Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Freer Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

This is the second reference in questions to delays in court, which cause immense inconvenience and sometimes considerable distress to witnesses and others, as well as to the victims of crime. We are looking urgently at how to improve the efficiency of the system and how best to proceed if people fail to co-operate. It is always possible to proceed with a trial in the absence of the defendant, but only once the judge is satisfied that the interests of justice will not be prejudiced. There is no point in starting a trial only for it to have to be started a week or two later when it is challenged.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to reform the role of bailiffs in commercial rent collections and repossessions; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)]

The Government have given a commitment to provide more protection against aggressive bailiffs. Although there are no plans to reform the role of bailiffs in repossessions, the Government are considering replacing the existing common law right for a landlord to distrain for arrears of rent with a modified out-of- court regime for recovering rent of commercial premises. We will announce details of a full public consultation in due course.

[Mike Freer]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he confirm that the consultation will include representatives of landlords and not just those of tenants?

[Mr Djanogly]

Of course. It is vital that we ensure that our proposals for transforming bailiff action do not impose unreasonable burdens on business. To that end, we are undertaking further work to explore all the regulatory and non-regulatory options available.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As Members can see, a considerable number still wish to participate in the debate. As we want to listen to the Minister and the knife falls at 10 o’clock, I call for brevity and short speeches.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

I commend the Minister for listening to our concerns and introducing these proposals. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), as we have been pressing the Government for action for some time. I am grateful to the Minister for his courtesy on this issue.

Labour Members commented that they did not see a need for this Bill, as they thought that there was some parallel Bill. I have to say, having listened to some Labour Members, that they seem to be living in a parallel universe. If there is not a squatting issue, why is it that three houses in my constituency were squatted in one week?

My concern is about the residential squatters and the homes they squat, which are often not derelict or abandoned properties. Those properties can be dealt with. Councils such as my own London borough of Barnet routinely issue improvement notices. If landlords do not bring the properties up to standard or back into use, they use the threat of a compulsory purchase order to bring the landlords back into line. On every occasion I have seen that used, the property has been refurbished and brought back into use. There are methods of dealing with abandoned and derelict properties without giving a charter for squatters.

The issue of residential squatters is not just one about mansions or large houses lying empty for year after year. The houses to which I refer in my constituency have been refurbished between purchase and occupation. These are houses that are going through probate or whose owners are on extended holidays. When the owners come home, they find their property occupied by somebody else, who is not necessarily homeless. As we have seen in the papers recently, it is often organised gangs that occupy family properties that are clearly occupied, clearly in use and clearly not abandoned.

I listened to what Labour Members said about squatting already being a criminal offence and the police having powers to deal with it. If so, why is it on every occasion in my constituency that the police have stood by and said, “Sorry, guv, but it is nothing to do with us; it is a civil matter”? The current law is defective; the current law needs clarifying; and these proposals do that.

I was intrigued to hear the argument that homelessness is some excuse for squatting. Is it okay for people to say, “I don’t have a house, so I’ll have yours. Thank you very much.”? I am not sure whether that is what Labour Members are genuinely saying.

We heard the argument that pennilessness is an argument for squatting. Is it also an argument for mugging? If I am penniless and go out and mug somebody, is that all right? Is that what Labour Members are really saying?

I have read the amendments, and I understand the problems of those who have been in shelters for the homeless or domestic violence refuges or have received mental health support. However, I also know that many people in need of mental health support squat not because they are not being given that support, but in order to evade the very support they need. If we can deal with squatting, those with mental health problems will have a better chance of benefiting from the intervention that they both need and deserve.

Hard-pressed taxpayers and home owners who have worked hard, have bought their houses and pay their mortgages are demanding change and protection. I support the new clause because it will provide the very necessary protections that those people require.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his brevity.

Squatting

Mike Freer Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Brady.

I will start this debate with a quote:

“This place isn’t nice enough for me. I want somewhere posher, with a swimming pool if possible.”

