Emmaus UK’s Policy, Campaigns and External Affairs Manager, Sam Dalton, attended both Labour and Conservative party conferences, to hear from MPs, policymakers and other organisations, and attend conference events on homelessness, housing, and other relevant areas.
Was there a central theme to both conferences?
A central theme running through both Labour and Conservative party conferences this year was undoubtedly housing.
Fringe programmes were dominated by panel discussions on how to tackle the housing crisis, how to build more affordable and social homes, and whether the respective parties were YIMBY (‘Yes in my back yard’) or NIMBY (‘Not in my back yard’).
Housing is an issue on which Labour has come out all guns blazing since taking power in July, and on which the Conservatives are being forced to think about their own offer.
Within the relentless debates on housing, tackling homelessness featured strongly in its own right, as did creating more preventative public services that support people early on, and stop catastrophes like homelessness taking place.
What did they have to say about homelessness?
At Labour conference, both Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner made strong commitments on homelessness in their keynote speeches.
Starmer said Labour would house all veterans, young care leavers, and domestic abuse victims, while Rayner re-committed to establishing a cross-government task force on ending homelessness, as Emmaus UK called for in our pre-election Action on Homelessness manifesto.
A fringe event on ending homelessness and rough sleeping, featuring one of the new Vice Chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homelessness, David Smith MP, agreed it was crucial to have different government departments involved.
For example, panellists pointed to people being discharged from prisons and the Home Office as being a leading cause of homelessness, and that this department would need to work closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to tackle the problem.
A cross-government approach to ending homelessness seems to have support across the two main parties, with numerous speakers backing the idea at Conservative conference. We don’t know who the next Conservative leader is going to be yet, or exactly what shape their policy agenda is going to take, but at a hustings between the four then contenders centred on their vision of social justice, one of the remaining candidates Robert Jenrick dedicated a section of his opening remarks to tackling the root causes of homelessness – providing some optimism for the priority he may give to the area.
What did the parties say about building affordable and social homes?
Tackling homelessness is closely tied to providing more affordable and social homes, and that is where so much of the discussion at both conferences lay. For Labour, who have already set their target of building 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament, the debate is now about how this is achieved, and what type of housing is built.
How much impact will the party’s planning reforms have in speeding up housebuilding? Will any extra funding be given to councils to build new council housing? Should Right to Buy be reformed or replaced?
Emmaus UK joined other charities in calling for 90,000 new social rent homes to be built per year as part of the government’s overall target, but as yet no figure has been given by Labour. “The biggest expansion in affordable and social housing in a generation” has been promised, and next week’s budget announcement may give some clues as to how this will be funded.
Whie social housing may traditionally be seen as more fertile ground for Labour, with the Conservatives prioritising home ownership, the latter’s conference was flush with fringe events and discussion on how more social homes could be built – and why this is so important. It feels like many MPs, councillors and activists want the party to have a strong offer on this.
A distinctly Conservative case for social housing was being made. If you fund social housing, people pay less in rent, and have more money to spend in other areas of the economy, supporting growth. People in secure housing are more economically productive, having a firm base from which they can work more happily and healthily. And when social housing is good-quality, people’s health improves, and less money needs to be spent on the NHS.
How central was reforming public services?
Spending more now so you can save later applies not only to housing, but to public services more widely. While the case for taking a preventative approach has long been made, where the government intervenes early to keep people healthy, it now seems the political pressure to actually take this approach is greater than ever. The state of the housing crisis and NHS make it a necessity.
On health, Labour is prioritising prevention through its curbs to the harmful practice of smoking, for example, which it believes will save the NHS huge costs in the long-run. At a panel discussion on taking a Conservative approach to public service reform, the need to root public services in local communities, and co-design services with users, was made strongly, all as part of a bottom-up approach that prevents people becoming ill, or unsafe, or homeless, early on.
And it’s the importance of using lived experience to shape policy we must not forget, as we were reminded by a Labour conference event involving Groundswell, Revolving Doors, and the new Prisons Minister.
What did you value most about being at the conferences?
It was great to hear how other organisations involve people with lived experience of the issues they are working on, as Emmaus UK’s project to shape the Supported Housing Act is being led by staff and ‘companions’ who have lived experience of homelessness, with focus groups, interviews and surveys being carried out in Emmaus communities and other small providers.
Overall, it was positive that this year’s party conferences demonstrated that homelessness and housing are taking centre stage in today’s politics to ensure the provision of the future meets the scale of need, and delivers for the very people who will live in these settings.