Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

11. What progress he has made on ending rough sleeping.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to end rough sleeping.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

The Government are committed to ending rough sleeping. We published our cross-government strategy “Ending rough sleeping for good” in September 2022, and we are investing an unprecedented £2.4 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over three years. Rough sleeping levels were 18% lower in 2023 than they were at the peak in 2017 and they were 9% lower than pre-pandemic levels.

[Felicity Buchan]

This Government are absolutely committed to ending rough sleeping, which is why we are investing £2.4 billion. Importantly, £1.2 billion is going into prevention, so that we prevent homelessness before it happens. I want to address the point about the Criminal Justice Bill. The Government are clear that no one should be criminalised for having nowhere to live. The Bill gives powers to the police and local authorities only where behaviour causes damage, distress, harassment or disruption. Guidance will be issued that makes it clear that outreach and support should be prioritised.

[Will Quince]

I welcome the fact that the Government are investing £2.4 billion on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping. Notwithstanding what the Minister just said, does she agree that we need to help people off the streets, not risk criminalising them, as is regrettably proposed in part of the Criminal Justice Bill?

[Felicity Buchan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his words welcoming Government expenditure on tackling rough sleeping and homelessness. The Government are very focused on helping the most vulnerable in our society, who are often rough sleepers. That is a cross-government effort. For instance, I work closely with the Department for Education on care leavers and I work closely with the Department of Health and Social Care on those who have addictions. I reassure my hon. Friend that no one will be criminalised simply for sleeping rough.

Rough Sleeping

Will Quince Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to follow my friend the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), alongside whom I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this very important debate.

It is difficult to conduct a debate about rough sleeping without viewing it in the wider context of homelessness. The hon. Gentleman gave a compelling and comprehensive speech; it will not surprise him that I do not agree with all of it, but much of it I do agree with. He referenced a lot of the all-party parliamentary group’s work, and I will try not to repeat too many of the points that he made so eloquently. I also thank the Minister. I know it has not been a very easy 12 months for her, but she has worked very diligently on this issue and I thank her and the Secretary of State for the roles they have played.

Over the past 12 months we have seen a small decrease in rough sleeping, but it is important to point out that that is in the context of increases in London, Birmingham and Manchester in particular, and of figures still showing an increase of 165% since 2010. I welcome the Government’s ambition to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it entirely by 2027, but that is too long. I put it to the Minister that we must be far more ambitious.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I know that the figures are disputed and that the CHAIN—combined homelessness and information network—statistics show differences year to year, but with a decrease of 2% a year it will take until 2052 to deal with rough sleeping in Britain, and that is frankly not good enough.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; I picked up on that point, which the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group, also made. I think it is a little misleading, if I dare say so, on the basis that the past year is the first year in which a number of interventions kicked in, the largest of which is the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, so it is not necessarily correct to say that we will see a 2% decrease; we should see a much sharper decrease this year, next year and the year after. Of course, the key is ensuring that we stay on top of those figures and, through further debates such as this one and through the all-party parliamentary group, we continue to hold the Minister and Secretary of State’s feet to the fire to ensure that those ambitions are met.

However, I think we need to go much further. To tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, it is important that we truly understand it. The hon. Lady mentioned the statistics; the reality is that we do not entirely know, because in nearly all cases they are estimates. We have some reasonably good estimates for London, but for the rest of the country they are often based on a headcount on a single night, at one point of the year. As the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark rightly pointed out, numerous people will come into a town centre of an evening or during the day, because they can beg, and people will be kind and generous. However, because of the danger of violence in the evening, they will actually head out of town to parks and recreational spaces to sleep in tents, so may not be picked up in rough sleeping headcounts.

We know that the reasons for homelessness and rough sleeping are numerous, varied and complex. I wish it were as simple as saying that the answer is just more money, but money is only part of the answer. To some extent—I err on the side of caution when using this phrase—homelessness is a little like an illness. Successive Governments have thrown huge amounts of money at the problem, which, a bit like a painkiller, has worked in masking the pain but has not actually treated the underlying condition or, even better, actually cured it.

