HC Deb 27 July 1977 vol 936 cc687-97

The Lords disagree to the Commons amendments in page 7, line 8, but propose the following amendment in lieu thereof—

Lords amendment: No. 2, in page 7, line 8, leave out from first "of" to end of line 8 and insert: (a) a displaced residential occupier of the premises; or (b) an individual who is a protected intending occupier of the premises by virtue of subsection (1A) or subsection (1C) below.

(1A) For the purposes of this section an individual is a protected intending occupier of any premises at any time if at that time—

  1. (a)he has in those premises a freehold interest or a leasehold interest with not less than 21 years still to run and he acquired that interest as a purchaser for money or money's work; and
  2. (b)he requires the premises for his own occupation as a residence; and
  3. (c)he is excluded from occupation of the premises by a person who entered them, or any access to them, as a trespasser; and
  4. (d)he or a person acting on his behalf holds a written statement—
    1. (i) which specifies his interest in the premises; and
    2. (ii) which states that he requires the premises for occupation as a residence for himself; and
    3. (iii) with respect to which the require. ments in subsection (1B) below are fulfilled.

(1B) The requirements referred to in subsection (1A)(d)(iii) above are—

  1. (a) that the statement is signed by the person whose interest is specified in it in the presence of a justice of the peace or commissioner for oaths; and
    2. 688
  2. (b) that the justice of the peace or commissioner for oaths has subscribed his name as a witness to the signature;
and a person is guilty of an offence if he makes a statement for the purposes of subsection (IA)(d) above which he knows to be false in a material particular or if he recklessly makes such a statement which is false in a material particular.

(1C) For the purposes of this section an individual is also a protected intending occupier of any premises at any time if at that time—

  1. (a) he has been authorised to occupy the premises as a residence by an authority to which this subsection applies; and
  2. (b) he is excluded from occupation of the premises by a person who entered the premises, or any access to them, as a trespasser; and
  3. (c) there has been issued to him by or on behalf of the authority referred to in paragraph (a) above a certificate stating that the authority is one to which this subsection applies, being of a description specified in the certificate, and that he has been authorised by the authority to occupy the premises concerned as a residence.

(1D) Subsection (1C) above applies to the following authorities:—

  1. (a) any body mentioned in section 14 of the Rent Act 1977 (landlord's interest belonging to local authority etc.);
  2. (b) the Housing Corporation; and
  3. (c) a housing association, within the meaning of section 189(1) of the Housing Act 1957, which is for the time being either registered in the register of housing associations established under section 13 of the Housing Act 1974 or specified in an order made by the Secretary of State under paragraph 23 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Rents and Subsidies Act 1975."

Mr. John

I beg to move, That this House do not insist upon its amendments to Clause 7 and agree with the Lords in their amendments proposed in lieu.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this we are to take Lords Amendments Nos. 3 to 7 and amendments thereto, and Lords Amendment No. 8.

Mr. John

Hon. Members who were present during the debate will recollect that there was a discussion based on Amendment No. 37 in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) about the scope and nature of the clause. After some discussion, an agreement was arrived at whereby a narrower and less open to abuse clause should be substituted in place of the new clause then being moved. These are amendments which incorporate that agreement. Perhaps I may give very briefly the details of them.

The position of the displaced residential occupier is undisturbed. But, in addition to that, the benefits of Clause 7 are extended to a protected intending occupier—that is, a person allocated a tenancy by a local authority or a housing association, and a person who has bought the freehold or a long lease on premises which he requires for occupation by himself as a resident. In each case there are supplementary provisions to prevent abuse, to ensure that the trespasser clearly understands his liability to be convicted of a criminal offence, and to give a police constable a firm basis on which to exercise his powers.

In the case of a local authority tenant, there will have to be a certificate signed by the local authority to confirm that a tenancy has already been allocated. In the case of a person who has bought a house or flat, he will have to make a properly witnessed statement to declare his interest in the premises and that he requires them for his own occupation. The other amendments are consequential upon those amendments.

I commend these proposals to the House.

Miss Jo Richardson (Barking)

I beg to move, as an amendment to Lords Amendment No. 2, subsection (1A), after paragraph (b) insert: (bb) he intends to take up residence of the premises within six weeks; and'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this we may take the following amendments to Lords Amendment No. 2:

In subsection (lA)(d), at end of subparagraph (ii), insert: (iii) which states the date by which he will have taken up residence of the premises, being a date less than six weeks after the day that the statement is signed; and'. In subsection (1B), after 'subsection (1A)(d)(iii)', insert and subsection (1E) (c) below.'

