Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

36: Clause 145, page 132, line 7, at end insert “or if the building has been empty twelve months or more and is not subject to a current planning application”

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, during the passage of this Bill we have learnt that there is no need for this clause because squatting in people’s homes is already criminal. We have learnt that there was a big need for guidance and we would not be where we are today unless there had been an abject failure of successive Governments to issue any guidance on the use of Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. If enforcement of those more reasonable measures in that Act had been properly understood, duplicating the legislation in this much harsher way would not have seemed necessary; nor is there a demand for it.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for our two meetings. She also wrote to me after the Report stage to say that the Government consultation was evidence of demand, so I looked again at the results of the consultation. In fact, out of the 2,217 people who responded, 96 per cent did not want to see any action taken to criminalise squatting, and even more surprisingly, only 10 people, 0.5 per cent of all the respondents, wrote in to say that they had been the victims of squatting. I do not feel that either need or demand has been demonstrated.

We have also learnt that this is going to cost a good deal. In a Bill that is all about cost cutting, even the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that the cost of this measure will be between £5 million and £10 million, which is a pretty wide estimate. However, those figures are probably optimistic. If the clause is enforced, it will cost the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office many tens of millions in enforcement, court time, rehabilitation, curfew monitoring and so on, and that is before we get to the costs of rehousing.

I am still against this clause in every way but, on the basis that the Government are determined to push it through, I must look at mitigating in any way I can the injustices being perpetrated against the homeless, and that is the purpose of the amendments I have tabled. My noble friend Lady Hamwee will go into greater detail on the definition of “residential”, which we feel is still inadequate. I will address my comments to the commencement of the clause. What will happen to those individuals who will be affected when the law is changed? I need to know about the practicalities of how individual homeless people who are currently squatting will get to know about the change in the law, or will they simply be criminalised overnight? Could there be a system of warning them and offering help to find alternatives? Are local authorities actually prepared to do that?

With nothing set out in the Bill, how will the Government ensure that appropriate help is offered? Evidence given to us by the charity Crisis, which has researched this issue, shows that when squatters who want to leave a squat present themselves to their local authority for help with housing, they are given a home-finder pack that at best contains a list of landlords, but since they have no money, the pack is of little help. They may be given a list of hostels, but some 2,000 hostel beds have been lost in the past year, so the hostels are likely to be full. Can my noble friend tell me what should happen then? There is nothing in the Bill to suggest even consultation with local authorities, let alone powers to make them act. Can squatters be deemed to be intentionally homeless, because then local authorities have no obligation at all to house them? They would automatically be denied help. Will the Government invite representatives of Crisis, a charity which does so much for the homeless, to work with officials on potential transitional measures? They might be able to offer some practical suggestions for measures that could be put in place to support homeless people who are squatting.

Finally, I should like to ask my noble friend about empty dwelling management orders. The number of empty homes is staggering, at over 720,000 across the UK. In London alone, there are some 74,500 empty homes. Some of them are owned by local authorities and housing associations, which is a bit of an irony since those bodies are meant to be in the business of housing people. However, by far the greatest number of empty homes are in private hands. If the Government think it is criminal to squat, they should also think it is criminal to leave properties empty, denying them to society year after year. What are the Government doing to ensure that the scandal of all those empty homes comes to an end?

I challenge the fact that this clause is still needed, but it is before us. These modest amendments try to make the position clearer and a little more just. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I preface my remarks with the comment, “Better late than never”. I add my tributes to those made earlier to Lord Newton of Braintree. Back in the 1980s when I worked with the Child Poverty Action Group, I knew him to be a fair and open-minded Minister. On the day of my introduction to this House, he welcomed me from the Benches opposite in a very warm and generous way. Like so many other Members of your Lordships’ House, I thought of him as my noble friend. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, once again, for her perseverance in ensuring that we debate this important issue at not exactly a reasonable hour but at least a slightly less unreasonable hour than the last time. I am pleased to add my name in support of the amendment. As I made clear on Report, Clause 145 is wrong in principle. It is unfair because it treats what is a homelessness and welfare issue as a criminal justice issue, and it is unnecessary because residential home owners are already protected in law.

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[Baroness Northover]

Yes, I would say so. I do not think it is right that people should live unprotected. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, flags up monitors for heating systems and the dangers involved there. How can anybody be protected or have tenants’ rights if they are squatting? I think we owe it to our citizens to make sure that they are housed properly and that they do not live without that kind of protection, as is the case with squatting. Perhaps I may continue.

On preparing local authorities for commencement, we plan to do a range of things, including working with the National Homelessness Advice Service to provide training for local authorities, raising awareness through regional seminars and websites, and working with Citizens Advice to ensure that home owners and squatters are informed of the changes.

