The next item is the statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government on homelessness and rough-sleeping. I call on the Minister to make her statement—Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. Llywydd, this Government is committed to ensuring everyone lives in a home that meets their needs. Meeting this commitment is made all the more challenging by the continuing austerity and uncertainty. The most pressing and difficult challenge is in meeting the needs of those who are furthest from secure, suitable housing, in particular those sleeping rough on our streets in tents and doorways, but also those whose homelessness is less visible but just as real.

We have this morning published the annual rough-sleeper count for Wales. The annual count aims to identify rough-sleepers on a particular night. It also includes the findings of a two-week data gathering exercise, using information from a range of services, to provide evidence of the levels of rough-sleeping over a longer time period. The data provides a snapshot of a continuously changing picture. In broad terms, the data indicates that our collective efforts may be beginning to have an impact. In the face of increasing pressures on households, the number of people sleeping rough appears to be stabilising overall, and, in some areas, numbers show a decrease. However, even one person sleeping rough on our streets is one person too many. Like all other Assembly Members who are familiar with the reality on the streets of our towns and cities, I know that rough-sleeping remains at a persistent and unacceptable level in Wales.

This is not a situation unique to Wales. Rough-sleeping is sadly evident in all major towns and cities. This is not acceptable and, in my view, it is not inevitable. Decent housing ought to be a basic human right in a rich country like ours, but the impact of welfare reform, coupled with almost a decade of austerity, is adding to the pressure on households and their access to affordable accommodation. The Welsh Government has invested significantly in preventing and tackling homelessness over the last three years. We are building on that investment, with over £30 million more this year and next. We are also committed to building more affordable housing and to protecting our social housing stock. There are signs that the combination of our groundbreaking homelessness legislation and this financial investment are making a difference.

Almost 19,700 households were successfully prevented from becoming homeless between April 2015 and the end of September 2018. This is particularly positive given that the numbers of households assessed as threatened with homelessness rose by 12 per cent compared to the same quarter the previous year. Despite this significant increase in demand, local authorities managed to maintain service levels, preventing homelessness in 65 per cent of cases. Rough-sleeping is the most acute and visible form of homelessness. People sleeping on our streets often have a range of complex needs that accommodation alone will not address. If we believe the numbers of rough-sleepers to be persistent and unacceptably high, we must then question whether our service models are responding adequately to the needs of people who find themselves on our streets. We must learn from people’s lived experience and seek innovative responses that have individuals at their centre.

We need to ask ourselves whether the additional funding has had an impact, and whether service models adequately support the complex needs of people to help them off the streets and into long-term accommodation. I want local authorities to be bold and brave. I commend them and every single individual who works so hard to support rough-sleepers and help them turn their lives around.

There are some innovative approaches being trialled across Wales. In Wrexham, the community care hub is one such example. As the First Minister recently saw first-hand, it offers rough-sleepers unique access to GP, mental health, substance misuse, housing, outreach, job centre and other support services all in one room. Wrexham council is also seeing early signs of success with its 'assertive outreach' approach. The approach focuses on multidisciplinary support that is persistent and purposeful, with the primary aim of ending homelessness.

I am pleased to report real progress in taking forward Housing First in Wales. Although still early days, we are already seeing evidence of its success with some of our most complex rough-sleepers. We are working with local authorities and the wider sector to roll out a further programme of Housing First trailblazers, supported by over £700,000 of additional funding next year. We are also focusing on how we co-ordinate and share best practice from these early projects.

Housing First breaks with our traditional staircase, earned rewards approach to helping people off the street. Its success is couched in the fact that it puts the individual at the centre. It does not require them to earn the next step on the journey. It accepts that individuals may have a complex mix of issues and needs. Fundamentally, it recognises that individuals may be better able to manage or address issues such as mental ill health or substance misuse and engage with services when they have a stable place to call home.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Salvation Army Housing First project in Cardiff and was able to speak to one of the service users and hear about how Housing First has made a dramatic difference to his life. It was evident that the success of Housing First lies in bringing together a range of services, each working in new, flexible and responsive ways to meet the needs of homeless people.

The importance of multi-agency buy-in and flexibility is also being recognised in Ceredigion. They see the importance of all services and partners working together, actively seeking solutions to the complex needs of individuals. Ceredigion aims to prove that a shared commitment to tailoring services to individuals, rather than the other way around, can really reap rewards.