In subsection (1B), after second 'above', insert ' or subsection (1E) below.'

In subsection (1C), after paragraph (a), insert: '(aa) he intends to take up residence of the premises within six weeks; and'. After subsection (ID), insert: '(1E) For the purposes of subsection (1) above no person shall be guilty of the offence of failing to leave premises on being required to do so by or on behalf of a displaced residential occupier unless the person making the request holds a written statement—

  1. (a) which specifies his interest in the premises; and
  2. (b) which states that he was resident on the premises until he was excluded from occupation by a person who entered them, or any access to them, as a trespasser; and>
  3. (c) with respect to which the requirements of subsection (IB) are fulfilled.'.
We may also take the following amendments to Lords Amendment No. 7:

In subsection (2AA), after first 'of', insert 'a displaced residential occupier of the premises or'. In subsection (2AA), paragraph (a), after 'above', insert ' or subsection (1E) above'.

Miss Richardson

Lords Amendment No. 2 is in my opinion, and, I think, in the opinion of most Labour Members, certainly an improvement on the amendment which was carried on Report, which expanded the scope of Clause 7 so widely that it would have given rise to abuse by unscrupulous landlords. In practice, therefore, if that had been left in the Bill, it would have made it impossible for those in possession to challenge the good faith of those claiming to be entitled to possession. I am glad that Lords Amendment No. 2 has gone through the House of Lords and that we are now considering it.

What I have tried to do is merely to seek to tighten up the Lords amendment a little, and I should like to explain why. My amendments fall into two groups. The intention of the first group is to make matters clear to protected intending occupiers, hereinafter referred to as "PIO". We seem to be producing more and more sets of initials. When I saw the initials "PIO", I could not think what they meant. I was inclined to mix them up with something in the Middle East.

However, having got protected intending occupiers, the intention of the first group of my amendments is to make clear that the criminal law can be invoked only when actual occupation has been stopped. In other words, if a person buys a house and finds that there are squatters therein, under the present Lords Amendment No.

2 he needs only to say that he intends to occupy at some future date. At least, that is how I read the Lords amendment. If there is a more specific intention than that, I should very much like to hear what it is from the Minister. If the present clause had contained, for example, the word "immediate" or some qualifying phrase such as that, I should have been happier. That is why I am seeking to insert a time limit of six weeks.

If the Minister would spell out what the intention really is, I might withdraw my amendment, depending upon what he says, but I believe that my amendment would make the whole clause clearer. I have tried to pace it out. It stretches from the original half a page on Clause 7 to about two and a half pages on Clause 7. It is growing, but my amendment would make it clearer.

The hon. and learned Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Mayhew) talked on Report about the sense of outrage that people felt about being prevented from taking up residence. It is a sense of outrage that everyone understands. I think that my amendment restricts the clause to that, and I hope that the House will support it.

With regard to the second group of amendments, I ought to explain that there appears to have been a misprint. It can only be a printer's error because I have checked the script which I put in. My second amendment in subsection (1B) should say: "after 'above' insert". That makes it clearer and that is, in fact, the manuscript which I put in to the Table Office.

The intention of the amendments is to extend the obligation to get a statement from the displaced residential occupier—the DRO—in the same way as will be the case with regard to a protected intending occupier. That will help the policeman on the beat who has to make the decision—and it is a difficult one—when he is called in to arrest a trespasser. He ought to be able to require proof that the displaced residential occupier is really a displaced residential occupier.

I shall give an example in order to make my argument more graphic. Let us suppose that a person buys a house or a flat, goes along with a removal van, takes in the packing cases and, because it is late in the afternoon or early in the evening, does not want to do any more work. He sleeps on the premises overnight. In the morning he goes out to buy a pint of milk, but when he returns he finds that the flat has been taken over by squatters. Does that make him a protected intending occupier or a displaced residential occupier?

What I am seeking to do is to give real proof of the fact that someone who has slept overnight is a displaced residential occupier. That will make it easier all round for the alleged trespasser, the displaced residential occupier and the police to sort the matter out.

