Homeless Young People

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) on securing this debate and giving us all the chance to discuss this important issue.

Many hon. Members have spoken of their own personal experiences, including volunteering. The hon. Gentleman gave a good opening speech, in which he pointed out that he had been in a pretty desperate situation himself, doing what is called sofa-surfing, something that sounds better than it is—it is a stressful situation for anyone, as it is just one step away from becoming a rough sleeper.

Today’s debate is about Government support for young people who are homeless, but I want to start by putting on the record my tribute and thanks to the many charitable organisations that do such important work on this issue. Some have representatives here today. Since I became shadow Housing Minister, I have had a lot of help, support and advice from Crisis. Its No One Turned Away campaign is one that we have all read about and, I am sure, are all passionate about. I also pay tribute to Centrepoint, St Mungo’s Broadway, Depaul, YMCA, Shelter, Homeless Link and countless others.

In my constituency and home town of Wolverhampton there are small local charities such as P3, Home Group Stonham, the RMC—Refugee and Migrant Centre—TLC college and the Haven. Churches all round the country also help people, through soup kitchens and also, sometimes, by providing shelter. Only yesterday, in Bedford, I visited the YMCA Beds for All home, which provides housing and support for homeless people of a variety of ages who have just come out of hospital. It was tremendous to see the work that the YMCA is doing to help those people turn their lives around.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) pointed out that we are one of the richest countries in the world. That is why it is so incredibly tragic and unacceptable that homelessness is with us. We talk about the numbers, but in my opinion one homeless person is one too many. I am sure that homelessness must be a terrifying experience for anybody, but it is particularly so for young people. The youth homelessness charity Centrepoint estimates that as many as 80,000 young people in the UK experience homelessness of some kind every year. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay highlighted, according to research by Crisis, half of all homeless people first became homeless under the age of 21. The majority of those who, unfortunately, first experience homelessness at such a young age face that experience again and again because they cannot get the help they need.

When a person has a number of complex problems, it can take only one thing to tip them into homelessness. When I visited a Crisis at Christmas centre over the Christmas period, I was reminded of that. I asked one of the volunteer chefs, “Why do you give up 10 days of your time during the Christmas period, when there is family pressure on you to be at home, to do what you are doing here?” He said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” That was a stark reminder that it is all too easy for people to reach that tipping point and find themselves in such a situation.

Many hon. Members have already pointed out that many young people are driven to homelessness by a dispute at home or by their families kicking them out. The dispute might be due to overcrowding in the family home, as the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) said, or because the young person or someone in their family has a new or existing mental health problem. All sorts of issues contribute to those tragic situations. If the young person does not have family support, which is vital, although many of us take it for granted, it is all too easy for them to enter a downward spiral.

As many hon. Members have said, young homeless people are much more vulnerable than the rest of the homeless population. Shockingly, two in five have experienced abuse at home and a third have been in care. There are also wider structural causes, such as a lack of affordable housing, the housing crisis, extreme poverty, unemployment and worklessness.

I am proud of the previous Labour Government’s record. We were determined to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness, and during our period in office there was a 70% drop in the numbers. We launched the flagship Supporting People programme, created the rough sleepers unit to reduce rough sleeping, and dramatically reduced the number of people and families in long-term bed-and-breakfast accommodation. When we left office there was still more to do, but I fear that since 2010, for a number of reasons, that progress has been rolled back.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale said, we have had a deep recession, but apparently we are in a recovery and the economy is growing. However, the number of people who are homeless and sleeping rough has continued to rise. Data from the Combined Homeless and Information Network, or CHAIN—a recording system for the homelessness charity St Mungo’s Broadway —show that 762 people found sleeping on the streets of London last year were under 25, which was a big increase on the 436 it found in 2009-10. For every person on the street, there are thousands without a decent, secure home.

I welcome the Government’s “No Second Night Out” initiative, which builds on some of the things we did in government, but I am afraid that some of their broader actions have made things much harder for young people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

[Ian Lavery]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that not one speaker from the Government parties has mentioned welfare reform, which is having an impact on homelessness? Not one of them has talked about the bedroom tax, sanctions or the other things that we have mentioned. We are entitled to disagree about whether this is a political issue, but the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) suggested that we were lowering the tone of the debate by talking about politics. Politics is about choice, and politicians of all political persuasions are entitled to challenge other politicians. The political decisions that have been made are causing mayhem for young homeless people.

[Emma Reynolds]

And it is the responsibility of the official Opposition to hold the Government to account.