As well as encouraging local authorities to ask themselves hard questions, learn from one another and change their delivery models, I will also be encouraging them to work alongside my own department to reflect on what we may need to do differently. The aim, longer term, is to align our funding to local authority statutory homelessness strategies. It will be important that these plans clearly demonstrate how public and third sector organisations will work together strategically to deliver greatest impact. I want to see genuine collaboration between all partners across a locality. I will be asking myself and my ministerial colleagues to provide the same level of purpose, commitment and strategic cohesion. The unacceptable circumstances of every homeless and roofless citizen requires, and deserves, nothing less. 

I would like to start with areas of what I think are profound agreement, probably, across the Chamber, on this most important of issues, I think—a whole barometer for the sort of civility we have in society, or otherwise. I think rough-sleepers are the most vulnerable, in terms of being so far from secure, suitable housing. I was pleased to hear that from the Minister. While rough-sleeping remains persistent, it is unacceptable and it is not inevitable, and that is the view we need to hear from Government. Decent housing is a basic human right. I think that was a very clear statement after the second world war, but it perhaps has been lost in recent decades to some extent, and we do need to reassert it. We must be bold and brave—I like those words and I commend you for them—and test our current service models. On these principles, we can build a robust consensus and approach to this challenging issue.

The Minister referred to the success of the housing Act in shifting Wales to a focus on prevention, and I've heard a lot of people commend the Government's approach. So, in concentrating on a couple of deficiencies, I do still want to be balanced and say that I have heard people commend the approach and urge it on other parts of the UK. However, I have also repeatedly heard that a key deficiency of the 2014 Act is that local authorities are only required to assist those who actively seek assistance. Now, of course, many do go beyond that, but the requirement in the law is to respond to those who actively seek assistance, and local authorities can end their homelessness duties if an individual fails to co-operate with the local authority—again, it doesn't say that they must, but they can. And, finally, nor do rough-sleepers in the legislation automatically acquire priority-need status.

Now, the Minister has endorsed the housing first model, and I agree with her that it is probably the best way forward in terms of tackling rough-sleepers, but I do think some of the things that have now been, if not enshrined, then permitted in the legislative approach don't quite align with that. In fairness, I think you made reference to some of the difficulties of an earned approach in granting housing, but I do think that we need to carefully look at the legislation to see how it is operating at this level of bringing relief to rough-sleepers, and the need currently to seek assistance and then to, in an ongoing way, co-operate can't be there as the central principle of the legislation. That should not be how it is interpreted, because, obviously, rough-sleepers have very, very complex needs, as you said, and their circumstances are also highly complex.

I think the Wrexham model is genuinely encouraging because they have what you've called 'assertive outreach' and that does seem to me where we need to be going in terms of how we interpret the legislation, and so I hope that you will confirm that.

Finally, I emphasise innovative work found in the voluntary sector. I hope Members have had a chance to read Lindsay Cordery-Bruce's insightful and compassionate article in yesterday's Western Mail. I have to say, Llywydd, I think this was one of the best commentary articles I've read in many years in any newspaper, frankly, on this subject, and I do urge Members who've not had a chance to read it to do so. Lindsay emphasises the need for an active approach to, quote,

'put compassion back into commissioning'.

End quote. And that ACEs—adverse childhood experiences—need particular attention. Now, I know the Government is looking at ACEs, and I think to bring it into this sector is very important. She also says that homelessness has become a crisis of leadership as much as a crisis of housing, and I think it's for us now to try and combine and have this vigorous consensus and move things along.

And I'll just finish from another part of the voluntary sector, with Crisis's chief executive, John Sparks, who said, after the statistics were published today, and I quote:

'It's nothing short of a national scandal that night after night there are still people forced to sleep rough on our sleeps, especially when we know that if we take the right steps it could be ended for good.'

We all need to work to that end.

Thank you for those remarks. I don't disagree with any of them, really. I think there's some small degree of emphasis, perhaps—very nuanced—that we would disagree with, but, in general, I think we're going in the right way.

I think there's lots to be learned from how far we've come, what's been effective and what hasn't been effective and, in fairness, all over the western world, we have a similar problem, and the models that are being developed—we seek to learn from the best of those models. So, Housing First seems to me a very self-evidently sensible solution. It can take many months, however, to get somebody who has been rough-sleeping with a number of complex problems into the secure accommodation that they need. But we are very much looking to move away from the, sort of, staircase of earned reward that we've hitherto had. Not that that hasn't worked for some people. It will have worked for some people, but, really, what we're looking at is what's called trauma-centred approaches, individualised to the individual person, because every individual is different. So, I'm sure that there are perfectly good housing opportunities available that would make me very unhappy but that might make somebody else very happy. The point is to try and discover what that person is most likely to be able to sustain and what support services they require to do so. It may be, for some people, that being put into a flat and given a basic level of income is enough, and for others they will need a lot more support than that.

