Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lee Anderson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 1
Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]]

Now then, no one should feel unsafe in our country, and this Bill will be of great comfort to law-abiding British people who want to see greater powers for our police and tougher sentences for child murderers, sex offenders, killer drivers and anyone else who thinks they are above the law. If you cannot live by the rules of our society, then you should live in a place that has a different set of rules, and that place is prison. The good news is that we are recruiting 10,000 extra prison officers and 20,000 new police officers, and we are building more prisons.

Post covid, people want to return to safe streets and safer neighbourhoods. This Bill does that. This Bill ensures that the victims of crime are put first. I find it strange that Labour is talking about tougher sentences for crimes against women, yet in December it tried to stop us deporting foreign rapists. One Labour MP said we should not deport those criminals in December as it was too close to Christmas. I disagree; I thought it was a great Christmas present.

Labour says that this Bill will remove the right to protest. Rubbish. This Bill will protect peaceful protests from being hijacked by trouble-causing agitators. Labour’s idea of peaceful protests are the ones we saw in Whitehall last year, where police were attacked, our flag was burned and memorials were damaged, while its own MPs looked on and said nothing. That was disgraceful.

We have a Home Secretary who is brave enough to tackle the issue of illegal camps. Those camps have made the lives of Ashfield residents a misery. When they are set up, crime rises, locals feel intimidated and the council is left with a massive clean-up bill. This Bill puts a stop to that nonsense. Police in Ashfield are doing a great job, but I know they are frustrated by short sentences and weak bail conditions. This Bill will give our police extra powers and the extra confidence they need.

I am confused that the shadow Home Secretary said tonight that he agrees with lots of things in the Bill, yet he will vote against it, proving once again that Labour is on the side of the criminals. Before lockdown, residents would often see me sat in the front of a police car going out on patrol and supporting our police, which is in sharp contrast to some Labour politicians, who have been seen in the back of police cars on the way to the station. It comes as no surprise to me that Labour will not support this Bill, after reading this week that there are 14 leading Labour politicians who have been arrested, imprisoned or under investigation in the past six months. There is no wonder we need more prisons.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Third sitting)

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q Thank you. That is helpful to hear. On cautions, out-of-court disposals, the proposed changes will ensure that the victims are consulted for their views. Are you supportive of that? Do you think that those changes will assist with the drive towards, and the approach of, more restorative justice?

Dame Vera Baird: Yes, I do. It is very important that what victims want, which I have described—procedural justice, being treated with decency, being kept up to date and so on—is provided for in the process of delivering a caution. It looks as if victims are about as satisfied when the offender is given a caution as they are when the matter goes to court, so as long as they are consulted and they are treated as victims throughout, I think it is probably excellent to streamline the nature of this work.

There is one reservation: perhaps something needing a bit of looking at is the obligation to admit guilt in order to get an out-of-court disposal. Sometimes something like a deferred prosecution might be something that a person would be readier to accept, and it should be no more of a problem for a victim. But in principle, as long as victims are involved—we have a massive backlog in the courts, so if we can deal with justice for both sides in some other way, let us do it.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I have just one question, Dame Vera. What are your views on stronger sentences for drivers who cause death or serious injury?

Dame Vera Baird: I am not an expert on sentencing and I do not think you particularly want my personal views. Do you want the perspective of victims on that?

[Lee Anderson]

Yes, please.

Dame Vera Baird: It is hard to say because we do not get a lot of victims coming to us and talking about sentencing; they are usually talking more about their own treatment by the justice system. But what I can tell you is that although they are broadly supportive of different sentencing, the briefing that you have probably had—and that we certainly have had from RoadPeace, Brake and British Cycling—suggests that they are worried about the difference between a sentence where someone has caused death and a sentence where someone has “only” caused what might be the very most serious of harms, and they wonder whether there ought to be some nearer proximity between the two.

