Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

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.