My Lords, I am not going to say that I am grateful for the reply on this occasion because it was really disappointing. We have here a mechanism that we can use to do two things that there is broad consensus about in your Lordships’ House, one of which has already been passed through legislation, which is to repeal the Vagrancy Act, and the other of which is subject to new government legislation but could be done much more quickly by using this Bill. On the Vagrancy Act, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and I mentioned, 1,000 people were arrested under it during the course of last year, and on no-fault evictions, families are living in misery now. Anyone who has been a councillor—I know the Minister has been—will have heard the terribly distressing stories from families when they get evicted and end up finding it very difficult to find somewhere else to live.
When we went through the Covid crisis, I was very pleased to see the Government taking immediate action with their “Everyone In” programme, getting people sleeping rough into accommodation as quickly as possible. We have the opportunity to build on that, but rough sleeping is already starting to go up again. Why not take the opportunity of this Bill to do something about it now? Can the Minister tell us how many people are sleeping rough tonight, or any night in the coming week? If you can do something about this, why would you not?
The noble Lord, Lord Best, rightly mentioned that a number of powers have been introduced in recent Acts, particularly the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime
and Policing Act 2014, that already allow the police to address anti-social begging, and there are powers for councils to set aside areas where they do not allow people to hang around. There are lots of powers already. We do not need any more powers; we need the Government to get on and scrap this 200 year-old Act that criminalises those who are sleeping rough. The postponement of this repeal for over a year is already far too long. I shall withdraw my amendment for today, but I am sure that we will come back to this on Report.