These snow effigies of homeless people were created in 2018 to demonstrate that rough sleepers were freezing to death [Image: @TrevorCoultMC on Twitter].

The novice Work and Pensions Secretary and the former Tory speechwriter professed outrage at claims that the Conservatives were not compassionate (remember “compassionate Conservatism”?) and didn’t care in a stomach-turning display of hypocrisy on the BBC’s Politics Live.

Ms Coffey tried to blame the 22 per cent increase in deaths since 2017 on drug use. But why do people take drugs? They do it to escape the hell of their existence – a hell into which they have been forced by Tory policies.

Universal Credit, the Bedroom Tax, and cuts to sickness and disability benefits have all been engineered to make it impossible for people to afford to pay for their accommodation and to eat.

Have no doubt about this – the Tories have been deliberately levering poor people out of their homes. The evidence is in the policies and in their result.

If they really were trying to solve homelessness – as they vowed to do in 2017 – there would have been a 100 per cent fall in homelessness-related deaths, not a 22 per cent increase.

A record number of homeless people died last year, marking the biggest increase in deaths since reporting began, official data shows.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show an estimated 726 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2018. This is a 22% rise from 2017 and the highest surge since the data was first collected in 2013.

Drug-related deaths saw the biggest increase, rising by 55% since 2017.

Charities called for an urgent investigation into the deaths of vulnerable people, saying it was heartbreaking and that they should not die “unnoticed and unaccounted for”.

The mouthpieces rushed to cover their political rears on Politics Live, provoking a predictable reaction from This Writer:

Even The Guardian‘s Helen Pidd was finding excuses for the Tories, with a claim that defied reason:

And the simple fact is that deaths will continue to rise until homelessness becomes an automatic death sentence.

I said that was the plan when the Conservatives announced their plan to halve homelessness by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027 – and this is more evidence that I was right.

The answer to homelessness, and the problems that come with it, have been known for years – give these people a place to live! That would relieve burdens on the health service and also on the police and justice system – as has been proved in Utah.

The Conservatives know this but refuse to take the appropriate action.

Therefore we may conclude that they are deliberately driving people to their deaths.

And there’s only one way to stop it – unless you are one of the thugs who consider rough sleepers to be targets for violence and would rather pour petrol on them and set them alight than help. And I don’t think Vox Political readers are thugs.

We need a Labour government, as soon as possible – or these Tory policy deaths will only increase.

Source: Homeless deaths in 2018 rise at highest level – ONS | Society | The Guardian

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