Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I will do so straight away: I put it to the Minister that this legislation needs to be brought forward as soon as possible, so that we can address this problem head on. Of course, this has been done in the Republic of Ireland, which in 2002 changed trespass from a civil offence to a criminal offence. That is actually inflaming the problem in this country, because many Irish Travellers are not in Ireland any more; they are here.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He will know that in the Republic of Ireland, the criminalisation of trespass is part of a much wider, holistic package of equalities, rights and social programmes for Gypsies and Travellers that do not exist in this country. When pressing the Minister on the progress of this legislation, will he join me in pressing him on the flawed nature of the Home Office consultation, which was conducted during Dissolution and with questions that were, at the very least, loaded?

[Mr Hollobone]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Like her, I do not regard the Government’s consultation as satisfactory. I do not regard it as ambitious enough, and she is right to identify that there are issues with the Gypsy and Traveller community that we need to address outside the planning system. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, in one of his excellent debates on this issue, highlighted the fact that Gypsies and Travellers have the lowest level of work of any ethnicity, at 47%. Some 60% of Gypsies and Travellers have no qualifications at all, whereas the figure for the rest of the population is just under 23%. He has said quite rightly that a compassionate case can be made for integrating Gypsies and Travellers into one whole assessment of their housing needs within a local area, rather than treating them as a separate group.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for securing the debate, and I appreciate the tone in which it has been conducted; we have not always had the restrained and thoughtful language that we have heard this morning.

I want to make just two or three points. I think hon. Members of different parties recognise that this is a matter of balancing rights and responsibilities, but I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Kettering that the balance is currently in favour of the Traveller community.

As has been noted, the travelling community has a right to enjoy a nomadic lifestyle, but law and practice are restricting—and indeed in some cases preventing—its exercise. My hon. Friends the Members for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) talked about how planning policy changes over the years have reduced the supply of sites. We have heard, for example, that the removal in 1994 of the requirement for local authorities to provide sites, and the national planning policy framework provisions more recently, have meant that local authorities are, in many cases, either not assessing need properly or not bothering to assess it at all.

In practice, although the Government have made shared ownership and affordable homes funding available for the provision of more pitches, not a single local authority has taken up access to that funding, as was revealed in a written answer from Lord Bourne to Baroness Whitaker in the House of Lords on 23 January 2019. It is clear that, whatever the law may suggest, in practice local authorities are again and again failing to make any provision or plan for Travellers in their local plans. The Government are toothless, unwilling, or both, as they are not preventing that indolent neglect of local authorities’ responsibilities.

At the same time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, local authorities suggesting in their plans that there is no need have also been seeking wide injunctions to prevent Travellers from occupying land in their boroughs. The two cannot both be true. If there is need, they need to provide for it. They cannot say there is no need and fail to plan for it, and then seek an injunction to prevent it anyway. Both those things cannot sit side by side.

I am sorry to say that I very much disagree with the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on the definition “Traveller”. It has been tightened, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, which has exacerbated, not reduced, problems, because it means that there is no requirement on local authorities to plan for the need of people who do not travel all the time. That de facto has obliterated the right to travel, because it means that Travellers are no longer recognised as enjoying that right. They are not counted or covered by the provisions of the definition of “Traveller”. That has suppressed the culture, rather than protecting its rights.

I appreciate that the Home Office consultation and plans on unauthorised trespass are not the Minister’s direct responsibility, but I am sure he will speak to his colleagues in the Home Office about our concerns. The proposals are for the criminalisation of unauthorised trespass, and for that to apply in the situation of very few caravans appearing on unauthorised land. As my hon. Friends said, of course people will have to use unauthorised sites if there is a lack of authorised ones. Even when they are on unauthorised sites, the powers already available to the police and local authorities are sufficient to take suitable action—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) is shaking his head, but the police themselves in their submission to the Home Office consultation said that they did not want additional powers. They believe that the powers are sufficient. I refer him to the freedom of information request submitted by Friends, Families and Travellers, which elicited that information from a number of police forces.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that, in many instances, the police are not using the powers available to them? That is part of the problem with the system. The statement that there are sufficient powers at the moment does not seem to be reflected in the action that gets taken. When unauthorised encampments turn up, the police are sometimes too afraid to take any action.

[Kate Green]

It would be unfair of me to draw attention to the massive reduction in police numbers over the past 10 years, which may be contributing to that problem, but that is not what the National Police Chiefs Council told the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma. It said that it believes that negotiation and communication with the community is more effective than enforcement, and that is what it tries to do. No police officer has ever told me that he or she has been afraid to engage with Travellers on unauthorised encampments. It is important that we do not make policy by anecdote.

It is really useful to have this debate. It is right, as the hon. Member for Kettering said, that we look at the responsibilities, obligations and rights of the public as a whole—the settled community and the travelling community. We must get the right balance between them. I do not believe that the balance is currently weighted in favour of the travelling community. Quite the opposite: too many of them are living in disadvantaged, marginalised situations on unsuitable—sometimes authorised and unsuitable—sites. We need a proper national planning framework that is properly managed to balance the interests of the settled community and the travelling community. I invite the Minister to think broadly about how that can best be achieved.