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David Cameron again played fast and loose with facts and figures today, suggesting homelessness was DOWN on his watch, despite it rising every year since he's been PM.

It came on the day new figures revealed the number of homeless had risen by 14,720 since the Tories came to power.

The new numbers, released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, reveal a 35% increase in homeless numbers since 2009.

Mr Cameron claimed - for the second time since Christmas - that homelessness now is at half of its peak under Labour.

While it's true that homelessness reached its peak at 115,270 in 2004/05 while Labour were in power, that's a largely irrelevant benchmark.

Here's why.

Homelessness dropped every year since then - until David Cameron came to power

How homelessness has risen again under the Tories Source: DCLG

Since 2004/05 - the "peak" David Cameron referred to - the homelessness figure dropped dramatically year after year.

That is, until 2010, when David Cameron became Prime Minister.

Since then, it's risen every year but one - and has shot up by 55% since the Tories swept into number 10.

The bar for what counts as being homeless has been raised

(Image: Dan Kitwood)

The homelessness statistics in the early 2000s were undeniably quite high - but all is not quite as it seems.

At the time, single men in overcrowded households were counted among the homelessness figures.

The criteria for homelessness has changed since then, with overcrowding removed from the stats.

That explains the rapid drop in the figures in 2005 - but it doesn't explain the increase under Cameron.

The bar for what counts as being homeless has been raised - and it's still going up under the Tories.