Illegal Encampments (East of England)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, and to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst).

In Peterborough we do not have a problem to the same degree as my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) do—a problem that they have eloquently described. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow on giving us the opportunity to debate an important issue that causes great problems for community cohesion in the east of England. Both my hon. Friends are wonderfully energetic champions of their constituencies, and the issues are important.

I am rather shocked at the conduct of the Essex police and crime commissioner. I am one step removed from him, because he is not the PCC for my area. He has come dangerously close to invoking issues of parliamentary privilege. It is not for him to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow what it is proper and right for him to bring up on his constituents’ behalf. Perhaps one of those constituents might want to write to Mr Speaker, to alert him to the issue. For the avoidance of doubt, loyal Conservatives in Essex will no doubt be mindful of the issue when the PCC seeks re-adoption as the allegedly Conservative candidate in the next elections for the post. It is not acceptable to speak in the way he did.

I have known my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for perhaps 20 years. He is a moderate, erudite and thoughtful gentleman and not in the business of alienating or stigmatising any of his constituents—or, if he does, only the ones who break the law. That is as it should be. It is as well to make the point, again, that we just need fairness and equity between the travelling and settled communities. To come back to the point astutely raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden, the simple issue is that if I break into the garden of my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow by forcing the lock, and I occupy it, that is not a civil trespass matter but potentially a criminal act. My constituents cannot understand it when Travellers—a small minority, admittedly—damage property to get on to communal land in my constituency and the police say it is not a police matter, because it is their word against everyone else’s, the witnesses are unreliable, and it is too much trouble to investigate.

What do we want? Do we want people to have faith and trust in and respect for the law—their local police officers as well as senior ones and the police and crime commissioner—or do we want to open the door to vigilantism? That is what will happen. Not that long ago, in the Welland estate in my constituency, there was an illegal incursion by Travellers. It was ended when one of the caravans was set on fire by the settled community. We do not want that to happen. It put people in danger, and it is obviously bad when people set each other’s homes on fire. However, if the police are not respectful of the settled community’s legitimate concerns about the issue, it is much more likely that such a thing will happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock described the huge amount of waste in her constituency, and there is a film on YouTube—unfortunately it is a badge of ignominy for my constituency—that someone made a few years ago about Norwood lane in Paston, which was allegedly the most fly-tipped piece of road in England and was adjacent to the permanent Norwood lane Traveller site.

While I am on the topic, perhaps I may make the point for the benefit of any Peterborough city council officers who are watching—I am sure they are—that, public-spirited and willing to put my shoulder to the grindstone as I am, I find it odd that all five Traveller encampments in the Peterborough city council unitary authority area are in my constituency, and none are in the constituency of North West Cambridgeshire, which consists of nine other wards. I must have upset someone. The three new emergency stopping spaces are in my constituency, as are the Oxney road and Norwood lane permanent sites. Let us have fairness and equity in the allocation of sites within local authorities, whether Essex or Peterborough.

Every summer we have a problem, although not to the extent revealed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow; we have historically had difficulties with illegal Traveller encampments. Admittedly they were in south rather than north Cambridgeshire; nevertheless we get them in Peterborough, particularly in Werrington, but also in Parnwell, and in Fletton, which is in the constituency of North West Cambridgeshire.

People were so concerned in Werrington that the neighbourhood council invited the police and crime commissioner, Sir Graham Bright, to come and listen to the complaints. They were real, significant complaints and were not just about mess. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but seeing people urinating and defecating against the fence of William Law Church of England primary school in Werrington is sickening and unacceptable to parents, governors, teachers and pupils at the school. Nevertheless it was not just the waste and antisocial behaviour that they complained of, but behaviour such as going into the district shopping centre, the Werrington centre, and threatening people; and going into licensed premises in the area and taking them over, challenging the criminal justice system to do something about it. That happened two Christmases ago. Cambridgeshire police were called, and they came three and a half hours later, after a small group of Travellers threatened people with violence if they made a fuss. They effectively took over the pub, which I will not name, for obvious reasons.

We run the risk of the police having their authority undermined, because the public will say they do not treat people fairly. It irritates me something chronic to see a statement, written by a senior police officer in Cambridgeshire constabulary, that begins with the human rights of the Travellers—not the mess, crime, threats and antisocial behaviour, or any of the things I have mentioned, but the human rights of the travelling community. What Alice in Wonderland weird world have we stumbled into —what Kafkaesque world of political correctness—where a priority in a public statement from publicly funded people, whose work is paid for by the taxes of decent, honest people in Peterborough and beyond, is the human rights of people who transgress, threaten and break the law? It is unacceptable.

