Homelessness

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I said, the figures for the past year suggest we are seeing a reduction in street homelessness—a modest reduction, I admit, of 2%, but a reduction none the less. We will not find out the official figures for the most recent count taken in November until next month, but having been to a number of local authorities across the country in recent weeks and spoken to them it seems to me that we will see a further, more significant fall in rough sleeping when we receive those figures. I have not for one moment suggested that that is an end in itself. We need to go much further and much faster. In my remarks, I will set out exactly what this new Conservative Government intend to do.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am glad the Secretary of State raised Housing First. I know he will join me in congratulating Councillor Yvonne Davies and Councillor Sharon Thompson, who had to take back control of delivering it to drive some of the reductions we have seen in the west midlands. The point really is this: for Housing First to work, we first need houses. The truth is that the number of social homes built in the west midlands has fallen by 17% in the past year and by 18% since 2010. Surely that must be turned around.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very happy to praise anybody who has been involved in Housing First. As I said, a few days before Christmas I visited a Housing First pilot in Walsall and was tremendously impressed by the work there. I met a lady who had been taken off the streets in Walsall. She had been sleeping rough in a park for a long time, but was spending her first Christmas for a number of years in a home of her own and would shortly be having her children over for Christmas lunch, which she had not managed to enjoy, I think, for over decade. It is a tribute to the housing associations that are willing to participate in Housing First. I want more housing associations to do so. We will clearly need to provide both the funding and the certainty of that funding, because it is a significant endeavour for a housing association. That housing association, for example, is not only giving property and a home to that lady, but promising to provide wrap-around care, an individual to visit or phone that person, every day for up to three years. That is an incredibly sophisticated and bespoke level of care, but one that is working extremely well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I have a very different set of prescriptions for some of the problems set out by the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway).

Debates in this place are always political, but they sometimes touch on the personal, too. I am the adult son of an alcoholic. Since I lost my father to a lifelong struggle with alcohol five years ago, I have sought to campaign for those in my home city of Birmingham who are self-medicating trauma with drugs and with alcohol. The reality is that what we see on our streets is that the safety net in this country—the social insurance system of which we were once proud—has now so comprehensively collapsed and the holes in that safety net are so big that anyone now hit by a twist of fate without a family to help them will fall straight through and hit the pavement, where in my region, on average, they are now dying every 10 days. That is why I say to this House that the subject of this debate is a moral emergency, which is why the response we need from Her Majesty’s Government is an awful lot stronger than what we heard today.

In cities such as Birmingham, we may have planes in the sky but we have homeless people dying in the doorways. Having this in the second city of the fifth richest country on earth is not a morally acceptable situation. I could give the House a barrage of statistics—

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will come on to Walsall in a minute. I could give the House a barrage of statistics about how rough sleeping in my city is up by 1,000% since 2010; about how the number of homeless children has trebled; and about how we now have a crisis of overcrowding, with one in five homes in inner-city Birmingham and the Black Country now overcrowded. But I do not want to talk about statistics. I want to talk about a story. It is the story of a man I met in an underpass next to Birmingham New Street station when I was out on a Sunday morning last year with an amazing team of people called Outreach Angels. We saw a man lying on the floor in acute distress—a double amputee next to his wheelchair. This was in an underpass that stank of urine. He had been there for three days, and he was still dressed in his hospital gown with a hospital tag on his wrist. It took us nearly two hours to get that man an ambulance. How on earth have we come to this in this country?

Thank God across our region we now have a coalition of kindness that is fighting back, with extraordinary people and organisations, including Hope into Action: Black Country; Matt Lambert, who does great work in Wolverhampton; Nobby Clarke, the Coventry night shelter and Hope Coventry; Langar Aid and Khalsa Aid International; SIFA Fireside; the outreach teams across the west midlands, which are doing extraordinary work; and Councillors Yvonne Davies and Sharon Thompson, who do extraordinary work and who have taken back control of the Housing First programme in our region, because they understand that for Housing First to work we first need homes. Can we guess the grand total of the number of social homes built last year in the hon. Gentleman’s borough? It was zero. The number of social homes built in the west midlands last year fell by 17%, and is down by nearly 80% since 2010. So I will take his intervention, but will he at least agree that we cannot bring together a shared agenda to tackle this problem unless we start building council homes again?

