One of the things I noticed in the late 1980s, when I first went to London, was that there were people begging on the streets—numbers of them. And I remember thinking, 'Oh, I wouldn't like to see this in Wales.' But it happened, in the 1990s, and it's still there now, as we know. At the end of the second world war, begging largely disappeared from the streets of the UK. It re-emerged under a Tory Government in the 1980s and 1990s.

From my perspective, I think there are two issues here: first of all, there is no doubt that many people find aggressive begging intimidating, but the answer is not simply to say, 'Well, just get rid of them and that's the end of it', because there has to be a twin-track approach. Yes, people don't want to—. Many people do feel that they don't want to see people begging on the street, but there has to be an alternative where people can go, where people don't feel they have to beg, where people get the support that they need, where they're given a roof over their heads and get that support. We're not in the days of the Vagrancy Act 1824, where people were effectively criminalised because they were homeless. It does need a compassionate approach, she is right, and that means ensuring that where there are plans to deal with the issue of begging on the streets there are places people can go in order that they feel they don't have to do that in the first place.