Your campaign to stamp out begging in Brighton and Hove misses an important point.

While you have printed some excellent articles highlighting the difficulties homeless people face, you have consistently ignored the role of central government in making their lives more unbearable.

Over Christmas, the homeless charity, Shelter was forced by government regulations to turn away 75 homeless people into sub-zero temperatures.

These people were deemed "not homeless enough" as they had not made contact with outreach workers.

Shelter spoke out about their concerns for the 75 - some long-term rough sleepers, some new to the street and some asylum seekers.

The charity received the full wrath of Louise Casey, the Homelessness Tsar, who believed that Shelter was "scaremongering".

Such bullying behaviour by unelected government appointees is unacceptable.

Charities have been advised that their funding may be reviewed if they do not back the new Rough Sleepers Initiative.

Ms Casey and her Rough Sleepers Unit should stop instructing charities and the public what they can and cannot do.

Given the incredible wealth of our society, homelessness and begging should not exist.

It is absurd, however, to blame homeless people for their plight and thus obscure the obscene inequalities in our society.

-Andy Player, Western Street, Brighton