So, the model is centered around that person-centered approach, and I was very privileged to meet a gentleman who had benefited from that and was very sure that without that he would not have been able to come in off the street. So, I agree with that. We are looking and we have various reviews going on, started by my colleague Rebecca Evans when she was the housing Minister—reviews into priority need and several of the other things that David Melding mentioned, looking to see what has been effective and what we need to do to shift the conversation onwards. I'm glad you like the Wrexham model because I think there is much to be said for that kind of assertive outreach, as it's called. Having said that, though, in the end, we have also got to respect what the individual themselves thinks that they need and is able to express to us. So, it is about the careful balance between that person's individual rights and our need to support that individual back into sustainable accommodation.

Your statement claims that the number of rough-sleepers appears to be stabilising, but that's based on the rough-sleeping count, which still shows a 45 per cent increase since 2015. Furthermore, whilst those counts are useful in some respects, they can miss rough-sleepers who've been driven from the areas where people are being counted, which we know is happening as a result of over-zealous policing, and in some cases bad policy as well. The other data that we have suggests the problem is still on the increase. A 27 per cent increase in households threatened with homelessness since 2015, for example, does indicate the sheer numbers that we're talking about here. So, would you accept that it's too soon to say that the pressures that cause homelessness appear to be stabilising? After all, we don't have universal credit rolled out completely yet, and we know that that's likely to increase homelessness even further.

Secondly, your statement refers to the groundbreaking legislation, legislation that of course retains the Pereira test and priority need categories, despite the advice that the entire sector was giving to you. The Wales Audit Office have highlighted that, and I quote,

'Local authorities are reacting to the problems caused by homelessness with varying degrees of success, but there is limited focus on preventing the fundamental causes of homelessness'.

Now, your statement does imply that you know this, because you say that local authorities need to ask themselves some very, very hard questions. So, can you tell us what those questions would be, please?

Thirdly, I can't see any mention of the recent Crisis report on how to end homelessness in the UK, which is the most comprehensive plan that I've seen. Do you intend to read that plan? And finally, your statement mentions a number of housing first projects, and housing first is a philosophy that we endorse. Your statement notes that adopting this model is a move away from traditional staircase approaches, but can you elaborate on this, please, in terms of how the Welsh Government will be using its powers and, for example, funding to ensure a move towards Housing First? Can you also explain how retaining priority need is compatible with the housing first policy, please?

Yes, thank you for those remarks. I'd be very happy to try and do my best for those. We are having a review of the priority need system, which Rebecca Evans commissioned, and we are expecting to report back in April of this year, with a view to seeing very much largely what the Member has talked about—what's happening on the ground, what we should be doing to change it, if anything, and so on. So, I'm going to wait and see what that brings, but it was commissioned with a view to many of the things that she set out in her remarks.

In terms of the Crisis report, I've met with Crisis already. I'm very interested in what they've got to say. We have a number of pilots running. We want to see how those are evaluated. We are very, very interested in looking to see what we can do with a view to some of the things—the Housing First approach, the person-centred arrangements that are set out in that report.

The questions the local authorities should ask themselves are: are they learning from the best practice around them? I mentioned a number of authorities—Ceredigion, Wrexham, just to name two—we have good practice in our local authorities. It's not in every local authority. So, in working with the Welsh Local Government Association more generally, actually, for local authorities, not just in housing, we are looking to push good practice across the local authority sector in a number of ways. I'll be looking to local authorities to work together properly to make sure that we are having the best practice spread across Wales, and that we are not going at the pace of the slowest, so to speak, and that's not just in housing, that's across a range of services. Because we do have excellent practice in Wales, but that's not as universal as you and I would both very much like to see.

In terms of the universal credit roll-out, I absolutely take her point. I said in my statement that the rough-sleeper count is a snapshot of a very movable feast. We know that it hides a number of statistics of people who are not in secure accommodation but who are still able to sofa-surf or are at the behest of friends or family. We know that it hides those things. We know that local authorities have made some strides in preventing homelessness, but they are fighting a rising tide of poverty driven by austerity, and universal credit roll-out is certainly not helping that. So, I concur with everything she said there.

