The Tory plan to arrest ‘smelly’ homeless people was never going to pass the sniff test

The odious Crime and Justice Bill was supposed to make ‘smelling homeless’ an offence, says Big Issue founder John Bird. But it also distracts from the real stench – one that suggests the rot has set in at the top of this government

Critics say the crime bill as it stands could lead to people being arrested for having an ‘excessive odour’ (PA)

A few days after presenter Jonathan Ross declared that he and his wife are giving up on regular showering, bodily smells have become a big issue. The Crime and Justice Bill, currently passing through parliament, was supposed to include a section that would apparently make “smelling homeless” an offence.

I don’t know if you could call such a thing Orwellian, but it does smack of some kind of weird thinking within the leadership of this current government. Perhaps a sign that the rot of office has set in, and they should leave the stage of history for others who have deeper concerns than what a person smells like.

And now – possibly glimpsing the ridiculousness of their policy the second it came into contact with public reaction – a Downing Street spokesperson has said the prime minister believes that “nobody should be arrested ‘just if they smell’”, before going on to say that “the reference to smell in the bill stemmed from the definition of causing a nuisance that is contained in an older piece of legislation, the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act”.

So what is one to make of this? One explanation might be that the government has only just noticed this relic piece of legislation from 30 years ago clinging onto the paperwork. If so, shouldn’t they have someone reading these bills a little more closely? Or perhaps one of their team has properly sat down and – fully considering what such a bill might entail – asked: “Who is going to train up the Sniff Patrol?”

Either way, minsters are now apparently considering “clarifying amendments”.

If the original bill was not so demeaning to define a person as a risk to the public good based on how they smell, we could have a good joke about it. But unfortunately, its very drafting shows a loss of direction in dealing with the problems of the street homeless – and homelessness in general.

Living and, at times, dying on the streets of our cities is a human rights abuse; and we should deal with this harsh reality. People who live on the streets are largely unhealthy, depressed and declining at a greater rate than those indoors. That is the issue – not the smell, or the stink that the government has tried to conjure up over this issue.

The root of virtually all street living is the problem of poverty. People end up on the streets because poverty and its associative issues like mental health and wellbeing undermine the lives of the poor. And many pass through the streets and take up residence there as the only available answer to the pressures of their lives.

Why is it, therefore, that, if poverty is the big deal behind street living and much homelessness, why are we not targeting poverty more clearly? Why is it that 50 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on people who suffer from food poverty?

Poverty is the big governmental cost. Yet eight different government departments – in a haphazard manner – have poverty in their brief.

The Treasury struggles to keep money back that could dismantle poverty, yet we see government having to pay double and triple because the investment was not made at the right time.

The “smell issue” is indicative of a government incapable of joined-up thinking. Let us hope that they do indeed cut this piece of poor thinking, along with anything else that tries to criminalise those hardest hit by poverty.

When I first heard the smell story, I was reminded of my own times rough sleeping. As a bail-jumping runaway, I was eventually arrested. And when stripped, I was found to be wearing women’s knickers.

The police had a field day. I explained that after months of rough sleeping I was picked up by two young women and taken home. They bathed me, and then threw my clothes away. They rustled up a shirt and a jacket, but I was reduced to wearing their underwear.

Yes, with facilities lacking and opportunities almost nil to keep clean, falling on the street can become an odour issue. But that’s not the big thing. That is the lack of thinking about dismantling the reasons why people fall onto the streets in the first instance.

We need a ministry of “Poverty Prevention”, as the bill I am putting through the Lords at the moment is calling for. Not the scattershot effect that the government is at the moment practicing. Which obviously leaves room for lots of very silly ideas, with the “Sniff Patrol” probably the silliest.

John Bird is an independent member of the House of Lords and co-founder of The Big Issue