Absolutely. A combination of policy measures—not just the failure on new housing completions, but a range of other measures—has contributed to this toxic situation. We see it perhaps most visibly in Greater Manchester—I live there and represent part of it—than in any other part of the country, and thank goodness that we in Greater Manchester have a Labour Mayor in Andy Burnham who is so determined to make a difference on this matter. If Labour was in power, we would set up a taskforce, led by the Prime Minister, to end this, and we would start by setting out plans to make available at least 4,000 homes for people with a history of rough sleeping.
The homelessness statistics obviously include the hundreds of families who tragically lost their homes in the Grenfell Tower disaster in June, four-fifths of whom are still living in temporary accommodation. Although Labour welcomes the additional funding for mental health services for those affected by Grenfell, we have profound concerns about the fact that no new money has been allocated for fire safety throughout the country. The Government ignored calls to fit sprinklers to all social housing tower blocks in 2013, after the disastrous and fatal events that happened at Lakanal House and Shirley Towers, so it remains the case that only 2% of tower blocks in the UK have sprinklers installed. That figure should be of serious concern to us all.
We can see that the measures included in the Bill fall far short of what is needed to fix the housing crisis in Britain. We want in particular to discuss one measure that the Opposition are concerned may be being used as a fig leaf for just another cut. This is in regard to clause 8, the income tax exemption for the armed forces accommodation allowance, which the Minister mentioned. The explanatory note to the clause states that this is
“to allow members of the armed forces to give up their entitlement to accommodation in exchange for an allowance to be used to rent or maintain accommodation in the private market.”
Labour is concerned that this manoeuvre is designed to force more servicemen and women into the private rental sector, as part of a Government shift towards selling off the military housing stock in which armed forces personnel would ordinarily be housed.