Clause 2
Housing and Regeneration Bill
1:00 pm
Grant Shapps (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Welwyn Hatfield, Conservative)
As I was saying, our greatest concern with homelessness is that the figures for rough sleepers are inaccurate, and it is rough sleeping that concerns us most here. Two main points remain to be covered.
The rough sleepers unit was disbanded on the basis that the two-thirds reduction target had been met; the unit, which can be credited with a great deal of that reduction, was effectively wound up by bringing it into a wider homelessness body under the Department for Communities and Local Government. To have the new body deal simply with the wider issues of homelessness—Labour Back Benchers have pointed out that there is a great difference between homelessness and rough sleeping—rather than having a unit that deals only with rough sleeping may be a mistake.
The new clause is an attempt to bring a rough sleepers steering group into being. Its purpose is to re-emphasise the importance of tackling rough sleeping and its consequences. We propose setting up a separately recognised body within six months, and having it report within a further six months. We can draw upon the experience of the rough sleepers unit, and the work that it did in contributing to the reduction in rough sleeping. It worked, because it concentrated minds on the issue, which is the point of the new clause.
I had anticipated an intervention along the lines of the one made this morning by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, that the new clause would simply add to the list of objectives under clause 2. We do not want to repeat that earlier debate—it went as far as it could—but the objectives of the agency need to be set out somewhere. The problems of homelessness and rough sleeping are sufficiently important that I am surprised that a detailed reference has not been made to plans to improve the lot of rough sleepers or to re-emphasise the issue anywhere else in the Bill.
I am interested to hear from the Minister whether I have missed something in the 280 clauses that could help, or whether he is amenable to seeing mention of the issue in the Bill or to providing some reassurance on the question of rough sleeping. In particular, will he comment on the problem with the counting of rough sleepers that was referred to earlier, when we heard that the Department counts an estimate of nought to 10 rough sleepers as zero? I would be interested to hear whether anything can be done about that.
I have provided an outline of our reasons for tabling new clause 7. I hope that the Minister will take some of those points on board.