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Dr David Christie, a Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures, has provided evidence to a parliamentary inquiry: Tackling Homelessness. Taken from his doctoral thesis entitled A ‘Hand-up, not a Handout’: New Labour and Street Homelessness 1997-2010, Dr Christie provides a thorough examination of New Labour’s success in reducing homelessness in the UK throughout the 2000s.

Key findings in the evidence he provided include:

• long-term resettlement for homeless people away from the streets requires a multi-dimensional and holistic approach
• New Labour was highly successful in reducing the numbers of rough sleepers and in enabling resettled homeless people to permanently escape from the streets. New Labour’s approach has direct relevance to contemporary homeless policy-making
• The creation of cross-cutting government bodies is essential to address homelessness holistically, and these bodies must be empowered with sufficient authority and resources to achieve their aims

Further to providing evidence to the government, Dr Christie coordinated the delivery of an event at The Exchange building in Birmingham’s town centre. ‘Witness Event: New Labour and Street Homelessness’ brought together key figures in the delivery of New Labour’s homelessness policies to debate their impact and relevance to the homelessness policies of today.

Reflecting on the event, Dr Christie said: “The witness event was hugely successful in bringing together many of the key individuals who designed and delivered homelessness policy under New Labour for the first time since 2010. The audience contained a depth and breadth of expertise, and the debate was lively and astonishingly well-informed. The key insights from the event included: the desperate need for the reconstruction of a comprehensive, ring-fenced funding scheme for housing support equivalent to New Labour's Supporting People programme; the key role that local authorities need to play in forming local homeless strategies that are fully focused on prevention; the centrality of partnership working between central government and the voluntary sector - to provide financial stability and enable the up-skilling of the sector's workforce which, in turn, is needed to deliver the complex and sophisticated forms of working with people with challenging and complex needs that is essential to enable long-term resettlement away from the streets”