It's for us to see what we can do to help local authorities not just hold the tide, if you like, but actually accelerate it in the other direction, and that's very much what the reviews that we've commissioned will be looking to do over the next year.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

First, can I welcome the ministerial statement? Can I also welcome some of the comments made by colleagues earlier? I especially welcome distinguishing between homelessness and rough-sleeping. Homelessness includes those of no fixed abode who sofa-surf thanks to the kindness of friends and family, but in many cases they are just one night away from sleeping rough. There are also those who are inadequately housed in overcrowded accommodation, often staying with family or friends, and are neither homeless nor rough-sleepers but need different accommodation. And that, sadly, includes children.

There are a number of hostels that do a good job but some individuals would prefer the street to the hostels for all sorts of personal reasons, which I know the Minister is well aware of. Does the Minister agree with me that the only way we are going to reduce homelessness and rough-sleeping is by building council houses in sufficient numbers to meet demand, providing support to get the homeless and rough-sleepers into permanent accommodation, ending no-fault evictions, and developing co-operative housing initiatives?

The very short answer to that is 'yes'. I do entirely agree with the Member. We absolutely are determined both to deliver our affordable homes target, but much more importantly build homes for social rent at scale. Now that the UK Government has come back to the 1945 consensus, if I can put it that way, and removed the housing revenue account caps and so on, it means that our authorities are freed up to build the housing that we so very much need.

The big thing will be for us to build the right sort of housing in the right places. So, some of it will just be standard social homes for rent, but some of it will be supported accommodation, and that will be both for people coming back in off the streets, and the right sorts of support and so on—and as I said, one size certainly doesn't fit all there—and it will also be step-down accommodation, so freeing up our NHS, for example, in allowing assisted placements out into the community. It will also mean building sustainable communities once more. Now, this is a point where David Melding and I don't agree, I have to say. I bitterly regret what happened with the right to buy and what happened in the council estates where I grew up, which have turned from sustainable mixed communities into communities where we have one socioeconomic group isolated away from everyone else. I think that is the wrong thing to have done, it did not work, and I would very much like to drive sustainable mixed communities back into those estates by building and adapting those houses so that a number of different uses can be put back there, so that, without wanting to seem nostalgic for my childhood, it resembles much more the estate that I grew up on than the isolated social groups that we currently see. Mike Hedges set out beautifully, actually, the things we need to do in order to achieve that, and we're very determined to do them.

Thanks, Minister, for your statement today. We did have an inquiry on the problems of homelessness and rough-sleeping on the communities committee last year, and as David Melding mentioned, in many cases it is a complex picture, and you've alluded to this in your statement today. So, sometimes it needs complex and cross-cutting approaches to solve these problems, and I was heartened by your references to the approach in Wrexham, where obviously you'll need to monitor how the outcomes pan out. But it seems that you do often need some sort of cross-cutting approach, and that may well be what they're doing with their community care hubs. So, that might be some example that perhaps we can draw on when we look at this across the breadth of Wales.

Now, one visible issue that we have witnessed recently is the increase in people living in tents in urban centres, which is becoming a controversial issue. Clearly, people would seem to be better off in tents than living outside exposed to the elements—that would appear to be clear—but I think we do need to be mindful that people within the housing sector have raised issues over this, with the potential problem that what appears to be a short-term solution of living in a tent might turn into a long-term solution, and might actually deter people in the long run from seeking more viable long-term housing solutions.

So, people in organisations like the Wallich are raising issues over this. I think we need to investigate why sometimes people are more willing to live in tents rather than seek shelter at the overnight shelters. Now, there is some anecdotal evidence from the recent media reports, and some of the people who have been interviewed—some of the homeless people living in the tents—have pointed out that sometimes the overnight shelters are not as attractive for them as living in a tent and sometimes they find the situations that they're in in an overnight shelter are not that safe. So, I think we do have to try to work out how to make it more viable for people to actually be housed in the overnight shelter.

I think drug use is becoming an issue—there is some evidence that the longer people stay homeless the harder it is for them to reintegrate and the more likely they are to be exploited on the streets by drug pedlars. Actually, many of the people who are in the tents—the ones who have been quoted—seem to be saying that one of the reasons they don't want to go into the overnight shelters is to avoid interaction with drug users. But, actually, if they stay in the tents, there is some evidence that they could end up getting involved with drug users even against their own wishes.

So, these are complex problems, and I appreciate that the solutions are not always that easy. I think there is some evidence that rough-sleeping in Scotland—the figures may have stabilised, so I wonder whether there are lessons that we can learn from their approach there. Some people have also noted that a lot of charities, possibly, on occasion, seem to be competing against each other. Can we work to ensure that the charities do work together to help to resolve these issues? Diolch yn fawr.

