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Traveller Law Reform

12.31 pm

Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to reform the law in England and Wales as it applies to gypsies and travellers.

Last July, the House allowed me to introduce the Bill that I wish to reintroduce today. Since then, the response that I have received has strengthened my conviction that it represents the right approach to resolve the problems that continue to be experienced in many hon. Members' constituencies because of unauthorised encampments of travellers and the antisocial behaviour that can occur when large groups of travellers congregate. My Bill would establish, for the first time in a legal framework, the right of gypsies and travellers to lead a nomadic way of life. It would also establish the responsibilities and obligations that they owe to others when exercising that right.

Since I introduced my Bill, I acknowledge that the Government have responded to the issue of travellers in several ways. However, they have not yet got to grips with the central issue: ensuring that sufficient sites for travellers are established to avoid the use of unauthorised sites. That is also the aim of my Bill.

Let me remind the House where I am coming from. Over Christmas 2001 and the new year, the national media gave widespread coverage to the unauthorised occupation of Kings park, a public park in my constituency, by a large group of travellers—800 people of all ages in some 200 vehicles and caravans. They said that they intended to stay throughout the entire holiday period, and so they did, despite a county order for their eviction and the requisite notices that were served. I shall not dwell on the effect that the travellers' presence had on the residential neighbourhood during that period—it is on the record—save to say that the experience cost the local community more than £100,000 and affected it in many ways that my constituents never want repeated.

The experience happened at the end of a year in which there was the largest ever number of unauthorised encampments on public parks and open spaces in our borough of Bournemouth. Such encampments continue regularly; Kings park was occupied on a much smaller scale just before Easter, despite measures that had been taken to avoid that happening.

Parliamentary initiatives that many hon. Members continue to take to raise the issue show just how widespread the problem of travellers' unauthorised encampments is. More of us tabled questions on the subject last year than ever before, and several Adjournment debates and ten-minute Bills have called for local authority and police powers to be strengthened to allow travellers to be evicted more effectively and to tackle antisocial behaviour.

In January, my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) introduced a Bill to address another subject related to travellers: those who buy designated green belt land to develop without planning permission. Six weeks ago, the Minister responsible for the issue, the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr.

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McNulty), told the local government conference on gypsies and travellers of the initiatives that the Government have recently taken: more cash for the gypsy sites refurbishment grant; a consultation paper on operational guidance on managing unauthorised encampments; and research commissioned from the university of Birmingham on the provision of sites—the report is expected next month—which is in addition to a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research on unauthorised sites.

None of those initiatives will achieve what I believe is necessary—the establishment of the rights and responsibilities of gypsies and travellers within the law. Nor will any of the Government's proposals to date help local authorities such as mine in Bournemouth, which has run out of land to develop, including sites for travellers, and is rightly protecting its public parks and what is left of its green belt to prevent further urban sprawl. For such authorities, the Government propose no new powers to deal with the problem of unauthorised encampments. The fact is that section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 cannot be used when there are no alternative sites; nor does the Government's new draft housing Bill reflect their proposals for sustainable communities that should apply to travellers. Indeed, it appears that gypsy and traveller organisations were not even consulted on the Bill.

My Bill responds to all those issues. It is based on the work of the Cardiff law school and is the culmination of four years' consultation between gypsies and other travellers' organisations, statutory and voluntary bodies such as the police and local authorities, and lawyers and planners who face the problems that arise. Its main provision, in clause 1, is the establishment of a gypsy and traveller accommodation commission, with the principal task of ensuring that there is adequate accommodation for gypsies and travellers in England and Wales. It would be representative of the communities concerned as well as of interested public bodies, local authority and voluntary organisations. It would be expected to respond to problems of antisocial behaviour and unauthorised encampments, such as we have experienced in Bournemouth.

The Bill would require local authorities to facilitate the provision of sites for gypsies and travellers. The Housing Corporation would be empowered to make grants to registered social landlords to enable them to provide and manage such sites. Where, as in Bournemouth, there are no longer any appropriate sites to develop, the commission would explore appropriate sites with and in neighbouring authorities to serve the entire area. The new powers provided to the police to deal with unauthorised encampments could then be applied to all the local authorities in that area, which is not what the Government propose today.

The Bill would require local education authorities to develop strategic programmes to improve the educational attainment of gypsies and travellers and their children. It would also clarify the scope of the Race Relations Act 1976 by acknowledging that Irish travellers constitute a racial group, as do Scottish and Welsh gypsy traveller communities. It would also contain other appropriate provisions.

I submit that my Bill represents a carefully considered approach that provides equality of opportunity and equal access to civic life and social services for travellers

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and gypsies. It acknowledges that the threat of continuous eviction does nothing for the health and welfare of families, or for the education of children; that only 2 per cent. of travellers live to see the age of 65; and that the traveller infant mortality rate is nearly three times the national average. It recognises that where local authorities have offered suitable land sites, good relations have developed and school attendance and health have improved. A schedule to the Bill would propose a code of conduct for travellers, based on best practice and in consultation with local authorities and traveller groups.

