“Homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under the last Labour government, since then it’s down by almost a half […]  it’s Labour that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness”

That’s what the Conservative chancellor Sajid Javid told Sky News this morning.

Let’s take a look.

When was the peak?

The Conservatives have admitted to FactCheck that Mr Javid “misremembered the years, he meant the peak in 2003 under Labour”.

They explained the “down by almost a half” claim is based on official figures from the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG): “Applying the statutory definition of homelessness, the number of homeless people in England has fallen 57 per cent from 135,590 in 2003 to 57,890 in 2017”.

Were Labour ‘responsible for the massive rise in homelessness’?

Getting the dates wrong like this is significant because Mr Javid went on to say just a few seconds later that “it’s Labour that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness”.

Yet when we look at the dataset he’s referring to, it becomes clear that Labour oversaw all of the decline in statutory homelessness that Mr Javid seems to take credit for.

Statutory homelessness was 135,590 in 2003, and fell to 42,390 by the time Labour left office in 2010. That means Labour presided over a 69 per cent drop in statutory homelessness in their final seven years in government.

We should say that the early years of the last Labour government (1997 to 2003) saw statutory homelessness rise by some 33 per cent.

But to characterise the Blair-Brown era as “responsible for the massive rise in homelessness” when the rise was followed by a much greater fall during their tenure is misleading.

The Conservatives’ record

The same dataset reveals that since the Conservatives took office in 2010, statutory homelessness has risen by 36 per cent.

It’s also worth noting that there are myriad ways to measure homelessness. For example, government figures show the number of rough sleepers has risen by 165 per cent since 2010 (though these stats carry the caveat that the way they are collected has changed over time).

FactCheck verdict

The Conservatives have admitted that Sajid Javid got his stats wrong when he claimed “Homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under the last Labour government, since then it’s down by almost a half”. He said a few seconds later that “it’s Labour that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness”.

Mr Javid was actually talking about a peak that happened in 2003. This error is significant because the dataset he’s referring to reveals that it was Labour that oversaw all of the decline in statutory homelessness that Mr Javid seems to take credit for — and that the situation has actually got worse since the Conservatives took office.