The Minister of State said something very much like that on Report. He said: It would be valuable for any person who was seeking to act on behalf of a displaced residential occupier to furnish himself with the clearest evidence that he was doing so".—[Official Report, 13th July 1977; Vol. 935, c. 709.] What I am seeking to do is to make sure that the displaced residential occupier shall be obliged to provide some written evidence that he is, in fact, a displaced residential occupier. That is the purpose of the amendments. They are designed to clarify the situation for all concerned, and I hope that they will find support in the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It may perhaps be convenient to point out that the House is now considering Lords Amendment No. 2 and the amendments thereto, Lords Amendments Nos. 3 to 7 and the amendments thereto, and Lords Amendment No. 8.

A further item which should be noticed is that there is a misprint in the second amendment by the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) in subsection (1B) of Lords Amendment No. 2. It should read: "after ' above', insert 'or subsection'" and so on.

Sir Michael Havers (Wimbledon)

I express our gratitude to the Minister for responding in accordance with the discussions that we had and, indeed, for slightly extending what we had agreed by going as far as housing associations. The safeguards here are sufficient. While I understand the anxieties expressed by the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson), I do not think that any time limit such as six weeks would be effective because a major reconstruction might have to be done to the house—especially in the case of something like dry rot—and six weeks would not be enough time.

It seems to me that the safeguards are quite sufficient, and we are grateful that the Government have implemented their undertaking.

Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South and Finsbury)

There are very many hon. Members, particularly on this side of the House, who believe that the criminal law ought not to be involved at all in dealing with squatters. That is not my view. In any case, that is not what we are now doing in the Bill. The criminal law is to be involved to some extent, and up to some line, in dealing with the squatting situation.

The question which arises is whether we have defined wisely the line at which the operation of the criminal law stops. I must apologise that during earlier deliberations on Report I did not intervene. I was distracted by other matters. I was very pleased that the amendment moved by the Opposition was accepted on Report, and I am only sorry that it was accepted subject to an understanding that it would be amended by the Lords roughly along the lines on which it is now before the House.

6.15 p.m. There are many parts of the country where the kind of difficulty which I want briefly to describe does not happen very much. But it certainly happens an awful lot in my part of the world. Very frequently these days, in a borough like Islington, the borough council, the GLC, the Ministry of Defence or a housing association buys old properties and does them up. The rehabilitation is very extensive and expensive and the time taken is prolonged.

One does not offer a place to a tenant before the work is done. If one did, no tenant would normally say "Yes" in those circumstances. While the work is being done over some months, and at a cost of many thousands of pounds per unit dwelling, no tenant is allocated to the accommodation.

A common occurrence is that when this prolonged and expensive work of rehabilitation is just about completed, in come the squatters. They have watched the work going on, and they pop in.

Often they are not the kind of squatters who see an empty home, and because they are really homeless they move in to put a roof over their heads. They are often what I would describe as middle-class squatters.

As a result, in my constituency the GLC has to pay patrols outside the places that it is doing up in order to ensure that once they are done up they will be available to people on the waiting list and will not be immediately occupied by squatters. I have had the same situation with regard to Ministry of Defence buildings in my constituency where, as soon as the work is done, in come the squatters. There is another area where private residents in accommodation which was being renovated have felt obliged to put out vigilante patrols so that squatters would not move into those units of accommodation into which they were due to be moved when the work was completed. But since no tenant had been allocated for any particular accommodation, they would not qualify under the terms of the amendment as protected intending occupiers.

My feeling is that the language adopted by this House on Report is roughly correct with regard to this point. A local authority or its housing manager ought to constitute an intending occupier or a residential occupier in respect of this accommodation. We ought so to define "residential occupier" as to include a local authority within the definition in respect of this accommodation.

If it were possible so to draft that definition that it applied only in cases where the accommodation could soon be occupied and was intended so to be occupied, I would certainly go along with that, because that would exclude the case of broken-down property which was not likely to have any work done on it and certainly would not be occupied for an extensive period.

If it were not possible to define that line between accommodation about to be occupied and other accommodation, I would have preferred to give to any local authority this special legally protected status in respect of this accommodation. We have now found an illogical line. It means that, if a property comprising three units of accommodation has had £50,000 spent on it to do it up, which it often the case in my constituency, but tenancies have not yet been allocated, the criminal law will not be involved when squatters move into it, but that as soon as tenancies have been allocated the criminal law comes into operation.

