A Conservative MP and former army officer has said that sleeping rough is “a lot more comfortable” than military exercises, in a debate he led on tackling street homelessness.
Adam Holloway, the MP for Gravesham in Kent, told parliamentary colleagues in the Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday that if a person is “able-bodied and sound of mind” there are resources that make it possible to sleep rough.
He said begging was also part of the problem, allowing homeless people to make “quite a lot of money”.
Holloway, a supporter of the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave, also said that a rise in street homelessness was driven by eastern European immigration, claiming that many migrants from that region preferred to sleep rough than pay for accommodation.
He said mental illness and drug addiction were “real ingrained problems” behind homelessness that needed to be tackled to solve the crisis.
Holloway, who told MPs he had spent a number of nights during the parliamentary recess in February sleeping on the streets as part of a television programme on street homelessness, said: “One observation I do have, if you are able-bodied and of sound mind there are all sorts of services – not quite 24 hours a day – that make it possible to sleep out.
“I’m 52, I was in the army; to be honest for me sleeping rough in central London is a lot more comfortable than going on exercise in the army.
“But if you’re mentally ill or you are old or you are personality disordered then it is a very different thing. Or if you’re drug addicted it is very difficult. We have to accept that some people are able to sleep rough because there are resources to do so.”
Holloway’s comments come after research revealed at least 78 homeless people died on the streets and in temporary accommodation this winter, bringing the number of recorded homeless deaths to more than 300 since 2013.
Challenged by the Labour MP Laura Smith, Holloway acknowledged that he was not saying “even a large minority of the homeless are there because there are resources for them” but added “we’re going to get absolutely nowhere on this, in solving the problem in getting to the people who are most needy if we just continue to just talk about the homeless and feel sorry for everybody”.
He later said there was a link between the scaling back of mental health services and the rise of homelessness.
He said in February he took some cardboard to Covent Garden and “bedded down” for the night under the awning of St Paul’s church. The MP said he had first attempted this nearly 27 years ago as a television reporter for ITN’s World In Action.
He said that compared with the early 90s, the majority of rough sleepers were “foreign nationals”.
Holloway, who faced criticism in 2015 for claiming asylum seekers often holidayed in the country from which they had supposedly fled, said: “As I wandered round as shawls and brand new trainers who were handed out I honestly didn’t hear English being spoken by anybody. I heard east European languages. I heard Arabic. And I heard Italian.”
He later said: “If we’re to be honest about the correlation between immigration and rising numbers of street homeless, it’s no surprise to me that 1,950 rough sleepers in 2016-2017 were migrants from Romania, Poland and Lithuania. When people are far from home and familial support structures, homelessness is a much greater risk.
“Some migrants do indeed sleep on the streets by choice, preferring to sleep rough than to pay for accommodation.”
On the same topic, he said: “On the subject of people from eastern Europe, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves whether it’s exploitative to build an economy on cheap labour provided by those who can barely afford to accommodate themselves in our country.
“Of course you could argue these people are not strictly homeless because they might have a home back home but that’s their reality when they’re here.”
Holloway’s claim that the majority of homeless were foreign nationals was challenged by the shadow housing minister Melanie Onn, who said UK-wide this was not the case.
Data from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain), a multi-agency database recording information about rough sleepers and the wider street population in London, found 45% of rough sleepers in the capital were of UK origin.
But in the whole of England, 16% of rough sleepers are EU nationals from outside the UK, and 4% are from outside the EU, according to official figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Holloway said during his experience on the streets in February he was taken to a hostel in Hither Green, which he said was less comfortable than sleeping rough.
“When I left there I was quite relieved, the thought of potentially sleeping days and weeks on the floor in a cramped room between a refrigerator and french windows did not appeal to me,” he said. “I can completely see how if you’re able-bodied and of sound mind it would be much more appealing to sleep under the awning of St Paul’s in Covent Garden because there you have freedom.”
Holloway said “people’s generosity can sometimes be as much part of the problem as part of the solution”.
“Begging is part of the problem,” he said. “You can make – if you’re able-bodied – quite a lot of money from begging on the streets of London. So generosity of members of the public is a factor in this. Generosity can be enabling.”
Holloway did not immediately respond to a request for comment.