I think the Member highlights very well the sheer complexity of the difficulties that face us. I would certainly not want to criticise anyone who helps a homeless person have a tent that stops them sleeping in a doorway, because it can make the difference between life and death. However, clearly that is not a sustainable solution. The whole purpose of the housing first approach is to be able to offer people secure permanent accommodation and not have to have them go in and out of night shelters and so on, which, clearly, is only a minor step up from sleeping in the street.

Having said that, the night shelters are a very important part of the mix. We are helping many of the charities that run the night shelters with things like more security and better living space, if you like, but one size doesn't fit all. For some people, that will just not be an acceptable place to go—for others, it will be a lifeline. So, you know—. The Member highlights the complexity, and what I've said in my statement and in answering questions across the floor is: it is quite clear to me, and as clear as the nose on your face, really, that each individual will have a different set of needs, and you need to design a different set of interventions for that individual. The idea that you can have some kind of universal service that fits everybody—clearly, that just does not work.

As I've said very clearly, I'm absolutely convinced that a suitable accommodation offer for the Deputy Presiding Officer, for example, might not be anything that I would find suitable accommodation, because we are very different individuals. We need to be able to recognise the humanity of the person who's homeless and get them the sort of home that they would be able to sustain long term, and that has a huge range of complexities associated with it.

I'd just like to say two other things, though. The first is, just to be clear, that not all people who are rough-sleepers have substance abuse problems—some of them do and some of them don't, so that's not a universal characteristic either. And that isn't the problem in every night shelter either, so the problem is that it's very complex and looks very different depending on where you shine your searchlight.

I'd just like to pay tribute, first of all, to all of the people, both staff and volunteers, who every single day and night are averting people from becoming homeless and supporting those who are on the streets. Every single night, there is a hot meal available to people who are destitute, and there's a huge amount of work going on and people working their socks off. Cardiff council's homeless outreach team helped no less than 54 people on one night last week into emergency accommodation—obviously, when we had the most extreme weather. We still have 90 emergency places available for people who can be persuaded to go into emergency accommodation in what was very dangerously cold weather a few days ago. I also pay tribute to fact Cardiff outperforms the Welsh average. 

Three quarters of the people who sought early advice about becoming homeless were actually helped into alternative accommodation rather than waiting until they were on the streets. So, obviously that's a really important message to anybody in that situation. 

Unfortunately, we know that the main cause of homelessness is not addictions of one sort or another. It is, unfortunately, mortgage and rent arrears and that is because of a deliberate policy by the UK Government not to allow in-work benefits to keep pace with prices, and family breakdown will instantly lead to people not being able to pay their rent. 

So, there's been a 247 per cent increase in the last year in Cardiff, compared with the previous year, as a result of mortgage and rent arrears, and that is a cause for concern. So, the desperate need for more social housing, I think, is top of my list of concerns, because people who are in temporary accommodation are waiting too long before being able to be moved into permanent accommodation, because we simply don't have enough. We've already got a lot of people inappropriately housed who do have a roof over their heads.

So, really—I know that there are intermediate pods being built as part of the innovative housing programme in Cardiff by Cadwyn, and I wondered if you can tell us when they might become available, because they're a bit like Ikea pods—everything available, privacy, security. And also you mentioned the trailblazer Salvation Army Housing First project that you visited recently. It would be very useful to hear a bit more about that. Otherwise, does the Government have any concrete plans to abolish section 21, which is forcing many people to become homeless, because they are simply unable to provide alternative accommodation when their private landlord decides they don't want to house them any longer?  

So, starting with that one, we are actively pursuing any legislative opportunity that would arise in order for us to deal with the section 21 issues. I'm not actually in a position to say what that is but we are very actively pursuing the various options that are available to us, within the legislative programme, to be able to address some of those issues.

We're also, as you heard me saying in response to other questions, looking to have a very serious mass social housing build policy, and we're looking to work with local authorities as fast as possible to free up public land in order to be able to do that. We're working very hard—Rebecca Evans and I are working very hard to make sure that the cap arrangements for the housing revenue account are removed from every authority that currently has one. I think we've got four left to go, but anyway it's not very many more to go. We're very much encouraging local authorities to step up to that plate and use their prudential borrowing powers in order to start the build for houses for social rent.