[Eddie Hughes]

I am just disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention the excellent work of YMCA Birmingham, where I was assistant chief executive until I came to Parliament. That organisation has been given about £3.5 million over the past five years by this Government to provide accommodation for homeless people in Birmingham.

[Liam Byrne]

I would add to the hon. Gentleman’s list, because not only does the YMCA do an amazing job, but so do St Basils, with the work of Jean Templeton; Tabor House; the Good Shepherd Ministry in Wolverhampton, which the Secretary of State mentioned; Homeless One; and the Ummah Care Foundation, where I used to work in a soup kitchen on a Sunday night. This coalition of kindness is basically the last bastion of civility in our country. Thank God for them.

What we now need in our region is the biggest council house building programme since the second world war. What we need is a private sector, region-wide licensing scheme to stamp out bad practice. What we need are street teams delivering 24/7 addiction and mental health support. We need to radically expand the shelter that is available from places such as Tabor House and the Good Shepherd Ministry—places that provide not only shelter, but sanctuary, not just a house, but a home. But we need a Government who help, too.

We need the Government to start by abolishing the Vagrancy Act 1824. I cannot be the only person in this House who thinks that homeless people do not need handcuffs—they need a helping hand. We should replace that with Kane’s law. We should bring together the Department for Work and Pensions, the Prison Service, the health system and local government, and create an obligation on them to collaborate not only to remedy homelessness, but to prevent homelessness. I have met too many people fresh out of prison at 4 o’clock in the morning in Birmingham. I have met too many people who have been sanctioned on to the streets by the DWP. Let us end this injustice once and for all.

[Mr Betts]

My right hon. Friend is making a valid point. I am sure he recognises that we tried to amend the Homelessness Reduction Bill in Committee to place a responsibility on other public agencies to address homelessness. What we got was a duty on them to refer people to housing departments, not to address it themselves.

[Liam Byrne]

What we need is what I have called Kane’s law, in memory of Kane Walker, who lost his life on the streets of Birmingham last year: a duty on public agencies to collaborate to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. Let us put alongside that the restoration of housing benefit for young people, who do not pay lower rents than anybody else; let us make sure that we take off the caps on housing benefit, which cover only two thirds of the average rent in a city like Birmingham; and let us end the shame of “no recourse to public funds”, which means that those who come to our country to seek sanctuary are ending up on the streets.

The great tragedy of this debate is that if we summoned the will, we could, together, make homelessness history. We on the Opposition Benches are determined either to find a way or to make a way. We want to know whether the Secretary of State is with us or against us.

Definition of Islamophobia

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree. I thank my hon. Friend for the work he does in supporting the all-party parliamentary group. I assure him that that kind of attack and that kind of prejudice is very much covered by our definition. If we cannot recognise what is under our very noses on the doorsteps of our own Parliament, how can we give Muslims up and down the country, or those who are perceived to be Muslim, the confidence that we are taking this seriously?

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I, too, commend my hon. Friend for the leadership that he has shown on this issue. Hate crime against Muslims has risen by almost 100% since the Brexit referendum. In my constituency, which has the biggest Muslim population of any constituency in Britain, nearly 90% of my constituents have experienced Islamophobia or know someone who has. That includes bottles thrown at them, alcohol thrown at them, and people screamed at for having the temerity to wear a hijab. Surely we need a better definition of Islamophobia if we are to prosecute Islamophobia and to clamp down on its enablers in the British media.

[Wes Streeting]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. He is respected in this place for his deep knowledge of extremism issues, which is why we invited him to give evidence to our inquiry. The law already covers discrimination based on race and religion, but what we are dealing with is not just a challenge of changing laws; it is a challenge of changing hearts and minds, changing the everyday lived experiences of people in our community, and helping people to recognise and understand the challenge.

