Ahead of the next General Election, Homelessness stakeholders came together to hear from representatives of different political parties and put forward their questions. I represented the Conservatives.
My budget has been increased from £2bn to £2.4bn, an unprecedented amount of money over 3 years, showing how this is a major focus of Government.
While every rough sleeper is one too many, on an international comparison basis, our numbers are statistically low. At the last annual count, England had 3898 rough sleepers, 6.8 per 100,000 people. Only Japan and South Korea of comparable countries have lower numbers, while the US rate is 28 times higher. We are determined to do more and hence the increase in funding.
