Covid-19 Lockdown: Homelessness and Rough Sleepers

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on his plans to prevent homelessness and protect rough sleepers during the second national lockdown.

As we look ahead to the winter months, it is vital that we work together to prevent increases in homelessness and rough sleeping. The Government have set out unprecedented support on this issue, dedicating over £700 million to tackling homelessness and rough sleeping this year alone. Our work on rough sleeping has been shown not only to be world-leading but to have saved hundreds of lives. We are dedicated to continuing to protect vulnerable people in this period of restrictions and through the winter months.

We used the summer to work with local authorities on individual local plans for the coming months. Last week, the Prime Minister announced the Protect programme —the next step in our ongoing, targeted support for rough sleepers. That will provide a further £15 million, ensuring that support is in place for areas that need it most, and addressing the housing and health challenges for rough sleepers during this period of national restrictions. That is on top of the £10 million cold weather fund, available to all councils to provide rough sleepers with safe accommodation over the coming months. That means that all local areas will be eligible for support this winter. It builds on the success of the ongoing Everyone In campaign in September. We have successfully supported over 29,000 people, with over 10,000 people in emergency accommodation. Nearly 19,000 people have been provided with settled accommodation or move-on support. We continue to help to move people on from emergency accommodation with the Next Steps accommodation programme.

On 17 September, we announced NSAP allocations to local authorities, to pay for immediate support and to ensure that people do not return to the streets, and £91.5 million was allocated to 274 councils across England. On 29 October, we announced allocations to local partners to deliver long-term move-on accommodation. More than 3,300 new long-term homes for rough sleepers across the country have been approved, subject to due diligence, backed by more than £150 million. We are committed to tackling homelessness, and firmly believe that no one should be without a roof over their head.

Throughout the pandemic, we have established an unprecedented package of support to protect renters, which remains in place. That includes legislating through the Coronavirus Act 2020 on delays as to when landlords can evict tenants and a six-month stay on possession proceedings in court. We have quickly and effectively introduced more than £9 billion of measures in 2020-21 that benefit those facing financial disruption during the current situation. The measures include increasing universal and working tax credit by £1,040 a year for 12 months and significant investment in local housing allowance of nearly £1 billion. As further support for renters this winter, we have asked bailiffs not to carry out evictions during national restrictions in England, except in the most serious of circumstances. As the pandemic evolves, we will continue working closely with local authorities, the sector and across Government to support the most vulnerable from this pandemic. These measures further demonstrate our commitment to assist the most vulnerable in society.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. The Minister’s words and the Prime Minister’s order last week to stay home will ring hollow for people with no home. In March, the Government told councils and charities that they should try to bring rough sleepers in, and the extraordinary effort prevented thousands of infections, more than 1,000 hospital admissions and 266 deaths. But now the Government’s rough sleeping tsar is no longer in post, and she has warned that we are facing a “perfect storm of awfulness”. Many of those brought off the streets have returned and thousands more are newly homeless, with a record high 50% increase in young people sleeping rough since last year in London alone.

What has changed since March? It is colder, and the cold weather fund is lower than it was last year. So can the Minister tell the House why the Government have lowered their ambition? Their plan provides neither the leadership nor the funding to ensure all rough sleepers have a covid-secure place; £15 million in funding will be given not to all councils, but only to the 10 with the highest rough sleeping rates. Seventeen health and homelessness organisations wrote to the Prime Minister to warn against the use of night shelters as not covid-safe. Why have the Government refused to publish the Public Health England advice on this decision? The plan makes no reference to people with no recourse to public funds. Instead there is a rule change so that rough sleeping will lead to deportation. Does the Minister agree that it is immoral for people to be deported for sleeping rough?

On Armistice Day, will the Minister ensure that the Government record whether homeless people have a service record, so that we can get an accurate picture of the scale and need of those who have served our country?

Finally, the homelessness crisis is the result of 10 years of Tory failure, so will the Minister now commit to abolishing section 21 evictions, as the Government said they would, to prevent a further rise in homelessness, and invest in the support and social housing we need so that we can genuinely end rough sleeping for good?