One or two noble Lords asked about the consultation. The vast majority of responses—1,990 out of 2,216—were received via the website of the campaign group Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes. That is fair enough. However, the remainder came from landlords’ associations, local government associations, law firms and so on. We also received responses from individual property owners who had first-hand experience of squatters in their buildings. I have just mentioned the letter that I received yesterday from the deputy leader of Redbridge Council which referred to a couple of cases and the impact on the areas involved.

I was asked by my noble Friend, Lady Hamwee, whether squatters who vacate their squats will be considered intentionally homeless. That is obviously a very important point. Section 191 of the Housing Act 1996 provides that a person becomes homeless intentionally if it is a consequence of something that he or she has deliberately done or failed to do. The accommodation that he or she has left must have been available for their occupation and reasonable for them to continue to occupy. Therefore, it is unlikely that a squat being occupied illegally could be considered as accommodation that is available to be occupied. I hope that my noble Friend is reassured on that point.

I was also asked about whether we could commit to working with Crisis, and we certainly will. We will involve Crisis when we are liaising with the local government department and local authorities on the implementation of the offence. It is very important that that is taken forward. I was asked about the empty dwelling management orders. In January 2011 the Government announced that we would be making changes to those orders. These proposals will limit the authorisation of interim EDMOs to those properties that have been wholly empty for at least two years. They will require local housing authorities to give property owners a minimum notice period of three months before applying to a residential property tribunal for an interim EDMO. They also require the local housing authority to provide all the information that it has on the empty property that is causing a nuisance to the community, and that the community supports the proposal for the local housing authority to take control.

I was asked by my noble friend Lady Hamwee about guidance for the police and the CPS. We will liaise with ACPO prior to commencement on the provision of appropriate guidance, including how the new offence will interact with existing offences in Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. There were various other points but I shall move on to Amendment 36 and the point about occupying buildings that have been left empty for a year or so.

As I explained, this amendment is problematic for a number of reasons. I explained this on Report and in my letter. There are many reasons why a residential building might be left empty for a year or more, and I have just referred to the letter from Redbridge. Clearly, if a property is inherited following a death or probate is taking a while to sort out, those kinds of issues may mean that a property is empty. Reference was made by my noble friends Lady Miller and Lady Hamwee to the definition of a building. I note that my noble friend has proposed a definition that would sit alongside the current definition in the Bill. We are concerned that that would introduce unnecessary confusion and complexity. We talked about this at our meeting this morning. I am happy to expand on that if required but it is five minutes to 11, so unless noble Lords want to come back to that, I urge them to accept the simplicity of what is there at the moment, which is the right way to go.

I commend my noble friend for her concern for a very vulnerable group of people. As I have just said, it is important to look at this with some clarity in terms of the social responsibility to individuals and how society should ensure that the vulnerable are cared for and housed properly, and that squatting is not the answer. I understand why my noble friend has tabled the amendments and her concerns about unintended consequences of legislation. I hope that she is reassured that we have looked very carefully at the issues that she has raised and that we have sought to address them, in terms of assisting vulnerable people. I therefore hope that she will be willing to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I am tremendously grateful to all Members of the House who spoke in this debate—which finally had the airing that it deserved, even though it was late—and to all Members of the House who stayed to hear it. It was an incredibly important debate about whether we should choose to criminalise a section of society. Many extremely good points were made and I will not rehearse them all at this hour. One theme that ran through all the speeches was that of unintended consequences.

I entirely agree with my noble friend that it is society’s responsibility to look after the vulnerable—and, I would add, the homeless. That responsibility does not include criminalising them; that is where we part company. However, I see that Amendment 36 is problematic, and I accept the criticisms around the definition of “residential”. We were trying to offer something that was slightly better than what was in the Bill.

Noble Lords concentrated on the issue of what people will do. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, the housing is not there and cannot be created in an instant. Therefore, there will be a group of people who will face very difficult decisions about whether to stay in a squat and be criminalised, to sleep rough or to present themselves to their local authority. We keep coming back to the issue of local authorities and consultation. I think that the Minister accepted that consultation with local authorities was the key. The House would feel very reassured if that were put in the Bill.

While accepting that my other amendments are faulty, I will seek in due course to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 41. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 36.

Amendment 36 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

41: Clause 152, page 137, line 22, at end insert—
“(3A) Section 145 shall not come into force until the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State has consulted representatives of local authorities and such other persons as he considers appropriate.”

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I move this amendment because of the reasons expressed from all sides of the House, and because it is my hope that the House of Commons might debate this properly as it did not have a chance to do so in Committee.