The consultation about repealing the Vagrancy Act starts with harmless inquiries about who I am. The 13 questions that follow strike a different note: “Do you agree that begging is harmful to individuals and detrimental to communities?” “What forms of begging cause greatest harm to individuals?” I do not believe begging is harmful. Over the last 10 years of researching people who beg in Shoreditch, East London, Paris and Cambridge, I found that begging was a kind of work for many who engaged in it. It provided structure, value and an income to people who were often otherwise marginalised. It is an important part of how people survive—and a way of making a home on the street.
The original Vagrancy Act dates back almost 200 years to 1824. It was designed as a means for police to sweep the streets after the Napoleonic Wars from “leftover soldiers”; it has since mostly been used to charge different kinds of outsiders, from people experiencing homelessness and begging to travelling people and refugees. As Centrepoint puts it: this Act criminalised homelessness. Currently, people charged under the Act can face fines of up to £1000 and a criminal record.
Over the years, the Act has been criticised vehemently by homeless service providers, charities and politicians and peers across party lines. A prominent critique was launched when homeless people were being moved around in 2018 for the Royal Wedding in Windsor. The goal of “supporting individuals into services” was not furthered by criminalising rough sleeping. Research by Crisis has shown that enforcement of the Act in fact tended to lead to people moving on to sleep rough elsewhere, without being offered advice or support. Eventually, the government promised in 2018 to repeal the Act and recently announced it would finally fulfil this promise. And now, instead of repealing the unnecessary and dangerous Act completely, the government has run a rushed consultation to replace it, despite a whole suite of public safety laws still in place which make a ‘new vagrancy act’ unnecessary at best—from the Modern Slavery Act and the Fraud Act to the Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
The government’s background consultation document, which was closed last week, gives more details about the plans; “a replacement for the Vagrancy Act is needed which prioritises specific forms of begging.” The new Act is intended to avoid a blanket-criminalisation of begging (and essentially homelessness). It would only touch on what the government calls organised begging, fraudulent begging (e.g. people feigning injuries) and persistent begging, particularly by people who refuse support repeatedly. All of this based on the belief that “begging causes harm to the individuals involved and to wider communities given its impact on high streets and community cohesion,” and that it can “undermine the public’s sense of safety and pride in where they live.”
The wording indicates that the new Act could be used to target minority groups—“organised” and “fraudulent” begging are often associated with Synthi and Roma and Irish travelers. Furthermore, the reliance on criminalisation is based on a flawed belief system which similarly underlies the American War on Drugs, launched in 1972 by Reagan. The idea is that if you make it just hard enough (or expensive) to do something—either begging or taking drugs—people will stop and accept the support on offer. Both policies fail to question why people repeatedly refuse support. If it is not helping them, why don’t we examine how to change the support so that it works? Mark Allan, CEO of Jimmy’s Cambridge, a local charity which provides both housing and support for homeless people, agrees. “What we should be doing is finding out why these people are on the street and rather than having police arrest and fine them, get the right service or support organisation to help people.” The “empowerment” of police to arrest rough sleepers is a waste of resources that does not get to the root of the problem. Allan questions the efficacy of the new proposals: “With this law, the government is trying to tackle the problem of ‘entrenched rough sleeping’ without helping people adequately. The help needed won’t come through law enforcement.”
Saskia Neibig, Senior Policy Officer at Crisis, proposes an alternative to the law altogether, based on the principles of choice and control for the people who beg and experience homelessness. “We would like to see non-punitive measures, outreach work, support without enforcement,” she says. “We know, for instance, that Housing First works but national rollout has been held back. Why? We need to have something to offer people.”
We really shouldn’t focus on introducing a new law which in other countries across Europe has been shown and critiqued to result in explicitly racist outcomes against minority groups, such as Roma. It isn’t the lack of enforcement but the inadequacy of support services—from mental health and substance use support to housing—which are the issue. Before the substantial cuts to social services, New Labour had all but eliminated rough sleeping, for instance. The new Act’s mention in this month’s Queen’s Speech contained seemingly caring rhetoric. But the consultation speaks a different language. The government wants to pay lip service to its 2018 promise to repeal the Act but keep an unnecessary and dangerous weapon against minority groups in the hands of the police. We should make sure it cannot sell this as progress.