There is no logical defence for drawing the line precisely in that place. In an area where this kind of situation persists, I believe that the changes to the law which have now been made will be useless and that the changes which we have dropped between what we did on report and the Lords' consideration of the Bill are the ones that we need and the ones which we shall miss having in the years to come.

Mr. John

Let me first deal with the amendments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Miss Richardson). I think that I can show her that they are unnecessary. As regards her proposed six weeks' time limit, she is being more generous than the Bill, because, in order to qualify, a protected intending occupier must be excluded from the premises at that time and he must intend to use them as occupation for his own residence at that time. In fact, that is tighter rather than looser.

My hon. Friend's second point concerns the displaced residential occupier. There are three brief reasons which I adduce against the requirement of a statement. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the person who is a displaced residential occupier will be perfectly clear. There will be furniture arid effects in the house which will identify the person and which the displaced residential occupier can identify to the squatter to make him aware of his rights. Generally, he will be known in the locality as a person who has occupied the house. It should be easy for the police to identify that person and to act upon his instructions.

The second reason is that the requirement to sign a statement personally will exclude one category which the Committee had in mind, arid that was the person who was in hospital at the time. It might be very difficult for a person in hospital at the time to sign such a personal certificate.

The third reason which I suggest to my hon. Friend, although not with any great force, is that her second group of amendments are technically defective. However, I hope she will accept that the anxieties which she expressed are met in the Lords amendment as it is.

Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

The Minister of State said that, under the amendment as it is drafted, it would be necessary for the PIO to show that he required residence in the premises immediately. This is subsection (I A)(b), he requires the premises for his own occupation as a residence". Does the hon. Gentleman read into that that he requires them immediately—at that moment?

Mr. John

It is coupled with exclusion from that residence, which also connotes the desire to occupy that property at that time.

I come, then, to the matters raised by by hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham). I quite understand what he means. He has always taken the strong view that the local authority should be as entitled as a person to have the powers of the criminal law.

I am afraid that I do not agree with my hon. Friend, and it is distinguishable in the fact that the position which arises when a tenancy has been granted to an individual and when a person has purchased a house is much more immediate and much more fraught with difficulty than when a local authority has a squat on its hands before it allocates the tenancy.

I do not think that my hon. Friend can read this in isolation from the improvements to the civil procedure which we have also made, the effect of which will be in some calculations to halve the time under the accelerated procedure which is necessary to recover possession. I believe that the combination of the civil procedure for the person who is not either displaced or an intended residential occupier and the improved civil procedure for local authorities which have to manage property will give a very worthwhile and very speedy remedy against squatters.

Mr. George Cunningham

Can my hon. Friend tell me the answer to the following problem? Let us say that a local authority has a lot of the kind of accommodation that I have described which is expensively done up but tenancies for which are not yet allocated, and it then has a squatting problem on its hands. Would it be possible for the local authority to use subsection (1C) by giving the certificate to its housing manager in respect of all that accommodation? Would not that bring the law into operation?

Mr. John

No, I do not think that it would. The local authority would have to grant a tenancy, which would be a bona fide tenancy. The situation which my hon. Friend describes would be a much wider one dealing with a block of property. In my view, we have achieved the right balance in the Lords amendment. The civil procedure will be helpful to local authorities in dealing with these matters.

Mr. Graham Page

I am a little puzzled by the hon. Gentleman's answer to my intervention. In the case of someone who is entitled to occupation at once and who requires to put in decorators before he enters into residence, surely he is covered as the clause is now worded. He is entitled to immediate occupation, not necessarily for immediate residence but for eventual residence. To say that he has to show and to prove to the policeman who supports him that he requires to live in those premises immediately is not what the clause says—that he requires occupation immediately and for eventual residence.

Mr. John

If the right hon. Gentleman will look at the end of the second line of subsection (1A), he will see the words "if at that time." Then it follows from there.

Miss Richardson

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for spelling out how the Lords amendment will work in practice. What he has said will be useful when it is read in addition to the amendment. I shall go away from the House for the Summer Recess with the words "defective drafting" ringing in my ears. However, I have no explanation of how defective is "defective" and what it really means.

Having said that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to.

Lords Amendments Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 agreed to.

Question put and agreed to.

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