An old adage that works just as well for homelessness and rough sleeping as for anything else is that prevention is always better than cure. We need a two-pronged approach that covers both. In order to prevent homelessness and to help those currently homeless, we have to truly understand them, looking at those numerous, varied and complex reasons and then putting in place timely interventions to address each and every one of them, otherwise we risk regression.

The all-party parliamentary group goes to all parts of the country, and I have seen too many cases, particularly in London and my constituency of Colchester, of rough sleepers who have been through the council system. They have had support and been through temporary accommodation, and in many cases have been given social housing, but for so many reasons that has failed. That is one of the biggest problems, and if we do not address those underlying issues that cause homelessness at the outset, the likelihood of regression is sadly very high.

We need much better data—as I said, we have reasonable data for London but not for the rest of the country—in order to understand those root causes of homelessness and then address them. We know some of the causes. They include poverty, debt, eviction and section 21 notices to end assured shorthold tenancies, which are now the No. 1 cause of homelessness. They also include relationship or marital breakdown, domestic violence, landlords not letting to those in receipt of benefits, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental health issues, leaving prison or care, being LGBTQ—a particularly vulnerable cohort—hospital discharges and leaving our armed forces, which the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark mentioned.

We also have to consider the wider context. In 2017-18, we built 6,463 social homes, yet nearly 1.2 million people are on council housing waiting lists. Successive Governments have not built anywhere near enough social homes.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I do not disagree with the point the hon. Gentleman is making. Would he like to comment on the opinion of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government that the Mayor of London should build fewer affordable homes and more luxury homes, as he said yesterday?

[Will Quince]

I had not seen that, so it would be ill-judged to comment on it. I can point the hon. Gentleman to a very fine article from only last week in, I believe, the Colchester Gazette, authored by the local MP, on why we need the most ambitious Government investment in social housing since the second world war. I will touch on that in a little bit.

Sadly, we have an estimated 4,677 people sleeping rough on our streets, and 277,000 homeless households. That is due in part to a lack of security in the private rented sector, which, as I mentioned, is now the biggest single cause of homelessness. We have areas where demand massively outstrips supply, including some of our major cities and large towns, with Colchester being a prime example, so landlords will not let to those in receipt of benefits.

The Government have done some great work, which is starting to make a difference and gives some reason for optimism, including the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. I was pleased to speak at all stages of its passage and to sit on its Bill Committee. There is also the £28 million Housing First pilot, the rough sleeping initiative and the Somewhere Safe to Stay pilot. There is funding for non-UK nationals sleeping rough. There are rough sleeping support teams and mental health support outreach workers. Improvements have been made to StreetLink and there are homelessness experts in jobcentres. Those are all part of that £100 million package to support the rough sleeping strategy announced last year.

My concern is that, worthy, important and valuable as those programmes are, they treat the symptoms, not the cause. What do we need to do? The first thing I should say to the Minister is that I do not have all the answers. However, I have some suggestions on ways in which we can start to prevent homelessness and address the issue. First, we need a full nationwide roll-out of Housing First as quickly as possible. The three pilots were important and a great start, but we know that it works; we have seen it work in other countries, particularly in Scandinavia, where rough sleeping has been entirely eradicated. Secondly, fewer than half of local authorities have a night shelter, so we need to fund and build more of those. Regional hubs are hugely important.

As the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark mentioned, we need to lift the freeze on the local housing allowance, which was introduced in 2016. We also need to embed and fully fund the Homelessness Reduction Act. It is a great piece of legislation, but we must monitor it to make sure that it is working and is fully funded and, equally importantly, that local authorities use it to its full and interpret it in the right way. That is hugely important, particularly in relation to the duties it places on them. As the hon. Gentleman also mentioned, we need a help-to-rent scheme. We need to look at people who have no recourse to public funds. In London and some of our big cities, between 30% and 40% of rough sleepers are non-British nationals and are not entitled to any support, so we need to find a solution for those individuals.

