A LABOUR frontbencher suffered a humiliating gaffe when she got the number of rough sleepers in her constituency wrong by more than 2,750.
Dawn Butler said she had reduced the number of homeless in Brent, North London, from 3,000 down to zero.
Dawn Butler wrongly claimed she had reduced the number of homeless in Brent, North London, from 3,000 down to zero
ROUGH NUMBERS
But the real number of people living on the streets in 248, LBC reports.
Ms Butler, shadow women and equalities minister, told LBC: I can tell you that in 2007, I had around 3,000 or so rough sleepers in Brent.
“The Labour government invested an extra 5m to make sure we can eradicate rough sleeping. We approached the people who were sleeping rough and we helped them out of that situation.”
But when the figure was queried by host Nick Ferrari, she replied: “I think it was 3,000 in Brent. It was a large number.”
There are currently 4,741 rough sleepers in England with 8,855, in London alone, according to the Greater London Authority.
Ms Butler was grilled by Mr Ferrari who accused her of trying to tackle the countrys homelessness crisis without knowing the size of it.
The presenter said: You’re telling me the Labour Party will stop the problem of rough sleeping, but you don’t know how many people there are.”
Ms Butler admitted: “I don’t know all the figures and all the numbers. It’s not actually my area.
“Let’s not take for fact what I’ve just said in terms of the numbers.
“But I can tell you this. We had a number of rough sleepers in Brent and this is what we did to eliminate rough sleepers and we almost eliminated rough sleeping until 2010 and then Labour were not in government.”