But victims do say quite clearly that they have concerns about making causing death by dangerous driving and causing severe injury by dangerous driving have much higher penalties, because of the factor I mentioned before: it might deter prosecutions, or it might deter juries, who can pretty easily see themselves in a driving seat when something goes wrong, from convicting. So they have that reservation.

I think the telling line is that victims are not sure why there is such reliance on custodial sentencing for people who may have driven dangerously but are not dangerous people. Is it not better to use driving bans more effectively and not to allow such leeway about the unfairness of it but to make them pretty well automatic? That is their take on it, and I do not think I can second-guess them.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. Dame Vera, you answered, in response to your first question, most of the questions that I was going to ask, so I am very pleased that you were able to do that. Obviously, as the Opposition, we have tabled a lot of amendments, which seek to do exactly what you described.

To finish the conversation that we started at the beginning, it would be helpful if you could describe the impact that you think those amendments will have on the process and on the victims. Perhaps you could say a bit more about their sense of confidence in the system. What are we aiming for here?

Dame Vera Baird: We do have to protect the article 8 rights of complainants, and the open nature—the swingeing and unconditional nature—of these clauses does not do that. I have set out all the people who have commented on how commonplace it is for a victim to have their phone demanded and for it to be trawled, as it is called on the ground. I have set all that out.

The consequence, of course, is that complainants, who say they have been sexually assaulted—they are already injured, and we have already failed to protect them against crime. They are probably vulnerable. They are certainly very nervous. They have heard that it is not a nice thing to go to court. They probably know the conviction rate is very low. They have got together the courage to go and talk to the police and to discuss the case, and they seem to be met—my survey last year made this very clear—with police officers who are looking askance at them as genuine victims and saying, in effect, “Hand over everything there is for me to know about you, so that I can check whether you are a worthy person for me to get behind and prosecute this case.”

Other than sexual assaults, rapes and trafficking, and occasionally domestic abuse, I do not know of any other kind of case in which the download of phones is used in that way. It is not just the download of phones. Frequently the police ask for, and frequently the CPS requires, all health notes, psychiatric notes, school reports and social services reports, which obviously adds to the tendency to think that you are the one under investigation, and not the other. This is a massive deterrent and, not surprisingly, a good reason why people withdraw.

Following the pilot we did in Northumbria, which was highly successful, it is very important that there should be automatic legal advice. When someone’s article 8 human rights—we have an obligation to protect human rights—are put at stake by what the CPS has found are overly intrusive demands in 60% of cases, the only way to try to deal with it, given that there are a whole range of cases about it, is to get free, independent legal advice for the purpose of discussing and ordering with the police and the CPS what is appropriate to seek, what should be disclosed and what should not.

Our amendments say that, and we have sent those to the Government. I think we have also sent them to every member of this Committee. I hope that the Government will realise that although it has an end-to-end rape review—the purpose of which is to restore confidence and restore prosecutions—this piece of legislation is actually running in the opposite direction and is likely to make things worse.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Fourth sitting)

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 20th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you all. I also thank you all for joining us early. It was really kind of you to give up part of your day to let us talk to you a few minutes before we had scheduled. Right, Mr Anderson would like to ask a question.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Q My phone has been pinging all day. We have an unauthorised Traveller camp just set up in the constituency of Ashfield. With that comes lots of problems. We know from experience that there will be an increase in crime locally tonight. We will see sheds getting broke into. We will see a little bit of intimidating behaviour in the local neighbourhood. Probably, pub landlords will have a tough time as well. There will be some fly-tipping. The list goes on and on. It is a big problem, not just in Ashfield, but all over the country. The Bill sort of addresses that and it is great news for my residents.

I surveyed 1,000 people in my constituency earlier this year. I will run through a couple of the questions I asked. The first question was: do you think the Travelling community respect the rights of the local community when they set up camp in your area? Only 4% said yes. I asked: do you think the Home Secretary is right when she said that we need to give our police tougher measures to stop unauthorised camps? Only 3% said no. I am not going to run through all the questions, but the last one I will give you is this: do you think crime rises in the area when an illegal camp is set up? Some 92% of my residents said yes.

