Rough sleeping in 2023 was 27% higher than the previous year (Alamy)
4 min read
The co-founder of the Big Issue magazine has accused politicians of being “obsessed” with tackling the homelessness “emergency” and not the poverty that drives it.
Crossbench peer Lord John Bird added the new Labour administration has been “stumbling” when it comes to dealing with the issue since entering office.
Bird urged ministers to develop a long-term strategy for tackling the root causes of homelessness after figures showed rough sleeping figures rising by 27 per cent in 2023 and homelessness at record levels.
Bird made headlines last month after he walked out of a select committee inquiry into the issue, describing the hearing as a “farce”.
Speaking to The Rundown podcast from PoliticsHome, Lord explained why: “The reason I walked out was because every now and then I just get cheesed off, and you have this situation where people are obsessed with the emergency.”
He gave the example of the Beveridge Report, commissioned in the middle of the Second World War, which looked at what the future of social security would be once the conflict was over.
“In the middle of the crisis, if you are not at the same time saying how do we prevent the next crisis, then it means you have no intellectual, no philosophical, no long-term legislation or whatever up your sleeve because all you’re doing is you’re going from one emergency to the other,” he said.
He said fixing the really pressing short-term issues needs to be the first part of a longer-term plan to help the homeless, and move away from a focus just on the emergency problem.
Appearing alongside him the former mayor of Middlesborough, Andy Preston, agreed, saying the “colossal and frightening sum” spent on just emergency accommodation in London alone every year “would finance the building on an annual basis of 200,000 homes”.
He said: “We’ve got an average of two and a half people per dwelling in this country, so that’s half a million people, we could effectively eradicate so much of this.”
This week the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government announced £1bn in additional funding for local councils in England to tackle growing levels of homelessness.
“This largest-ever investment marks a turning point, giving councils the tools they need to act quickly and put in place support for people to tackle, reduce and prevent homelessness,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner.
“It’s time to turn the tide.”
Writing in the Big Issue himself, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged this Christmas to “make sure no one faces homelessness”.
Asked how he felt the new Government is tackling the issue, however, Lord Bird said: “They’re stumbling.
“I wouldn’t entirely blame them because the depth of the problems that have been left by the Conservatives are absolutely enormous. They put so much stuff on the back burner for so long, and it’s difficult.
“It’s like being thrown in a swimming pool and you can’t really swim, you’ve got to learn.”
He has been advocating for the last few years for a ‘ministry of poverty’, looking at both prevention and cure, saying tackling the issue needs to be cross-government.
Labour has set up an inter-ministerial group on homelessness and rough sleeping, chaired by Rayner, but Bird said it only goes “halfway between where it should be and where it is at the moment, and a halfway stage is better than not”.
Preston went further, saying he was “really disappointed” with the new Government and that he expected more from his former party on this issue since they took office.
“They’ve had 12 months to carefully plan and bring together innovation, ideas, creativity and real passion to fix this — and I’m just not seeing any of it,” he said.
“I don’t mean they don’t care, but there isn’t that passion, there aren’t the ideas.”
Criticising a reliance on inquiries and commissions on policy ideas before acting, Preston said: “I want to make it clear that there are really extraordinarily complex drivers of homelessness, but at the end of the day, it comes down to simple maths as well.
“It’s like musical chairs. If you’ve got a shortage of housing, it’s like musical chairs at a kid’s party; you’ve got 10 kids walking around, there’s only nine chairs, and when the music stops, they’ve all got to grab one.
“Someone is not going to get a chair. We haven’t got enough chairs. We haven’t got enough houses.”
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