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House of Commons
Friday 5 February 1993
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[ Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]
Orders of the Day
Caravan Sites (Amendment) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
9.35 am
Sir Cranley Onslow (Woking) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am glad to have the opportunity to invite the House to consider the Bill to amend the Caravan Sites Act 1968, and I am grateful to colleagues for coming to participate in the debate because I know that the subject is of wide interest.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), whose Privatisation of Gipsy Sites Bill many hon. Members will recognise re-embodied in the Bill that I seek to bring before the House. I am especially grateful to him and to the Minister for all their help during the preparation of my Bill. When I was fortunate enough to draw a place in the ballot for private Members' Bill, I did not find it difficult to choose the subject. The law relating to gipsy sites and the experiences of many people throughout the country need to be debated. The Conservative party recognised that at the last general election, when it included a commitment in its manifesto to reform the 1968 Act. That commitment was the result of discussion before the election.
Last autumn, the Government published a consultation paper on the subject, which I am sure we shall discuss in detail and which I shall take the House through, if I may.
I recognise that there may be difficulties in getting the Bill on to the statute book. When I chose the subject, I was conscious that, if I were to be successful, I should need the active endorsement of the Government and not merely of the House, because of the difficulties in getting private Members' Bills through, especially when the Standing Committees are already heavily loaded. Whether my Bill reaches the statute book or not, I hope that the House will value the chance to talk about the issues and to hear from the Government how matters are proceeding.
I remember that, in the early 1960s, when I was a local councillor on Dartford rural district council, we faced problems in Kent which were not so different from the problems experienced in my constituency and other parts of the country today. It is a long-standing problem. We must recognise that the social changes that have taken place during the post-war years have made the problem more intense.
This country has a long-established nomadic gipsy community, which has undergone great changes during the post-war years. The traditional and genuine gipsy,
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whom many of us remember from our childhood, is much rarer nowadays. One does not often find ladies in straw hats and long black skirts offering to sell one clothes pegs or bunches of violets that they have just picked from one's hedgerow. The pattern has changed. There are not so many opportunistic gentlemen offering to do a job and saying, "I've got half a load of tarmac, squire, and would be glad to do up your drive." Even that traditional gipsy activity seems to have diminished.There are some genuine gipsies--I am glad to say that there are some in my constituency. But there are many other aspects of gipsy life that have brought the description of gipsy into greater conflict with the rest of society, which I regret. When we consider the matter today or on any other occasion, it should be our objective to harmonise and smooth the existence of gipsies in society, not to provoke confrontation. I certainly do not seek to do that today. As change has taken place, many members of the gipsy community and many groups or clans of gipsies have become much more affluent and able to provide for themselves. I believe that many are much more anxious to do so. I hope that, in considering change, we can shed any idea of a dependency culture for the gipsies that may still permeate some people's approach to the subject. We must recognise that everyone has rights in the matter. There are undoubtedly rights that gipsies should enjoy, but communities and local residents also have rights, which it is our function to protect when they are threatened or infringed.
I shall interpolate one aim that my Bill does not have, and for lack of which it may be criticised. I do not set out to provide an answer to the problem of new age travellers, which has attracted so much attention and which causes so much concern in many parts of the country. My hon. Friends may suggest that my Bill should have covered that subject, and there may be an opportunity for them to make their views known on that important issue.
However, I did not believe at the outset that it would be possible in the compass of a private Member's Bill to bring before the House the sort of measures needed to deal with the serious problem presented by new age travellers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry) indicated assent.
Sir Cranley Onslow : I see that my hon. Friend the Minister is indicating assent--he may recognise that it is a proper subject for the Home Office rather than for his Department. However, I hope that both Departments will get the message that there is a need for amending legislation, even if I am not seeking to bring that legislation before the House today.
Mr John Marshall (Hendon, South) : An urgent need.
Sir Cranley Onslow : Yes--as my hon. Friend says, there is an urgent need. Those of us who spend time in the west country or Wales know what a tremendous menace to rural life some aspects of the new age travellers can present.
