My Lords, I apologise for being forced to move Amendment 160 and to speak to amendment 165 at this ridiculous hour. I hope that your Lordships can please hang on for just another few minutes, and I express my deep appreciation to those who have stayed to support these amendments to the Vagrancy Act 1824, which would be repealed by Amendment 160. I pay tribute to my colleagues from all parts of the House who are supporting this amendment, not least the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, the erstwhile distinguished Housing Minister responsible for the important rough sleepers initiative in earlier times; the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, who has helped us with invaluable legal expertise; and Crisis—with congratulations and thanks to its new chief executive, Matt Downie—for its powerful campaigning on this repeal.
We discussed these amendments in Committee, and subsequently a number of us met with the Minister here today and the Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing, Eddie Hughes. They explained that the Government are fully committed to repealing the law that makes homelessness a criminal act—but not necessarily now. Currently, the Vagrancy Act turns unfortunate casualties of our housing and care systems into criminals and deters them from seeking the protection and support they need to move away from the streets.
The shadow of the totally inappropriate Vagrancy Act still hangs over the public policy framework for homelessness and rough sleeping. The Government have done some really good work in helping thousands of homeless people into safe accommodation during the Covid crisis. These efforts may justify past delays in addressing the repeal of the Vagrancy Act, but any further delay would seriously undermine the reputation of the Government in this field.
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Ministers promised us a note to explain the problem. On Friday we received the promised response from Ministers, six weeks after our meeting and after we had sent a number of plaintive requests asking for the information urgently so we could tweak our amendment if necessary. Friday’s email finally explained that the outstanding worry concerned passive begging—begging that did not cause harm, annoyance, distress, et cetera—and that a review of this issue was still needed. This response came too late, of course, for us to devise and table a revised amendment for consideration tonight.
However, the position is not irredeemable. We responded to Ministers with a proposal for a simple amendment to repeal just Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act which covers rough sleeping, to be tabled by the Government or by us with government agreement at Third Reading. We also proposed to Ministers that they consider separately Section 3 of the Vagrancy Act, which covers begging. It is disappointing that the Government need more time to reflect on this part, given that the review of the Act was completed a few years ago, but it is clear that the Government are willing to look at the repeal of the begging section of the old Act as a matter of some urgency. To put their intention on the record and to demonstrate willingness to move this forward as fast as possible, we have proposed that Ministers give us the assurance that following their review they will bring the begging issues swiftly into consequent legislation introduced in the next parliamentary Session, for example with an amendment to an appropriate Bill such as a housing Bill.
Agreement on these two steps—an amendment at Third Reading to repeal only rough sleeping legislation and an urgent review of the begging issues thereafter—may not be exactly what we originally hoped, but they would take us a long way to righting the long-standing wrong of the moribund, objectionable Vagrancy Act 1824. I await the Minister’s response with some trepidation, and I beg to move.