| Anti-social Behaviour Bill
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Matthew Green: Before I discuss the reasons why I cannot support the amendments, I agree that there is a problem. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the matter, because on some occasions there seems to be no possibility for action. However, he casts his net too wide in his attempt to find a solution to the problem. If he reads his amendment carefully, he will realise that it may have unforeseen consequences. By removing the wording about vehicles, for example, and by rewording the first section, he would allow a police officer to remove wild campers, by which I mean people who are camping overnight—[Interruption.] I will clarify the term. Wild campers are people who, for example, might camp on a mountain but who do not use a public campsite. I have done it myself—technically it is trespassing, but it is a widespread practice and one that does not cause problems for anyone. There may not be many police on a mountain, but the way in which the hon. Gentleman has framed the amendment would mean that a police officer had the power to make two people in a tent move it off the site, and would potentially render them liable to imprisonment if they happened to leave some litter behind. I am sure that that was not the hon. Gentleman's intention. Mr. Paice: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman supports what I said. I am saying that if people camp on land and leave a pile of litter, they should be prosecuted. Litter is a visual affront, and leaving it behind in any other context would be an offence, so it is right that they should be required to remove it. Column Number: 421 The hon. Gentleman slightly misinterprets my amendment. Casual campers, or two people in a tent, whatever their purpose might be, will not cause problems of the sort that I have described. However, I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that the new clause specifies that reasonable steps must
and that then he may—not he shall—direct them to leave. It is clear that the police officer will retain the discretion. If he thinks that the occupier is being unreasonable in saying to— The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is beginning to move from an intervention into a speech.
11 amMatthew Green: I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. However, I still believe that he is attempting to make the power too wide. He said that he might not have the wording exactly right. I am pointing out a potential pitfall that might occur if the legislation is widened, whatever the good intent might be. New clause 11 uses the term ''misuse''. I understand that the hon. Gentleman sees the new clause as dealing with a particular problem. However, we have to consider whether the law will be used in circumstances other than that for which it has been proposed. The new clause would give powers to a local authority to evict somebody who was deliberately misusing or despoiling land, even if that person owned the land. A couple of such cases have occurred in my constituency. They were difficult, but they have been resolved. They both concerned farmers who had deposited large amounts of more than redundant, broken, bits of machinery on their own land next to the public road. Eventually, because of complaints, the local authority took action. After some time and several court actions, both sites were cleared up, using existing legislation. The problem with this legislation is that a local authority could use it to evict those owners from their land. I realise what the hon. Gentleman is trying to do, but I caution him about how wide he is making the legislation. He might have one purpose in mind, but it could be used in circumstances for which he does not intend it. Mr. Randall: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman. I do not say that the wording of the new clause is perfect, but the problem is with the matter of excuses, which I think he recognises. Are the Liberal Democrats in favour of framing more effective measures for removing travellers from unauthorised encampments? Matthew Green: We would want to be able to be sure that the law could be used. The Gentleman has made a good point in saying that there are occasions when the existing law needs to be enforced but is not being used. I understand his desire to try to use the existing law. That is a different matter from widening the scope of the law. I am trying to urge caution about widening the law, rather than about removing hurdles to the use of existing legislation. The hon. Gentleman has made a stab at removing the hurdles, but in the new clause he has widened the legislation beyond the Column Number: 422 purpose that he intends it to serve. I cannot support the new clauses because they have the potential to draw in much wider issues.Several hon. Members rose—
The Chairman: The hon. Gentleman's name is on the tip of my tongue. Mr. Hawkins: And you have been a colleague of mine for 11 years, Mr. Cran. [Interruption.] Demob happy or what? The Chairman: I call Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins: As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire rightly said, with the new clauses we are aiming at slightly different aspects of an undoubted problem, but if I may, I shall incorporate into my speech every word that he said. All of us, particularly those who represent rural or semi-rural constituencies, which includes me, have seen the appalling amount of waste that is left behind by travellers who are trespassers. My hon. Friend's aim relates to travellers who are trespassers, whereas my new clause 11 is intended to cover the situation in which such abuses have been caused even by owners of the land. The hon. Member for Ludlow rightly pointed that out, but he did so in an ''on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that'' speech, which is typical of the Liberal Democrats. They are never prepared to address the extent of the abuses. There is a particular constituency reason why I raise this point. Similar issues have arisen in other constituencies and I hope that other members of the Committee, because they may face exactly the same problem that my constituency has had, will take note of this. In new clause 11, I have tried to deal with a relatively recent aspect of the problem. We now have the situation in this country—this has happened not only in my constituency—in which some travellers have become very wealthy. They have probably become wealthy because they operate in the black economy in very many cases and do not pay tax. They are quite often referred to as ''the boys from the black stuff''. They go round many houses in my constituency asking, ''Can we tarmac your drive?'' Anyone who is unwise enough to let them in usually has a lousy job done and is hugely overcharged. If they decline to pay, and particularly if they are elderly and vulnerable, heavies from the traveller community come and threaten them. We all know that that goes on. As a result of such activities, some travellers become wealthy. In a village called Chobham in my constituency, unscrupulous travellers have bought a field. It is known as field 0081—that is its numbering on the land plan—and is at a place called Pennypot lane. Those travellers have dumped thousands of tonnes of hard-core—I do not exaggerate—on a field that is on a flood plain. They have moved lots of tarmac and asphalt on top of the hard-core, and lots of caravans on to that. Even if owners of land misuse it in that overt way, the current law does not give local authorities or, indeed, anyone else the same powers to deal with them as the previous Conservative Government