The clock is ticking: the Vagrancy Act must be denied its 200th anniversary

“An Act for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons, and rogues and vagabonds.” As pre-Victorian laws go, this one seems especially antiquated and amusing. Or at least it would, if it were not still enforced in 2022, criminalising homelessness and trapping rough sleepers in poverty with fines of up to £1,000.

Two years from now, the Vagrancy Act was due to celebrate its 200th birthday in England and Wales. But after years of campaigning, led by the charity Crisis and championed by MPs and Lords across parliament, the 1824 Act will finally be consigned to the dustbin of history. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, 1st March 2022, as rain hammered down on to the streets outside parliament, the full repeal of the Vagrancy Act was agreed in the House of Commons.

Just six weeks earlier, the House of Lords voted to repeal the Act through amendments to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, in the face of government resistance. Fearing a defeat in the House of Commons, ministers this week made a last-minute U-turn to table their own amendment repealing the 1824 Act. This includes repealing Section 3 of the Act, which currently makes begging an offence, and Section 4 of the Act, which currently creates a range of offences including persons who sleep in an outdoor setting, or in any deserted or unoccupied building.

That these sections still exist is nothing short of astonishing. There are lots of strange and ancient laws still on the statute books, but the Vagrancy Act is not one that has been left to gather dust. Over the years, it has also been tinkered with many times, sometimes consolidating or dropping certain sections. 

Section 4 alone, which still exists and sets out who can be criminalised as “rogues and vagabonds”, has been amended by the UK or devolved parliaments in 1871,1888, 1925, 1935, 1948, 1967, 1968, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1989 and 2003. It has now been 30 years since Scotland repealed the Act. Yet archaic Vagrancy Act powers were used by the police over 10,000 times in England and Wales during the last decade.

Despite parliament looking at the Act over and over again, the policing of people who are homeless often goes unseen by the public. That changed in 2018, when Windsor’s Conservative council leader demanded police use their Vagrancy Act powers to move on the borough’s homeless people in time for the royal wedding. The symbolic inequality exposed a deep unfairness within the law itself, and may have been crucial to Labour’s 2019 manifesto promise to repeal the Act.

But the vehicle for this repeal is the much-maligned police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, which is as controversial as it is dangerous. While Tory MPs pat themselves on the back for reducing criminalisation by repealing the Vagrancy Act, the policing bill threatens up to ten years in prison for anyone causing “serious annoyance” at a peaceful protest. 

It is a bitter irony that the very same policing bill that repeals the Act will also make tens of thousands of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people, including children, criminally homeless. That is why Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran could only call the Vagrancy Act repeal a “chink of light in the bill”. Sensible, compassionate and long overdue changes are mixed in by the government with draconian, anti-democratic and divisive law. This is deliberately difficult for the Labour opposition benches to challenge with a simple and clear message.

Despite significant efforts to challenge its morality, legality and enforceability, the policing bill has almost made its passage through parliament and will soon be sent to the Queen for royal assent. Once that formality is over, a race against the clock will begin to deny the Vagrancy Act its 200th anniversary in law. In Monday’s debate, MPs from both sides of the chamber urged the government to repeal the Act quickly. Shadow policing minister Sarah Jones welcomed the repeal but warned the crucial change must not be “kicked into the long grass”. 

The government is arguing that the Vagrancy Act cannot be repealed immediately in case doing so would “weaken the ability of the police to protect communities”. They will therefore not enact the repeal “until appropriate replacement legislation is in place”, which is expected to be consulted on as part of their rough sleeping strategy in the near future. This will be an unsettling caveat for anyone nervous about the tone and content of the Conservatives’ current legislative programme.

Tory MP Robert Jenrick challenged the government reason for delay, saying that when he was Housing Secretary he had “not seen any convincing arguments” that the Act needed to be retained or modernised. Policing minister Kit Malthouse, under pressure from both sides, clarified that 18 months is a maximum timeframe for the repeal to take effect. “If we can act faster, we will, but intensive work will obviously be required to get us there.” The clock is ticking. For the first time in almost 200 years, it can be said with certainty that the Vagrancy Act’s days are numbered.