Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Like so many others, my constituency has been plagued by the problem of illegal encampments for the past two years. It is the same in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who cannot be here tonight because he has suffered a bereavement. I want to make it clear that I am referring to the behaviour of a problematic minority; I have no wish for my remarks to be construed as a general criticism of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people.

Enforcement and clean-ups have cost Birmingham City Council an estimated £700,000 in the past year, and there are some 395 unauthorised encampments across the seven west midlands authorities, which provides some idea of the scale of things in the area. I thank the police and crime commissioner, David Jamieson, the officers and councillors of Birmingham City Council, Adrian Jones of the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups, and Abiline McShane, who is a constituent of mine. All of them have helped my understanding of the issue.

I concur with other Members’ comments about the problems that illegal encampments cause so many of our constituents. There is no single solution, but there are some things that would help. More transit sites would give people more places to go to and make it easier for the police to use powers to move people from unauthorised sites.

Police powers would be strengthened if they could direct groups across combined authorities. I urge the Government to consider a change to section 62A of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to allow police officers to direct unauthorised encampments to a site in a neighbouring authority where the authorities are working together as a combined authority or under some other sharing arrangement. That would make a significant difference to some of the problems we have at the moment.

We could do with a further change to protect private property so that, if a landowner recovers a site from unauthorised occupation, there is some sanction to prevent repeat returns, which is what happens at the moment. I know it is not popular to ask for money, but I think the Government should consider a fund from which local authorities might draw or borrow money to help with setting up transit sites, because they are key to a long-term solution.

There are obvious problems, but I want to praise West Midlands police, Birmingham City Council and particularly Councillor Karen McCarthy for pioneering the use of injunctions against persons unknown. That marks a substantial change in the law, and will make it easier to get injunctions in the future.

I want to conclude by saying that injunctions are not the answer—we simply end up with a displacement problem —but rather a short-term solution or sticking plaster. We need to find longer-term measures, some of which, to be fair, the Minister hinted at today. It seems to me that quite a lot of effort is being made by Members on both sides of the House for people to be reasonable. We have to find solutions that are practical and address the problems our constituents are experiencing, but that do not seek to scapegoat people unnecessarily. That will not solve our problems but create a different set of problems, and leave us with the same issues time and again.