Rough sleepers will die this winter. The Tories should embrace Labour’s solution

It shames a country as decent and well-off as ours that tonight thousands of people will sleep outside for want of a place to stay. Tragically, people are not just living on the streets in greater numbers, they’re dying there too. The ground-breaking project by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggests that at least 484 people have died homeless since October last year. These include men and women of all ages, found dead outside in tents and car parks and shop doorways.

It’s unbelievable that in 21st century Britain there is no guaranteed shelter from the winter cold for those who find themselves homeless, and that in some parts of the country there is little or no emergency accommodation at all when temperatures plunge. Astonishingly, government ministers don’t even know which areas have emergency winter provision, and which don’t. The government simply doesn’t gather the information. In places that do have winter services, we know that one in four had to turn away rough sleepers last year. These charities, churches and councils do an extraordinary job in increasingly tough circumstances, but the government regards them as an optional extra rather than an essential part of our welfare state, with life-and-death consequences for those who sleep rough.

This is part of a pattern of neglect we’ve seen from Conservative ministers since 2010. Rough sleeping has risen each and every year as government cuts have taken their toll. This is the desperately foreseeable effect of slashing investment in affordable housing, cutting housing benefit, withdrawing most funding for homelessness hostels, and refusing to give the growing number of private renters any rights to security in their home.

I’m determined that under the next Labour government this will change. That’s why today I announced that Labour will make emergency accommodation available for every rough sleeper in every area whenever local temperatures are set to fall below freezing. The new national scheme will be funded through a new Rough Sleepers Cold Weather Fund, set at £100m in the first year, and paid for by part of the funds raised from the levy on second homes used as holiday homes that I announced at Labour party conference earlier this year. It can only be fair that those who have done well from the housing market pay a bit more to help those with no home.

As well as extra emergency shelter, this new funding will ensure keyworkers are available to link rough sleepers with health and housing support to keep them off the streets for good, as cold weather enables contact with rough sleepers that are otherwise hard to reach. This service will be a new frontline for Labour’s wider commitment to end rough sleeping and tackle the scourge of rising homelessness, just as the last Labour government had to do in the 2000s. After the mass homelessness of the 1980s and 1990s, with tent cities in central London, Labour acted with a comprehensive plan driven from Downing Street which helped to reduce rough sleeping dramatically.

The same challenge will face the next Labour government, and that starts with giving every rough sleeper a roof over their head when the weather gets cold. We can save lives this winter if the government acts to put this scheme in place now. If not, it will fall again to Labour to confront our country’s homelessness crisis.

• John Healey is the shadow housing secretary