Birmingham used to have a real problem with homelessness. A walk along New Street at night would find groups of people, young and old alike, huddling in make-shift homes of cardboard boxes, the occasional second-hand sleeping bag, and the obligatory stray dog.

These were people forgotten by society, unloved by their family, and left without hope.

But that has now changed in large part due to social enterprises like St Basils in Birmingham.

Each year the corporate community in Birmingham, along with other friends, raises funds for St Basils by volunteering to spend a night out on the streets of Digbeth with just a cardboard box and a plastic bag as a home for the night.

So on 24th November I spent one of the wettest and windiest nights of the autumn out of the street to raise awareness and funds for St Basils. Sutton Coldfield MP and Shadow Minister for Birmingham Andrew Mitchell also joined the event to welcome sleepers and support St Basils.

Since 1973 St Basils has worked with young people who are threatened with homelessness and hopelessness. St Basils provides a home to about 1000 young people each year, and runs courses that build confidence and skills, giving participants a hand up rather than a hand out.

A measure of the success of St Basils is that in the November’s annual count of homelessness in Birmingham, just five people were found living on the streets. That is a reduction of 82% over the past five years.

I spent my windswept night on the street lying in an ever larger puddle of rainwater. Other “sleepers” boxes were drowned out a blown away, including an impressive den built by schoolchildren from Oundle School. My home for the night was a rather more sturdy construction, which I built from a cardboard box that was held together with masking tape. Whilst rainwater seeped in underneath it just about survived until morning.

One cold night on the streets of Birmingham may have been uncomfortable for me, but I am delighted to have helped St Basils continue to do its truly valuable work with young people who society had overlooked.

In total I raised £2,880. That included £750 from Barclays through the employee community support matched funding scheme.

The Daily Express steps up its long-standing campaign to abolish Inheritance Tax.

Death Tax is a pernicious tax that primarily hits people who have recently suffered trauma and loss. Due to the meteoric rise in the value of property in the UK over the past ten years, IHT now hits a majority in middle England. It is double taxation of the worst order that strikes at vulnerable people who have lost a loved parent or child. Death Tax hits people who have paid taxes, managed businesses, created employment, bought their own homes, and seek little more than to ensure that their families are independent from the State. Death Tax is wrong.

With good (and costly) financial advice IHT can be addressed. The super-rich tend to hold their assets off-shore in formats that will not be subject to IHT. But, you can't hold your family home in an off-shore tax shelter. So, those who really suffer are the families of people who die owning little more than a home in a desirable location.

Around the world attitudes to Death Tax is changing. In some US states including Florida, and in Portugal it has been abolished. Its time for it to go in the UK too, a case that I argued publicly at the Conservative Party Conference in October 2006.

My speech, in which I also spoke in favour of of David Cameron's Disraelian principles of "sharing the proceeds of growth" and "promoting General Well-Being" was reported in a leader article in the Express last October.

Exerpts from my speech at the party conference.
"No one in this party could disagree with the principle of sharing the proceeds of growth"

"And no one in the Party could disagree with the ideal of promoting General Well Being"

"But the best way of raising our General Well Being is to raise less taxes. And that is also a Conservative principle"

"Inheritance Tax is plainly and simply wrong"