A lovely event at the House of Lords on Monday evening to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1966, Ken Loach film, 'Cathy Come Home'. The film moved the country as a whole and led to the setting up of Homes for Cathy, a group of Housing Associations committed to tackling homelessness. 22 of them are still going today – although as you can imagine, they hoped they wouldn’t still be dealing with the same issue half a century later. The problem is getting worse, not better; last Christmas over 100,000 children were in temporary accommodation.

Lord Kerslake opened the evening and Lord Best, who has been backing the Homelessness Reduction Bill was also there, as was John Healey, Shadow Minister for Housing. We watched live extracts of a play by Cardboard Citizens – a surreal combination of luxurious surroundings and tragic real life stories but somehow all the more moving as result.