The Bill is great news, because what it will do is see a decrease in crime the four or five times a year when unauthorised camps are set up in my community. I would like to ask the witnesses whether they agree with me that crime will reduce in places such as Ashfield because of the new measures in the Bill to stop unauthorised camps. It is a yes or no answer.

Professor Clark: Well, I am speaking to you as someone who has been employed as a professor and a researcher for more than 25 years.

I suppose we need to begin with querying the methodology of the survey that was just mentioned and how robust that kind of response and the data are. In terms of a yes or no answer, the answer in a sense would be this. What is in place to ensure that we address the ripple effect of the issues and consequences of the lack of provision of Traveller sites at least since the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and up to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994? The concern is that if people have nowhere to go, if there are no legal sites in the area, these encampments will not go away, so unfortunately this new legislation, which I think is going to be just about as unpopular as the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and we all remember how unpopular that was, will do nothing to solve this issue.

What needs to be in place is a national site strategy that to some extent addresses the wide-ranging social policy issues that arise when there are unauthorised camps, as they were referred to there; roadside sites is another way of talking about it, in terms of the terminology. The Government need to work with the organisations that represent the communities to plan an effective road map—quite literally—of UK sites and accommodation. I just do not see this legislation helping that by any means at all.

We are witnessing right now what is going on in Bristol —the really draconian eviction that is going on in Bristol. We are witnessing what has happened at the Wickham horse fair. This goes back many, many generations, and I think there has been an overreaction at the Wickham horse fair today as well. A really serious rethink is needed. I would hope that time and energy were spent addressing the shortfall issues with accommodation and the consequent social policy issues that arise, rather than trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. It is a minority within a minority of the population. Bear in mind that 75% to 80% of the Gypsy and Traveller population in the United Kingdom are in bricks-and-mortar housing; this is a small percentage.

I absolutely sympathise with the speaker who mentioned the issues in the local area. What needs to be done is to address that issue in a more comprehensive, national strategy. That, not criminalising populations, is the answer.

Oliver Feeley-Sprague: I agree with a lot of what Colin said. The specific issue around Traveller legislation is not something that we prioritised in great detail in our submission on the Bill, but as a representative of Amnesty International I would say that Travelling communities, not just in the UK but widely across continental Europe, are among the most discriminated against and victimised of any minority group in existence. That is even reflected in things like the Lammy report on racial discrimination in the UK. You do not address the problem by criminalising an entire way of life, which is one of the potential outcomes of the measures in the Bill, especially when you are talking about groups that already have protected characteristics under other relevant law.

I point out that the list of things that anecdotally were reported as part of the survey are already criminal acts. There are already powers in place to prevent, detect and stop those things and to prosecute the offenders. A common feature of some of the measures in the Bill, in our view, around the necessity and proportionality test, is that many of the things that are addressed are already criminal, or can be made criminal in the right circumstances. Those measures are neither necessary nor proportionate.

Gracie Bradley: I would echo a lot of what Colin and Olly said. The real issue here is the chronic national shortage of site provision. Instead of criminalisation, what we want to see is local authorities and Government working together to improve site provision.

It is really important to recognise that we are talking about one of the most marginalised communities in the UK at the moment. These measures are a disproportionate and probably unlawful interference in Gypsy, Roma and Travellers’ nomadic way of life. Article 8 of the European convention on human rights protects people’s right to private and family life and their home. The Court of Appeal has set out that this community has an enshrined freedom to move from one place to another, and the state has a positive obligation to protect Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities’ traditional way of life. The new seizure powers in respect of vehicles in particular are very likely to mean that people end up facing homelessness.

