This is the first rough sleeping summit, ladies and gentlemen, here, in Downing Street and looking around the room, I can see so many people have travelled to be with us today.
Thank you. Thank you all for doing it.
Does it feel right to be here? I think so.
I just wanted you to just dwell on the moment for a minute before we get into the amazing presentations we’ve heard, and all the issues we’re here to discuss.
Just think about the significance of the moment for one minute. Because we’re gathered here in the most powerful place in the land to talk about people who often feel forgotten, nobody cares.
People who feel they’re just walked past on a daily basis. So, if nothing else, perhaps the message of what’s happening here today gets out of people out there, and makes them feel today if not tomorrow, but certainly today, that somebody might care enough to do something.
And I think that’s such a powerful place for us all to start today and build from, because I know this country can do what it wants to do when we all pull in the same direction.
And I’m conscious that in this room we’ve got obviously colleagues from the charitable sector, community voluntary sector, but we have lots of private sector colleagues in the room and I wanted to recognise your support too.
Keely talked about getting on the phone and I know what it’s like when Keely gets on the phone. She can get others behind what she wants. Keely you’re amazing, the pride of Wigan, for sure, and what you’ve built in The Brick.
But people rally to the call, don’t they? And I think what we’re doing here today, everybody, is creating a focal point for people to rally around. And send a message about who we are as a country as we go forward from here.
We’re a country that doesn’t want anybody to have to sleep rough on the streets every night. We are better than that. We can fix this, as Louise said, we did before.
So today is about how. How are we going to do it?
And I promise you, I’ll back up everything you’ve just heard from Lorna and from all the speakers that you heard at the start, I will lead from the front.
The first thing that I can say to you, which I hope makes it feel a little different, is that for as long as I’m here, and as long as this government is in position, this will be permanent.
This isn’t an initiative that you’re used to seeing that comes and goes and then you’re left thinking ‘what was all that about?’.
This is a permanent drive, similar to the one we saw in the 2000s. We’ll be at your back all the way through this. So, work with that knowledge, and that confidence to plan for the long fall.
We can only do this by doing that, by taking that longer term approach, sticking at it, because while we will offer everybody something this year, a route away, and Angela, it’s amazing what you’ve done working with Flo, the Homelessness Minister and all of your team to get into a position where we can say that with confidence today that we can give an offer.
It’s about what follows beyond that, isn’t it? What comes next year as well.
So we want you to know that the money is there, we will be backing you all of the way.
The second thing I want to commit to you today is this is a whole government approach. We need all parts of government behind this as well, all departments.
And we have raised this at Cabinet a number of times already, we have that buy-in from all departments.
So I want you to know, it is that whole government but also, as represented in this room, whole society approach to tackling this issue with our colleagues in local government, and it’s good to see Councillor Eamonn O’Brien, Chair of the LGA with us today.
It’s only by having everyone facing the same way, pulling the same way, that we’ll make the difference that we all want to make.
I did a lot as Mayor of Greater Manchester on this, and I went on something of a journey myself, working with Kevin Lee who’s here as well, who’s been pulling this event together.
We’ve discovered a lot that we didn’t know before we started, and it is really important to always bear in mind that this is about recovery.
It’s about helping people who often have suffered trauma in their life go on a journey of recovery.
And it’s not possible to put a time frame on that journey, it will be different for everybody.
But if you think about it in that way, and also that every single person, whoever they are, what they’ve been through, is capable of recovery and it’s our job to help them on that journey.
We had a mantra in Greater Manchester, and today I’m making it the national mantra that underpins this collective drive that we’re all going on together everybody, this collective journey: names not Bamidbar.
That’s how, Lorna, I think you start to end homelessness.
Following this message, think about the name, the individual, the person right there in front of you.
Start there, and then work from there.
We know that everything is possible when government works on that principle, when society works on that principle. And that’s what will guide us, that’s the way we will do it.
And I want to stress, whole society. And I want to pay tribute to the Reverend Ian Rutherford who is here with us today, who chaired the Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network during my time as Mayor.
I can see representatives from the faith sector in the room and it’s so important that you’re with us today because in the end you can have the names on Bamidbar approach, but you’ve got to use it to build something else, which is trust.
