Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (c. 10) (LASPO) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted by the coalition government of 2010-2015, creating reforms to the justice system. The bill for the act was introduced in the House of Commons on 21 June 2011, and received Royal Assent on 1 May 2012.

Measures

Among other measures, the act:

Gives courts greater discretion to issue conditional discharges for young persons pleading guilty to a first offence

The objectives of the act included making significant savings in the cost of the scheme, discouraging unnecessary and adversarial litigation at public expense, and targeting legal aid to those who need it the most.

Creates a "single remand framework" for the use of secure remand for children and young people; transfers the cost of remand arrangements to local authorities; creates new conditions that must be met before a child or young person is remanded into custody

Expands Youth Rehabilitation Orders (YROs) to allow longer curfew hours, single duration extensions of six months; increases the maximum fines for breaches; and allows courts to order a period of supervision instead of custody following a breach

Abolishes the Legal Services Commission, a non-departmental public body, and replaces it with the Legal Aid Agency, a new executive agency of the Ministry of Justice

Part 1 of the act - removes financial support for most cases involving housing, welfare, medical negligence, employment, debt and immigration.

Part 1 of the act - removes financial support for most private family law cases, other than in situations involving domestic abuse allegations, where a child who is the subject of the proceedings is at the risk of 'harm' from another party.

In Part 3 of the act, concerned with sentencing and punishment of offenders:

Chapter 1 brings the sentencing starting point for murders motivated by hate on the grounds of disability or transgender to 30 years, falling into line with other types of hate crime, and removes the maximum fine on certain offences dealt with by Magistrates Courts, including fines for health and safety offences, so that fines may now be unlimited ("a fine of any amount").

Chapter 6 modifies the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 to allow the Secretary of State to deport foreign nationals serving indeterminate prison sentences, once they have served the minimum term.

Chapter 9 creates a new offence of squatting in a residential building, with a maximum punishment of 51 weeks' imprisonment, a fine not exceeding level 5 of the standard scale (£5,000), or both; and amends the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to allow the police to enter and search such a building if they suspect someone to be squatting in it

Development

The creation of a new offence for squatting was proposed by Mike Weatherley, Member of Parliament (MP) for Hove in East Sussex, who had been campaigning against squatting since being elected to Parliament in 2010. In a consultation held in 2011, the government raised the option of criminalising squatting in commercial (non-residential) properties.