Illegal Encampments (East of England)

Lord Haselhurst Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Connoisseurs of parliamentary proceedings may find it wry that I have the honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I hope your mind is cleansed of those occasions when the roles were reversed and I may have had occasion to call you to order.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for giving us this opportunity to raise these issues—issues that I imagine a large number of Members have, to varying degrees. I am in his slipstream in what I want to say this afternoon. He is a doughty champion of Harlow and its residents, and he can rightly describe Harlow as his beautiful city. Equally, I hope he recognises that the district of Uttlesford, which comprises a large part of the Saffron Walden constituency, is continually cited as one of the most desirable places to live in the country. That, of course, adds to some of its problems, as people reading that fact may think about moving to the area. Those people may include Travellers, because we have regular visitations.

It would be hard for me to compare any of the situations in my constituency with the scale of the problem that my hon. Friend is confronted with in his; even my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) might take second place in the order of crisis, given the situation that my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has described. There are many different situations, but too often, across the piece, those situations give rise to public fury; hence the involvement of Members of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow has graphically described what can go wrong, and I recognise most of those situations as having also arisen at encampments in my constituency.

Those who know me will understand my particular concern, not only as president of the West Essex district cricket board, when an incursion in the village of Hatfield Heath interfered with the local cricket ground, causing a competitive fixture to be postponed at a critical time. An ordinary, very English activity that is traditional to villages was disrupted by caravans being parked on the ground. The pitch was scuffed—one remembers a test match that was affected by the pouring of oil on the pitch —and water was taken, causing total disruption. That is part of the general annoyance that has been caused. The general annoyance is that such disruption is a regular thing in the village of Hatfield Heath. Just as people think they have cleared one situation, there is an anticipation, borne out by history, that it will be repeated, which gives rise to extra annoyance. The annoyance is caused not just by that continuity, but by the regular reappearance of caravans, although they are not necessarily the same ones.

A quite different situation arose in Little Dunmow, where the houses came after the Gypsy settlement. There had been no particular complaints about the Gypsy settlement, which has been established for quite a long time, but once houses are built close by, some of the disturbances that come from such settlements become a source of difficulty—dogs barking at all hours of the night, shotguns being fired and stray horses wandering around. Although Essex county council has a Gypsy liaison officer, it is hard to imagine someone not invested with police powers, or anything of that kind, being able to control a situation and bring about harmony between the newcomers in the houses and the longer-established people on the Traveller site.

Uttlesford district council and the city of Chelmsford, the rural areas of which I also represent, are known to be looking for pitches to accommodate certain numbers at the Government’s behest. People are starting to ask questions. I accept the logic in trying to establish the requisite number of official pitches, because the theory is that, if those pitches are established, we can swiftly move on caravans that park on unofficial sites. There is nothing more infuriating for anyone than to wake up and find a caravan or caravans on greensward in front of their house, or in a field next door. People naturally expect the authorities to do something, but nothing is gained if all the authorities can do when they succeed in moving the caravans on is cause a second unofficial parking.

I see the logic in trying to have official pitches, and it all seems straightforward, but unfortunately it is not. Hopefully the Government can help, but we need to know exactly for whom we should be providing the pitches. Are they for itinerant Travellers, or are we also meant to be covering static caravans? There is an important distinction between the two. What criteria should apply? If Travellers can just turn up, whether on a village green that also hosts a cricket pitch or on an area by the side of a road such as a lay-by, surely there need to be basic facilities, otherwise we will see the unsavoury activities of human beings without any kind of facilities for ordinary toilet practices and so on. People will also have to search for basic facilities such as water, and there seems to be no advance provision. If a site is volunteered, there should be criteria and minimum standards; otherwise, it should not apply.

Highways issues should also be taken into account. The city of Chelmsford is battling with its need to provide an allocation, and it seems to have set its sights on a possible settlement at Drakes lane in my constituency. The road that serves the site is wholly inadequate, as there is surrounding industrial activity. What is the sense of encouraging provision for Travellers—in many cases, one expects, with children—where heavy lorries are pounding down an unsuitable lane? The scope for accidents is obvious. We need to know more about what we have to do and for whom.

I will not be censorious about the police, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow was, but the relevant bits of legislation covering all their powers are longer than the ten commandments. In all the different circumstances that could apply, such legislation helps to confuse the police about what they can do. It is often down to the status of the land. Is it private or public land? What are the rights of access for members of the public? If there are rights of access, how can we discriminate between one type of member of the public and another?

I am grateful to the police for coming together with all the local interests to solve—finally, we hope—the recurring problems in Hatfield Heath. The key lesson I got from those discussions was that a crime has to have been committed to make it easier for the police to apply section 61 of the 1994 Act. If that is the case, to put things at their simplest, we need to know what constitutes a crime in relation to the sorts of problems that my hon. Friend described.

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend will be aware of what section 61 states. If there are six or more vehicles trespassing on private land, the police can issue instructions under section 61.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

That was not exactly how it was explained to me by the police officer who came to the discussions at Hatfield Heath; but what my hon. Friend says demonstrates my point. There is uncertainty about what must happen. If the law is being applied unevenly because police discretion means variation from one place to another, that is not helpful to any of us.

To sum up, what we need and what the public are looking for is fairness. This is not a matter of discriminating against the travelling community, let alone those of the Romany tradition; it is a matter of fairness. If one person is not allowed to do something, why should someone else be allowed to do it without any kind of retribution being visited on them? That is basically what people want dealt with. If we legislators cannot provide a clear definition of what is or is not fair, we will continue to have very dissatisfied constituents.