my hon. Friend will excuse my back; as we all know, we talk to each other through the Speaker.

This is a very difficult issue, and one that we want to get right. People from all sides are asking questions about it, which is why the consultation is so important, and I encourage my hon. Friend and other people to take part in it. A very interesting report from 2010 suggested that rent control would make matters an awful lot worse, but the consultation is important.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Estimates of homelessness among veterans of our armed forces range from the low thousands to approximately 11,000. Why does the Minister think that the Government have failed veterans of our services?

[Mrs Wheeler]

As Members might imagine, as the Minister with responsibility for veterans in MHCLG, I have taken a great interest in this matter. In London, we have data from the combined homelessness and information network—so-called CHAIN data—which gives us very good and specific data about the number of veterans who are on the streets. Similarly, the homelessness case level information classification, or H-CLIC, contains data that all councils put into it. It is still experimental, because it has been going for less than 18 months, but the latest figures show that the number of veterans on the streets is lower than it has ever been, and lower than 3%.[Official Report, 5 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 4MC.]