Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

It is a delight to have your eagle eye on us, Sir George, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate. I will heed your advice to be short and will focus on one tiny point—as I look around the Chamber, there is a sigh of relief that I will be sitting down soon.

Mole Valley is an interesting and beautiful area covered with green belt, areas of special scientific interest and so forth. Anyone who applies for permission to build on land there has extreme difficulty, unless they are applying for land within the limited amount that is available for normal building. That applies to the settled community and to the Traveller community. Most Travellers in our area are on settled sites and are part of the community, and most of the kids go to school. The situation works normally and is accepted by the settled community.

However, we must recognise that any constituent who builds on land in Mole Valley, especially green-belt land, without permission can expect a heavy hand to apply to them. We have had a few such cases, and the properties have been completely demolished. However, some of the Traveller community—I emphasise that it is some—do not seem to believe that the laws apply to them, or they just ignore them. I will give just one example of many. It is on a green-belt pasture land site in Leatherhead. In 2003, Travellers with a distinct Irish accent arrived out of the blue and squatted on the site. They said they owned it, and they may have—I am not absolutely sure. They fenced it and put in a fast-growing hedge and a series of caravans. They put up buildings of a more permanent design than caravans. To my amusement, they put in two high, wrought-iron, electrically operated gates of the sort that one might expect to see at a manor house. It really is quite extraordinary.

Over the years, the usual series of planning applications have been made and rejected. They have been appealed, and the appeals have been rejected. Deadlines that have been set for departure from the site have come and gone. Just as a deadline approaches, new and slightly different planning applications are delivered to the local authority, sometimes hours or minutes before the deadline. The Travellers are still on the site—they have been there since 2003. The newly Liberal Mole Valley Council that was elected last May has just published its draft local plan. To the absolute dismay of the law-abiding settled community, and despite local resistance at every stage, the council has decided to designate the green-belt site as a Traveller site, in addition to the other Traveller sites that are being created.

In other words, if the Liberals have their way, 17 years of blatant abuse of the planning laws will have paid off for those Travellers, who do not travel. A proportion of the green-belt pasture land will be gone, and the series of rejections, repeals and so forth will be set aside and ignored. From what I have seen, this is the sort of behaviour that one expects of the Sicilian Mafia. One might ask why those Travellers act in such a way. The answer, of course, is because they frequently can. Nobody, including the courts, the police, the local authority and various Government Departments, seem capable of stopping them.

The Minister and his Department are running a review, which has been mentioned. It has been running for years and the time has come for some action. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said that it will be completed within five years, but we do not want to wait that long. We are making local plans, and we need something in short order. We need the Minister to consider tightening up the legal definition of Travellers, which is too loose at the moment—many of those who squat have no intention of travelling. Extraordinarily, the claim to “need” to live in caravans frequently overcomes the normal and understandable offer of bricks-and-mortar accommodation, especially where the local authority is required to house Traveller families. That is particularly relevant where children and infants would, by normal standards, be accommodated in a better, healthier environment than a caravan or some of the out-of-the-way sites in the middle of the green belt.

Local planning authorities should be in a situation where they can force vacation of the land prior to approval or rejection of a planning application. If a house builder started building on a site without permission, a stop notice would be applied. The change should be applicable to, and enforceable on, Gypsies or Travellers —I had better change that to Travellers, because I know many Gypsies who are the most pleasant, law-abiding people I have come across. It is time we did something, because the law-abiding population—the settled community—would not test the system as they know they would be rejected, but the Traveller community abuse it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I am a new Member and this is my first Westminster Hall debate, so I came this morning with a little trepidation.

I have listened with alarm at what the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and other Conservative Members have said. Gypsies and Traveller communities are not a problem that needs to be tackled, nor should legislation crack down on them. They are citizens entitled to equal treatment and the protection of their way of life. The dehumanising language we have heard should have no place in society or in the halls of power.

I appreciate that this debate is about planning law and relates to the Gypsy and Traveller communities, but that topic cannot be understood outside the context of the prejudice that they face. All too often, they are othered as outsiders unworthy of equal rights. As with all types of bigotry, it comes from the top down—including, I am sad to say, from Members of this House, who have in the past compared Gypsies and Travellers to a “disease” and a “plague”. Such scapegoating catches on.

A report by the Traveller Movement found that 91% of people in the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities had experienced racism because of their ethnicity. Some 70% had experienced discrimination in education; 49% had faced discrimination in employment; and 30% in access to health. More than three-quarters said that because of this prejudice, they have hidden their ethnicity to avoid discrimination.

Such bigotry—like all bigotries—has consequences: 77% of Gypsy, Roma and Travellers report having experienced hate speech or hate crime. Racist attacks are common, such as the burning of three caravans in Somerset at the end of last year and the killing of Johnny Delaney, a teenager kicked to death in 2003— his assailants reportedly shouting that he was only an “effing Gypsy”.

This prejudice has a long history: from 16th-century laws that threatened nomadic peoples with exile or death, to the Thatcherite Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which repealed the duty of local authorities to provide sites for Roma and Travellers. Since then, there have only been further reductions in stopping places and authorised sites, which has left many with the choice either to use unauthorised sites or to abandon their identity. The inadequate provision for Gypsy and Traveller communities is the principal cause of the problems that hon. Members have mentioned. It is hardly surprising that a mess is made when adequate sites are not provided for them. The advocacy group Friends, Families and Travellers argued that the main cause of unauthorised camps was

“the abject failure of the government to identify land for sites and stopping places.”

It is a mistake to blame the effect, when the underlying cause of inadequate provision is at fault. That is why the Government’s consultation document, released early last year, as well as Tory manifesto commitments, are of great concern to me. The sweeping new police powers would be unnecessary and authoritarian. Existing powers are already more than enough, as shown by the fact that the majority of police who responded to the Government’s initial consultation opposed increased eviction powers. The powers are also authoritarian. One traveller said:

“The police will have the power to kick my door in, take my home, arrest me and take the children into care. We won’t get them back because we won’t have a home.”

That is the fear that those proposals cause in the Gypsy and Traveller community.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Zarah Sultana]

Sorry, I will not.

The proposals do not solve a problem; they further oppress a marginalised group.

What, then, are they really about? Why was this bigotry so prevalent throughout the Conservatives’ election campaign? Was it because this is a major issue faced by working people of this country? Of course not. It is because, in the words of the chair of the Gypsy Council, the Tories are trying to

“criminalise Gypsies to hide their own failures”.

I know what it is like to be part of a scapegoated community. According to research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 22% of people openly express negative feelings towards Muslims, while 44% openly express negative feelings towards Gypsies. We are both scapegoated communities blamed for problems not of our making. I note that the hon. Member for Kettering, who calls for oppressive measures on the Gypsy and Traveller communities, has also demanded that the burqa be banned.

Some people—often children born to wealthy families, sent to expensive private schools and educated at prestigious universities—are intent on blaming people they deem to be outsiders. I know where the real blame lies: not with Gypsies or Travellers, migrants or refugees, Jewish people or Muslims, but with a class of people born into privilege who dominate society and use their power and privilege to deflect the blame for a failing economy away from themselves. Instead, they scapegoat others.

At a time when there is rising racism against Muslims, Jewish people and the Gypsy and Traveller community, we must all stand up to bigotry wherever we see it and recognise that our struggles are one and the same. There is safety in solidarity, which is more powerful and more beautiful than anyone’s hate.