Gypsy and Traveller Policy

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We are all equal under, and have a duty to obey, the law.

The current twin-track, separated planning system—one for Gypsies and Travellers and one for settled residents—greatly threatens and undermines community cohesion and causes significant fear, distrust and upset to both Travellers and settled residents. If someone can demonstrate, or simply declare, that they are a Gypsy or Traveller, they acquire highly lucrative planning rights not available to the rest of the population. Such rights are granted to some individuals who are very wealthy, or become so as a result; they are not all vulnerable individuals. That opens up the system to massive abuse from some people seeking to gain such lucrative planning rights.

Many able-bodied Travellers do not in fact travel for a living. Often, settled residents travel more, on business, than some so-called Travellers.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Is there not another point, which is certainly true in the case of Sussex police? If someone claims to be a Traveller, the police simply accept that as fact. No effort is undertaken to ascertain whether they really are of that ethnic identity.

[Andrew Selous]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The reality is that anyone can self-declare as a Traveller. I very much welcomed the written ministerial statement made by the Minister on 17 January in which he committed to looking at that issue.

I cannot believe that it is right that some schools, such as that in the village of Braybrooke in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), should be entirely occupied by Traveller children. I do not believe that that is in their own best interests, not least given Traveller children’s high rates of absence. For Irish-heritage Travellers, the 2008 national pupil database showed primary school absence rates of more than 24% and secondary school absence rates of more than 27%. I believe that if the children of Travellers were integrated across a greater number of schools, they would be more likely to conform to the higher attendance rates of the majority.

The current separate planning system for Gypsies and Travellers often takes no account of the proper provision of facilities in rural locations, specifically those for sewerage and sanitation. Harm is often caused to the local environment by hedgerows being illegally pulled out, pollution of the local water courses and farmland, and sometimes encroachment on others’ land.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate.

As a quick disclaimer, when I raised the subject of a constituent and endorsed the local authority, which referred to him as “unkempt,” it later transpired that that person claims to be of Traveller origin and a six-month criminal investigation against me by Sussex police ensued. The investigation of course got nowhere. When the case was dropped, I raised the matter in the House, at which point the references to “Traveller” were registered as a hate incident by Sussex police, and six months later I was served with a police information notice that has subsequently been the subject of a Committee of Privileges investigation. I put it on record that I will not be sending a copy of Hansard to anyone, which is what sparked the complaint.

I have no argument with Travellers, but I do have an argument with illegal encampments, which cause such devastation, angst, pain and cost to my constituents. They disrupt the leisure, education and business activities of legitimate council tax-paying constituents who just want to go about their business. In my constituency, Adur and Worthing have been the destinations of choice for illegal encampments for many years. I take issue with the fact that the residents of such illegal encampments seem incapable of vacating without completely trashing the site and leaving a heck of a mess for local people to clear up. One of my parish councils, which has been the subject of multiple illegal encampments, had to raise council tax last year by 28% purely to pay the bill for clearing up and reinforcing some of its public sites.

[Mr McKenzie]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way because there is very little time.

The problem is that illegal encampments seem to have no consideration for the communities in which they park themselves. As hon. Members have said, there is a perception among our constituents that there is one law for Travellers and illegal encampments and another law for law-abiding citizens, who would have to fund the clearing up if they undertook such activity. My concern is that our police, and certainly Sussex police, seem to be engendered with a feeling of political correctness, such that when one challenges the legitimacy of people calling themselves Travellers, or the legitimacy of what they are doing, one is put in the frame by the police. That is just not fair, and it creates great resentment among constituents who have to pay to clean up the mess.

The situation in my constituency has got better, and that is largely because of our new police commissioner, Katy Bourne, who has made illegal encampments one of her priorities. She has made the police take the problem much more seriously. Adur and Worthing councils have certainly improved their responses enormously and there has been a much better team effort in dealing with the problem. Rather than the police telling us what they cannot do, the police and crime commissioner has compelled them to issue rather more section 61 and section 62 notices, which have moved many of these illegal encampments swiftly on. Those notices work. In one case last summer, 50 caravans turned up on an open public area where a church festival was being held. Within an hour they had been moved on. They went to a football pitch, and within 24 hours they had been moved on from there, because the police were prepared to use section 61 and section 62 notices.

In West Sussex, all the local authorities have come together to co-fund a transit camp for the whole county, which will improve the problem. We welcome the Government money made available to help fund that transit camp. I strongly agree with my hon. Friends the Members for South West Bedfordshire and for Poole (Mr Syms) that we need to reform the Housing Act 2004. Everyone should be treated the same in housing assessment, and we overestimate the real need. A recent census found that more than two thirds of Travellers have brick and mortar homes in other parts of the country. We must look at the vulnerability of these communities to very poor education, qualification, health and employment outcomes, and a long-term policy that addresses that is needed. Just treating them differently in the planning system is not the solution.

We need to use smarter measures to deal with illegal encampments. In my constituency, I am urging the police to ensure they have a hotline for constituents who see these encampments appearing, so that that can be reported quickly and a fast response by the police and the local council to stop that encampment getting bigger can be expected and achieved. I can never understand why, when an illegal encampment starts, the police allow further caravans and vehicles to enter the site. During the day, people will often leave the caravans in their four-wheel drive cars to do business of various sorts, and I do not understand why they are allowed back on to an illegal encampment in the evening. Why are we not using more disruption techniques and saying, “If you are going to leave the site—as we hope you will if it is an illegal encampment—you can only go with your caravan, and you certainly cannot come back in again in the evening”? Those are the sort of disruption tactics we should be using for better enforcement.

The problem in my constituency is that the council has spent an awful lot of money reinforcing entrances and putting down bunding, only for a whole fence panel to be taken out to provide an entrance or for bollards to be ripped out by the tow bar of a car. Recently, the bunding on one site, which had been put in specifically to stop illegal encampments, was removed by a bulldozer. Why do we not use CCTV more, once an illegal encampment has been set up, to see what further offences might be committed? Why do we not better check the number plates of these vehicles to see where they are registered, and whether the Travellers have other accommodation or are without any alternatives?

All those things need to happen, but, recognising the problem and the particular vulnerabilities of the Traveller community, we also need far better long-term planning, and we need the Traveller community to sign up to that. We need clarification of the law, joined-up solutions and, above all, a level playing field that is hopefully used for playing and not illegal encampments.