Rishi Sunak faces revolt over plan to criminalise homelessness

40 comments

1. They can’t even protect their boarders, and they want to do this 🤣

2. Homelessness needs to be criminalised – only in so much as it should be a crime that the government can allow the country to get into a state where it can happen!

3. Criminalising homelessness doesn’t work.

   You can see an example of this in the USA. Las Vegas takes a hardlined approach to homelessness and basically made it illegal. The police will arrest you if you’re caught sleeping on the streets, multiple offences means jail time.

   Yet Las Vegas has had a 14% increase in homelessness in the last year alone, and almost as many homeless people on the streets as in San Francisco, despite it having a population 230,000 lower than San Francisco.

   If we want to fix it, we need to address the issues at the core of this problem (of which there are many), to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.

4. So his party has made it harder for people to find employment and get their own homes, and if they can’t afford a home that makes them criminals?

5. A policy so cruel that even the most hard-hearted of Tories know it’s awful. Not to mention thinking about it for any length of time results in you concluding it won’t work.

6. Jesus Christ, imagine having nothing, possibly being at the mercy of addictions or mental health issues, entirely vulnerable and being told you are a criminal just for existing.

   Get in the bin, tories

7. “The punishment will be the provision of a home.” Right?… Right?

8. Imagine outlawing a thing you also make unavoidable for more people

9. Tories: Right we need to shed this “Nasty Party” image.

   Also Tories: See those fucking homeless? Let’s make it worse for them. That’ll fix it.

10. Good god I am no means a full on lefty (I will be voting for Keir) but Christ on a bike what the hell is he thinking?!?!?

    This policy is another level sure way to loose massive votes. England might be many things but we ain’t gonna vote for a guy who criminalises being homeless.

11. This reminds me of Dostoyevsky’s stories, where in Russia in the winter, homeless people would commit crimes so they could get put in prison as a way to avoid the worst of the Russian winter. They would be flogged as part of their punishment but that was better than freezing to death.

    Congratulations Tories, you managed to regress our culture to the 19th Century; I suppose that was the aim of the right wing of the party since the beginning of the 20th Century.

    Despicable.

12. Imagine being with nothing barely existing begging for anything and too afraid to exist or be seen trying to find somewhere barely safe and warm to hide and sleep. This is evil psychological warfare

13. Stop fucking up the country to the point it reduces people to such desperate measures then you melt

14. I always feel like the Conservatives do things that are blatantly cruel and immoral to the most vulnerable when middle class people are starting to feel the pinch.

    It’s like if they treat certain groups absolutely awfully the people that were starting to feel squeezed by them suddenly feel like they are doing great in comparison.

    Kinda like how racism in the US works, they don’t treat poor white people well, but they feel like they are doing well because of how black people are treated.

15. Awful…. dismantling social services and then blaming the.people who need them. While complaining about a low birth rate… insane country…

16. Can’t we get rid of that cunt yet? Using taxpayers money for a police escort, closing roads off so he could go to a fucking football game!

17. Okay, so that means the government will heavily invest in social care and housing, right?

    …Right?

18. If you’re homeless, what would you do in this situation to avoid being charged as a criminal? I don’t understand what option someone in that situation would have.

19. Jacob Rees-Mogg can’t wait to open up his Workhouses to take in the homeless and debtors.

20. I think there is no way this ends up going to a vote, the article is right that this section would overshadow the whole bill. It seems to be a holdover from Braverman and her ‘homelessness is a lifestyle choice’ views.

    For anyone who hasn’t read it, the concern from the ‘rebel’ Tory MPs is that the bill would inadvertently make being homeless illegal whilst trying to write a law targeting ‘nuisance homelessness’. The current wording is too vague and will have to be rewritten or scrapped all together.

21. ye he will build flats for his friends to rent out in the place of those tents

22. How does criminalising homelessness work then? That literally makes no fucking sense. That’s like criminalising being poor or criminalising mental health problems, or criminalising just bad fucking luck or criminalising growing up in an abusive family etc…

    This is in the realms of people choosing to be homeless rather than it being a symptom of dysfunction

23. And there is not enough prison space as it .
    Even if you are evil enough to think it’s a good Idea.
    Why not allow councils to build again ( and not sell them off) and have a stock of social housing.
    I know homeless people to him are probably failures and of no value,so I am hardly surprised.

24. So it’s one of bravermans ideas from when she was home secretary.

    So the punishments for being homeless would be a fine, which everyone knows the homeless have plenty of spare cash so I’m sure they can pay up. Or to move them on to somewhere else, where they’ll also still be homeless and breaking the law, just in a different location than they were before.

    Yep, you can definitely tell this is one of Braverman’s schemes.

25. There are around 675k empty homes in UK – that’s homes just sitting there with no one living in them for over 6 months in the last year.

    There are around 300k homeless people in the UK.

26. Is Sunak just trying to throw the election now? How on Earth can he think this is a popular policy?

27. Great. People who can’t find suitable housing will be able to sue the government if sine it’s illegal to be homeless.

    The government will be obliged to build a certain number of homes every year to avoid people becoming homeless.

28. So how can you charge someone who’s homeless? Like how would you send them a notice to come to court with no fixed address?

    Or is the plan to put all the homeless in prison or Rwanda ?

29. I see some of you being surprised.

    I see some of you saying that nobody will vote for this

    But the UK has been waging a war against homeless people (not homelessness) for a few years now.

    All those benches they modified so that people can’t sleep on them.

    The way that a lot of our pavements are actually now private property so you can be moved on already.

    This is just the final nail in the coffin

    And its fucking disgusting

30. Criminalising homeless….this government has zero vision left at all.

31. >Rough sleepers could be moved on, fined up to £2,500 or jailed.

    This is how out of touch this prick Sunak is.

    He thinks that everyone _simply, must have at least £2500_.

    Because he has so much money this is literally pennies to him. Which also explain so much about how he sees this country and how he attempts to govern it.

    Braverman actually came out and said homelessness is a lifestyle choice. What a fuckwit. Fuck these Tory dickheads.

    If a homeless person had 2.5k free do you think they’d be on the fucking street?

32. I agree, people being homeless is a crime. So supply them with a home.

33. Don’t say anything critical, you fucking plebs.

    If you say one thing about how much you disagree with this, you’re an extremist, you fucking peasants.

34. Perhaps he wants to get all Victorian and bring back the Workhouses.

35. > As well as new laws on begging the bill would expand police powers to test suspects for drugs on arrest and enter premises to search for stolen goods such as mobile phones. **It would also give probation officers the power to administer lie tests to sex offenders and terrorists after their release from prison**, and increase sentences for some offences.

    I thought we all agreed lie detectors were bullshit? I don’t want them to play any part in the system of justice, no matter what I think of the individuals they want to use them on. If they’re considered reliable for them, how long until they’re considered reliable for everyone else too?

36. They are behaving like cartoon villains now. I think they do it on purpose because they know they’re on the way out and it will create more legal mess for any new government. Looking forward to saying “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

37. I am looking forward to Sunak being kicked out of his house.

38. Soon to go Sunak hopefully will never win an election.

39. Gonna guess Homelessness has increased also while the tories have been running things.

40. Isn’t it up to the Government to stop homelessness? Just shows how shitty they are.