We need to start treating homelessness, and particularly rough sleeping, as a health issue. I mentioned alcoholism, drug addiction and mental health issues. We need mental health support workers to go out with every outreach team up and down the country. I am pleased to see that £30 million will be invested in that regard, which will make a huge difference. For the Minister to say at one of our all-party parliamentary group meetings that the Department very much sees rough sleeping and homelessness as a health issue was an important step change.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman may feel positive about the Government accepting that homelessness should be seen as a health issue, but his Government have cut public health funding.

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady makes a good point about health funding. I have raised my own concerns about that privately with Ministers. There is a huge amount more work to do in that area. I specifically refer to outreach workers going out in our towns and cities across this country and providing support. It is often those outreach workers who are trusted to provide that support. However, I very much take her point.

Minister, we need specialist, well-funded interventions for those high-risk groups that I mentioned—particularly prison leavers, care leavers, survivors of domestic violence and the LGBTQ community. We have to give more support to those amazing charities and voluntary organisations that work so hard to tackle homelessness up and down our country. Many of those charities have been in existence for decades, but the pressures on them now are huge.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I apologise that I will not be able to stay to hear the Minister’s response. While I appreciate the hon. Gentlemen’s concern and care for what he thinks should be done, perhaps he could look at the record of the two years before and after the millennium. Those of us in local government then worked with and funded—or were supported by Government funding—via several different routes, the public sector and the third sector to provide the very services that he describes. Those services supported all sorts of vulnerable people before they became homeless. They were thought of not as homelessness services but as early intervention and prevention services, and they prevented a host of problems, not only rough sleeping.

[Will Quince]

As I mentioned, the last Labour Government made several helpful interventions, but I genuinely believe that throwing money at the issue, which the Labour Government did as much as any of their successors, is not wholly the answer. It worked like a painkiller, masking the pain, but did not address the underlying condition.

[Marsha De Cordova]

The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly long speech. It is not about throwing money at homelessness. It is the policy of austerity that has led to the rise in homelessness. That is just a fact.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for the intervention. I mentioned that the issue is in part about money, but it is not wholly about money; it is also about getting the right interventions in place. The hon. Lady may not have been listening entirely. I would very much welcome her coming to some of our APPG meetings, because then she would know that it is not just about austerity. Austerity may be part of the issue, because of course if we cut back on services up and down the country, everything has a consequence, but the reasons for homelessness and, in particular, rough sleeping are complex, varied and numerous. It cannot be put down to just one thing.

We need to address the availability of high-strength cheap alcohol on our high streets. I appreciate that doing something about that is not within the Minister’s gift, but I hope that she can take the issue away.

I know that this will be a controversial point, but we need to try to rechannel the generosity of the British public. Too many people are, understandably, giving money to people on the streets. My message to them is this. That generosity is incredible, but please direct the money to the amazing charities that work in our towns and cities up and down the country. By all means, support people with food, blankets and all sorts of other things, but not with money, because in too many cases, as we find if we speak to rough sleepers, it ends up going on drugs and alcohol, and sadly that is helping to perpetuate their rough sleeping. It is making the problem worse, not better, so I encourage people to support charities that are working on the ground and not to give money to individuals.

I want to come back to what the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) said. Yes, we can throw money at an issue, but unless we address the underlying cause, we will not solve it, and the underlying cause of this issue is that successive Governments have failed to build anywhere near enough social housing. That is as true of the last Labour Government as it was of the Government before them and of the Government before them. That is why I genuinely believe that, finally and most importantly, we need the most ambitious and largest Government social house building programme since the second world war. I refer the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) back to that rather punchy article on this issue.

