Responding to new figures from the King’s Fund showing a steep increase in the number of hospital admissions related to homelessness, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said: “These figures show the appalling extent of homelessness across our country. They also make clear the huge cost of this Conservative Government’s failure to invest in preventing homelessness, because it leads to more people needing to be treated to hospital.
“The Government must act urgently to eliminate rough sleeping and other forms of homelessness. They must take a more compassionate and holistic approach, starting by scrapping the Vagrancy Act, a Dickensian law that criminalises rough sleeping in England and Wales. The answer to ending rough sleeping is not to arrest those doing it.”