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. I hope she recognises, and I think she did at the beginning, that this Government have put £700 million into homelessness and rough sleeping support this year alone. That is unprecedented support, and it is decisive action that this Government took in dealing with the covid crisis. Although I strongly object to the fact that many have returned to the streets, we were working on this plan in the summer with local authorities in order to work out what the next steps would be after the Everyone In programme. As I outlined in my opening answer, more than £266 million is being provided to local authorities in order to provide move-on and Next Steps accommodation, with more than £150 million of that invested in long-term support and accommodation for rough sleepers.

To pick up on the point about the winter allowance being lower than last year, this must be taken in the context of the unprecedented amount of funding that the Government have provided in this area, in order to protect those individuals who were at threat of homelessness and rough sleeping throughout the pandemic. Indeed, a £10 million winter fund is available to all local authorities throughout the country, but it is right that the £15 million fund that was announced last year—the Protect programme—is focused on the areas in which there is the most need. We are working intensively, not only with those first-wave initial boroughs with the highest level of rough sleeping but in collaboration with all local authorities throughout the United Kingdom, in order to understand the challenges they face and the needs they have.

On the point about no recourse to public funds, I would like to make the hon. Lady aware that the rules of eligibility for immigration status, including for those with no recourse to public funds, have not changed. Local authorities are able to use their judgment when assessing the support that can lawfully be provided in relation to those individuals and their individual needs: this is already happening, as it does with extreme weather and where there is a potential risk to life. Local authorities provide basic support for care needs that do not solely arise from destitution, whether for migrants who have severe health problems or for families where the wellbeing of children is involved. Also, it is just not true that we are deporting individuals who are rough sleeping.

The Everyone In programme ensured that homeless people and rough sleepers had a roof over their head during the pandemic, and I welcome the Protect programme initiative. However, it is vital that our solutions are also long-term and sustainable. I welcomed the roll-out of the three-year Housing First pilot in Greater Manchester, and the recent announcement of 3,300 units of move-on accommodation for rough sleepers. Would my hon. Friend also consider bringing forward future funding allocations so that local authorities, mental health charities and agencies that are able to offer wraparound support can have the certainty they need to ensure the success of these initiatives?

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the wraparound services that organisations within local authorities provide to some of those individuals who are experiencing complex issues, such as substance misuse and mental health concerns. I am grateful that she highlighted the Housing First pilot projects, and we are encouraging and working with local authorities to get individuals who need such support into that programme.

I will also work hard to make sure that we are able to develop and work with local authorities to assist them to provide the local services and wraparound support that those individuals need. It is not just a home they need; they need the support services around them, and I am determined to be able to do that.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on securing this urgent question. This feels like groundhog day, with the Government yet again in the spotlight for their decision to withdraw prematurely the protections and support for the most vulnerable people during a second wave of covid. In recent weeks, they have had to U-turn on providing free school meals and on extending furlough. I rather suspect that, quite soon, they will have to U-turn on providing more support for people who have been left homeless.

Thankfully, in Scotland we have a Government with a bit more foresight than this bungling British Government, who reek of incompetence and chaos every single day. The SNP Government in Scotland have extended the ban on evictions until March, and we have committed to looking to extend that further to September if the evidence shows a clear need. Will the Minister do likewise?

I am appalled by the reports that the British Government plan to deport non-UK nationals who are sleeping rough. That is a totally inhumane policy, devoid of any compassion and fairness, even by this Conservative Government’s standards. Will they now urgently reinstate the pause on asylum evictions so that communities and individuals who we know are at greater risk of covid-19 are not put at increased risk?

Finally, has the Minister’s Department ever received any advice from Public Health England or, indeed, health directors about the risks to black and minority ethnic people being left homeless? If so, will she publish it? If not, why has she not commissioned it?

I respect the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but he is completely incorrect in relation to this Government’s ongoing support for rough sleepers during the pandemic. We carried out an unprecedented and world-leading programme in Everyone In, we worked with local authorities constructively and intensively to develop programmes for the continuation of that support through Next Steps and Move On, and we secured accommodation. This Protect programme is the next step within that, and it is the Government taking quick action for what is now required within the restricted period and into the winter.

