Rough sleeping has been reduced before and it can be again – but not by gimmicks about tents

Editorial: The home secretary’s insult about ‘lifestyle choice’ is no substitute for the hard work of helping people off the streets

No one wants to see people sleeping rough on our streets (PA)

Suella Braverman is the first self-contradicting home secretary. As soon as she intervenes in a policy area, we know that nothing will happen. When she says that the law will be changed to require her to remove asylum seekers who arrive by small boat before they can claim asylum, we know that the law will not be so changed.

When she pushes for measures in the King’s Speech to make it unlawful for charities to give rough sleepers tents, we can be reasonably confident that no such measure will be included in the government’s legislative programme on Tuesday.

She is engaged in gesture politics. No one wants to see people sleeping rough on our streets, whether in tents or not, but while most of the public recognise that this is a complex problem requiring compassion, determination and resources, there is a minority who will cheer on a politician offering simple and punitive so-called solutions. Unfortunately, that minority is overrepresented among the membership of the Conservative Party, and Ms Braverman is already fighting the next Tory leadership election.

She is shameless. Which is why, instead of retreating from reports of her pointless plan to fine charities for handing out tents, on Saturday she defended it. By defending it, however, she only succeeded in further exposing the shallowness of her thinking. Her claim that living on the streets is a “lifestyle choice” opened her to ridicule.

Of course, there are some people who find it hard to stay in any kind of accommodation, to hold down a job, or to deal with problems of addiction or mental illness, and who might even sometimes say that they would rather be on the street. But to call that a lifestyle choice is absurd, and to think that the availability of tents is going to make any difference to the underlying problem is wilful incompetence.

It is bizarre that she should even be offering her ill-considered opinions on the subject, which is not the Home Office’s responsibility. She has been afforded the opportunity only because her department is in charge of the criminal justice bill, and she has apparently suggested to the prime minister that clauses be inserted banning the supply of tents that cause a nuisance – as if that could be defined and enforced.

However, her opportunist politicking exposes the gap in ministerial responsibility for rough sleeping that the prime minister, once he has told Ms Braverman to stop being ridiculous, ought to fix as a matter of urgency.

The Conservative manifesto in 2019 promised to end “the blight of rough sleeping by the end of the next parliament”. Ministerial responsibility for meeting this target was handed to Luke Hall, Rishi Sunak’s successor as junior minister for local government, who was renamed parliamentary under-secretary of state for rough sleeping and housing in April 2020. He met the target immediately, because during the first coronavirus lockdown an emergency policy known as “Everyone In” briefly succeeded in getting nearly all rough sleepers off the streets.

Since then, however, the number of rough sleepers has returned to its pre-pandemic levels – while ministerial accountability has waned. Mr Hall was replaced by Kelly Tolhurst in September 2020; she was replaced after four months by Eddie Hughes. When he was replaced by Andrew Stephenson last year, the “rough sleeping” was dropped from his title, and he was replaced after a month by Felicity Buchan, the current minister. Her ministerial responsibilities are described as “housing and homelessness”, but homelessness is not the same as rough sleeping. There are 40,000 people assessed as homeless currently in temporary accommodation in England, while there are perhaps 3,000 people sleeping rough.

Rough sleeping is a difficult and specific problem. It requires sustained ministerial attention. It was reduced more or less as much as it could be under the last Labour government, but it has not been the focus of a determined effort since, except in the special circumstances of the pandemic. It could be reduced again if rough sleepers were offered targeted help with addiction, mental illness, temporary accommodation and employment – instead of gimmicks about not giving them tents.