Those are not the words of someone complaining about the gym facilities at the House of Commons. They are the words of one of London’s most prolific squatters about his latest free home in Hampstead, as reported in the Evening Standard last week. We are all covering his council tax contributions, his electricity bills and his gas bills, and we are all paying for the police to investigate each time a new break-in is reported.

As my hon. Friend the Minister stated in a recent letter to me, squatting is

“the unauthorised occupation of property belonging to another person and amounts to trespass on land”.

Some forms of trespass are criminal, such as those that take place on licensed aerodromes and railways, but I am focusing today on all the other forms of squatting. They relate to offices, flats and houses; to empty and occupied buildings, and to private and public property. These forms of squatting are unlawful but not criminal.

Squatting is a huge problem in Hove and Portslade and I have been campaigning on the issue since I was elected to Parliament. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister and our right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government have made joint announcements on the issue. I am also grateful to the organisations, such as Landlord Action, that have helped me to raise awareness of this issue around the country.

The Ministers’ announcements will be widely welcomed by those who have been adversely affected by squatters. I will make the case today that time is of the essence. The problem is getting worse, not better. However, there are two sides to this story and getting to the crux of the matter is not just about cracking down on trespassers themselves.

I wish to dispel the myth, once and for all, that squatters and homeless people are one and the same. My constituency has both wealth and deprivation. It is a Mecca for every character imaginable, which makes it such a wonderfully diverse place to live in. Homelessness is an issue locally, but we have a fantastic support network of local charities, including Emmaus, Brighton Housing Trust, Off The Fence and the YMCA, which look after a great number of vulnerable people. It is our duty to look after such people and I fully support the excellent work being carried out in this area.

Tackling homelessness is also a high priority for Brighton and Hove city council. The council is working hard to reduce the number of empty properties in the city and last year alone 168 long-term empty properties were brought back into use. In 1997, 200 council-owned properties were long-term empty but that figure is now down to just 28.

However, putting considerable resources into removing squatters and paying for the damage that they inevitably cause places a strain on council services. In the past 18 months, there have been 10 instances of squatting in council-owned properties in Brighton and Hove, which has cost local people more than £30,000 in legal bills alone. The repair bill for one particular property was £40,000, which again had to be picked up by the residents of Brighton and Hove. Squatters are damaging buildings that are in the process of refurbishment, which only exacerbates the housing shortage.

In my experience, squatters do not fit the profile of the kind of vulnerable people that we should be looking out for. I am generalising of course, but for the purpose of this discussion I want to make the point that serial squatters know the law. They submit freedom of information requests to councils to find out where there are empty buildings; they are “web-savvy” and highly resourceful; they run rings around the law, and what these professional squatters lack in respect for other people’s property they make up for in guile and tenacity. They are organised and frequently menacing.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the Shelter website, which I was quite horrified to read? As he knows, my constituency has a persistent problem of squatters. But Shelter has a guide to squatting, about how to keep on the right side of the law, on its website. Does he agree that it is reprehensible to encourage people in this illegal activity?

[Mike Weatherley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I very much agree with him. I will go on to make some specific points about “The Squatters Handbook” shortly.

I said that squatters know the law well but the absolute opposite is true when it comes to the public in general, who would be shocked if they knew just how powerless they are to take on squatters. Many members of the public do not find that out until it is too late. Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 makes it an offence to use violence, or threats of violence, to gain access to premises when

“there is someone present on those premises…who is opposed to the entry”.

That section is what is usually referred to as squatters’ rights, but I do not believe that it exists to assist squatting. It is in place to prevent unscrupulous landlords from using violence or intimidation to evict legitimate tenants. Squatters, therefore, have such rights only by accident.

A local resident asked me a question in my local paper, The Argus:

“If squatting is a practice that is socially unacceptable, how is leaving a property empty for more than a year any more acceptable?”

