Bankers can wait. Targeting protesters is much more Cameron's cup of tea

News of new squatting laws from UK

There are 700,000 empty homes in England alone, almost half of which have been empty for a long time. They have long been a refuge for street sleepers and other homeless people. 

Last year the government launched a consultation on criminalising all squatting in residential buildings; 96% of the respondents argued that no change in the law was necessary. But on 1 November, just five days after the consultation ended, the government jemmied an amendment into the legal aid bill, already halfway towards approval. This meant that the House of Commons had no chance to scrutinise it properly, and objectors had no chance to explain the issues to their MPs.

The result of this blatant insult to democracy is that people who have housed themselves at no cost to anyone are likely to be summarily evicted.

Houses will fall back into disuse, and the government's housing bill will rise: by between £35m and £90m, according to the campaign group Squash. Worse still, the new law will help unscrupulous landlords to evict tenants where there is no written contract, by declaring them squatters and calling the police.