As we have already discussed, some elements of these proposals are very subjective and invite stereotypes and profiling. The majority of police forces do not want greater powers. Research from Friends, Families and Travellers has shown that when police were consulted in 2018, 84% of the responses said that they did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments, and 75% of responses said that their current powers were sufficient and/or proportionate. The issue is the chronic national shortage of site provision, and that should be the priority of Government and local authorities.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Thank you to our panel for turning up early. I want to give you an opportunity to tell us anything you like about your views on the powers for policing protests in the Bill. Are they necessary? What impact will their use have if the provisions are enacted?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Ninth sitting)

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

I am not aware of the situation that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about or the circumstances that brought it about. Clearly, people need to be respectful of the people around them when they protest, and they must do so in a lawful way.

Taken together, clauses 54 to 56 and clause 60 make amendments to the 1986 Act that will significantly expand the types of protest on which the police could impose conditions.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman cast his mind back about 12 or 13 months to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on Whitehall, when several of his colleagues—Labour MPs—were out there with the rioters? Is that an acceptable level of protest?

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This measure puts more power in the hands of the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary may have different views in the future and use the powers in an authoritarian way, which may have a further impact on people’s rights.

[Lee Anderson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the best way to protest is through the ballot box?

[Bambos Charalambous]

That is one way to protest, but elections only come every three or four years. In the intervening period, people have no way to exercise their right to protest via the ballot box and so have other means. The ballot box is also a vote on a whole range of things, while a protest might be for an individual issue not covered by an election.

A few weeks ago, we debated a petition signed by more than 250,000 people. The right to protest is a fundamental freedom and a hard-won democratic tradition that we are deeply proud of. Throughout our history, protests have led to significant changes for the better in this country. Suffragette protests put an end to the discrimination against women in our democracy. Historic trade union protests led to outlawing exploitative employment practices in factories, lifting health and safety standards for workers. Such protests have forced Governments to make the significant changes that we now recognise as fundamental parts of a civilised society.

If the public order provisions in the Bill had been in place when the suffragettes marched for the right to vote, would the women who shouted and screamed noisily for their future have been arrested? Does the Minister think that the marchers for the right to work or those on the anti-apartheid protests should have been stopped for causing annoyance or being too noisy? Do the Government want to stop the children who are shouting loudly for action on climate change or to prevent people across the country from marching to remind people in the establishment that black lives matter?

I support the police 100%; we in the Opposition listen every day to what they tell us. This is a most serious issue, but it is not quite as cut and dried as the Government would have us believe. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services reported on public order measures in its inspection report, “Getting the balance right?” On public order legislation, the inspectorate called for

“a modest reset of the scales”.

By any measure, this is not a modest reset.

The support for new powers on public order was qualified support for the five Government proposals the inspectorate was asked to respond to. What Matt Parr’s report actually said was that the vast majority of police forces were happy with the existing legislation. It was mainly the Met that wanted new powers to deal with very specific events—mainly large-scale, peaceful, Extinction Rebellion protests. What the police have asked for, they have not been given.

In the evidence session, Matt Parr said:

“We were very clear in what we said that any reset should be modest. We also said that, because of article 10 and article 11 rights, some degree of disruption is not just an inevitable by-product, it is sometimes the whole point of the exercise of protest, and on that basis, it has to be encouraged.”

He went on to say that the proposal—these clauses—

“clearly aims to set a lower bar. Personally, when I reviewed it, I did not think the bar was necessarily the problem. There is just as much of a problem with educating and training the police officers and making sure they understand how article 10 and 11 rights can be properly tempered. It was a question of training and understanding as much as it was of where the bar was for disruption.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 52-53, Q77.]

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[Bambos Charalambous]

I do not know whether that would be captured by the legislation, but if it would be captured, that would be wrong. I mentioned the Let Music Live protest. Even if such a protest were deemed permissible, it would still cause many problems of interpretation for the police, who would have to use the Bill to define whether the protest had “significant” or “relevant impact.”

Aside from music, what about singing? Singing songs and chanting have been a feature of every protest or demonstration that I have ever been on. Would singing be captured by the clause? The hymn “We Shall Overcome” was adopted as an anthem and sung as a protest song. In 1963, the folk singer Joan Baez led 300,000 protestors in song as they sang “We Shall Overcome” at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the civil rights movement march on Washington. Some 300,000 people singing “We Shall Overcome” must have made a fair bit of noise. Imagine a crowd of 300,000 outside the Houses of Parliament singing “We Shall Overcome.” Who would determine whether that constituted noise having a “significant” or “relevant” impact on “persons in the vicinity”?

