MP IN PLEA TO MAY ON HOMELESS
AN MP has called on the Government to scrap a law dating back to the 1820s which makes it illegal to sleep rough.
Liberal Democrat Layla Moran wants to axe the Vagrancy Act after hearing that about 8,000 homeless people have been prosecuted over the last four years for rough sleeping.
The Act, which dates back to King George IV, has been repealed in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
But Ms Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, is shocked that it is still being used daily to arrest homeless people in England and Wales.
She has called on Prime Minister Theresa May to “consign this heartless Dickensian law to the history book”.
She said: “It is appalling that thousands of people every year are being arrested using an archaic and outdated law designed to deal with the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars rather than the realities of homelessness in the 21st Century.”
An early critic of the law was anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce, who condemned the 1824 Act when it was introduced for not considering the circumstances that lead people to homelessness.