I shall set out the background to the problem and take the House through parts of the Government's consultation paper, with which hon. Members are probably familiar, but which needs to be placed on record today. The need to reform the Caravan Sites Act 1968 was recognised in the
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Conservative manifesto, which contained an undertaking to review that Act, with the aim of reducing the nuisance of illegal encampments.In 1965, before the then Eric Lubbock introduced his Bill to the House, it was estimated that there were 3,400 gipsy families--about 4, 750 caravans in England and Wales. Even then, they presented problems that needed to be dealt with, and the result was the 1968 Act. The Act places on local authorities a duty to accommodate all those whom the Act defines as
"persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin", who were residing in or resorting to the local authority area. Once a local authority was deemed to have provided sufficient pitches, it could apply to become designated by the Secretary of State. The effect of designation was to make it a criminal offence for a gipsy to station a caravan within the designated area, and to enable the caravan to be removed. In that way, it was intended that there would be sufficient pitches for travellers across the country and that each local authority area would accept its fair share of travellers.
When he introduced the Bill, Eric Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, said that he expected it to
"help local authorities properly to control the unauthorised use of land. It will give relief to quiet neighbourhoods and beautiful countryside which have suffered from invasions of the travelling people while at the same time it will give those travelling people a recognised place in the community."-- [Official Report, 1 March 1968 ; Vol. 759, c. 1930- 31.]
The House knows that, in the years since the 1968 Act, those hopes have not been fulfilled ; the problem has become worse, not better. In 1965, there were 3,400 gipsy caravans ; in January 1992, the Government's latest count when they published their consultation document, local authorities counted almost 13,500 such caravans, and there were an estimated 9,900 gipsy families in England and Wales. Of those, more than 4,500 were on unauthorised sites--only 1 per cent. fewer than in 1981.
Only 38 per cent. of English local authorities have achieved designation under the Act in the 24 years that have elapsed, despite the fact that, since 1978, the Government have made available a 100 per cent. grant to meet the capital costs of gipsy sites and, so far, the cost to the Exchequer has been £56 million. That is an expensive and ineffective way of dealing with a problem that we cannot ignore. I am sure that there is no disputing the need for reforming legislation--I hope that there will be agreement on both sides of the House on that. The site provision is not keeping pace with the growth in the number of caravans. In their consultation paper, the Government state that there is no reason why the need should automatically be met by public provision. That is one part of the consultation paper which my Bill brings before the House. The Bill aims to open the way so that the provision of gipsy sites is no longer a local authority responsibility, but those who want to establish such sites-- whether gipsies or operators seeking to provide sites for gipsies--are able to use the established planning process to obtain consent for what they want to do, like any other citizen. Equally, local residents and others who are affected by the planning
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application have and can enjoy the full rights of objection and the full opportunities of appeal and public inquiry which the process gives.The Bill is not an attempt to deny gipsies their sites or to deprive them of the opportunity to establish themselves in permanent or semi-permanent encampments, but simply a recognition of the need to redress the balance by altering the answer to the problem. If people doubt whether gipsies or others are willing or able to respond to a new set of circumstances, I can tell them that there are private gipsy sites up and down the country which are operated perfectly successfully. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford will be able to say something about the willingness in the gipsy community to recognise that they can and should make provision for themselves. It would not be taking dignity away from them ; it might be giving them more dignity, if we gave them the opportunity to do just that.
Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher) : I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and neighbour. These are problems that we know about only too well in Surrey. Will he consider the difficulty in one part of my constituency, Elmbridge borough, where there is a private gipsy site? There are no planning problems, by and large, and no other local problems. The trouble is that the pitches on the private gipsy site, because of timing difficulties, were not counted in the borough's qualification for designation, and that has caused a great deal of local grievance.
Sir Cranley Onslow : I can well understand that that may be the more so when there is competition between districts and boroughs for designation under the Act. That leads to applications being handled rather hastily by local authorities in a county such as Surrey, where local authorities often seem anxious to pass the parcel from one to another by seeking designation and by unloading their problems on to their neigbours.
