‘I thought I’d be dead by now’ – can Labour use Blair template to cut ‘shameful’ levels of rough sleeping?
Ian Harrison watches a film in which, 16 years ago, he is on the streets begging for money in Covent Garden.
Recorded in 2008, we see a fresh-faced 19-year-old Ian, who has been evicted from his flat, telling the camera he is going to take as many drugs as he can get.
“I want to get so far gone, all my problems go away, just for tonight,” he says.
Watching this, 35-year-old Ian blinks slowly.
He nods and lets out a big sigh. Then his teenage self says something prescient: “Nothing changes, only time, and the people I’m begging from.”
Ian nods again: “He is right. Look where I am now!”
Ian is still homeless, his face now wears the years he’s lived on the streets and the addiction to heroin and crack he is still battling.
And although he has a room in a hostel for the moment, his life is on the same cliff-edge it was all those years ago.
It is significant that Ian became homeless in the late 2000s, towards the end of the Blair/Brown era, when a drive to tackle rough sleeping had successfully reduced numbers on the streets by two-thirds and kept them low for a sustained period.
Ian’s been living rough since 2008, when he was still a teenager
He was in a film years ago showing him begging in London
The 2008 financial crisis and subsequent global economic downturn saw homelessness numbers begin to rise, and steadily do so for a decade until a period during the pandemic triggered a drive to get people off the streets.
But now it is peaking again and last year Ian was among 11,993 rough sleepers in London – the highest ever recorded in the capital.
Labour‘s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, described the situation as “shameful” as she took over the task of sorting it out.
Deputy PM Angela Rayner is in charge of tackling the problem. Pic: PA
Ms Rayner will lead a new cross-government taskforce to tackle the issue, which has echoes of Tony Blair‘s cross-department approach.
However, the success of Blair’s rough sleeping unit, launched in 1999, was also attributed to its focus on attempting to tackle the causes of homelessness, not just finding people places to stay.
This is something Ian feels is lacking now.
Despite having a roof over his head, his single room looks like the streets have followed him in.
Ian grew up in care and says he never had anyone to show him the basic things in life
The floor is covered in rubbish, the sink and walls stained, flies buzz around a small boxy space that smells not dissimilar to the cardboard home he lived in under the Hammersmith flyover a few months ago.
Ian grew up in care and says he hasn’t learned how to look after himself.
He says: “I struggle with a lot of basic things in life. I never had parents to say brush your teeth, get in the shower do this, do that, when you grow up into an adult you don’t have that stuff.”
‘Hard to be stable in a place like this’
He is off the drugs and has a prescription for methadone, but says his environment doesn’t help.
“It’s hard to be stable in a place like this, because it’s a very unstable place to be in,” he says.
“If you are picking someone up and putting them in a hostel with 26 other people who are all addicts, it’s not going to take long before it’s going to rub off on you.”
He is in supported accommodation but says it doesn’t offer the support he needs, which is self-care, organisation and, frankly, a great deal of therapy.
No one has ever addressed the root causes of Ian’s problems.
Ian says his supported accommodation is not helping him get better
“From a very young age, you know, I went through a lot of sexual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse, which was sustained daily, for years,” he says.
“They say you need therapy, but to get the therapy you need to be completely clean of drugs and alcohol for a couple of years. But that’s part of the illness, it’s part of the symptoms of the illness.”
Read more:
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‘Stuck in a merry-go-round for 20 years’
It will be the task of Ms Rayner’s cross-department team to try to turn around the lives of people like Ian – and it won’t be cheap.
But the Sky News producer who filmed the footage back in 2008 and has known Ian since that time, has seen him go through countless hostels (around 30, says Ian) and mental institutions, only to eventually end up back out on the streets.
The long-term cost of not solving Ian’s problems is incalculable.
“I’ve been stuck in a merry-go-round for 20 years,” he says.
“l become homeless, get into a hostel, become homeless. You give up.”
Asked what his 19-year-old self would have hoped to being doing in his 30s, Ian says: “To be honest, I thought I’d be dead by now. And I wouldn’t have cared if I was.”
But Ian does care now.
A wish list, written on his hostel wall, reads: “Stop using all drugs, save up more cash, care 4 self better, start up business, go to gym, get routine, have camping holiday.”
To achieve this, he is going to need the kind of help that has eluded him all his life.
When I got to Chequers on Sunday, the prime minister had clearly been up for most of the night and hitting the phones all morning with calls to fellow leaders in Europe and the Middle East, as he and others scrambled to try to contain a very dangerous situation.
His primary message was to try to reassure the public that the UK government was working to stabilise the region as best it could and press for a return to diplomacy.
But what struck me in our short interview was not what he did say but what he didn’t – what he couldn’t – say about the US strikes.
It was clear from his swerve on the question of whether the UK supported the strikes that the prime minister neither wanted to endorse US strikes nor overtly criticise President Donald Trump.
