Rough Sleeping

Debate between Neil Coyle and Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Coyle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I should probably finish my speech, because he has just said everything—[Interruption.] Steady on, I am not giving up that easily. He made three salient points, and I hope the Minister heard them being made from her Back Benches.

This issue is not, and should never be, a party political one. I am proud to co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness with the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince). Through him, we have met the Minister—if I had requested a meeting, I do not think she would have been as free with her time as she might be with the hon. Gentleman—and together we have had some successes. I look forward to that continuing. Work on this subject is happening across the parties and the solutions are there if we are prepared to invest in them.

Had I finished my thank yous? No. I was going to mention Crisis, Shelter and other organisations. Crisis provides facilitation for the all-party group.

The background to the debate is the statistics on rough sleeping, which were published a week ago. The wider background, which has been touched on by others, is the rise in overall homelessness every year for the past eight years. On that wider issue, I hope that the Minister will indicate in her response whether she thinks the overall homelessness figure, which I think is to be published at the end of March, will rise or fall. What is her expectation?

I also pay tribute—as all MPs do—to the work of local organisations in my constituency. That includes St Mungo’s, which does some brilliant work.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. If it were not for local organisations, such as the Slough homelessness forum in my constituency, which helps the council to operate two night shelters, we would be in a much worse situation. Does he not agree that it is a shocking indictment of our society that rough sleeping has more than doubled, increasing by more than 165% since 2010?

[Neil Coyle]

I have not been able to disagree with a single intervention yet—someone will have to challenge me. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

There is a positive and a negative: the positive is that the public care about this issue. Volunteers help out, and even St Mungo’s in my constituency relies on them to do the outreach. I went on a walkabout with them, to support homeless people and to try to get them into shelters during the very cold spell last year. The public appetite is there. People are willing to give their time and donations to address the issue. That, however, is in the face of eight years of annual increases in homelessness and of Government policies that directly contributed to that rise. That is the negative.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Coyle]

Yes, baby milk too. If anyone watching this debate wants to donate, do not just take food—it is not just about pasta and beans—but take all the other daily essentials.

A young woman who came to me was sleeping with someone different every night rather than go back to an abusive domestic environment or sleep on the streets. That is an appalling situation for people to be in. The two truisms from all the individuals I see is that no personal circumstances have been anything other than tragic, but all of them are avoidable—without exception—if we get the policies right.

The latest statistics are shameful: in the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet in the 21st century, an estimated 4,700 people are forced to sleep rough. That is completely unacceptable, whatever the politics. Genuine efforts to tackle rough sleeping are welcome. It is the most extreme form of homelessness, but in November last year, Shelter estimated that there were 320,000 homeless people in Britain. That fuller extent of homelessness needs adequate attention. It is not just about rough sleeping, because moving people from the streets into temporary accommodation still leaves them homeless.

Those statistics show that for every homeless person we see sleeping rough, there are about 63 other homeless people who are less visible: they are in temporary accommodation, sofa surfing or on night buses like my constituent. Some say that rough sleeping is the tip of the homeless iceberg, but if an iceberg is one-eighth out of the water, the analogy is not strong enough. Rough sleeping would not even be a quarter of what is visible above the water, if my maths is right—I make no claim to be a mathematician.

The latest statistics on rough sleeping show that the total number of people counted or estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night was 4,677, which is down 2% from the 2017 total of 4,751. That is a reduction of 74 people. It is important to flag that that data set is not strong enough. No one thinks that it is the most reliable way to assess the genuine number of people sleeping rough.

[Mr Dhesi]

To build on those statistics, research in 2014 found that 61% of women and 16% of men who were homeless had experienced violence or abuse from a partner. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a serious link between homelessness and domestic abuse that the Government need to investigate further and deal with?

[Neil Coyle]

I completely agree, and I will come back to domestic violence later.

The data are based on numbers on the street, but areas such as Brent Council did an estimate rather than go out and count, so that is not a reliable figure. Keith, the Big Issue seller at London Bridge, sleeps in a bin cupboard on the Purbrook Estate near Tower Bridge Road. Nobody went into that bin cupboard to count him. That estimate is not an adequate assessment of the problem. I hope that the Minister will tell us how she intends to ensure that data collection is more robust. That decrease of 74, based on a faulty test, is on the back of an increase of 2,909 since 2010, using the Government’s own measure. Under the last Labour Government, the number of rough sleepers was at an all-time low. The latest figures suggest that rough sleeping may have reached a two-year low.