The law is in place to deal with these problems. Sections 61 and 62 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allow the police to direct trespassers to leave a site that they have occupied, and to remove property and vehicles. Sections 62A to 62E allow them to move such trespassers on the basis that there are alternative sites.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow referred to the alternative sites in Peterborough. In fairness—I am a fair-minded person—the jury is still out on whether those sites will be used, but early indications are that they are not being as well used as they should be.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock: this is about buck-passing. The police say, “It’s the fault of the local authority,” the local authority says, “We’ve been advised by the police,” and then the police say, “Well, we’ve made reference to the ACPO guidelines.” Everyone is passing the buck and the decent, honest, tax-paying person who does the right thing is left frustrated and angry. That is why people are alienated from politics and politicians. The people are the ones in charge—they pay their taxes, do the right thing and send us to Parliament—but they do not feel that their voice is being heard. I say to the police, and to the police and crime commissioners in particular: get a plan in place. Not every criminal activity is the same and every area is different, but get a strategy in place and listen to people.

My hon. Friends are lucky, because we rarely see our Cambridgeshire police and crime commissioner. In Peterborough, he has an outreach worker; we feel like a special social services case. This pre-eminent city in north Cambridgeshire of 187,000 people has an outreach worker. If Sir Graham Bright is watching, I tell him that we would love to see him, and not necessarily his outreach worker, to talk about these issues.

Incidentally, I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow: our police and crime commissioner said, “Well, it’s not on my radar; it’s not something that I get many complaints about.” That was after he had been to a meeting and listened to a publican say that he was threatened, there was criminal activity, people were angry and so on. The police need to do more, there needs to be proper co-ordination and I agree that court proceedings need to be looked at again. The Government have done a good job. They issued new guidelines in August 2013 on this issue and the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, issued an important written ministerial statement in February.

May I make a plea specifically on emergency stopping places? My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden said that Chelmsford was looking at that. That must be marked by proper openness and transparency. There is a lot of fear among the settled community. I hosted a meeting in April 2010, before the general election, in a village called Eye in my constituency, to the east of Peterborough, and 700 people came to it. It was ostensibly about housing developments, but there was a bit at the end about Travellers, and that attracted quite a bit of interest. There must be transparency. The problem in Peterborough is that although I was advised by the chief executive in March 2013 that there would be a decision on our emergency stopping places by June 2013, it was only in September 2014 that proposals were put out to public consultation. That took the city council 18 months. This is a sensitive and difficult area, but local authorities must move more quickly.

Adrian Chapman, the assistant director of communities and targeted services, is an excellent officer and, in fairness, I have had good support from the chief executive, Gillian Beasley, but what really disturbed me about that process was that it involved a closed, secret working party of councillors who had all signed a confidentiality agreement. That should really set alarm bells ringing. We were not allowed to know the workings, methodology or scoring system that that group was using for the parcels of land that the local authority was looking at, and I still do not know the basis on which it chose its sites: two in the Dogsthorpe ward and one in the East ward, all in my constituency.

I will finish by making the point that this is something that causes people an enormous amount of upset and anger. It undermines the whole system of representative democracy and people’s faith and trust in the criminal justice system, and it makes people want to resort to vigilantism and violence to protect their homes. That is something that we should not turn a blind eye to, in any sense. We need to look at the ACPO guidelines, and we need more consistency from the police and local authorities. We may need a review of the guidelines from the Department for Communities and Local Government, and perhaps a new ministerial statement.

I was pleased to hear that the Secretary of State for Justice will visit Harlow. He may wish to have input into court proceedings, and we need to look again at the Irish experience of intentional trespass. This is an issue not of nimbyism or parochialism, but of the faith and trust that ordinary people—I hate that term, but I can think of no other—have in the system. It is our duty and responsibility to listen to decent, law-abiding taxpayers who do the right thing and take the appropriate action.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing the debate, which gives us a chance to highlight some of the issues that are being faced, particularly, as the title of the debate shows, in the east of England. Such debates are important—this one is a really good example—because they give a chance for Members to shine a light of transparency on what is going on in their local community.

I appreciate that many of the issues raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Harlow, and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), are about some of the agencies, including local authorities, or about giving a message, very clearly and publicly, to the police and crime commissioner. I have no doubt that PCCs will pick up that message, not only because they are watching Parliament TV, but because the debate has attracted the attention of our excellent “Look East” BBC team, whom I can see in the Gallery. That sort of transparency shows why such debates are important.

I am somewhat disappointed by the comments of the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), who speaks for the Opposition, because she clearly has not taken the time to examine some of the issues affecting the east of England. Had she done so, she might have understood a bit more about the problems that I saw in Harlow when I visited with my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow. I understood and saw for myself just how badly let down the people of Harlow have been by the Labour-run council there, and I will come to that point in a moment. I have also seen some of the issues in Thurrock, and I know from my background how the previous Government let down the people of Basildon by not supporting the council there in its issues with Travellers for so many years—those issues were finally sorted out only in the past couple of years.

We are concerned about unauthorised Traveller encampments and the effect they have on local communities. We recognise the deep concern among communities in Harlow and elsewhere, and the demand for urgent action. It is clearly unacceptable that communities should suffer the level of distress and expense caused by the unauthorised camps that we have repeatedly seen in Harlow and elsewhere. As I say, I visited Harlow to see what was happening. I was troubled by what I saw and heard—not only by the comments of the residents, but particularly the comments of the Labour council, which, to be blunt, misled both me and my hon. Friend. I wrote to him to clarify the truth of the situation and will touch on that in a moment.