We're also, of course, pursuing our affordable homes policy, which—we're confident that we will get to our 20,000 affordable homes. But that's not the only solution that's needed, as Jenny Rathbone rightly says. We have a very bad housing shortage and that is driving some of the homelessness. But also we have a rising tide of poverty driven by austerity, which is also contributing to the family breakdown, stress and so on that she very ably outlined, I think. 

So, I go back to saying we need to learn from those very good authorities that have got excellent programmes. We need to spread the best practice across Wales. And I would like to finish by saying what I did say in my statement: to express the Government's very enormous gratitude to all of the people who work in this sector—the third sector, the local authorities, the volunteers and so on—without whom we would have had very many more deaths on the streets. 

I'm grateful to you for your statement, Minister, and I very much welcome the focus on enabling a greater supply of social housing. I think that's absolutely essential to get to resolve many of the issues we've been debating this afternoon. But also I would like to seek your views on talking about homeless people as human beings, and not simply numbers and statistics. Has the Government plans to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824? We're aware that the Vagrancy Act is still in force in parts in Wales, and it does criminalise people who are attempting to live on the streets and who are attempting to create survival strategies whilst living on the street. And we know that this is a pernicious piece of nineteenth century legislation that has no place on the modern statute book. So, I'd be grateful if the Government would outline any plans they would have to repeal that Act, but also, then, introduce new rights for people who are living on the streets. We know, for example, that people who are rough-sleeping do not have access to the medical support that they require, but neither do they have access to things that many of us would take for granted in our daily lives, like access to fresh, clean drinking water, for example. So, as well as repealing the legislation that criminalises people, we also need to ensure that people have the sorts of rights that many people take for granted.

And, finally, Minister, I heard your replies earlier on issues around substance misuse, but I would emphasise to you that I believe that creating a holistic approach to dealing with substance misuse and mental health, which does affect and impact many, many people who are homeless, would impact the ability of people then to sustain their lives in the future. We recognise—I think there's a wide recognition—that at the moment we simply do not have a holistic approach to policy in place; we deal with substance misuse in one place, we deal with mental health, and we deal with housing separately. We need to bring these areas together to enable us to ensure that people who have found themselves homeless are able to be sustained not simply for one night, but able to rebuild their lives.   

Yes indeed, I completely agree with that. That's, in fact, the complete basis on which the housing first strategy is based. I mentioned the innovative project in Wrexham that brings all of the services into a single room so that people have ease of access and so on. And the whole purpose of the housing first approach is that getting somebody into a secure, long-term home that they can regard as home makes it much more obvious that they will be able to access the decent services that come with having an address and a place you call home, whereas, if you're in a ladder of temporary accommodation and so on, you continue to experience the difficulties of not having those permanent services that people have when they have a decent, secure place to live. So, I completely agree with him, and we are looking across the Government at how we can improve the access to services for people who are right on the acute end, the rough-sleepers, but, actually, all the people that Mike Hedges mentioned—the people who are sofa-surfing—and the people that Jenny Rathbone mentioned—family breakdown as a result of serious financial difficulties and so on— that we are all aware of in our communities.

And can I just finish by agreeing with him absolutely that the whole purpose of this is to treat the poor, unfortunate human being who has found themselves in that position as a human being because, frankly, it could happen to any one of us. It's only luck that you don't end up in that circumstance, and so I think we absolutely have to treat each individual as the individual human that they are, and we have to make sure that we have a trauma-centred approach that gives that individual a tailored response.

And, in terms of the Act that he mentioned, we are looking across the piece at the interaction of various legislation, some of which we have the powers to do something about, others that have had unintended consequences—the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, for example, is having unintended consequences in this space—that we will need to work with the UK Government on to secure the changes that we need. 

Thank you for your statement, Minister. Homelessness and rough-sleeping are one of the nation’s greatest shames. The fact that we don’t have enough housing for our citizens is bad enough, but the fact that we neglect those in mental anguish, leading to them sleeping in shop doorways, is disgraceful, and I hope you'll agree with me. A large percentage of those forced to sleep rough are ex-forces. They leave service, often suffering from the physical and mental wounds inflicted upon them during conflict, expecting to be housed by a grateful nation, only to be abandoned, untreated and homeless.

People who were prepared to give their lives defending us and our nation are now treated badly, pushed aside, as if out of sight, out of mind. And this, by God, isn’t good enough. Politicians of all persuasions have attacked rough-sleepers as detritus to be moved from our streets without tackling the underlying causes, without thinking about the terrible suffering rough-sleepers experience. People don’t choose to sleep in shop doorways—they are forced to. We shouldn't be making them feel ashamed, as it is us who should feel the shame. I know of several veterans who feel forced to hide away their rough-sleeping behind bins or in bushes because of how they're treated. Where is the compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves?

