Red light for rough sleepers: We are told the ‘night shift’ left their tunnel, which led to Elizabeth Tower, every morning at 6am and tidied up after themselves.

Parliament has installed rolldown shutters on an underpass leading to the Parliamentary estate, preventing a group of rough sleepers from staying there overnight.

The homeless people involved had been meticulous in their behaviour and saw no reason for the draconian move.

But This Writer recalls the fuss after two homeless people died within sight of Parliament last year.

Rather than act to help stop people from becoming homeless, Parliament acted to remove homeless people from the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster.

The policy has become known as “out of sight, out of mind”.

And I think this is part of it.

It doesn’t matter how well-behaved these people are; the fact that they exist is a reminder of the real effect of Conservative government policies in the fifth-richest economy in the world.

A group of rough sleepers who describe themselves as the parliamentary “night shift”, moving into an underpass leading to the parliamentary estate after MPs have left for the day, have been barred from accessing their relatively safe bed space underneath the street.

The group of about 10 rough sleepers formed a distinct community with rules of conduct. They made themselves invisible from MPs and parliamentary workers and visitors during the day and only emerged after 11pm to lay out their cardboard, newspaper and sleeping bags in the exit 3 underpass from Westminster tube station to the parliamentary estate.

None of the group were involved in begging, substance abuse or rowdy behaviour and those who joined had to abide by the group’s informal code of conduct, especially being willing to get up before 6am to vacate their nocturnal space before parliament’s daytime business begins and leaving the tunnel clean and tidy with no newspaper, cardboard or food and drink waste left behind.

Source: Westminster rough sleepers evicted from parliamentary estate | Society | The Guardian

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