Clause 2

Part of Housing and Regeneration Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:15 am on 10 January 2008.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Grant Shapps Grant Shapps Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government) (Housing and Planning), Co-Chair, Conservative Party 10:15, 10 January 2008

The hon. Gentleman’s argument runs contrary to the previous intervention. I think that we are agreed that it is important to have a measure; I believe further that it is important that that measure is accurate against the real numbers, so that when the Government say that there are 498 rough sleepers each night that is an accurate number, whereas at the moment we know it to be inaccurate. I am not certain that there is any specific evidence to suggest that counts are less accurate now than they were previously. I suspect that because the agencies and charities that carry out these counts for local authorities are getting better at it over time in a process of continuous improvement, the counts are getting slightly better rather than slightly worse, notwithstanding the problems with the mechanism for returning data to local authorities where there is a check box for a bracketed number of nought to 10 and so on.

I want to reflect on the point about the reason why people sleep rough. It comes down to the purpose of the new clause. The hon. Member for West Ham is right to say that it is never straightforward. My experience of meeting rough sleepers is that it is incredibly complex. If it was easy, both sides of the House at different times in past Governments would have cracked the problem and there would be nobody sleeping rough. I met somebody when I went out on Christmas Eve who had slept rough for 20 years—20 years on the streets—but when one talks to this chap, Ivan, he will say that he was offered housing time and time again.

There are problems of relationship breakdowns, of financial crisis, of mental health and many other areas. It is not as simple as saying, “All we need to do is provide more housing.” However, it is also the case that the number of available hostel places tends to seize up, simply for the reason that people move into hostel places and then find it difficult to get to the next step of  housing. Overall housing provision, which is the reason why I think that the new clause is so relevant to the Bill, is still a key. When someone is off the street, the next step on the housing ladder is a hostel; the next step after that is some kind of move-on housing and beyond that, social housing, and beyond that, rented accommodation and so on. The problem is that if we fail to build sufficient social housing, as has been the case, with less social housing being built every year over the last 10 years than in any of the previous 18 years, it is difficult  to then move people on from hostel housing into the next move-on level and into social housing. One of the problems is still the equivalent of bed-blocking—hostel-blocking—which prevents people from moving out of accommodation.