However well-intentioned Brokenshire’s words, the government reneged on this duty. In 2019, the number of deaths among homeless people in England and Wales rose for the fifth year in a row to a record high of 778. Meanwhile, the number of people who were entirely homeless or living in temporary accommodation and hostels in England soared to 280,000 in 2019 from a low of 40,000 in 2009 and 2010.
The 280k is the number sleeping rough plus the number saved from sleeping rough by the welfare state. But it is used to show the problems of those sleeping rough.
Imagine – we entirely solve rough sleeping. This sill clearly involve at least some temporary accommodations somewhere in the system. But by this metric being used the problem will be the same size it is rather than having been solved.
Perhaps they should tow back all those freeloaders who paddle in from France until this homelessness crisis is solved?
I’m sure the 3m-odd immigrants since 2009 had nothing to do with this…
Lots of hand wringing on the Beeb this morning about the shortcomings of the care system for teenagers. Government must do something…
I guess that would be the same care system that is being swamped by lots of unaccompanied ‘minors’? Government will continue its current strategy of talking a good fight.
If people are that concerned then why do they not donate to charities and the claim back the tax on their tax returns?
Aren’t these the same sort who claimed that the existence of food banks showed how “the system” was failing?
One reason the wartime Labour Party was against Beveridge’s proposal for a Health Service was that ameliorating the plight of the poor would make them less likely to vote Labour. (That may be why the Liberal and Conservative Parties quickly adopted the policy.)
It’s a general rule: those who make their livings as parasites on the poor and unfortunate are really keen to keep up the numbers of the poor and unfortunate.
P.S. It was the nation’s bad luck that Labour changed its mind in time for Bevan to impose his National Health Stalinism.
@ MC
The 3m-odd immigrants between 2001 census and 2011 census …
I believe that there has been a decrease in immigration since 2016
Dearieme: Beveridges’s plan was state funding for local provision. Labour, more specifically Bevan himself, took it and transformed it into state funding and control of state provision.
“ Lots of hand wringing on the Beeb this morning about the shortcomings of the care system for teenagers. Government must do something…”
It’s a pity they didn’t have the same concern for them when schools were being shot down instead of being a mouthpiece for teachers’ unions.
@John77 – https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06077/SN06077.pdf
There was a decrease in immigration 2016 to 2019, however there were still more than half a million immigrants each year and net migration was still positive. Net migration in the year to April 1 2020 was 313,000.
From the report: “Over the last twenty-five years, both immigration and emigration have increased to historically high levels, with immigration exceeding emigration by more than 100,000 in every year since 1998.”
@ MC
OK, let me rephrase – between the 2001 and 2011 censuses the number of people living in the UK on census day but born abroad increased by over 3 million. That is a net figure, net of emigration, net of the hundreds of thousands (possibly even a million) who were here in 2001 and died in the next decade. That is a recorded fact, not just an estimate, and a damn sight more than net immigration since 2009.