Question: When you joined the Rough Sleepers Unit you talked about the need to end the culture of free handouts to beggars which perpetuated homelessness because the money wasn't targeted to solutions. It seems the Government and many homelessness charities now support this view - how close are you to persuading the public of this change in the way they approach homelessness?

Louise Casey: When we launched the 'change a life' campaign we spent £240,000 on advertising on places like local radio and some advertisements in some local newspapers and one or two nationals - that amount of money on advertising doesn't go very far.

What was good about it was that we managed to have a vociferous debate ahead of the launch of the campaign. After that I couldn't wait for 'change a life' to launch as it gave us the chance to say 'we're not telling you what to do with your money - that's your call'. Nobody would ever say I think you should spend your money on this rather than that but what we are saying is if you are going to spend your money on the homeless you could do it so much better if you joined the 'change a life' campaign or if you gave an even more valuable product, which is your time or your gifts in kind.

I respect Hilary Armstrong my Minister because she has had the courage to back this difficult campaign. I think it is quite courageous to expose the whole issue of giving money to people on the streets. If you hand somebody a fiver or a quid to make yourself feel better you think your helping someone in need, it's really hard to then say to that caring individual, 'actually your money won't be helping them and in a funny kind of way you just might be the last pound they need to get their next lot of crack or heroin which pushes them even further down, which ends up with them overdosing'. It is a really difficult thing for us to try and get across this message without us sounding hard or nannying and I think we just about managed to do it. I think it was a tough thing for the voluntary sector to do as well.

Question: Were you disappointed by the reaction of Shelter to the change a life campaign?

Louise Casey: Disappointed would be the right word. I think they were more concerned about the process. What they wanted us to do was set up another working party and have more discussions. I think there wouldn't be much between us on the principle of a hand up not a hand out. I know full well that Shelter really does believe a hand up not a hand out is the best way forward and they themselves in their briefing on begging talk about giving money to charities as a much better way of helping somebody than giving money directly on the street.

If changing social exclusion was as straightforward as changing the first two letters to inclusion - if we could just do a bit of window dressing and make ourselves feel better life would be straightforward but unfortunately change involves challenge. Challenge involves difficulties so we've just got to get through it and hold on to the fact that we actually don't want to live in a time when people are dieing on our streets either of drug addictions or of homelessness.

Question: Shelter did say that telling people not to give money directly to beggars you increase the stigma of homelessness?

Louise Casey: I think they were concerned about us increasing the stigma of beggars rather than the homeless. My view is that it can't get much worse. Life on the streets, be it as a rough sleeper and begging or just someone begging but not homeless, you are eighty per cent more likely to be assaulted, your eighty six per cent more likely to be on major drug habits. It's a degrading life to have to live and most people doing it don't want to do it. So what we have done is put in place services to help people. We're using tax payers money to fund expensive and complex services and at the same time we are saying it would be really helpful if the public could play their part and get involved in change a life rather than handing out money directly on the street.

Question: Talking about the problems and solutions of homelessness - it's a highly sensitive subject - does this sensitivity sometimes get in the way of finding the right solutions?

Louise Casey: The moment The Observer sniffed this 'change a life' campaign - they argued that the Government is saying 'Thou shalt not give to beggars - what a bunch of scroungers' - you just think Oh for God's sake - can we just grow up for a minute and have a bit of sensible debate about a very sensitive and difficult issue.

We could have launched 'change a life' and simply said its great scheme because it's the first telephone line of its kind, really innovative ideas and really clever campaign and then sat back on our laurels and said aren't we great. But that would have been nonsense unless we actually tackled the much more difficult underlying issue which is people beg on the streets to sustain a drug habit. They are already involved in other forms of crime so the idea that if you take begging income away from them they will do worse things - they already are.

The idea that we don't say to the kind person who walked past the twenty one year old woman on the Strand and instead of giving a pound coin gave her twenty quid - it was the twenty quid that pushed her into the comatose position when we found her on the street and the irony is everyone was walking past her as she was comatose and still throwing coins in her direction but they left her there outside McDonalds because that is too difficult a thing to take on and people probably thought she was drunk, people might have thought she was asleep. She was dieing, she had taken too many drugs in one day because kind people had given her too much money. She was sleeping in a hostel and she had access to drug detox and rehabilitation - the reality is there are nasty people out there that peddle drugs in nasty immoral and insidious ways, root them into people's bodies - they get hooked and it's my job to actually say the difficult thing.

Question: How would you persuade someone who makes money from begging to go into a job they know would probably pay them less?