Mr. Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) : Does my right hon. Friend recall that, under the regime before the Caravan Sites Act 1968, it was quite difficult for gipsies to obtain planning permission? The ball was in their court to try to make provision for themselves. Does he think that, if the initiative were given back to them, there might have to be additional measures or guidance to ensure that we did not revert to the pre-1968 situation and that gipsies did not find it difficult, for all the reasons that we understand, to obtain planning permission?
Sir Cranley Onslow : That is a perfectly fair point. I am sure that the Minister recognises, as did the consultation paper, the need for planning guidance to prevent just such a situation from coming back to plague us. It will be necessary to give all planning applications full, fair and proper consideration. I do not believe that that is impossible. Some aspects of the present regime operate unfairly against those whose interests are affected. I am sure that my hon. Friends will want to point that out, based on their own experience. Many of the sites that are chosen as official gipsy sites are not chosen because they are good sites, on planning grounds ; they are merely chosen because they happen to be available. One hears people say, "There is an old tip over there ; it would make a good gipsy site." People feel some sympathy for that argument. I do not advocate
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taking any piece of wasteland, however unsuitable it may be, even if it is thought suitable for consent for planning a gipsy site. We must tackle the problem constructively. I hope that this meets the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst).We must also recognise that, in practice, enforcing the provisions of the 1968 Act against illegal encampments is difficult. That Act, too, needs reviewing. As matters stand, and as the consultation paper points out :
"A landowner whose land is not in a designated area and who is aggrieved by unlawful camping can only seek redress by initiating a civil action at his own expense. Landowners can apply to the court for an order of possession if they believe their property is unlawfully occupied, and special procedures are available through both the high court and the county court to assist landowners to obtain relief as quickly as possible. But many landowners may find"--
I think "may" is the wrong word ; many landowners will find-- "that these procedures consume time and money and, if the campers return later or simply camp again nearby, they may be ineffective." That is civil service talk for saying that the Act is not working. We all have experience of the difficulties and the distress that landowners may experience dealing with the problems with which they are suddenly confronted. They come under great pressure to protect not only their own interests but those of their neighbours by dealing with illegal camping. Such camping is a great nuisance in any given locality.
The consultation paper also points out that other pieces of legislation are in place--the Planning and Compensation Act 1991 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990--and that they, in theory, strengthen powers to act against illegal encampments. Both Acts, however, are relatively new and correspondingly untested. I do not know what the courts will make of them, but I believe that there is no alternative to giving greater powers to local authorities, landowners and the police to act swiftly and effectively against illegal encampments.
The Government set out in detail in the consultation paper their proposals to deal with illegal camping. I am glad to see that it notes :
"The Government considers that the existing powers provide insufficient means to respond effectively and speedily to unlawful on illegal occupation of land. A straightforward and speedy remedy is needed."
We all endorse that. The proposals speak for themselves, but it would be interesting if the Minister told us what reaction his consultation process has produced on the part of local authorities and police forces.
It was notable that, when setting out the alternatives, the Government invited views on whether local or highway authorities should be empowered by magistrates courts to seize caravans whose removal was obstructed or resisted, or which returned in breach of a prohibition order. The Minister may already have been told that that might cause more problems than it solved. If a caravan were seized and its owner were taken away, the other members of this family would remain, needing a roof over their heads, and the social problems of physical restraint applied to vehicles are not to be ignored--even if some of the vehicles are not particularly roadworthy. That is another feature of the problem with which many colleagues, I am sure, are familiar.
The consultation paper also states :
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"The number of caravans on private gipsy sites in England and Wales has increased by 114 per cent., from 1,400 in 1981 to nearly 3,000". That goes to show that the private sector solution is recognised, and that the gipsy community has responded to it. The privatisation of sites, would bring a solution nearer. I am happy to leave to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford to outline that to the House. I hope that he will have an early opportunity to contribute to our debate. It is a new and constructive idea, but it does not appear in the Government's consultation paper. I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend explain these worthy proposals in more detail.I do not speak for myself alone when I say that we look forward to seeing many of these ideas embodied in legislation as soon as may be. As the concluding paragraph of the paper states :
"the present arrangements are satisfactory neither for local authorities, for local communities, for landowners, nor for gipsies and travellers. The public resents the unlawful or illegal occupation of land, however it arises."
