Prime Minister is star attraction at The Plaza!
THERESA May says she will commit £500m to tackling homelessness after being challenged about the scale of rough sleeping in Greater Manchester.
The PM pledged extra cash to help people get off the streets, but said the answer would be helping people into work, although she declined an invitation to visit the city’s homeless to see the problem for herself.
She spoke to our sister newspaper the M.E.N. after seeing a front page story which revealed how homeless people are living in squalid conditions in a tunnel under one of the city’s main roads, the latest in a string of stories highlighting an increasing problem in the city.
Leafing through the article, Mrs May said: “None of us want to see people homeless or rough-sleeping. That’s why the government has committed to spending by 2020 over £500m on homelessness and rough sleeping.”
The government announced in January it would spend £550m on projects in 225 local authority areas to help down-and-outs get back on their feet by 2020.
Mrs May, who was visiting the volunteers who run Stockport’s Plaza theatre as part of early campaigning for the June 8 General Election, added: “Actually dealing with homelessness and rough-sleeping is about more than just accommodation.
“It’s about trying to make sure people get out of the circumstances where they find themselves homeless in the first place.”
She pointed to fundraising announced last year for ‘trailblazer projects’ which she said ‘Greater Manchester will be involved in as well as councils in other parts of the country’.
Asked whether she would be prepared to visit homeless people in Greater Manchester to see the problem for herself, the prime minister said: “I don’t think I’ve got the opportunity today to do that.”
She added: “I have spoken to people who have been in these difficult circumstances of not having a home but obviously you have identified a particular issue.”
She denied that the Tory-led Coalition austerity program introduced in 2010, which saw public services slashed, was to blame for the current levels of homelessness in Stockport and the north west region.
Mrs May also scotched stories that she had agreed to cancel HS2 to Manchester to pay for Brexit.
She said the Tories were ‘absolutely committed’ to the project and confirmed it would come to Manchester as planned.