Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Manchester and Baroness Whitaker

Committee stage
Monday 17th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 49 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—for whose wide-ranging support I am most grateful—would right an acknowledged wrong: the declaration of incompatibility with human rights of part of Part 4 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The right reverend Prelate regrets he cannot at the last minute attend, but he hopes His Majesty’s Government will help. The amendment also tackles the whole of that discriminatory part of the 2022 Act. I will not rehearse again the full range of unfair disadvantage which has resulted from these provisions, which I set out at Second Reading. I will briefly describe what our amendment would achieve, to correct a manifest unfairness which harshly criminalises, and confiscates the caravan homes and domestic possessions of, a small number of families whose nomadic way of life is recognised in law.

I should first of all say that it is the shortage of authorised sites which is the underlying problem. That is why that minority of Gypsies and Travellers who live in that way have often no other choice than to park their family home on an unauthorised site. This is where the judge found race discrimination. He said that

“it means that Gypsies will no longer be able to avoid the risk of criminal penalty by resort to transit pitches. The position might be different if transit pitches were readily available … But the evidence shows this is not the position”.

The amendment simply returns the situation to what it was before the cruel and discriminatory provisions of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act were enacted. It in no way reduces the ample powers the police already had in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to oblige unauthorised trespassers to leave if there had been threatening behaviour or damage—previous case law has included “squashed grass” in this category—to issue temporary stop notices and injunctions to protect land, to direct unauthorised campers to an alternative site, and to prevent them returning within three months. Our amendment’s main provisions are: the elimination of the power of a landowner to command eviction on a subjective reason of being caused distress, and a return to 12 months as the interval within which the travelling family cannot return to the land—from three months, which was the discrimination that the incompatibility declaration captured.

I need hardly remind the Committee that our Gypsy and Traveller population already suffer a degree of prejudice which has substantially contributed to the worst life chances in health, employment, education and well-being of any minority ethnic group in our country: the attitudes and conduct enabled by the provisions we seek to repeal can only further encourage that prejudice and disadvantage. Can your Lordships imagine how it feels to have hanging over your head, when you cannot find an authorised site, the fear that your family home might be impounded, with all that is in it, and your family turned out, homeless, to find shelter—all on the say-so of a member of the public who feels “distress” simply at the presence of a travelling family? Not the least of your fears will be that your children cannot get to their school, or that the medical regime of an elder in your family has to be abandoned.

I urge the Minister to heed the widespread condemnation of the provisions we seek to repeal by our Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Committees on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and fulfil this Government’s acceptance of the obligation to comply with the court through our amendment. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, Manchester’s famous Christmas markets are now in full swing. If you’re visiting my city any time in the next few weeks, until the last few days before Christmas, you are most welcome to patronise them. However, that was not the case for a number of young people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds this time last year. They were turned away by police at the railway station on the supposition that they must have come to commit crime. Children were seen being forced on to trains heading to unknown destinations, separated from family members, and subjected to physical aggression. That included shoving, hair-pulling, and handcuffing. Several individuals reported officers making disparaging remarks about their ethnicity.

It is a sad fact that in 2025, it remains acceptable in our society to treat Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in ways that seek to drive them to the margins of society. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which amended the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in respect of unauthorised encampments, included changes in respect of which, as we have just been reminded by the noble Lady, Baroness Whitaker, the High Court has made a declaration of incompatibility under Section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998. Police powers were expanded beyond the original provisions of the CJPO Act, allowing officers to arrest, seize vehicles, and forfeit property if individuals failed to leave when directed. The PCSC Act also extended those powers to cover land on highways, increased the no-return period from three months to 12 months, and broadened the types of harm that justify eviction, removing the previous need to demonstrate threatening behaviour or damage.

I opposed those changes in your Lordships’ House then, and I do so still. The overwhelming reason why illegal encampments take place is simple. As the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has just reminded us, it is down to the continuing failure of local authorities across the nation to provide sufficient legal sites. There are few votes for local councillors in providing Traveller sites; alas, there are many more votes for those same councillors in closing or refusing permission for them. That is a direct consequence of the same prejudiced attitudes against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community which underlay the distressing treatment of the young people in Manchester last year. Amendment 49 can be a first step towards rectifying that institutionalised injustice.

I hope that in responding to this debate, the Minister, can give us some indication of how His Majesty’s Government intend to legislate, both in this Bill and elsewhere, to tackle the persistent levels of discrimination against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.