[Lee Anderson]

There is another chant, “What a load of rubbish,” and that is pretty much what I am hearing today. Does the hon. Gentleman realistically expect that the police could stop 300,000 people singing a song?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and ask, well, why not? Does he not think that is a noise? If it is not a noise, why is that not set out in the legislation? Where is the guidance on it? The legislation is badly worded and wrong, and its vagueness will cause confusion. The hon. Gentleman has demonstrated the point I am making; he says it is a load of rubbish, but in my view that would be captured under the legislation. Are songs and music exempt? Perhaps the Minister will tell us.

Some protests and processions are loud, colourful and joyful. I am sure the Minister is aware of the explosion of colour and sound that is the Pride parade, which takes place in towns and cities across the country. Pride in London is a wonderful event, and the procession is a joy to watch. It is also very noisy. There are drums, whistles, sound systems and cheering crowds; it is quite something. Will the London Pride parade, which passes down the top part of Whitehall, constitute noise and have a significant and relevant impact on persons in the vicinity? Part of the point of Pride is to be noisy. Could Pride be outlawed for being noisy? If not, why not? Let me put on record my support and solidarity of the LGBT+ community during this Pride month.

Even if the Minister brushes off music, song and noise made by the Pride parade as not constituting noise for the purposes of the Bill, does she concede that noise can be an integral part of protest? Earlier this year, we watched in horror as the military staged a coup against the democratically elected Government of Myanmar. There was outrage among people as the military clamped down on protest and imposed curfews. Faced with the prospect of curfews and armed brutality against street protests, protestors found other ways to make their protest heard. In February, in the city of Yangon, ordinary citizens staged a noisy protest, by banging pots and pans and anything they could lay their hands on from their balconies and homes, to create an almighty din and show civil disobedience and anger against the coup. Those same protestors in the UK, banging their pots and pans, would fall foul of clause 54. Noise is part of protests; whoever drew up the proposals clearly has not thought through the dilemma that the police will face, putting them in an invidious position as they try to enforce these sloppily drafted clauses.

I am surprised that the Government, who pride themselves so much on their libertarian values, are so prescriptive and authoritarian in trying to pass the legislation. The right to protest is a fundamental freedom, as is freedom of speech. The former Prime Minister and Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), was right when she said on Second Reading that the legislation is concerning and risks going against the right of freedom of speech. On the power of the Home Secretary to make regulations on the meaning of serious disruption to the activities of an organisation or the life of the community, the right hon. Member made another important point, saying:

“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]

If there were a peaceful protest outside the Home Office that the Home Secretary did not like, everyone could be criminalised for shouting too loud, so that people working were not disturbed. Does the Minister have a cause that she cares deeply about and may want to protest about? The Home Secretary would have the ultimate say on whether what she was saying was right or wrong. I know that I would not want the Home Secretary to have that power.

Michael Barton, the former chief constable of Durham police, compared the measures in the Bill to those of a paramilitary-style police force, and asked if the Government are

“happy to be linked to the repressive regimes currently flexing their muscles via their police forces?”

I reiterate his question to the Minister, and I hope she will answer it. The very same Home Office that is offering Hong Kongers British national overseas visas to escape the oppressive regime that last week banned the annual vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 would criminalise those Hong Kongers for demonstrating loudly outside the Houses of Parliament. Once again, the Government are on the wrong side of the argument; instead, they find themselves on the same side as those who curtail the right to protest and silence the voices of the people.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)

Lee Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

I do not know who signed the petition, but I am sure it is available. The right hon. Gentleman will have to explore the petition himself to see who signed it.

