Rough Sleeping: Families with Children

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of rough sleeping among families with children.

I place on the record my co-chairship of the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness. It is always an honour to speak in a debate under your stewardship, Dr Murrison, but I deeply regret the need to have this debate today.

Government policy is clear. The letter of the law is clear. Basic decency is clear. No child should have to sleep rough on the streets of this country. Despite that, I found myself last week watching a stark ITV News report by Dan Hewitt revealing that the homelessness charity Crisis is seeing growing numbers of families with children who are homeless and approaching it for help after being turned away by their councils. In some cases, that has forced those families and children to sleep rough.

Over six months, Crisis has identified 134 cases of families with children and pregnant mothers who came to its services asking for help to avoid or end their homelessness, because they had been unable to access support from their local authority. One hundred and thirty-four cases—that is about four a week, or almost one every single working day. Those cases included children as young as four, a child with epilepsy, refugees we have welcomed and single mothers. All were people who needed help, but were utterly failed by our broken system.

In my time as shadow Minister for homelessness and rough sleeping and in continuing to be an advocate since then, I have heard many heartbreaking stories while campaigning in this space. I have seen relentless record highs in the numbers of people forced to sleep rough, people discharged from hospital to recover on the streets, and children doing their homework in mouldy bed-and-breakfasts. I thought I could no longer be shocked by how deep this crack in the foundation of our society runs, but I was wrong.

Hearing about children being forced to sleep rough while the services built to help them played “pass the parcel” with their future was profoundly shocking. Before we talk about national plans, funding pots and statutory duties, I want everyone in this Chamber today to sit with these thoughts. What if that were me? What if it were my child having nowhere in the world to go, sleeping in a car or on the steps of a town hall, confused and getting colder, hungrier and more scared every night? How did it come to this? How is our system so broken that we cannot even keep children from having to sleep rough?

We can end this scandal and deliver historic change if we hold on to the moral clarity that we feel right now and pull every lever we have. There are still many levers we can pull if we have the political will to prioritise this issue. I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister because she has already written to all the councils in the country to remind them of their clear duties under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 and under the Housing Act 1996. However, will she set out what accountability measures will be put in place to ensure that situations like this are unheard of, as they should be?

These cases also show how guidance, laws and letters can take us only so far. I do not believe that anyone goes to work wanting to refuse help to a child facing rough sleeping, but the fact is that that is happening. It shows just how broken our system really is and how critical it is that we reduce the number of people and families being pushed into homelessness.

I welcome the Government’s national plan to end homelessness. It is an historic first in tackling a range of forms of homelessness across England, setting out a new duty to collaborate between six key Departments, with outcomes frameworks for local authorities, and matching our APPG’s call for the collation of homelessness funding into a multi-annual pot. However, when the APPG for ending homelessness, which I co-chair, produced our “Homes, Support, Prevention” report, we listened closely to the homelessness sector—researchers, councils and experts by experience—to identify three key pillars that the Government need to address. The national plan only really addresses one and a half of those pillars. Without delivering on all three, some of which I accept are beyond even the Minister’s capable reach, families will keep being forced into desperate situations.

The plan broadly focused on what we called the support pillar, with toolkits and an outcomes framework for local authorities that will be published in due course, as well as the prevention pillar, through the new duty to collaborate. I would welcome any further information the Minister can provide about the timeline for the consultations on the toolkit and the new duty.

However, when we review the prevention targets, it becomes clear that a key driver of homelessness is not being adequately addressed: Home Office policy. Homelessness after move-on from asylum accommodation rose by 37% according to the last Crisis homelessness monitor for England, yet the only target the Home Office has signed up to is informing councils about when people are leaving its accommodation. The Home Office has effectively been let off the hook when it comes to preventing homelessness among refugees—people we have welcomed here—and has instead been allowed to start doing what other Departments have been expected to do for years under the duty to refer. This is a huge hole in the preventive wall the Minister is working to construct—one that will see homelessness and further division spreading across the country if it is not closed.