You’ve got to get that trust off people if you’re then to be able to go on that journey away from the street together.
And we know working with our faith organisations and all of our communities, you can bring that extra dimension to the work that we’re all going to do together, and we really thank you for it.
So we’ve got all of the ingredients, haven’t we? It’s all there.
I know times are tough, but this is the right thing to do in any circumstances. It is just the right thing to do.
But I remember when I was in the journey of trying to persuade people to get behind our driving in Greater Manchester.
We’ve also got to be conscious when we speak to the rest of the country, the taxpayers of this country, that actually, to leave people sleeping rough has financial consequences.
It doesn’t work for anybody and it doesn’t work for the public purse. Because if you leave people in a position where they are in and out of A&E and in and out of a hospital bed, that doesn’t make sense for anybody. There is a rock-solid business case to do something to end homelessness, to put people on a path to recovery so that they can contribute once again and that also should be the thinking that we take to this conversation.
If you find anybody in your area who says we can’t afford to do it, tell them from me, directly from here, that we can’t afford not to do it and in fact not to do it is more wasteful of public resources, but it’s worse than that, far worse than that, it’s wasteful of people’s potential, it’s wasteful of people’s possibilities that they have in their life to get back to what matters to them in their lives. And never ever hear that and don’t challenge it.
We will do this, everybody, we will. I am absolutely certain of it, when I look round this room I know that you are all powerhouses in your communities when it comes to this issue. I know, like Keely, you’re the people who don’t take no for an answer because of the people that you are, you pull people around you.
Let’s make this a turning point in this country.
We’ve been living in a time where people feel that nothing can be fixed, that everything is too difficult and then people just sense that they will see the sad picture of people sleeping on our streets.
Well let’s show them that it can be fixed, it can be done because this is a challenge that is not beyond us.
If we go at this from a ‘names not Bamidbar’ approach. Go at it with a care for people.
I spoke outside Downing Street when I walked in three months ago, just over, on that morning.
I said I was going to put a care for people at the heart of government. And the fact that we are talking about people in this country with some of the biggest challenges today, if we get the country right for people with the biggest challenges, we’ll get it right for everybody. But let’s look at this through a vision of care.
We did something in Greater Manchester that was something of a game changer.
We’d always looked at people when they presented as homeless, through the Homelessness Act and the provisions it had around whether people could have access to support or not. And that was quite restrictive and it meant more people were turned away than were supported, until Manchester City Council, to their great credit, decided to use the Care Act as the Act that they would use to judge whether or not they were going to help somebody.
And you know what? In the vast majority of cases, they then found that they did have an obligation to support people, and then they started to work with everybody pretty much who came through the door.
So let’s put a care for people at the heart of everything that we’re doing here. Let’s celebrate the fact that we have gathered in this room all sections of British society and you’re here because you’re ready to work together.
I never let it be said that one organisation comes to me and says, ‘Oh, we know everything how to do this’. It won’t be solved like that. It will be solved by the network of organisations working together.
The problem is bigger than all of us on its own, but when we work together, we can become bigger than the problem and we can solve it.
So, I am just so grateful that you are here, that you are on this journey with us.
We will be with you all of the way, that will never change, we’re at your back, we will make this work, we will show that this country is unbeatable when it works as one, we will fix this, as Louise said, ‘we’ve done it before, we’re going to do it again’.
And just think how it will feel if we get to the end of this year, and if I could just finish on this point and you know in your heart and we know at a national level that we did give every single person an offer of help at this end of year.
I started by saying that they might hear about this in the news today, and think about that for a minute, what that would mean in your communities, people hearing about an event like this.
Wouldn’t it be just terrible if we then didn’t follow through and made sure that it turned into something tangible for every single person?
I am asking you all from the front here today: please, we must turn this into something tangible for everybody.
It doesn’t mean that everybody will be able to take up the offer and everybody will be able to have their life turned around.
But the fact that we give them that offer will put enough hope in their heart that something will be coming and something will change as we go into the new year.
That’s our collective mission, everybody.
I’m so proud that you have answered the call that I made just over three months ago.
Together we will do it, and we will show the power that this country still has when it works as one. Thank you very much.