Bristol West MP Stephen Williams has lined up to support Conservative plans to make squatting illegal, saying the current law is “ridiculous”.
Mr Williams, whose constituency includes the Telepathic Heights squat on Cheltenham Road, said that for too long squatters had occupied buildings in Stokes Croft and St Paul’.
Stephen Williams
Violent protests were sparked by a police raid on the squat opposite the Tesco store in April.
Now, the prime minister has wrested control of justice policy from his own Tory colleague Kenneth Clarke, announcing a raft of measures to crack down on violent crime.
David Cameron demanded that prisoners spend longer in jail with tougher penalties for those receiving community sentences. He also pledged to introduce new protections for home owners and small business owners who use “reasonable force” to defend their properties. Squatting will become a criminal offence and anyone threatening someone with a knife will be jailed.
“My mission is to make sure families can feel safe in their homes,” the Prime Minister said. “The first duty of government is to protect people.”
The Prime Minister may now face a battle to convince Liberal Democrat colleagues of the merits of the scheme, although Nick Clegg has said he supports the plan.
Lord McNally, the Liberal Democrat justice minister, said: “The longer I have been in this job the more convinced I have been that we should rely on the discretion of a well-informed judge rather than Parliament trying to second-guess the judiciary at long distance by too-restrictive legislation.
“We will see how this unfolds because one of the issues that is certainly being brought forward is the idea of mandatory life sentences for serious repeat offenders.”
@Liberal Vision
"Squatting is no different from theft". Neither is sitting on empty deteriorating property. I've lived next to two perfectly good empty properties for the last 13 years. Countless people have hopefully enquired about their availability to rent/buy. I have directed them all to the owner, to no avail. Makes me livid. Your Liberal Vision looks a lot like neocon look after the haves and let the have nots go to hell to me.
[...] MP for Bristol West, is taking a stand to protect owners of property from being dispossessed. Stephen has given his support to legislation, to be brought before parliament by the government, to criminalise [...]
This is excellent news. Well done Stephen and I hope you convince your Lib Dem colleagues to back this Bill as well.
Squatting is no different from theft: squatters take and use other people's property without their permission, and in the process deny the owner the ability to use it. In the process, they very often damage the property, leaving the owner to foot the bill. Squatting should be criminalised as soon as possible.
@Mog: I don't know about the "rightwing press" (I don't read it), but your characature of squats, owners and squatters is terribly naive. My friend let his flat when he went abroad, and after a few months the tenants stopped paying him rent. It took him over six months to evict these squatters. That's not only six months during which he had to pay a mortgage without having income to cover it; it is also six months during which he could not let the flat to the many people desperate for accomodation who were willing to pay their rent.
surely its better to have properties occupied rather than being left to rot by speculators? Most of the rightwing press seem to be making out that people are regularly popping off to the shops and returning to find their houses occupied! Its simply not the case. There are twice as many empty properties as there are homeless people. To me the criminal act seems to be when people buy and sell potential housing for profit when there are people who have nowhere to live.
Housing is a right not a privilege. Of course we respect the right of people to feel secure in their homes – what we will not defend is the 'right' to own property that people could live in but let it rot and go to waste. Most of the squats in Bristol have been empty for years and the owners have taken no interest in them until squatters move in. For example the Freeshop on the Croft where the owner didn't even know he owned it for years as he lives in Hong Kong.
As Managing Director of The Sheriffs Office, I couldn't agree more and welcomed calls for new laws to make squatting a criminal offence.
We regulalry have to evict squatters that occupy both public and private property and matters seem to have escalated out of control in recent months.
It is not right that property owners can experience significant challenges to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, often facing criminal prosecution in the process.
Police officers are already in attendance for the vast majority of evictions to and we believe the law should provide them with the necessary powers to evict squatters.
Property owners should also have the opportunity to pursue criminal proceedings against squatters.
The quicker the new law is introduced the better!
David Carter, The Sheriffs Office
Common-sense is that if you enter the property of some else, you have no right to be there, end of.
Once again, the UK seems to have a government whose crime and punishment agenda seems to be being set by the Daily Mail and Daily Express instead of common-sense.
Telepathic Heights is now a former squat, by the way.