We must deal with that.
I spoke about how the present handling of applications for gipsy sites makes matters worse rather than better. The consultation paper says that gipsies enjoy a privileged position, but I do not think that that is how they would see it. An application for a gipsy site does not follow the route of an ordinary planning application. The privilege--if that is the right word--is enjoyed by the local authority, not by the potential occupants of the site that the local authority is obliged to provide. It is no exaggeration to say that, under the present Act, local council powers are undemocratic and outdated. I shall illustrate that with two examples from my constituency. In my constituency, there are two local authorities-- Woking borough council, the whole of which is covered by my constituency, and Guildford borough council, part of which is in my constituency. Neither of those authorities can yet apply for designation, because, in the view of those who settle these matters, they do not have the requisite number of pitches. Each has one 1968 site, and both sites are in my constituency.
Both those councils are under pressure, as are other councils in Surrey, following the issue of a direction under section 9 of the Act by the Secretary of State which requires the local authority, in terms, to get on with it or suffer the consequences, whatever they may be. For some time, pressure has been building as neighbouring boroughs in Surrey have managed to become qualified for designation, and that pressure has increased on Woking and Guildford.
To my knowledge, since their establishment, neither of the existing sites has caused any trouble. The occupants conduct themselves perfectly peaceably, and I get no complaints from their neighbours. The arrangement is perfectly satisfactory, probably because both sites are in fairly isolated areas, although that does not necessarily conform to the Department's current guidance. The search for new sites has caused the greatest concern among my constituents. There have been prolonged searches all over Guildford borough, which extends widely along the north downs, and there have been strong local objections to every identified site. Finally, about 18 months ago Surrey county council chose a piece of land that was to be left surplus by the construction of a major bypass in the Blackwater valley. That bypass was to go through an established mobile home settlement and would
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leave a slice of land enclosed by the new road and the Aldershot gasworks, some industrial development, and its Rushmoor council boundary. It was about as far from Surrey as one could get without actually going into Hampshire.The mobile home owners had been perfectly happy to live on the site, and some of them wanted to return when the road was completed. However, I do not think that any hon. Member would be happy if he were consigned to live there. There are strong objections to it on social grounds, and certainly from the neighbouring borough council and residents of my parish of Ash. It is not an ideal site, but from the council's point of view it has the great merit of being available. The council did not need a public inquiry process and, because it owned the land, it did not need a compulsory purchase order, and the Act enabled it to apply to the Secretary of State for a grant.
The local parish council and the mobile home residents were not consulted before the decision in a way that I or they would recognise as consultation, and the local community felt, with some justice, that over time they had played a full part in helping to assimilate a gipsy community into their area.
When I first came to the constituency it had a large gipsy settlement called Surrey Borders which it has assimilated, mainly into council housing. That part of Surrey has had a gipsy community for a long time, but that factor in itself made matters worse, because many people said, "We have played our part. Why should we share a burden that could well be taken elsewhere in the Guildford borough? The other site in the borough is only two or three miles away. Why pick on us?" Whatever one's view of the argument, I firmly hold the opinion that people who object should be entitled to have their objections heard and fully considered. The matter should not be rushed through.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) : Does my right hon. Friend agree that far too many local authorities are looking for as many sites as possible in order to become designated so as to ensure that other people have to pass on? Does he also agree that there is little or no consultation with gipsies to find an area to which they would want to go? Some of the chosen sites are totally inappropriate for gipsy needs, and the site finally designated is the last place that they would want to go.
Sir Cranley Onslow : I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and my example is a perfect demonstration of what he identifies. The way in which the issue was handled made communal relations in the parish much worse, because it stimulated an antagonism between the settled gipsies and the rest of the community that had not been a feature of local life for many years.
Mr. Ian Taylor : My right hon. Friend and I are neighbours and understand these problems only too well. Part of my constituency is also in the Guildford borough. and some of the alternative sites that he describes were in my constituency. The difficulty is that two communities in my constituency were concerned that they were on the list, and that sets one community in a borough against another. That is a matter of great local concern, which cannot properly be solved by the current legislation.
