Speeches by Ali.

“The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the importance of the constituency connection. Hon. Members have made important contributions about alternative systems, outlining their merits and limitations. Each of those systems has its pros and cons, and that has been strongly and powerfully debated by many …”

“I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for opening the debate and by congratulating the Backbench Business Committee and the key Members on securing this debate. The UK’s democratic system and institutions are strong and are rightly held the world over as a strong ex…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his invitation, and welcome him to send us information. He knows that I cannot be a member of the all-party group, but I recognise and commend its work. Having been a member of and chaired many all-party groups during my 14 years in opposition, I recognise the importance of their work. I tha…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Member, who is an extremely diligent Member of this House, with many years of experience, and a great campaigner. He makes important points about planning matters, which obviously I cannot go into, but I look forward to working with him. I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. This G…”

“The hon. Member has set out his critique. What is important is that we get it right, and that requires close working, with him and other hon. Members, and my Department, and that is why the brokerage element of what we do is really important. He makes very important points; we can continue the conversation beyond this …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing this important debate and for highlighting his concerns about this project, and I thank other hon. Members for their interventions. As someone who spent many years securi…”

“It is important that we all ensure that we are peacemakers at home. If we want to see peace and security both here at home and elsewhere in the world, we have to work together in solidarity and be fellow citizens. We have to practice what we preach. It is important that we keep our democracy safe, and that those of all…”

“It is an honour to speak in this Holocaust Memorial Day debate, and I am grateful to hon. Members from all parts of the House for their powerful and moving contributions to this important debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who responded to the debate, and to my …”

“I have had a meeting with my counterpart where homelessness and rough sleeping have been on the agenda, yes.”

“I am Rushanara Ali, Minister for Homelessness and Democracy.”

“Good morning, Chair. To the Committee, I want to start with saying how delighted I am to be here in front of this Committee and at the fact that this Committee is looking at homelessness and rough sleeping, which I know is a subject close to all our hearts, given the challenges we face. For me, since I joined the team …”

“Our aim is to work across Government and make sure that those underlying issues that drive homelessness and rough sleeping are owned by the relevant Departments. That is a feature of a number of cross-governmental groups, for instance the violence against women inter-ministerial group, the child poverty inter-ministeri…”

“Each Department has lead responsibility. To give you an example, this is not a talking shop. We have been taking action in terms of my Department. The first thing we did is that the Chancellor, as you know, increased the funding for homelessness by £233 million, bringing the total to £1 billion, which we announced the …”

“We can follow up, but this is an initial meeting, setting out and agreeing the themes. Then, as I say, we have another meeting coming up. To reassure you all, we are not waiting for a strategy to develop. We have taken action in terms of legislative programmes in my Department, as you know. We can go on to it later. Th…”

“We expect to publish the strategy following the conclusion of phase 2 of the spending review. I would not want to get into specifics, but that is just to reassure you. We can continue the conversation as we make progress, as we do in Parliament. Obviously, it is not just this session. There will be other opportunities …”

“It is an internal government report. We are at the early stages of looking at working across Government, but we are certainly keen to engage this Committee. When the report of this inquiry comes out, we would be keen to draw on the insights that you have. I have looked very carefully at the written evidence that was su…”

“There will be a strategy that will be available after phase 2 of the spending review.”

“I will just bring in Penny if she wanted to add anything.”

“I could not agree more. To reassure you, we have some great examples. You mentioned some of that. In terms of policy, the previous Labour Government cut rough sleeping by two-thirds. We have a really good evidence base on what worked historically and where things can go wrong. We need to learn from success as well as f…”

“To reassure you, in parallel we are doing work around supporting local authorities in terms of funding, but also there are the homelessness advisers in the Department who work with those who are facing particular challenges. We also have a series of Government programmes and pilots, such as the Housing First pilot and …”