I would like to talk about homes. Homes are the best and only truly sustainable way to end and prevent people’s homelessness, yet across the country an affordable home is becoming a pipe dream for whole communities, leading directly to unsustainable numbers of people needing homelessness support. It does not matter how quickly or effectively we bail if the boat is still sinking. It is therefore vital that the Government step up their social house building targets until the crucial 90,000 social homes per year—a figure supported across the homelessness sector—has been reached.

One way that could be done is by stepping up work on empty homes. Analysis by Crisis found that just £1.38 billion of direct Government investment in local authorities and partner agencies could bring 40,000 long- term empty homes back into use as social homes over four years. I appreciate that this is not directly the Minister’s brief, but how is she working to ensure that the Minister for Housing and Planning understands the need for homes for people experiencing homelessness?

We also need to look at short-term measures. The review of social homes allocation policy is welcome, but there needs to be a commitment to legislative change. The feedback I received from the 27 organisations on our APPG steering group was that people experiencing homelessness face a range of barriers to accessing social homes beyond simply supply, including being dubbed “too poor” to afford social rent homes. How far have we come from the purpose of social housing as housing to ensure that everyone can afford a home if people across Britain are being deemed “too poor” for it? Where are they meant to go? Supported housing, temporary accommodation, the street—back into the bowels of the system. I would welcome it if the Minister set out a timeline for her review of social homes allocation policy.

Given the lack of social homes, the affordability of the private rented sector is crucial. For people who rely on benefits to pay their rent, the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget in November that the two-child benefit limit will be abolished was extremely good news. However, as it stands, many families in my constituency of Liverpool Wavertree and across the country are still struggling. There is an average gap of £200 per month between local housing allowance and the median rent for a home. That gap can turn a bump in the road into a car crash. If people lose their job, need to take up caring responsibilities or fall ill, they can no longer afford to pay their rent. When they are pushed into homelessness, the local council simply cannot find a local home that those people can afford, trapping them in temporary accommodation at much greater expense to the state—a classic false economy.

I know that the Minister understands these issues. At a recent meeting of the APPG for ending homelessness, I was struck by her focus on the structural causes of homelessness, rather than on individuals. That is a welcome step forward from the last Government, but I am concerned that that understanding is not shared across other Departments.

Do the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury know how hard it is for families on universal credit to keep a roof over their heads, given that fewer than three in every 100 homes are affordable on local housing allowance, and that the LHA freeze is pushing people into homelessness? Does the Home Office care that when it slashed the move-on period from asylum accommodation from 56 days to 28 days, it made it impossible for families who have been granted asylum to find a home in that time, and that is pushing people into homelessness? I would welcome it if the Minister set out how often the interministerial group on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping will meet. Will she commit to publishing the minutes? What steps will be taken if Departments in that group do not deliver on their stated commitments?

We must not let national Government play “pass the parcel”, as local government has. Children’s lives are hanging in the balance. I know the Minister shares that determination, and I hope the Government as a whole do too.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

The interministerial group will meet regularly.

There are interconnections between homelessness and violence against women and girls, because the third biggest cause of homelessness is people fleeing domestic abuse, so we will do some of what we need to do via our work as Ministers through the violence against women and girls strategy. As a number of Members have highlighted, there is clearly a connection between homelessness and poverty. We are about to take forward the delivery of the child poverty strategy, so some aspects of what we are considering will be taken forward through that discussion among Ministers. I am very conscious that we should have meetings not for the sake of it, but to get things done. We will deliver our objectives through those three interconnected strategies, and Ministers will certainly meet regularly.

[Paula Barker]

I thank the Minister for the contribution she is making. Will she commit to publishing the minutes of the interministerial group?

[Alison McGovern]

I was going to come on to that. I will certainly commit to providing an update. It is beyond my procedural knowledge exactly what we are allowed to publish from ministerial groups, but I will certainly commit to providing an update. I was going to suggest that we might have a meeting with the APPG shortly after, so that we can provide an in-person update, because I think it would be far better for parliamentarians to be engaged in this process.