Housing

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I was staggered to hear the Minister’s complacency about homelessness, which is wholly misplaced. In my region of the west midlands, which is under a Tory Mayor, homelessness or rough sleeping is up by 333%. Homeless people are dying at the rate of one a fortnight. I want this House to hear, to know and to remember the names of those who have died in the past 15 months alone: Paul Williams, Laura Cairns, Steve, Daniel Hutton, Alain Simmonds, Daniel Clements, Terry Taylor, Jayne Simpson, Michael Hill, Peter Mbugua, Simon Holmes, Linda Grimes, Remigiusz Boczarski, Peter Corker, Joby Sparrey, Julie, Thomas Pulham, Kane Walker and two men whose names are known only to God.

The homeless people I see on the streets of Birmingham often live in medieval conditions. I have met people in subways in their hospital gowns and people with rat bites fighting and fearing sepsis, and yet the homeless people in Britain’s second city, in the sixth richest economy on earth, face a health system that is rated inadequate and a mental health service in which the caseload is rising four times faster than funding, and where only 1% of the money promised to the West Midlands combined authority for housing has actually been paid over to build new homes.

That roll of names is a roll call of shame. I hope that in our city, if not elsewhere, we build a permanent memorial, so that we are confronted every day with the names of those who died, the names of those whom we have collectively failed. The best memorial of all, however, would be to end this scandal for good and to sweep the disgrace of homelessness into the history books once more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I know that my hon. Friend has been a champion for Shropshire and I commend him for his work on homelessness and on other issues. He rightly highlights the rapid rehousing pathway. That is a key part of our rough sleeping strategy to see that support and care are provided quickly and to see people getting off the street into homes, with all the assistance they require.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Home- lessness in Birmingham has increased by nearly 1,000% and almost 100 people have died homeless in the past five years. This is a moral emergency. My interviews with homeless people show that collapsing healthcare services are part of the problem, yet the homeless people in our city have a primary care system rated as “inadequate”. What steps can the Secretary of State take to fix this—not when the service is recommissioned in two years’ time, but now, before more people die?

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s passion, and indeed we have spoken about the situation in Birmingham. I hope he will acknowledge the additional funding that will be going to Birmingham in the next financial year through the rough sleeping initiative and the funding that NHS England has committed to health services for rough sleepers. Clearly, I will want to know and be certain that funding is applied to Birmingham and those areas where we have seen an increase in rough sleeping, for the very purpose that he underlines; we can save lives.

Local Government Finance

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I want to start by associating myself with the remarks of the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), in what I thought was a brilliant exposition of the injustice at the heart of this statement this afternoon. Be in no doubt: this statement today is a basic question of injustice and unfair deserts. It shows this Government’s wilful determination not to do anything about tackling the injustices that now scar this country, including communities such as mine in Birmingham. If they did want to tackle them, at the heart of this statement would be a bold determination to make sure that we were investing most in those communities that need it most. Instead, as the shadow Secretary of State has set out with such brilliance, we have exactly the opposite.

Many of us on this side of the House came into politics for a simple reason: because we wanted to tackle the basic, fundamental injustice that the postcode in which people are born defines their possibilities in life. That is why I gave up a career in business to serve what is this country’s most income-deprived constituency, where four generations of my family have lived and worked.

Nine years into this Government’s austerity, those injustices are now looming larger than ever. This Government have given us a slower recovery than after the great depression. What that means in Birmingham is that it is harder to earn a good life than ever before. The employment rate in our city is now lower than it was before the great depression. In some parts of the west midlands today, people are now earning 9% less than they did in 2008. The ladder in life is harder to get on to because apprenticeship numbers in the west midlands have fallen by a third. That is 10,000 fewer apprentices in our region over the last year.

How can it be just for a child born in Ladywood to live eight years less than a child born in Sutton Coldfield? How can it be right that a kid born in Alum Rock has a third less chance of going to university than a kid born in Solihull? How can it be right that someone born in Bordesley Green has a one in five chance of being overcrowded, even if their parents or siblings are disabled? How can it be just that someone born in Birmingham this year has a four in 10 chance of being born in poverty? These injustices are wrong.

