Gypsies and Travellers and Local Communities — House of Commons, 2017-10-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Stephen Pelham Pound (Labour, Centre-left): I take the point made by my hon. Friend. I think that many of us feel the same irritation As I was saying, Ealing is not blessed with huge open spaces, but the open spaces that we have tend to be public parks, school playing fields, sports fields and golf courses, every one of which has suffered from a Traveller incursion in the last few years. It is not as if Ealing is one of the boroughs that say, "We will have no Travellers." It is not a borough that sets its face against people who have every right to identify themselves as having a certain ethnicity. We have a caravan site. Every time there is an unauthorised encampment in the borough, we investigate the status of the children to establish whether they are receiving education and what their health conditions are. We do not try to shove people off without a second thought. Nevertheless, between 2012 and this summer there have been 140 illegal occupations in the London borough of Ealing, the majority of which have been on council land I have had interactions with the travelling community since the mid-1970s, as a housing officer, as a housing association officer, as a councillor, and even as a mayor and a Member of Parliament. I entirely accept that there are some who will approach you when they move on to the land and say, "I am the guy in charge: if you have any problems, come and see me." Others, however, will commit the most ghastly antisocial behaviour, such as throwing stones at cars, and a couple of weeks ago there were some horses at a petrol station on the A40. That is cruelty to the horses, but it is also pretty appalling for the people who live in the area There are some who take things too far in the wrong direction, and worst of all are those who use the encampment for fly-tipping. There is no more heart-breaking sight than a sports field where a group of amateur footballers have been trying to get together to play football—to bring people together for the good of the community—and there is a 2-metre-deep pile of asbestos-ridden household waste that costs us a fortune to clear up. Let me give the House a rough idea of what that means. The legal costs alone in the London borough of Ealing between June 2016 and the present time were more than £200,000, and officer time amounted to more than £130,000. Our borough is not swimming in cash. I doubt that any Member in the Chamber represents a constituency that has more money than it knows what to do with, but our clear-up costs amounted to £250,000 These are not really encampments. They are, in fact, illegal businesses. I pay tribute to Ealing council officers such as Yasmin Basterfield, Chris Bunting, Jess Murray and Paul Murphy—not the other Paul Murphy; the one in Ealing—who do an incredible amount of work with their teams. However, we do not have the confidence of the local community that we can sufficiently address this issue. What happens is that, suddenly, a great glistening cavalcade of chromium-plated 4x4s—if only it were a caravanserai!—roars down and sets up an encampment on our open space, and then the problems start In the brief time that remains to me, I shall ask the Minister four basic questions, to which I want to hear four answers. Section 61 has been mentioned, and section 61 is not good enough. It needs to be enforced properly. What guidance will the Minister give his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about a protocol to enforce it? Why cannot legal advisers in magistrates courts sign the warrants over the weekend? Will the Minister at least speak to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who is present, to establish whether the Ministry of Justice can do something about that? Every vehicle that arrives can be identified through a registration number. Why can those numbers not be used to identify the people who are responsible for the crime, and then prosecute them? What could possibly be wrong with that Finally, could we have a few bob from the Government for the unanticipated costs of clearing up? Frankly, it is crippling us in the London borough of Ealing.