Rough sleeping is no longer a crime, but here's why it could backfire

To kick this week off, Labour’s newest MP and the man who looks likely to become prime minister gave a historic speech from the People’s History Museum in Manchester, laying out his vision for the future of Britain’s economy.

In looking to the future, Burnham nodded to the past. He said that if, and it is still an if, he becomes Britain’s next prime minister, he would like to oversee the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period.

While Burnham was looking to the aftermath of the Second World War for inspiration, another historic announcement was coming out of Westminster.

Caroline’s mother Christine has called for an apology from the press and police over how she was treated before she died.

She made a documentary called Search for the Truth for Disney+ last year

Caroline Flack’s death has become a tragic parable about cancel culture, responsible use of social media, the intrusion of the tabloid press, the sensation of reality TV and the misunderstandings and stigmas about mental ill health, from which we were all supposed to learn and in which each of us who watched on as voyeurs was complicit. 

People who have a strong chest and back may be less likely to have a heart attack, according to a new study.

Researchers said that people with strong pecs, back muscles and torso are also less likely to die within the next decade.

Experts from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said that it is “not just about being muscly”, as the size of people’s muscles was not linked to their risk of a heart attack or early death.

It said that all kinds of exercise, and not just strength training, can improve muscle density.

It is fascinating that people’s skeletal muscle could be linked to their risk of having a heart attack. I am now personally interested in exercises like cycling, planks and pilates, which I enjoy and may have an effect on these muscles.

What are the things that you do to keep yourself healthy? Your mind might jump straight to the run you do a couple of times a week, or the choices you make about what to eat, the amount of sleep you manage to get each night or the friends who make you feel seen and heard. And you’d be right. These are all things that keep us healthy.

Millions of Britons could pay higher energy bills than they need to if they do not submit a meter reading before the price cap rises on Wednesday.

The price cap, set by the regulator Ofcom, is set to rise, affecting 5.3 million households on a standard tariff.

How much the price cap will increase from Wednesday, 1 July.

The average gas and electricity bill will jump to £1,862 a year.

There are currently 27 fixed deals available that are cheaper than July’s price cap, with average savings of £285, so act now to save yourself money.  The price cap is going up, but your bills don’t have to.

People are future-proofing their homes for sustainability and to protect themselves against unpredictable energy costs

The summer’s first full Moon is lighting up skies across the country this week.

To see the Stawberry Moon, look towards the south-east after sunset. That will be after around 9.20pm on Tuesday, 30 June. The moon will track southwards through the night, setting in the south-west before sunrise on Wednesday.

Angry people on social media claim the current high temperatures are nothing special but they ignore the long-term trends

The Vagrancy Act, which was introduced in 1824 in response to rising homelessness following the Napoleonic Wars and Industrial Revolution, made it a criminal offence – punishable by fines or even imprisonment – to sleep on Britain’s streets or beg for money.

And, while its use by police had declined, it was still occasionally used against people experiencing homelessness in modern Britain and as justification for moving people who are on the streets on instead of helping them.

Indeed, under the last Conservative government, as I wrote here, its existence shaped a toxic and cruel debate about whether “rough sleeping was a lifestyle choice”, which, as someone who has covered this issue for nearly two decades, I can assure you it is not.

Kerri Douglas, now 42, was arrested under the Vagrancy Act when she was 21 years old in Piccadilly Circus while she was rough sleeping in the 2000s. 

“I was sat on the street with my book, and because a member of the public had bought me a cup of hot chocolate from Caffè Nero, the police said I was begging and arrested me,” she told me. 

“When you get arrested you have to pay a £1,000 fine, but if you’re homeless like I was you can’t pay that – so I spent a whole weekend in Holloway Prison.”

Kerri described the experience as “petrifying”, and says: “I didn’t come out of there myself at all… you’re being criminalised for something you have no choice over.”

It is because of stories like Kerri’s that, last summer, former deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner pledged to scrap and repeal the Vagrancy Act. This week her successor, Steve Reed, announced that it was finally happening.

Matt Downie, chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis, was among experts who welcomed the decision, describing it as a “watershed moment” which “marks the end of a deeply cruel policy of criminalising people because they are homeless”.

Homelessness in Britain, which includes rough sleeping, is currently rising. In London, the number even hit a new record high at the start of this year with 4,841 people recorded as sleeping on the streets.

Those people may no longer be criminalised, but these statistics still show more and more people are finding themselves in one of the most desperate situations a human being can encounter.

Kerri, who is now a homelessness campaigner, is pleased to see the back of the Act but she is worried “we will now see more people on the front line of rough sleeping”, if more isn’t done to provide safe accommodation.

She warns that “the Government needs to see how escalated the issue is”, and particularly cautions that there are “more women rough sleeping” with fewer shelters available.

The Vagrancy Act may be no longer, but if you look around in your local town or city, you will see people who are experiencing homelessness. I left a hospital in central London at the nadir of an uncomfortable heatwave and was confronted by the sight of a long row of tents where it was clear that people were living on the side of a busy main road without access to fresh water.

Temporary accommodation, as Burnham knows all too well, is overflowing and, as he himself has noted in recent weeks, there are around 1.3 million households waiting for social housing across England.

Do we have places for people who are experiencing homelessness to go? That is the question Burnham will have to answer.

Sir Keir Starmer’s power was, many of his critics in Westminster argue, undone by a series of U-turns and poorly communicated policies but, above all, an inability to move quickly.

It has taken a Labour Government more than two years to scrap the Vagrancy Act, an undeniably significant but largely symbolic move.

And, if the council housebuilding revolution that Andy Burnham called for sounds familiar, that’s because it is – it was also promised by Angela Rayner when Labour were campaigning to win the 2024 general election.

Rayner, to her credit, managed to secure a record £39bn worth of funding for the Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) from the Treasury and, as I wrote last week, promising statistics suggest that more social and affordable homes have now been started than at any point since the early 2010s.

Nonetheless, this is not quite the mass council housebuilding programme Rayner, and by extension, Starmer, pledged.

Burnham may become prime minister in a few weeks. If he does, he will inherit an atrocious housing crisis in a country where homelessness is rising.

But he will also gain the advantage of the groundwork laid by Rayner and her housing and planning minister, Matthew Pennycook: the Renters’ Rights Act, the Planning and Infrastructure Act, the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill and a clear line in the sand under draconian attitudes to homelessness.

This time, there will be no excuse for delays or dithering for Labour.

Britain, under Burnham, could have a more preventative and more interventionist state.

However, in order for Burnham’s vision to be financially viable, we will also need to have a more productive state. And fast. How soon, as one of the new prime minister-in-waiting’s favourite bands, The Smiths, put it, is now?

New data published today by HMRC tells us that the housing market has slowed. Housing transactions data reveals what was happening five or six months ago when sales were agreed. The latest data on this shows that home sales completions slowed in May this year, down 2 per cent from April.

Richard Donnell, of the property listings website Zoopla, thinks this “reflects the impact of last year’s Autumn Budget”, which was preceded by much speculation about property taxes and may have prevented people from listing their homes for sale.

He adds that “higher mortgage rates over April (as a result of Trump’s war with Iran) have hit new sales”.

It looks like there will be a substantial drop in the overall number of homes bought and sold this year, which is no good for the Government, which really needs the housing market to pick up and fuel the private housebuilding boom they’ve promised.

That said, in a few weeks, perhaps that pledge will no longer be so relevant… Burnham has not yet said whether he will keep pushing for 1.5 million new homes.