[Andy Slaughter]

Again, I cannot fault what the hon. Gentleman is saying about social housing. It is what all the homelessness charities are urging on us. I just hope that he can have some influence on the Government whom he supports. But perhaps he can explain, then, why rough sleeping fell by 75% in the last 10 years of the Labour Government and has gone up by 165% in less than 10 years of his own party’s Government.

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. There are many reasons for what he refers to. The Government could tomorrow invest tens of millions of pounds—well, it would be more than tens of millions—in more temporary accommodation, and that would get more people off the streets, but it would not address the underlying problem, which is that we need long-term, permanent, secure accommodation for people up and down our country.

I come back to the fundamental point about social housing. I want us to get back to building in the region of 100,000 social houses a year. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that in 2018-19 the total housing benefit bill is likely to hit an incredible £23.4 billion —£23.4 billion—and it is only going in one direction; it is only increasing. That means that we are spending more than £20 billion a year to mitigate the effects of a housing shortage brought about by successive Governments, without finding a long-term solution to the problem. Arguably, what is worse is that, because of the lack of social housing, those who need homes are being housed in the private rented sector, so taxpayers’ money is being transferred into the pockets of private landlords, which in turn only increases demand in the private rented sector and drives up rents for everyone else. I suggest that investing in social homes is a far more efficient use of public money. Once built, those social homes would be public assets that would appreciate in value.

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way. Does he agree with me on this point? The Government recently announced that they would make direct payments to private landlords to avoid escalating rent arrears. Would it not be sensible to make the same offer to social landlords?

[Will Quince]

I will have to look to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, because I believe that that is a recommendation that the all-party parliamentary group has made. It is one of those changes that would be a positive step.

The other reason why a large and ambitious programme of social housing would be a good thing is that it would provide—this is why there is a strong Conservative case for doing it—an immediate financial return through the reduced housing benefit bill. It would also alleviate hugely the pressure on the private rented sector and ultimately, I believe, lead to cheaper rents.

I will conclude because I am conscious that many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate. Although I hugely support the Government’s aim and ambition, I want us to be far more ambitious, and, through the all-party parliamentary group, we will continue to push the Government to be more ambitious. I said earlier that homelessness is a little like an illness. I want us to invest fully and properly in the treatment and cure, and that does mean significant resource. So I say to the Minister: please set out an ambitious strategy to tackle the root causes, and the whole House—I believe that this would be cross-party—will support you in making the case to the Treasury. It would lead not only to a financial benefit but to a huge social benefit. One family homeless or one person sleeping rough on our streets is one too many. Let this be the Government who put in place the long-term strategy to end homelessness, and Minister, we will all be behind you.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

Absolutely. My apologies—when I mentioned the fantastic reduction of rough sleepers in his area from 35 to 11, I meant to say that I would be delighted to meet Depaul.

[Will Quince]

At the moment, survivors of domestic abuse are subject to a vulnerability test. Could the Minister look at removing that, so that it is an automatic priority need?

[Mrs Wheeler]

We will keep all such matters under review.

I hope that my remarks have demonstrated the Government’s commitment to halving and ending rough sleeping and to reducing homelessness. I thank hon. Members for their speeches and questions, and I thank all the charities mentioned today. I look forward to working with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and other hon. Members of different parties in the coming months and years. I also thank my brilliant team for all their hard work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to reduce homelessness.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

17. What steps his Department is taking to reduce homelessness.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

I thank my hon. Friends for their questions. We are spending more than £1.2 billion through to 2020, and we have implemented the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, published our £100 million rough sleeping strategy and taken immediate action to begin to reduce the number of people on the streets.

[Mrs Wheeler]

We are delighted to be piloting Housing First at scale across England for the first time. The impact of that approach will be measured by a rigorous evaluation, which will ensure that we have the robust evidence base needed to demonstrate its effectiveness and inform future spending decisions.

[Will Quince]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me and the more than 20 homelessness and health charities, including St Mungo’s, which today published a joint open letter to Sir Simon Stevens of NHS England, that to tackle homelessness, we need to ensure that the NHS works with others and local authorities to provide better support for those tackling mental health, alcohol and drug addiction and sleeping rough on our streets?

