---

Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) and to the Minister for allowing me to participate in this debate. Fortunately, we have some extra time, so it is possible for me to speak. I say Minister, but I think that the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark) remains, in fact, a Whip—although Whips are Ministers, of course. Perhaps this debate is the result of a conspiracy between the three of us to give ourselves the opportunity to make a contribution to the House—something that Whips are sometimes not able to do easily.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he expressed his concerns. I think that he struck precisely the right note, and I was encouraged to see the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner) nodding frequently in response. The topic commands strong consensus among those who have experienced the problems that my hon. Friend outlined so clearly.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir Michael Spicer) and I had a most constructive and productive meeting with the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who is currently on maternity leave—I understand that she is now a mother again, which I am delighted to hear. We were most encouraged by her attitude and the Government's attitude as it was reflected during that meeting. The Government are to be congratulated on the way in which their thinking is developing.

In my remarks, I shall refer to specific sites in my constituency. As the Minister did not know that I would speak in the debate, I do not expect him to respond to those site-specific points. In addition, some of the cases in question are being considered by the Minister for Housing and Planning in his quasi-judicial role, so it would be improper of the Government to comment. I fully understand and accept the limitations on what can be said today.

Travellers have rights—rights that must be respected. We in Worcestershire owe a great debt to the travelling community. Down the years, without the Travellers, the growers of the vale of Evesham would have found their lives extremely difficult. Travellers have served this country well and we have a duty to repay them for some of the things that they have done for us in the past. It is important to understand that context.

However, something might be changing within the travelling community. Part-time seasonal jobs are no longer available in the vale of Evesham as once they
 
16 Sept 2004 : Column 1540
 
were. The jobs are becoming all-year-round jobs and those who service them now are typically members of ethnic minorities, asylum seekers and other immigrants who work—some short term, some long term—not only in the fields when produce is growing, but in the packhouses during the winter when produce is imported from other countries to provide a continuous flow of product to the supermarkets, which sadly no longer respect seasonality. I think that it is a great loss to British society that we no longer celebrate the seasons and that, instead, foods are available all year round.

Many of the jobs are now permanent. As a result, Travellers might be finding that there are fewer seasonal jobs to do and that their need to travel is decreasing. It is important to make a distinction between sites provided for Travellers, and sites provided for Travellers who wish to settle. I believe that neither planning law nor human rights legislation as it is interpreted by the courts takes sufficient account of the phenomenon that I have described. A change is taking place that planning law must address.

I am delighted by the spirit of co-operation that characterises debate on the future of planning law and Travellers. Next week in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire, in the Pershore headquarters of Wychavon district council, which serves my constituency, there is to be a meeting between all the parish councils of Wychavon and the residents of Cottenham. The latter have, in many senses, been leading the debate on the future of planning law and the problems associated with unauthorised encampments. The meeting will explore, through an honest and friendly dialogue, how improvements can be made.

We need a better balance. In my constituency, the permanent settled residents—and sometimes the permanent settled Travellers—voice concern to me that, because of the way in which the planning system is operating, the new people are getting effective rights that they themselves would be denied. That is the problem that must be addressed by planning law.

I shall explain some of the issues confronting us. At the village of Cleeve Prior in my constituency there has been a heavy concentration of Travellers' sites down the years, and on most of them permanent settled accommodation has been erected.

It being Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]

Mr. Luff: Across the border in Warwickshire sites have been closed, and Travellers have moved to Cleeve Prior. The failure to establish a national strategy on site provision is part of the problem. Historically, Worcester city and Wychavon district councils, two of the few councils to be given designated status under the Caravan Sites Act 1968, have established a large number of sites for the travelling community, unlike many surrounding districts in Worcestershire and neighbouring counties. That generosity has made those sites a honeypot, attracting people to an area that has already done a great deal to meet its obligation to the travelling community. Some time ago, there was a dramatic development at Wyre Piddle analogous to the
 
16 Sept 2004 : Column 1541
 
phenomena described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds—the tarmackers came and the caravans were on site before people knew what had happened. A small village has grown up beside the Wyre Piddle bypass, which is a sensitive issue currently under consideration by the Minister. The sheer visibility of the settlement has caused considerable concern, and it is unthinkable that anyone would ever have received permission to build a dwelling there. The courts, however, have taken an extraordinarily lenient view of that development, where there was a careful conspiracy to build, for reasons to do with the misunderstanding of the nature of Travellers, which I discussed earlier. I hope that the Minister makes the right decision.

