2. What discussions has the Counsel General had with the UK Government regarding timescales for introducing legislation to replace the Vagrancy Act 1824? OQ60957

The Criminal Justice Bill, introducing legislation to replace the Vagrancy Act, is being considered in line with established constitutional procedures. Welsh Government laid a legislative consent memorandum covering the Bill on 29 January. We expect a date for Report Stage to be announced soon.

Thank you for that answer, Counsel General. I think there is broad agreement that the Georgian legislation that is enforced in Wales is no longer fit for purpose. It was reported two weeks ago that 2,500 arrests have been made in England and Wales since 2019, and of course some of these may be legitimate anti-social behaviour issues, but often homeless people have been targeted and victimised under this Act, which is completely unacceptable.

The UK Government announced that it wished to repeal the Vagrancy Act once replacement legislation was prepared, but there was a disagreement over the content of the replacement Bill. There has been a lot of misinformation and scaremongering over the contents of this Bill, which has led to it being omitted from the King’s Speech, thus keeping the Vagrancy Act on the statute book for longer.

It is understandable that replacement legislation must take into account the potential for problematic anti-social behaviour that disrupts the lives of businesses and the public, and I think that can be addressed in a compassionate way. With the dust settling on the replacement Bill and a new Home Secretary in place, has the Counsel General had discussions with the UK Government regarding their intentions to replace the Vagrancy Act and what their timescale is for doing this?

Thank you for the question and thank you for raising this particular issue. Obviously, the discussions that would take place in terms of the policy and issues around the legislative consent issues would, obviously, primarily engage a Cabinet Secretary in respect of this. But, obviously, there are issues that have been raised that are in the Criminal Justice Bill that do cause deep concern. On the one hand, obviously, the issue of abolishing the Vagrancy Act 1824, this 200-year-old appalling piece of legislation, is absolutely right. But I have to say that we think that the way in which UK Government has approached it is actually wholly wrong.

As you know, we had a legislative consent memorandum on 29 January, and that underlined, really, the deep concerns that we have with the proposals in the Bill, and things like so-called nuisance begging, nuisance rough-sleeping and so on, which would replace the Vagrancy Act. And I have to say that there's a real concern about what seems to be a suggestion of criminalising homeless people. I was very interested really that the magazine, The Big Issue, that really addresses a lot of the homeless issues—. I was very concerned reading one of the reports from a whistleblower in UK Government, one of the civil servants, who said this:

'I have never been so ashamed to call myself a civil servant. The code requires us to work on whatever the government wants us to, but after years of crackpot Tory ideas, I can’t take it anymore. Criminalising homelessness has been the straw that has broken the camel’s back.' 

And I very much agreed with the comments made by Bob Blackman, again, a Conservative MP, who said that the proposals were outrageous and worse than vagrancy. Can I say that criminalising homeless people is not a solution to homelessness? The idea that someone who's homeless could be fined up to £2,500 is absolutely ludicrous in terms of the belief that such a fine could ever be paid. And the idea of imprisonment is, again, a totally contradictory objective.

The approach that we've taken in Wales is to take a person-centred approach to assist people off the streets. I think recent changes to our legislation highlight that all the rough-sleepers are a priority for housing and homelessness assistance. Again, as I've just reiterated in my last point, criminalising homeless people is not a solution to this. I do think UK Government is going in exactly the wrong direction on this, and I'm hoping that there will be room for substantial changes, and certainly these parts, to improve it. There'd be nothing worse than replacing the Vagrancy Act with something that's even worse that the Vagrancy Act.