[Mrs Wheeler]

My hon. Friend is an assiduous campaigner on this matter. We appreciate that this is a very high priority for all local constituency MPs on both sides of the Chamber. I certainly agree that wraparound support is crucial to help people who have been sleeping rough to access and sustain accommodation. In our recent rough sleeping strategy, we announced a range of measures, including asking NHS England to spend up to £30 million over five years on health services for rough sleepers.

Homes (Fitness for Habitation) Bill

Will Quince Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Buck]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that. This Bill is one tool and there are many others we need to adopt to ensure that tenants have a full range of rights and, indeed, are protected against retaliatory eviction. That is outwith the scope of this Bill, but there is much more we will seek to do and will no doubt be pressing the Government to do, on matters ranging from security of tenure protection to the provision of legal aid and advice services

I have always believed that politics is a collective effort. For most of us, most of the time, what we do in here is part of a team effort. Although that can sometimes drift into tribalism, there is no shame in the fact that politics is not primarily about what we do as individuals. Private Members’ Bills are one of the few ways in which we, as individual Back-Bench MPs, can make a difference, but in truth this, too, has been a team effort. I am grateful to the Minister and to the officials, who have been brilliant; it has been a joy working with them on this Bill. I also thank all the MPs, from both sides of the House, who spoke on Second Reading, who served in Committee and who are here today to see us through Third Reading.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

May I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing this important Bill? It has been a pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee. Does she agree that this is a shining example of the huge amounts that can be achieved when Back Benchers work with the Government?

Ipswich-London Rail Fares

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I cannot speak to the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituents in particular, but I can confirm that Greater Anglia’s overall performance is currently around 89.1%, on the public performance measure, which assesses whether a train arrives within five minutes of its scheduled arrival time. That is against its target, under the franchise for this period, of 91.3%, so it is only marginally off what we have specified for that period of the year.

For the sixth year running, we are capping fees in line with inflation. It is important that we continue to receive this fare income, albeit capped, because it makes such a vital contribution to the investment that we are piling back into the rail system: 98p in every pound goes straight back in as investment. The most significant of those costs are the investments in the network itself and in staff costs, which is why it is so important that we get fares linked ultimately to the more commonly used CPI measure of inflation. For that to be sustainable, we need income and costs in the industry to change in parallel. Linking fares to the CPI without linking other costs in the industry to it would cause higher and higher costs to be borne by the taxpayer rather than by rail users. The Secretary of State wants to work with the rail industry, the Office of Rail and Road and the unions to ensure that wage costs for all employees are based on the CPI and not the RPI in future pay deals.

As the hon. Member for Ipswich noted, we are ensuring that when things do go wrong, passengers are compensated fairly. As was noted a few moments ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), we are in the process of moving Greater Anglia from Delay Repay 30 to Delay Repay 15, and we hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to welcome that on behalf of his constituents. In his statement to the House on Thursday, the Secretary of State said that he wanted Delay Repay 15 to be introduced next year.

Stations are also receiving significant investment. Services on the Great Eastern main line between Norwich and London will be improved considerably. As I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises, access for disabled people at Ipswich station has been improved and smart ticketing has been introduced, all within the period of capping fare rises at inflation only. As a result—as the hon. Gentleman said—Ipswich station recently won the “large station of the year” award at the 2018 national rail awards event. That is all part of a £60 million programme of investment by Greater Anglia in stations on its network until 2025.

A number of members mentioned the new trains that will be introduced during the franchise period. That is an exciting and promising development for passengers in East Anglia. There will be 169 new trains—most of them electric, but some bimodal—to replace old British Rail-era rolling stock: much cleaner-running, faster, more spacious and more efficient modern trains for Members’ constituents.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

My constituents, who also travel on the Great Eastern main line, have waited for, in some cases, 40 years for the brand-new fleet of trains that will be introduced next year. The Minister mentioned changes in fares and infrastructure changes. Can he confirm that none of those changes would threaten the introduction of the new trains?