A broad coalition, from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to Liberty, from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to the Ramblers Association and from the police to Shelter, is united in the view that the proposals put forward by the Government would be wrong and unhelpful, and go against our basic rights.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

We have a big problem in Ashfield with the travelling community. They come two or three times a year. I did my own poll of about 2,000 constituents, and 95% agreed with me that the Travellers were creating a massive problem—crime was going up, pets were going missing, antisocial behaviour was going through the roof and properties were getting broken into. My constituents do not want them in our area anymore. That was a survey of 2,000 people, and that was the response from 95% of them. That evidence from my area is a bit more compelling than the petition the hon. Gentleman mentioned, which has probably been signed by 100,000 Travellers.

[Bambos Charalambous]

One of the problems is that there is less local authority provision for Travellers to go to. That loss of provision, which is partly due to cuts to local government, has caused more problems, meaning that more people are on the road at any given time. However, this issue does not affect just the Traveller community, as the hon. Gentleman will see when I go on to make further points. It also impacts people such as ramblers, birdwatchers and others who want to stay out and sleep in their vehicles while enjoying countryside activities.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Therein lies the problem: many people do not want to have Travellers anywhere near them, and that is partly why there are so few sites. If more sites were made available, that would potentially solve the problem.

[Lee Anderson]

We have already established that in places where Traveller communities set up, such as Ashfield, crime goes up; we know that there is a direct correlation between Travellers being in the area and crime going up. Does the hon. Gentleman think that crime will come down if we have a permanent site in Ashfield?

[Bambos Charalambous]

As I have said, there is no excuse for criminality, and the Gypsy and Traveller community is already overrepresented in the prison population, but I do not think that the two issues are necessarily related to what the clause is trying to achieve. The hon. Gentleman is trying to say that the Gypsy and Traveller community is responsible for crime in Ashfield. I do not know the facts and figures in relation to that, but what the clause does is criminalise communities for being in vehicles on public land. While each Member has a concern about their individual constituents, we need to get back to what the Bill is focusing on, which is criminalising anyone in a vehicle, even on their own. I think that is what we need to focus on.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. We want to make sure that people are free to enjoy the beautiful countryside we are lucky to have in the UK without fear of being criminalised in such a way.

Marc Willers QC went on to say:

“That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s… There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.” —[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 72, Q104.]

[Lee Anderson]

At the beginning, the hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about Romani Gypsies coming here more than 500 years ago, but the Gypsy encampments that we are talking about in places such as Ashfield are not the traditional, old-fashioned Gypsies sat there playing the mandolin, flogging lucky heather and telling fortunes. The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools. That happens every single time they come to Ashfield. Does he agree that there is some confusion on the Opposition side as to who these people actually are?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I have said previously that we certainly do not condone any antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, but this is one of the many prejudices that exist about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and it is these sorts of problems that would lead to people invoking some of the clauses in the Bill in order to criminalise people.

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Another point made by the Minister for Policing was that the clean-up costs of the encampments can be huge. This is truly a problem, but it will not be solved by these clauses. Friends, Families & Travellers has pointed out that there are tried and tested ways of saving money while supporting families on roadside camps. Adopting a working, negotiated stopping policy where local authorities provide basic facilities such as toilets, water and rubbish collection, and working with families on encampments to agree suitable temporary locations and lengths of stay, has been proven to significantly reduce the costs attached to encampments. Research from De Montfort University found that a negotiated stopping policy developed in Leeds was shown to be self-financing when financially analysed. The creation of permanent pitches leads to the generation of rent and council tax for a local authority. If there are issues of commercial waste management such as large-scale fly-tipping, local authorities can use the legislation that already exists to deal with that crime. Additional legislation is not necessary.

[Lee Anderson]

About five years ago, we had Travellers come to a car park in my village and they left a load of rubbish there, which cost the council over £1,000 to clean up. A few weeks later, they came back again, left another load of rubbish that cost another £1,000. I got that fed up with the local council that I hired a JCB and put two concrete blocks there, to stop the Travellers coming back and to keep the beauty spot tidy, and I got a £100 fixed penalty notice from my local Labour authority. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that was the right course of action?