My answer is simple—it is not acceptable at all. I have contacted my local council on a number of occasions about the issue of empty buildings belonging to exploitative developers. We should be careful, though, not to embrace squatting on the principle that “our enemy’s enemy is a friend”. We must get tough on bad landlords—and soon—but buildings can be temporarily empty for all sorts of reasons and many of those reasons are entirely acceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunt]

That is, of course, one of the things that we are considering, and it has been pointed out that in Scotland squatting is a criminal offence. That offence, however, is extremely widely drawn and for that reason the tariff of punishment is extremely low. It is at the very bottom of the scale—a level 1 offence—with a fine not exceeding £200.

[Mike Freer]

Perhaps I could help the Minister on that point. I understand that squatting is a criminal offence under the Trespass (Scotland) Act 1865, which states that the maximum penalty is a fine or 21 days’ imprisonment. That is a slightly firmer penalty than in the information the Minister has, and I urge the Government to adopt it.

[Mr Blunt]

That might have been the position in 1865, but I am afraid that the Criminal Justice Act 1982 restricted punishment to a fine not exceeding level 1, which is currently £200.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Freer Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Another place is taking a very long time to discuss this, quango by quango, and it is rescuing several of these bodies. There is an enthusiasm for outside public bodies in the upper House that I am not sure is totally shared here. We will of course carefully reflect on the debate and vote in another place on the future of the Youth Justice Board. Since it was created—it did a very good job at first—time has moved on; peers kept referring to circumstances that they remember before it was created. We now have youth offender teams who do not need the level of supervision that they are getting from the Youth Justice Board. However, I will see whether any of my former friends and colleagues, and current hon. and noble Members of the upper House, have persuaded me to reconsider the policy.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

T3. The Minister may be aware that the Gaddafi house is a high-profile squatting incident in my constituency. Just this week, we have had two further squats. Will he meet me and my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) to discuss this pressing issue?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

I will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss squatting. I would hate to think that anyone would use the example of the Gaddafi house as any excuse for this pernicious offence.

Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend is quite right—that is exactly what I am trying to do. I do not want to turn this into a debate about press freedom, because it is not as simple as that.

I should like to explain where I am coming from—a dreadful modern expression, but it is an accurate description. About 30 years ago, I first became involved in student politics—you may remember those times, Mr Speaker. I was a student reading law—you were probably at kindergarten—and I became involved in student politics. I then trained to become a barrister. Student politics, rather bizarrely, took me to Scotland, because I won an election. I blame not just the good students of Stirling university for that but my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer)—we, too, go back many years. I ended up as the honorary president of Stirling university, and I was in need of a job.

It had always been my intention and ambition to work in the broadcast media, for reasons that I do not need to divulge to the House. The only good advice that I ever got about how to achieve my ambition was to start on a local newspaper and learn my trade as a journalist. I did that. I worked for a year on a newspaper called the Alloa and Hillfoots Advertiser and Journal. It was a great publication. It employed at least two reporters, and I was one of them. I covered everything, from the fortunes of Alloa Athletic right through to the editing of the pigeon club—one of my greatest moments in journalism. In all seriousness, I honed a trade there. I learned a great deal. At that time we never published the name and address of anybody who was arrested, because a convention existed.

In due course I was lucky enough to go into television. I worked in television for many, many years, not just as a presenter, but as a reporter. I have always been very proud of my membership of the National Union of Journalists. I was shop steward. That does not make me a good journalist, but I hope it explains where I am coming from, and I do not want my remarks to be seen as an attack on all the people with whom I had the great honour to work and whose skills I still admire.

If we look at what is happening in Egypt, we know that it is because of the courage of the media there that not just all of us know what is going on there, but most importantly, the people of that country, notwithstanding the oppression in place, know what is happening. We sometimes forget the invaluable work that the media do, and how brave and courageous many reporters are, especially in such situations. I am keen to emphasise that this is not an attack on the media, but it is a serious criticism of the antics that have prevailed for too long among certain sections of the media. That is what the Bill seeks to address.

