3. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Homelessness and Rough-sleeping

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:12 pm on 5 February 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:12, 5 February 2019

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.