Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 02 February 2022
I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am the owner of a rental property in North Lanarkshire.
We welcome the debate and are pleased to see that the consultation is under way. We support measures to intervene at an earlier stage, and encourage services to work together to respond to people’s needs to ensure that fewer people and families face having to rebuild their lives.
Yesterday’s homelessness statistics for the six months to September demonstrate that the nation’s continuing homelessness crisis is severe and persistent. Each case represents a household of real people, including whole families, children and people with mental health or other problems. They simply want the right to safe, secure, affordable housing, but, instead, they are going without.
As our amendment says, one in 12 people have been
“forced to experience the trauma of homelessness”,
which shows that the opportunity to go much further to end homelessness, and prevent it from happening in the first place, cannot be missed. In May, we pledged that there should be collective responsibility across public services to prevent homelessness. When it comes before Parliament, we will therefore support legislation that applies such a duty to public services.
Similar to the issue that was highlighted by Miles Briggs, Shelter has drawn to my attention the proposal that would remove the right to permanent accommodation and replace it with the right to stable accommodation. I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on that and confirm that there will be no regression of hard-won housing and homelessness rights in forthcoming legislation. I ask the Government and Parliament to reaffirm existing expectations that homelessness ends only in a secure, permanent setting.