I mentioned events in Bristol. Let me make it clear that I do not intend to name anybody, and I am sure that hon. Members will also be keen not to name anybody, save for this: I do not think there is anybody who is not aware of the publicity and media coverage that was given to the first man who was arrested following the murder of Joanna Yeates. It is right and fair to say that everybody with any sense of decency and sensibility has accepted that the coverage of that individual was, if not outrageous, as I believe it was, certainly unacceptable and plain wrong. It is as if we had forgotten that one is innocent in this land until proven guilty. Unfortunately, it is not the first time that that has happened, but it is the most extreme case that we have seen.

Everyone tends to forget that on being arrested, a person suffers the trauma of the arrest. It is difficult to imagine a worse accusation than to be accused of taking somebody’s life, raping someone or doing something horrible to a child. There is the trauma of the process and the nature of the allegation, and on top of that, the person’s name and address appear in the local paper. If it is a high-profile case, they appear in the national papers.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

It is not just the naming of someone as a person of interest. If we recall the landlord in Bristol, it was the castigation, the crawling over of that gentleman’s background, the questioning of his looks, his eccentricity and his sexuality that were abhorrent and that will follow him around for ever. Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not just the naming, but the castigation that follows such people around afterwards?

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes exactly the point that is most pertinent. It is the vilification. I have used the expression and I do not hesitate to use it again. What we saw in Bristol was, in effect, a feeding frenzy and vilification. Much of the coverage was not only completely irrelevant, but there was a homophobic tone to it which I found deeply offensive. The slurs on the man were out of order. All good and decent people in this country accept that. I include in that number fellow journalists.

I am grateful to all the people who have contacted me by letter or e-mail. Among them have been journalists, some of whom wanted to speak privately. Among good, sensible journalists there is a desire now for clarity. I will deal in due course with the Contempt of Court Act 1981. It as if those journalists want us, as Parliament, to help them in a way that they cannot do themselves. They cannot self-regulate because of the financial pressure that is being placed especially on our newspapers and on our broadcast media. I shall deal with that point later.

Enough is enough. We must do something about the matter and stop it. It is not just ordinary members of the public and journalists who want clarity and who want the present practice to end; it is also the police. I shall touch on that as I go through my speech. The man who was first arrested in Bristol was not the first, but I want him to be the last. There are other examples. Again, I am grateful for the e-mails that I have received and the information that I have been given from various sources to remind me of other people who have found themselves in a similar position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right to put a high degree of faith in the judgment and good sense of ordinary people in making the distinction between what they would see as authoritative sources of information and the sort of tittle-tattle that fills far too many social networking sites. A judge giving a direction to a jury can deal with such mischief and, if I may say so, my hon. Friend sounded a little judicial in his intervention, because I can imagine a judge saying to a jury at the beginning of a trial, “Please disregard any gossip you may see on websites. Don’t tweet. Don’t look at Facebook. Disregard all those websites.” There is a great difference between information and knowledge.

[Mike Freer]

I am not a lawyer, so I do not profess to know the technicalities of the difference between information, gossip and libel, but can my hon. Friend confirm that the written media carry much more weight than the internet?

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned libel, but often, the points that are reported are facts. The gentleman in Bristol was gay, he was eccentric and he was a teacher, but it is the insinuation that is wrapped around such facts that causes the damage. That gentleman was referred to as a teacher at a school, within a mile of which a murder had taken place several years previously. All that is factual, but the insinuation that the media wrap around such facts causes the damage that needs to be controlled.

[Mr Buckland]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the assertion of facts that could be prejudicial to any future investigation, although I would say that I am now of the view that internet and print media are indistinguishable. The only difference between them is that today’s print is tomorrow’s firelighters—tomorrow’s chip paper, as I think I called it in another debate. The problem with the internet is that it is not just for Christmas, it is for life. I could give a number of examples of constituents who, years after having been exonerated and cleared of very serious allegations, still have to live with the fact that when a Google search is made against their name, a newspaper report about that false allegation comes up. It haunts people who are in that unfortunate situation. As I said earlier, that is a matter for DCMS input and for regulation, because we need consensus about how to deal with the sometimes baleful effects of internet reports that linger for years and years.