Mr. Olner: It took three years to clear a site in Nuneaton and complete the process that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. We had to go through the planning laws and other legislation, an appeal and an inquiry before achieving enforcement and eviction. That lengthy process is frustrating for good constituents in many areas and is expensive for local authorities. Court costs alone were more than £150,000 for my local authority, which also had to bear the cost of clearing the site and so on. There is a failure in the planning system, as we are not talking about Joe Bloggs wanting to build an extension but a deliberate invasion of land. Most of our builders would not be allowed to buy a field in the green belt and build 40 bungalows on it—that is the difficulty that we face.

Mr. Luff: The hon. Gentleman made two points. First, the cost to district councils is a serious concern, as they operate on tight budgets, and the threat of a Government cap hangs over them if they exceed council tax increases. Their residents expect them to take strong legal action against abuses of the planning system, but the costs can be huge, so it may be extremely difficult to do so. Secondly, there is a dramatic illustration of the imbalance of the planning system at Wyre Piddle, because next door to the site a local man wants to put up a huge mobile advertisement for turf. Quite rightly, the district council has been brutal, and insisted that he move it. In the field next door, however, there is an authorised but permanent encampment, which is the subject of a planning inquiry instigated by the Minister. Two different planning standards were therefore applied to those adjoining fields. The district council was right to fight both cases. The courts, however, are against one, but not the other.

A site at Upton Warren is part of the same problem as Wyre Piddle, but when local people explained to the Gypsies and Travellers that what they were doing, while not illegal, was unacceptable, they backed off and are applying for planning permission in the proper way, which I am pleased about. At the village of Aldington, which I visited last week, there have been extraordinary uncontrolled developments, which are subject to enforcement notices from the district council. It will be interesting, however, to see whether those notices can, in fact, be enforced.

There was a striking demonstration of changing attitudes in Eckington in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire. The local
 
16 Sept 2004 : Column 1542
 
paper, the Evesham Journal, had a big spread on the front page in which travellers said that they wanted to settle and send their children to local schools.

It invited our sympathy for those people. Well, I am delighted that they should settle. If they now need to settle, I wish us to do all we can to accommodate their doing so, but it must be done in a legal and proper way that does not cause resentment in the other settled community, which would not be allowed to settle in the same place.

The technique that people used in this case was to apply to all the service providers in good time, so water and electricity supplies were in place. Service providers cannot refuse to provide services. A customer could say, for example, that he was keeping a pony and needed an electric light and a bit of water for its trough. In such circumstances, the water and electricity will be laid on, and the tarmackers will move in late on a Friday, ideally just before a bank holiday weekend. The settlers will whack in a planning application at five o'clock on a Friday, as the district council offices are closing. They know that that means that they can say to the courts that they have applied for planning permission, and they will have the whole bank holiday weekend to construct the development.

In the case of Eckington, the district council was magnificent. Officers went out over the bank holiday weekend, sacrificing their holiday, to monitor what was going on and explain the limitations. The temporary stop notices might have helped, if they had been able to issue them so close to the bank holiday weekend. The technique is very clever, and it is used in an organised and consistent way that should alarm all of us. It is that abuse of the planning process and the cunning way in which people are getting around it that cause such resentment.

I commend the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on his early-day motions on this subject. In particular, early-day motion 1538, which is headed "Cottenham Residents Gypsy and Traveller Declaration", demonstrates the extraordinary range of interests that one would think were inimical to a solution, but which can be brought together if the language and approach are right. The motion points out that there has been a

"ground-breaking dialogue . . . commended by the Commission for Racial Equality, Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, Michael Evans, Bishop of East Anglia and the Right Reverend Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford"

on a "bridge-building initiative". That is what can be done if the matter is approached in the right way.

Ministers should not be afraid of being firm with those who are seeking to abuse the system. I am attracted to the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds about allowing no retrospective permission where there is a wilful attempt to breach planning regulations, as there clearly was at Eckington, and, I would say, at Wyre Piddle.

Perhaps what we most need, however, is to redefine what we mean by the phrase "travelling community". We have obligations towards travelling Travellers who wish to continue their travelling lifestyle. There are some who wish to do so in a legal way, but another band of people, including those who regularly invade the Hampton Lovett trading estate in my constituency, do
 
16 Sept 2004 : Column 1543
 
not behave legally and do not deserve the same sympathy and assistance. Their abuse of private property is shameful. We need to define those who are genuine Travellers, and those who wish to settle. If the courts were encouraged to look differently at the rights of travelling and settling Travellers, local residents, who are subject to all the strictures of the planning system, might accept that the right balance is being struck.

The integrity of the planning system is at stake, as is respect for it. This matter strikes at the heart and essentials of our democratic society. I hope that we will now hear some encouraging words.

6.8 pm

---