I will quickly provide an update on the work of other Government Departments, in response to the questions raised. The Treasury is leading on the value for money review of homelessness support, which should pick up the precise point that the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley made on the cost of temporary accommodation. We have talked about the disaster this is for families, but what is going on at the moment is also a disaster for taxpayers. The Treasury is working with us and the DWP on that and is actively engaged.

I am working extremely closely with the Department for Work and Pensions on incomes and the homelessness system overall, and it has been very active. With regard to the Ministry of Justice, the Minister for Prisons and I have been working very closely on people leaving prisons; he has exacting targets for reducing the number of people who leave prison to no fixed abode. I have also worked very closely with Home Office Ministers, and I will ensure that they receive a copy of the report of this debate, because I am sure Members want their opinions to be heard by them.

On health, we need to ensure that neighbourhood health services support people who have experienced rough sleeping, particularly in relation to addiction and the trauma that children who have experienced homelessness might go through. On education, Members will know the disaster it is when children have to move schools because of temporary accommodation. The Department for Education has been working closely with us on that. I hope that reassures Members that this is a cross-Government effort. None the less, we will introduce a legal duty to collaborate, to compel public services to work together to prevent homelessness.

As the shadow Minister pointed out, building more homes takes time, but our plan takes immediate action to tackle the worst forms of homelessness now. Alongside the work that the Minister for Housing and Planning is doing to bring forward much more social housing than we have seen in this country for a heck of a long time, we will increase the emergency accommodation reduction pilots into a programme backed by £30 million of funding to tackle a wider range of poor practice, including B&B and unsuitable out-of-area placements. As I mentioned, I met our expert group yesterday, and we intend to move very quickly on the toolkits that we need. Much of the information exists already; we just need to get on and do it.

We are helping more vulnerable people off the streets and into stable housing by investing £150 million in supported housing services and £15 million in our long-term rough sleeping innovation programme, to help councils with the greatest pressures to deliver more personalised and comprehensive support for people with complex needs. I could talk about that for a long time, but I will not. Members here will understand that, sometimes, complicated personal circumstances sit behind someone’s homelessness, and we need really skilled caseworkers to support people with those. Likewise, we want to get on with the work on allocations, which is under way, and I am making sure it moves quickly.

The latest data showed progress against two of our new targets. The percentage of duties owed where homelessness was prevented or relieved with accommodation secured for six or more months is up 3.7 percentage points year on year to 46%. That means a higher proportion of households at risk of homelessness or already homeless was helped to secure accommodation than over the same period the year before. That includes an increase in households helped to find accommodation before experiencing the traumatic experience of homelessness—that is the target that I really want to see go up.

The quarter in question also saw a reduction in the number of families in B&B accommodation over the statutory limit of six weeks, to 1,670. That number is still far too many, but it is the lowest since the beginning of 2023 and down 55% year on year. I am confident that we are going in the right direction on B&B use, but we need to go faster and do more.

The figures do not mean the job is done—far from it—but they show that prevention is improving and that fewer families are spending long periods in unsuitable accommodation. I have confidence that we can achieve the targets we have set ourselves, but we need to make sure that we maintain focus and, as Members have suggested, keep working right across Government to deliver.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Wavertree for securing this debate. As I said, our city is very proud of her. I hope we will never have cause to discuss families with children sleeping rough again, but I trust that Members here will secure other debates so that we can keep our focus on our homelessness strategy and make progress, as I have suggested, over the years to come.

[Paula Barker]

I thank all hon Members for their thoughtful and knowledgeable contributions. I also thank the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), and the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster), for their contributions, as well as the Minister for hers. I look forward to working with her constructively in the months and years ahead.

I place on the record my thanks to Crisis for its incredible work. I particularly thank Dan Hewitt and ITV for keeping this all in the public domain—the work they do is incredible. I hope that, collectively, we can all use the moral clarity that we have found today in these abhorrent cases to spur us on to build a better Britain where nobody experiences homelessness.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of rough sleeping among families with children.