[Joseph Johnson]

Indeed they will not. Our priority is to ensure that the new trains are in service by the end of 2020. Once they have been introduced, passengers in Colchester will experience improved journey times, much greater reliability, and much more comfortable journeys.

I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich, and all colleagues in the Chamber who represent East Anglia—and parts of Gloucestershire, and areas further afield—for their contributions. We will continue to look at ways of being able both to improve services and to keep the cost to the passenger to a minimum. Greater Anglia is a train operator that will be in place at least until 2025, and it has shown a willingness to work with the Government and invest in the railways. I hope that, when we reach the end of the term of the East Anglia franchise, we will all be proud of the successes that the Government’s partnership with Greater Anglia has achieved.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I very much welcome the £28 million to trial or pilot Housing First and the £192,000 to my local authority for a micro-Housing First project. Given that we know this approach works, in particular for rough sleepers with very complex needs, what steps can my right hon. Friend take to accelerate the roll-out across the United Kingdom?

[James Brokenshire]

I commend my hon. Friend for his work on the all-party parliamentary group for this important issue. As he highlights, we are piloting in three areas, but we are reflecting carefully on the issue of complexity and the challenges that those who are rough sleeping face in getting accommodation, and we will propose further measures as we bring forward our rough sleeping strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Will Quince Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department is taking to reduce homelessness.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)]

Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority for me and my Ministry. That is why we are spending more than £1 billion through to 2020. We are implementing the most ambitious legislative reform in decades—the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—and we have established the rough sleeping and homelessness reduction taskforce.

[Will Quince]

The all-party group on ending homelessness recently took evidence on the success of rapid rehousing models in Denmark. What consideration has my right hon. Friend given to the merits of rolling out such programmes alongside the faster and wider roll-out of Housing First in England?

[Sajid Javid]

May I first pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the important role that he has played as the co-chair of the all-party group on ending homelessness? He is absolutely right to point to international experience when looking at the huge challenge that this country faces. As he knows, Housing First has come from the experience of others, particularly Finland. I thank him for his support.

Homelessness

Will Quince Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).

There is no inevitability about homelessness. In 21st-century Britain, there is no reason for anybody to sleep rough on our streets. It is perhaps too easy to walk past a rough sleeper and pretend that they are not there, and to think that the individual before us must have done something wrong—that they are a drug addict or alcoholic, someone to be fearful of and stay away from. We must break this taboo. Every rough sleeper is somebody’s son or daughter and every or any single one of us could be in that position within a small number of unfortunate life events. We must never forget that.

It cannot be said enough that one person sleeping rough on our streets is one person too many. In last year’s autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced £28 million of funding for three Housing First pilots in Manchester, Liverpool and the west midlands. That was such an important move, because the underlying causes of homelessness, and, in particular, rough sleeping, are incredibly complex. To suggest that they are attributable to any single cause is to display an unwillingness truly to understand the issue.

The more we can learn about what forces people on to our streets, the better we can target preventive support, yet there are some things that we do know. If we look at the 2016-17 Combined Homelessness and Information Network figures for London, we can see that among those who were interviewed the single biggest reason given by new rough sleepers for leaving their previous accommodation was the loss of a tenancy, yet that was not because they were evicted for antisocial behaviour or rent arrears. Individuals were asked to leave, most likely through section 21 notices from their landlords. The second biggest reason was relationship breakdown, which is not all that unexpected given that young single men are rarely considered a priority need unless they are vulnerable. We need to consider both issues to see how rough sleeping can be prevented, but it is more important to ensure that there are support services in place for those already sleeping rough on our streets.

