I very much welcome the statement. I welcome yet another opportunity to discuss supporting housing and the housing support grant, which I seem to have spoken on at least four times over the last two weeks, alongside David Melding and others. But I think it really is important. I don't think we can overestimate how important housing is. Being homeless is one of the great fears of many of us, and, as we go home tonight to warm, dry houses, just think of those who don't. And we've seen what the weather's been like over the last few days. I don't think sleeping outside would be up on the top of any of our lists of things we would like to do. But it is, unfortunately, the reality for far too many people.

It's incredibly difficult to count the number of people who are homeless. A lot of people, especially women, sleep all day and walk during the night. Now, if you're walking in Wind Street on a Saturday night or a Sunday night, to tell if you're homeless or just somebody who's out for the night would be incredibly difficult for anybody. So, female homelessness is always underestimated. But some men do it as well; they think it's dangerous to sleep during the night and much safer to sleep during the day.

I welcome the fact that the Minister stated that a home of your own is the heart of a happy and productive life and that the Government believes that everyone should have a warm and decent home. I think that that is something that would be echoed right the way across the Chamber.

The housing support grant is aimed at tackling homelessness and it's incredibly important in what it does in commissioning projects to tackle homelessness, but we also know that just giving somebody a home is a temporary measure if it's not supported. Some people need support. Their lives are chaotic; they don't come from a stable background, whether they've been in care or have lived in an unstable home. Sometimes, we talk about care, about this number of young people who have left what has been a very unstable home where they've moved around continually, where—. And I deal with a school in my constituency where, at one time, there was a pupil there who would go home and sit on a step outside a house to wonder who was going to pick her up and which home she was going to live in that night. I think we really do have these problems. That wouldn't be picked up under any of your surveys or anything else, but there you had somebody young and in primary school who was effectively homeless. 

I think what I'd like to say as a question to the Minister, I think you can take it that you've got cross-party support here to ask for additional funding for this area, and if you want to know where you need to take it off, I'm sure that many people can come up with a number of areas that appear to take up large sums of money and don't appear to be particularly productive. But I think that it really is important that this is adequately funded, and if somebody—. If the Minister wants me to name some of them, I will: the economy, which seems to have large amounts of money to give out to companies to come here because we offer them more money than anybody else; they come for a short period of time and then leave. I've never thought this would be a sensible economic policy, but it's certainly a very expensive one. But dealing with people who are homeless, I think, is really high up on everybody's agenda, and I would hope that additional money is found.