Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 4 February 2020.
Well, I thank the Member for that question. I completely agree with her, of course, that criminalisation is not the answer to homelessness and rough-sleeping. I thank the Member, as well, for drawing attention to the figures published today. Some Members here will remember the debate we had last year when the figures went down, when there was a general feeling, from people's lived experience of seeing a rise in street homelessness, that it was hard to square a falling figure with what we are seeing. And, as a result of the discussions we had here, the methodology for this year has been revised and improved, and I think you can see some of that in the figures that were published today. They show, as ever, a mixed picture: five local authorities showing falls in the number of rough-sleepers, including Gwynedd, Wrexham and Cardiff, with significant falls, and then rises in other parts of Wales as well.
The Welsh Government is investing record sums in responding to homelessness. We have new ways in which we are trying to respond to rough-sleeping through the Housing First initiative, which is already helping over 60 people over this winter to go directly into accommodation. We do it in the teeth of the gale of austerity, which is the underlying cause of people losing their homes, losing their livelihoods, and finding themselves in this desperate situation. We will use the figures published today to work with our colleagues in local authorities, in the third sector, to see what more can be done, using the report that was commissioned by Julie James for this winter, chaired by the chief executive of Crisis, so we can learn lessons from elsewhere as well.