Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities
Debate between Lord Sharma and John Penrose
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I just want to pick up on the last but one point about the disadvantages suffered by the Traveller community. It is extremely difficult to defuse innate concern among the settled community and potential hostility towards the Travellers if we are all suffering, and I think that all of us will have encountered periodic and repeated incursions with temporary and illegal settlements of one kind or another. With all due respect to the people who gathered the Minister’s figures, as the figures were collected in January, I suspect the result would be very different if the numbers were collected in July.
John Penrose
The Minister is being very generous in giving way. I want to echo the comments that have just been made. The feedback from North Somerset Council and my local police indicates that, although the current powers are extensive in theory, they do not work in practice. They are too slow, and there are too many loopholes. The miscreant element of the Traveller community that is the cause of these problems understands the loopholes all too well, and we end up playing cat and mouse across county boundaries and authority boundaries. We absolutely need to reword the law, so that it works fast and effectively for the settled community as well as for the Traveller community.
Alok Sharma
I agree. We need fairness in the law, and we need it to be applied in a manner that works for the settled community.
Having given way to quite a few Members, I will proceed and see whether I can gallop through. As I have indicated, local authorities, the police and other agencies can work effectively together. There are examples of such work in the west midlands and Warwickshire, and I am sure that colleagues will talk about them. I agree that the police can act much faster when there are sites to direct Travellers to. That is why we expect local authorities, as a minimum, to plan for a five-year supply of deliverable and developable sites for Travellers.
The number of Traveller caravans on authorised sites rose from 14,498 in July 2010 to 17,938 in July 2016. We need all local authorities to step up to the plate in providing sites. Local authorities that meet their requirements help to limit the prevalence of illegal encampments. We expect local authorities and the police to clamp down on such encampments, but unless there are sufficient sites, the police and local authorities will not be able to use their powers fully.
In March 2015, the Government wrote to council leaders, police and crime commissioners and police chief constables about their response to illegal encampments. We were concerned that local authorities and the police were not being seen to be doing enough to stop such incursions, and we reiterated that the Government want local authorities, the police and other local agencies to work together to address incursions. We reissued a summary of the robust powers to remove unauthorised sites, but I am aware of growing concern that the available powers are not being used fully.