New squatting law will 'cancel out' legal aid savings

Tue Mar 20 22:54:58 GMT 2012

New squatting law will 'cancel out' legal aid savings
http://www.co-operative.coop/legalservices/latest-news/Legal-Services/new-squatting-law-will-cancel-out-legal-aid-savings/
Legal Services 16 Mar 2012 - Published by Phil Hammond
The introduction of a law to criminalise 
squatting could exceed cost estimates by almost 
20 times, cancelling out legal aid savings.
This is the finding of a new report commissioned 
by Squatters' Action for Secure Homes (Squash), reported in The Guardian.
The study shows that the increased cost for 
further criminalising squatting under clause 136 
of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of 
Offenders Act voids the savings that the 
government intend to make through legal aid cuts.
Once squatters are evicted they will increase the 
amount needed to be spent on housing benefit, it is claimed.
These extra costs could total up to £750 million 
over five years for taxpayers, depending on the 
actual number of squatters currently in existence, the newspaper explained.
"The government has seriously underestimated the 
financial implications of clause 136 by failing 
to quantify some of the key and inevitable costs 
of criminalisation," the report states.
Clause 136 and its costs add yet another layer to 
the controversy surrounding the legal aid cuts.

The fight to save squatting - and its odd bedfellows
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/joe-rake/fight-to-save-squatting-and-its-odd-bedfellows
Joe Rake, 20 March 2012
Today the House of Lords will debate plans to 
criminalise squatting. Clause 136 of the Legal 
Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill 
(LASPO), which seeks to criminalise squatting in 
residential properties, will be scrutinised late 
in the evening as Baroness Sue Miller (Lib Dem) 
and Baroness Lister (Labour) have tabled a number 
of amendments ?  to mitigate some of its worst 
impacts on homeless and vulnerable people. 
Additional concerns have also been raised in the 
last week, with the release of a report in The 
Guardian ? which suggests this clause could cost 
the taxpayer as much as £790million over the next 
five years, outweighing the entire savings that 
the rest of the Bill intends to make.
Im a squatter myself, so its not surprising 
that Im urging peers today to vote against 
criminalization. But the squatter communitys 
unlikely allies in this fight tell a different 
story, one of widespread opposition from many quarters.
Last summer the government held a three month 
consultation entitled Options for dealing with 
squatting. One might have expected negative 
results given the sustained right-wing media 
coverage attacking squatters both before and 
during the consultation period. However, out of 
the 2217 people who responded to the consultation 
? , 96% didn't want to see any action taken to 
criminalise squatting. Even more surprisingly, 
only 10 people bothered to write in to say they 
had been a victim of squatting. But the 
government ignored its own consultation ? , and 
three days before the LASPO bill was to be voted 
on in the House of Commons, Ken Clarke tacked on 
an amendment to criminalise squatting in 
residential properties  this despite the fact 
that there is no direct link between squatting and legal aid.
 From the Metropolitan Police to the Law Society, 
unexpected bodies have come out against the 
government's proposals to criminalise squatting. 
The Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association 
are adamant that the existing laws are already 
more than adequate ? and the Metropolitan Police 
have even said that the law is already broadly 
in the right place. 160 leading legal experts 
wrote a letter to the government ? which 
explained the misleading information being put 
out around the already existing laws. Many 
organisations, including the Magistrates 
Association, have also expressed concerns about 
the cost of it all ? during a time of austerity measures.
The homeless charity Crisis ? have urged the 
Government to scrap the proposals and have argued 
strongly against essentially making homeless and 
vulnerable people criminals for attempting to 
gain a roof over their heads. Crisis research ? 
shows that 40% of homeless people have used 
squatting as a last resort to prevent sleeping 
rough. Its one thing to criminalise squatting, 
its another thing to do it in the middle of a 
housing crisis when homelessness rates are soaring ? .
Even Channel 4 went squatting to investigate the 
situation. George Clarke's programme 'The Great 
British Property Scandal' ? highlighted the 
fundamental problem. There are an estimated 1 
million properties lying empty across the UK. 
Squatting attempts to utilise these empty 
buildings  criminalisation will only encourage 
owners who own empty properties to keep them empty.

Squatting for community self-defence
I live at Grow Heathrow, a squatted community 
garden in the path of the now cancelled Heathrow 
3rd runway. Set up in March 2010 in opposition to 
the runway and the destruction of the homes in 
its path, the community market garden project 
continues to thrive with the support of the local 
community, local council and MP ? .  After 30 
tonnes of rubbish were cleared from the site, 
what was an abandoned wasteland now hosts 
numerous community events and gatherings. 
Although exempt from the proposed new law (as 
commercial property and not residential), many 
more similar projects around the UK will be 
threatened if the LAPSO bill passes.
Now, more than ever before, we need places like 
Grow Heathrow to build community self-defence. As 
the majority in this country struggle under the 
governments harsh austerity programme, it will 
be more important to reclaim space anywhere we 
can. Land distribution patterns in this country 
reveal the true extent of inequality and 
privilege  1% of the population own 70% of the 
land. Squatting is one method for reversing this trend.
The creation of alternative worlds is 
inextricably linked to confronting this one and 
from my experience squatting does both things. 
'Occupy, create, resist' is a notion that 
resonates strongly at Grow Heathrow. Occupy: take 
space, often made possible by squatting a piece 
of land or a building. Create: create the world 
you want to live in and would one day be willing 
to defend. And then Resist: once you come under 
attack for creating something which doesn't match 
with the ideals of the state or global capitalism.
Today, squatters across the country are in 
Resist mode, standing together with all those 
who recognise that criminalisation is 
unnecessary, unjust and unaffordable. We can't 
allow the government to bypass democracy just in order to send out a message.

Joe Rake is Transition Heathrow co-founder and 
SQUASH (Squatters Action for Secure Homes) campaigner.
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