I must stress that this is a problem caused by a small minority of Travellers, but their actions harm the general relations between the Traveller community and the wider settled community, which is not fair on both communities.

Nationally, the number of caravans on unauthorised encampments has been falling, but I understand that that is of little comfort to communities such as those in Harlow and Thurrock that have had to endure the level of unauthorised camps we have seen in the past year or so. I will seek urgent discussions with my ministerial colleagues in both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice—I know that the Justice Secretary is visiting Harlow this week—to consider what more can be done.

I will explore with my colleagues what might be hindering some local agencies from using the powers that are available to them. Hon. Members have made the point that there are already substantial powers available to allow for swift action to stop unauthorised encampments, but they are not yet being fully used by either the local authorities or the police.

As I have said, local authorities and the police have a range of strong powers that can be used. Where they are used promptly, we believe that they are sufficient. However, the Government are open to representations about how enforcement can be improved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough rightly said, in August 2013 we sent all council leaders updated guidance to set out the powers they have. It told councils that they can consider working with the local police and landowners to secure sites and identify vulnerable sites; that they should prepare their paperwork in advance, so that they are ready when they know things are likely to happen; and that they should develop a clear notification and decision-making process. We also reminded them of the general ability, and need, to act swiftly.

Councils and landowners can obtain a possession order to remove trespassers from land. They can apply to the courts for pre-emptive injunctions, which prevent unauthorised camping in a defined geographical area. In addition, we have lifted the previous Administration’s restrictions on the use of temporary stop notices, giving councils more freedom to take early and decisive action against unauthorised sites and encampments. Councils can issue such a notice on both private and public sector land.

Local authorities and the police can use the strong powers available in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, as my hon. Friends outlined. Under section 77, a local authority can direct people residing in vehicles to leave land occupied without the consent of the landowner. If the trespassers do not leave when directed to do so, or if they return to that land within three months, they are committing an offence.

The police have powers under section 61 to direct trespassers from land when requested by a public or private landowner, and when the trespassers have caused criminal damage. That goes directly to the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden —he is right about a criminal offence in that regard. They may also use those powers when trespassers have engaged in abusive or intimidating behaviour, or if six or more vehicles are trespassing on the land. We have seen that situation elsewhere. I have seen that happen in Harlow as well as in Thurrock. If the trespassers do not leave when directed to do so, or if they return to the land within three months, they are committing an offence.

The strongest police powers under section 62A can be used where vacant authorised Traveller pitches are available in the local authority area. If, after being directed from land, the Travellers return to the district as trespassers within three months, they are committing an offence. That is where Harlow council has let down residents and has misled my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow, as we clarified after our meeting. I am sure he will remember that, when we visited Harlow, the council said it was trying to take advantage and bid for the pot of Homes and Communities Agency money—Government money—provided to get sites back into use, and it outlined to me the number of sites it had available. Under questioning, we eventually got the council to admit that one of the sites had not been in use for some years. It said it was looking to bring it back into use and had bid for Government money to do so. I was therefore somewhat surprised when I returned to the Department and found out that it had made no such bid, as I outlined to my hon. Friend. Harlow council should be more honest with people and straight about what it is doing. It should stand up and fight for the people of Harlow in the way that my hon. Friend is so admirably and passionately doing, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock is doing for her constituency.

I note the concern and confusion about the powers available to local authorities, the police and other agencies. We will look again at our summary of powers document to ensure it is crystal clear to the agencies and, more importantly, to the public, who can also help to hold the agencies to account.

Local authorities should be addressing their Traveller communities’ site needs through the local plan-making process. I am sure the hon. Member for City of Durham is aware of how the local plan process works. It is there for local authorities to do just that. However, a lack of locally available pitches is not an excuse for unauthorised encampments and antisocial behaviour, and should not in itself stop councils or the police taking action.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

There is also a question of consistency. If someone is found to be committing a criminal offence on the property of a registered social landlord such as a housing association, they can probably be evicted. How many times has that happened on a fixed Traveller pitch, when someone, or a family, is engaging in criminal activity? How often are they evicted? I am not sure there is equality in that regard. That needs to be clarified by Government regulation or guidance.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. We will feed through some issues he and other hon. Friends have raised to colleagues in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

I shall touch briefly on what we have done to ensure that planning for site provision works more effectively and, importantly, as hon. Members have rightly said, fairly. We removed the top-down regional strategies and plans that caused so much resentment. Our planning policy for Traveller sites puts the provision of sites into the hands of local councils. They have to consult local communities as well as ensure they are protecting the green-belt land and our great countryside.

Local authorities have to identify a suitable five-year supply of Traveller sites to meet their objectively assessed needs in line with national planning policy, so it is very much in their hands. I know the hon. Member for City of Durham did not realise this—I am sure she will read the national planning policy framework soon—but it is in the hands of local authorities, as part of working out what their needs are, to assess what is right and appropriate for them locally.