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Sir Cranley Onslow : I agree with my hon. Friend. Without going more deeply into the matter, I can say that politics also comes into it. Often, and with some justice, there is a feeling that decisions about the location of gipsy sites are taken to plant a problem in an area that is not necessarily represented by a member of the majority party on the borough council, if I may put it delicately. I think that my hon. Friend recognises what I am talking about.
None of my constituents in Ash have any confidence in the workings of the 1968 Act, and I do not blame them. In the other part of my constituency in, the community of Knaphill in Woking borough, the situation is every bit as unsatisfactory. The pressures there have been similar, but there is one difference--whereas Guildford borough council ultimately agreed to go along with the chosen site at Ash bridge, Woking borough council vehemently disagreed and lodged a section 8 objection to the application, which has been forwarded by Surrey county council to the Secretary of State, for the establishment of a gipsy site on land at Barrs lane, Knaphill. I do not expect any hon. Member to know Barrs lane. It is a pleasant piece of open woodland which has been enjoyed by the local community as an extension to the adjoining recreation area for many years. That is one of many reasons why there is particular opposition to the establishment of a gipsy encampment.
That site was first considered because it was thought to be available. It was in the ownership of a property development company that had failed to secure planning permission to build houses there--and quite right, too--and which thought that it could solve its problem by offering the land to Surrey county council on a free sale, so that it might then be able to buy it and use its ownership to establish a gipsy site. Again, that would have circumvented the public inquiry process that one would otherwise expect. That is another example of the privileged position enjoyed by a county council, which acts to the detriment of the communities that the local authority is supposed to represent.
I am conscious that this is a long story, and that I will have to condense it. I pay tribute to the local community for its responsible attitude in getting together and making its objections. The Knaphill action group is lively, and is 100 per cent. representative of the local community. It has conducted a skilful, persistent and, so far, successful campaign to ensure that the processes for which the present law provides--inadequate though they are--are fully used. Thanks to the action group's representations, the site was eventually dropped from the short list. The local residents were so encouraged by that that they banded together to buy the land from the property company's receivers, so that they could dedicate it to the Woodland Trust and thus ensure that it would be enjoyed in perpetuity as a local amenity. That demonstrates the community's strength of feeling about the Barrs lane woodland.
Unfortunately, in circumstances not wholly clear to me, the site was returned to Surrey county council's short list without much notice and with virtually no discussion, and chosen as the preferred second site in Woking borough. It would be hard to exaggerate the strength of local disquiet at those events.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows of my strong belief that there should be a public inquiry, and the inspector ought to conclude that the site is wholly unsuitable for a
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gipsy caravan encampment on general grounds of public amenity. The fact that the site is available has no bearing on its merits, but that is the way in which the 1968 Act works. I hope that those two examples show what is wrong with the Act, and that my hon. Friend the Minister will say that he is taking action in those cases that will in effect restore the balance of democratic decision-making. The present position is intolerable. Repeated incursions by parties of travelling gipsies on to roadside verges or other areas of accessible open land--car parks, sites earmarked for redevelopment, public parks, and so on is intolerable and must not be allowed to continue. The theoretical rights of removal from public or private land should not blind us to the fact that they are ineffective, expensive, and cumbersome and that something more effective is needed. There is great public anger in areas where incursions occur about the damage they cause and the nuisance they provoke--not to mention the trouble and expense of securing eviction and restoring the land to its former condition.The 1968 Act, as it currently operates, leaves behind a mess. It is time that that mess was cleared up, and I am glad to give Parliament a opportunity to start doing so today.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : I call Mr. Tony Baldry.
10.14 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry) : rose --
Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is usual and customary for the House to hear speakers from both sides of the House, and then for the Minister to intervene later. It is unfortunate that the Minister, instead of listening to the various points that are to be made, is intervening at this early stage.
Madam Deputy Speaker : It is for the Minister to choose when he wants to intervene, and it is for the occupant of the Chair to decide whether or not the Minister has caught their eye.