We announced the winter fund only a couple of weeks ago, and now we are on the Protect programme, so it is absolutely incorrect and completely wrong to suggest that this Government have not been taking the issue seriously and have not put the resources where they are needed. I have been determined over recent weeks, as the Minister, to make sure we have local authority by local authority checks on what is happening, looking at the local interactions on the ground.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) is categorically incorrect to say that we are deporting EU nationals who are sleeping rough. That is not what is happening, as he knows. In actual fact, we have been working with local authorities on the support and offer they can give to immigrants with no recourse to public funds at local level. Quite rightly, my colleagues in the Home Office and I are working through many issues that affect a number of different people.

I must also point out that all these individuals are different. Every individual has specific needs, and it is right that we work intensively with local authorities to make sure those individual needs are considered.

Order. We have a lot of people who need to get in, and we have spent 15 minutes on the first three questions. We need to pick it up.

I welcome the measures and the very significant funding that the Minister has announced today. Does she agree that it is important to take the same kind of approach as that taken by Rugby Borough Council through its preventing homelessness and improving lives programme? That has made a tremendous difference to local families at risk of homelessness through early intervention by a dedicated support team, working with those who are vulnerable to prepare a plan to avoid a crisis situation later.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is through the good practice of councils such as Rugby Borough Council and programmes of that nature that they are able to work with those families and individuals before there is a need for them to sleep rough or become homeless—it is prevention. We know that since we implemented the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, that has had a significant impact in many parts of the country. I am pleased that we are determined and committed to make sure we implement that even further and work with local authorities to get better results.

First, congratulations are due on the efforts that were made to get rough sleepers off the streets from March onwards. Great work was done by councils with voluntary organisations and with good support financially from the Government as well. The real pressure on councils now, I am told by my own city of Sheffield, is from people presenting as homeless from the private rented sector. An increase has led Sheffield City Council, which is very good at dealing with these matters, to have 80 families now in hotels and another 200 in temporary accommodation. That will cost the council around £500,000 extra in this financial year. If dealing with homelessness has to be a priority for councils, which certainly it should be, will the Minister make it a priority for Government to make sure that councils have the extra resources they need directly to continue delivering the services that people in the private rented sector will need in the coming, very trying months?

I thank the hon. Member for his comments and articulation of the work that has been done by the Government and many local authorities and the voluntary and charitable sector in the covid-19 pandemic. He is absolutely right that we need to monitor and make sure we are working intensively with local authorities to understand the needs and the challenges. That is why we are working with local authorities to provide plans, and that is why we have put in the Next Steps funding, to provide that Move On and Next Steps accommodation support. We will continue that work through the winter and evaluate any impacts that we are seeing through the covid pandemic. We need to bear in mind that we have also provided councils with over £6 billion in funding to deal with some of the issues that are coming out of the covid pandemic.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her appointment and on attending the all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness within days and answering our questions. I also congratulate the Government on a brilliant job in pulling rough sleepers off the streets and putting them into secure accommodation. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the problem now is that every case of homelessness is a unique one. Many people who have been rough sleeping have physical and mental health problems, and they are also probably addicted to drink, drugs or other substances, so it is vital that we roll out the Housing First initiative from the pilot sites throughout the country and also fully fund my Homelessness Reduction Act when the funding for it comes to an end. Will she therefore commit to rolling out Housing First across the country and to ensuring that local authorities are fully funded for their duties under my Act?

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and it was a pleasure to attend the APPG. I also thank him for his work in this area, for which he is a passionate advocate. Housing First is a great pilot, and we have continued to make sure that we can get individuals through those schemes, even during the pandemic. We are working with those sites to make sure that we can maximise that funding and that pilot to get the data and information. I am very supportive of the Housing First programme, and I would very much like to extend it. That is something that we will be working on in Government. I am committed to making sure that the Homelessness Reduction Act is implemented fully, and we will have further discussions about the funding to be able to deliver on that.

A street homelessness reduction programme is not world leading if the numbers sleeping rough on our streets are rising. It is shocking that the number of young people sleeping rough on our streets is now at a record high. What will the Minister do to ensure that homelessness prevention services offer appropriate support to young people with particular needs, such as young prison leavers?