LONDON LETTTER: On A cold November night last year, Labour's Rough Sleepers' Unit counted the number of people bedding down on England's streets and alleyways. It was intended as a snapshot of the number of street homeless across the country from Hull to London and Bournemouth to Liverpool, never as a definitive figure on homelessness.
It was a straightforward exercise. Members of the unit and homelessness workers, visited known areas used by rough sleepers and counted up the numbers, eventually coming up with the figure of 530 rough sleepers in England.
Or was it that simple? Were some rough sleepers moved off the street for the night so they wouldn't appear on the official count? Were homeless charities asked to keep their night shelters open for a few more hours to keep the official figures down? The the Simon Community certainly believes this was the case.
When the unit released the official figure, highlighting that the government had met its pledge to reduce the numbers sleeping rough by two-thirds between 1988 and 2002, the Prime Minister rightly promised Labour would not be complacent.
Meeting a group of former rough sleepers in east London, who had been helped off the streets and into full employment by the unit and other organisations, he told them: "There was no clearer evidence that something was going wrong with our society than the increasing numbers of people sleeping on the streets of our cities."
Critics found it hard to allow Labour's triumph to go unchallenged, particularly when outreach workers and volunteers working for homeless organisations were coming forward with accounts totally at odds with the official line. It was not clear if allegations of "fixing" the count in London would be repeated across the country. But anecdotal evidence in Bournemouth and Leeds - where homeless groups said their figures were three and five times higher than official statistics - raised many questions.
Outreach workers and homeless volunteers who contacted officials at the Simon Community and other organisations reported unusual events. Some said that on the night of the official count they were asked by members of the unit to extend the hours of London night shelters to get people off the street. Some rough sleepers said they were threatened with arrest if they did not go into a shelter and a homeless shelter near London's Euston Station claimed the unit booked in street homeless on the night of the count.
One homeless charity in Bournemouth refused to take part in the count because it did not trust previous homeless figures produced by the unit. And in Hull, where last November's count recorded no rough sleepers, council officials asked why then did they have seven night shelters in constant use. Even the Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Fearn, said he found the official figures difficult to believe and accused the government of carrying out a "purge" of street homeless.
Since the allegations were reported in the media, the chairman of the Simon Community, Philip Burke, and the homeless tsar, Louise Casey, exchanged bitter political blows, with Ms Casey rejecting all allegations that the figures were manipulated. A cold night in November would certainly send more people into shelters, even the homeless groups accept that, but Ms Casey also condemned her critics for undermining the work of the unit, describing them as "one or two people with an axe to grind".
Calling for an inquiry into the headcount, Mr Burke insisted again this week that he was saddened by the "disgraceful" methods used by the unit, not simply the official figures, to meet the government's homeless pledge.
"If Tony Blair was in Opposition there would be a national outcry," says Mr Burke, who claims the government has also been briefing against the Simon Community in the media.
"This isn't about the numbers - although we believe there are up to 1,000 rough sleepers just in London. This whole issue smacks of a process of corruption from start to finish. We find this deeply offensive and believe there is a deep sense of cynicism within Labour. It is a sad and shameful indictment of the government's attitude to social exclusion."