Mr. Baldry : It may be helpful to the House for me to intervene at this stage to outline the Government's approach to the Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Sir C. Onslow), and the reform of the Caravan Sites Act 1968 more generally. The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) can be assured that I will listen to everything that every right hon. and hon. Member says. I hope that he, likewise, will be present throughout the debate to hear everything that my right hon. and hon. Friends have to say. It is noteworthy that, on such an important matter, the Opposition Benches are marked by the scarcity of occupants.
I welcome also the involvement of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) in this issue. This Bill takes forward initiatives originally taken in my hon. Friend's ten-minute Bill of last November.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on having brought forward this measure. The issues that it addresses are of concern not only to his constituents but to many others. The Government will not oppose the Bill, although clearly we shall need to examine closely in Committee the detail of its provisions.
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The Caravan Sites Act 1968 was introduced 25 years ago with all-party support. It was a private Member's Bill introduced by the then Eric Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, with the support of the then Labour Government and the Conservative Opposition. It sought to respond to the need to provide sites for gipsies and to tackle the problem of illegal camping. The Act defines gipsies as"persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin, but does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen"--
and so on. Not all gipsies are travellers, and not all travellers are gipsies.
Parliament was concerned with the people who had and have a recognisable identity in the social history of this country, who were of a nomadic habit of life, and who either resided in a particular area as their more or less permanent residence or regularly resorted to an area during the year for a particular purpose--such as those who went hop-picking in Kent or strawberry-picking in Somerset in the appropriate season. Before 1968, their rights, other than when moving from place to place, were questionable, and provision for them was negligible.
Lord Avebury's approach was straightforward. He estimated that there were 3,500 gipsy families in England and Wales. In the event, that figure appears to have been an underestimate, but it was clearly accepted by Lord Avebury and the Government as reliable at the time. The intention was that each local authority should make a fair provision of gipsy sites reflecting the number of gipsies resorting to that area. Once such provision had been made, the local authority concerned could apply for designation--and once it was designated, it could take action against unauthorised camping by gipsies in its area, which became an offence. A magistrate could, on the complaint of any designated local authority, authorise that authority to take necessary steps to remove caravans. If a local authority failed to make proper provision of sites for gipsies in its area, the Secretary of State could issue a direction to that authority requiring it to provide an appropriate number of sites.
The Act was thus said to contain a carrot and a stick. The carrot was that authorities that made reasonable provision could become designated and thus have greater power to deal with unlawful camping, and the stick was that any authority that dragged its feed could have a direction issued to it by the Secretary of State.
As will be gathered from a reading of the report of the Bill's Second Reading, it was introduced on the basis of at least three rather important premises. First, it was assumed that the travelling gipsy population was unlikely to grow, as more and more gipsies moved of their own accord into more settled accommodation. The Minister, Arthur Skeffington, said at the time :
"with this legislation and the provision of permanent camps, the task of integration should become much easier, particularly for the children of gipsies."
Secondly, it was assumed that local authorities would be keen to make suitable provision, because that would enable them to achieve designation and thus be able more easily to deal with unlawful camping in their areas. The third premise was that the exercise could all be achieved by authorities in a cost-neutral way, in that the money that they spent in providing pitches could be recouped in rate and rent receipts. Lord Avebury said :
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"this will not constitute a new burden on the rates since a great deal will be recovered in the charges made for the use of facilities."--[ Official Report, 1 March 1968 ; Vol. 759, c. 1980, 1929.]As my right hon. Friend the Member for Woking has observed, all those premises have proved wrong. Since 1968, the gipsy population has grown : In January last year, there were some 13,000 gipsy caravans in England.
Mr. John Marshall : Does my hon. Friend agree that many of those so- called gipsies are not gipsies at all, but ne'er-do-wells who are anxious to move from one site to another, to avoid paying their community charge, to avoid sending their children to school and to live off social security? To call them gipsies is to misuse the term.
Mr. Baldry : I was going on to say that the 13,000 figure excludes nearly all those who are more commonly known as new age travellers. They do not fall within the statutory definition set out in the Caravan Sites Act. My hon. Friend is right : many other people are causing concern, but are not included in the statutory definition of a gipsy.