The Bill responds to the recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed last year for member states to resolve the legal status of gypsies and travellers. The alternative is to continue to rely on laws to prevent unauthorised encampments, which the police and local authorities are at their wits' end trying to enact. I commend my Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Atkinson, Mr. Terry Davis, Mrs. Annette Brooke, Mr. John Butterfill, Mr. John Battle, Mr. Henry Bellingham, Nick Harvey, Julie Morgan, Michael Fabricant, Andrew Mackinlay, Mr. John Randall and Mr. Kevin McNamara.

Traveller Law Reform

Mr. David Atkinson accordingly presented a Bill to reform the law in England and Wales as it applies to gypsies and travellers: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 20 June, and to be printed [Bill 102].

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the main business, I inform the House that there is a limit of eight minutes on Back-Bench Members' speeches. That is because there are so many hon. Members who wish to speak. It is therefore not a day for hon. Members to come to the Chair to ask where they are placed on the list.

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Orders of the Day

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill

[Relevant document: The Second Report from the Health Committee, Session 2002–03, on Foundation Trusts, HC 395.]

Order for Second Reading read.

12.41 pm

The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Speaker: I should inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe).

Mr. Milburn: Three years ago we set out our policy on the health service in our 10-year national health service plan. Last April, following the Budget of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I published in the House a follow-up Command Paper, entitled "Delivering the NHS Plan". The Bill implements those plans.

Underpinning the Bill is this diagnosis: the principles of the NHS are right: service is free at the point of use, based on the scale of patients' need, not the size of their wallets. Those are principles to which at least we on the Government Benches hold firm.

Today's health service, however, is the product of decades of under-resourcing. It is the product also of the age in which it was born. If it is to keep pace with demographic change, and indeed with social change, it too must change. The NHS plan sets out the investment and the reforms that are needed to give patients the modern responsive services that they rightly expect. These are clear national standards, devolution of resources, choice for patients and flexibility for staff. It is these reforms that the Bill takes forward.

The Bill strengthens national inspection and the NHS complaints procedure. It modernises NHS dentistry and the welfare food scheme. Should general practitioners vote for a new contract in a ballot, the Bill will legislate for it. The Bill puts power and resources in the hands of local staff and local communities by strengthening primary care trusts and creating NHS foundation trusts. These reforms match the resources that are now going into the NHS and that are bringing about improvements for patients.

Our national health service is the fastest growing health service of any major country in Europe. While in the year before we came to office the NHS budget fell in real terms, by 2008 its budget will have doubled in real terms. That is the difference between a Labour party that is committed to building up the NHS and a Conservative party that is always committed to cutting it back. The hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) shakes his head, but the situation could not be clearer. The Conservative party's policy document—hideously misnamed "Leadership with a Purpose"—was published at last year's Tory party conference. It boasted:

"Conservatives do not support the tax and spending increases the Government has announced."

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Not only do they not agree with that extra spending, they voted against it when they had the opportunity to do so. They now plan to cut that spending by 20 per cent. across the board. That is the Conservative policy for the health service. Members of the Conservative party must be the only people who believe that we can get more out of the health service by putting less in.

The fact that resources are rising in the national health service means that staff numbers are rising too. Nurse numbers are up by 50,000 and vacancy rates are down. For the first time in decades, general and acute beds in hospitals are now growing in number. Waiting lists and waiting times are both falling. That is why the recent report from the independent Modernisation Board rightly argued that the NHS is turning the corner.

This is not the time to cut back the NHS. It is the time to continue to invest in the NHS, and it is also the time to keep pace on reform. The question is how best to go about it. Here again, there is a choice between those of us who believe in reforming the NHS and others who believe that the NHS should now be abandoned. The Bill chooses the former over the latter.

Like all my right hon. and hon. Friends, I stand foursquare behind the principles of the national health service. I do so for the following reasons. With the NHS, we all share in the security—Nye Bevan called it the serenity—of knowing that we all pay in when we can so that we can all take out when we need to, the health of each of us depending on the contribution of all of us. Those were the ideals that inspired the generation of Bevan and Beveridge and they remain our inspiration today. Indeed, in many respects, the case for the national health service, its system of funding and values is stronger today than it has ever been. Now more than ever, we live in a world where health care can do more, but costs more. Since none of us knows when we will fall ill, how long it will last or how much it will cost, having a national health service that pools risk because it is funded through general taxation and is free at the point of use, based on need not ability to pay, is the right way forward for our country. That is the Labour principle.

There is another principle of course. It was spelt out by the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) at the Conservative spring conference just a few weeks ago. It is the principle that the patient pays. As he put it himself, his party plans to develop

"the pay-as-you-go market where patients pay for a single procedure or item of care."

There has been much talk in relation to the Bill of two-tier care. That Conservative policy is two-tier care, and would provide a fast track to treatment for those who can afford to pay and a slower service for those who cannot. Charging for health care is a Conservative policy—it is not a Labour policy. I can tell the House that not one clause of the Bill is about introducing Tory charges. Every clause is about maintaining the NHS as a universal service, free at the point of use and based on need, not ability to pay.

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