Although we welcome the Government’s “No Second Night Out” initiative, the overall framework within which we are working is worse than it was when we left office. We have had the bedroom tax and the housing crisis—the number of houses being built is the lowest in peacetime since the 1920s. Lower numbers of affordable homes are being built—in particular, homes for social rent, on which many people on low incomes rely. I am concerned about the worrying rise in the use of benefit sanctions, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke eloquently. The Government deny it, but it seems that jobcentres have unofficial targets for sanctions. In many cases, as has been highlighted, it is being done unfairly and is causing hardship.

Councils such as Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Rochdale and Sheffield are facing the biggest local government cuts in the country, especially compared with wealthier areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) is right that political choices have been made. Unfortunately, the Government’s political choices have made the situation worse.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I agree that we must situate this problem among a raft of policies. There is an association between homelessness and drug problems. We have discovered that last year, as a result of the cuts to the work being done with drug users, there was a 30% increase in deaths associated with drugs.

[Emma Reynolds]

That is truly worrying. Many of these problems are connected with substance misuse and mental health problems. Young people, in particular, must have much earlier access to help. That could be help with fighting an addiction or with mental health problems that sometimes become apparent only in people’s later teenage years, their 20s or further on in their lives.

It is important that the next Government—I hope they are a Labour Government—get the framework right. We have got to build more homes and, crucially, more affordable homes. We are going to abolish the bedroom tax and make renting in the private rental sector much more secure and stable, because at the moment tenants are not getting a good deal. We are one of the richest countries in the world, so it is unacceptable that we have such a high level of homelessness, especially among our vulnerable young people. The next Labour Government will tackle the tragic phenomenon of youth homelessness. We will take the concerted action across government that is desperately needed to get those people the help they need.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) for securing such an important debate.

I recognise many of the issues that hon. Members have raised, which is why tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority for the Government. I have no doubt that being homeless affects every aspect of a person’s life. I do not want to see anybody in the frightening, difficult and challenging situation that my hon. Friend described, particularly because many of the individuals affected are extremely vulnerable.

I understand and share my hon. Friend’s ambition to eradicate homelessness altogether. However, a crisis in an individual’s life can happen at any time. The key things are preventing homelessness and helping individuals who find themselves in that situation. Whichever Government are in power, they can put significant resource into dealing with the issue, and I should put on record that we have put half a billion pounds into tackling homelessness and an additional £445 million into addressing some of the welfare reform issues involved. However, many of the key interventions are undertaken by charities such as Crisis and others, and the vast majority of the work is undertaken by local authorities, which do an enormous amount, and I want to pay tribute to the individuals involved. That half a billion pounds has prevented almost 700,000 households from becoming homeless since 2010, so a significant amount of prevention work is going on. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be interested to know that Cornwall has intervened for 5,000 households and supported those individuals, and I applaud its efforts to look after people who have found themselves in that difficult situation.

We should recognise that despite the tough set of economic circumstances, statutory homelessness is now lower than in 27 of the past 30 years, which is a significant change. However, the Government want to make sure that there is a strong safety net; it is particularly important that families and vulnerable individuals should have a house to live in. We have made sure that when particular authorities have been struggling to keep within the law as far as the six-week window on bed-and- breakfast accommodation is concerned, we have put additional money in to be able to intervene for those authorities. By working with them and with their peer councils, we reduced the number of such instances by 96% by December 2013. Those really high levels of reduction have continued in the years since.

The issue of housing supply was raised, and that could be a political matter—I recognise this is a political arena—but we should recognise that housing supply has not kept up with demand for many decades. Coming out of a recession, it is not just about pressing a button and getting housing going again. We need to have the skill set, the resource and the confidence in the market needed to build houses, and we have to make sure that councils have sufficient land to be able to do so.

However, I want to put on record the fact that 217,000 affordable homes have been built since April 2010, involving £19.5 billion of public and private moneys. The affordable homes programme will deliver 170,000 houses by March this year, and a further project to deliver 275,000 houses with £38 billion of public and private money is en route.

There are two interesting results: first, we have built more affordable homes than were built during any equivalent period in the past 20 years. Although I recognise that all Governments have struggled to deliver affordable homes, we are building a significant number. Secondly, more council homes have been built in the lifetime of this Government than in the 13 years of the previous Administration.

[Emma Reynolds]

Will the Minister recognise that the number of homes built for social rent fell last year to its lowest level in 20 years, and also that the Government have changed their definition of affordability to 80% of market rent?