Georgian-era laws that render rough sleeping illegal are to be repealed, Home Office sources insisted on Thursday night, as the Government faces a growing Tory rebellion over the issue.
Senior Conservative MPs have demanded that ministers accept a House of Lords amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would abolish the Vagrancy Act of 1824.
Damian Green, chairman of the One Nation caucus of Tory moderates, last week warned Downing Street about the strength of feeling among backbenchers about the legislation that dates back almost two centuries.
Charities such as Crisis have long criticised it for criminalising homelessness and begging, arguing that people on the streets should be offered support rather than face the criminal justice system.
Mr Green told The Telegraph that a swelling number of MPs were preparing to rebel in support of the cross-party peers’ amendment, which would scrap the Vagrancy Act, when the Government’s flagship policing bill comes back to the Commons on February 28.
On Thursday night, a Home Office source said the Prime Minister and Home Secretary were committed to repealing the Vagrancy Act, but stressed the process could take some time, as ministers needed to assess what powers the police would lose.
‘Reneging on a commitment’
Mr Green argued that use of the Vagrancy Act had been falling over many years and said its abolition was widely supported by police in major cities such as London and Manchester.
The police were granted more up-to-date powers in 2014 to tackle people “aggressively begging or doing anything people would object to”, the former Cabinet minister added.
He insisted the Government would be “widely applauded” for taking swift action to abolish the controversial law, warning that failure to do so would represent “reneging on a commitment”.
Tory MP Richard Graham also weighed in, arguing the Government should “recognise that things have moved on since the end of the Napoleonic Wars” and repeal the legislation “well before it reaches its 200th anniversary” in two years’ time.
He urged the Government to accept the amendment tabled by crossbencher Lord Best, arguing that “a period of short consultation can follow to see if there are any unexpected gaps in the legislation being exploited which need to be filled through a statutory instrument”.
Former Tory minister Dan Poulter said he too was “sympathetic” to the amendment, declaring the Vagrancy Act an “outdated piece of legislation”. He said he believed “there’s a fairly good chance” the Lords’ amendment would pass in the Commons later this month.
Writing on The Telegraph website on Friday, Mr Poulter also heaped pressure on the Government to reverse its planned crackdown on large-scale protests, another element of the far-reaching policing bill.
