The so-called season of goodwill might seem an odd time for the Government to launch a major debate on how we should react to the growing number of beggars on the streets.

But then, I suppose no time is a good time to push this emotive issue to a high place on the national agenda.

It needs debating, though. There seem to be more and more people asking passers-by to part with money. Walk through town and you run the gauntlet of them.

Some of them are legitimate and not beggars at all - like Big Issue sellers, who turn themselves into one-person businesses to earn their way off the street.

They deserve support but risk being undermined by impostors like the young man who I tried to buy a magazine off the other week at the bottom of Ivegate.

He took my pound then asked me if he could hang on to the only copy he had and "sell it on". He was clearly bogus, but the pound had gone from my pocket into his and there was nothing to be done about it - except take care in future to deal only with genuine Big Issue sellers with a good stock of magazines.

Some busk, earning any money that people give them by providing entertainment of a sort. They at least are offering a service in exchange for the cash they receive, and their music brightens up the streets.

But what of the others, the ones who beg? What of the well-spoken young man who asked me for the 74 pence he was short of the train fare to get to a hostel for the homeless in Leeds? I took pity on him and gave him a pound to help him on his way.

Two weeks later he again accosted me in the street and politely told me he was 74 pence short of the train fare to get him to a hostel in Leeds. My response was less sympathetic on that occasion as I wondered how many other donations he had conned out of Bradford people.

What are passers-by to make of the woman who looks to be of Bosnian or Kosovan origin and holds out a card asking for money while clutching to her chest a well-wrapped infant which is so still and silent that it's hard to believe it isn't a stage prop?

How generous is the person who toils all week in a poorly-paid job to provide for a family supposed to feel towards a young man who passes his days sitting in doorways and whining "Spare the price of a cup o' tea?" at every passer by?

Are these people genuinely on their uppers, with no other source of income than that which they can scrounge from strangers? Or are they taking the public for a ride to supplement their benefits - which, of course, are also funded by the public?

It's impossible to tell, isn't it? And that's why I think it's reasonable for Tony Blair to suggest that the public should not give money to beggars. However, the Government is wrong to discourage those organisations which set out to help the homeless by providing them with food, clothing and a bit of encouragement.

No-one, surely, sleeps rough if they have any alternative. No-one queues up at dead of night for a bowl of sustaining soup before returning to a cardboard bed in a doorway if they have access to any more comfortable way of life.

These are the people who truly do deserve support. If the Government really believes it can create enough hostel places around the country to accommodate them all, and persuade them to come in from the cold, then let it get on with it.

But meanwhile, it should modify its message by suggesting that rather than give money directly to beggars, those who wonder how they might cope if their own life went horribly wrong should instead give it to those organisations which help them.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.