Oh Dear.

I have just got off the phone with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Despite conceeding that there is clear evidence that Croydon University Hospital (CUH) is in breach of there terms of registration as a health care provider and members of their staff are engaged in the physical and psychological abuse of patients they will be shirking their responsibility to take enforcement action. I shall email them the full case file which should cause them to rethink that position but if not the a Ms Clair Robbie has just added herself to the crimes against humanity indictment. The matter is of course now with the Secretary of State through the Parliamentary Ombudsman so he will be imposing an intervention order tomorrow (2/11/11) unless of course he thinks it's a good idea to let the matter drag on through the G20 Summit as a sort of referendum.

There is a much bigger problem afoot at the moment though.

Since about the 13th Century homeless people in Britain have had the common law right to live in unoccupied buildings and land without the permission of the landowner in a process known as squatting. Although this has often provided a useful safeguard against feckless landowners who leave good properties to fall into disrepair the Conservative Party hate the right and massively restricted it under our old friend the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. After being returned to power in 2010 the Conservative Party set out to remove the right completely and make squatting an arrestable criminal offence.

As is common practice for the introduction of a new law before the bill entered Parliament a Parliamentary consultation process was begun. Unlike a petition which merely requires respondents to write their own names Parliamentary consultations require respondents to be able to answer detailed questions about the issue in question. As a result only people with an in depth working knowledge of the current law surrounding squatting and evictions responded to the consultation. 95% of them said that there was no need to make squatting a criminal offence because the law is already heavily weighted against squatters. All the horror stories you hear about people being unable to remove squatters are just that. Horror stories normally caused by a police officer or judge refusing to do their job or the person seeking eviction being unable to prove that they actually own the property.

With the consultation showing no meaningful support for the idea the Conservatives dropped the idea of introducing the new law as separate bill that would receive meaningful Parliamentary debate. Instead they've decided to add it on as an amendment to the unrelated Legal Aid bill which is already at such an advanced stage it is expected to receive it's final Commons vote tonight. (1/1/11). In protest against this rather sneaky and underhand move many squatters - some of them quite odd - are currently wandering the public areas of the Houses of Parliament setting the stage for what promises to be quite an entertaining night of rolling news.

In other news neither St Paul's Cathedral nor the City of London Corporation have served notices to quit on the Occupylsx protest. So in real terms nothing has happened. In metaphorical terms also nothing has happened because the extended deadline for the church and the protesters to enter into negotiations expired yesterday (31/10/11). Neither party was capable of operating the door handles.