When I worked at HMP Parc, people were in prison for vagrancy. They should not have been in prison; they should have been helped within our community. Unfortunately, successive Governments have failed to provide sufficient affordable housing, leading to this rise in homelessness. Minister, how is your Government increasing the supply of affordable housing this year? Welsh Labour have been in power in Wales for nearly two decades and yet homelessness has increased. So, will you accept that your policies are to blame for the increase?

Helsinki has virtually eliminated rough-sleeping over the last couple of decades, and since 2007, the Finnish Government has based its homeless policies on the policies of housing first. Minister, what lessons have you learnt from the Finnish experience?

According to Shelter, housing first accommodation is a better option for people with long-term mental health issues or substance misuse problems, yet Wales has very little housing first accommodation. Minister, can you outline how you plan to rectify this?

And finally, Minister, what specific action will your Government take to support homeless veterans and ensure that military personnel receive help, support and treatment upon discharge, in order to prevent their eventual homelessness and rough-sleeping?

Well, Deputy Presiding Officer, I think I covered quite a lot of what the Member asked me in answers to previous Assembly Members. I didn't, however, address the issue about veterans, which I think is something that she's right to raise. Under the priority need legislation, the priority need for armed services personnel only applies at the point of discharge from the regular armed forces, and it doesn't apply to reservists, spouses or other members of the extended family. We have, however, within the code of guidance, suggested local authorities, when considering urgent housing need, give additional preference to anyone who has a serious injury, medical condition, or any impairment, which they or a member of their household has sustained as a result of service in the armed forces. And we also have a specific housing pathway for ex-service personnel, which provides information and signposting for services and cross-tenure housing options available for service personnel and their families on transfer back to civilian life. 

We also developed, published and disseminated advice cards, leaflets and posters to publicise the pathway within the armed forces community and with existing rough-sleepers, including the contact details for the veterans' gateway service, which provides a one-stop shop for veterans and family members to access services and support in one place. So, I would very much like to highlight that Members, if they are encountering somebody from an armed forces personnel background, should be directing them towards the veterans' gateway service, which will help connect them with the right support and right people who will be able to deal with their very specific need.

Minister, I think many people do share a very strong feeling that it is simply morally indefensible that in the fourth, fifth, sixth biggest economy in the world, we have so many people homeless and sleeping rough, and I think that manifests itself in the sort of voluntary response that Jenny Rathbone mentioned earlier. And I know that at Christmas time, for example, so many people came forward to help with some of the temporary services that have been set up in city and town centres, that they were asked to return home because they were tripping over themselves. But their commitment was very much welcome, obviously, nonetheless. But people really are at a loss to understand how, as a UK, within Wales, we're unable to organise ourselves as a state, as a country, as a society, in a way that prevents increasing homelessness and rough-sleeping. We obviously need to do a lot, lot better.

In terms of the committee that I chair, the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, Minister, I just wanted to ask some questions in terms of some of the work we've done, in terms of some of your responses, your predecessor's responses and where we are at the current time. In terms of the action plan, more information was going to be sought through research on the causes of the recent increase in rough-sleeping, and I just wonder whether that work has identified any opportunities for stronger measures around prevention. Also, the rough-sleeping action plan is intended to be a living document, and I just wonder to what extent it has evolved and what the current developments are.

And on responses to recommendations within our committee report, Welsh Government noted that there would be an updated code of guidance for local authorities on the allocation of accommodation and homelessness and that that would be published around the end of last year and that it would be subject to consultation. So, given that we haven't had the publication, I just wonder where we are with those matters.

Finally, the Welsh Government's response noted that it was in the process of commissioning an independent assessment of the potential implications and risks associated with changing the current priority need approach. So, Minister, could you provide an update on that work and an indication of when findings will be published?

I'll try and do those in reverse order, just because that's how my memory works. So, in terms of the priority need research, that's due back in April, commissioned by my predecessor Rebecca Evans. We're expecting that back in April.FootnoteLink I know that the new guidance is delayed, but we want to make sure that we've got all of the right collaborations and so on, and we had, obviously, a change of Minister in between as well. So, I will write to the Member and tell him exactly what the plan is, because we've been having some discussion about making sure that we've got the right input from all of our collaborative partners—third sector, local authorities and so on—before we issue the new guidance. And we are working, as I say, to shift to a housing first secure accommodation model, so we are looking to see what the evaluations of the various pilots bring us. Also, as I said in response to Leanne Wood, we are looking to see what the experience elsewhere with housing first models has been.