These inequalities demand an answer, not the proposals from the Secretary of State this afternoon. This Government were able to rustle up £1 billion for their friends in the Democratic Unionist party in the space of days. In Birmingham, we have taken the biggest cuts in local government history—£690 million to date, £85 million still to come and £46 million to come out of our budget this year. That is a total of nearly three quarters of a billion pounds. The bad news is that it could be worse because we face £161 million of pressures over the next two to three years. That is why I say to the Secretary of State today, on behalf of all the Labour MPs in Birmingham: this battering of our city has to stop and it has to stop now.

Yesterday morning, I met the friends of Kane Walker, the young man who died on the pavements of Birmingham a week or two ago. They could not stop for long because they were rushing to hospital to see a friend, homeless too, who had been bitten in the face by rats and they feared sepsis—the sepsis that they think killed Kane Walker just a week or two ago. But Kane Walker was not alone: one homeless person a week now dies in the west midlands, sometimes in medieval conditions. This, in the fifth richest economy on earth, is a moral scandal, and this statement this afternoon has done nothing to reverse it.

This Secretary of State takes the issues of Birmingham so seriously that, when its entire number of Labour Members of Parliament wrote to him demanding an urgent meeting last November, he cleared his diary immediately to offer us some time five months later—in March. I know how little this Government care for Britain’s second city, and I know it will take a Labour Government to bring justice back to our city.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

Goxhill is lucky to have such an assiduous representative in my hon. Friend. I agree with him that we need to balance the aspiration for new homes for the next generation against the need for sensitive and appropriate development. I urge him to work with the residents of Goxhill to put in place a neighbourhood plan, which would mean that they would no longer be victims of the planning system, but its bosses.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that the battering of Birmingham next year will be all the more severe for his decision to rule out access to the council’s reserves. Birmingham’s MPs have written to him to ask for a meeting. When he finally wrote back, he refused to meet. May I say to him that he can take these decisions but it is incumbent on him to front them up to Members of this House?

[James Brokenshire]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am happy to meet him and his colleagues because, obviously, I am focused on ensuring sustainability and stability in the finances in Birmingham. We took that decision carefully and in a considered way, but I recognise the points he makes and I am happy to meet him.

Deaths of Homeless People

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Three weeks ago I joined the census that shames us, counting rough sleepers in Birmingham. There, beneath the Christmas lights, we found a man without legs sleeping next to his wheelchair in doorways. We found wounded veterans sleeping in arcades. We met a man in the grounds of the cathedral who had had his benefits stopped. We met people fresh out of prison. We met people self-medicating for trauma with drugs and alcohol. These are our neighbours, and some will not survive the winter. Today, coroners do not record homelessness in full on death certificates. That has to change, because we in this House need to know the whole truth about the depths of this scandal. Perhaps then we can shame this Government into dramatically speeding up their timetable to end rough sleeping for good.

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s passion in relation to this issue, and I take the cases that he highlights hugely seriously. He makes a point about the proper recording of deaths linked to homelessness, and I will certainly take that up with the Ministry of Justice. This is about not only ensuring that we have the data but how we bring about change and learn and apply lessons to see that homelessness is prevented and reduced and that we act to end rough sleeping and save the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Local Government Funding Settlement

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Negative RSG will be eliminated, as I have indicated. My hon. Friend will see in the different schedules that will be published the implications of the rural services delivery grant. He will also notice, in relation to Dorset, the statutory instrument that has been laid in relation to council tax harmonisation, which I am sure will give him all the clarity he will need for his council for the future.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The battering of Birmingham has been remorseless. In the food banks where I work, demand is up by a third on the past year. In the soup kitchen where I worked on Sunday night, demand was up by 50% on the past year. The rough sleepers I helped to count sleeping on our pavements a couple of weeks ago were up by 50% on the past year. Yet our council has been forced to table proposals to cut council tax support for the poorest in our community because the Secretary of State has ruled out access to our reserves. Birmingham MPs wrote to him on 25 November to ask to discuss this. We have not yet had the courtesy of a reply. When will he meet us to discuss when the battering of Birmingham will stop?

[James Brokenshire]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. I will certainly look into his letter of 25 November and get back to him in relation to the points that he makes. But I would also highlight how we have been supporting the west midlands area in relation to issues such as rough sleeping, which he highlights, with our Housing First programme to ensure that we are getting the help that is needed to the most vulnerable people, getting them off the streets and getting them the support that they require.