[Bambos Charalambous]

As I have said, there are powers in place to deal with fly-tipping. Where people feel the need to secure certain sites, it is down to the local authority to deal with those issues. I am certainly not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands and deal with things in the ways they see fit. That would be the road to chaos. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, but I am not going to comment on individual situations. The law is there, it is available and it can be used. It has been used quite successfully by many local authorities and the police.

There are other solutions for managing unauthorised encampments such as negotiated stopping whereby arrangements are made on agreed permitted times of stopping and to ensure the provision of basic needs such as water, sanitation and refuse collection. The manifesto commitment and the Government response referred to littering as a problem, but then why do the Government not consider providing more authorised camping sites with proper refuse facilities? Why do the Government think that confiscating someone’s home, putting them in prison and fining them is the answer? Why do the Government not instead consider the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), whose private Member’s Bill would make it an offence to demand money to vacate an unauthorised encampment? That, along with a significant increase in permanent site provision, could prevent Gypsy and Traveller communities from being forced to make unauthorised encampments, having nowhere to go, and prevent the small minority of Travellers who demand money to leave sites where they are not entitled to be.

I acknowledge the difficulty that people or businesses can face with unauthorised encampments on their land. The Victims’ Commissioner put it well when she said that

“unless there is proper provision of authorised encampments, you have two sets of victims. I quite agree with you that the people who are distressed, damaged or whatever by an unauthorised encampment are victims of that. There is no doubt of it…but I want you to take into account the difficulty of finding somewhere to camp in a lot of places, which forces people into an unlawful place.” ––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2021; c. 120, Q193.]

The Policing Minister also claimed that money for sites was available in the £150 million affordable homes programme pot, but the last shared ownership affordable homes programme in 2016 to 2021, with a budget of £4.7 billion, awarded grants for just two Traveller sites across the whole country in the scheme’s entire period. They were both just transit sites in Birmingham and Cornwall. That was revealed by Friends, Families & Travellers, which FOI-ed Homes England to find that information. Funding for Traveller sites must be more than warm words.

The Minister also claimed that there has been an increase in the number of caravans on sites from 14,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019, but she failed to point out that the number of caravans counted on sites is different from the actual number of pitches. The 14,000 and 20,000 figures are the total number of caravans counted that are listed as on authorised sites in the caravan count. While there has indeed been a rise from 14,730 in January 2010 to 19,967 in January 2020, the number of caravans on socially rented sites fell by 364.

Small-scale, family-run sites are great for those who have the resources to pull this off, but they are incredibly problematic and inaccessible for those who live in areas where land is at a premium and who have limited finances. It is the number of permanent pitches that can really improve things for Travellers, residents, local authorities and the police. Although there has been a 39.9% increase in transit pitches alone, it amounts to an increase of only 101 pitches—the equivalent of 10 per year over 10 years—with an overall decrease of 11.1% in permanent pitches on local authority and registered social landlord sites. In fact, the Government’s published figures show that there has been an overall 8.4% decrease of pitches on local authority Traveller sites. Nesil Caliskan, the chair of the Local Government Association, told us in the evidence sessions:

“There has to be a commitment from local authorities that those sites are allocated. The statutory legislation that already exists for these protected characteristics needs to be taken seriously. We should be meeting the obligations that are already set in statute, which says that we should have adequate sites for these communities, but we just do not.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 68, Q99.]

The Government should focus on ensuring that local authorities have the resources they need to provide more space for Traveller communities to legally reside. By taking an enforcement approach to address the number of unauthorised encampments, the Government are overlooking the issue of the lack of site provision.

Part 4 of the Bill would cause harm to Gypsy and Traveller communities for generations. Gypsies and Travellers are already the most disproportionally represented group in the criminal justice system. Part 4 would compound the inequalities already experienced by Gypsies and Travellers and further push them into the criminal justice system, just for existing nomadically. I urge the Government to rethink these harmful proposals.