Cllr Hollingsworth, seconded by Cllr Aziz proposed the submitted motion as set out in the agenda and briefing note.

After debate and on being put to the vote the motion was agreed.

Council resolved to adopt the following motion:

This Council notes with horror the decision by the Government to make sleeping rough sufficient grounds for deportation from the UK; nothing could expose the callous brutality of the current Conservative administration more clearly than this.

The Council also notes that in addition to long-standing and indisputable evidence linking both homelessness and poor quality housing with poor mental and physical health, poorer educational outcomes and worse life chances, it is becoming clearer that overcrowded homes are likely to be a significant factor in both the spread of Covid and deaths from the virus.

This Council notes that overcrowding is just one factor that has been identified as leading to the higher rates of people from BAME backgrounds becoming critically ill and dying from Covid-19 and the work Shelter and The Big Issue have done to highlight the government's own figures that black people are 'three times as likely to experience homelessness'. The pandemic is intensifying the housing crisis and widening inequalities for these groups.

The pandemic has demonstrated that we are only as safe as our most vulnerable member; those with no recourse to public funds must have access to public services including housing services with no fear of deportation.

The Council further notes that the ‘everyone in’ campaign at the onset of lockdown showed that it is possible to end rough sleeping with sufficient political will and funding, and also notes that over the last 70 years it is only when council housing was being built in sufficient volumes alongside market housing that enough homes for everyone were provided.

This Council believes that nobody should have to sleep rough on our streets, and that having a secure, safe and affordable home is a basic human right for all.

This Council believes that the Government should have used the publication of the long-delayed Social Housing White Paper to address properly both the moral imperative to end rough sleeping, and the equally important need to provide genuinely affordable and secure homes for all, and condemns the failure to do so.

This Council therefore asks that:

·       the Leader of the Council writes to the Home Secretary to demand that Government abandons their proposals to make sleeping rough a ground for deportation, and instead to properly fund local authorities, health services and support providers to ensure that no one in Oxford, or anywhere else in the UK, has to sleep rough on the streets;

·       all members of Council support Shelter’s campaign for a mass programme of social housing building, with 200,000 new homes a year being required to address a backlog that has built up over decades;

·       all members of Council endorse efforts by Oxford City Council and the other local authorities in Oxfordshire to provide enough affordable housing to meet the needs of our current and future citizens

This motion was not taken as the time allocated for debate had finished.