Louise Casey: Most people who are on drugs on and off during that time reach a point where they want to come off them. Where there's a day when they don't make enough money, where they spend several nights sleeping on the street, sleeping in appalling situations, being pimped being prostituted, all sorts of terrible situations. At the point they recognise they want to do something about it, we want to make sure there is somebody constantly out there persuading them to take help, that they take that help, then you've got to make sure they go into detox and rehabilitation and you really do have something for them at the end of that process.

The rough sleepers strategy that we published last December was about reducing the number of people sleeping out in the streets to zero or as near as possible but at least by two thirds. I think that already by consulting with the voluntary sector, charities, talking to rough sleepers and people in Whitehall - following on from the good work of the Social Exclusion Unit that set the ball rolling for all of this - we published a strategy that we've now funded which focuses not just on providing hostel beds for people or housing people but actually focussing on treatment options for vulnerable people, putting a lot of our resources into drug, alcohol, mental health treatment as well as rebuilding the lives of people once they have come off the streets because all previous strategies (a) left people behind who were very vulnerable who are still out there now and the public know it and (b) they didn't put enough energy into considering how you help people once they have left the streets and are trying to build their lives. They've moved off the street but they may not have any friends, they don't have a job, they don't have a life away from the streets. We must consider what draws people back to the streets - drug misuse, drinking - people back out on the streets who are more friends to you than your neighbours and we've put a strategy in place that puts as much emphasis on what happens to someone once they've moved away from the street to root them into a more positive lifestyle, to actually give them a greater sense of self-esteem and then they get interested in things like jobs and work and we put a lot of money into that sort of direction.

Question: You say there are beggars out there who are on drugs they need the money - are you concerned by the issue of aggressive begging?

Louise Casey: There are people out there aggressively begging which is really disturbing for members of the public. People get frightened and it's terrible. Again they are aggressively begging to sustain a drug habit we now have arrest referral schemes in most London police stations and places around the country but there is a target to have them everywhere and that can't happen quickly enough for me.

I am a big fan of some of the stuff the prison service is doing with the Home Office. Obviously these are only for people seriously committing crime. People who constantly commit crimes because of their drug misuse and they end up in the courts either go into custody because they've re-offended so many times so they'll have to go to prison and go through cold turkey in prison or others are offered detox and rehabilitation. There were 1,100 drug treatment orders available on the 2nd of October in the inner London probation service and that has to be the way forward. Once they're clean, not through cold turkey but through proper detox and rehabilitation they then move away from it.

Question: Let's say all the homeless people wanted to come off the streets and exactly as you're saying they need to proper care and attention to get over drinks drugs habits mental health problems - as the resources there to cope with all these people wanting to come off the streets and into mainstream society?

Louise Casey: The voluntary organisations and charities working on the streets on the frontline had a very thorough look at who's been out there. Who's been out there for a while, who had been out there recently but was ill or vulnerable. What we've managed to do is put in place really effective services for the most vulnerable people. Now that may not be every single person who is on the streets.

Question: Who would you class as most vulnerable?

Louise Casey: Most of the homeless people sleeping out at three o'clock in the morning are vulnerable. But now we have got enough beds and treatment options in place to help those people. Last year I set December 2000 as a target where we could actually go to bed at night thinking that we have done everything humanly possible for people who are stuck out on the streets rough sleeping. There will be some people who may not want to come in and I don't think we should give up on them but I wanted to know we had done everything we could for them and will keep doing so. Some people are trapped out there in a way that they have lost all hope about coming in again, or they are so embedded in the lifestyle that it would be really hard.

Question: But come December there is a bed for all the most vulnerable on the streets of London should they want one?

Louise Casey: Yes for the first time ever we can now say that by mid-December there will be a bed for all the most vulnerable living on the streets in London.

My only proviso is that if people around the country are thinking oh there's free beds or an easy way to get access to accommodation, major cities aren't the way to do that. We're very clear on who actually needs help and who has been out there for a while and what we don't want to do is encourage people to use the street for two reasons. One, because we just can't cope with everybody that wants to leave a situation and come and get help. There could be thousands of people on waiting lists all over the place. Two, the streets are a really dangerous place. I can't emphasise that enough. We've listened to people living on the streets, they say it's a dangerous place to be and therefore if you need help don't think sleeping on the streets is gong to be an option because it's not.

Question: How concerned are you about the booming property and rental market in London - is that a cause for concern?

Louise Casey: I join the queue with Government Ministers like Nick Raynsford and John Prescott and senior civil servants who are really trying hard to put in place some policies and realistic measures to ensure that people who are on low incomes working in inner cities get affordable accommodation.

There's always more demand for housing than availability but what we can't do in a civilised society is have vulnerable people, who are really ill in one way shape or form, sleep on our streets because we have an affordability problem in London at the moment. The whole point of the Rough Sleepers Unit is to make sure those people really do get the treatment and the help, the bed, the permanent help and the jobs they need.