I wish to take this opportunity further to draw the attention of the House to a subject which had a poignant topicality just before Christmas because of its biblical connotations—homelessness. After Christmas the problem has not gone away and I feel that it should be kept before us.

The genesis of my desire to bring homelessness to the attention of the House was a question to the Minister for Housing and Planning about the statistics of homelessness. The issue raised in my question was never resolved. No one knows how many homeless people there are in Britain. The official statistics published for the Department of the Environment record only homeless households which apply to and are accepted by local authorities. Many do not qualify to be accepted, including people without children and under retirement age. Non-priority groups are at least as great in numbers as priority groups, so one can double the official statistics of 120,000 homeless households. That is the figure for 1989. If one accepts that two thirds of homeless families have dependent children and that the average household consists of three people, it becomes clear that the official statistics involve approximately 300,000 people. If one adds in those who are not accepted by local authorities, the figure rises to 500,000. That is the number of people who became homeless in 1989.

The problem is growing. Ten years ago the official figure was 53,000. The average annual rate of increase in homelessness acceptances between 1976 and 1988—again according to Department of the Environment statistics—was 8 per cent. for London but 16 per cent. for other metropolitan districts. Two conclusions can be drawn: first, the curve is upwards and, secondly, homelessness is a national problem. We should remember that those are only the official statistics recorded by the Department of the Environment.

I wish to consider who are the homeless people, where they are, why they are homeless and the cost of keeping them without homes. I shall then examine some of the initiatives taken and conclude by suggesting other initiatives that might be effective. The homeless are generally people on low income or no income. They are vulnerable groups such as the migrant unemployed who move to the cities for work but are unable to find homes and people who suffer from discrimination in the private rented sector such as families with small children, pregnant women, single parents and ethnic minorities. Many such people can be found in the official statistics, but many others cannot. The unofficial statistics include victims of the present system of welfare benefits such as 16 to 17-year-olds who do not qualify for benefits. Young people receive benefits on a sliding scale based on age, but, of course, rents are not based on a sliding scale.

The unofficial figures also include people of all ages who are in a Catch 22 situation. They cannot afford the deposit on accommodation because benefits are no longer paid in advance and it is difficult to claim benefits if one has no address. Let us not forget the social inadequates, not least the pitiful cohort of mentally disturbed who are discharged on to the streets without proper support. Huge numbers of these latter groups do not show up in the official statistics. There is also the phenomenon of the 1980s, and particularly the late 1980s, the mortgage defaulters whose number has quintupled over the past 10 years from approximately 20,000 to over 100,000 per annum. That is who they are.

Where are they? Those who are fortunate to be provided with accommodation are, in large numbers, in temporary accommodation of various kinds, such as hostels, short-life properties, mobile homes, bed-and-breakfast accommodation and, perhaps the most fortunate, in properties leased by local authorities from the private sector. That is the private sector leasing group to which I shall refer as PSL. I shall address further remarks to the bed-and-breakfast and PSL groups. Those not provided for find shelter either in overcrowded circumstances in the homes of family or friends, frequently dossing on floors—they include large numbers not counted in the official statistics—or, as we see if we go not far from the Chamber, they live rough on the streets.

Why are those people homeless? The simple answer is that there is a lack of accommodation for rent at a price which they can afford. One feature which most of them have in common is that they cannot contemplate purchasing accommodation. The statistics for rented accommodation as a proportion of the total housing stock are interesting. In 1981 there were 6.6 million public sector rented units; in 1990 there were only 5·5 million. In the private sector in 1981 there were 2·4 million rented units; in 1990 there were only 1·7 million. Admittedly, there has been a small rise in the housing association rented sector, from 456,000 in 1981 to 642,000 in 1990, but it is pitifully small and not enough to bridge the gap.

The most important contributing factor has been the huge number of council homes taken out of the stock under the right-to-buy legislation and the fact that councils have been prevented from using most of their capital receipts to build new council houses. National Economic Development Office statistics show that in 1980 council new starts were 41,000, complemented by 15,000 housing association new starts; in 1990 the total has gone down to 24,000, composed of 8,000 council new starts and 16,000 housing association new starts. The figures show a small but inadequate increase in housing association provision. The projections for 1992 are even more gloomy—a pitiful 3,000 new starts in the council sector and 2,000 in the housing association sector.

There is a cost in all this homelessness. First, there is a monetary cost. The Department of the Environment calculation for keeping a family in bed-and-breakfast accommodation as compared with building a new council house shows that in London the cost of a new build is £7,400 while the cost of bed-and-breakfast accommodation is £11,315 per family. In other metropolitan districts, such as Knowsley, South, the difference is even more significant; the cost of a new build on average is £3,200 while the cost of bed-and-breakfast accommodation is £9,490. Those are the Department's own statistics at 1988 prices.