I return to what I regard as the grey area between arrest and charge, and the somewhat cumbersome nature of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, the leave of the Attorney-General is needed before any prosecution is brought, which can often be a cumbersome way of doing things. Such things take time, because obtaining that leave can interrupt proceedings and lead to a delay before a decision is made, which can be damaging in itself. As she said, the test set out in that Act—whether there is

“substantial risk that the course of justice…will be seriously impeded or prejudiced”—

is a high one. It mentions the course of justice, however, and at the point of arrest we do not know whether there will be a course of justice in the sense of a charge. I can see many a clever lawyer—much cleverer ones than me, although I have received a degree of praise today that I perhaps do not deserve—taking that point firmly by the reins and running with it.

In short, the Act, which is celebrating its 30th year, needs revision, and here is my suggestion. We should consider the point between arrest and charge in a different way from the point from charge to trial or conviction. There should be a presumption against the publication of details of an arrested person prior to charge; then that presumption should be reversed post-charge. In other words, we should apply the interests of justice test, but with safeguards in place, acknowledging that the decision to charge is significant. It means that the prosecution has formed the view that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction, and that it is in the public interest to charge. That is an important and simple test that everybody can understand, both in this place and elsewhere, and it should trigger more disclosure.

Prior to that point, unless there are public interest reasons such as those clearly set out in the Bill, the presumption should be the other way around and there should not be publication unless there is a clear public interest such as that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rightly referred to. I can imagine, and in fact I know of, scenarios in which there is a tight-knit local community or an estate in which a particular issue arises, and it would be in the local public interest to know that suspect A had been arrested. That person may well be known to local people, and it would give them a sense of confidence that the criminal justice system was working. Most importantly, if there were any perceived injustice at that stage, people in the local community could come forward and say, “We think you’ve got the wrong person—will you investigate why?” I can imagine a whole host of community and wider public interest reasons why publication could and should take place.

The observation that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) made earlier about limiting the details that can be published to someone’s name and address has merit. In the spirit of the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe that the Bill is not necessarily the precise device needed to cure the mischief, it could well be that if the Bill proceeds further, or in the course of a wider review of the Contempt of Court Act, we should consider carefully whether setting out clearly in statute a provision for the publication of name and address could cure the problem of the grey area that I have been talking about.

I have mentioned the exceptions that my hon. Friend has set out in clause 2. I welcome them, with one caveat. Subsection (2)(c) and (d) state that it will be in the interests of justice to make a direction when

“it may lead to information that assists the arrested person”

or if

“the conduct of the…defence at trial is likely to be substantially prejudiced if the direction is not given.”

I wonder whether we need the word “substantially”. Perhaps it would be far better to take it out and make the point that if the defendant wants the provision to apply, that is a matter for them. The burden of proof is not on the defendant, as we all know, so perhaps that word should be taken out.

Departmental Press

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Ministerial Corrections

[Mike Freer]

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much her Department spent on newspapers, periodicals and trade profession magazines in each year since 1997.

[Official Report, 11 October 2010, Vol. 516, c. 188-189W.]

Letter of correction from Nick Herbert:

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on 11 October 2010. The year ‘2010’ of the Official Report reference in the second paragraph should have read ‘2009’.

The correct answer should have been:

[Nick Herbert]

The answer to this question is provided in the following table. It covers the period 1999-2009. Figures before 1999 are not available.

This year we have been able to access more information that has enabled us to provide more details than we did in answering a similar question answered on 31 March 2009, Official Report, columns 1075-76W.

The figures from 2006 onwards are taken from a corporate framework agreement which gives improved value for money when compared to previous arrangements.

This framework agreement includes figures for the UK Border Agency and it is not possible to separate out their expenditure from this figure. The other Executive agencies do not yet use this framework and so are not included.

The figures provided reflect the functions with the Home Office during the listed years. Machinery of government changes and internal departmental restructuring has led to changes in the size and functions of the Department. As a consequence direct comparison year on year is very difficult.