As for the second premise, depite the passage of a quarter of a century, only 38 per cent. of local authorities in England have made sufficient provision to enable them to become designated.
Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : I agree with that figure of 38 per cent. Earlier, the Minister referred to the "carrot and stick" approach. How many times since the passage of the 1968 Act has the Department used the stick?
Mr. Baldry : I shall come to that shortly.
Many local authorities seem to have been incapable of identifying suitable sites in their areas, agreeing on acceptable sites or coping with local controversy over any proposed sites. My right hon. Friend's description of some of the difficulties that he has experienced in his constituency is evidence of that. The Secretary of State has now issued directions to three local authorities--Avon, Hertfordshire and Surrey. Indeed, so slow was the provision of sites by local authorities that the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980 gave powers to the Secretary of State to make 100 per cent. grants to local authorities for the costs of site provision, thus confounding the third premise on which this legislation was based--that it would not result in greater public spending. So far, £56 million has been spent direct by the Exchequer on funding gipsy site provision, and as a result there are now around 6, 000 caravans on public gipsy sites. I can think of no comparable 100 per cent. open-ended, demand-led grant made available by my Department, or indeed by any other Department. Despite all that, there are still some 4,300 gipsy caravans parked illegally in England, and the number is growing.
The intention behind the original Caravan Sites Act was commendable. Introducing his Bill, Lord Avebury said that it would "help local authorities properly to control the unauthorised use of land.
It will give relief to quiet neighbourhoods and beautiful countryside which have suffered from invasions of the travelling people while at the same time it will give those travelling people a recognised place in the community."--[ Official Report, 1 March 1968 ; Vol 759, c. 1930-31.]
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We have no quarrel with those aspirations, which had the support of the entire House at the time. Sadly, however, the Caravan Sites Act has failed to deliver as envisaged. Action is now needed, and my right hon. Friend's Bill is a useful step in the right direction.Mr. Ian Taylor : The Minister mentioned the issue of an order against Surrey. My right hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Sir C. Onslow) and I are particularly interested in that. Does my hon. Friend recognise that, despite the availability of 100 per cent. grants, the difficulty lies in identifying the permanent site in a way that the local population can accept? That is a matter of grave concern. Although the Minister clearly has a duty to implement the terms of the 1968 Act, there is great local resentment at the insistence that such a requirement should be imposed local communities.
Mr. Baldry : I understand my hon. Friend's point, which illustrates the concern felt about the identification of suitable sites. That has been part of the problem experienced by many local authorities over the past quarter of a century as they have tried to provide sites in the way envisaged in the 1968 Act. As I have said, the premises on which the Act was based have all clearly failed : that is why action is now needed.
Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest) : One of the principal problems of the 1968 Act was the fact that it diffused responsibility for site provision between district council, county council and, to a certain extent, central Government. It was also seen as unfair by many communities- -particularly my community in Wyre Forest--because the more sites the council provided, the more it was expected to provide. A honey-pot effect was produced : as an area became known as a place where gipsies were accommodated, more came, and more was expected by both county and district councils in regard to determining designation by central Government.
Mr. Baldry : I am sure that all hon. Members accept that the original Bill was presented with all-party support and the best of intentions. For reasons that I have given, which I expect to be reinforced repeatedly today, the premises on which it was based have all been found wanting and, given the experience of the past quarter of a century, the legislation needs to be reformed and action needs to be taken.
We have made it clear that people who wish to adopt a nomadic existence should be free to do so, provided that they live within the law in the same way as their fellow citizens. We have no quarrel with people pursuing a nomadic life style, provided that they do not expect either a privileged position under the law or entitlement to more support from the taxpayer than is available to those who choose a more settled existence.
We believe that gipsies and travellers, like other citizens, should seek to provide their own accommodation, seeking planning permission where necessary like everyone else. Of course, the vast majority of gipsies have already gone a considerable way towards making their own provision. They have almost always bought their own caravans and trailers and, in those circumstances, it does not seem unreasonable that more gipsies should make a provision for their pitches. Three thousand caravans were accommodated on private pitches in England in January 1992.
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