Criminalising The Homeless Is ‘Cruel’

There is a grim irony to those who have overseen soaring rough sleeper numbers now looking to criminalise those they have failed, writes Liam Thorp in the Liverpool Echo.

“Homeless people should not be arrested just because they smell,” read the headline. I checked the date. It was April, but it was not the first of the month and this was no joke. This was a serious article being published about the United Kingdom in 2024. Why such a remarkable statement even has to be made by politicians tells us a lot about the pernicious and nasty agenda of this government.

The context here is that the government’s Criminal Justice Bill is making its way through Parliament. The government says it is seeking to replace the archaic 1824 Vagrancy Act but its new plans are similarly grim. In its current form the bill will give the police powers to fine or move on so-called ‘nuisance’ rough sleepers. Under the plans, those sleeping on the streets could be fined as much as £2,500 or even imprisoned. This is a move so toxic and cruel that even the Conservatives own backbench MPs – including the likes of Iain Duncan Smith – are threatening to rebel and vote against it. Good on them.

It may not surprise readers to hear that this planned attack on some of the most vulnerable people in the country was first announced by former Home Secretary, the famously compassionate Suella Braverman, the same person who suggested rough sleeping was a ‘lifestyle choice’. But it has continued on its way through the Commons under Rishi Sunak’s leadership. Critics of the legislation have correctly pointed out that it is so broad that someone could be criminalised for sleeping in a doorway or even, as the opening headline referred to, if they are deemed to have an excessive smell.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, writing in The Big Issue, put it well when she said that while experts across the sector have called for a compassionate approach to homelessness, the government “is intent on treating rough sleepers with cruelty and criminalisation.” There is a cruel irony to all this. That’s because the same party in government that has overseen a dramatic rise in rough sleeping through painful austerity cuts and the removal of support services is now looking to criminalise those that have fallen through the increasingly cavernous gap.

In February, latest figures revealed that rough sleeping increased in all regions of England. An estimated 3,898 people slept rough last year, a shocking annual increase of 27% and the highest annual rise since 2015. The latest number is more than double the number of people recorded as were sleeping rough in 2010 when records began. And you know what else began in 2010? The Conservatives came to power and launched their austerity agenda. For a government who has overseen such a shameful rise in the number of those sleeping on the streets to turn around and threaten to criminalise those same people is as brazen as it is cruel.

In recent months I have spent a lot of time talking to people at all ends of the homelessness spectrum. Liverpool as a city has been going through a homelessness and housing crisis with more and more people ending up at its sharpest end and on the streets. I have spoken to entrenched rough sleepers with painful histories of abuse and mental health crises who struggle with the support services or struggle to trust those who want to help. I’ve spoken to terrified people who never imagined they would end up sleeping rough but through a perfect storm of circumstances – rising rents, redundancy or family breakdown to name but a few – they have ended up in a terrifying position.

And I’ve spoken to desperate asylum seekers who have fled war and persecution and braved harrowing journeys to seek shelter for themselves and their families in this supposedly compassionate country, only to be turfed out of their accommodation and onto the streets of an unknown town or city as struggling councils try and fail to find them shelter. The idea of classing anyone in any of these positions as a “nuisance” seems anathema to me and I would hope it would be the same for most decent people in this country. It appears there are at least some people in our current government who disagree. Shame on them.