Jim Shannon

My hon. Friend is right. I have been presented with those cases in my office many times. People want to get a mortgage and cannot get one, because of the price of houses in Northern Ireland. In my constituency, they are the highest in all Northern Ireland; indeed, they are comparable to other parts of the United Kingdom. I put on the record my thanks to my local housing team and particularly to the manager Eileen Thompson, to Irene May and to the many others who go the extra mile every day to help those in need. We do what we can with what we have, but because of the skyrocketing demand in my constituency and across the whole country, funding is not stretching far enough. Some 29,000 households in Northern Ireland have homeless status, and the policy approaches are not sufficient to meet the scale of demand. Although the Northern Ireland Executive receives money through the block grant, which is allocated accordingly, the figures show how much of an issue homelessness is, and there is more that we can do on home building. My ask to the Minister—it is not her responsibility where the money goes, but maybe she can pass this on to the right person in the Cabinet—is a commitment to social housing delivery across the whole country and better integration with counterparts in the devolved nations, to ensure that we can support those who are in desperate need of safe and secure housing. It is essential that Westminster provide stronger and more consistent support through fairer and more responsive Barnett consequentials. We have argued for many years that the Barnett consequentials do not reflect Northern Ireland’s needs. If they did, perhaps we could address the issue of temporary accommodation and homelessness, keep pace with demand and deliver long-term solutions. We must take the necessary steps to make the United Kingdom a safe and secure place to call home.