Tag Archives: government

All still to play for

The Government have voted through an amendment to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, to make squatting in residential buildings a criminal offence, with up to 51 weeks imprisonment. The clause has now moved to the House of Lords where it will face its first proper scrutiny. A second reading took place on the 21st November where a general debate on all aspects of the bill occurred. The bill is still to go to committee stage where a full line by line examination should happen and this stage is yet to be scheduled. You can keep track […]

This pernicious choreography hints at a more sinister logic…

This pernicious choreography – from summer consultation to rushed last-minute amendment – also hints at a more sinister logic. On Tuesday morning, the housing minister, Grant Shapps, tweeted the following: “St Paul’s: Right to protest NOT a right to squat. Looking at law to see if change needed to deal w/ camps like St Paul’s & Dale Farm faster.” Shapps’ casual and lazy equation of protest and collective assembly with the rich and varied history of squatting reveals, it seems to me, the ultimate target of the government’s legal revanchism…