Soup kitchens? Not in my back yard says Tory peer

Soup kitchens? Not in my back yard says Tory peer
By Francis Elliot, Whitehall Editor
Published: 25 March 2007
John Patten, a housing minister under Margaret Thatcher, is pressing for the closure of soup kitchens run for the homeless near his London flat.

The Conservative peer and former cabinet minister is demanding action against the mainly Christian charities that offer free food to hundreds of homeless and destitute people every night in Westminster.

The demand for their charity has grown sharply in recent years as crackdowns on illegal migrants forbid the local council from providing help. Complaints about noise last summer led to threats by the local council to begin issuing Asbos to those offering charity in designated areas.

Lord Patten, who condemned the "appalling scandal" of homelessness as a housing minister in the late 1980s, now appears to have taken up the cause and is waging a parliamentary campaign to force the Home Office to take action against the charities.

In January, he asked whether the soup runs had led to more people sleeping rough. Last week, he demanded to know whether ministers had asked the charities to "desist" from providing "nightly soup runs in Howick Place".

The former Oxford MP, who rose to become Secretary of State for Education under John Major, lives in Ashley Gardens, a nearby private estate in which two-bedroom flats sell for £800,000.

Contacted by The Independent on Sunday, Lord Patten agreed he had tabled questions on the soup runs but hung up when asked whether his intervention may be regarded as an example of "nimbyism".

Alistair Murray, the chairman of the Soup Run Forum, a body that represents the charities, said: "I am surprised that John Patten has joined the hardliners. What does he propose that we do, starve people into submission?"

The provision of free food for people sleeping rough is becoming increasingly controversial. John Bird, the founder of the Big Issue, is among those who believe that, in some cases, handouts are doing more harm than good.

Some have even suggested that some of the free food is being handed to migrants who are not homeless but are simply saving cash.

But Mark Palframan, of the Simon Community, has said: "It is quite offensive that senior figures within local authorities and in the homeless industry are quite openly espousing a policy that uses hunger as a coercive tool.

"We too want to encourage people off the streets and to take up the services and support available, but this cannot, and should not, be done through the politics of hunger. Some people still need free food, and we will continue to provide this."