The CHAIN report found that 47% of the rough sleepers that the network spoke to had mental health support needs, 44% had alcohol support needs and 35% had drug support needs. That underlines the problem in trying to tackle this issue: rough sleeping is not simply a homelessness problem. All too often we hear stories of individuals who have been helped off the streets and into temporary accommodation but who do not get the support they need to address the root causes so, unfortunately, they end up back on the streets.

Addiction can also affect people’s ability to enter emergency accommodation. In my experience, those sleeping rough on our streets cannot stay at the local night shelter or hostel because they have an alcohol or drug addiction. That is why Housing First is so important. We need to get vulnerable people off the streets and into stable accommodation so that we can help them with their underlying support needs.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

We do not have to go too far from here—just down to Victoria—to see people living rough on the streets. I often wonder why nothing has been done about them, and I see them regularly down there. There is another factor too. Homeless families have been exploited by landlords and are in overcrowded accommodation, and some of them are evicted because they cannot afford to pay the rents, so we should think about building council housing for a change as well.

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I want specifically to talk about rough sleeping, and he raises a point about wider homelessness. I have no doubt that colleagues across the Chamber will speak more widely about homelessness, but I want to talk about rough sleeping, which does not necessarily fall into the category of families. It tends predominantly to involve young single men and young single women.

We do not have to look too widely across the world to see that Housing First is working and helping rough sleepers with the most complex needs.

[Helen Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about Housing First, in that it is a well-proven approach to addressing the complex needs of rough sleepers. Does he therefore agree that three pilot schemes, none of them in London, represent a paltry approach from this Government to a practice that we know works and that should be funded to address this urgent crisis?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady, with whom I worked on the Homelessness Reduction Act, makes a good point. If she bears with me, she might like what I will have to say in just a few moments.

In my view, the Housing First approach is a common-sense approach. Think about it: how can we provide the support services needed to help rough sleepers with their mental health, drug or alcohol issues when the support workers never know from day to day where they can find those individuals? How do we address the general and mental health problems that are all too common with rough sleepers when they are under extraordinary pressure and physical strain from living on the streets?

Like the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), I am pleased the Government have launched the pilots, but I think that it is time to go further and faster. I believe that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government wants to go further. He is committed to tackling the issue and is determined that the Government will halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it entirely by 2027. But I want him to be bold and radical. If this was the first time that such a project had been undertaken, I would understand being hesitant about moving faster and the desire to evaluate how the pilots work, but they already exist in the UK and are used across the world. We should implement Housing First across the country as a priority. At the very least—and I look to the Minister on this—let us have a timetable for the full roll-out of Housing First programmes across England.

Most importantly, we must ensure that the programmes are fully linked up with local support services that are given the funding they need to help those sleeping rough with their mental health problems or addictions. Of course, that will involve spending money, but in my view that is a short-term cost. The study by the University of York and the Centre for Housing Policy found that Housing First programmes cost between £26 and £40 an hour, yet the potential savings are estimated to be as high as £15,000 per person per year if we include reductions in use across the NHS and in our police and courts services. So this is not only the right thing to do, but will save the taxpayer money.

Homelessness and rough sleeping in particular often have many complex underlying issues, which means that addressing them will require more than one solution. The Government have already made good progress on tackling homelessness, whether through the Homelessness Reduction Act—it was a privilege to serve on the Bill Committee, and I am delighted that it has become an Act of Parliament and will be implemented in April—

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Will Quince]

Of course.

[Giles Watling]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. As a student, I studied sociology and I spent some time on the streets and at St Martin-in-the-Fields at the Crypt. I know that people went through a lot of hard times down there, and that was many years ago—decades and decades ago. This problem has been with us for such a long time but what we must do is think outside the box and always be flexible. Housing First is a great and a wonderful project, but we must go further and we must always look at these people, communicate with them and ask them why they are there. It is not always just about mental health or family breakdown. There are many reasons, but we must keep the line of communication open.

