Contribution
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for raising this very important debate and for his impressive work helping homeless and vulnerable people over 35 years—I must admit that it shocked me when I heard that it was 35 years. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, shared with us his experiences, and I thank him for that. My father was a bus conductor, and I experienced as a youngster my parents being able to buy their social housing, so I am going to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on that because, at the end of the day, many people such as them stayed in their properties; they were long-term tenants, they did not go anywhere, so actually the homes were not lost as a result of them buying.
On the doorstep of No. 10, the Prime Minister pledged to end rough sleeping by Christmas. I do not think anyone in this room would disagree with that pledge, and we would all love to see it happen. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham recalled his interventions to address the issue many years ago, and I want to continue in that vein. I remind people about the previous Government introducing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which came into force in 2018. That included the duty to prevent homelessness, moving it to the other side, and the duty to relieve homelessness into the statutory housing duty. It saw 740,000 families helped into housing and long-term accommodation between 2018 and 2024. I saw the benefit of that scheme as a council leader.
I know my colleague here, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, who it is lovely to have back again, served us well through that period. These things made a big, big difference, but the previous Government’s rough sleeping initiative provided over £2 billion to help rough sleepers find work, access services and secure accommodation. It was a long-term fix; it was not just a revolving door. What is more, they allocated £11 billion to the affordable homes programme from 2021 to 2026, and met the promise to build 1 million new homes over the last Parliament.
However, when the new Prime Minister’s pledge was made, there was no detail on how it would be achieved, how much it would cost or where the money would come from. These are not just technicalities to be ironed out further down the line. Furthermore, it is not the first time that the Prime Minister has made the pledge. He did the same as Mayor of Manchester, where the number of rough sleepers proceeded to rise. He set up the Bed Every Night scheme and then a Housing First scheme. How exactly will the Get Everyone In for Christmas scheme differ from and work better than those two schemes? Is the national plan to end homelessness, published only last December by the Government, still being followed, or has that now been shelved?
In addition, the Prime Minister has called for the biggest council housing programme since the post-war period, then backtracked on his proposal for the Government’s £10 billion 10-year affordable homes programme to be spent entirely on social housing. Can the Minister clarify exactly how many social homes they are planning to build?
During the passage of the Social Housing Act—of course, many of your Lordships in this Room were on that journey—we on these Benches made constructive proposals to enable the building of more social homes and reduce waiting lists. For example, an estimated 148,000 social homes may be fraudulently occupied; that is a big theme that I have and an issue that I feel needs resolving. The Government themselves estimate that 5,800 social homes may be illegally sublet through short-term letting programmes, and we heard some comments earlier about some short-term lettings. Yet in 2024-25, there were just 476 evictions for illegal subletting. When there are people out there on the streets in genuine need, this is unacceptable. Those are British people for whom the welfare state should be there. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify this Government’s plans, how they will be funded and exactly what the Government will do to achieve the numbers. I look forward to hearing her response.