SOME 135,000 children will be homeless this Christmas, according to research by the housing charity Shelter, which calculates that another child becomes homeless in Britain every eight minutes.

Official figures also show that the number of people sleeping on our streets has more than doubled since 2010 to almost 5,000 people on any given night.

Shockingly, and in a stark illustration of Tory Britain today, the number of people dying homeless has risen by more than half in the last five years to 726 last year.

We need to be absolutely clear that rising homelessness is a direct result of decisions made by the Tories.

These decisions involve slashing investment in new low-cost homes, refusing to help private renters and making huge cuts to housing benefit and homelessness services as part of their failed austerity agenda.

Since 2010, the Conservatives have cut £1 billion out of local homelessness services so there are almost 9,000 fewer hostel beds; slashed funding for social housing so the number of government-funded homes for social rent has fallen by 90 per cent, and dramatically reduced housing-benefit entitlements, which the National Audit Office says has led directly to higher homelessness.

Data from the body representing homelessness organisations, Homeless Link, reveals that there were 34,900 hostel beds in England last year, down from 43,655 in 2010. 

Three-quarters of homeless services have turned people away because they were full. 

Additionally, the National Audit Office has confirmed that cuts to local housing allowance contributed to higher homelessness.

Jeremy Corbyn was therefore totally right this week to criticise the Tories for being “directly responsible” for people living and dying on the country’s streets.

What’s even worse is that the Tories show no indication of taking any real action to change this situation.

The Conservatives’ election manifesto  makes clear that they have no plan to tackle the crisis of rising homelessness. 

Specifically, it contains no additional funding for social housing and no new measures to combat rising homelessness or rough sleeping.

In contrast to this inaction and uncaring approach, Labour has pledged a national “moral mission” to save lives this winter and end rough sleeping.

A Labour government will be committed to ending rough sleeping within five years, and its manifesto contains major new pledges to tackle homelessness.

As part of these plans, there will be 150,000 council and social homes built each year  – the biggest council- and social-housing programme since the 1960s – new funding for homelessness services and housing benefit, and a charter of renters’ rights.

Other pledges include a £600 million modern-hostels fund for good-quality homeless accommodation with 5,000 additional beds to take people off the streets and help them rebuild their lives; a £200m hostels transformation fund to turn existing hostels into places where homeless people can turn their lives around, and a new £100m-a-year scheme for emergency winter shelter and support , which will get people off the streets in cold weather and save lives this winter. 

There will also be 4,000 additional “Housing First” homes — a pioneering scheme to get some rough sleepers off the streets and straight into permanent housing. – and a further 4,000 new permanent “move-on” homes, ringfenced for rough sleepers moving out of hostel accommodation.

The package will be backed up with an additional £1 billion a year earmarked from council budgets to pay for staffing and support and funding to relink local housing allowance with local rents.

Together, Labour’s plans add up to the biggest package of help for the homeless in at least 20 years, illustrating the stark difference between a politics that puts people first, and a politics that puts the needs of the 1 per cent first, whatever the consequences.

As Corbyn has said: “One person sleeping rough is one too many [and] no-one wants to live in a society where thousands of homeless people are left out in the cold on the streets.”

Quite simply it should shame Boris Johnson, shame his government and shame the Conservative party that their ideologically driven decisions are directly responsible for the disgraceful increase in people living and dying on our streets.

The fact that it doesn’t shows exactly why they need to go.

Matt Willgress is the national organiser of the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and editor of Labour Outlook. Follow www.facebook.com/LabourOutlook and www.twitter.com/LabourOutlook.