The Tory plan to arrest ‘smelly’ homeless people was never going to pass the sniff test

The odious Crime and Justice Bill was supposed to make ‘smelling homeless’ an offence, says Big Issue founder John Bird. But it also distracts from the real stench – one that suggests the rot has set in at the top of this government

Critics say the crime bill as it stands could lead to people being arrested for having an ‘excessive odour’ (PA)

A few days after presenter Jonathan Ross declared that he and his wife are giving up on regular showering, bodily smells have become a big issue. The Crime and Justice Bill, currently passing through parliament, was supposed to include a section that would apparently make “smelling homeless” an offence.

I don’t know if you could call such a thing Orwellian, but it does smack of some kind of weird thinking within the leadership of this current government. Perhaps a sign that the rot of office has set in, and they should leave the stage of history for others who have deeper concerns than what a person smells like.

And now – possibly glimpsing the ridiculousness of their policy the second it came into contact with public reaction – a Downing Street spokesperson has said the prime minister believes that “nobody should be arrested ‘just if they smell’”, before going on to say that “the reference to smell in the bill stemmed from the definition of causing a nuisance that is contained in an older piece of legislation, the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act”.