Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I declare my interests, first in my work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which has already been referred to today, secondly as chair of the Wythenshawe Community Housing Group, and lastly as deputy chair of the Church Commissioners for England, one of the largest owners of farmland in the country. I think I have almost as wide a range of interests as has this extraordinarily diverse and far-reaching Bill.

I am grateful to those noble Lords from across the House who have proposed and supported the amendments in this group and spoken to them so powerfully in this debate. Like others, I am also grateful to the Minister for generously taking time to engage with us last week.

In my short time so far as a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have become accustomed to Ministers telling us that they have sympathy for our position but that the present Bill is not the way to address the matters that concern us—for example, when we tried to look at safety in high buildings on the then Fire Safety Bill. I do not see why we cannot play the same card. We need a separate Bill, one that deals comprehensively with the needs as well as the obligations of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people—not simply legislation that offers fresh and very serious penalties for what may be rather minor infractions. The matters addressed in these clauses would surely be better dealt with in that more balanced context. That would allow Her Majesty’s Government to deliver on their manifesto commitment.

If that is asking too much, the penalties exacted for matters treated in this part of the Bill should at least be proportionate to the offences committed and not excessive. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the principle of lex talionis, set out in the Hebrew scriptures and most commonly referred to as “an eye for an eye”. This was intended never as an endorsement of physical mutilation but as a limit to how severe a sanction should be. It sets a maximum, not a minimum. Put bluntly, no penalty should exceed the seriousness of the offence.

I know from my housing association experience that there are many cases in which someone may inhabit their dwelling in ways that cause nuisance to their neighbours —the way they dispose or do not dispose of rubbish; playing loud music late at night; abusive language; sometimes even damage to neighbours’ properties—but I also know that there are many checks and balances before anyone can be removed from their home. Yet these clauses could allow for confiscation of somebody’s primary or only dwelling on the basis of a very low level of nuisance caused. Unless Amendment 55ZB in my name and those of other noble Lords is accepted, there will be no need to ensure that any alternative accommodation or site is, or rapidly can be made, available. There is some irony that we are debating powers to render families with no place to lay their heads, not even a stable, this close to Christmas. Surely we need to balance these provisions by a limitation on using them in such circumstances.

I know it is not the Minister’s intention to enact disproportionate penalties for minor infringements, so finally I ask her, as well as accepting our Amendment 57, to put on record in this debate that, before the Bill becomes law, suitable statutory guidance will be published to limit the exercise of these powers to that small minority of cases in which a very high threshold of wrongful behaviour has been reached; and, further, that reports on the exercise of these powers will be compiled and made available to your Lordships’ House at least annually, so that we can detect any tendency to abuse the powers that the Bill would enact.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and to support the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Whitaker, on Amendments 57 and 55ZB, to which I am happy to be a signatory along with noble Lords drawn from right across the House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, set out the arguments for Amendment 57 with her usual clarity. At the heart of her remarks is the compelling case for social justice and the upholding of human rights. Suffice it to say that when it comes to inequalities, this group of people—Gypsies, Roma and Travellers—are in a league of their own. That was the conclusion of the March 2019 report of the Women and Equalities Select Committee. I know the Minister has given a great deal of personal attention to this issue; like others, I put on record my gratitude to her. When she comes to reply, I wonder whether she can tell us what account was taken of that report in framing this legislation and what action was taken to develop the cross-departmental strategy it called for.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, noted the absence of any detail still. I simply reinforce her message that the Government should publish and allow a debate on the strategy before implementing Part 4, or at least give a clear commitment as to when the strategy will be published. No doubt Covid will be prayed in aid to justify the delay but, even allowing for Covid, more than two years is simply too long. After all, those same constraints did not prevent the department coming forward with this change of law—or, for that matter, this entirely new Act of Parliament.

I will say a few words in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who in her admirable way has pursued this issue over so long and has encouraged so many of us to join the all-party parliamentary group in which she plays such a leading role. She has rightly pointed to the absence of sites—a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. How we respond to that is surely about whether to criminalise or incentivise local authorities to do something about it.

The greatly missed Lord Avebury promoted the Caravan Sites Act 1968. As a young city councillor in Liverpool in 1973, I, along with others—some of whom are in the Chamber this evening—pressed for the city council to do something about that Act. We pushed for the opening of a permanent site for Travellers. It is situated in Oil Street, in Tara Park. The Act led to many new sites, but its repeal in 1994 disincentivised provision, and there are now some 1,696 households on the waiting list for permanent pitches in England, while the last funding round secured resources for just two transit sites.

The civilised answer is to make provision, not to introduce draconian, criminalising legislation based on some very dubious legal principles, which seem to me to run contrary to human rights obligations and our duties to contest bigotry and prejudice with solutions—points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s barometer of prejudice, 44% of those surveyed expressed hostile and openly negative feelings towards Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. We should beware of doing anything to reinforce such prejudice and the old tropes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, reminded us of where prejudice can lead. On 2 August each year, the day on which we recall the Roma genocide, I am always struck that on that very day in 1944 the Gypsy family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German Nazi concentration camps in the then occupied Poland, was liquidated. It is sometimes suggested that, during the Holocaust, half a million Roma and Sinti perished. At the time of the liberation of Auschwitz, just four Roma remained alive.

In our generation, it is down to us to guard against prejudice, which—I know the Minister would agree—can so easily morph into something worse. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, is right to draw attention to the obvious and inevitable violation of human rights that will occur if this clause remains unamended. As the Bill stands, it both criminalises people and deprives them of their rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires respect for their homes—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made—and their private and family life, which by law includes respect for their traditional ways of life. As long ago as 2001, the ECHR ruled that there was

“a positive obligation on Contracting States by virtue of Article 8 to facilitate the Gypsy way of life.”

I wonder whether the Minister can tell us how this provision achieves that objective.

Since 1995 the UK has been a signatory to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Article 5 of which says:

“The Parties undertake to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture”.


It is impossible to see how this legislation honours that obligation.

Before Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, along with myself, published an article in the House magazine pointing out that the way of life lived by the Roma, the Gypsies and the Travellers stretches back half a millennium, long before the enactment of the Enclosure Acts and the agricultural revolution. In this Bill, we intend to overturn the practice of centuries and criminalise trespass and enable the police to seize vehicles, as we have heard, and homes. Imagine the impact on the children of these families as they watch their parents’ possessions sequestrated and their families evicted—and this could be in the very depths of winter.

These amendments point to rank discrimination and are an attack on a way of life. Adequate accommodation for Gypsies and Travellers is a better, more civilised and more humane way to proceed, rather than locking people into endless cycles of criminalisation and evictions. If this amendment is taken to a vote by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, I for one will certainly go into the Division Lobby to support her.