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which has taken up a fair chunk of my remaining time—but nevertheless I thank him for it. We need to stop thinking of rough sleeping as simply a homelessness problem and, by rolling out Housing First programmes across England, linking them with support services and giving them the funding they need, we have the opportunity to transform the lives of the people sleeping rough on our streets. My hon. Friend is right that we need to think outside the box. I think that to a large extent Housing First is the answer, but we must roll it out faster and further. I know that the Secretary of State wants to do this, so I say to the Minister: let this be the Government that end rough sleeping for good.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Will Quince Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad). I, too, support the Bill and commend the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for introducing it; I worked with her on the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).

I pay tribute to Shelter. It has done a fantastic job campaigning on many of the issues we are talking about today, and the Bill receiving its Second Reading would be a testament to all its hard work in this area.

We have already seen action to help people get into properties—Help to Buy for those looking to own, and the Budget included help to rent—and this must now be extended to ensuring that people live in properties that are fit for purpose. The 2015-16 English housing survey found that almost 795,000 homes in the private rented sector and almost 245,000 in the social rented sector have a category 1 hazard. A category 1 hazard is defined in the housing health and safety rating system as:

“a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety.”

The phrase “health and safety” might cause a few eyes to roll, but we are talking here about some very serious things: asbestos, mould and damp, carbon monoxide and the products of fuel combustion. What if I said this represents 6% of properties in the social rented sector, or that it represents 17% of properties in the private rented sector? Let us just think about that for a moment. There is nearly a one in five chance that a property one of our constituents goes out and rents has a hazard considered a “serious and immediate risk”; this has to change.

The Bill’s key function is to provide a meaningful route for those living in properties that are not fit for purpose to get necessary repairs done. We are not seeking to be disparaging about landlords; the overwhelming majority of them always try to do the right thing by their tenants and take swift action to resolve any faults or problems with their properties. If anything, the majority of them, who are tired and fed up with having their reputation trashed and tarnished by others in this sector who simply—excuse my language, Madam Deputy Speaker—don’t give a damn, want this Bill to pass.

At present, tenants are dependent on their local authority for action to be taken regarding property standards. This can be difficult enough when someone is renting accommodation from a private landlord, but what about when their landlord is their local authority? It is important to have a route open to tenants that ensures that local authorities do not have conflicting interests.

The Bill will give tenants the right to take their landlords to court where the property they inhabit is not fit for purpose. They will be able to apply for an injunction directly that will compel their landlords to carry out the necessary repairs or for compensation from their landlords for their failure to maintain the property. In the worst cases, tenants will be able to provide their own evidence to the judge, rather than, as at present, having to rely on an environmental health officer or independent surveyor’s report. Local authorities can focus their resources on the very worst landlords.

There is always a reluctance about legislating in this area—a belief that this is a matter best left to be resolved between individual landlords and tenants—but let us be clear: this is not about the Government telling landlords what to do; it is about levelling the playing field. Nor does it introduce anything new. No new property standards are defined in the Bill. There is no additional regulation. We are simply making sure that existing standards are enforced.

The final point I want to make is to do with the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, which the hon. Member for Kensington rightly referenced. An inquiry is taking place, and I do not want to speculate about what it will find or who is to blame, but we have all heard the harrowing stories about the unsafe conditions, including fire doors that did not work, insufficient emergency lighting in stairwells and inadequate smoke ventilation. A number of those concerns had previously been raised by tenants, who felt that they were being ignored. We must never again have a situation in which genuine issues, particularly those relating to safety, are not tackled by landlords. When tenants feel unsafe, landlords have to take action. They must listen; no ifs, no buts.

That is what the Bill will do. It will empower tenants so that when they tell a landlord that the condition of their property is simply not good enough, the landlord must take notice and resolve the problem. This is not some kind of top-down diktat; it is bottom-up accountability. That is why I am pleased to support the hon. Member for Westminster North and her Bill on Second Reading. It is a welcome and necessary step towards ensuring that every tenant is given the basic right to live in a home that is fit for purpose. Our constituents deserve nothing less.