WE should think of a better word to describe the people who occupy York's White Swan Hotel. Squatters is wholly negative.

Squatting brings to mind that thing that dogs do before they do their dog's do; squat also means "short and thick, dumpy" according to my dictionary; and diddly-squat is a more colourful phrase for naff all.

York's squatters deserve better. Far from being short, thick and dumpy they walk tall as champions of freedom and responsibility. By checking in to the White Swan, they have started a debate on the York property lottery, improved one of the city's most shameful eyesores and exposed a tax scandal. Perhaps we should re-name them floorspace liberators.

They may not be there much longer, however. Unhappily, the law still protects the haves and rejects the have-nots. A judge has granted the owners of the White Swan permission to chuck out the residents. And with it, the owners won the right to let the empty eyesore rot for another 20 years.

What I'd like to see is new legislation to bring the landlords to account.

How about a law which prosecutes any owner of a large building who allows it to fall into wrack and ruin? The sentence would not be financial: if you're rich enough to allow your £2 million York hotel to moulder, a fine won't bother you.

Instead, my new law would see the property transferred from the hands of the neglectful landlord to those of the local citizens. And a hefty fine would be imposed to pay for the building's restoration for community use.

In an age when we are so short of housing every spare sliver of York land is being built upon, it should be criminal for anyone to allow a prime central site to become, in the barefaced words of the owner's lawyers, "decrepit and uninhabitable".

On the same day as the hotel's owners won the right to evict the floorspace liberators, we revealed how a single investor is buying 70 new York flats for £12 million - presumably, to rent them out at sky-high prices. That says it all about the shocking housing inequality which exists in our city.

While I'm reforming the property laws, I would see to it that the tax loopholes the White Swan's owners have exploited were closed. As we revealed last month, they pay a pitiful £2,000 a year in business rates. The many York business people who provide a beneficial service to citizens while struggling to meet far higher rates bills must be sick.

Next, I would bring the lawyers into line. Those who appeared on behalf of the White Swan's owners in court on Monday asked for £7,000 in costs. The judge cut this to £2,000, saying: "It would be wrong to claim that this case has raised such matters of legal complexity that it is justified to claim figures of this kind."

Under my future legislation, any solicitor found guilty of inflating their bills would be forced to do 100 hours community service. Perhaps they could be put to work decorating old buildings reclaimed from irresponsible owners.

ANOTHER York building attracting controversy is the Minster. Until now its earthly owners have tolerated total strangers around the place. But now they want to charge visitors. The fee has not been decided: a pay-per-prayer system perhaps?

They could go further. Now the Church has agreed in principle to deny access to poor people, why not just turn the whole thing into York's first five-star hotel?

Updated: 10:34 Wednesday, May 14, 2003