Follow latest: Trump hails ‘bullseye’ strikes on Iran
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Starmer reacts to US strikes on Iran
Instead, his was a form of words – repeated later in a joint statement of the E3 (the UK, Germany and France) – to acknowledge the US strikes and reiterate where they can agree: the need to prevent Iran having a nuclear weapon.
He also didn’t want to engage in the very obvious observation that President Trump simply isn’t listening to Sir Keir Starmer or other allies, who had been very publicly pressing for de-escalation all week, from the G7 summit in Canada to this weekend as European countries convened talks in Geneva with Iran.
Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 in Canada last week. Pic: Reuters
It was only five days ago that the prime minister told me he didn’t think a US attack was imminent, when I asked him what was going on following President Trump’s abrupt decision to quit the G7 early and convene his security council at the White House.
When I asked him if he felt foolish or frustrated that Trump had done that and didn’t seem to be listening, he told me it was a “fast moving situation” with a “huge amount of discussions in the days since the G7” and said he was intensely pressing his consistent position of de-escalation.
What else really could he say? He has calculated that criticising Trump goes against UK interests and has no other option but to press for a diplomatic solution and work with other leaders to achieve that aim.
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What is Operation ‘Midnight Hammer’?
Before these strikes, Tehran was clear it would not enter negotiations until Israel stopped firing missiles into Iran – something Israel is still saying it is not prepared to do.
The US has been briefing that one of the reasons it took action was because it did not think the Iranians were taking the talks convened by the Europeans in Geneva seriously enough.
It is hard now to see how these strikes will not serve but to deepen the conflict in the Middle East and the mood in government is bleak.
Iran will probably conclude that continuing to strike only Israel in light of the US attacks – the first airstrikes ever by the US on Iran – is a response that will make the regime seem weak.
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What next after US-Iran strikes?
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But escalation could draw the UK into a wider conflict it does not want. If Iran struck US assets, it could trigger Article 5 of NATO (an attack on one is an attack on all) and draw the UK into military action.
If Iran chose to attack the US via proxies, then UK bases and assets could be under threat.
The prime minister was at pains to stress on Sunday that the UK had not been involved in these strikes.
Meanwhile, the UK-controlled airbase on Diego Garcia was not used to launch the US attacks.
There was no request to use the Diego Garcia base, the president moving unilaterally, underlining his disinterest in what the UK has to say.
The world is waiting nervously to see how Iran might respond, as the PM moves more military assets to the region while simultaneously hitting the phones.
The prime minister may be deeply opposed to this war, but stopping it is not in his gift.
UK
GPs can prescribe weight loss jabs on the NHS from today – but strict eligibility criteria in place
GPs will be able to prescribe weight loss jabs on the NHS from today.
About 220,000 people with the “greatest need” are set to receive Mounjaro – with strict criteria for the first year of the rollout.
Initially, only those with a body mass index of over 40 who have at least four other health problems linked to obesity will be eligible.
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Can you get pregnant when on weight loss drugs?
Some doctors have raised concerns about the additional workload this new programme will bring, while pharmacists fear it could lead to supply shortages.
While an estimated 1.5 million people are now taking weight loss drugs across the UK, they could previously only be accessed through specialist services or private prescriptions.
Dr Claire Fuller from NHS England said: “We urgently need to address rising levels of obesity and prioritise support for those who are experiencing severe ill health – and greater access to weight loss drugs will make a significant difference to the lives of those people.”
She added: “While not everyone will be eligible for weight loss drugs, it’s important that anyone who is worried about the impact of their weight on their health discusses the range of NHS support available with their healthcare professional.”
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Weight loss drugs ‘changing way we see obesity’
The chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs welcomed NHS England’s decision to pursue a phased rollout, and said current workloads must be factored in to ensure the jabs can be prescribed safely.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne went on to say: “While weight loss medications have a lot of potential benefits for patients who are struggling to lose weight and who meet all the clinical criteria for a prescription, they mustn’t be seen as a ‘silver bullet’ to aid weight loss.
“We also need to see a focus on prevention, stopping people becoming overweight in the first place so they don’t require a medical intervention later.”
Read more from Sky News:
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‘How I tried to get weight loss drugs’
Her remarks were echoed by the National Pharmacy Association’s chairman Olivier Picard, who says “prescribing these medications alone misses the point”.
He argued that they need to be part of a comprehensive strategy that includes lifestyle coaching, exercise and nutritional guidance – but many GPs currently “lack the bandwidth” to provide this support.
“As a result, we could end up in a situation where patients are prescribed the medication, lose weight, and then experience rebound weight gain once the course ends – simply because the foundational lifestyle changes weren’t addressed,” Mr Picard added.
Estimates suggest about 29% of the adult population is obese.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the government “is determined to bring revolutionary modern treatments to everyone who needs them, not just those who can afford to pay”.
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