Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

All of us could sign up to four outcomes that relate to tonight’s debate. First, we should all believe in freedom and equality under the law. Secondly, we want the best possible community relations, but good community relations are undermined because we sadly do not always have equality under the law. Thirdly, we want good outcomes for all disadvantaged groups, but education and health outcomes for Travellers are shockingly bad, as we have heard tonight. Fourthly, we want fairness for those in the settled community who are persistently affected by adverse Traveller behaviour. We should all be able to sign up to those four principles, so I hope that we can coalesce, take some of the heat out of the debate and get some positive solutions.

I commend the intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), who made the key point that local authority Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessments are impossibly unfair on some areas that already have large numbers of people and over-occupied sites, because such areas will never be able to fulfil the requirements currently placed on them by the Planning Inspectorate. I was disappointed that the Minister who opened the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), did not mention the concerns about some privately run Traveller sites where, frankly, the rule of law does not currently apply and where horrendous things are happening. I am aware of sites where we have seen modern slavery, the abuse of tenants who are sub-letting and all types of criminality. I ask the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), to pick up on that point about privately run sites when he responds. Local authorities cannot enforce the law on such sites, requiring a warrant to enter some of them. Planning legislation is utterly unfit for the task.

We know that rubbish has been left all over the Olympic park, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned the incident at Langley near Slough. We also know what happened in Cromer recently, where the chief constable of Norfolk admitted that real anger and alarm had been experienced by many in that community following a rampage of Travellers that should not have been allowed.

As for action, I have several suggestions. We need an up-to-date Land Registry. We need the Gypsy and Traveller accommodation assessment to require people to answer questions in interviews. If they can avoid answering the council officer’s questions about whether they are Travellers, the system simply does not work. We need immediate court access for local authorities. The planning policy guidance on Traveller sites from the Department should include a requirement for licensing, which would give local authorities proper power. I want the ability to impound vehicles involved in fly-tipping or other criminal activity, regardless of ownership. I also want checks on the wealth of Travellers, some of whom are enormously wealthy. Why should the taxpayer have to provide pitches for them?

A constituent—a member of the settled community—came to speak to me after a dinner last week and said that he has experienced endless break-ins and arson attacks and that sewage and rubbish have been dumped all over his land. He looked at me and said, “Does anyone in the Government care about this issue?” I want to be able to go back to him and say, “The Government get it. The Government do care. We are here for everyone to be treated equally.”