Only this month the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, a reputable body, produced figures for the net cost per head of population of keeping people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. It went up from 83p in 1988–89 to £1·50 in 1989–90, an increase of 80 per cent. The same set of statistics shows that the total net expenditure on homelessness in 1989–90 was equivalent to £2·79 per head of population or, if translated into the cost per charge payer, £3·79. Some estimates suggest that the cost per charge payer could rise to £24 in London. All bets are off on this, of course, while the poll tax is still in the massage parlour.

I have listed the monetary costs of homelessness, but there is also a human cost. I recommend to the House two documents—"A Crying Shame", which concentrates mainly on the effects of homelessness on children and has been produced by the London Boroughs Association, and "Homeless Families and their Health", which was produced jointly by the Health Visitors Association and a committee of the British Medical Association. There is also much anecdotal evidence of damage to physical and mental health caused by homelessness and the dangers posed to the safety of children when in temporary accommodation. There is also evidence of a drift into crime and prostitution, both male and female, among young people caught in the homelessness trap. People who have no accommodation or live in inadequate accommodation often become victims of crime. Those human costs are also translated into further monetary costs when one calculates the demands that they produce on the welfare services and the health service.

There have been a number of Government initiatives. The document produced by Shelter, "No New Homes", tabulates 10 such initiatives from 1986 through to 1993. Credit must be given to the Government for those initiatives, but, welcome though they are, unfortunately they are often inadequate. The Government's own welfare benefit system as now structured compounds the problem. A series of discreet initiatives do not add up to an adequate and coherent policy on homelessness.

The estate action scheme was never adequate in scale and represented, not new money, but money top-sliced from the reduced housing investment programmes. It was also subject to task force criteria which did not necessarily meet local housing needs.

In December the autumn statement included a seemingly generous statement from the Minister for Housing and Planning of £81 million to housing associations to provide hostel and long-term accommodation in London. That money will have some effect, but only in London.

Private sector leasing was first limited by the Government to 10 years and then to three years. The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 resulted in those leasing arrangements being set against borrowing approvals. In October 1990 the hon. Member for Worcestershire South (Mr. Spicer), then Minister for Housing and Planning, announced changes in the amount of subsidy to local authorities with the result that local authorities now tend to opt for bed-and-breakfast accommodation that attracts a higher subsidy. Outside London such accommodation does not attract a higher subsidy and any differences in costs must be passed on by the local authorities in higher rentals or on to the hard-pressed poll tax payer.

I have suggested that private sector leasing is preferable to bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and in many ways it is, as the problems associated with bed-and-breakfast accommodation are well-known. However, at least monitoring procedures exist for such accommodation. No such procedures operate for private sector leasing, but it should be remembered that short-term leasing of that sort still represents temporary accommodation and that it varies tremendously in quality. Guidelines and systems must be introduced to ensure the enforcement of quality.

What should be done? First, there should be a significant change in attitude. We must recognise that homelessness is a national problem and not one that merely affects London. It should also be recognised that recent initiatives have been ad hoc and marginal in their effect. There is also a need to face up to the scale of the problem and a serious attempt should be made to assess it. Local authorities should be allowed to play their proper role in co-operation with, and complementary to, other agencies in solving that problem. If we consider those implications, we see that a number of positive measures can be taken.

The code of guidance on homelessness should be strengthened in a number of ways on which I do not have the time to elaborate. We should extend the priority groups, and in particular strengthen provision for children. The code should be made statutory. We should not allow local authorities to be deemed to have discharged their responsibilities by providing temporary accommodation of various sorts. There should be a further look at the welfare benefit system to eliminate some of the anomalies that I mentioned earlier.

More money must be allocated to the local authorities and housing associations, not top-sliced, as hitherto, so that the limited initiatives taken so far can be taken further. The restrictions on private sector leasing, apart from those on quality control, should be revoked.

There are also a number of initiatives to be considered that need not cost money. We could freeze the rents-into-mortgages scheme until it can be seen that the crisis of homelessness is on the way to being solved. We could have a mortgages-into-rents scheme rather than let people lose their homes. The sale of council houses on the open market could be restricted where it can be shown that there is a problem of homelessness in the district. Most importantly, the embargo preventing local authorities from using more of the £7·3 billion capital receipts that have accrued since the right-to-buy legislation was introduced should be lifted. That extra money could be used for a crash programme, including using local authority new stocks, bringing back into use the thousands of voids in the public sector that need renovation before they can be occupied and purchasing similar voids, in whatever condition, in the private sector.

I make a special plea for a step that could be taken without any cost, and for which I understand there are moves afoot elsewhere: the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824. It contains nothing that is not covered by some other Act. Its repeal would mean that those who, at present, suffer the tragedy of being homeless and living rough on the streets would not be classed as outside the law and subject to the harassment that that entails.

The crisis of homelessness can be solved with an injection of money—that is necessary. But how much could be achieved with just a change of attitude and a little imagination? In the words of the document produced by the London Boroughs Association, which addresses itself particularly to the plight of homeless children, "It is a crying shame."