It will also be an offence to put your sleeping bag on the street and lie down for the night. If you do either, you might have to pay a £500 fine.
A fine for a free sandwich sounds like punishing the poor and vulnerable to me, and we all know homeless pockets do not run deep. But Westminster Council insists in its latest consultation that it won’t be. In fact they say that charitable soup runs are an impediment to their ‘humanitarian ambition’ to reduce rough sleeping to zero and put people in contact with services which will take them off the streets. I echo the doubts of many third sector organisations working in this area: this new bye-law is hardly the right way to achieve such a laudable goal. An independent study by the London School of Economics Housing consultancy group agrees. It has concluded that rather than perpetuating a damaging street lifestyle soup runs actually provide a safety net for those who have slipped through the system. They were also found to provide a valuable form of support that homeless people – as well as those who are in supported accommodation – do not find elsewhere.
The real nub of the problem seems to be the complaints about disruptive behaviour and rubbish from local businesses and residents. One must have sympathy with such complaints - who doesn’t want their area to be free from noise and rubbish - but is cracking down on voluntary soup runs the answer?
Soup runs adhere to the most basic of human needs: nourishment and companionship for people who lie at the outskirts of our society. These are the people we all walk by on our way home to a warm bed and a hot meal. A harsh and demeaning bye-law is not the way to help them into the services the Council is aiming to provide. And just as the old Vagrancy Act of 1824 has failed to eradicate poverty and begging, so too will this proposed bye-law push the problem elsewhere and penalise those who least deserve it.
>> Liberty's response to the consultation
