Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Squatting clearly has a devastating impact on private owners, and it can also have a devastating impact on councils. When I was a councillor in Hackney back in the late '80s, it was eventually discovered that many council properties were squatted, and that in many cases council employees had sold the keys to the squatters. We clearly need to tackle squatting, therefore. I would have welcomed a fuller debate on the matter, however, and I now want to raise a few points that would, perhaps, have been more pertinently raised in Committee, if that stage had taken place. The first aspect of new clause 26 on which I seek clarification is proposed new subsection (3)(b), which states that"““a building is 'residential' if it is designed or adapted, before the time of entry, for use as a place to live.””" Could a commercial building be so ““designed”” or ““adapted””, and what would be required for that to be achieved? Would simply placing a bed in a commercial premises be enough for it to be ““designed”” or ““adapted”” as ““a place to live””? The second point on which I seek clarification relates to proposed new subsection (4) on the ““permission of a trespasser””. If a person has not been informed by someone who is a trespasser that they are in a building that they are squatting, and that person then squats in that property, would they be guilty of the offence of trespass? I hope the Minister can provide some clarity on that point. At the risk of the Opposition accusing me of trying to have my cake and eat it, I will say that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has raised some interesting points in amendment (a). Setting a bar of six months would not be appropriate, however, because there are many circumstances in which people might legitimately choose to leave a property empty—for example, if they are abroad for a year. However, I am sure that every Member of Parliament here tonight probably has one, two, three or possibly more properties in their constituency that have been empty year after year—possibly for decades. I know for a fact that residents living on either side of such properties may prefer to have someone in them so that the property is not allowed to fall down, be taken over by foxes, have trees growing in the front room and so on. I accept that the difficulty lies in trying to distinguish between those cases and cases where a squatter takes advantage of a property. The amendment raises an interesting point and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to it.