I didn't say in response to Caroline Jones, but the Finnish model is very interesting, but, of course, people cherry-pick what they like out of models, and one of the things about the Finnish model is that it's one of the most equal societies in the world and is not in its ninth year of austerity, which drives very many of the issues that the Finnish model is able to deal with, whereas we are in a very different position in terms of the stress that many of our families find themselves under, particularly those who are in minimum wage jobs, where the universal credit roll-out is having a severe impact on their ability to maintain their secure accommodation. That's why our legislation is groundbreaking, because we have swapped around to looking at the prevention of people falling out of accommodation. I have very much the ambition to end evictions from any kind of social housing in Wales and that we put the support services in place so that people are not evicted from social housing, because when they are, they become homeless—that is the end of that line. So, we need to work hard with our councils that still have their own housing and with our registered social landlords to make sure that we can maintain people in social rented accommodation, that we can meet their needs and that we ensure that they are in suitable accommodation, because, often, it can be that you're just simply in the wrong place away from your support network and all the rest of it. So, we'll be working very hard to put those matters in place.

We've also got to address the supply side, as he rightly says and the report says, and I've answered various Members about what we're doing on the supply side, but that is, of course, very important: to get the right kind of supply side and the right kind of housing for people so that they have their needs met as part of that secure accommodation. That's absolutely fundamental, and in places like Finland, that is the centre of what they do. Those are things that we're very keen to learn from.

Information further to Plenary

Thank you. And finally, Jack Sargeant.

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd, and can I start by thanking the Minister for bringing forward this statement today? I also welcome the comments you've made to Members across the Chamber. I'd also like to just join Jenny Rathbone in paying tribute to those who help with this situation we have day in, day out. It pains me that, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, rough-sleeping happens every single day, and it's simply an unacceptable injustice that damages and destroys thousands of lives. And it isn't just unique to the streets of Cardiff or London. It's happening in towns right across the UK, including my own. So, I want to see our communities, as well as the Government, work to end the epidemic of homelessness once and for all. Minister, would you agree with me that businesses can have some involvement in this—businesses like Dandy's Topsoil in my own constituency, which actually offered a position to a rough-sleeper? He didn't have a curriculum vitae, he didn't have a suit, but they offered him a job, an interview and a position, which started to change the way he was living his life.

Also, can I draw your attention to a report by Shelter, which is called 'Trapped on the Streets'? This report importantly notes that, although there are some common causes described by people sleeping rough, the population is actually diverse and each person's needs, as we've mentioned before, and experiences are vastly different. So, will you consider these findings in the report, because I think it's actually an excellent report and I think Members from across the Chamber should take note of that as well.

Finally, I know we're running out of time, Minister, I'm really pleased that you mentioned the work on Housing First, because this is something I called for last year, and sat down with the previous Minister last year as well to discuss that. So, will you commit to continuing that conversation in the coming months with myself, to see how we can develop this for Wales?

Yes, of course. I'm very happy to commit to that and to speaking with any Member who has an interest in how we develop these policies. We have a range of actions, as Jack Sargeant has pointed out—I'm very heartened to hear of the business that he mentioned. Sadly, many of the people sleeping rough on the streets have got jobs, because, actually, you need more than that. And one of the things we will be doing shortly is going to Stage 3 of our Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Bill, which will abolish many of the fees that are a serious barrier to people getting into private sector rented accommodation, because we have anecdotal evidence of people having to come up with about £3,000 in terms of deposits and fees and guarantor credit arrangements and all the rest of it, and that's just out of the reach of a large number of people who then end up sofa-surfing and all the rest of it. So, that's very much the purpose of that Act. So, as I hope that demonstrates, we're attempting to attack this absolutely heinous scourge on our society in a large number of different ways. 

In particular, I want to point out the trauma-centred approach that we're having where each individual is an individual human being and has their particular circumstances addressed, and that we don't have a one-size-fits-all, 'Oh yes, you're a rough-sleeper; you fit into this category' approach, because people very clearly don't fit into those categories, as I've said a number of times. So, we'll be looking to see that the action plan reflects that; that we review with our local authorities that their action plans also reflect that and we will shortly, as I said to John Griffiths, be publishing a number of best practice guides and the advice papers and so on, that will underline this approach once we've got the research and evaluations back, so that we can make sure that we put the best advice and guidance out there for all of our third sector and local authority partners.

Thank you very much, Minister.