I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable residential property, unoccupied for a specified period and not offered for sale or let, to be transferred from the ownership of public landlords to the ownership of housing associations; to amend the law to provide incentives to private landlords to let empty residential property; and for connected purposes. There can be few hon. Members whose constituency work is untouched by the rising tide of homelessness. In my constituency experience, the number of people looking for accommodation from the local authority and from other public authorities has increased markedly in recent years.

It is easy to be judgmental and to seek to fix blame. but the honest answer is that the causes of the rise in the number of homeless families are many and it is not always easy to attach blame. Experience seems to confirm that marital breakdown and family break-up are the largest factors behind the increase in homeless applications to public sector housing bodies. It is easy to understand why. A married couple with two young children drift apart; automatically, one housing unit becomes two. The party with the children, usually the mother—[Interruption.]