A homeless man has died after he was found outside the entrance to the Houses of Parliament.
The man collapsed near Westminster station last night, close to an entrance used by MPs and parliamentary staff.
He died in hospital on Wednesday morning, police said.
The 43-year-old man, known as Gyula Remes, was said to have been drinking and had been given a cigarette. A friend said he suspected it had been laced with the synthetic drug spice.
Gabor Kasza, 22, told the Press Association: "He was drinking, very heavily, and someone gave him some kind of cigarette which he smoked.
"He said he was going to lie down and then when I came back a few hours later, he was all blue. We couldn't resuscitate him. It was definitely spice."
Mr Kasza said his friend had recently begun work as a chef's assistant and was well known among the homeless community at Westminster station.
David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said in a furious tweet: “There is something rotten in Westminster when MP’s walk past dying homeless people on the way into work. 24,000 people homeless on our streets this Christmas and our Government playing reckless with a No Deal Brexit. Plague on their Houses.”
His party colleague Jess Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, said a shrine had been set up outside Parliament: “Homeless man died outside Parliament last night according to the homeless women I just spoke to. They've set up a memorial outside the door of parliament to the tube where they live.”
It comes after new figures by Crisis revealed London accounts for 25 per cent of nation's rough sleeping population.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “At around 11.30pm on December 18, we were alerted by officers from British Transport Police to a man collapsed in an underpass near to Westminster underground station.
“First aid was administered by the BTP officers and the man was taken to a central London hospital, where he died in the early hours of December 19.”
The Met added the death is not being treated as suspicious.
Earlier this year 35-year-old homeless man Marcos Amaral Gourgel in February died at the Tube station during a bitter cold snap.
Additional reporting by Press Association.