did in relation to trespassers in the Criminal Justice and Column Number: 423 Public Order Act 1994. I was proud to serve on that Committee. It was one of the most important pieces of legislation that we introduced in my time in government; it was a very big Bill. I was responsible for dealing with it, with the help of my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), who was then a Home Office Minister of State and lead for the Government on the Committee.We toughened up the powers, and there was a lot of support from Labour members of the Committee, who were in opposition, because we all, as far as the main parties were concerned, wanted to toughen up the law against travellers. In the early 1990s, we had started to see the problem of illegal raves and we had certainly seen huge problems with travellers who were trespassers. However, I do not think that any of us anticipated back in 1994 that we would have the wholly new problem of wealthy travellers buying land and misusing it. I make no apology for saying what new clause 11 is intended to do and I do not think that there would be unintended consequences. Even if people own land, I want the law to be able to deal with them if they deliberately misuse it, for example, by wrecking the drainage of an area by laying thousands of tonnes of hard-core and asphalt on a flood plain, and putting caravans on top. I want the Committee to understand how frustrating it has been for all the law-abiding residents of Chobham, and for the chief executive, senior officers and councillors on Surrey Heath borough council. They have tried to use the courts wherever possible. They have tried to get round the problem that the travellers are now the legal owners of the field by using the local authority's compulsory purchase powers. Once they compulsorily purchase the field, it will return to the ownership of the local authority, which will be able to evict the travellers, who will by then be trespassers. However, in the meantime, there is continuing damage to the drainage. Chobham has suffered extensively from flooding in the past and the position will become worse. Earlier, in a brief response to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, I said that he was not helping his case by referring to the Environment Agency. I shall explain why. There is huge anger—I cannot stress it too strongly—in my constituency, up to and including the leader of the council and the chief executive, a senior and experienced local government officer, with the Environment Agency, because although the Environment Agency originally said, ''Oh dear, this is building on a flood plain'', it has failed to do anything about it. The councillors for the ward concerned and the residents have found out that the man who was sent by the Environment Agency immediately went native and started siding with the travellers. I have had some very acrimonious correspondence, as has the chief executive of the local authority, with the chief executive of the Environment Agency. I make no apology for putting that on the record. An extraordinary thing has Column Number: 424 happened. The chief executive of the Environment Agency, as she now is, was originally appointed as a Labour peer. Subsequently, when she changed jobs, it was felt that it would be wrong for her to continue to be a Labour peer, so she became a cross-Bench peer. When I wrote to her and suggested that she was too busy pursuing her duties supporting the Government to do the Environment Agency job properly, she wrote back and said that I was wrong: she spends hardly any time in the House of Lords but is working full-time as chief executive of the Environment Agency.Two points immediately occurred to me. First, what is she doing in the upper House of this place if she is writing to me, a Member of Parliament, to say that she is not going to do her job? Secondly, what were the Government doing appointing this person to be a peer? I want those points on the record because they have caused huge anger in my constituency. When that sort of thing is put in writing to me and made clear to the chief executive of my local authority, I am not surprised that local people are angry. They look to senior people in a body that exists to protect the environment and to address the concerns of innocent, law-abiding landowners and house owners in Chobham about flooding, and they see that that work is not being done. There is also concern about the fact that the travellers own the land and the courts are failing to help the local authority do something about it. I stress the sequence of events. The local authority, Surrey Heath borough council, recognising the serious extent of the problem, sought—as any responsible authority would—an injunction. Having managed to get one on Wednesday 12 February 2003 against some named occupants of field 0081 in Pennypot Lane, Chobham, it issued proceedings in the High Court for an application for committal of some of the named people—I shall not trouble the Committee with all the names—as a result of the defendants' being in contempt of the court order made on 12 February. The application sought an order that the defendants be committed to prison or such other order as the court may think just to punish them for their contempt—that is, the continuing dumping of thousands of tons of hard core. A few weeks ago I spoke to somebody who has been working at the neighbouring farm. To give the Committee an idea of the scale of the problem, he said that lorries were arriving every 15 minutes and dumping more hard core. Naturally, I have been to see the field. The chief executive of Surrey Heath borough council, Mr. Barry Catchpole said:
of the planning regulations—
The county council, the borough council, the parish council in Chobham and I, as Member of Parliament, all hoped that that would happen. On Friday 2 May, Mr. Justice Holland said that the injunction was being ''flagrantly ignored'' and that he Column Number: 425 would commit to prison any of the named respondents in the application if any further breaches occurred before the hearing. At that time, the local authority councillors and officers and I were confident that something would finally happen.
11.15 amHowever, on Monday 19 May, despite three months' further evidence of the flagrant breaches of the injunction granted in February, the court decided not to take any notice of any of the breaches, simply added to the injunction, which remains in place, 24 other named occupiers of the site, adjourned the contempt hearing indefinitely and took no action. Not surprisingly, the borough council's formal statement said:
My close friend and colleague, borough councillor Stuart Stevenson, who represents the neighbouring ward of Bisley, is the chairman of the borough council's planning applications committee. He said:
apparently—
and the rest of Chobham and the local authority.
That refers to the fact that the local authority was going to try to use compulsory purchase measures, which is a long and slow process, as hon. Members who have dealt with such matters know. I finished the story so that all members of the Committee could understand the seriousness of the problem and appreciate why new clause 11 or, if its wording is not quite right, something similar is needed to deal with property owners in these circumstances. It may be a rare situation, but it will become more common as travellers profit from the black economy. If what they do works in Chobham, they will try it everywhere and get round the laws against trespassers on land by buying property and despoiling the land by building on flood plains and so on.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 22 May 2003 |
