UK home secretary Suella Braverman came under fire from the Opposition and charities as her own party colleagues distanced themselves from her on homelessness which implied that some people sleeping in tents on the streets of the country were making a “lifestyle choice”. The Indian-origin UK cabinet minister announced plans on social media over the weekend to crack down on homeless people as they caused nuisance and distress to residents.
“The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice,” Suella Braverman posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor. Nobody in Britain should be living in a tent on our streets,” she said.
The minister also said that the government has put options in place for people who do not want to be sleeping rough.
“What I want to stop, and what the law-abiding majority wants us to stop, is those who cause nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public spaces, aggressively begging, stealing, taking drugs, littering, and blighting our communities,” she added.
UK PM Rishi Sunak called the comments “offensive” and he declined to repeat the phrase.
“I don’t want anyone to sleep rough on our streets. That is why the government is investing GBP 2 billion over the next few years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping,” Rishi Sunak said, adding, “Our Homelessness Reduction Act which was a landmark law that we passed has already ensured that over 600,000 people have had their homelessness prevented or relieved so I am proud of that record. But of course, there is more to do and we will keep going so that nobody has to sleep rough on our streets.”
Energy secretary Claire Coutinho said that Suella Braverman “wouldn’t necessarily use that language”.
“I think she was talking about different things. She acknowledged that there are people who just, you know, need our compassion. They’re struggling with things like addiction,” she told said.
However, Labour’s shadow leader of the Commons Lucy Powell said, “I think the comments of the home secretary are despicable, really. And they speak to what this government’s whole meaning now seems to be about, which is creating more division, where division isn’t needed, by trying to inflame and sort of false wedge political issues.”
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