Homeless Emergency London People

EDM number 514 in 1990-91, proposed by DN Campbell-Savours on 21/02/1991.

That this House notes that on Friday morning 15th February 1991 Homeless Emergency London People (HELP), having fruitlessly sought assistance from the Department of the Environment, and having exhausted all other avenues, contacted the honourable Member for Workington, seeking urgent assistance to obtain 200 blankets to distribute that night, and throughout the weekend, to people sleeping rough on London's streets; notes that HELP had run out of blankets and had to turn away people, many of them dangerously ill as a result of sleeping out in sub-zero temperatures night and night; notes that the private office of the Secretary of State for the Environment was immediately contacted from which an official contacted HELP regretting that the Department could do no more than provide two telephone numbers for the Salvation Army, an organisation whom HELP had already contacted to find that their own and other hostels were themselves short of blankets; notes that after many hours of telephone calls by the honourable Member's staff to a range of organisations, blankets were, through good fortune, obtained from Westminster Hospital; notes that at 5.47 p.m. a departmental official telephoned the honourable Member's office to claim that the Department had been doing all they could to help; understands that HELP are short of 300 to 500 blankets for this weekend and the Department of the Environment have not even returned their telephone calls seeking assistance; and condemns the Government's demonstrated lack of concern and co-ordinated assistance in meeting this continuing emergency.

This motion has been signed by a total of 36 MPs.