Vagrancy Act 1824

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

Sir Charles, it is a privilege and honour to serve under your chairmanship. Members will be aware that this is an issue of great interest to me, and I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for securing this important debate. Before the pandemic began, I volunteered each Sunday at Charles Thompson’s Mission in my constituency to help serve hot breakfasts to over 350 people who were then homeless across Merseyside. For me this was not a chore, it was a privilege.

The causes of homelessness are many and complex. Everyone I met at the mission had a different story to tell. Some were casualties of the housing crisis and a cruel and often incomprehensible welfare system, and some had fled domestic violence. Many struggled with substance abuse and mental ill health, and all were victims of a decade of brutal spending cuts that has left frontline services struggling to survive. The decade of austerity led to a staggering 165% increase in the number of rough sleepers in England. That is a shameful legacy and its victims deserve support, not punishment. No one deserves to be criminalised simply because they have nowhere to call home. Seven out of 10 local authorities continue to use some form of enforcement against homeless communities. In Merseyside alone, nearly 300 proceedings were brought under the Vagrancy Act 1824 in 2019.

For those who fall victim to this pernicious piece of legislation, the consequences can be devastating. Fines can sometimes be as high as £1,000—a whopping amount that will only plunge people further into dire poverty. It makes any chance of escaping the streets impossible. Just the threat of being fined or moved on by the police can drive many homeless people away from places of visibility. That puts them out of reach of frontline services and third sector organisations that could help them. It increases the likelihood that homeless people, who are already 17 times more likely to be victims of crime, will be subject to violence, abuse and criminal exploitation.

The Vagrancy Act traps homeless people in a vicious circle of criminalisation and marginalisation. I was therefore heartened to see the Communities Secretary tell the House that he thought the Act should be scrapped, at last adopting the position my party has held for many years. Nearly 200 years after the great abolitionist William Wilberforce first condemned this spiteful Act in the House, we now have the opportunity to right a wrong that has endured for too long.

However, we must go further. In place of the Vagrancy Act, we need a compassionate and holistic approach that tackles the root cause of homelessness, rather than simply giving homeless people a one-way ticket to the criminal justice system. That means restoring funding to frontline public services, which do vital work helping homeless people battling with mental ill health and substance abuse. It means giving local authorities the resources they need to tackle this issue with a public health-focused approach. We must write off all the debts incurred over the pandemic and restore funding after 10 years of austerity. Above all, it means tackling the housing crisis by ending the right to buy and launching a massive council house building scheme that creates homes fit for the 21st century and ends the blight of homelessness once and for all.